September 6, 2007
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Thursday, September 06, 2007The Daily News
Luciano Pavarotti 1935-2007
1 So…Luciano Pavarotti walks into a bar…2 So it goes, so it goes…
3 Heaven just got another voice.
4 Truly, all a friend can say is ain’t it a shame.
5 Moving on: One
of the wonderful parts about throwing your stuff out there each morning
is that the editing process can be brutal. I always hesitate whenever
I use the word “ain’t”. I don’t mind using it at all, it’s just that I
will never understand the apostrophe. What is it abbreviating? Hmmmm.6
Anyway, normally the DN takes a few hours to put together, not because
it’s so hard to write but because it just takes time to gather some of
those priceless pictures that I steal on a regular basis.7 When the right one comes along, I almost fall off my chair.
8
I usually write stuff up first, check it for moronic mistakes, and then
search for the pictures. Inevitably I find some idiotic mistake the
minute I’ve sent the thing into space.9 Sometimes I don’t
even notice what I did. I run it for grammar errors a hundred bajillion
times only to find some screwball misplaced modifier or some horrendous
error in structure. In general, it’s such a rarity that not just me,
but the entire world goes into a form of shock.
10 I also have the Corrections Officers ready to pounce.
11
Yesterday, for example, a few people wrote and said they loved
yesterday’s DN, which I did too, but mainly because of that dandy
picture of the Queen.12 But as I re-read, I began twitching on a few grammar concerns.
13 I then got to number 33 and saw that I had written, “I may have wounded up whack.”
14
For those of you who don’t know, the correct past participle of “wind”
is “wound”. I knew this, but when you are going fast on a computer,
your fingers sometimes travel faster than your thoughts. My FINGERS
knew the past participle of “wound” is “wounded” so they just flew with
that.15 I stood disgraced. How many other harrible errors
had I made in the past week? Month? Or…it’s just too harrible to even
think about.16 Even to think about.
17 It’s just too harrible about which even to think.
18 Oy.
19 I thought that perhaps it would slip past everyone.
20 After having gone through a hundred tons of fan mail, I realized that NOBODY had spotted it. Dun dun DUUUUUUUUNN!!!!!
21 I went back to new mail.
22
Now the embarrassing thing is that Sparky had just visited me, so the
speakers on my computer were turned up loud. I was just trying to sneak
in a quick goof at work when suddenly, reverberating off six walls was the famous
AOL voice:YOU’VE GOT MAIL!23 I just kept staring at the screen like the guys in those commercials that say, “Need to get away?”24 I looked around swiftly, and then glanced back.
25 I had an e-mail from the immortal Goof. Geoff is one of the best, and eagle eye and a hankerin’ for only the best.
26
I KNEW I couldn’t throw that one past him. I just laughed, opened the
mail and his e-mail said, “…that would be a ton of rot…” referring
to yesterday’s DN, item 28, which read, “It turned your teeth rotton, your eyes blue…” etc.27 AH!
28 There it was, big as the world. I had misspelled the word “rotten”!
29
Again, that was just an effort in haste making waste. I originally had
it worded, “It originally turned your teeth red…” and switched at the
last moment, thought twice, then looked a third time and just galloped
with it, my fingers totally not spelling the word “rotten” even
remotely correct.30 AH!
31 I stood astonished. I
stared at the error, which Geoff, in a brilliant twist of irony,
painted a sweet red for me. Would this have ever happened to Keats,
Byron
or Shelly?32 Get off me. I KNOW it’s “Shelley”. I wasn’t sure if the middle guy was Bryon, Byson, or Biron though.
33 Yeah I did. Now I’m paranoid.
34 My only peace came when I realized that NOBODY had caught the “wounded” one, which really jumped out at me.
35 Well, that’s a Day in the Life of a DN guy.
36 Like I used to tell my actors, a pie in the face comes with the job.
37 I laughed, and enjoyed the fact that we have people out there who wounded up pretty edumacated.
38 I like to think I had a part in that.
39 Anyway, thanks for all the cards and letters. Keep vigilant. I screw up at least three times a week, so happy motoring.
40 And Geoff, lookin’ forward to twenty-five man.
41 Let’s jam.
42 Peace.
~H~
