OT? Sex ed and language

Joel S. Berson Berson at ATT.NET
Tue May 25 23:18:33 UTC 2010


At 5/25/2010 01:39 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>...which, of course, was heavily mocked in High Anxiety. Of course, it
>is only slightly less funny if you are unfamiliar with the antecedent of
>the joke. In fact, wasn't even set in San Francisco?

I'm confused.

Dr. Richard H. Thorndyke *is* the character in "High Anxiety', not
someone who was mocked in that move.
What is "the antecedent of the joke"?
The move is definitely set (for the psychiatrists' conference and the
hotel murder) in San Francisco.  (I've been at the hotel.)

Joel

>     VS-)
>
>On 5/25/2010 1:19 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>A variant on this dilemma: Dr. Richard H. Thorndyke was distressed
>>during his lecture on the psychology of sex at a convention of
>>psychiatrists in San Francisco, when he discovered kiddies in the
>>audience -- he felt he could not use the "Latinish words from the
>>academy" and, hoping to keep the children unaware, resorted to
>>infantile euphemisms, which of course mystified his adult audience.
>>Joel

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