What's In A Name? A Move Character, Here's Four For Sixteen Different Actors

Fred C Dobbs from Treasure of the Sierra Madre

This is a fairly well-organized though poorly thought out blog post. However if you’re already here you should definitely read it. It’s fun and easy. What I’ve done is taken sixteen (see, I don’t even know why it’s sixteen) famous male actors and listed four of their — I was going to say iconic, but I’m not sure that they really are — film roles. I think it’s safe to call them notable ones. Their best? No. Well, in some cases, yes. But in some cases I subtracted a better film for a better character name. Like for Woody Allen. Instead of Isaac Davis in Manhattan I went with Fielding Melish from Bananas. The latter being a far more interesting character name. So my criteria was a little inconsistent, plus I wasn’t too meticulous, so might have left out a good character or good character name. Anyway, what I like about it is that each name evokes an image, not just a character but an entire movie. It was fun to put together and for all I know it’ll be fun to read. It won’t take long. Don’t get ticked off because I omitted a character you really like or particularly associate with an actor. Just enjoy what’s here. You can do that easily enough.

Humphrey Bogart 

Philip Marlowe- The Big Sleep

Richard Blaine - Casablanca

Fred C Dobbs - Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Sam Spade - The Maltese Falcon

Woody Allen

Danny Rose - Broadway Danny Rose

Alvy Singer - Annie Hall

Fielding Mellish - Bananas

Leonard Zelig - Zelig

Groucho Marx

Rufus T Firefly - Duck Soup

Captain Geoffrey T. Spaulding - Animal Crackers

Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff - Horse Feathers

Otis B. Driftwood - A Night at the Opera

Cary Grant

Walter Burns - His Girl Friday

CK Dexter Haven - The Philadelphia Story

Leopold Dilg - Talk of the Town

Johnny Case - Holiday

Robert DeNiro

Travis Bickle - Taxi Driver

Jake LaMotta - Raging Bull

Jimmy Conway- Goodfellas

Rupert Pupkin - The King of Comedy

Henry Fonda

Tom Joad - Grapes of Wrath

Wyatt Earp - My Darling Clementine

Charles Pike - The Lady Eve

Abraham Lincoln - The Young Mr. Lincoln

Burt Lancaster

JJ Hunsecker — The Sweet Smell of Success

Sgt. Milton Warden - From Here to Eternity

Ole “Swede” Anderson - The Killers

Felix Happer - Local Hero

Max Von Sydow

Antonius Block - The Seventh Seal

Father Merrin - The Exorcist

Jonas Persson - Winter Light

Albert Emanuel Vogler - The Magician

Steve McQueen

Det. Lt. Frank Bullit - Bullit

Virgil Hilts - The Great Escape

Doc McCoy - The Getaway

Jake Holman - The Sand Pebbles

Warren Beatty

Clyde Barrow — Bonne and Clyde

John Reed - Reds

Joe Frady - The Parallax View

Jay Bulworth - Bulworth

Jack Nicholson

Signalman 1st Class Billy L. Buddusky — The Last Detail

Jake Gittes — Chinatown

Jack Torrance - The Shining

Warren Schmidt — About Schmidt

Denzel Washington

Private Tripp — Glory

Joe Miller — Philadelphia

Easy Rawlins - Devil in a Blue Dress

Malcolm X - Malcolm X

Jeff Bridges

Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski - The Big Lebowski

Duane Jackson - The Last Picture Show

Richard Bone - Cutter’s Way

Rooster Cogburn - True Grit

Al Pacino

Michael Corleone - The Godfather

Frank Serpico - Serpico

Sonny Wortzik - Dog Day Afternoon

Lowell Bergman - The Insider

Jimmy Stewart

Jefferson Smith - Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

George Bailey - It’s A Wonderful Life

Ransom Stoddard - The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

Alfred Kralik - The Shop Around the Corner

Leonardo DiCaprio

Rick Dalton - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Howard Hughes - The Aviator

Amsterdam Vallon - Gangs of New York

Bob Ferguson - One Battle After Another

It Would Be More Better If You Didn't All The Time Make That Mistake: The Author Looks Back on the Most Common Errors He Saw As An EFL Teacher

It’s been a week since I retired from teaching after forty years. For the last sixteen years I taught EFL (English as a foreign language) which meant that, for the most part, my students were visiting the U.S. primarily to take intensive English classes. I thought it might be interesting to share the most common mistakes I encountered. Mind you, most of the classes I had were at the intermediate level, more of my students were upper-intermediate than lower-intermediate. One interesting thing about a lot of these mistakes is that they were just as likely to come from a Japanese student as a French one. However there were particular kinds of mistakes that came from particular kinds of speakers. For example Spanish speakers often used the word “history” for “story” and they were constantly saying things like “in this moment” rather than “now.” They grossly overused the word moment. Germans would often use the continuous tense when the present simple was called for. They would say: “I am eating lunch every day at noon” instead of “I eat lunch everyday at noon.” 

