Artists on art

8/23/15

When I first heard this chorus on the Tragically Hip tune Poets, I stated aloud that's it. I'll have more as time stumbles on. On the street and the epitome of vague Don't tell me how the universe is altered When you find out how he gets paid 

8/26/15

this one gets to the point:

  Nietzsche on Dante Alighieri

“A hyena that wrote poetry on tombs.”

8/27/15

I found  some comments from Professor Ermath, my mentor on George Eliot @ UMBC circa 1980, but prefer this  Woolf comment on George Eliot aka Mary Ann Evans . link
 she has little “verbal felicity.”

8/29/15

Enjoyed this quote whether it's true or not not:
In 1969, while submitting work to Paloma Picasso, Charles Bukowski remarks that 

William S. Burroughs’s “cutups and tape arrangements are just ghetto bored flip of a safe and secure man.”

9/13/15

I think rotten Johnny has Greenday's #

 The blancmange that is Green Day, where you have a Johnny Rotten first verse, a Billy Idol chorus and a Sham 69 second verse. Preposterous!

10/24/15

John O'Hara, the author  of  Butterfield 8,etc,  wasn't shy and definitely aware of being a Mick. I'm guessing this was about critics:

Little old ladies of both sexes. Why do I let them bother me? 

11/15/15

Some easy guesses on Neil's targets . From Hippie Dream

 And the wooden ships are a hippie dream capsized in excess

11/21/15

Faulkner's "Sound & Fury infuriates me and probably others because you need a flow chart to keep track of the characters.

12/23/15

an oldie but goodie for the season:

I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up - they have no holidays.  Henny Youngman

3/6/16

The biodoc, Regarding Susan Sontag,  stirred some  mixed feelings  such as an appreciation for her solid quips and a dislike for her late 1960's visit  to North Vietnam during that war.

Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.

4/2/16

Bowie from his song Andy Warhol:

 Andy Warhol, Silver Screen Can't tell them apart at all

4/13/16

Thomas Jefferson was born on this date in 1743. I'm  buying his quote:

“I cannot live without books.” 

5/8/16

another THip line   keeps bouncing around my skull. This one from 100th Meridian:

"It would seem to me I remember every single fucking thing I know"

7/16/16

Bukowski in 1959: " I do not feel it is pedantic or ignoble to demand freedom from the opiate of clannishness and leech-brotherhood that dominates many of our so-called avant-garde publications"

7/29/16

back to kerouac:
“Artist or no-artist, I can't pass up a piece of fried chicken when I see one.”  Jack Kerouac, Visions of Gerard

8/19/16

Keeping it light this morning-from  Paul McCartney: Yoko Ono and I are 'mates'

8/21/16

The late  #JoeStrummer and I share a birthday today so I'm snipping a  lyric from the Clash to keep upbeat today.

"I'm all lost in the supermarket.......I came in here for that special offer"

9/24/16

This resonates more now than ever. #Saul Bellow :   "Open discussion of many major public questions has for some time now been taboo. We can’t open our mouths without being denounced as racists, misogynists, supremacists, imperialists or fascists. As for the media, they stand ready to trash anyone so designated."

10/2/16

No reason in particular but  here's a quote from the seedy #Celine 's book North:

“whenever they get a chance, never fear, people make you waste hours and months ... they use you as a wall to bounce their bullshit off"

10/14/16

the late #gilscottheron wrote these lyrics in the song "B Movie" about Reagan's presidential victory, and I'll dare to spin them forward . View them through your political "frames"

"Before the free press went down before full-court press
And were reluctant to review the menu
Because they knew the only thing available was ... Crow"

10/29/16

It's the height of the political season in the USA so I'll turn to Hemingway's opinion on the poet #EzraPound who went off the rails for Mussolini and Hitler .

"He should not be hanged and he should not be made a martyr of…. It is impossible to believe that anyone in his right mind could utter the vile, absolutely idiotic drivel he has broadcast"

11/3/16

Johnny "Rotten" Lydon once called #Bono- Bozo. Wonder what he thinks of this

 "Bono named on #Glamour magazine's Women of the Year list"

11/11/16

RIP #LeonardCohen. These two lines from #JenniferWarnes cover of  Cohen's "first we take manhattan" still reverberate.

"I don't like your fashion business, mister

And I don't like these drugs that keep you thin"

11/24/16

from #iggypop: " What did Christ really do? He hung out with hard-drinking fishermen."

11/29/16

Appropriate reaction or stoking more interest in the upcoming 40th anniversary of the Sex Pistols debut single?
 #JoeCorre (48), the son of Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, torched about 6M worth punk memorabilia s  in the middle of the River Thames claiming punk  wasn't intended to be nostalgic.

12/31/16

Ending the year with a  #Bowie line or two from the song Blackout with a touch of pretense:

"Oh you, you walk on past
Your lips cut a smile on your face"

2/18/17

This #Bukowski line nabbed me this morning

"I don't like jail, they got the wrong kind of bars in there."

2/25/17

Most of her books are worth reading so why not share  her opinion on writing

“Writers are always selling somebody out.”
—Joan Didion

4/1/17

No foolin, one of the straighter lines from the late  #gilscottheron  about Guns:
   "When other folks give up theirs, I'll give up mine."

4/29/17

PFurs lyrics from "it goes on"

"Where they put on wigs and stuff
So they can be themselves"

5/28/17

After a cool conversation with an old friend, I went looking for some poems by #FrankOhara and enjoyed this line on Impressionists research from Having a Coke with you.

" when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank"

6/9/17

I wonder  about this quote but find #mickeyspillane 's jab amusing.

 "Hemingway hated me. I sold 200 million books, and he didn't. Of course most of mine sold for 25 cents"

6/21/17

#gorddownie of #tragicallyhip appointed Order of Canada. I've always considered it an  oddity for rock and rollers to get government medals.

