Category: Arts and Letters

That Lost Golden Age – How Real Was It?

There’s a moment in “The End of the Golden Gate” that seems to encapsulate all three things, penned with a light hand and probing eye by comedian W. Kamau Bell:

“I once did a show at Vesuvio Cafe with Allen Ginsberg opening with a new poem. Margaret Cho dropped in to try out some new material. Kirk Hammett from Metallica and Jerry Garcia played folk songs on acoustic guitars. Annie Sprinkle did a visual history of porn. … Armistead Maupin sat in the back writing a book that ended up being ‘Tales of the City.’ And unbeknownst to all of us, Willie Mays and Rick Barry were in there the whole time.”

In his essay, Bell acknowledges: “Um, I don’t think that timeline works” of the fictional gathering he conjures above, only for his friends to reply, “You missed it, man. It was so cool.”

San Francisco is forever dying
Michelle Robertson
SFGATE

Article discusses this book:
The End of the Golden Gate: Writers on Loving and (Sometimes) Leaving San Francisco

Happy 4th of July

Have a great 4th of July! pic.twitter.com/IrPdxd9GZm

— Keith Richards (@officialKeef) July 4, 2021

Errol Morris on Donald Rumsfeld

It is impossible for me to write about Mr. Rumsfeld, the former U.S. secretary of defense who died on Tuesday, without writing about his memos. He played a role in making memo-writing the new frontier in governmental accountability. He also pioneered the memo as an obfuscatory instrument. Write one memo saying one thing, write another memo saying the exact opposite.

As I interviewed Mr. Rumsfeld for my documentary about him, “The Unknown Known,” it became (at least for me) a story about a man lost in his endless archive, adrift in a sea of his own verbiage.

Donald Rumsfeld’s Fog of Memos
Errol Morris

“Choosing to teach American history for the purpose of learning “patriotism” alone would be comparable to going to our doctors and insisting only on good news if the doc has found that we have heart disease or cancer.” – David Blight Quote

Choosing to teach American history for the purpose of learning “patriotism” alone would be comparable to going to our doctors and insisting only on good news if the doc has found that we have heart disease or cancer. I am alive because of triple by-pass surgery. America?

— David W. Blight (@davidwblight1) June 30, 2021

Twitter bio:
I still can’t resist rooting for the Detroit Tigers. Historian of slavery, Civil War era, author of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. Teacher.

How Bizarre – OMC

Dog setting the world record with an 83 yard frisbee catch.

Dog setting the world record with an 83 yard frisbee catch. from nextfuckinglevel

Quentin Tarantino – Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – Novel Review, NYTIMES

Quentin Tarantino’s first novel is, to borrow a phrase from his oeuvre, a tasty beverage.

It’s his novelization of his own 2019 film “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” (the book’s title omits the ellipsis). It’s been issued in the format of a 1970s-era mass-market paperback, the sort of book you used to find spinning in a drugstore rack.

It’s got a retro-tacky tagline: “Hollywood 1969 … You shoulda been there!” If it weren’t so plump, at 400 pages, you could slip it into the back pocket of your flared corduroys.

Quentin Tarantino Turns His Most Recent Movie Into a Pulpy Page-Turner
Dwight Garner
NYTIMES

Come Dancing – The Kinks

Fresh Air Interview – Desus and Mero

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. My guests Desus and Mero host the Showtime comedy series “Desus & Mero” Sunday and Thursday nights at 11. Their third season resumed after a monthlong hiatus last night. It was their first show back in the studio since the pandemic. At the heart of the show is Desus and Mero talking to each other, making each other and the audience laugh about everything from politics to viral videos, sports, pop culture and the Bronx, where they each grew up in the ’80s and early ’90s. The show also has sketches, and in each show, Desus and Mero do an interview. They get high-profile guests like Barack Obama, Anthony Fauci, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Chadwick Boseman, Seth Meyers and Chris Hayes, who went to school with Desus.

NPR

Author vs Imagined Author – Bertrand Russell Anecdote

I remember meeting for the first time one of the leading literary men in America, a man whom I had supposed from his books to be filled with melancholy. But it so happened that at that moment the most crucial baseball results were coming through on the radio; he forgot me, literature, and all the other sorrows of our sublunary life, and yelled with joy as his favorites achieved victory. Ever since this incident, I have been able to read his books without feeling depressed by the misfortunes of his characters.

Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness.

“Part of the attraction of The Lord of the Rings is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed.” — J. R. R. Tolkien

J. R. R. Tolkien was a master of Worldbuilding, working on his Middle-Earth world from about WW1 until his death. The Lord of the Rings is full of lovingly crafted and referred-to details, many of which are left unexplained, whose stories first got public with the posthumous publications of the earlier stories.

One thing Tolkien knew from his studies as a linguist and English teacher is that some of the old myths recreate the Cryptic Background Reference effect entirely by accident, when the relevant poems or stories are lost — the medieval Finns probably had an explanation of what a Sampo (from The Kalevala) is, for example, but it didn’t survive the Middle Ages.

Then there are some things which never got elaborated on, even posthumously, like in The Hobbit when Bilbo makes reference to “the wild Were-worms in the Last Desert.” Nothing remotely similar is ever even spoken of again.

“Far, far below the deepest delvings of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things.”

Half of fun of reading Tolkien is this. Go read The Silmarillion and go back and read The Lord of the Rings. Now revel in all the references most people didn’t get the first time around. That part of the song Aragorn sings in The Fellowship of the Ring about Beren and Lúthien? Now you know the whole story. Bilbo’s song about Eärendil that Aragorn seemed to find so cheeky to sing in Rivendell? It was about Elrond’s father (and mother) who he hasn’t seen in five thousand years and probably dredged up some bad memories about the ransacking of his home when he was a child by the sons of Fëanor. The list goes on.

The Second Prophecy of Mandos, which describes what the end of the world will be like, is referenced (though not by name) in virtually all of the canonical stories of Middle-earth. However, the prophecy itself does not appear in canon — only in Tolkien’s earlier drafts for The Silmarillion.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CrypticBackgroundReference

Modern Love – David Bowie

I know when to go out
Know when to stay in
Get things done

I catch a paper boy
But things don’t really change
I’m standing in the wind
But I never wave bye-bye
But I try, I try
There’s no sign of life
It’s just the power to charm
I’m lying in the rain
But I never wave bye-bye
But I try, I try
Never gonna fall for

walks beside me
(Modern love) walks on by
(Modern love) gets me to the church on time
(Church on time) terrifies me
(Church on time) makes me party
(Church on time) puts my trust in God and man
(God and man) no confession
(God and man) no religion
(God and man) don’t believe in modern love

It’s not really work
It’s just the power to charm
I’m still standing in the wind
But I never wave bye bye
But I try, I try
Never gonna fall for

Modern love (modern love)
Modern love (modern love)
Modern love (modern love)
Modern love (modern love)
Modern love (modern love)
Modern love (modern love)
Modern love (modern love)
Modern love (modern love)
(Modern love)
(Modern love)
(Modern love)
(Modern love)
Modern love, walks beside me
(Modern love)
Modern love, walks on by
(Modern love)
Modern love, walks beside me
(Modern love)
Modern love, walks on by
(Modern love)
Never gonna fall for
(Modern love)
(Modern love)

Suggestions on Reading Ulysses