A young, bug-eyed Tom Poston molests
an also young, but already crinkly-looking,
Bob Newhart

The Philter just turned 2, which means it’s time to review the last year’s posts and issue updates, corrections, and clarifications. So without further ado:

• Abe Vigoda has defied the odds again by remaining alive for another year. Among those whom he’s recently outlived are Tom Poston of Mork and Mindy and Newhart fame. Only after Poston’s death did I learn he had been married to Suzanne Pleshette, who had co-starred in a different show with Bob Newhart — although Poston’s show turned out to be a dream contained entirely within Pleshette’s show. I don’t know what it all means, and I’ve already spent entirely too much time trying to figure it out.

• Speaking of the dearly departed, I am sad to report that my favorite laundromat, Bud’s Suds, is no more. Bud’s — in 2005 the subject of a brief photoessay on the dangers of dryer abuse — is mourned by all who knew it.

• The Wu-Tang graffiti that I photographed on College Ave. has of course been subsequently painted over, and don’t I feel clever for having captured it?

• I did not win a Pulitzer for my pithy prose-poem “If I Had a Hammer….” But I should have.

• No one has yet invented software that will let you hear any artist performing any song. Too bad, but I remain hopeful.

• No aliens—be they Martians, Lectroids, Xists, Betelgeusians, or others—have contacted me yet this year. But the 60th anniversary of the Roswell Incident doesn’t roll around until July 8; so, again, I remain hopeful.

• Hector Maze remains in limbo and is likely to remain there for the foreseeable future. But one thing I can finish is the dictionary top-of-the-page project, which I left off at piña colada.

pleasure dome to plethysmograph (1)
point blank to poker face
police dog to pollen tube
potlatch to pound sterling
prescription to presidency
pretty to prickly
promoter to propaganda
queer to quicksilver
radio telescope to ragweed
receptionist to recluse
regressive to reincarnation
reversed collar to revolution
ring finger to ripple effect
robber to rocket scientist
sabotage to sacrifice
Sasquatch to Saturday
scrap heap to screw conveyor
self-deception to self-motivation
senility to sensualism
sextodecimo to shadow cabinet
shiver to shoot
slow cooker to slush fund
spaceman to Spanish Armada
Spock to spoon
stroke to struggle for existence
Sugarloaf Mountain to sulfur
swagger to swastika
tepee to term insurance
terminus to terrorize
token payment to Tom, Dick and Harry
tome to tongue twister
transaxle to transformation
twaddle to twine
ulcerative to Ultrasuede
Uncle Tom to undefined
undergrad to understand
understandable to undressed
unquestionable to unscathed
uphill to upside-down cake
uttermost to Uzi
validity to Van Buren
velour to venial sin
Volgograd to voluptuous
warm-blooded to warship
waterworn to waxwing (2)
weaver to ween (3)
whiffet (4) to whirlwind
whithersoever (5) to whoops
wire agency to wish filfillment
woodwaxen to Wordsworth
wordy to workload
yin and yang to Yoshihito
zebra crossing to zeugma (6)
zygospore to ZZZ (7)

(1) n. a device for measuring and recording changes in the volume of the body or of a body part or organ
(2) “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain…” –J. Shade
(3) v. to think; suppose
(4) n. an insignificant person
(5) conj. Archaic to whatsoever place
(6) n. the use of a word to modify or govern two or more words when it is appropriate to only one of them or is appropriate to each in a different way, as in to wage war and peace or He caught a trout and a bad cold
(7) (used to represent the sound of a person snoring)