Stan Freberg, Jerry Nachman, Leah Garchik on punctuation, Sam Whting and Robert Minervini on Market Street art, and More!

I almost didn't get dressed today because the Chronicle, so boring yesterday, was so fascinating today!  Sam Whiting's Datebook feature on Robert Minervini's art made me want to go to Market Street, a place that isn't usually magnetic.  Minervini, a thirty-three year old artist from Oakland, is bringing the statues out of Golden Gate Park in paintings he's created that make them more meaningful.  (Nobody reads this blog, but just let me note that he isn't really taking the statues out; he's just bringing them to life..)   I'm going to keep this article (yes, I get it in paper) in my binder labeled "Some of What Makes San Francisco So Wonderful."

Leah Garchik's column on favorite punctuation is full of really great comments--by her and by her readers.  Readers also quote the famous.  F. Scott Fitzgerald observed that using an exclamation point "is like laughing at your own job," but the reader quoting him says he like it becuase it's so often used in songs like "Stop!  In the Name of Love." Someone named John Sylvester says he likes the exlamation makr "becuase it emphsizes teh critical importance of whatever it is that I have written...This might otherwise have been missed."    Ann Packer, who started the whole conversation in Leah Garchik's column, says she likes the commas because "it leads to eleaboration."  I learned a new word, too:  interrobang, which combines the question mark and the exclamation point, one written on top of the other.  (Is that different from this?!)  Leah Garchik described Wikipedia as being "pretty hoity-toity" in their explanation calling the word "an example of a pormanteau which incorporates an onomatopeia."  Huh?