The biggest problem for students from anywhere else in the world was prepositions. This is understandable given the capricious nature of prepositions and the lack of rules governing their use. For example why do we get “on” busses, trains and — most frighteningly of all — airplanes. Seems more logical to get “in” them. More examples will become evident below.

Mistake: “He lives near to the store.” “Near to” was a universally made mistake and it was hard for students to shed it. We have “next to” and “close to” so why not “near to?”

Mistake: “We are going to go to shopping.” Same with going to swimming, dancing or any other activity. That damn word “to” was a constant. Students either used it too often or substituted an incorrect preposition for it as in, “I’m going for the store.”

Mistake: “He has been married with her for four years.” This would rank among the top ten most common mistakes and again that damn word “to” is involved. It’s understandable, being married with another person does make sense.

Double mistake: “It is the birthday of Betty, she has twenty-four years.” The second mistake “having” your years is the more common. I think the French led the way in making this mistake but Spanish speakers made it as well. The house of Ed rather than Ed’s house was mostly a lower level problem, most common among Italians.

Mistake: “Baseball is very famous in the United States.” No it is popular, not famous. This one sounded silly, especially when I’d be asked something like: “Are burritos famous in California?”

Mistake: “I saw one dog running in the store.” No, you saw “a” dog running in the store. In English when there’s just one of something we almost always go with “a” or “an.” Not so in other languages.

Mistake: “My friends and I will make a party this weekend.” Nope. We “have” parties, barbecues and picnics, we don’t make them. Students sometimes also wanted to “make a test” rather than take one.

Mistake: “Do you all the time go to that cafe?” I had to familiarize hundreds of students with the word “always” and its regular use.

Mistake: “We went to a movie yesterday night.” How many times did I tell a class: it’s yesterday morning, yesterday afternoon but last night. (Please note, that was a rhetorical question.)

Mistake: “Do you practice basketball?” This could go for any sport, including skiing. Students had trouble understanding that while you can “practice” a sport when you’re working on your skills, we don’t use the word to mean participating in the sport. You don’t practice basketball every Saturday, you play basketball. You don’t practice skiing, you go skiing.

Mistake: “We had a great weekend, it was so funny.” This one slipped by me a few times in my early days. I assumed that there were a lot of laughs. But it soon become evident that students thought that fun and funny were related words with the latter being an extension of the former.

Mistake: “It would be more better if you came with us.” Students loved to put a “more” before a comparative. Imagine their confusion when I said that you could say: much better.

Mistake: “All the people like going to the beach.” “As with ‘always,’ I was constantly introducing students to the word “everybody.” 

Mistake: “I was in New York during two weeks.” How about “for” two weeks? Another preposition problem.

Mistake: “How can I spell this word?” This is another one that would crack the top ten. It was also a difficult one to explain. “How do you spell this word?” just didn’t make sense to them.

Mistake: “I must go now.” Technically not a mistake, however I was forever pointing out that ninety-five per cent of the time we would say “I have to go now.” The word “must” in this sense is rarely used and then only in serious situations.

Mistake: “When do you come back to your country?” Folks, you come here, you go there.

Mistake: “We were twelve people on the trip.” There were twelve of us on the trip.

Those are far and away the leaders among common mistakes. In addition to all the other grammar we did, the reading, the listening, the writing, the talking, the activities, I would often give them error correction papers. The assignment was to find the mistakes in each sentence and correct them. Invariably a few minutes into working on the paper someone would ask: “does every sentence have a mistake?” When I assured them they all did, I’d see faces sag and people look bewildered. But students who stuck around figured it out. Most important of all was the fact that in understanding these mistakes they were also learning about other aspects of the language. The point was not just to remember to say “last night” but understand other aspects of the language.

I’ll miss watching students figure things out. That was fun.

Wherein I Yell at Youth Sports Coaches Who Yell At Kids

My niece was telling me about her son’s middle school flag football coach. He makes the team run sprints so much in practice that some of the get physically ill. Again, this is middle school. It’s important to be in shape and indeed good for you, but at the same time you’re working with twelve and thirteen year-olds who are playing goddamned flag football, not running ultra marathons.

That’s not the worst part. If they lose a game this same coach makes them run extra. That’s right, he punishes children for the sin of losing a game. As a youth coach you know what I did when my team lost a game? I told them not to feel bad about it, learn your lessons and move on. I also told them that I was proud of their effort and that they should be too. By the way, I coached several teams to championships and had a perennial winner and it never occurred to me — not once — to punish players because the other team outscored them.

All my life I’ve seen evidence of youth coaches who get it all wrong and frankly I’ve been appalled. It hasn’t gotten any better since I was a kid. Actually, youth sports in general is in worse shape than it was fifty years ago. There’s a tremendous emphasis on winning, far out of proportion to what it should be. There’s also a proliferation of pay-to-play teams. Economically disadvantaged children (that’s a euphemism for poor kids) miss out. Baseball in particular has become a sport dominated at the youth level by privileged white kids. But that’s a topic for another time.