7/29/17

weather related lyrics from Tom Verlaine's tune "kingdome Come"

 "Well, I walked in the pouring rain And I heard the voice that cries "it's all in vain"

8/3/17

Yuh never know with "Rotten Johnny" Lydon. On meeting #newtgingrich some time ago"
 "I found him completely dishonest and totally likeable, because he doesn't care!"

8/25/17

"and he's hearing something she never said" from when the weight comes down by #TragicallyHip.

10/22/17

moving through an Mp3 playlist of THip- mourning #GordDownie and starting with the first line from "The Luxury"  "Zoo Lion sobers up and starts to scream and shout"

10/28/17

#georgeclinton , the funkster, co-opted this fast food ad line in 1986. "do fries go with that shake" Today, the PC police would arrest him.

11/9/17

#kurtweill "song of the white cheese" with lyrics by Günther Weisenbom has been found in the archives of Berlin Free University. The lyrics lampoon a Weimar-era religious leader who laid cottage cheese on  eyes in attempts to heal blindness. 

11/25/17

I watched a 1992 #GeorgeCarlin HBO special last night in which everyone from enviromentalists to fundamentalists was  fair game and thought his bitterness made him less funny.

1/14/18

#Shitholes is the word of the week, but I'll mention the late #gorddownie 's words from the song Little Bones: 
"Baby eat this chicken slow
It's full of all them little bones."

1/25/18

RIP #NicanorParra, the chilean poet, died at the age of 103. He once told poets to come down from Mt Olympus

2/14/18

Memo from Joy Division on Valentines Day : "Love will tear us apart...again "  😉
3/4/18:  comedian #stephenwright amusing line on crossing into Canada "they asked if I had any firearms with me. I said, "Well, what do you need?”

4/1/18

Easter 2018 pondering how stunned and amused I was in 1978  by #JohnDonne 's poems and the tales of his transition from a rake, womanizer and hellraiser, to  a cleric in the Church Of England. Time to spin #vanmorrison 's tune  : Rave on John Donne

4/30/18

In these days of if you don't share my politics, I aint buying your products or listening to you, I watched a good portion of the #SteveEarle interview on the PBS Speakeasy series this weekend and learned enough to not the switch the channel. 

5/12/18

Reacting to the headlines this morning with a line from This Corrossion by Sisters of Mercy

I got nothing to say I ain't said before

 5/20/18

My response to all the celebrity lectures, #metoo crowd, etc. #menot

7/7/18

"and he's hearing something she never said"  a line from the #tragicallyhip song - when the wieght comes down.  Will it be #maxinewaters new campaign slogan ?

9/15/18

#bertoltbrecht tune Mack the Knife has beeen covered by a ton of artists from Bobby Darin to the PFurs and with  a new movie version of ThreePenny Opera opening in Germany , I read that Brecht provided his actors with whistles to drown out boos from the audience at  the world premiere of The Threepenny Opera at Berlin's Theater am Schiffbauerdamm on August 31, 1928.

9/30/18

The late #charlesbukowski probably didn't consider this line from his book #pulp offensive in the 1990s, but it's likely deemed offensive by today's snow angels.  “-Look, barkeeper, I'm a peaceful man. Fairly normal. I don't sniff armpits or wear ladies' underwear."

11/17/18

In a #steveearle listening mood this morning and this line  from "Other Kind" resonates for no particular reason: "Ah - but leave it up to me to say something wrong and hurt someone before I'm done"

12/08/18

 #tragicallyhip song "the Luxury"  digging this line : "Melancholy wine-soaked tenderness"

1/23/19

 Iran's Culture Ministry announced  a suspension of  the upcoming "Poland's Film Week," in #Tehran. Probably only four or five films would have passed their strict codes.

3/9/19

 I'm using this line from THip's "Nautical Disaster"song to describe #IlhanOmar  self-absorption this week.  " I had this dream where I relished the fray"

3/24/19

"Instinct is the common lawyer--A million years won't erase"

Echo & The Bunnymen - All That Jazz

5/23/19

 #Spillers music store in Wales has stopped stocking #Morrissey 's  releases because of his endorsement of British political party For Britain.  Intolerance grows!

6/12/19

Rather than pay ransom,  #Radiohead makes stolen tracks available online at Bandcamp with proceeds to help 'Extinction Rebellion' , a climate change group. That's one way to deal with hackers!

6/22/19

 “If I'm a bitch and a fake, is there nobody who will love a bitch and a fake?”
― Graham Greene, The End of the Affair
After  watching a biopic on Greene yesterday, I'm still shaking my head at his loyalty to #Philby and his embraces of various Communist countries and causes.

7/12/19

In an attempt to keep current I found this quote from  #jermainedupri,  producer and owner of the So So Def record label, " today’s women rappers sound like strippers.”

8/9/19

 "A smile is like a blush, it is a response, not an expression per se, and so it can neither be easily maintained nor easily recorded."  #nicholasjeeves on why smiles are so rare in painted portraits.

9/20/19

 "You pay for this, but they give you that" #neilyoung  from Hey, Hey, My my

9/22/19

  #thomyorke of #Radiohead on being a climate change campaigner and needing air travel to tour.
"I totally agree I'm a hypocrite but... what do you want to do about it?"
Hey Thom: STFU

10/16/19

" Bad artists always admire each others' work." #Oscar Wilde born Oct 16, 1854

11/1/19

  #VanMorrison sings about politicians on the song "nobody in Charge" :  'waffling endlessly' .... "getting paid too much for screwin' up". Some think this about Stormont being inactive in NI, but it could be applied to many politicians.

11/26/19

This BBC headline gave me a chuckle. Coldplay joins the fossils at museum gig

12/18/19

 "The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live." #georgecarlin

12/24/19

Rev #JohnDonne lines from his poem Nativity 

"Stars and wise men will travel to prevent
The effect of Herod’s jealous general doom"

2/2/20

#iggypop received a lifetime Grammy. Maybe he should've performed his song, "I won't crap out."

2/9/20

 Jasper and Jinx, their original names, became Tom and Jerry in 1940 and turned 80 this weekend. A career that included  some production time in Prague in the early 1960s.

