standard playing cards
“By 1470, French card makers in Rouen had settled on the four suits we’re familiar with today. The church was represented by hearts, the state by spades, merchants by diamonds, farmers by clubs (which resembled more and more the clower they harvested). Earlier cards had been expensively hand-painted for the actual king and his court, but widespread demand among common folk soon led to mass production of uniform decks using woodcuts and stencils. Rouennais designers fashioned their court cards after historical figures. The king of spades was drawn to resemble David, king of the Hebrews, his sword modeled after the weapon he took from Goliath upon slaying the giant with a leather slingshot, which was shown lower down on his card. The club king depicted a stylized Charlemagne, the king of diamonds Julius Caesar, the heart king Alexander the Great. The four kings thus represent the Jewish world, the Holy Roman Empire, Rome, and Greece, the four main wellsprings of Western civilization. . . .
By the nineteenth century, as standard playing cards became double-ended, designers had to jettison the heraldry on the lower halves of the court cards. David’s slingshot disappeared, making his kingship more generic. Two images that survive are the orb of Christendom cupped in the left hand of the club king, and the three-belled flower, emblematic of the Holy Trinity, held by his queen.”
—James McManus, from Positively Fifth Street, 2003.
the ace, or one
“Some historians argue that the ace, or one, . . . made its counter-numerical switch from lowest to highest rank during the American and French revolutions, when it suddenly became possible for the merest commoner to become emperor, prime minister, or president. These days the ace represents whatever intangible force (such as God, Allah, aleph, I, the Arabic number one, or what physicists call a singularity) can overcome the most august human being.”
—James McManus, from Positively Fifth Street, 2003.
the brightest source of light in our solar system
“Except for the sun and the occasional thermonuclear blast, [Las Vegas] is the brightest source of light in our solar system. Its most famous drink, in fact, is the Atomic Cocktail—vodka, brandy, Champagne, splash of sherry. Gamblers enjoying them in the fifties were treated, by paying slightly more for their rooms, to views of Johnny von Neumann’s hydrogen bombs going off sixty-five miles north of town.”
—James McManus, from Positively Fifth Street, 2003.
the Black Book.
“Established in the days of Estes Kefauver and J. Edgar Hoover, the Black Book is simply a three-ring looseleaf binder holding mimeographed records and mug shots of the thirty-eight “Excluded Persons” barred for life from Nevada casinos.”
—James McManus, from Positively Fifth Street, 2003.
to “call a spade a spade”
“The ace of spades is as black and as bad as things get—or as good, in the sense that Rhett Butler, Adam Cartwright, John Shaft, or Achilles is good. The ace of spades also is real, the most real, in that our willingness to “call a spade a spade” shows us to be forthright, clear-eyed, realistic.”
—James McManus, from Positively Fifth Street, 2003.
a black cat
“I ain’t superstitious, but a black cat just crossed my trail.”
—Muddy Waters, as quoted by James McManus in Positively Fifth Street, 2003.
the Black Death
“Contemporaries did not call the plague the Black Death. Sometime in the fifteenth century, the Latin phrase atra mors, meaning, “dreadful death,” was translated “black death,” and the phrase stuck.”
—McKay, Hill and Buckler, A History of Western Society, sixth edition, 1999.
Her blacks
“Her blacks crackle and drag.”
—Sylvia Plath, from Edge; quoted by James McManus in Positively Fifth Street, 2003.
little towers of tinted clay chips
“I’ve fantasized for decades about having a World Series stack imposing enough to make brutal sport of my opponents, but I have zero actual experience in the role. Do I feel any pressure? Of course not. I . . . pour out my baggie of chips, stack them by colour, recount them. Not that I think anyone would have stealthily siphoned a pink or an orange this morning, but still: $276,000, all present and accounted for. Does it make sense to say that one loves little towers of tinted clay chips? Did Grandma Betsy shit in the woods? . . .
At $15,000 per round, the average stack would be blinded off in about seven rounds. I have more leeway, of course, with my four yellow five-hundreds, fourteen blue-and-white thousands, twenty-four orange five-thousands, and fourteen hot pink ten-thousands. (And yes, I’m convinced of it: love is exactly the word.) The floormen have requested that we keep all our pinks to the fore, this is to give opponents a fair chance to measure with whom they want to tangle. Or not.”
—James McManus, from Positively Fifth Street, 2003.
all blue.
A club flush.
—Positively Fifth Street, by James McManus, 2003.