Russell M. Dembin
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russdembin.bsky.social
Russell M. Dembin
@russdembin.bsky.social
210 followers 170 following 81 posts
Parent of two, educator, administrator, editor, writer, dramaturg, and scholar dedicated to anti-oppression; accessibility; diversity, equity & inclusion • Ph.D., UT Austin • (Formerly @Dramaturgs) • he/him • russelldembin.com
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russdembin.bsky.social
Happy birthday to the 2000 Year Old Man. On the album 2000 Years with Carl Reiner & Mel Brooks (recorded in 1960), the character said he was going to turn 2,000 that October 16; if I have my math right, that makes him 2,063 today.
Album cover of 2000 Years with Carl Reiner & Mel Brooks. Reiner and Brooks wear jackets, white shirts, and ties, and Reiner is on the left with Brooks’s hand on Reiner’s right shoulder. Still from the TV movie 2000 Year Old Man. The interviewer, left, wears a trench coat and turtleneck and holds a wired microphone toward the title character, who is much shorter, wears round glasses low on his nose, has a long white beard, and points up with his right index finger. Album cover of The 2000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000. Mel Brooks, left, and Carl Reiner are looking out and pointing in opposite directions with Reiner’s left arm crossed in front of Brooks’s right arm. Cover art for the book The 2000 Year Old Man Goes to School, written by Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner and illustrated by James Bennett. In the foreground are the title character, left, and the interviewer, respectively resembling Brooks and Reiner, reaching for each other’s right hand and smiling. The 2000 Year Old Man has a white beard and long white hair and wears a red sash over a white robe, and the interviewer wears a green dress shirt and tan pants. In the background are school-age children, one holding a “Welcome!” sign, a dinosaur wearing sunglasses, and a white schoolhouse with a sign that seems to say “Carlmel Elementary School.”
October 16, 2023 at 6:09 PM
russdembin.bsky.social
That explanation is great too. In the interest of accessibility, here’s a screenshot of the entry from the 1892 book.
An entry from page 235 of the 1892 book Fact, Fancy, and Fable: Gone Up, Gone Under. These apparently contrary expressions stand for one and the same thing in Western parlance; i. e., to fail, to “go to smash,” or even to die. The first may be supposed to be drawn from the sudden elevation attending an explosion; the second probably arose from the fate of some luckless pioneer who was drawn under the rapids of a river. “Of the facility with which the slang of England rises to the rank of unobjectionable words in the mouths of Americans, the term ‘going up’ is an instance. It arose from the spout or tube through which the pawnbroker sends the goods he has advanced upon to an upper story. Hence at first the phrase ran ‘to go up the spout,’ and meant simply disappearance or destruction. Then the ‘spout’ was deemed superfluous; and when the city of Richmond fell at the close of the civil war, the newspapers reported gravely that it had gone up.”
October 12, 2023 at 5:36 PM