2/22/20

 #Andre Bazin  , a film critic, wrote this in 1967 :"The cinema owes virtually nothing to the scientific spirit," ..... The fathers of film are not scholars, but rather "monomaniacs, men driven by an impulse, do it-yourself men or at best ingenious industrialists."
 Is this back-handed compliment, complete bullshit, jealousy, or all of the above?

3/12/20

 #Nadasurf played two shows in the same day to beat virus restrictions of 1000 people in avenue by playing Paris show twice, one at 1900 and then at 2115 . #vanmorrison did a similar thing in a different Paris venue. #coronavirus .

3/21/20

digging #johnnyrotten 's comment on Occupy Wall St movement which he liked for awhile but " it always ends with some hippie playing a flute"

4/18/20

"A patronizing disposition always has its meaner side." George Eliot aka Mary Ann Evans

4/29/20

Some candor from a famous 84 year-old  actress #JulieAndrews:   I'm 'old and crotchety' for a ‘Princess Diaries 3,’ but would do it for Anne Hathaway

6/13/20

A little bit of Bowie from "up the hill backwards" 

More idols then realities
I'm okay, you're so so

7/16/20

Oh no, more Hitler stories but this may be worth reading:

#HansPosse , Hitler's favorite museum man in Germany, documented a vast criminal enterprise in looted art in minute detail in his travel diaries which are now available online .

7/24/20

I was listening to "Everytime you go" by the Tragically Hip and  remain amused by the lyric "pissin bliss" penned by the late Gord Downie.

8/23/20

#johncleese on dealing with political correctness:  comedians “have to set the bar according to what we are told by the most touchy, most emotionally unstable, and fragile and least stoic people in the country.”

9/30/20

Years ago David Bowie sang ,Is there life on Mars?  Italian scientists reported that a network of salty ponds may be gurgling beneath Mars’ South Pole alongside a large underground lake, which raises the possibility of tiny, swimming Martian life. 

11/14/20

I saw a video clip of #OrsonWelles discussing Hemingway and eventually found my way to this quote about #Hemingway's suicide from #johnhuston : "Hemingway wouldn’t have done it had it been cancer. But he was on his way to imbecility."

12/12/20

#markknopler from the song Lady Writer: "you talked to me when you felt like it " I'm sure you know the feeling.

12/15/20

The life of  former British PM Tony Blair will be the subject of a  rock opera to be performed in London in 2021. I wonder if Pete Townsend will be involved in the project.

1/17/20

“The responsibility of tolerance lies in those who have the wider vision.” George Eliot (Mary Evans)

02/27/21

"Modesty in an actor is as fake as passion in a call girl."   Jackie Gleason

03/27/21

I watched old video clips of David Bowie and John Lennon separately discussing their collaborations on the song Fame which were mostly positive, and then got a chuckle from Lennon's response to a question about his chats with Bowie while working on Bowie's cover of the Lennon-McCartney tune, across the universe.   I paraphrase: which David, you never know which one you're talking to?

04/10/21

Over the years Rotten Johnny's comments about British royalty have changed so I bet he utters kinder words about the death of Prince Philip than Harry and Meghan do from California today.

05/22/21

Rotten Johnny, the ex SexPistol, shoots from the hip again on the  woke brigade defacing a statue of Churchill last summer.. Churchill "saved Britain" and added that "whatever he got up to in South Africa or India beforehand is utterly irrelevant" to the current issues of today.

JUNE 11, 2021

Sir Van Morrison took to the stage at the Europa Hotel in Belfast last night to hit out at Health Minister Robin Swann. for the last minute forced cancellation of his concerts 

 North Antrim MP Ian Paisley joined him on stage.

July 29, 2021

Getting a chuckle out of John Mayer's new album title,  "Sob Rock"

Aug 10, 2021

Director Tsai Ming-liang's documentary "The Night" and Chung Mong-hong's drama "The Falls" were submitted under the name Taiwan, but Venice Film Festival organizers listed the two films as being from "Chinese Taipei". Communist China wields its influence everywhere.

Aug 18, 2021

 Elton John interviewed on partying with John Lennon. They were doing rails in a hotel room and someone knocked on the door. EJ said it's Warhol and Lennon said ,No. . EJ said ,why. Lennon: "He always carries a camera."

Sept 5, 2021

#davidspade on cancel culture survival : "I just turned into Marlon Blando" 

Nov 9, 2021

Northern Ireland’s health minister #robinswann is suing Van Morrison after the singer accused him of being “very dangerous” over his handling of Covid restrictions. Also, there are allegations that Van called Swann a fraud in a print interview.

Nov 20, 2021

I tend to give the music industry a hard time for some of its political stances, but props for Homeland and Life, a  Cuban protest anthem against the Commies  that won a Latin Grammy for song of the year. Hopefully, Maykel Osorbo, one of the songwriters, won't die in a Cuban prison.

Kerouac, a mad texter?

If Jack's tortured liver had survived, he would've been 91 on March 12, 2013. When he was writing  On the Road, he was a fast, proficient typist. Perhaps he added too much benzedrine in his Ovaltine, but he  was a catalyst in shifting attitudes and approaches to writing. Writing is about words and Kerouac enjoyed playing with them to capture the moments as he lived and viewed them. Sometimes he was silly and often he did not pursue grand concepts which the stuffed literary shirts consider a necessity to being  considered a great writer.

His interesting novel Pic in which he tries to capture the sounds and dialect of a ten-year old black male was panned as being stereotypical by many, but I view it as a valiant effort to capture what he was hearing. I wonder if he would've been panned had he chosen as a white man to capture the dialect of a ten-year old southern white boy?




 One of the cheapest dismissals of Kerouac came from one of the  pissy-ass blowhards of all time-  Truman Capote

 "That's not writing, that's typing."

I've digressed enough. Kerouac's drunken fingers would've put him in texter's hell and placed him permanently in the word police solitary confinement wing.

Thx Jack- your books, good, weak, or ugly were edifying.

Did I mention that his buddy Neal Cassady claimed that jack  "feared the wheel" (driving).

