Sunday 30 March 2008

Freud's a fraud, and Skinner's of no use


"Do you consider yourself sufficiently protected, sufficiently safe?"


A shadow of fear passed over the face of the President.


"What do you think?" he asked with an arrogance tempered by anxiety, an anxiety masked by arrogance.


"I think you will be as protected and as safe as possible so long as you feel unprotected, unsafe."


"Ah," the President said, impressed.


-from Equal Danger by Leonardo Sciascia (1971)

Saturday 29 March 2008

The Chronic Ramping of Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus


What links Albert Pujols, Edgar Renteria and Bartolo Colon?

Friday 28 March 2008

Sex, Consolation for Misery?


"Grown up? Never- Never!" - Piero Paolo Pasolini (henceforth PPP) 1960

Wednesday 26 March 2008

Samuel Beckett and"Mush"


As in, inspiration from the.

Thursday 13 March 2008

Twilight turns from amethyst to deep and deeper blue...


Today's literature: prescriptions written by patients - Karl Krauss

Wednesday 12 March 2008

Aspects of the Povel


"Her smile resembles a sneer. I couldn't take it anymore so I shat my pants. The summer of Japanese beetles. Our pyromaniac cousin who I thought was hot burnt an ant with a magnifying glass. 'He's gonna take over your uncle's company someday,' my dad says. Feeling jealousy when my aunt showed me his prom pictures. If only they were there when I caught the sunfish. A man helped me unhook it and released it back into the pond. Its torn palate and perforated hoses on people's lawns.


A paragraph of Povel by Geraldine Kim picked at random.

Tuesday 11 March 2008

If you don't do it, nobody will.

Train your brain, pay your rates.

Monday 10 March 2008

Why the long face?

NATASHA [taking off her shirt]:

Look, I'm absolutely naked,
I have become one long face,
that's how I get into the bathtub.

-Alexander Vvedensky 1931.

Saturday 8 March 2008

Thursday 6 March 2008

Ally Sheedy's Sweet Left Foot


Ally Sheedy in the parto-necessary lovefest on the films of John Hughes, don't you forget about me, to John Hughes his mself:-

John, thank you for giving me the best role I ever had [talking about The Breakfast Club]. Thank you for showing me what I was capable of. Thank you for watching, for trusting us, for so loving and appreciating every moment. You showed me what a great director can be and can do. I could never even repay you. Thank you for giving me the experience of a lifetime.

I disagree with some of this. First of all, she has the worst role in the film by far. No real smart lines, no great dancing, and a godwaffle makeover scene that almost beclouds the best chamber piece since The Long, the Short and the Tall.

Secondly, just to take the two films before BC and one after, she was provided with, and excelled in, much better roles in Wargames, Oxford Blues and St Elmo's Fire, where it is clear that she has a magnetic screen presence to match and postcede the bests of Broderick, Lowe and assorted Nelsons, Estevezs and McCarthys, that is not tapped at all in BC. Whither the urbane possibilities, the sheckling subalto? Plus the ending, the ending, bending from Bender to subcenterrr.

Much the same magentism, and excelling at the same historical period, Kevin Sheedy:-


Check out the two-finger salute AND the goalkeeper's posing pouch. Sheedy was always described as having a sweet left foot, as if it alone would wine, dine and bed the ladies with its crossing and set-piece abilities. As if it could dextrously (sinisterly) alight the fire of sexual symphonia in the clattering basins of human predonda. Hillary, the family Sheedy doth perumpt me to quip, how bout how I was so much younger then, hand how unforkly I'm older than that new.

As was Ally Sheedy, who was pally not needy, 22/23 at time of BC, already a published author and journalist and who had failed an audition for Ringwald's part in Sixteen Candles, where she had turned up with two black eyes. She also later turned down Kelly McGillis's part in Top Gun, and became addicted to sleeping pills during a relationship with a Bon Jovi guitarist.

Anthony Michael Hall coits on Ally Sheedy- "Ally had such an aura. She loves books, old music, Bob Dylan [see]. At the time [BC filming], she was a big fan of Edie Sedgwick and the whole Warhol period. She was kind of ahead of herself in her eclectic palette of tastes. Ally, to this day, is like an older sister to me" [all this from the book Brat Pack Confidential].

But Anthony MH himself had the most mamazing development. From the geek and the nerd, he became the bully and the fug (later nonentity on SF channel) in many films, as soon as 1990's Edward Scissorhands. I feel a great kinship to this pattern (minus nonentitial), the parital path of another hero, Morrissey slightly, to beefcake bruiser.


Everybody loves chocolate, and the distance from tip of chin to tip of nose, is a challenge to the best of us, hungry hungry hippos borne back ceaselessly into repaste. And Mildred had a cute face, but was no actress, so what beans, Mr Beans?


Saturday 1 March 2008

That's four day old fish. I'm not buying it.


Enlarge to "Behold: A Depressed Duck".

Next post- why Harry should be king NOW!

Franka Potential if you Famke Yachances


Grief by Georges Bataille

Grief
grief
grief
oh grief
oh grief
oh my tears of sap
my saffron dick


oh to pull down my pants
and piss myself.