This reminds me of one of the best /worst lines in Troll 2. Something like, “I know your grandpa’s death has been very hard, on you, Julia, and also me, his daughter.”
That movie is a treasure trove of bad dialogue.
I’m afraid I’m guilty of characters repeating names to each other in my own fiction. But you know what? I do that in real life all the time, it’s like an affectation in my own speech. That’s possibly unusual, but probably why I write it in fiction. I wonder if Heinlein talked that way.
It’s an acceptable convenience in written fiction. In real life (or in a play, a movie, or a television episode) you can see the people as they’re talking and it’s clear who’s saying what and to whom. But in written prose, you just have the lines of dialogue. Sometimes the author has to add a written cue so the reader knows who’s speaking and who they’re speaking to.
Spice Weasel, I don’t remember hearing people talk that way in real life, but I don’t know whether that’s because it’s very unusual or because it’s so usual I don’t notice it.
I haven’t read every post in this thread, but I’m quite confident in saying that I am the thickest person here.
In You’re So Vain, I was always confused about the refrain “you probably think this song is about you.” I always thought “of course it’s about him! What else could it be about? Are you trying to say the song’s really about you, Carly? Because it’s not. It’s clearly about him.”
Then it finally hit me: she’s saying he’s so vain that, even though his name has not once been mentioned, he probably just assumes the song is about him anyway.
I always thought she was singing “You had one eye in the mirror as you watched yourself go past.” It wasn’t until just a few years ago that I realized the line ends “you watched yourself gavotte.”
I started an informal Facebook poll on it once and the consensus seems to be that I’m weird. I think it is more common in fiction for the reason described above, but I still have to weed half of them out. Honestly a lot of it for me is the dialog cadence, it could just as well be, “ya know” than a name because two syllables need to go in that place for it to sound right to my ear. I guess if Heinlein does it…
This may have been mentioned earlier but I used to watch the '66 Batman show all the time growing up. Reruns of it ran perpetually in the afternoon on channel 32 and I always enjoyed it as face value: a televised and colorful interpretation of a crime fighting duo who always had just the right gadget to escape their predicament and would always outfight the villain of the week’s goons. The onomatopoeia was just added to the fight scenes to give them a little comic book oomph. Then one day I was watching it and Batman and Robin go to a run down factory to investigate a crime and then there they are outside of the run down factory that has a sign above the door that literally says “Run down factory” and I said “Wait a minute…”
I’ve listened to Billy Joel’s Piano Man about a million times, and always assumed that the manager (“And the manager gives me a smile.”) referred to his (the Piano Man’s) manager, who presumably booked the gig and showed up to watch. It hit me the other day that he’s referring to the venue/bar manager, who is making book with the “pretty good” crowd.
Watching the video (for the first time) I see the manager depicted as a 70’s Vegas-Lizard type surrounded by boobs, smoking a cigar, and saluting Joel.
My read is the song is not REALLY about him (the apparent focus). It’s about her (the singer.)
MORE of the song seems to be about this self-centered guy, but her point is a) she had some dreams that involves a life with him but realizes their futility and b) “you gave away the things you loved, and one of them was me.”
The song isn’t, in the end, about him. It’s about how she feels coming to grips with him shitting on her love for him.
BUT he’s so obtuse he can’t figure out that’s what’s bothering her.
It makes more sense if you boil it down to her saying “I’m a wreck because I realize you hardly even notice I’m here. And honestly you probably still are thinking what does this mean to me even now.”
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I thought the official answer was, first she’s singing about one guy – the dude who wore an apricot-colored scarf and knew how to gavotte, a man who may or may not be Mick Jagger – and then she’s singing about another, who (a) talked a good game about them being a pretty pair, and who (b) we’ll just assume is Warren Beatty; and then she’s singing about some third guy. Which means that, no matter who you are, most of the time she’s singing about someone else.