so much for that myth of broadmindedness & tolerance... 5.30
and yourstruly, who strives mightily to maintain a non-violent disposition & way of life, has to admit he'd like nothing better than to take a baseball bat to the kneecaps of the neanderthals responsible for the assaults on Lori Haigh &
the Capobianco Gallery...
who said irony was dead? 5.29
ahhhhhh man, what the fuck are we still doing there? Imagine how much worse Tillman's loved ones are feeling after this news; certainly should provide us all with much to contemplate on the upcoming holiday. Couple of things to mention & share with thineowndarnedselves, nice to see the bartender back's in biz (for the moment anyway...); then we offer up thanks for all the linky goodness re Walker Percy over at wood s lot, y muchas gracias a riley dog for linkage leading to Marion Peck; Woof Woof, riley D., Woof Woof...
heeey keeeedz... 5.25
just a couple of things we want to mention before our habitual short term memory loss kicks in; big shout out to G. Coale for nice mention of our Iliad-inspired post of a few days ago, why don't you all help out a really good guy
(hey, he goes thru all that trouble of putting together Testing Testing for us) and contribute to the scanner fund? Oh, also want to point you in the direction of APOD and lovely image there this morning; next we leap on over to the New Yorker on line for this item on bloggers w/book deals; some miscellaneous linkage that's come our way of late: Essential Information; a little visit to the auld sod via Big n Juicy; reminding ourowndamnedself to update our allies page, dave pell's Electablog and Frank Wallace's Power Skeptic and then to close out our little exercise in futility this morning we'd like to share something brought to our attention when we went to see The Saddest Music in the World on Sunday, preview for soon to be released The Corporation. Now that's a double bill that will have audiences thinking when they leave the theatre, Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Corporation... ahhhhhh, a monkeyman can dream, can't he?
s'always something... 5.21
thinking back fondly upon G. Radner's Rosanne Roseannadanna character on the old SNL, that trip down
memory lane inspired by technical difficulties we are experiencing in cyber-ville; perhaps by the time you read this the server difficulties will have been put to rest and this page will appear in the configuration we are accustomed to viewing, something about "upstream had to remove the IP from your site --- it was being mailbombed..." and who would want to do that to our ol'uncle d'monkey? nasty bastids...
yourstruly saw a movie the other day, we won't mention the title, even the less astute amongst you will recognize which cinematic masterpiece we are referring to when you get a little farther into this post, if you should deign to. One of the first things that came to mind after seeing the film was the realization that if a certain Peter Jackson had been enchanted by a literary work other than Tolkien's trilogy, we might actually have a film (and yes, maybe three of them) worthy of depicting the story of Achilles, Agamemnon, Priam, Paris, Helen, et al. Allow l'Marquis to
make immediate mention here that he is not in any way terribly well versed in the classics, let alone those of Greek antiquity, Homer in particular. Aside from an introduction to Homer's The Odyssey in high school yourstruly had not read The Iliad until years later, in a philosophy class at S.F. State, under the direction of a wonderful professor who also happened to be a poet, and perhaps it was that poetic sense that made it such a memorable class. Here then, more recently, we happened upon this review of C. Logue's All Day Permanent Red (when we say recently, we mean a little over a year ago). We had already happened upon Stanley Lombardo, very likely on a C-Span program where we heard him read from his translation of Homer's Iliad, and we recall how frustrated we were at that time when we sought out his translation. Now before venturing further in this day's post, we submit the following link as supplementary material supporting our recommendation of S. Lombardo's translations of both of Homer's masterworks, courtesy Cody's Books, Chris Hedges' Recommended Reading. Upon viewing this film, let us simply posit that you do yourself mighty injustice if upon seeing it you imagine you really know The Iliad, and no, not that you should nor that you should have to, but if you were so inclined ourowndarnself would highly recommend you locate a copy of Lombardo's translation and transport yourself to another time, another place, perhaps discovering for yourself what
it is about The Iliad that permits it to speak to our humanity so many years after its genesis. Your scribe has yet to mention what happened after our introduction to Christoper Logue and his, ahhhhhh, well, it is not entirely a new translation, but perhaps more accurately a rewriting/reimagining of portions of Homer's work. If it wasn't for the technical difficulties currently besetting our dumbmonkey page, you
might likely see an image alongside this post of several of C. Logue's books that we have sought out and acquired. Something we learned as we indulged our fascination with Logue's efforts is his C.V. includes acting and screenwriting, and one can apprehend the hand of someone who has written for the screen in some of the imagery he
utilizes in his version of Homer's tale. True, one should keep in mind that The Iliad is but one of many works from antiquity that were once recited from memory and probably a good deal different in its original tongue and likely subject to a variety of minor modifications during those performances before finally becoming a written work some thousands of years ago. Some of this brings up an interesting aspect of our reliance on modern translations and interpretations so we're going to include
this next link in re to The Iliad in translation, and alongside that, this link to a page where Mr. Lombardo recites portions of The Iliad in ancient Greek, and okay, now as far as wrapping up this little piece of friday morning business, please, avoid that travesty of a film, it is nothing but empty calories, quite boring, and very little in it worthy of some positive mention, perhaps instead put that money towards acquisition of a copy of Homer's Iliad and make that movie yourself, in the privacy of your own imagination...
summer's mere weeks away... 5.17
yourstruly's imagining all manner of possibilities re shaking off those summertime blues (especially the version prevalent in the year 2004), perhaps more on that hereabouts as the month closes out, but patience me preee-teeez, patience...
hey! it mus'be jelly, 'cause jam don'shake like dat!
imagine our wonderment... 5.14
this morning when we found this history of Bhangra whilst visiting MetaFilter and although yourstruly's not immersed himself in bhangra, he's gotten a lot more than his furry ol' toesies wet, so to speak. Check out Ramy & Bally Sagoo, which was introduced to us via radio program we heard recently, and available on the Introduction to Bhangra disc out of that Rough Guide series
" S w e e t n e s s ! "
"And when you say culpable..." 5.3
it makes me want to kiss you
smack on the vocabulary...
from poetry daily
bright and sunny sunday morning... 5.2
cloudless skies, bound to be a warm afternoon, perhaps breezy though...
thanks to C.J.'s BookNotes, for pointing the way to S. Hersh's Torture at Abu Ghraid, from the 5.10 New Yorker (not yet in our mailbox dammit...);
from the local big city fishwrap today, A Marine's Journey Home.
before we actually get around to...
acknowledging Mayo's arrival, want to mention a couple of things,
watched T. Burton's Big Fish recently, at home on video, and glad of having the opportunity to do that in the privacy of chez jaypea as we viewed much of the film with tears in our eyes and the occasional mournful whimper...
something that has actually made us happy of late, this marvelous and endearing tune, certainly not to everybuddy's taste, but sure makes yourstruly happy, Guzray Zamaney Waley, and while perhaps this other one doesn't provide l'Marquis w/that identical degree of HAPPY-ness, certainly am enchanted by this tune, Maa.
from that link off to the left labeled le mot juste, Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.
- William Blake
and a personal thanks to T. Koppel and ABC for that thing they did last night...
the fruitless search for a muse that became april '04
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