Pick away folks!

4/10/13

when Ted Berrigan of the Paris Review asked during a 1968 interview,

 “How come you never write about Jesus?” Kerouac’s reply: “I’ve never written about Jesus? … You’re an insane phony … All I write about is Jesus.”

5/29/13

 I guess money was the sole reason the Sampas family (if they still control the Kerouac estate) released The Sea is my Brother,  a very rough draft  Kerouac penned in his early 20's about some fellows going to sea. The brief debates about Marxism and Socialism were amusing, but I spent more time wondering is that character partially Ginsberg, or Lucien Carr etc. Kerouac didn't meet Cassady until after this draft was penned circa 1942. Also, I guess John Clellan Holmes was mixed in to the Prof Bill Everhart character. 
It was a short book  that was too long, and women on the side was a Kerouac staple from his roughest drafts to his best works.

8/27/13

My buddy Barrie,  a longtime Kerouc fan, emailed  the link to a story about the real life  passing of the "Terry, the Mexican girl,"  from On the road.

 11/30/13

Kerouac scored the winning TD for Lowell High  in 1938. Just keeping it light on a fat weekend.

12/15/13

I thought of Kerouac & Cassady while watching some youtube clips of interviews of Robert Mitchum replies to questions about  his hobo days. "Man, the goal was to keep moving."

5/24/13
Jack replied to my thread before I typed

Don’t use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.

8/17/14

From Jack's standard novel: The Town and the City

I've drank with his brother in a thousand bars 

9/6/14

Yesterday was the 57th anniversary of the publication of On the Road. Jack was 35 at the time  and most of his "barnstorming" was behind him

10/23/14

Oct 21 1969. Kerouac died . the liver conked out. Here's a link to his his last interview. He was for legalizing pot.

 Gimme a pack of marijuana!'

12/13/14

Cassady  wrote this long before he laid across a railroad track to die.
 The time has come, everybody lie down so you won't get hurt when the sun bursts.” 
― Neal Cassady, The First Third

3/6/15

 "You can't fight City Hall. It keeps changing its name." I need to verify haven't read this article from Kerouac in 1969 "After Me, The Deluge"

8/7/15

Kerouac quoted in a Chrysler commercial. Suppose it should've happened sooner but he had a fear of the wheel and was more comfortable as a passenger

12/6/15

Turning to Kerouac for what's important:

“Artist or no-artist, I can't pass up a piece of fried chicken when I see one.”  Jack Kerouac, Visions of Gerard

12/25/16

excerpt from #kerouac on xmas eve just after midnight in Lowell, MA : kerouac short story

  “In the general uproar of gifts and unwinding of wrappers it was always a delight to me to step out on the porch or even go up the street a ways at 1:00 in the morning and listen to the silent hum of heaven diamond stars"

2/11/17

digging back to Kerouac's brooding in the novel Tristessa

“I play games with her fabulous eyes and she longs to be in a monastery” 

3/12/17

Ti Jean  boozed too much to make it to 95.   If he were breathing and texting, I bet he would've typed leave me alone. Or maybe he'd be near a kitchen.

"I got all my boyhood in vanilla winter waves around the kitchen stove.-Kerouac "

7/4/17

Hypothetical #Kerouac tweet to the #Capote: F U Tru

9/2/17

The spitters would probably get arrested today, but here's an interesting image on #Lowell , MA from #Kerouac 's "Visions of Gerard".

 "men smoking cigars stand by the rail spitting in the waters that reflect the drizzle hopelessness of 1926.” 

3/12/18

would #kerouac have dug HBD Jack

10/20/18

#kerouac was hitting the bottle hard in 1960 but well aware of some things: "It is not my fault that certain so-called bohemian elements have found in my writings something to hang their peculiar beatnik theories on. "  Basically beat ain't always beatnik.

10/17/20

  “Some's bastards, some's ain't. That's the score.” #kerouac On the Road

Musing about the Beat writers

of which I include Neal Cassady. I read an interview with Carolyn Cassady,http://victoriamixon.com/2010/02/17/gobsmacked-the-carolyn-cassady-interview/
 one of Neal's wives, in which she had kinds words for Neal and Jack Kerouac.


I finally saw  a utube clip from French Tv of a not completely drunk Kerouac doing an interview.

Got to wondering about Mardou Fox (alene lee) the black/cherokee love interest of leo Percepeid (jack kerouac) in the book Subterraneans and found this photo of her sitting next to William burroughs. Ol bill didn't spent much time with the ladies.

I think she later hooked up with Lucien Carr. Enough name-dropping today. Burroughs is the character Frank Carmody in the book. Btw, George Peppard as Kerouac and Leslie Caron as Mardou are curious choices for the movie, but Jim Hutton as the allen Ginsberg character (adam moorad) and Arte Johnson as Gore Vidal (Arial) are the true head-scratchers.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054351/

3/1/13

  I recall attending a talk by Charles Plymell, a poet and associate of the Beats, in the early 1990's at 8X10 club on Cross St in Baltimore, He mingled with the crowd, and I bought him a beer and asked a few questions about Kerouac and Burroughs, He said in many ways Kerouac was a regular guy, and he nearly chuckled when I asked about Burroughs nasal twang, which he blamed on Missouri air.

He suggested that the Herbert Hunckes of NYC were a dime a dozen.

5/18/13

  It seems I've neglected Allan Ginsberg.  I never dug his politics even when I was younger and left leaning. I liked a few lines in Howl,  but I viewed him as mostly cock and bull.

6/19/13

 I'll add Gregory Corso to the list of Beat  affiliated authors that I didn't dig.  Gary Snyder was decent.

10/6/13

Two weeks late on the news of Carolyn Cassady's death on 9/22/13. Her friend Estelle Cimino, co-owner of the Beat Museum in San Francisco, confirmed the death to the Associated Press. No cause of death was given.

12/26/13

Thanks to my nephew for an interesting  chat yesterday on Kerouac. Jack has his arm  around Neal.

