If you've ever wondered whether the medium is the message, consider the following:  In the Christian Bible there is another Genesis contained in the introductory lines to the Gospel of John.   

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ... and the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us."  

The liturgical service commemorating the events reported in this gospel places within a central tabernacle behind an altar, where once an ark held scrolls inscribed with God's words, bread that by a miracle becomes the flesh of the son of God.  (Eating replaces reading ...  Sensuality replaces intellect...)

While it is God's words inscribed in the scrolls, John's gospel also announces that "the Word was God." 

If words define our consciousness then no truer words were ever written,  

Conflict over religion in Western Civilization can end because, despite the many sects, we're all a product of only one religion.

I find myself awake on this Friday morning realizing the needs and fears that make up the inaction of the moment... That's the way it is right now maybe forever... Sometimes I think there is a destiny and a connection with God... a universal One of some sort... and that I am an important player, a part in universal destiny that is somehow connected with my creative inspiration as it translates into music and writing... But today I'm more a drone than ever before and I felt I was one when I first started working at the Comptroller's Office... the 54 years have their moments... Sometimes I do feel happy and good about myself and the world... My alter ego has become my father, as he should be, as he always was the man I most avoided... Now I have no choice but to confront him in all his intensity and permanence.  My inspiration consists of seconds, and the perspiration part required to translate inspiration into communication... well, it's an act of focusing, and every moment I feel like I must stop now... I'm feeling at every moment of action that I must stop, that something is stopping me... The simple example with this computer typing is The Heat of the Computer... I may as well admit that after sleeping for a time I turned on the television and it allowed me to start over on its broadcast of Reservoir Dogs, a simple production attaining near perfection... The impact of the Harry Nillson song at the end is now somewhat matched by the brilliant time shifted script.  It's a play and a work of cinema, an opportunity for actors to display their own unique brilliance... an admirable accomplishment, inspiring me to aspire to such an accomplishment.  But it leaves me in a state of low grade hysteria, the Coconut song hysteria... Would I wish this on another person?  The piece leaves you in a crazy place.  And it is brilliant in its engagement.  I was hooked from beginning to end, watching in awe as I understood the context in which memorable events transpire.  It's a strong context... It's the script.  This fellow's impact on my life is somewhat considerable and exists apart from my own life.  I would like a role model somewhere in the entertainment engaging me.   Someone I'd actually like to be, not seeing people who remind me of the worst of me...identifying and awakening my masculine predicament.   It's a pretty funny predicament... Ultimately these movies are comedies, part of the comedy being that they are movies.  

This is my quantum physics post addressing the question of how to make a qubite computer. It already exists through the @rnd function, the random number generator. we have ones and zeros and an unexecuted random number function with the parameter limited to between zero and one. The unexecuted random function is the third bite. The ordinary computer's random number generator arrives at its underwriting calculations by limiting high and low parameters, running the random calculation over and over, the parameter between the random numbers becoming smaller, in effect shrinking Shroedinger's box with the cat in it... I suppose there is no doubt to the answer that ultimately the cat is dead, the act of avoiding observation while trying to determine the observable answer kills it ... Peter Dizozza

The biggest moonshine in 18 years happens tonight. Various earthquakes have already hit the Pacific, New Zealand and Japan, and my mother passed away from a sudden quake of sorts within her. She went forward doing, learning, listening and contributing until she was stopped, in this case by her physical being. Because her mother lived to be a hundred and even then did not die from a natural cause, my mother's health did not receive the attention my father was giving to his own health.
Though not in cause, in effect the reason for my mother's and grandmother's passing is the same, most recently addressed in the script for A Question of Solitude.
Reality is barely comprehensible at a close look. I hear my mother speaking to me. At one point she was entirely me. At this point I am my own person and she is part of me. I miss her and love her.

There aren't many mysteries at present, just of time and existence, of gravity and friendships, of living. The mysteries of eight are infinite but it's just a symbol for a number. We can count and eight can look like a single symbol... are their different symbols for eight in different languages? What does the symbol look like elsewhere. For here it is infinity, a mobius strip, add the ribbon flip to the figure and you have three dimensions in two.

2.26.98



Carol's favorite Movies

I Know Where I'm Going
Michael Powell Ernest Pressburg
Wendy Hiller

Lawrence of Arabia
Great Expectations
David Lean

The River
Jean Renoir
(I like his Dana Andrews Film, Swamp Water)

Snow White
Disney

Gigi
Vincent Minelli

Odd Man Out

--------
Ghost Stories
The Haunting

Comedies
Take the Money and Run
Bedazzled

Sandy likes

The Maltese Falcon
John Huston

Casablanca
Michael Curtiz

Charade
Stanley Donen

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Richard Lester

The Inlaws


M

Gigi

The Thin Man

The Thing

The Sound of Music

Ghandi

Ruggles of Redgap

All of Me

Sabateur

Suspicion



Dizozza Personal Favorites
(please follow each category with the words, "of which I'm aware")

The Music Lovers
Ken Russell

The Chalk Garden
Ronald Neame

The Ruling Class
Peter Medak (also directed Negatives) -- met the director in September, 1992

The Marriage of Maria Braun
Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Chinatown
Roman Polanski

