GR translation: Arab With A Big Greasy Nose

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

And Sam Jaffe appears in /Bleeding Edge/!

"'This is me?' Ernie said when he saw the photo. 'I look like Sam Jaffe.'
  'A friend of yours, Mr. Tarnow?'
  'A movie actor.' Explaining to Efrem Zimbalist Jr. here how in /The 
Day the Earth Stood Still/ (1951) Sam Jaffe, playing Professor 
Barnhardt, the smartest man in the world, Einstein only different, after 
writing some advanced equations all over the blackboard in his study, 
steps out for a minute. The extraterrestrial Klaatu shows up looking for 
him and finds the boardful of symbols, like the worst algebra class you 
were ever in, notices what seems to be a mistake down in the middle of 
it, erases something and writes something else in, then leaves. When the 
Professor comes back, he immediately spots the change to his equations 
and stands there kind of beaming at the blackboard. It was some such 
expression that had crossed Ernie's face just as the covered federal 
shutter fell.
  'I've heard of that movie,' recalled this Windust party, 'pacifist 
propaganda in the depths of the Cold War, I believe it was flagged as 
potentially Communist-inspired,'
  'Yeah, you people blacklisted Sam Jaffe too. He wasn't a Communist, 
but he refused to testify. For years no studio would hire him. He made a 
living teaching math in high school. Strangely enough.'
  'He taught high school? Who would've been disloyal enough to hire him?'"
  'This is 2001, Maxeleh,' Ernie now shaking his head back and forth, 
'the Cold War is supposed to be over, how can these people not have 
changed or moved on, where is such a terrible inertia coming from?'
  'You always used to say their time hasn't passed, it's yet to come.'"

pp. 100-101

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASsNtti1XZs

Klaatu's speech sounds indeed a little bit "Communist-inspired", no?


On 23.05.2016 20:52, Simon Bryquer wrote:
>
> Being ill (dracunculiasis) and /_to perform on_/ is vomiting on 
> someone or something. Key :Army.
>
> As per the following:
>
> Perhaps this has been answered before – we’re talking about Kipling 
> here.  The *‘*/Fuzzy/*-*/Wuzzy’ poem of 19^th   century British 
> soldier view of /Hadendoa warriors in Sudan.
>
> Gary Grant and all that refers to the movie ‘Gunga Din’ (also a 
> Kipling poem made into a movie) played by Sam Jaffe, who I vaguely 
> recall could be described in that movie as ‘Arab With A Big Greasy 
> Nose’ though it’s all about India.
>
> BTW Sam Jaffe was great in the John Houston movie ‘Asphalt Jungle’ 
> ---- also I believe this was Marilyn Monroe first speaking role, 
> though she did not get any screen credit. She plays a slightly 
> mentally off babysitter --- and she was extremely good.
>
> Maybe the key words here : dracunculiasis and elephant medicine
>
> A parasitic infection caused by drinking flea invested water and 
> causes one to vomit – to perform on here might be vomiting on one or 
> many in the crowded army in battle.
>
> I would conclude to perform on is vomiting on someone or many.
>

> *From:*owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] 
> *On Behalf Of *Monte Davis
> *Sent:* Monday, May 23, 2016 12:30 PM
> *To:* Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> *Cc:* Pynchon Mailing List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> *Subject:* Re: GR translation: Arab With A Big Greasy Nose
>
> I take the "wistful classic" to be a comic song. I don't know the 
> song, or know that Pynchon had any existing song in mind rather than a 
> tease. So "perform" is wide open to your suggested definition... or to 
> a musical performance (like squeezing a clown's rubber nose)... or to 
> a sexual performance (details depending on culture, other organs 
> involved, and how one feels about noses).
>
> On Mon, May 23, 2016 at 11:54 AM, Mike Jing 
> <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com <mailto:gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>> 
> wrote:
>
>     Resurrecting this old post nobody replied to back in 2011. A search in
>     the archives shows that this has been asked a few times, but no one
>     had an answer. The problems is that I still have to figure out how to
>     translate "perform on". From the OED:
>
>     6. intr.
>     b. euphem. Esp. of a child or a pet: to urinate or defecate.
>
>     Does this make sense to anyone else given the context?
>
>     On Fri, Dec 9, 2011 at 4:19 AM, Mike Jing
>     <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com> wrote:
>     > P14.5-13   In 1935 he had his first episode outside any condition of
>     > known sleep—it was during his Kipling Period, beastly Fuzzy-Wuzzies
>     > far as eye could see, dracunculiasis and Oriental sore rampant among
>     > the troops, no beer for a month, wireless being jammed by other
>     Powers
>     > who would be masters of these horrid blacks, God knows why, and all
>     > folklore broken down, no Gary Grant larking in and out slipping
>     > elephant medicine in the punchbowls out here . .. not even an Arab
>     > With A Big Greasy Nose to perform on, as in that wistful classic
>     every
>     > tommy’s heard . . .
>     >
>     > What is this classic with "an Arab With A Big Greasy Nose"?  And
>     what
>     > do they want to perform on him?
>     -
>     Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>

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