4/14/14

Interesting casting decision in the movie Kill your Darlings . Jennifer Jason Leigh as Allan Ginsberg's mom leaps out at me. kill your darlings  I think Kerouac married the gal who bailed him out of jail.

6/1/14

Kerouac espoused  the Catholic beatttitudes and was not a beatnik.  Ginsberg  saw it as :

  “The point of beat is that you get beaten down to a certain nakedness where you are actually able to see the world in a visionary way,”

It wasn't  Maynard Krebs pounding a bongo drum. banging a congo drum

7/31/14

I've been trying to get through the 2012 release of the movie "On the road" and doubt if I will. Maybe I should hunt around for the "the Subterraneans " released in the 1950's . I mentioned the cast in my  original post. Anyway Kerouac was a Catholic Boy. Here'a snippet from  "Visions of Gerard:

"His life.... ended when he was nine and the nuns of St. Louis de France Parochial School were at his bedside to take down his dying words because they'd heard his astonishing revelations of heaven

10/4/14

Re-read sections of Howl and think less of it. Ginsberg's, a one time ad-man in NYC,  description of Burroughs is quite a positive spin on Burroughs' move to Mexico after shooting his wife

 who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit

3/31/15

This has been my sense of  Kammerer, and i haven't seen the movie Kill your darings. caleb carr on kammererr

  Every time Lucien Carr moved, and it was several times, Kammerer followed

4/12/15

Gary Snyder on Kerouac: link

 My second favorite novel, which is a better novel, is The Subterraneans. It's the perfect little French novel with a beginning a middle and an end. A nicely structured Flaubertian piece of prose which shows his craftsmanship

4/30/15

Drunk Kerouac joking on the William Buckley Tv show when asked about the war in Vietnam:

"a plot to get Jeeps into the country."

7/21/15

I never thought that Ginsberg was as talented as Kerouac & Burroughs , but his tribute to Bernie Sanders may have been his nadir. BTW, I'm aware that Ginsberg thought  artistic "comparisons are odious." And he couldn't resist this line : Socialist kids sucking socialist lollipops. Ginsberg 1986 tribute to Sanders

Plus politics, regardless of your slant, tends to drag a poem down.

5/19/16

Caught up with Beat , a 2000 flick starring Keifer Sutherland as Burroughs and Courtney Love as Joan Vollmer.  Movie was slow and the casting felt odd. Kyle Secor as David Kammerer was interesting. Also, didn't hear  much of that Missouri Twang from the Burroughs and Kammerer characters.

7/26/16

going back to a link I posted last year. Allan Ginsberg's socialist ode to then Mayor Sanders

Isn’t this poem socialist? It doesn’t belong to me anymore.

5/21/17

After viewing a few clips of the " #TheSubterraneans " movie on youtube, I get why #Kerouac shied away from Hollywood. Rumor has it that he turned down  project in which he would be super-imposed over a #BennyGoodman recording session. It  would have been more interesting to have seen him sitting aside #CharlieParker.

6/10/17

Found this quote from #garysnyder on #jackkerouac and thought YEP!

"total absence in Jack of anything elite, or yuppie, or academic, or intellectual, or any of that posturing at all that we associate with learned people, middle-class white people"

01/26/21

 I came across this item while reading a history of Prague and laughed. #AllenGinsberg, an avid lefty, was crowned King of May in Prague in 1965 then the communists kicked him out.

2/24/21

RIP Lawrence #Ferlinghetti  ,who passed away at the age of 101 yesterday. Ginsberg and Kerouac read their works frequently in the 1950s at his City Lights bookstore in San Francisco. I admired his patronage of the Arts but didn't dig most of his poetry.

02/11/22

Once a commie always a commie: In the early 1980s goofy, commie sympathizer #AllenGinsberg stated this about #BernieSanders and his Vermont groupies: "Socialist kids sucking socialist lollipops." 

Forty years later, Sanders doubled down on his argument that Americans should see Ukraine through Russia's eyes.

May 7, 2023

Plymell (88) is still breathing. In his WikiP profile , no mention of Kerouac- Jack would likely laugh. Plymell, too.

May 25, 2023

RIP Caleb Carr, military historian, novelist, and son of Lucien Carr. In an interview, Caleb once noted that Jack Kerouac was a very nice guy but not a children person.

Bent stalks of cane

James Cain's novels, Mildred Pierce, Double Indemnity, & The postman Always rings twice, were turned into decent Hollwood noir flicks in the 1940's so I thought I'd give some of his other products a read. 

He tried to catch what he labeled the vividness of speech  the average's man.  The speech in Serenade, the story of an American opera singer who loses his voice while working In Italy but regains it in Mexico where he falls for a Mexican/Indian prostitute and takes her to the USA where he becomes a Hollywood star then  starts to re-kindle his opera career. He re-connects with a rich patron and spends most of his time with him  and ignoring his girl. This is where i got lost. All of a sudden, his girl accuses him of being a fag and in love with his patron.  A little more plot connection would've nice. Surprise, surprise, he acknowledged he was a fag.

While I was reading Serenade, i kept  wondering if William Burroughs used some of parts this style later in Naked Lunch and why was Henry Miller  banned during the same time frame. I understood more how Jack Kerouac could become a top seller in the 1950's. I want to clarify that I'm  connecting these writers by their rapid fire and, at times, disjointed plots, not that they wrote on similar topics and/or themes.

I thought about Kerouac's Tristessa while reading the parts of Serenade focused on Mexico.

I'm reading Cain's Love's Lovely Counterfeit looking for more noir and less vividness. 

2/1/13 

Definitely more noir in Counterfeit with requisite mobster back biting and political corruption

2/1/13- 

Butterfly stood for the birthmark passed down to sons. What appeared to be incest most of the story wasn't. Jess'wife took their two daughters and moved in with Moke. 18 years later one daughter Kady  returns and tempts Jess who doesn't give in until he finds out that Moke is Kady's father. He notices the butterfly on Kady 's son's belly then sees the same butterfly on Moke's stomach while they're secretly preparing to kill each other. Plenty of shenanigans in this backwoods tale.