Sleeper
Woody Allen

Oliver!
Carol Reed

Carrie
Brian DePalma

Catagories:

Kubrick
Lolita
Dr. Strangelove
2001
Clockwork Orange
Barry Lyndon
The Shining
(although 20 years in the making, this is the best
string of films since Hitchcock)
also Paths of Glory
Full Metal Jacket
The Killing/Killer's Kiss

Polanski
Rosemary's Baby
(Chinatown)
Cul de Sac
The Tenant
almost Tess and Repulsion
Scorsese
Temptation
Mean Streets
Taxi Driver
maybe Portrait of an American Boy
almost New York New York
King of Comedy

DePalma
Carrie
The Fury
Scarface

Ken Russell; * = good for something other than as a musical
Song of Summer, etc., Billion Dollar Brain
Women in Love *
The Music Lovers *
The Devils *
(The Boy Friend, Savage Messiah), XValentinoX
Tommy *
Lisztomania *
Altered States
Crimes of Passion
Gothic, Salome's Last Dance, Lair of the White Worm

he was also ARIA organizer

Other Musicals I believe are worthwhile -- because at least I've seen them

Follow the Fleet
Roberta
Top Hat

The Bandwagon
Singing In the Rain

42nd Street
Dames
Gold Diggers of 1933

Cabaret (Bob Fosse)
Hair (Milos Forman)
(Oliver!)
A Hard Day's Night
Help!
Yellow Submarine
The Wizard of Oz

The Little Shop of Horrors
The Rocky Horror Picture Show

West Side Story
Gypsy
almost Bye Bye Birdie

Ken Russell
ALL HIS FILMS ARE MUSICALS
Tommy

Disney

Pinocchio
Snow White
Peter Pan
Mary Poppins

The Little (My Little) Mermaid

Maybe Pollyanna
-- also see Parent Trap for Pre-Chalk Garden Haley Mills


Great Hitchcock

almost Young and Innocent
The 39 Steps

Rebecca
Shadow of a Doubt
Strangers on a Train
Suspicion
The Man Who Knew To Much
Rear Window
Vertigo (The James Stewart Trilogy)
North by Northwest
Psycho
(The Madness Trilogy)

The Birds

also The Trouble with Harry

Great DePalma
Obsession
The Fury
(Carrie)
Scarface

Remember
Elaine May:
A New Leaf

Mike Nichols directed
The Graduate and Carnal Knowledge

Arthur Penn directed
The Miracle Worker, Bonnie and Clyde, and Little Big Man

Warrent Beatty
B & C
$ (Dir. Richard Brooks)
Heaven Can Wait
Bugsy (Music: Ennio Morricone)
Dick Tracy

William Friedken directed
The French Connection
The Exorcist
The great Boys in the Band opening

1910-20
Swedish Films
Victor Sjostrom
Mauritz Stiller

Best Swedish Film
The Silence (Bergman)

1920-30
Way Down East
The Gold Rush
The General
Greed
Sunrise

1930-40
Little Ceasar
Public Enemy

1940-50
Casablanca, of course
They Died with Their Boots On (Prequel to Little Big Man)

1950-60
Rebel Without a Cause

1960-70
The Graduate

1970-80
Midnight Cowboy

1980-1990
Brazil
Raging Bull

Best Welles

Citizen Kane
The Magnificent Ambersons
The Lady from Shanghai

The Third Man
Carol Reed


Great Acadamy Award Winners

The Deerhunter
The Godfather / The Godfather II
One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest (Milos Forman)
Gone With the Wind
From Here to Eternity
The Best Years of Our Lives
The French Connection

Great Marilyn Monroe
Bus Stop
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
The River of No Return
The Misfits

Heat Wave, in There's No Business Like Show Business

Best Spielberg
Duel

Best Bette Davis besides Whatever Happened to Baby Jane
Now Voyager
The Petrified Forest
(Maybe: Marked Woman, Dark Victory)

Best Katherine Hepburn
Alice Adams
Morning Glory
Bringing Up Baby

Best Cary Grant
BUB
Charade
NBN

Best (funniest) Italians

Bertollucci - never saw The Conformist
Last Tango in Paris
Partners
1900
The Last Emperor
Antonioni
Blow Up
almost Red Desert
L'Aventura
Pasolini
Pig Pen
Arabian Nights
Salo
Visconti
Ludwig
(Death in Venice/The Damned)
Fellini
Il Vitelloni
La Strada
La Dolce Vita
Best German
Nosferatu
Caligari
M
Aguire
(The Marriage of Maria Braun)
Lola
The Tin Drum

Best Japanese
Ran
Throne of Blood
Night and Fog in Japan
Kwaidon
Ugestu
Ikiru
others

Best Bergman
The Silence

Detective Films
(Chinatown)
The Big Sleep
The Big Heat (Lang)
The Thin Man

Crime Films
Double Indemnity
(The Killing)
D.O.A.
Sorry Wrong Number

Horror
(Rosemary's Baby)
Halloween
Texas Chain Saw Massacre
almost Witchfinder General/Masque of the Red Death
Freaks
(I Walked with a Zombie)
The Cat People
Island of Lost Souls
Mad Max

Great Whale
Frankenstein
The Bride of Frankenstein
The Invisible Man
Show Boat

Ghost Stories
Beetlejuice
Blithe Spirit
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

Best Carol Burnett Version of A Movie
Mildred Fierce

Best Woody Allen
ALL are of consistent quality
favorite: Sleeper

Best Marxes
Duck Soup
Horse Feathers
Go West
All the rest.