One of the worst things I’ve seen in the new uber competitive world of youth sports is that in this overwhelming desire to win teams are limiting playing time to their starters while other kids are spending entire games on the bench. Kids — whose parents are often shelling out money for the privilege — busting their little asses to play, going to every practice are sitting on the bench for all or most of games. Kids! Again when I was a coach everybody played in every game — period. Like I said, my teams won championships. Many coaches, and this goes up through college all the way to the pro level, are afraid to use their back ups because they lack confidence. Not in the players but in themselves. 

Another thing is that here we are in the 21st century and we still have youth coaches who chew out their players. I’m not talking about yelling at players to “hustle” or barking instructions, I’m talking about using demeaning language, using profanity, insulting kids. That’s not even acceptable at the professional level let alone with ten-year-olds. What does it say about a forty-five year old man that he screams at a teenager for a mistake made on the playing field? 

It’s not just that. My older daughter was on her high school volleyball team. I attended home games. Once after a game the coach wasn’t happy with the way the team had played, despite the fact that they won. She kept the team on the court after the match and chewed them out in front of us remaining spectators. Seriously. After a match I would send my teams home with a hearty congratulations. If there were problems in their performance I would address it at the next practice with zero people watching. Even after a loss I wanted my players to feel good about themselves and I sure as hell didn’t want to air problems in front of other people.

Even if there were issues to be addressed I would always start practice on an upbeat note and then end it that way. These are young people. They have fragile egos. Many are sensitive. I wanted the experience of being on a team to be a positive force in their lives. I wanted to build their self-esteem while guiding them in being part of a team. My motto: play hard, have fun. If a player was late or someone interrupted me while I was talking the whole team ran to the fence and back (just once, enough to get a message across but not make them throw up). I was teaching them that they were all in it together. No one ever complained.

I was never perfect as a coach, far from it. But I also was not — not even close — a goddamned jerk who thought “punishment” was part of my job. I suppose I had an advantage as a coach because I was also a teacher and thus recognized that coaching and teaching are similar. (When a kid got the year the Civil War started wrong I never made them run until they vomited. Basic principle.)

Youth coaches need to relax, get over themselves and be there for the kids. Support them, nurture them and yes, push them, try to get the maximum out of them. But you don’t need to yell, cuss or name call. A pat on the back is more effective than a kick in the ass.

Reflections of Retiring Again -- Maybe This Time I'll Get it Right

I’m retiring — again. I did this seven and a half years ago but it didn’t stick. I was retired for three months before I returned to work, this time half time. I’ve been teaching mornings since, excepting during the pandemic.

This is not entirely voluntary. I’ve been thinking of hanging ‘em up for awhile now but the fact that there is no work for me has made the decision easier. I was going to be furloughed effective next week but with the prospects for future work bleak I decided to call it a career.

International language schools in the U.S. have seen a severe decline in enrollment recently owing to the fact that people in other countries are increasingly hesitant to come to this country. Let’s call this the Trumpy effect. Also it has become increasingly difficult to get a visa — even a temporary student one. This is another product of the Trumpy effect.

Fifteen months ago the school I’m leaving was running four classes. Next week it’ll be two. I’m the odd man out. 

I’m excited to have so much more time to write never-to-be-published novels (and maybe one or two that will be published). I also rather like the idea of not having to get up quite so early. Getting out of bed at 6:15 instead of 5:30 feels like luxury. I also won’t have to grade any more papers or deal with that goddamned smart board or see students staring at their fucking phones while I’m talking.

But I’ll miss it, especially as I’ve still got a little left in the tank. Yesterday was a terrific day in the classroom, I was in top form and students were appreciative. After class in addition to the usual goodbyes and thank you I got a couple of “great classes.” I’m still innovating too. Even in my last week I’m looking for the new and improved. I’m proud of that.

I’ve been in education for forty years. Most of the time was in public schools with middle schoolers — that’s a strange and wonderful calling. There was a school year I was off to stay at home with our first born and there was nearly two years off during the pandemic but other than that it’s been steady work.

There’s an interesting kind of power to being a teacher. You have a dozen or so people sitting there looking at you waiting for your next words, wondering what’s next on the agenda. But teaching is not what they used to call a “power trip.” It’s all about connections, orchestrating, showing, inspiring, motivating, cajoling, explaining and understanding. With a dash of entertainment mixed in. For me this included humor. It can be a helluva lot of fun and I’m going to miss it.

Is there a chance for another comeback? At 72 that seems highly unlikely. Anyway I’ve got a grandson on the way. I’ve got a wife to hang out with. I’ve got writing to do. It’s a big ole world and some of it exists outside a classroom.