2/25/13 

 Having chuckle thinking about how some members of the literary press who've tried to lump Henry Miller  & William Burroughs together. Obviously they didn't read past page 1 of books by either.

5/24/13: 

I'm not sure if we needed Ardai to make Cain's last work Cocktail Waitress available. The book is stuck in neutral or spinning around. Maybe some works are better left unpublished.
Thinking of a Henry Miller line again "everything has been analyzed to the point of nulllity."

7/4/13 

I watched Drugstore Cowboy (1989) again last night and got another mild chuckle seeing Burroughs as Tom, the junkie priest. His glee when the Matt Dillon character gave him free dilaudid appeared to be authentic.

9/27/13

Junkies need their sugar

10/21/13

Consider this old quote and inject the internet:

We do not talk - we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests. Henry Miller

11/7/13

 New York is not even a city, it's a congerie of rotten villages.

JAMES M. CAIN, The Paris Review, spring-summer 1978

1/15/14

“Paris is like a whore. From a distance she seems ravishing, you can't wait until you have her in your arms. And five minutes later you feel empty, disgusted with yourself. You feel tricked.” 
Henry Miller from Tropic of Cancer

6/14/14

Henry Miller

“Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed”

9/12/14

  Henry Miller line..again

 "everything has been analyzed to the point of nulllity."

10/1/14

 Anyone else feel this:

 Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.

William Burroughs

10/27/14

Line from Drugstore Cowboy

Diane was my wife. I loved her, and she loved dope. So we made a good couple

12/18/14

 “The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.” 
― Henry Miller, Sexus

12/28/14

From a 1969 NYT book review Here's Cain:

People tell me, don’t you care what they’ve done to your book? I tell them, they haven’t done anything to my book. It’s right there on the shelf. They paid me and that’s the end of it.”

2/8/15

Adding Walter Mosley to my bent stalks list: Quick review on Debbie doesn't do it anymore 

It starts with the scar tattoo target under Debbie Dare’s right eye, moves through finger pointing at the timeless contradictions of those who bash the porn industry while reveling in its product and lands nicely as Debbie the waitress raising her son . I read the book in a day and Mosley never fails to entertain, but has tended to become preachy through his characters on race issues.

Mosley’s efforts to capture Dare ghetto dialect remind me of Kerouac’s effort to capture a young southern black boy’s dialect in Pic.

3/27/15
Time is the only critic.

JAMES M. CAIN, The Paris Review, spring-summer 1978

4/2/15

James Cain on  Mencken from a Paris Review interview: no 69

 I don't think Mencken would have lifted a finger to defend the rights of some colored man in Baltimore to get up and make a speech against the white society

5/5/15

 Burroughs vents for me today:

 My affections, being concentrated over a few people, are not spread all over Hell in a vile attempt to placate sulky, worthless shits.”

7/27/15

Naked Lunch was published in the early 1950's:

 “Mohammed? Are you kidding? He was dreamed up by the Mecca Chamber of Commerce.” 

― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch

12/5/15

Headlines are full of gun control mania so I'll  dial back to a time  when censors  tried to control the pens of Henry Miller & William Burroughs.

5/25/16

Mull over this Mencken quote:

The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.

6/29/16

Still relevant old quote from Henry Miller

 “We do not talk - we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests"

10/9/16

The "trumpeting" of  vulgarity in the cybersphere takes me back to a letter from #henrymiller to his gal #anaisnin

“I want to undress you, vulgarize you a bit.”

While #hilary wants more gun control, I'll turn to a line from an old queer #williamburroughs who didn't have much use for women .

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it

5/7/17

I've watched quite a few reruns of the Perry Mason 1950s TV series and was hoping the 1930s novels were different and this one (The Case of the Velvet Claws: A #PerryMason Mystery #1 ) is. Some of the better elements:  Mason: Less time in the courtroom, more time on the streets, snappier back and forth with clients and others. Blunter Della Street. Grittier Paul Drake

What disappointed me is the publisher's foreword or fore warning that 1931 was a different time with different attitudes toward race and gender. Do we have to protect hyper-sensitive readers from the past and or can lawyers sue the use of words written 86 years ago?

9/1/17

Random thought: Maybe Hollywood will make a #PerryMason movie based in the 1930's and truer to #gardner 's books?

7/1/18

No Pockets in a Shroud by #HoraceMcCoy, the author of They shoot horse don't they, is a revelation. The books lead character Mike Dolan is a flawed man, muckraker, and an amateur thespian who gets his head blown off in the final scene.Depression era books are hectic and may not bore text- mad typists.

7/7/18

If I were on a tv studio set with these dead writers I'd ask   #burroughs about North Africa, #henrymiller about Parisian whores, and #kerouac about baseball.

11/11/18

“Dear Editor: It's a damn good story. If you have any comments, write them on the back of a check.” 
#ErleStanleyGardner

03/29/20 

“Married men get so they make a routine even of keeping a mistress” ― Erle Stanley Gardner, from The Knife Slipped 

8/15/20

 "A gun is like breath to a drowning man--it has to be drawn in haste." James M Cain

11/22/20

While reading Sulky Girl, a #PerryMason novel by Erle Stanley Gardner published in 1933, I was confounded seeing the word clews a number of times and wondered was the dude born in England? He was born in Malden, Massachusetts in 1889, and clew is an archaic version of clue.

2/8/2022

I'm enjoying "Shills Can't Cash Chips" by Erle Stanley Gardner, featuring private detective Donald Lam, published in 1960 for   a vocabulary free of woke culture influences. It's part of the Cool and Lam series that Gardner penned as A.A. Fair.

Mauling the late Norman Mailer

Wonder if  Norman Mailer ever stopped looking for the White Negro, ever questioned that his search appeared to be academic not serious--claiming to venerate while  sneering. He wasn't a hip or hep cat.

Deer Park to Barbary Coast, . tough guys don't dance to Hitler's childhood in the Forest. As I look back, I probably shouldn't have made Deer Park my senior high school term paper topic.

