via metafilter Alan, 91, walks every street in 192 suburbs of Sydney Australia - 487 photos certainly looks an eminently wanderable place
 

The curious rise of anti-religious hysteria

"George Lakoff - whose book "Don't Think of An Elephant" has become a kind of bible that explains their electoral demise for many liberal Democrats in the US - describes those who tend to vote for Bush as the products of authoritarian 'strict father families' who are motivated by self-interest, greed and competitiveness. These people hate 'nurturance and care', apparently, are religious bigots and lack the therapeutic sensibilities of their liberal cousins.


In the guise of a political theory, Lakoff offers a diagnosis of human inferiority. You can almost hear him murmur: 'They actually take their children to see "The Passion of the Christ"….' In previous times, such contempt for people was the trademark of the authoritarian right. In today's 'inclusive' society, it is okay to denigrate sections of the electorate as simpletons if they are still gripped by the power of faith.


Lakoff and others argue that many people who vote for Bush, or who are influenced by the religious right, simply do not know what is in their best interests. Instead of acknowledging the failure of its own political projects, the liberal elite prefers to indict sections of the public for being (stupid)and gullible."

Try It Again Without Smiling--very funny account (by Ms. Francis, below) of working on TV commercials:--

"It took a while for me to realize that I was the happy model who had a close-up. I was meant to sit happily down next to the rap star, pick up a sausage that had been stabbed onto a fork, bite it, chew, discover how delicious it was, and smile.

It took me even longer to realize that a key sausage selling point was the audible crack the things made when you bit into them. To illustrate this phenomenon, one had to bite into the sausage with conviction, and deftly twist the fork down and to the left (but not out of frame.)

I was a vegetarian, but I think the most diehard meat eater would have been scared by the sausages. They were small and irregularly shaped, pale gray and studded with knots of gristle. They looked like boiled arthritic fingers. One member of the crew had been solely assigned to mopping up the copious amounts of grease that flowed out of the tiny horrors as soon as they were stuck onto the forks..."


 

sorry to miss the always amazing Tony Torn (with Juliana Francis) in Fragment off-Broadway

"Though most Americans have no direct experience of the carnage in Iraq, we all feel its influence in our daily lives. Classic Stage Company's production of Fragment, created by writer Kelly Cooper and director Pavol Liska, engages us with timeless concerns about civilian life during a time of war, using fragments of lost plays by the ancient Greek writers Euripides and Sophocles."



 

tomorrow night on TCM is Carl Dreyer's Gertrud, which I've never seen.
 

spring is here, time to re-post the John Clare blog:--

How sweet to be thus nestling deep in boughs,
Upon an ashen stoven pillowing me;
Faintly are heard the ploughmen at their ploughs,
But not an eye can find its way to see.
The sunbeams scarce molest me with a smile,
So thick the leafy armies gather round;
And where they do, the breeze blows cool the while,
Their leafy shadows dancing on the ground.
Full many a flower, too, wishing to be seen,
Perks up its head the hiding grass between.-
In mid-wood silence, thus, how sweet to be;
Where all the noises, that on peace intrude,
Come from the chittering cricket, bird, and bee,
Whose songs have charms to sweeten solitude.


 

will add to my favorites this splendid Hyperlinked & Searchable Chambers' 1869 'The Book of Days' from which I learned that today was the anniversary of Petrarch's first glimpse of Laura...

'The sainted Laura, illustrious for her virtues, and for a long time celebrated in my verses, was first seen of me in my early youth on the 6th of April 1327, in the church of St. Clara, at Avignon, at the first hour of the day; and in the same city, in the same month of April, ou the same sixth day, and at the same hour, in the year 1348, this light disappeared from our day, when I was then by chance at Verona, ignorant, alas! of my calamity. The sad news reached me at Parma, by letter from my friend Ludovico, on the morning of the 19th of May. This most chaste and beautiful lady was buried on the same day of her death, after vespers, in the church of the Cordeliers. Her soul, as Seneca says of Africanus, returned, I feel most assured, to heaven, whence it came. These words, in bitter remembrance of the event, it seemed good to me to write, with a sort of melancholy pleasure, in this place ' (that is, in the Virgil) 'especially, which often comes under my eyes, that nothing hereafter in this life may seem to me desirable, and that I may be warned by continual sight of these words and remembrance of so swiftly-fleeting life,—by this strongest cord broken,—that it is time to flee from Babylon, which, God's grace preventing, will be easy to me, when I think boldly and manfully of the fruitless cares of the past, the vain hopes, and unexpected events.'




 

why you just have to love the Daily Torygraph obits:--from their Gene Pitney

"He was descended from a private in the Royal Marines who served in "Victory" at the Battle of Trafalgar."

(reg. required)

(Found the sailor here--

"Pitney, Fraser 24 English RM/Pte")
 

great Glasgow novelist/anthologist/graphic artist Alasdair Gray has a gallus wee blog.



