Saturday, August 11, 2018

Quips and Quotaions (Play to Your Strengths Edition)









 If your head tells you one thing and your heart tells you another, before you do anything, you should first decide whether you have a better head or a better heart.


 --Marilyn vos Savant


 (She knows what she's talking about--the woman has an IQ of 228!)





7 comments:

  1. Hi, Kirk!

    This post affords a Boomer like me an excellent opportunity to play a game of Six Degrees. First, I want you to know, and I am not boasting here (but I really am), that the moment I saw those first two pictures I instantly named one of my favorite sci-fi horror movies of the 50s, The Brain From Planet Arous, and a favorite TV series, Love American Style. Like a lightning bolt striking, I remembered a string of people associated with those two screencaps.

    The moment I saw that evil alien brain suspended midair, I instantly recalled that the fright film starred B movie actor John Agar. Earlier in his career, Agar was married to Shirley Temple. The scenes in the goofy flick in which Agar's character is able to make airplanes explode simply by gazing at them and smiling cruelly represent method acting at its finest. :) Agar's co-star in Brain was Joyce Meadows, not to be confused with Jayne Meadows who married Steve Allen and Jayne's sister Audrey Meadows who famously played Alice Kramden on Jackie Gleason's hit series The Honeymooners.

    Claudine Longet - gotta love her. When I saw that image of her being introduced on an episode of Love American Style, I immediately recalled that she was the wife of crooner Andy Williams, that she stood trial for shooting her lover, former Olympic skier "Spider" Sabich, and that the jury ultimately found her to be too pretty for prison. In addition to being an actress and dancer, Claudine was a singer. I own one of her records.

    Finally we come to Marilyn vos Savant aka "Mrs. Shady." That's right, Kirk - Marilyn is my wife. I admit that she's out of my league. I definitely traded up when I convinced her to marry me, given the fact that her IQ is a full three points higher than mine. At parties she introduces me as "Idiot Savant."

    Enjoy your weekend, good buddy Kirk!

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    Replies
    1. Welcome, Mr. Jarvik! Still cranking out those artificial hearts? But if you don't mind, I'm going to keep calling you Shady. It's just what I'm used to, that's all.

      As coincidental as it may seem, vos Savant is not a pen name. It was her father's surname and her maiden name which she has decided to keep, but you knew that when you married her.

      I'm not saying he was up there with Laurence Olivier, but I rather liked John Agar's unhinged performance in The Brain from Planer Arous. I found him even more enjoyable than the talking dog. I did not know he was ever married to Shirley Temple.

      Finally, Shady, do you remember the 1970s Saturday Night Live skit titled The Claudine Longet Invitational Ski Championship? Even if you haven't, keeping in mind what you said about the jury (I laughed out loud when I read it), it may just be physical appearance trumps both head and heart. In her case, anyway.

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    2. In the future, good buddy, please try to avoid using the word "trumps." It triggers a migraine. :)

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  2. I can remember when I used to get the Sunday paper and inside was a paperette magazine called Parade. In the bask was a column Ask Marilyn...Marilyn vos Savant would always blow me away.

    I used to love old cult movies like The Brain up there. Imagine to my delight I discovered my cable package has a new offering, The Comet. It's all cult horror monster, creature and sy fy cult classics. Needless to say I've been watching a lot at night.

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    Replies
    1. Marilyn vos Savant blows me away too, maddie. Not only can't I figure out those word problems she regularly features, I don't always understand what's being asked!

      The Comet sounds like a channel that would keep me watching, too. I don't so much get scared at monster movies as I enjoy the sheer weirdness of them.

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  3. Welcome back, Debra.

    Marilyn vos Savant scored that in 1956 when she was only ten years old. The Guinness Book of World Records became aware of it in the 1980s, and for a number of years she was listed as having the world's highest IQ. That's no longer the case but not because there's someone smarter out there. The Stanford-Binet test (the official name of the IQ test) was revised in the 1990s and a cap was set at 170. That's STILL a pretty rare score to achieve, but just not rare enough and Guinness dropped the category. I knew all this when I set out to do this post, but decided to go with the old score anyway, as that was her original claim to fame and what got her the Ask Marilyn column in the Parade Sunday supplement that maddie mentioned.

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In order to keep the hucksters, humbugs, scoundrels, psychos, morons, and last but not least, artificial intelligentsia at bay, I have decided to turn on comment moderation. On the plus side, I've gotten rid of the word verification.