Local trees

couldn't we all use a little more Dinah Washington?

farewell to the wise, lovely, peerlessly funny poet David Bromige



more here

this is very well done--On the Creepy Alluring Art of the Follow Shot

"Following" is a montage of clips illustrating one of my favorite types of shots: one where the camera physically follows a character through his or her environment. I love this shot because it's neither first-person nor third; it makes you aware of a character's presence within the movie's physical world while also forcing identification
with the character. I also love the sensation of momentum that following shots invariably summon. Because the camera is so close to the character(s) being followed, we feel that we're physically attached to those characters, as if by an invisible guide wire, being towed through their world, sometimes keeping pace, other times losing them as they weave through hallways, down staircases or through smoke or fog...

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Hemingway, Roethke, Plath & Ahab, from Literary Minifigs - a set on Flickr

Seattle trees

Extract from Aaron Vidaver's

"Introductions and incomplete bibliography written for the Anomalous Parlance series organized at the Kootenay School of Writing in 2000...

If ontology is the luxury of the landed, what is the necessity of the nomadic? In one of Warren Tallman’s letters to Robin Blaser he suggested that the New American Poets each demanded a cult of readers, because each poetry proposed a world requiring domestic inhabitation. The 6, 7, or 8 poetries in this series permit squatting only: perfect hide-outs from the authorities. They’re anomalous not in the sense of being abnormal (a psychological notion), but in their uncomfortability to common orders. They’re lawless, but not uniformly so. The word “parlance”, however, strikes me more deeply than ‘anomalous’ – it points to a conference to discuss terms, a conference that I hope will arise. Let’s defer the problem of specifying this writing as a poetics of _______, to prevent vaccination against the work itself...

Local & Tsawassen trees, Eva's typewriter (to whom special thanks for so graciously giving up her room, also to CJ for plugging the fan in, Sam for the new cartoons & Lord Bentley for the Springsteen singalong...)

very interesting looking Blast of Silence on TCM late tomorrow....

Having to work within the thinnest of shoestring budgets, Baron elected to use, as few filmmakers had before, the expressive potential of New York City; bringing his camera into the streets of midtown Manhattan at Christmastime, to Rockefeller Center, Harlem, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. Whether it was a conscious strategy or the result of having no resources to create a setting for his tale from scratch, this unglamorous, rather desolate photography of the city by Merrill S. Brody (who also acted as the film's producer) worked immeasurably to Baron's advantage. Indeed, as a directorial debut, Blast of Silence is an altogether prodigious achievement...

& earlier, Sean Connery & a crack team of UK thesps chew the scenery old-school in Sidney Lumet's super-intense WWll brig opera

The Hill, quite possibly the shoutiest movie ever made...

Dirt Dogs and Jinegar: A New Baseball Dictionary--

Baseball slang is an avalanche of skewed logic. The commonest words take
on very precise meanings. "Stuff" refers quite specifically to the
totality of a pitcher's arsenal: his array of pitches and the velocity
and movement with which he throws them. A pitcher can easily have good
stuff but not succeed if his "command"--the ability to locate pitches
accurately--is erratic. Terms associated with dirt and filth are highly
complimentary. A hitter respectfully calls an excellent pitcher
"filthy," a term that evolved out of common adjectives from a decade
ago: "nasty" and "dirty." "Dirtbags" and "dirt dogs" are consummate
hustlers, guys with perpetually soiled uniforms and caps and batting
helmets stained with sweat, tobacco juice and pine tar. Naturally,
dirtbags and dirt dogs play "dirtball." A player who is "pretty" is the
opposite of a dirtbag, as is a "muffin." Food references are as
prevalent as the television announcers who longingly mention the
hallowed postgame buffet in the players' clubhouse. The ball itself can
be an egg, apricot, apple or stitched potato. "Jelly beans" are rookies
and inexperienced kids, the type a veteran might relentlessly call bush
for a year before acknowledging him properly. Reaching base for your
team's big hitters is "setting the table." "Fat" pitches are hittable
ones, almost exclusively delectable treats, my favorite being
"ham-and-cheese." And then there's the colorful (although unfortunately
out of fashion) term for pep or spirit: "jinegar." Forms of kinship lurk
suggestively, with positive connotations only for the hitter. Batters
aspire to find their "cousin," the pitcher they manage to hit
inexplicably well. In the early 2000s the Yankees' weak-hitting utility
infielder Enrique Wilson found an unlikely cousin in the Red Sox's
masterful Pedro Martínez, and Pedro's tough luck against the
Yankees culminated in his admitting in an infamous interview that the
Yanks were his "daddy." It was a rare moment of hearing baseball slang
invented in real time...

don't miss the chance to hear the complete Warner Brothers recordings of Richard Pryor...

excerpt--

That N**ger's Crazy album (Part 1)