 

very well-done website by New York artist Claudia Hart who I met in Berlin & for whom I wrote a very long catalogue essay in 1997 (!) about her works "A Child's Machiavelli" and "Dr. Faustie's Guide to Real Estate"--since then her work has moved into the digital realm--you'll see if you click though--but which remains as thoroughly unheimlich as ever...
 

20 Wonderfully Irrelevant Andy Griffith Show Conversations

"20. Season Five: Episode 27, "Aunt Bee's Invisible Beau"

When Griffith tells Knotts that his aunt has been dating a "butter-and-egg man," Knotts quips, "He buttered her up and she egged him on."

Griffith: That's funny! You just think of that?

Knotts: I can't take any credit for it. My mind just works that way."

 

from police state UK:-- 'Playing The Clash made me a terror suspect'

"Mr Mann, of Hartlepool, Teesside, had boarded the plane at Durham Tees Valley Airport when the flight to Heathrow was stopped and he was arrested by police.

He said he was told he was being questioned under the Terrorism Act and his choice of music had aroused suspicions.

Mr Mann said yesterday: 'The taxi had one of those tape deck things that plugs into your digital music player.

"I played Procol Harum's Whiter Shade Of Pale first, which the taxi man liked. I figured he liked the classics so put on a bit of Led Zeppelin - Immigrant Song - which he didn't like. Then, since I was going to London, I played the song by The Clash and finished up with Nowhere Man by The Beatles."

Mr Mann said he was 'frog-marched off the plane in front of everyone, had my bags searched and was asked 'every question you can think of'.

He added: "It turned out the taxi driver alerted someone when I arrived at the airport and had spoken about my music. He didn't like Led Zep or The Clash but there was no need to tell the police." "


 

via bookslut "This I Believe"

"Writing, however, is not life. It's not even very much fun. It's like standing in a dark cave with an entire colony of Mexican fruit bats and trying to catch them with a butterfly net. They're zooming here and swooping there; they're smacking you with their wings. They're getting tangled in your hair, they probably have rabies, and they want to suck your blood, but you just keep swinging the net over and over and over, and yet the net remains empty. If, wonder of wonders, you do catch a bat, you will bask blissfully in the knowledge that you have netted the most perfect specimen of Chiroptera ever known. You'll bask for exactly five minutes. Then you'll start worrying that you'll have no one to admire your bat, your perfect, perfect bat. Or, if you do, that people will think it's a sucky bat, or that it should have been bigger, or furrier."
 

farewell Gene Pitney who died in Cardiff, touring the UK which always revered him.

A favorite of mine since infancy & one of the really great voices of the rock era, whether on Bacharach/David songs like "24 Hours to Tulsa", "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" or his own compositions, like "Mecca", "I Wanna Love My Life Away" (on which he played all the instruments) &c. &c. (He also wrote "He's A Rebel" for Spector, who produced "Every Little Breath I Take" in return, "Hello Mary Lou" for Ricky Nelson, "Red Rubber Ball" for Bobby Vee). Also recorded duets with George Jones & Melba Montgomery as well as having a whole career in Italian. Played piano & percussion for the young Stones--that's him shakin' the "Not Fade Away" maracas! A lot of his filler-free albums are hard to come by (thanks Lary), but there was a good 2-cd best of on Tomato a few years back which scratched the surface effectively. But if anyone deserves a giant collected box its Gene.



 

by far the best of the late night talk show guys Craig Ferguson has an interesting sounding novel out:--

"The book, which tops off at 329 pages, is filled with many surprises. Chief among them is probably this: unlike other television stars who have moonlighted as authors, including Jay Leno (the children's book "If Roast Beef Could Fly" in 2004) and Drew Carey ("Dirty Jokes and Beer: Stories of the Unrefined," in 1997) Mr. Ferguson has written a work of literary fiction, one that periodically tips its cap to Mikhail Bulgakov, Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Campbell, Jung, Mark Twain and Herman Melville, among many others."


 

The Rain Review of Books is up online with new editor Aaron Vidaver's first issue, with


Harsha Walia on Anna Pratt, Securing Borders: Detention and Deportation in Canada

Marie Annharte Baker on Thomas King, A Short History of Indians in Canada

Fiona Jeffries on Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation

Colin Smith on David Lester, The Gruesome Acts of Capitalism

Judith Copithorne on Daniel f. Bradley, A Boy�s First Book of Chlamydia: Poems 1996-2002

Max Sartin on Michael Barnholden, Reading The Riot Act: A Brief History of Rioting in Vancouver

Sandy Cameron on Bud Osborn and Richard Tetrault, Signs of the Times

Roger Farr on Richard Day, Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements

also the 1946 Driftwood Valley by Theodora Stanwell-Fletcher, one of the great BC books:--


