Instead, we got secondhand descriptions of Jonathan Winters' best comedy bits courtesy of Robin Williams, or a pivotal scene between Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton as re-created by Rob Reiner.
My favorite description of a growing annoyance is secondhand speech, "the cellphone equivalent of secondhand smoke".
The only explicit description of Whitman's sexual activities is secondhand.
"The grave site has been difficult to pinpoint because the descriptions are, in fact, general, and in most cases secondhand," said H. Arthur Bankoff, the chairman of the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at Brooklyn College.
Despite contemporary depictions of scenarios and masks and descriptions of particular presentations, impressions today of what the commedia dell'arte was like are secondhand.
* All smoke is secondhand.
Now: secondhand car salesman, Stockport.
Many of the descriptions ring false -- one character is fond of Nicorette gum, even though the product was not available in this country until the 1980's -- and the sequences set in Vietnam feel like secondhand recyclings of Robert Stone.
