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Originally uploaded by blakekillian.

Blogged with Flock

He said on Inside the Actor’s Studio, “It was a tremendous responsibility having a show like that,” Chappelle says. But, he adds, “it wasn’t the fame that got to me.” It was the deal: The Hollywood machinery is like those cartoons, he says, when one guy’s hungry and he looks at his buddy “like he’s a chicken dinner.”

I think the fact that he recognizes the true nature of the Hollywood greed machine says a lot about the kind of person Dave Chapelle is. Anyone who is willing to walk away from $50 million is either stupid or recognizes that taking the money would be selling themselves out. To get to where he is, Dave Chapelle is no dummy. I’ve never been a huge fan of his, although I think he’s funny.

I respect him more now that he’s being honest with us, and telling the world that he’s not sure where he’ll end up. “I don’t know how this whole Dave Chappelle thing is going to end. I feel like I’m going to be some kind of parable — either what you’re supposed to do or not supposed to do. … I’m going to be a legend or just that tragic (expletive) story, but I’m going to go all the way. I’m eager to find out how this is going to resolve itself.”
Whatever incarnation Dave evantually becomes, I’ll be more likely to listen to what he has to say.

Also, my truck’s tire are low, so I went to the only place open this morning, Meineke and they were rude and absolutely no help whatsoever. Never go there. I hate those emm-effers. It’s the one in Elmwood.

I wonder which flavor I’ll get?

But, being the aspiring entrepreneur that I am, I can’t help but admire and respect him. Has he gamed the system? After all, he was a failed screenwriter who has admitted to writing screenplays that he thought would get sold, and not neccessarily ones that would change the world. So, given his obvious bravado and intellect, it sounds to me that James has just been very clever. Kudos!

I do hate, however, that you tricked Oprah. Don’t mess with O!

Enter Barry Popik. By day a NYC parking-ticket judge, by night Popik was an indefatigable word sleuth. In the early 90s he chanced to meet fellow word maven Gerald Cohen at a New York public library. Cohen, a professor at the University of Missouri, mentioned that one early user of the term “Big Apple” was John J. Fitz Gerald, a horse-racing writer for the New York Morning Telegraph. Popik decided to find out whether Fitz Gerald had originated the famous phrase. Holing up at the library during his off-hours, he paged (reeled, actually) through just about every issue of the Telegraph from 1919 to 1929. He found that Fitz Gerald had first used the phrase in 1921 and mentioned it frequently thereafter. The most telling citation was from the first appearance of a column called “Around the Big Apple with John J. Fitz Gerald,” which appeared in the Telegraph on February 18, 1924:

The Big Apple. The dream of every lad that ever threw a leg over a thoroughbred and the goal of all horsemen. There’s only one Big Apple. That’s New York.

Fitz Gerald said he’d first heard the phrase on a trip to New Orleans to see one Jake Byers:

Two dusky stable hands were leading a pair of thoroughbreds around the “cooling rings” of adjoining stables at the Fair Grounds in New Orleans and engaging in desultory conversation. “Where y’all goin’ from here?” queried one.

“From here we’re headed for the Big Apple,” proudly replied the other.

“Well, you’d better fatten up them skinners or all you’ll get from the apple is the core,” was the quick rejoinder.

Popik found a reference to J.J. Fitz Gerald’s having sold a horse to J. Byers on January 15, 1920, leading him to conclude that “Big Apple” had first come to the writer’s notice on January 13 or 14.