I liked some of his writing but always felt the presence of the boulder on his shoulder.

11/27/12

The movie version of tough guys don't dance was mediocre, but it was cool seeing Lawrence Tierney, a 1940's Hollywood tough guy, as the character Dougy. He stole the film.

2/22/13

 The Castle in the Forest, his final novel, which covered Hitler's childhood was amusing and interesting at times, but bordered on being repetitive and overly didactic. It was as if he was on a word count.

6/7/13

 If Mailer were here today, his acid tongue would  be wagging about how a fellow lefty, Barack Obama, has let us down. Maybe he would call him Bush-Lite

10/4/13

One of Mailer's early published works was Advertisements for myself, a title Obama will likely borrow for his autobiography.

11/16/13

I knew that feeling:

“You know,” he laughed easily, “with all the goddam drinkin’ Ah’ve done, Ah still can’t remember the taste of it unless Ah got the bottle right with me.” 
― Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead

12/08/13

Can you envision the responses today to this  section from Mailer's, The White Negro, published in 1957?

Hated from outside and therefore hating himself, the Negro was forced into the position of exploring all those moral wildernesses of civilized life which the Square automatically condemns as delinquent or evil or immature or morbid or self-destructive or corrupt. 

1/11/14

 “You don't know a woman until you've met her in court.” 

10/15/14

Thought this was an amusing Mailer quote:

Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists.

11/13/14

another smart-ass quip from Mailer's White Negro

 “In such places as Greenwich Village, a ménage-a-trois was completed–the bohemian and the juvenile delinquent came face-to-face with the Negro, and the hipster was a fact of American life. … marijuana was the wedding ring.”

2/7/15

I saw this Mailer quote

Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child.

Her photo of a kid with a toy grenade is the likely basis for the quote

3/19/15

Mailer was a well-documented lefty and he said:

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

10/7/16

A generalization from the late Norman Mailer that may have a nugget of validity and a load of crap:

 "What characterizes a member of a minority group is that he is forced to see himself as both exceptional and insignificant"

1/21/17

For some perspective on current political events let's replay the #Buckley #Mailer debates of the early 60's .  Buckley Jr noted in  an obit on Mailer that he  created beautiful metaphors.

9/22/17

#mailer co-founded the #villagevoice which printed it last edition this week.. I had a subscription for a few years in the late 1970s and hardly looked for the paper by the late 80's. My favorite columnist was #nathentoff.

2/17/19

While reading more on the #buckley / #mailer  right/left debates, I came across this nasty comment from #gorevidal on  the Catholic Buckleys.  “the sick Kennedys.” Who knows, maybe he hadn't met Teddy K or Joe Sr at the time.

june 8, 2019

 Whatever your view of #normanMailer, his candor was refreshing: " I always start a book for money. If you're married five times you have to."

august 9

  Something to consider: #williambuckley 's comment on #normanmailer ,his debate partner.  Mailer "epitomized a certain species of macho, adolescent radicalism that helped to inure the wider public to displays of violence, anti-American tirades, and sexual braggadocio."

nov 3,2019

In the early 1950's William Buckley Jr was a CIA agent stationed in Mexico. In 1980 Buckley was seated next to the former president of Mexico who asked him what he had done during his time in Mexico?
Buckley's answer: "I tried to undermine your regime, Mr. President."

July 12, 2020

 "They told me if I voted for Goldwater, he would get us into a war in Vietnam. Well, I voted for Goldwater and that's what happened." quote from William Buckley Jr

Since so many folks in 2020 need a history lesson or two, Goldwater lost to LBJ in November 1964.

Feb 15, 2021

I watched some old video clips of an inebriated #jackkerouac and Buckley doing a verbal dance  over  adamite/atomite,  and it reminded me of what a damn shame it was that Jack drank himself to death. I'm uncertain if Mailer and Kerouac ever met.

Oct 22, 2022

"You cannot paint the Mona Lisa by assigning one dab each to a thousand painters."  quote from William F. Buckley, Jr.

Skin pops

 Chafed , I remonstrate aloud to a Lit Prof in 1980 about the classic allusions that required footnotes in most of T S Eliot's poetry, and now I'm offering poems with references to more recent writers.

I offer brief pre-notes:

In the late 90's , I awoke  thinking that Jim Carroll,  NYC Catholic boy, hoopster, & junkie poet had died and wrote down some lines which I edit from time to time. He died 9/11/09.

Jim Carroll’s passing Chelstea

Syringe

              Between board and rim

Gimmick

             Between sermon and hymn

Trespass

              Into extreme unction

Slide

            Chair to floor

Death

            Foreseen in final work

Minutes

             Twenty from Chelsea to Inwood

______________________________________________
I took  a class on America in the 1950's  in 1981 and was turned on to Jack Kerouac (nicknamed Memory Babe before the booze took over). My feelings for his works go up and down and  have never reached the apex they did when I was in my early 20's. Hey jack, sorry,  but I have edited.

 

    beaten Kerouac

   Memory Babe lost Mary

but never Mommy.

crawling in bars grumbling to die

Lucien carved Kam

Jack went on the lam

Married for bail

Got out of jail

 never said I do to Mardou

 Neal zooms cars

the Gerard appeal

proxy brothers and Florida bars

It wasn’t Tokay to beat it

After the surge of the road

And the brief Harlem Howl

Town or city, slum or slum

too drunk for whores 

sat or I won’t 

“too white” hick who found his way to Pic

                                                   And stumbled off the hippie bus for good

Neal, flat across the tracks              

Billy, heroin or boys shag

Allan, where are the fellas

Jack, TV slurs and slacks

Liver finally blows in Fla

Laid low in Unwell, Mass

_________________________________________________
I was watching  Patti Smith cover a Bob Dylan tune "Changing of the Guard" and inked some lines. Tom Verlaine  borrowed the last name from a French poet. 

