Honest, Mister: I Was Looking For Literutcher...!

January 28, 2002 2:22 PM

Honest, Mister: I Was Looking For Literutcher...! Well, I was searching for S.J.Perelman, my favourite humorist, when I came across Foundations of Fashionable Thought, a web site devoted to girdles: girdles in the movies, girdles in 1950 and girdles in every conceivable epoch and sense. It so happens I am partial to girdles, though I'd never dream of searching for them. At least not until now. And the question, I guess, is: has anyone else ever made a serendipitous find on the Internet, almost entirely unrelated to what they they were looking for? [Though, ahem, there are some great Perelman quotes on the main link, not to mention William Carlos Williams, J.D.Salinger, Anne Sexton, Ogden Nash, Mary McCarthy and other great excuses]
posted by MiguelCardoso (9 comments total)

Did you find a Perelman site, tho?
posted by zedzebedia at 2:31 PM on January 28, 2002

Though I knew he had a website, and I had visited it a few times before, I rarely had any contact with one of my very best friends. Then one day, about a year ago, I was searching for a recipe (I think it was Jambalaya) and I found Jon's website again. I got hooked on his posted recipes, and now I frequent his site almost every day. I count myself amazingly lucky that I can keep in touch this way, and if not for that search, I probably wouldn't. Though that is only one of the many serendipitous finds I've encountered on the 'net, to me it is certainly one of the most important.
posted by Wulfgar! at 3:03 PM on January 28, 2002

Just to let everyone know, Girdles in the 1950's is with us no longer.
Just to let everyone know, I get the big-screen TV.
posted by d8uv at 4:28 PM on January 28, 2002

Serendipitous, eh? Well, MetaFilter was a rather unexpected and tangential find, I must say. At the time, I was writing a short rant/essay on charities as personality jewelry and needed a bit more info on Nike using child labour. A quick bit of Googling took me to life of an internet meme and because I liked what I saw I poked around all of the recommended links. Bingo!
posted by MUD at 4:47 PM on January 28, 2002

My excuse? "Honest, officer, I was looking for marijuana!"
Several years ago I learned, online, that refrigerated boxcars are called "reefers". Call me naive, but not knowing much about trains, that was the first I had heard of it. This discovery has led me to hundreds of reefer sites as one of my hobbies is redesigning freight containers (they are much less expensive and easier to find).
posted by G_Ask at 8:04 PM on January 28, 2002

> Did you find a Perelman site, tho?

What Perelman site? (Did you see those girdles?)

I, too, have looked for a Perelman site. I bought a book instead. This anthology is good.
posted by pracowity at 7:30 AM on January 29, 2002

This anthology is good

I call it mind blowing (although the girdles are very very close second). meanwhile the web seems woefully short on perelman info.
posted by victors at 10:13 AM on January 29, 2002

btw:

Perelman was sort of a Depression-era Dave Barry

this is totally inexcusable. people have burned in hell for much less.
posted by victors at 10:15 AM on January 29, 2002

Right. Neither Depression-era nor Dave Barry. Hell, you could roll up Woody Allen, Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker and P.J.O'Rourke and still not come up with Perelman's tiniest tootsie on an off-day.

It's a pity about the Internet. There are shrines to everybody these day and Perelman's work, being short and concentrated, would be ideal for the web.

What is the Library of America doing, anyway? Most of Perelman's stuff is out of print. It's a scandal. Really.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 12:54 PM on January 29, 2002