Best Comedies
Arthur

Old
City Lights

Best Danny Kaye
Up in Arms

The Saddest Comedy
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

Most Misfired Comedy
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Toon Town)

Best Natalie Wood besides Gypsy and West Side Story
Miracle on 34th Street
Rebel Without a Cause
Best looking Natalie Wood besides the others
The Great Race

Good Shirley McLaine
The Trouble with Harry
Sweet Charity (Directed by Bob Fosse)
Terms of Endearment

Ingrid Thulin is in The Silence and The Damned

CARTOONS
Snow White (companion, WB: Coal Black)
Pinocchio (Cinderella?)
Peter Pan
(My) Little Mermaid

Yellow Submarine
Light Years (Korea -> France -> Assimov)

Japanese Male Holocaust Fantasy: The Wandering Kid

TOONS: Mouse/Bunny/Boop

Famous directors of the least important financially profitable films to achieve attention, ever:
George Lucas and Steven Spielberg
Best moment or fraction thereof: Lunch, with Ms. Allen, Mr. Ford and a monkey in Raidrs accompanied by John Williams' music.
Best Williams score: The Fury. The better orchestral inspiration -- Mahler, the Seventh Symphony.

Music names:

Frank Zappa
We all have our favorites
-- best overall album
Burnt Weeny Sandwich (Berlin)
-- albums containing good material
Apostrophe (Yellow Snow/Pancake Breakfast, Remus)
Overnite Sensation (Zombie Woof)
Joe's Garage (Cyborg)
Roxy and Elsewhere (cheepnis)
Uncle Meat
Waka Jawaka

Andrew Lloyd Webber
(Jesus Christ Superstar)

Marc Blitzstein
(Nickel Under Foot)

Kurt Weil
(Three Penny Opera, the Road to Silverlake)

Hoagy Carmichael
Film appearances

Harold Arlen hits in general

Johnny Mercer, lyricist and singer

George Gershwin

Duke Elington, Billy Strayhorn

Patti Smith
(Four Albums)

The Rolling Stones
(Beggar's Banquet, Let It Bleed)

The Beatles

Alexander Scriabin
(Sonatas 5 & 10)

Johannes Brahms

Gustav Mahler

Peter Tchaikovsky

Serge Prokofiev

Claude Debussey

Erik Satie

Stephen Sondheim

David Bowie
(The Man Who Sold The World, Diamond Dogs)

Carly Simon

Laura Nyro

Elvis Costello
(Mighty Like a Rose, My Aim, This Year's, Armed Forces, Get Happy)

Peka Pajola

Steely Dan
Phil Oches
Pleasures of the Harbor, Letter from California

Madonna
(Recording: 12" Live Angel, song: Material Girl)

Samantha Fox

Belinda Carlyle

The Roches

Bruce Springstein
(Thunder Road, Bobby Jean)

Elis Regina

Sergio Mendez

Gong(?)

Genesis
(Nursery Crime, Selling England, Supper's Ready)

Gentle Giant
(Glass House)

Movie Music:
Collaborators with Hitchock
Bernard Herman
Ken Russell,
Peter Maxwell Davies, Rick Wakeman

Ennio Morricone

and for De Palma
(least important major talent, John Williams, shines in The Fury (Mahler's Seventh), rehashed by someone else in The Elephant Man. Williams shining also: Superman, Can You Read My Mind?, and in the good Raidrs scene.)

Best Bacharach (despite words, of course, although the words are essential)
One Less Bell to Answer
Hey, Little Girl
The Look of Love

Bacharach and Herb Albert: This Guy's in Love with You

Best Scores for: Casino Royale, Lost Horizon, Arthur (Bacharach also gives credit to April Fools).

Best Bachrach recording by other than Bacharach -- The Mendez "Look of Love."

Hamlish wrote
Theme from Ice Castles: Please Don't let this feeling end ...
The Spy Who Loved Me - Best recording
If You Remember Me (The Champ)
(On Broadway: Chorus Line/Playing our Song. Is any of it good?)
Favorite Sondheim: All, particularly A Little Night Music

1990 Peak of Powers: Sondheim and Elvis Costello
(Mighty Like a Rose)

Favorite Rupert Holmes (from Drood)
Ceylon, and almost Perfect StrangersFavorite Books

The Woman in White

Bleak House

1984

Lolita

Flowers for Algernon

And Then There Were None

The Glass Key

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Cobra

Madame Bovary

The Picture of Dorian Gray



Best Anne Rice? -- Lestat

Best Kosinski: Cockpit

Melville
Falkner
Chandler
Hammett

John Barth, anyone?Writers
Recent interest in: Robert Benchley
Raymond Chandler
Anne Rice (Rampling? Roquefort)
Aleister Crowley
Doonesbury
Martin Amis -- London Fields, Time's Arrow, half way through Money I had had enough.
Daphne DuMaurier,
Short stories collection: The Turning Point
My Cousin Rachel
etc.
Isaac Asimov's Robot and Foundation trilogy.

