The young Nabokov was an amateur gymnast and athlete. At age 27 he waded into a distressing OJ-type situation of the time:

… a scandal had broken in Berlin around a Rumanian violinist named Kosta Spiresco, whose wife was found hanged, covered with the marks of a severe beating. Though Spiresco’s regular assaults were the cause of her suicide, he escaped punishment. German newspapers commented that no decent restaurant would hire him after this, but a Russian restaurant defied the prediction and a number of blowsy women began to buzz around the restaurant’s new violinist in perverted admiration. … Nabokov, an individualist in his notion of justice as in everything else, would always dismiss the concept of collective guilt but insist fiercely on collective accountability … he and his friend Mikhail Kaminka visited the restaurant with their wives, and drew straws to be first to hit the “hirsute, ape-like” Spiresco (Nabokov’s description). Nabokov won, slapped him on the cheek, and then, according to the newspaper report, “graphically demonstrated upon him the techniques of English boxing.” Kaminka pitched in against the rest of the orchestra, who took Spiresco’s side. At the police station where the three principals were taken, Spiresco refused to take charges, hinting instead that he would call them out to a duel. He declined however to take the addresses they proffered, and Nabokov and Kaminka waited at home in vain the next two or three days for Spiresco’s promised seconds.

The sources are the contemporary Russian emigre paper Rul’ and notes given by Nabokov to Andrew Field in 1973.

From Brian Boyd’s Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years

Today I accompanied my mother to a lunch with some of her friends. I was by far the youngest person present.

Talk turned to a local conversation group that her friends had found unsatisfactory.

Friend: “All they do is talk about how their children won’t communicate with them.”

My mother: “‘Communicate’? Tom never shuts up!”

I didn’t mind being the butt of her joke, but for some reason it seemed unfair that a mother should be funny.

Nabokov worked on the screenplay of Lolita in California.

At his first cocktail party, at producer David Selznick’s, Nabokov met a rangy, craggy-looking man sporting a deep suntan. “And what do you do?” he asked. “I’m in pictures,” John Wayne modestly replied. At another party Nabokov met an attractive brunette to whom he spoke French, and told her she had a wonderful Paris accent. “Parisian, hell,” Gina Lollabrigida replied. “It’s Roman French.”

Ha!

He did not always put his foot in it — at one party Marilyn Monroe took quite a liking to him — but conscious of being out of step, he soon dropped out of the cocktail party circuit.

From Brian Boyd’s Vladimir Nabokov: The America Years

Keith Olbermann just mentioned Barack Obama’s Spider-Man collection.

My mother: “Who’s Spider-Man? He’s not Batman, is he?”

Me: “…”

My mother: “Batman’s the mentally sick one.”

Me: “Spider-Man’s more downtrodden. It’s hard for him to be a good nephew and husband when he’s fighting supervillains.”

My mother: “He’s Silver Age, isn’t he?”

Me: “Wow. How do you know about Silver Age?”

My mother: “That’s a bit condescending.”

I’m going on vacation, and before that I’ve got to finish up a bunch of things, the upshot of all of which is that I will probably be out of action the next couple of weeks or so, at least as far as new content goes. But I’ll be back after the 4th. In the meantime, Cerusee and Tom and Miriam will keep you supplied with new bloggy goodness….