Patti strands Verlaine 

Sweatin gray hair sticks 

receiving  Benediction inside of society

standing barefoot

on the 25^th floor

Privilege earned and lust

Knees to the sun for fiends

“free’ money for

the citizen ship

Was that a crow pissing in the river

Or horses in the hall?

Poets on the mend

Behind torn curtains
_________________________



I offer a snippy ditty for Hunter S Thompson. My opinion of HST wanes as I learn more about him.

No free rides on a Harley

Hell’s boys felt your smear

Others, your loathing and fear

Pointing a pen or a gun

Against everyone

Then yourself

______________________

Soiree time in the early 20th century

 

T Spoons

Eliot's strings, rings, and things

fine, fine

where’s the wine

Sir, sir

No nectar

Only tea

I see, I see

Earnest- he, he

Chose not to be

More tea?

Let’s sugar

F Scott snaps, dines

Ivy flaps on plate

Ice chutes

Rips roots


Wright outside

Was Richard right
a little uptight
cells to sells
Paris swells
blurb. verve
Roxie, MS curve
moxie, not verve

Goofin on Neal
dust bowl to Denver
go, go, go nights
speed thru red lights
trains, chicks , talks, kicks
pool hall tea sticks
trippin Kesey
slappin back Kerouac
stole time  so easy
across tracks, grateful, dead

Too
stick stuck right shoe
wet leaves tumble
flags flap rumble
sky peeks purple blue




Lex Market Xmas season 1987
hooker stiff walks sore
chuckles to corner store
smokes til bike kid
drops the alley lid

black chicks, purple hair
old guys, just stare
we goof, gab, guzzle
taking in the puzzle

2015
bring in the year
bang on my ear
he died she died
I ran i cried

Row home Alley

not his window
not his wife
teen calls out
need a shirt
gotta go
i'm up next

ignore him
pitch the ball

Goofin
ISIL
ISIS
missile
crisis

Ouch, Ginsberg
“I see the lame minds of a generation ruined by
badness, grieving hysterical, spoiled
texting themselves through the clean streets at noon
whining for an instant fix,

Sill Label 4

current sea shifts
rubel fee drifts
just hit to play
then must delay

Ry Goodbye , too hip
borrowed a Ford
to see ol Gord
as his poetic brain
slips down the drain
maybe a Leafs cup
before time is up

what he was seen

with the Queen

Knot O2
 sarin dip ity
 ass mad strikes today
 makes Syrians pay
 yellow vomit in your city
 knived nerves fray

Trash way
who's that squattin
between the two shadows
staining the breezeway walls
panties up, she's done
she calls
I ain't shittin
here
Would Bawdy Le care
or sneer

Wife and kids
Sun's up, empty whisky jar,
queried on my family
Gabe, can't you see
 that's my car

sept 9, 2016 log

Fighting distractions in another attempt to capture the sights and sounds of Baltimore mid 1980's with a major focus on Fells Point, SoBo, Sowebo, and Midtown.   I change the characters, but versions of this memory dull but don't fade: "On my way along Charles St to Howeirds Bar and Middle Eastern music draws me into the UD Café and the sight of a Turkish waitress  swinging her hips and tongue-rolling a cherry stem  while serving Greek food."......

oct 8 log

..........What the hell, I swallow the dime of tan hash, order a double cheeseburger , and enjoy the chill of the AC.

dec 2 log

working on yet another 1980's Bmore story "a priest with an effeminate voice is presiding over a rehearsal wedding and my dad looks at me and says you were right. I finger point for him to face the altar. As soon as practice is over, he says "I remember those stories you told me about priests and altar boys, and I nod while thinking, (a hell of a time for you to acknowledge Balzac’s tales) then laughing at how he shrugged off my recollections a few months ago and how he’s interpreting them now.

 april 22, 2018

Testalls
balls in a sack
pack the bearing
no caring
rack em up
swing em
fisted,gifted lifted
no sharing

June 13, 2018

Scribbling some notes for future use. An old drinking buddy of mine used to tell of the thrill of getting one dance with  #hedylamarr at a USO function raising money for World War 2 bonds. At the time I doubt if he knew that the #austrian -born starlet co-authored a patent on radio waves.  Some ideas in that patent were later incorporated into blue tooth technology. After WW2, my buddy became a plumber and occasionally wore a T-shirt with the words, your shit is my bread and butter."

july 21, 2018

still working on my Baltimore 1980's downtown stories: "Stumble  a block to Howweirds deli side for a sausage and egg sandwich and  fountain soda around 10AM, and Bunky pulls up a chair and chats me up about my daytime appearance throwing off the clocks in this hood. I'm slow on the uptake while he slides me a folded up magazine item and relates how he found Big Dale face down dead in an apartment building he owns.

May 30, 2020

Old time expressions: sneak thieves are checkin the alleys for unlocked doors from Jim Carroll's "city drops into the night". 

 Chinchorro Bank, was known as "Sleep-robbing reef" because of the dangers it posed to seafarers.

Nov 30, 2021

Since my college days, I've had a like/dislike thing for T S Eliot, and I found this while reading a book review on the great poet. T S Eliot's first wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood, would occasionally show up at his poetry readings carrying a sign that stated “I Am The Wife He Abandoned.”

August 6, 2022

It's alleged that Stallone named his character Rambo after the French poet Rimbaud. Maybe he was thinking of these lines “In the morning I had a look so lost, a face so dead, that perhaps those whom I met did not see me."

Bad Blood”― Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell  

Jan 29, 2023 : RIP Tom Verlaine

May 7, 2023: Listening to Days by Television with Tom V on lead guitar and singing.

sept, 9,2023: short story notes:  your car is halfway on my sister’s lawn.

May 2, 2024: from my notes on Change from a dream: In my 20s I made brief ventures into the local music scene reciting my lyrics. The first day I could get the Lancettes together, the bassist played surf music while the guitarist ventured into Led Zep, and the drummer Lance thought he was playing behind Captain Beefheart. That brief session felt like an eternity, but a few days later we did a fun, free gig on a Sunday afternoon bill in a room in the UMBC Fine Arts building.