Collective memory

[Eric Sosman]

Nico de Jong wrote:
> 
> > Among the latter were two posters printed on [now I have forgotten the
> > English word for this type of paper, but it has tractor holes along
> > both sides, and is flimsy, and has horizontal perforations every now
> > and then] paper, with a silk-screeened slogan advocating recycling on
> > the supposedly blank side.
> 
> You are thinking of fanfold and/or leporello.
> Leporello comes probably from the operette figure, who in a scene reads a
> list of his masters "conquests", and as there are about 1000 names, he had
> to fold it in some way.

    You're off by one order of (binary) magnitude:

	 640	In Italia sei cento e quaranta,
	 231	In Alemagna due cento e trent'una,
	 100	Cento in Francia,
	  91	                  in Turchia novent'una,
	1003	Ma in Ispagna, son giá mille e tre!
	====
	2065

I once performed this "catalog aria" in an extrememly low-budget
production.  As a sight gag, I handed poor Donna Elvira the "non
piccolo libro," turned a couple pages for her while she registered
disbelief and horror, opened up a page as if to show her the
Playboy centerfold, and then strolled clear across the stage from
down left to down right -- still grasping the paper, with forty
feet of fan-fold unfurling as I went ...

    Cheap productions, cheap gags.  But, I think, a perfect
justification for the term "leporello" applied to fan-fold paper!

-- 
Eric.Sosman at sun.com