Our Vermont friend Robert retired a few years ago after a distinguished legal career up there. He once told me he attended an event honoring a beloved trial attorney who was retiring and who was widely regarded as the best cross-examiner the state had ever seen. And he was going to speak on the art of cross-examination. After going on for about 30 minutes, he told the audience he was going to end by revealing his formula for success. All the lawyers in the audience were poised with pen over paper to jot it down. Then he said: “Keep it short, sit down, you probably fucked up.”
Today’s Gameplay column in the NYT by Sam Corbin was about that: not cross examination, but how a three-item list is often the most effective way of getting a message across. It’s a rhetorical device known as a tricolon. Corbin says she texted her friend Chandler Dean, who writes speeches for media personalities and politicians, to ask him whether he knew about the device. “Know it, love it, overuse it,” he texted back.
Dean explained it’s like a tiny story with a beginning, middle, and end. He noted that the most popular adage about the power of the tricolon was, itself, a tricolon: “Tell ’em what you’re going to say, say it, and then tell ’em what you said.”
Corbin says you need to consider the rhythm too — it should go up-up-down, like a dance in 3/4 time — and its effect is strongest when each item escalates in potency and length. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” wouldn’t be nearly as powerful if liberty had come third.
It all came up because today’s NYTXW was a tricolon of sorts. The theme’s revealer was TOM DICK AND HARRY (“Trio of average guys”). Then the three theme answers were: CARIBBEAN CRUISE (for TOM Cruise); BIG BAD WOLF (for DICK Wolf); and FREESTYLES (for HARRY Styles).
Dick Wolf, you probably know, produced Law and Order and other hit shows. He went to college at UPenn (Class of ’69).
Harry Styles is a popular British singer. He is heavily tattooed, the most prominent of which is a large butterfly. He also has a Green Bay Packers logo tattoo (not kidding).
His sexuality is sort of up in the air, and he has dated a bevy of knockouts, including our Tay for a while. Here’s one of them, actress/model Camille Rowe. Did he fall for those ocean eyes? How could he not?
Linda and I attended a concert yesterday in a church in Plainfield NJ performed by the NJ Intergenerational Orchestra (NJIO). True to its name, orchestra members run in age from elementary school to folks in their 80s. The place was packed and it was great. The soloist for the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto was 15-year-old Elizabeth Poppy Song, and, forgive me, readers, for resorting to technical music terminology, but she f*cking killed the damn thing. Like, in a good way. Phenomenal.
Ah, to be young!
Sometimes a student says “Thank you” after I answer a question. It’s not necessary, I tell them, but I also say I do believe the small courtesies are important. “It doesn’t cost a nickel to say please or thank you, and people will think better of you for it.” I ran into a student of mine years after she was in my class, and she told me that made an impression on her. You never know what will stick. Here’s Tay. (Love the outfit, girl!)
“Children hate me.”
So this carrot and celery stalk are walking down the street and they come to an intersection. The carrot stops at the red light, but the celery keeps going and gets hit by a car. He’s rushed to the hospital and the carrot rides along with him in the ambulance. He’s taken in for surgery and the carrot paces nervously in the waiting room. After what seems like forever, the surgeon comes out and walks up to the carrot. He says: Your friend is going to live, but he’ll be a vegetable the rest of his life.
Last, happy birthday to Jonathan Winters (1925) and Kurt Vonnegut (1922). Oh, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821). If I had to pick one to sit next to on a long train ride, it would be easy. In 1964, Jack Paar gave Winters a stick and told him to do something with it. Winters proceeded to act out a fisherman, violinist, lion tamer, canoeist, diplomat, bullfighter, flutist, psychiatric patient, British headmaster, and Bing Crosby playing golf. He made up characters based on people he knew growing up in Ohio, including Piggy Bladder, the football coach for the State Teachers’ Animal Husbandry Institute for the Blind. If you saw him perform, you’d understand why he was a great influence on Robin Williams and Jim Carrey.
See you next time!
The Wellington Files 