Quote of the Day (Frances Trollope, Loathing a Most American Summer Fruit)

“The huge fruit [watermelon] is cut into half a dozen sections, of about a foot long, and then, dripping as it is with water, applied to the mouth, from either side of which pour copious streams of the fluid, while, ever and anon, a mouthful of the hard black seeds are shot out in all directions, to the great annoyance of all within reach.”—English novelist and travel writer Frances Trollope (1779-1863), Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832)

To her infinite horror, Mrs. Trollope first came across this fruit (one I love, BTW) while visiting Cincinnati in 1830. I’m afraid that her bad opinion wouldn’t be improved by the image accompanying this post: Juliette Lewis in the 1993 film, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.

Quote of the Day (Nicolas Cage, Adding an Unforgettable Detail to an Already Memorable Film Scene)

[Among the rich lore of legends associated with the film “Vampire’s Kiss,” pictured here, David Marchese asks star Nicolas Cage if it’s true that he asked to have “hot yogurt poured on your toes” during an intimate scene.]

Cage: “There was some yogurt. There wasn’t hot yogurt, and I think I was administering the yogurt to myself.”

Marchese: “But why?”

Cage: “I don’t really remember.”

Marchese: “It’s better that you don’t.”

Cage: “Probably.”— Oscar-winning American film actor Nicolas Cage, interviewed by David Marchese, “Nicolas Cage Made Himself A Legend. Then He Had to Live With It,” The New York Times Magazine, May 31, 2026

Well, I’m glad we got that squared away. I think.

Faithful reader, do you recall perhaps the most bizarre interview ever conducted on David Letterman’s Late Show? Oscar-winning actor Joaquin Phoenix made the late-night host uncomfortable with his long hair, unkempt beard, and gaseous musings—until admitting a year later that it was all staged for a mock documentary.

I wonder if the same phenomenon is going on—and has been for years—with Nicolas Cage. Stories like the one above are only marginally less nutty than the ones retailed for years about him (including the urban legend that the actor actually is a vampire).  

Did the actor, bored by what Joni Mitchell called “the star-making machinery,” decide to have a little fun with his interviewer?

It wouldn’t be the first time that a celebrity spun a few fables for an all-too-credulous reporter or talk-show host. Bob Dylan was famous for that. The late director David Lynch and Twilight star Robert Pattinson were also known to have invented a tale or two.

Cage didn’t stop with that little yogurt yarn.

He disputed that he’d taken an aquarium from the Museum of Modern Art (actually, he says, it was a Lucite box that covers artifacts, and he had “used it as an enclosure for a king snake”).

And he acknowledged having jumped as many as four beer kegs in his childhood, and of even planning a “hoop of fire” around the whole until a sensible adult came and took it away.

Please—enough already! Nobody can be this crazy. It’s all a put-on—right?

TV Quote of the Day (‘The Sopranos,’ In Which Tony Distinguishes Nostradamus From Notre Dame)

Bobby "Bacala" Baccalieri [played by Steve Schirripa]: “Mom started going downhill after the World Trade Center. You know Quasimodo predicted all this.”

Anthony 'Tony' Soprano Sr. [played by James Gandolfini]: “Who did what?”

Bobby: “All these problems—the Middle East, the end of the world.”

Tony [shaking his head, like a teacher correcting a very errant student]: “Nostradamus. Quasimodo's the Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

Bobby: “Oh right. Notre Damus.”

Tony: “Nostradamus, and Notre Dame. Two different things completely.”

Bobby: “It's interesting, though, they'd be so similar, isn't it? And I always thought, okay, Hunchback of Notre Dame. You also got your quarterback and halfback of Notre Dame.”

Tony [exasperated]: “One's a f-g cathedral.”

Bobby: “Obviously. I know, I'm just saying. It's interesting, the coincidence. What, you're gonna tell me you never pondered that? The back thing with Notre Dame?”

Tony: “No!”— The Sopranos, Season 4, Episode 1, “For All Debts Public and Private,” original air date Sept. 15, 2002, teleplay by David Chase, directed by Allen Coulter

Over the last several months, I’ve been catching up on nearly two decades of TV shows on DVD—series like Foyle’s War, Monk, Game of Thrones. Last night, I started Season 4 of The Sopranos. 

In the past, watching prior seasons sometimes made me burst out laughing at its moments of dark humor, but nothing prepared me for this segment quoted here. Years ago, on a radio show, I recall Goodfellas screenwriter Nick Pileggi saying that Mafia kids in school were the type of guys who tripped other students walking toward the front of the class. 

Perhaps Tony Soprano was like this growing up, too. In fact, I’d say it was very likely.

But perhaps all those weeks watching The History Channel (before it became dominated by reality programs, mind you) improved his appreciation for knowledge. 

Who said television serves no educational purpose?

 

TV Quote of the Day (Tara Reid, Comparing Her Intellect to Another Blond Celeb’s)

“I make Jessica Simpson look like a rock scientist.”—American actress Tara Reid in Wild on Tara (Taradise), Season 1, Episode 1, broadcast August 10, 2005

(Photo of Tara Reid taken Aug. 11, 2005, by Andrea Flannery.)

Quote of the Day (Helena Bonham Carter, on Her Unusual Consultation for ‘The Crown’)

“She [the late Princess Margaret, through a psychic] said, apparently, she was glad it was me. My main thing when you play someone who is real, you kind of want their blessing because you have a responsibility.

“So I asked her: ‘Are you OK with me playing you?’ and she said: ‘You’re better than the other actress’ … that they were thinking of. They will not admit who it was. It was me and somebody else.”—Actress Helena Bonham Carter, relating to the Cheltenham literature festival how she sought the best possible authority for playing the late royal in The Crown, quoted in Mark Brown, “Helena Bonham Carter Sought Princess Margaret's Blessing Through Psychic,” The Guardian (UK), Oct. 6, 2019

I guess Ms. Carter really got to believe in magic after her appearance in the “Harry Potter” films…

(Photo of Helena Bonham Carter taken at the press conference for "Toast" at the Berlin Film Festival, June 27, 2011.)

Quote of the Day (Baseball’s Dizzy Dean, on ‘The King’s English’)

“After a spectacular career as a pitcher, Dizzy Dean went on to become an equally spectacular sportscaster. Ignoring grammar and inventing words, he took such liberties with the language that a colleague was prompted to ask: ‘What made you become an announcer when you don't even know the King’s English?' ‘But I do know the King's English,’ indignantly retorted Dean. “ ‘And so is the Queen.’” —Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher, sportscaster, and interpreter of English Jay Hanna “Dizzy” Dean (1910-1974), quoted in E.E. Edgar, “Famous Fables,” Pottstown (Pa.) Mercury, June 19, 1976

It was, perhaps, incidents like this that led Dean to say, “The good Lord was good to me. He gave me a strong body, a good right arm, and a weak mind.”