Philip K. Dick's Valis

Some Vacchs books
The Perfume Book
The Unnatural Selection book.

Music: Marc Blitzstein
Broadway besides Sondheim:
Harnick & Bock She Loves Me, Fiddler, Fiorello

Artist Names:

Max Ernst
Salvador Dali
Hans Belmer
Francis Bacon
Max Escher
Hieronemous Bosch
Peter Breugel

Renoir
Vermeer
Monet
Gogh

Giacometti

DeKooning, exhibited at the Guggenheim over ten years ago.

Theatre events

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Stratford, Kier Dullea, Fred Gwyne, and Ms. Ashley

Mourning Becomes Elektra, Stratford

Our Town, Stratford

Three Penny Opera, not Beaumont's but Delecort's

Taming of the Shrew, Delecort, Raul Julia, and the only time Merrill Streep has made an impression (positive).

James Earl Jones' King Lear, Delecort

The Caucasion Chalk Circle, Brecht

Lupone as Evita

Les Miserables

Dream Girls

Sweeney Todd six weeks into the Uris run

Ian McKellen's Duchess of Malfi

Pinter's Sweet Bird of Youth

can't remember...

Pacino played Hughie -- that was good. dir. Theodore Mann

My favorite Hamlet: Richard Chamberlain
Favorite Playwrites:
Shakespeare
O'Neill (Mourning)
Williams (Cat)
others (Pinter, Stoppard, Mamet, Rabe)

Oscar Wilde's Importance of Being Earnest
Wrote the Happy Prince and the Devoted Friend, recorded by Claire Luce for Folkways Records

The interesting phenomenon during Last Night's visit to the V clinic... I'm kidding, it's not the V clinic... I'm helping with a study on brain waves, remember? The phd candidate is searching for the brain difference between aspergers and normals... is normals a pluralable noun?

... While there, with a constantly moving head within the magnetoencephelograph helmet, I experienced the phenonmenon of hearing lips and seeing voices... Professor McGurk's studies in the 1970's... ?? I have to look this up but the sound of the word changed as I looked at a video of the speaking of it run backwards... basically from a ba sound to a cla sound...the other studies were by Professor Tallon-Baudry and Professor Peter J. Lang...

Seeing a thing while it is making a noise changes the way we hear the noise the thing is making... that is ONE way to put it....the experiment here consisted of showing the video then reversing the video of the same spoken word. it sounded like a different word...

I am aware today of the following:

Charles Fourier and his proposal for community cooperation ordered as a phalanx...The Phalansteres is a Grand Hotel... Procul Harum introduced me to that setting...

Charles Dana, editor of The New York Sun once lived in a phalanx farm.

Thanks to a grant from Mr. Dana's foundation, I've learned that the brain emits magnetic rays at about 10 waves a second. Flashing faces may affect that. Choose whether they are black or whte, in black and white or color, whether their mouths, noses or eyes are blurred or focused, whether they are happy afraid angry fearful or neutral... Early results suggest when my eyes are open the wave patter more resembles the eyes closed pattern than when they are closed. The average wave is constant rather than varied.

I believe my participation is beneficial to everyone.

We don't even get to personality until we are impeccable with our word... How can you attain the right to be a person if you constantly make mistakes? Needless to say, I am my mistakes and do not call them that. I am secure in my awareness until I am proven wrong and am just as secure in my new awareness, and appreaciate your proofs and the attention you gave me. Thank you! Now what am I doing, I'm making a motion to amend pleadings to add a cause of action. We even don't get into the courtroom unless the papers are in order.

I have kitty-cat visitors for the weekend.

The fundraiser at the neighborhood playhouse went well, thanks to the great talent involved... I'd especially like the thank THE STEPPE DOGGES!

How about assuming full responsibility? oh to live up to it...

When it comes to my actions, I am self-insured...

Insurance companies have been in the film business. there's transamerica for united artists, american international is aig... and now, The CVII Insurance Company.

Insurance creates a disproportion in risk assumption... I am seriously suggesting here being

self-insured.

The Center for Holographic Arts downstairs is closing. They gave me a hologram of mezzo-soprano Betty Allen, in case you're looking for it. Oh, she just passed away at 82... young...She's on a 1970's recording of Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts...

Ariadne's Thread: I have considered insanity as a method of decision-making... insanity is repeating the same action and expecting a different result. In the alternative, there is the thread leading from where we are to the desired result. In laying that thread we establish the choices along the way as failures (not worth repeating) with the one success becoming a lengthening of the thread. We'll get to the goal, to the solution of the problem... if it's a problem we're having the other alternative in time is to ignore it and let it join the other problems that will eventually undo us... Or rather we can perceive that problem as part of the human condition. http://www.cinemavii.com/images/washdc/4.htm

General acknowledgement... well, there are classic films out there... I so enjoyed the James Whale film with uh... it was in vienna... great wizard of oz and Ms. Caroll... and then last night I turned on uh, hard eight? Sydney... Mr. PT Anderson's film... seamlessly scripted cinema... slept after 40 minutes with more to come the only relief being that what was coming was somehow an offshoot of bob le flambeur. The feeling that All fits into place follows now with regard to There Will Be Blood... It's looking like a very likeable film for which affection will only grow... I don't think I've fully explored my capability for flakey self-expression. The other amazing awareness and I thank you for it, is... There is a pre-life; there is an after-life; but to achieve affectuation, there is no better time to do so than during This Life.

