I am able to wrote from home now.
We just got thru September 13, Arnold Schoenberg's 130th birthday. He died July 13, 1951, which was on a Friady. A lifelong triskadecaphobiac, he was particularly afraid of Friday the 13th. So, on honor of that, here is
Arnold Schoenberg's last words
Version One - heard this in music school in the 70s - it's totally apocryphal:
Schoenberg knows that everything about about Friday July 13, 1951 adds up to thirteen, and he's really scared. He is so sick he can't get out of bed, and frets and sweats until the big day comes.
Schoneberg passes the whole day in mortal terror, cowering beneath his bedsheets. At two minutes to midnight, his wife Gertrude says "You see honey? All day long you fret, and nothing happens." At which Schoneberg promptly expires with a loud gasp.
Version Two - the version generally accepted by Schoenberg's biographers:
"Is it Friday the 13th?"
(Note how similar this is to W. C. Fields' reported last words: "Aww CRAP! It's Chirstmas Day.")
Version Three - told to me in Los Angeles by an older gentleman who said it was repeated to hom by someone "who was there":
"I was wrong."
Uncle Dave Lewis
uncledavelewis@hotmail.com