"For almost three years, naturalist Theodora Stanwell-Fletcher, together with her husband John, a trapper and explorer, lived and worked in the remote Driftwood River Country. Marked "unexplored" and "unsurveyed" on the few incomplete maps of the area, it was a region that had seen few white people. From their wilderness cabin the Stanwell-Fletchers studied the area's rich wildlife. "We wanted to make detailed and accurate observations on the lives of the Driftwood region; to understand the lives and problems of the wild things about us as they passed through all four seasons of the year," wrote Theodora. Her account reveals the daily pleasures and insights sparked by living close to the wild. It also chronicles the isolation, hardships, and struggles, including the severe sub-artic winters that brought deep snow and temperatures of forty-below. A popular success upon its publication in 1946, Driftwood Valley won the John Burroughs Medal for excellence in nature writing, its author the first woman to receive the award. In his introduction, Wendell Berry describes how as a teenager he discovered Driftwood Valley and recalls that it was "the only book I read for a year or two, the end serving only to permit a new return to the beginning.""
 

finally located my copy of John M. Barry's Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America

"There are two failed visions at the heart of Mr. Barry's story: the struggle to control a river that drains more than 40 percent of the contiguous United States, and the attempt to maintain an agrarian civilization in the lower Mississippi River Valley that, its white ruling class managed to believe, combined the best elements of Roman aristocracy and American democracy. The first vision was undone by stupidity (assuming anything could have been done at all); the second proved a mask of pretension that the fury of the river ripped away as if it had been a flimsy Mardi Gras disguise."

(review author T. H. Watkins' bio of New Dealer Harold Ickes also highly recommended)

 

The Apes of Flarf

"They were quite interested in the screen, and they saw that when they typed a letter, something happened. There was a level of intention there."
 

Wallace Stevens Walking Tour

I thought about brother Wally a lot walking around the tree'd & bungalow'd slopes of Victoria, that rhythm locked in when I would return to the Collected....always that balance of walking & thinking, moving through space at a slow trot-- Jacques Tati's ultimate complement to a comedian ---"he has legs"---





 

Jacket has a sheaf of poems by Margaret Avison--


The Hid, Here

Big birds fly past the window
trailing strings or vines
out in the big blue.

Big trees become designs
of delicate floral tracery
in golden green.

The Milky Way
end over end like a football
lobs, towards that still
unreachable elsewhere
that is hid within bud and nest-stuff and bright air
where the big birds flew
past the now waiting window.
 

Drew Gardner rides the unholy Bonnie Tyler/Elizabeth Bishop manticore---


"The Total Eclipse of Florida

Turnaround, Every now and then I get
out among the mangrove islands,
a little bit helpless and I'm lying like a child in your arms.
They stand on the sand-bars drying their damp gold wings.
Turnaround, Every now and then I get to an un-lit evening,
a little bit angry and I know I've got to get out and cry..."



 

nice one of Duke Ellington in his boxers from the Teenie Harris Archive

"Harris' 40-year career with the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the largest and most influential Black newspapers in the country, began as the nation emerged from the Depression and ended with the Civil Rights Movement. Numbering upwards of 80,000 images, this archive represents the largest single collection of photographic images of any Black community in the United States�or the world, for that matter."

 

Get Carter 1971 tour also has info on other shot-in- Newcastle films...

 

Steely Dan's Donald Fagen correctly identifies the greatest movie of all time.


Fagen is a confirmed fan of the great man, whose attitude and humour continue to provide him with inspiration. "Fields used to bill himself as 'The World's Greatest Juggler'," he says. "And he was. He had an amazing life. He trained himself as a juggler first; he didn't talk, just juggled. His patter really started as that stuff you say as you're juggling, little asides and so on. He was the most politically incorrect comedian ever - I love him, especially that movie "It's A Gift", the greatest movie of all time! His picture of family life is, on a certain level, the most accurate depiction I've ever seen, including any play by Pinter or the Greek playwrights. I love that bit where he comes down the stairs smoking a cigarette, sees his wife is in the sitting room, and eats the cigarette! Perfect!"
 

essay on The Brothers Quay and Bruno Schulz


"Here all matter, organic and inorganic alike, may be infused with life and spirit, but it is always bound by a temporality and subject to the laws of decay and entropy. In the Quays' cinematic world, not only do the anthropomorphous puppets possess life, but the entire mise-en-scene pulsates with movement. Rusty screws unscrew themselves from their dirt covered graves, perambulate to a new resting place, and screw themselves back into rotten wood at will. Dust, dirt, and dandelion pollen all move with rhythmic life; ice cubes melt into liquid state and reform repeatedly. As Schulz's fictional Father states, "There is no dead matter, lifelessness is only a disguise behind which hide unknown forms of life." It is as if some unseen force lurks behind the puppets and dolls, the self-moving screws and dust, and the repetitive movements of mechanized apparatuses with no apparent purpose--a secret interconnectedness of all things; a conspiracy of objects."