No more Burl Stiff for U-T
Though it’s not been confirmed by the U-T, we’ve heard it from a couple of reliable sources: Burl Stiff, the bespectacled dude who chronicled the lifestyles of San Diego’s rich and philanthropic (former U-T publisher David Copley among them), was one of the casualties of last week’s layoffs.
Stiff’s column consisted largely of a very long list of who was there, what they ate, what they wore and what kind of flowers comprised made up the centerpieces. David Copley’s friends—and D-Cop himself—made frequent appearances, and Stiff once accompanied Copley on a trip to Europe. And then wrote about it for the U-T. Here’s an excerpt:
They stayed at Hotel Baur au Lac in Zurich, and had a late supper in Rive Gauche there after the Christo show. (Singer Tina Turner was another patron of the restaurant that night.)
From Switzerland the party flew back to Nice and traveled by car to the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo. There, Copley had conferences dealing with the operation of Happy Days, a yacht that’s nearing completion in Seattle.
Dominating the domed lobby of the Hotel de Paris was a spectacular bouquet lit by a huge crystal chandelier. Glass bottles – tiny, bulbous and filled with pink-tinted water – were wired at intervals to blossoming fruit branches. Each bottle held a full-blown, hot-pink tulip on a short stem. The deep-pink tulips and the pale-pink fruit blossoms, touched with the glitter of all the bottles, created a dazzling effect. Magic.
The Copley party had dinner one night at Le Louis XV, Alain Ducasse’s restaurant in the Hotel de Paris, and the next night joined Alice and Richard Cramer for dinner at Le Grill on the top floor of the hotel. The Cramers, who used to live in La Jolla, are now at home in Monaco.
Lunch in St. Paul de Vence at La Colombe D’Or – hung with a famous collection of paintings – and dinner at the Hotel Metropole in Monte Carlo brought the fleeting European visit to a finish.
I blogged about this particular column awhile ago, but it still stuns me that any newspaper publisher would allow such a thing to be printed in his own newspaper. Alas, those days are over.
What am I going to do without my daily dose of Stiff? That magical column photo with the twinkle in his eye, the monotonous turns of phrase, updates of the Happy Days every movement, the laundry list of rich people…part of me died when I heard the news. And just when he was coming into his own. His column dated April 19, 2009 ended with, “Betty Peabody, widow of Dr. Homer Peabody, is the author of ‘Women Physicians in Early San Diego,’ and a veteran community volunteer. Of her experiences while traveling with her husband, she says the most exciting was a sabbatical to study the pulmonary functions of cannibals in the Solomon Islands.” Who can ask for better reportage? Blow out the pilot light.
A centerpiece can be comprised of roses, but not vice versa. The whole comprises the parts; the parts do not comprise the whole. You can say that roses composed the centerpiece, or made up the centerpiece, or constituted the centerpiece, but not that they comprised the centerpiece
Mock him if you must, but Burl Stiff would never have made that mistake
It’s not a mistake. It’s an accepted usage:
http://www.bartleby.com/61/72/C0537200.html
My, my, but won’t Burl (or “Stiffy,” as he was fondly known among the Happy Days’ coterie of cabin boys) be missed in the pages of the U-T — for however many more weeks that paper may yet publish? I guess June 2 will be about the right date for him to fly to meet his ex-publisher in Mumbai, the port for which he set sail from its mooring off Cannes this week, after David read the big news on the CNN website (see: http://edition.CNN.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/05/11/India.prostituition.children/
Usage accepted by whom? Buffoons of America. Just because something is in common usage, if it is being used incorrectly, it is still incorrect. Bartleby not to the contrary. “Watch your words” was correct. The whole comprises the parts.
I can hardly wait to catch up with Burl as he relaxes on the patio at the Casbah – you ARE going to pick him up for the “If I We’re You” feature?
If anything’s incorrect, it’s WYW’s use of “comprised of.” Regardless, I’m taking this to “A Way With Words.”
If I have to hear the compose-comprise discussion one more time on “A Way with Words,” I’m going to scream. Kelly, your link explains the proper usage — then basically says the improper use is so common that people have forgotten the proper use, and thus the improper use is gaining acceptance. Purists find this unacceptable.
Grammar purists would have us using male pronouns or the infinitely awkward “he/she” rather than “they.”
As Burl would say, “Comprised of” is grammatically incorrect, so is “If I We’re You.”
When you’re speaking in hypothetical terms, “were” is correct. “Were I as wealthy as David Copley, I wouldn’t be working at a weekly newspaper.”
The contraction “we’re” means “we are.” “If I we are you” is grammatically unsound. And were I as wealthy as David Copley, I would never have sold the paper and Burl wouldn’t be on the street scrambling for his next serving of Dungeness Crab Timbale !!!
Where are you getting “If I We’re You” from?
Archikvetch.
I think we should be using “he” or “she” instead of they. And though I’m a woman, I prefer the use of “he” as a default pronoun over the subject-verb disagreement caused by use of “they.”
This is a very entertaining conversation; thank you all.