Who was that masked man?

An average day in the Brockway household

Today I went to the library at lunch. I've taken to going there and just reading a random magazine off the shelves. Today I read History magazine and learned a bit about pulp fiction.
Pulp novels were a popular form of entertainment from the turn of the last century until about the 1950s. So called because they were printed on cheap paper with heavy wood pulp, pulp novels were famous for their over-the-top storytelling and lurid art. Characters introduced to us through the pulps include Zorro, The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, Tarzan, and Conan.
Pulp novels were usually anthologies with stories by lots of different authors. Since the cover sold the books, the cover was considered the most important bit, and often the cover was created first, with the story authors being asked to produce content to go with the covers. 
Pulp fiction was the descendant of the penny dreadful, a cheap publication, also printed on pulpy paper, popular in Great Britain in the 1800s. They were usually lurid serial stories, the most famous of which being the tales of Sweeney Todd.
Even though pulp fiction was considered worthless filth in its day, some pretty famous folk wrote for the pulps, including Isaac Asimov, William S Burroughs, and Tennessee Williams.
Eep. Must go find some pulp fiction to read. Now.

Let them eat pie

My favorite word just now: pastiche. A pastiche is, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, is an artistic work that incorporates elements of work from at least one other artist, era, or style. For instance, the film Pulp Fiction is a pastiche, with the filmmaker creating a new story in the style of the dramatic and lurid pulp novels popular in the first half of the 20th century. 
Pastiche is a French word derived from an Italian one that means pie crust, according to Dictionary.com. So a pastiche is like a pie, in which a variety of ingredients are combined to create a single dishes in which the individual elements are still recognizable. 

May I interest you in some pastiche pie?

Pastiche is related to pasta, which, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, comes from the Latin word meaning dough or pastry. Pasta appears to go all the way back to an ancient Greek word for sprinkle.

How about some pasta pastry? 

You've probably already guessed that pastry is related to pasta, both being foods made with dough. 
A pasty is a sophomoric giggle-inducing word for meat and vegetables wrapped in a pie crust and folded over to be eaten on the go, also known as a pocket pie. So this is the part where I was going to joke that pasties, the thing you eat, are etymologically unrelated to pasties, the things that women paste over their nipples because somehow obscuring one's nipples makes it legal to be topless in public (man nipples - no problem; lady nipples - filthy). Anyway, I was going to joke that the words are etymologically unrelated, but it turns out they're totally not. Pastie comes from paste, which also comes from pasta.

Oh yeah, you're looking at pastry pasties. That's happening. 

The Search for...

A McGuffin (or MacGuffin) is an element, usually an object, in a movie, that serves no other purpose than to move the plot along. Alfred Hitchcock coined the term; he explained the term in an interview thusly:

It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men in a train. One man says, 'What's that package up there in the baggage rack?' And the other answers, 'Oh that's a McGuffin.' The first one asks 'What's a McGuffin?' 'Well' the other man says, 'It's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.' The first man says, 'But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,' and the other one answers 'Well, then that's no McGuffin!' So you see, a McGuffin is nothing at all.

Quote courtesy of thequietus.com

Some of my favorite McGuffins:

The Maltese Falcon, the Maltese Falcon - The falcon was said to be important because underneath the black enamel, there are a bunch of gems. Lot of time and effort could have been saved if Sam Spade and the gang had just gotten together and robbed a bank.

Pulp Fiction, the briefcase - I've heard more enterprising fans postulate that the briefcase contained Marsellus' soul (which had been pulled out through the back of his head, hence the bandage). At any rate, we never find out what's in the thing... and it bugs me to this day.

Saving Private Ryan, Private Ryan - I'm not saying it wasn't a great movie, but the quest to save Matt Damon's character was really secondary to the recreation of the storming of the beach of Normandy. On a related note, I'm still a little queasy from watching it... twelve years ago.

And of course, there's the Holy Grail:

 There have been volumes written on the topic, on what it is, what it symbolizes, and so forth, and I'm not going to add to them. But I suppose my favorite Grail story is the one in the movie The Fisher King. In it, the main characters go on a mad quest for the Grail, which turns out to be a trophy on some dude's shelf. I liked this version of the Grail because it didn't pretend to be anything other than what it was, and the filmmakers didn't use that coy The Lady-or-the-Tiger cop-out. The Grail was the journey, and that's all that was needed.

Pic is from outside the grocery store. They'll let you take pictures for a long time before they start looking at you funny.

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This here is one of the stories of the grail, as told by Parry, Robin Williams' character from The Fisher King

It begins with the king as a boy, having to spend the night alone in the forest to prove his courage so he can become king. Now while he is spending the night alone he's visited by a sacred vision. Out of the fire appears the holy grail, symbol of God's divine grace. And a voice said to the boy, "You shall be keeper of the grail so that it may heal the hearts of men." But the boy was blinded by greater visions of a life filled with power and glory and beauty. And in this state of radical amazement he felt for a brief moment not like a boy, but invincible, like God, so he reached into the fire to take the grail, and the grail vanished, leaving him with his hand in the fire to be terribly wounded. Now as this boy grew older, his wound grew deeper. Until one day, life for him lost its reason. He had no faith in any man, not even himself. He couldn't love or feel loved. He was sick with experience. He began to die. One day a fool wandered into the castle and found the king alone. And being a fool, he was simple minded, he didn't see a king. He only saw a man alone and in pain. And he asked the king, "What ails you friend?" The king replied, "I'm thirsty. I need some water to cool my throat". So the fool took a cup from beside his bed, filled it with water and handed it to the king. As the king began to drink, he realized his wound was healed. He looked in his hands and there was the holy grail, that which he sought all of his life. And he turned to the fool and said with amazement, "How can you find that which my brightest and bravest could not?" And the fool replied, "I don't know. I only knew that you were thirsty."

As copied and pasted from: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101889/quotes?qt0427101