On this ride, your hosts Steve and Mal hurtle from Point A to Point B while considering times that they, or others, have been weighed, measured, and found wanting — or not.
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Show notes:
Steve has calculated that, including the word “grade,” there are 33 5-letter words in English that contain the letters a, d, e and r. (This is an example of Wordle-based obsession.)
About the Apgar test, as discussed at https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diagnostics/23094-apgar-score:
“The Apgar score is a tool healthcare providers use to assess how your baby is doing immediately after being born. It lets providers quickly determine if your baby might need extra care.”
Five things are measured in the Apgar test:
Appearance
Pulse
Grimace
Activity
Respiration
“Your baby’s provider will check this score at least twice, at one and five minutes after birth.”
About David Whorf (1934 – 2020):
The IMDB article about him does not mention him working on Batman. But in the IMDB article on Batman, in the write-up of “The Duo Defy” (a 1967 episode of the campy TV series starring Adam West) he is listed as Assistant Director. One therefore wonders: could it be he was a stand-in for the Robin played, as so many us will know, by Burt Ward?
It should also be noted that Steve eventually got an “attaboy” late during the production of Firestarter from the otherwise rather harsh David Whorf — Whorf, who had had a rather long acting career that one assumes never quite took off, perhaps impelling him into a life of A-D’ing on less than magnificent films. Or is one being catty?
It’s true that Steve finds himself wanting to weigh Whorf, measure him and find him wanting.
And for what it’s worth, Steve and Whorf had something in common. Arguably, their dads helped get each of them their starts in show business. You’d’a thunk Whorf’d’ve been more charitable that time he instead chewed Steve out.
Come to think of it, there was a fair amount of nepotism implicit in much of the staffing of Firestarter, such as it was. Not only for Steve, whose father got him a job interview with Dino DeLarentiis, producer of Amityville 3-D and Firestarter, but also for David Whorf, Assistant Director (and Steve’s erstwhile persecutor) on Firestarter, son of Richard Whorf, a TV shows and series director and actor; for Frankie Capra III, Production Assistant, son of that film’s line producer Frank Capra, Jr., himself the son of the legendary director Frank Capra (It’s A Wonderful Life); for Jonathan Fairbanks, Production Assistant (like Steve, uncredited on that film), if memory serves, a relative of the legendary film star Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.; and last but not least for Drew Barrymore, who played the lead character Charlie in Firestarter, grand-niece of the legendary film star Lionel Barrymore. Given the plot of the movie and the book it’s based on, the title “Firestarter” is apt enough, but on the cast and crew side perhaps a better fit might have been “Forebearstarted.”
As to the phrase, “Been measured and found wanting,” it can be found in the film The Knight’s Tale and in the Bible in the Book of Daniel 5:27.
There is also, inevitably, a blog article on this topic, at https://gregoryktyree.wordpress.com/2012/12/21/you-have-been-weighed-you-have-been-measured-and-you-have-been-found-not-wanting/
Finally (for now) a bit about the word “emboldened”:
Concerning the etymology of its root element, you can find the following information at https://www.etymonline.com/word/embolden:
bold(adj.)
Middle English bold, from Old English beald (West Saxon), bald (Anglian) “stout-hearted, brave, confident, strong,” from Proto-Germanic *balthaz (source also of Old High German bald “bold, swift,” in names such as Archibald, Leopold, Theobald; Gothic balþei “boldness;” Old Norse ballr “frightful, dangerous”), perhaps (Watkins) from PIE [probably,Proto-Indo-European] *bhol-to-, suffixed form of root *bhel- (2) “to blow, swell.”
The meaning “requiring or exhibiting courage” is from mid-13c. Also in a bad sense, “audacious, presumptuous, overstepping usual bounds” (c. 1200). From 1670s as “standing out to view, striking the eye.” Of flavors (coffee, etc.) from 1829.
The noun meaning “those who are bold” is from c. 1300 in both admiring and disparaging senses. Old French and Provençal baut “bold,” Italian baldo “bold, daring, fearless” are Germanic loan-words. Related: Boldly; boldness.