What's in the name of a work of art? Would Montagues vs. Capulets smell just as sweet, be just as apt and evocative, as Romeo and Juliet? For want of a
nail a shoe can be lost, and for want of an evocative title a story may be less appealing and less memorable. Imagine that the authors/editors/directors had come up with these clinkers instead:
Ad Men; Life with Dad; The Senior Citizen and the Sea; All the King's Aides; The Horse Talker; Tony and Cleo; Asiatown; Much Strife about Bubkes; Tora; Midnight Gigolo; Brian's Tune; The Dressing Gown; The Pain and the Joy; The Unclothed
City; Love is a Wonderful Thing; Kramer vs. Spouse; Real Courage; The Incorruptibles; The Adventures of the Finn Boy; The Importance of Sincerity; All's Rad that Ends Rad; Just the Way You Like It; Upper Floor, Lower Floor; The Grapes of Anger; A Long
Story about the Forsytes; Betelgeuse; Lads in the Neighborhood; A Very Long Day; The King's Oral Presentation; The Out House Code of Conduct; Shakespeare Feeling Amorous; The Gallic Lieutenant's Gal; Atlas Didn't Care; Lonesome Sparrow; Vanity and Prejudice;
Gold in the Mexican Mountains; Miserable People; A Few Capable Men; The Crying Contest; Peculiar Face; Window Shopping at Tiffany's; The Mismatched Couple; Home Without Company; Satan Wears Vera Wang; Insomnia in Tacoma; She Wore Something Yellow; The Noise
and the Fury; The Top of Kilimanjaro; A Farewell to Fighting; To Have and to Hang Onto; Recalling Past Things; Does Virginia Woolf Scare Anybody?; The Red Letter; Bunny, Scamper; The Alumnus; Ahab's Obsession; See Ya Later, Birdie; Two Men and a Boy; Reasonless
Rebel; To Dispatch a Bird; The Misshapen Bell Ringer of Notre Dame; The Baskervilles' Dog; A Christmas Song; The Lure of the Wilderness; Sense and Sensuality; Around the World in Less Than Three Months; Dancing with the Satellites; Half-Past Midnight; A Mechanical
Orange; A Pretty Good Storm; Love Me or Break Up with Me; Citizen Abel; My Attractive Lady; Ciao, Roma; Nonplussed Luke; Barrow and Parker; The Wild Cohort; Rachel; Nightclub; Quaker Persuasion; The Night of the Tarantula; The Bear and the Bandit; Brooklyn
Has a Tree; Central Street; The Three Personalities of Eve.
***
Ah, the hyperbolic sense of inclusiveness,
of completion, of having all variables and possibilities accounted for. Expressions of such fullness abound in our language: the whole ball of wax, the whole kit and caboodle, the whole enchilada, the whole shebang, the whole shooting match, all the
bells and whistles, the sky's the limit, from A to Z, runs the gamut, all the marbles, and the money, the marbles, and the chalk. Let's add the full metal jacket, the full meal deal, the total makeover, the total body scan, the full Monty, head over
heels, a full-count, a full-court press, a paradigm shift, a sea change, and then let's do the math: in addition to the whole 9 yards, there's also the whole 12-step program, the whole 6 feet under, the whole 10-foot pole, the whole 4Gs, the whole 12-inch
Sub sandwich; the whole 4.0 g.p.a., the whole 6-pack, the whole 1080p, the whole 32 teeth, the whole 24/7, the full 360, the whole perfect 10, the whole 2-for-1 deal, and giving 100% (or 110% for those, usually sports figures, who can't resist hyperbolizing
their hyperbole).
***
Do extremes meet? Sometimes they do. There are wastrels and
profligates, but should we not also recognize degrees of wastrelicity and profligacy? Should we not also remark the stingiest spendthrift and the smartest moron, the sanest lunatic, the soberest drunk, the most cautious daredevil, the most virtuous sinner,
the most ascetic hedonist, the most anorexic glutton, the most cautious gambler, the most attentive sufferer of ADHD, the most relaxed nervous wreck, the guiltiest victim, the luckiest schlemiel, the coolest hothead, the most outgoing recluse, the most pragmatic
idealist, the most sophisticated bumpkin, the smallest crowd, the most realistic dreamer, the most hidebound freethinker, the most aggressive pacifist, the most unorthodox conformist, the humblest snob, the most stoic complainer, the softest tough guy, the
most successful failure, the cleanest doper, the nicest bully, the most loyal turncoat, the most well-rounded megalomaniac, the most amoral ethicist, the most single-minded multitasker, and the most oxymoronic simplifier?
***
The CEO offers his stockholders a very stock report:
The
pressure was on, our backs were against the wall, push had come to shove, the ball was in our court, it was our last-ditch stand, it was the bottom of the 9th, it was crunch time, it was time to fish or cut bait, we were down to our last strike, it was the
11th hour, the game was on the line, it was do or die, it was now or never, the fat lady was about to sing, the driver was warming up the bus, but at the end of the day, in the final analysis, when all was said and done, when the last dog had been hung, when
all the numbers had been crunched, when the final vote was in, when the gun had sounded, when we had walked it back and pushed back, our skill set, our business model, our iconic brand, our flagship carried the day.