Oh yes, I am grateful to have the music set tonight. I've been active with various matters over the month of April and I'm always grateful to see the end of April. No, I never set music to The Wasteland, but here's the page with my 1970's interpretation of TS Eliot's Four Preludes: http://www.cinemavii.com/projects/TSEliot.htm

The performance tonight introduces to my songs the sound of the sitar...

SideWalk Waltz (Back to the Simple Days)Two Cranes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNpvHeBdmKo

I Love the Law

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZCrjy3gcOw

Love Them Both

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lP3xn2iU2cA

Question of Solitude Theme Song with SitarVision Quest 1 -- Peaceful Day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSR6QbpQBFs

alternate version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1KTH-49G0U

Vision Quest 2 -- That Much Better

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSO8989sXyA

Vision Quest 3 -- Give This Chant a Chance

Along the Highway in B

My Defenses are Down (Cover of a Song by Irving Berlin

Anything else? Electronica is a major timewaster... I buy something and getting it up and running takes time... That time must be factored in... how about buying something out of an open box, something that's tested and used... Good. I want something old that works. Now, I bought a toy video camera with an SD card attachment, I got a mini sd card... 4 gig... anyway, this storage system is very small and there are no moving parts... is the disappearance of the info only a magnet away? There's not that much space, or there's a limitless amount of space in the universe... what else? I was sick over the month and there was advice from Tyr Throne... we're not really carnivores, maybe we're omnivores but with the length of the digestive tract... we're absorbing over a period of time well beyond cats and dogs and other carnivores... and over that 24 hours the stuff has to be pretty stable... it can't be overly fermentible... as for anything packaged for shelf life... maybe salt is ok... other creative consultant bombshells from Tyr... revealing concealed estros... It's all part of A Question of Solitude now... thank you.

It's looking to me like each of Bernard Shaw's plays, preceded by its essay of coalesced elements, is a gift to the world. There's a good review of the Bible's New Testament in the 100 pages that precede his script for Androcles and the Lion. (I returned to it for a quote that I have yet to find about the audience at a roman colleseum that will appear in a nursing home in "A Question of Solitude" a new script with a reading at La Mama on March 31st.)

I thought that the silencing from martyrdom at calvary produced a worldwide backlash still felt 2000 years later, but Shaw's critique suggests that the silencing was successful. The teaching of a brilliant thinker (deluded, perhaps by a chance suggestion of one of his apostles, namely Peter) was usurped by ... well, to quote the words that seem particularly worthwhile...

"Paul succeeded in stealing the image of Christ crucified for the figure-head of his salvationist vessel, with its Adam posing as the natural man, its doctrine of original sin, and its damnation avoidable only by faith in the sacrifice of the cross. No sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the name of Jesus."

This is of double concern for me since I applied the genesis story in a recent piece, Paradise Found. I thought I was resonating the original biblical book, when I was mouthing an interpretation of it by Paul, which I have never read.

Anyway, the simply stated conclusion of Shaw is "There has really never been a more monstrous imposition perpetrated than the imposition of the limitations of Paul's soul upon the soul of Jesus."

Saying that sounds radical, and I am drawn toward radical statements... however Shaw offers a thoughtful argument before making it.

While there may be a physical decline processing within us as we travel through time, technology is advancing, supplementing, perhaps also supplanting what we lose. Eyesight is one diminishment; general awareness is another. Is this even worth saying? Today I'm better than I ever was, which suggests I was deep within a rut. It was one of my own making, arising out of my desire for AVOIDANCE. Tomorrow, again I awaken to go to a deposition in Queens for a car accident case that requires translators for all deposed, just to get a record in English of testimony that translates into a contingency fee of money for the firm, which means I get my salary in this game of legal work. I can't imagine doing anything else right now, as time indents into my hours of elyseum. I just returned from the Mac Roger Robots play, a meditation on humans supplanted by their improvements, still stumped by predicaments inherent in human nature, and they, the new race, take precautions, lest they forget, by annually conducting a religiously ritualistic history lesson. They remember how they got there, how they arrived that place. An artist created them. The new race is no better than the one it replaced.
My relationship with machines has not translated into humanizing them, because it wouldn't matter if I did. I go to bed crying that the cry for help that goes unheeded is my own.

If you're bothering to read your horoscope chances are you are alone. Safe bet the horoscope acknowledging that is going to the right person. No one can keep up with you so keep going and accept that. Kick up your heels in automobiles, it's Jimmy Durante, Laurel and Hardy, and Baron Munchausen back from the Congo, all in same sentence description for Hollywood Party.

