Don’t tag your own ribbons.

Click to enlarge: New York Yankees Manager Yogi Berra used to do short movie reviews on weekends during sports shows. By the time I heard the name, he looked like his picture here. That was back in the day when Siskel & Ebert had spawned an industry and anyone with some name recognition and a little quirkiness was reviewing movies.

I used to write movie reviews for my college newspaper. I always tried to say something more interesting than “see it” or “don’t see it.” Anyone can do that.

Now, this was in the days before the Internet, when research meant the library, card catalog, magazines and newspapers. When I drafted my reviews, I would invent placeholders for actors, directors, cinematographers, etc, so I could worry about larger themes and not details (which had to be right but weren’t important to the review). After I was done writing (and only then), I went to the library, got an issue of Time or Newsweek that also had a review, then wrote in the names of actors and directors and whatnot.

Click to enlarge: A young John Milton. That's a hint.

An acquaintance at that time raised both eyebrows and intimated with a crooked smile that I was plagiarizing. I didn’t. I never changed a word outside of names and titles, not once, nor was I ever tempted to.

This guy was a political writer and I suppose brought some preconceptions with him, but what he didn’t know was what I knew even then, that plagiarizing would have been tagging my own ribbons. He was of the sort that always had a twinkle of doubt in his eye and wink at the corner of his mouth that gripped a wooden toothpick, forever tacitly responding to everything I said with “You’re full of crap, Clarence.”

[2013-09-09]

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