By God, even now, my heart leaps like a salmon to hear it - just as it did when I first got a load of it in the summer of 1977, in a shopping mall movie theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and it is with some austere restraint I deny myself here the full portion of 30-something reverie.
The alternative is to publish something that isn't true, like tigers running through London, and get a load of traffic for it.
Oliver Sacks relates fascinating case histories and he writes fluently, but he treats his subjects with a tinge of the ringmaster's bravado — an underlying tone of, "Hey, if you think that's weird, wait until you get a load of this one!" It is possible to have clinical rigor without such voyeuristic emotional deficits.
That new three-story monster-house on the block, could you believe two mil, those show-off window arches and did you get a load of that corny balcony, all of it throwing the neighborhood out of whack, a crazy eyesore, but hey, it was driving property values up, he could live with that.
Deb Behan, a real estate agent whose extended family owns JT's Steak & Ale in town, recalled an incident at the restaurant in which she heard a man, on seeing a police officer, say to his wife, "Did you get a load of Barney Fife out there?" It wasn't a remark likely to charm the locals.
It offers a street-level perspective of Truth with a capital T, revealing each new surprise, punchline, and point as if to say, "Wait'll you get a load of this!" On the other hand, it's also full of restrained subtext in quieter character moments.
Get a load of that exciting urinal!