Jury duty consisted of 3 days at 111 Centre Street. This visit as a juror was considerably less friendly than prior because everyone is wired to the ears. Even I, without the latest technology, could walk into an internet room and send email on one of the connected dell laptops. I wandered around downtown, one visit to J&R, another to the County Clerk... if you want to change something on your dba certificate it costs the same as filing a new one, 120. As for a flat screen to replace my tube challenged sony for this anemic cable service... no. I feel like I have to buy something valuable but the merchandise and what it actually is (disposable) is failing to tip the scales. Yes, the scales of justice. The first day I joined 65 others in the opportunity to sit on a case of a lifetime, requiring a 4 week commitment. I should have sat there but in good conscience could not say I was available given my employment in an office of less than 10 employees, although the opportunity to sit there and be spoken to, and to hear words spoken for the benefit of... I went to the office after dismissal at 4, then the next day made another trip to drop off papers at 100 church street, oh, that lobby design is humid, these spraying globes create a steam room atmosphere, and of course the usual detailed security approval. The colors, too, at 100 Church are veering toward genius. I visited the great chinatown so near by, our stage manager was able to find the chosen New Yeah Shanghai and we had a good lunch. at the last minute in the morning we as jurors, another 65 of us, were sent to another shorter potentially criminal trial not involving murder but rather single witness victim beyond a reasonable doubt attempted maybe armed gas station robbery and the accused wandering the hallway saying on his cel phone the da has to prove his case, in the presence of his 65 attendants. How about giving him the cost of the trial, 10 employees, 65 people... no the process is good but the number of people attending to the accusation... anyway, the detailed questions included my favorite, hobbies? Songwriting and music theatre production.

itch mites?
I want to document a complicated mystery where one thing leads to another, and I begin the lyric to "vision quest one."

I had some hours alone, a taste of a peaceful day.
I saw a tree full of crows that followed a hawk of prey.
From one tree to another this hawk carried his meal.
To the next tree they’d follow.
Like stool pigeons they’d squeal


A few weeks later I found a tortoise carcas cleaned out under one of the trees.
The leaf shading it had these strange nipple growths. The other leaves were clear.
I've had an extended contemplation of this condition and extending itching since then because...
The mites that cleaned out the tortoise shell laid eggs in the leaf. The nipples are called "galls."
The hawk dropped the tortoise.

Today is the day this blog's been waiting for. I was thinking how life in the jungle is an ongoing challenge with perhaps even less moments to relax then we have here in civilization. The cats are probably relaxing now, but they're in the apartment and when they're not relaxing they seem restless. I've been rebelling against peace within myself, as a rebellion against complacency, but maybe it's not a sell out at all.

Pin the Crime on the Dead Man is a game from -- Witchfinders, by Peter Dizozza

Oh, I get it now. I have no emotional memory because for 35 years the daily companion medication to my 324 mg quinaglute duratabs was...80 LA Inderal (the trademark word for propranalol, which is a trademark word for...). Write now before you forget. (How to erase a mental hard drive; it's like spoliation of evidence... interesting. Oh, yes, Inderal...) These blogs are helpful. Free public access means I also get unlocked access.

We speak or write because we want something. According to the book I'm reading if we wanted for nothing we would not speak. Perhaps we speak because we want to hear ourselves speak. Another observation of the book, which is about how to read plays, backwards and forwards by david ball, is that we have obstacles in front of us blocking or, optimistically speaking, offering us access to what we want when we overcome them, whether ewith charm or force. Why must you be so obstacle? It makes the prize that much more sweet, or so I'm told, the overcoming of the obstacle. It's not the prize, it's the attaining it... On the other hand, I do enjoy what I have and less concerned with how I got it, although the attaining is something to be proud of... I'm kidding, it's not. I think I'm becoming a bit more savy about what my own writing is about. It is something of a one note sound. I obviously want something... pd

Schrodinger's Cat.

Our perception of reality is an oft innaccurate assembly of our senses; reality exists apart from our perception of it.

The person who put the cat in the box (with the radium isotope 440 or whatever) is the murderer, not the person who opens the box.

What would a magic lantern be without its light source? Now, if we're going for the best, we have a plasma screen as a light source for imagery. The glowing light must be evenly dispersed upon a flat surface, as impulses flex its spectrum through a process called Plasmosis... very photosynthetic.

All right, given the question I'll provide answers to anything. Answering questions help us discover not just more questions but sometimes actual answers.... but for now...

Moving past the medium to the message, anything can happen on that flat surface.

In another mindset, the light projects from a far off source landing flat upon a surface to read as a movie!

Anthology film archives let me have a look in the back for a bulb to put into the movie projector used in the La Mama stage production of TentagatneT. While I was at Anthology one of the TentagatneT actors had a film running there in the Barney Oldfield series, New Filmmakers. They let me watch some and I caught the last 10 minutes. From what I saw, the 30 minute video film, Sequel, was a montage of movies, news clips and silent film titles assembled from library materials and given an ambient wordless sound design by Christopher Zorker (all right, I also spoke with Chris tonight. He was simplifying the motives behind current events).

A film by Janice Ahn called Stutter followed and that took me by surprise. It was a sad character study in 13 minutes, remarkable in its compressed achievement of a harrowing encounter somewhat unstuck in time.

The theme for the evening: New Filmmakers Explore the New American Unreality.

Stutter reveals the sordidity of the date that almost didn't happen. It began well, with the man and woman enjoying the music from the beautiful turntable, the man taking pictures of the woman, but he's loathe to let her go.... He's a big hurt boy in his first floor lair, his grandmother listening from above.

