a small unregarded yellow sun
“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral Arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.”
—Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, 1979.
‘Has your eyes always been checked?’
“The optometrist says ‘Has your eyes always been checked?’
And I says, ‘Why no, they has always been blue. I gwarantee ya!’”
—Justin Wilson, concluding an episode of Justin Wilson Lookin’ Back, his cooking show. I caught it on RFDTV this morning, just after flying home via Heathrow and New York. (It’s good to be back home.)
nothing burns as easily or faster than film
“If you’ve gone to many picture shows, particularly back in the early days of the business, you’ve seen it happen once or twice. The film will hit the screen like a still. Then it looks like someone is punching a live cigar butt through it from the back.
That’s caused by not having the film rolling while the arcs are on. Because those arcs are just like a blast furnace, and nothing burns as easily or faster than film.”
—Jim Thompson, Nothing More than Murder, 1959. The burning still is used to great effect at the end of Two-Lane Blacktop, directed by Monte Hellman and starring James Taylor, 1971.
dark.
Not in operation; a dark house.
—Glossary of Exhibitor Terms, from Nothing More than Murder, by Jim Thompson, 1959.
paper.
Advertising matter.
—Glossary of Exhibitor Terms from Nothing More than Murder by Jim Thompson, 1959
product.
Pictures.
—Glossary of Exhibitor Terms, from Nothing More than Murder, by Jim Thompson, 1959.
mucklededung
“She had on an old mucklededung-colored coat—the way it was screaming Sears-Roebuck they should have paid her to wear it. . . .”
—Jim Thompson, Savage Night, 1953.
Tiny white things
“When I woke the last time it was nine-thirty, and sunlight was streaming into the room. It was shining right on my pillows, and my face felt hot and moist. I sat up quickly, hugging my stomach. The light, hitting into my eyes suddenly, had made me sick. I clenched my eyes against it, but the light wasn’t shut out. It seemed to be closed in, under the lids, and a thousand little images danced in its brilliance. Tiny white things, little figure-seven-shaped things: dancing and twisting and squirming.”
—Jim Thompson, Savage Night, 1953.
the part of me that was on-the-beam
“Around four in the afternoon, after I’d walked about ten miles, I came to this roadhouse. I went on past it a little ways, walking slower and slower, arguing with myself. I lost the argument—the part of me that was on-the-beam lost it–and I went back.”
—Jim Thompson, After Dark, My Sweet, 1955.
The concrete pasture
“The concrete pasture. I mean, that’s what it seems like to me. You keep going and going, and it’s always the same everywhere. Wherever you’ve been, wherever you go, everywhere you look. Just greyness and hardness, as far as you can see.”
—Jim Thompson, After Dark, My Sweet, 1955.