Never again to be trusted. The cycle of abuse progresses...overpowering immaturity, convincing on all levels, his, hers, his grandmother's... The violation, the unpleasantness, the feeling of irrefutable wrongness, selfish brute strength, disturbed and dangerous, feminine strength subdued, the grandmother pulls herself down to the first floor level, apologizes to the woman, just a girl, really, the boy, under his grandmother's supervision, on good behaviour, spent, allowing her to leave. It didn't have to be that way between them, but the boy's damaged mind destroyed the interaction, making it pathetically one-sided, and, yes, angering.

My new play will consider how people can treasure and trust one another.

ROFL Contestant!

My incentive for writing something, I know it's all been done before, is that it will contain what's never been done before. The idea should be radical. My recent piece arises from a feeling, too, the feeling of polarity dividing the oneness of the world. In 2.2.2, Hermaphroditism Through the Ages, describing which had me booed off the stage last night at Joe's Pub -- I really should have shown that youtube post of cute pussycats... In fact, I was up against and lost against Pussycat Mosh Pit -- anyway, it was worth it to introduce the radical idea, as propounded by Dr. Fricassee, that there's a conspiracy against evolution in the medical profession, that obstetricians confronted at births with ambiguous genitalia conspire against hermaphroditism , delivering to parents males and females, by surgically maintaining, for the stability of our bodies, The Two Sex System. Tyr Throne, my regular advisor in these matters (he considers many of my projects tantric explorations.) related that man is the mutant strain and woman is perfection. Yoga is the practice of becoming hermaphroditic. If nothing else, this begins an interesting science fiction story.

The college humor fellows had a funny moment -- are some of their employees really robots? during a meeting with the new stooges that I believe was about establishing an employee benefits program.

KLARA: Wait. We have the treasure from our international arms deal but no local currency. Before we get settled in at a house of roadside pyschotherapy, I think we'd better find gainful employment. Did you notice, on the car chase, a help wanted sign at the local alehouse? It said "Tuesday Psychic Needed."

JIM (Not fully on board, "You're the boss"): You're "psychic"; why don't you go check it out?

KLARA: Wait in the car.
(Klara exits)

JIM (alone, seated in car)
Where did you go; what did you do while I was out?

(repeat those 4 bars instrumentally, maybe 1 octave higher under following dialog)

KLARA: I got the job.
JIM: One day a week?
KLARA (gets back in car): Yes. They're covered for the other days.
JIM: Was it crowded?
KLARA (applying lipstick): For a Monday, yes.

JIM
When you were small, when I was tall we had no doubt.

KLARA: I'll get us a room (exits).

JIM
For in a summer wind as seeds took flight within
The finches long and we may long
Till nature lets us join her throng
as petals lift away, where's our wind to sail today?

(next 6 bars instrumental only under following dialog)

(Klara re-enters, mission accomplished)

JIM (confused; how did she even get the room?): We still don't have any money.
KLARA: Just hold your head up high. When they asked for a deposit, I told them I'm a visiting psychic at the alehouse and that money will be coming in soon. Besides, they said they'll pay us to have sex with their staff.

(Klara gets out, busily unpacks and prepares to go inside, not hearing Jim as he sings from the car)

JIM
Where did you go; what did you do while I was out?
When you were small, when I was tall we had no doubt.
In our four car garage, when we were living large
the muskrats docked; the tree swings rocked
the geese and fowl, high they flocked
(On next line, he gets out and catches her by the arm, getting her attention to ask...)
As box kites drift away, where's our wind to sail today?

JIM and KLARA
Reading the words can make them confusing
Listen and use the words of our choosing
When air is still, send them

(Klara, impatient, tries to extract herself. Jim doesn't let her go and calmly pleads...)

JIM
Arms open, sails out wide
We need the wind to rise
Remember when it did?

KLARA (encouraging)
And watch it rise again!
Swirling like shrouds, the trees will be veering!

JIM (doubting)
Enter the clouds, from what I'm hearing
that old black magic has slipped away.

KLARA (getting swept away, abandoning him)
Ear to the ground, the branches are swaying!
Worshiping trees, adore my playing!
(across the stage to him before exiting)
My new white magic will save the day!

JIM (alone where she has left him)
Where did you go, what did you do while I was out?









------------
Scene/song integration by Lydia Ooghe

Olive Juice Message Board Posts:

Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films...
Posted by peter on 6/21/2007, 1:17 pm
The big question is why it's such a pleasure to look through the list and drop vaguely inconsequential witicisms.s.s
?
Link: could this have taken me more than 20 minutes? ah the comfort zone...

Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films...
Posted by Bollo on 6/21/2007, 1:36 pm, in reply to "Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films..."
Gone With the Wind sucks

Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films...
Posted by julie on 6/21/2007, 8:43 pm, in reply to "Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films..."
why do you think it sux?

Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films...
Posted by Elastic No-No Band on 6/21/2007, 11:07 pm, in reply to "Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films..."
Wait. Did they redo it? Is this because they couldn't include TITANIC the first time? (god forbid)
Or because everyone was like NUH-UH! "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" AIN'T NO GREAT MOVIE, STUPID AFI!
Some nice additions. Seems like there's more great comedies added.
I don't think SUNRISE was on there before, which is a good call as far as adding it. (What? GREED isn't good enough to include, but LORD OF THE RINGS goes on there?)
BIRTH OF A NATION got booted. I guess old-timey racism is less acceptable now than it was in the 90s. (Oh wait, why is GONE WITH THE WIND still there, then?)
I understand FARGO getting booted (great flick, but not so influential these days), but why is FANTASIA less great than TOY STORY?
I love Cagney, so it's nice to see YANKEE DOODLE DANDY sticking it out at the bottom.
DAMN YOU, DIZOZZA, FOR BRINGING OUT MY FILM NERD!

Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films...
Posted by Bollo on 6/22/2007, 7:28 am, in reply to "Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films..."
Why do i think the most insufferably boring movie of all time sucks?? I dunno, I'm just like that... I recently went on a date to see 'Rolling Like A Stone' at the Anthology Film Archives, but its run had ended, and instead they had a WWI newsreel and a silent Cubist film of images just being repeated over and over and over... Started freaking out about a half hour into it. It was like a psych torture test


Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films...
Posted by Woodrow Wilson on 6/22/2007, 7:59 am, in reply to "Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films..."
Birth of a Nation? I love Birth of a Nation!! And I would be horrified it it all weren't SO COMPLETELY TRUE. Hey I know- Let's party at my house and we'll watch that one and Triumph of the Will


Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films...
Posted by Preston on 6/22/2007, 10:14 am, in reply to "Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films..."
Toy Story!?!? Tootsie!?!? Yeah, OK, sure.
Also, I hate to be the guy who always craps on Star Wars, but... come on.

Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films...oh...
Posted by peter on 6/22/2007, 12:26 pm, in reply to "Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films..."
come on, carrie fisher was great in star wars, why, was there something else going for that film?
oh, I forgot for the godfather, see what happens when you put Pacino in a suit and ms. Keaton in a dress. those two! what a couple!
oh, and I'm playing sidewalk Wednesday, June 27th... 7PM Twilight Time... here in the twilight, dear gods, isn't it past your twilight time?

Posted by Brandon on 6/25/2007, 12:55 pm, in reply to "Re: Drop everything! Top 100 AFI films..."
I think it's awesome that Toy Story is in there.

I love putting in my two cents regarding cinema... all these movies are fine.
1. ``Citizen Kane,'' 1941. saw it... I like the little models connecting with the grand interiors.
2. ``The Godfather,'' 1972. saw it... good idea to edit the baptism with the executions. memorable toll booth. Great patchwork filmmaking of a nasty script! See what happens when you put Mr. Pacino in a suit.
3. ``Casablanca,'' 1942. saw it. Great ensemble under Warners contract.
4. ``Raging Bull,'' 1980. saw it. Knew nothing on the subject before seeing it. Everything I know of the subject is in the film. I like the scene with Ms. Moriority at the Chelsea pool.
5. ``Singin' in the Rain,'' 1952. saw it. That's what happens when one of the MGM execs is a songwriter. inconceivably cute moments with two vaudeville guys and a girl.
6. ``Gone With the Wind,'' 1939. saw it. I like the scene in the bedroom before the son falls off a horse.
7. ``Lawrence of Arabia,'' 1962. saw it. I have no recollection or connection with this film. There's a BMW motorcycle in it that is clearly a fine machine. I have yet to appreciate translations by T.E. Lawrence.
8. ``Schindler's List,'' 1993. saw it. Schindler bookends a movie about Ralf Feinnes.
9. ``Vertigo,'' 1958. saw it. great use of two actors. part of a great three-style madness trilogy. Noticably great score.
10. ``The Wizard of Oz,'' 1939. saw it. by the time the monkeys were flying I was out of my mind.
11. ``City Lights,'' 1931. saw it. We all need the redemptive power of finding someone to love.
12. ``The Searchers,'' 1956. saw it. memorable landscapes.
13. ``Star Wars,'' 1977. saw it. Carrie Fisher makes this movie a worthy follow-up to The Hidden Fortress.
14. ``Psycho,'' 1960. saw it. Bizarre B movie look from a man with the command of technicolor hollywood excellence. Great transferral of protagonists.
15. ``2001: A Space Odyssey,'' 1968. saw it. Great use of music. Favorite scene is the jog and the happy birthday dave...
16. ``Sunset Blvd.'', 1950. saw it. Something about a monkey in this one, too. Too many "in" jokes. Great use of Hollywood.
17. ``The Graduate,'' 1967. saw it. good follow-up to the work of Billy Wilder. surprise superstar appearance by Mr. Hoffman. transcendent Simon and Garfunkle. I like the scene when he visits her university.
18. ``The General,'' 1927. saw it. Love locomotives and love the male/female collaboration between the two leads.
19. ``On the Waterfront,'' 1954. saw it. minimal recollection. Is it Copeland or Bernstein?
20. ``It's a Wonderful Life,'' 1946. saw it. Good lesson in mortgages.
21. ``Chinatown,'' 1974. saw it. love the scene with the boy on a donkey. miraculous ensemble including writer and director. Great use of title. again she gets dunaway... sorry...
22. ``Some Like It Hot,'' 1959. saw it. great use of old florida. increasingly loony guy film. Ms. Monroe gets through it because Wilder is too busy with other things.
23. ``The Grapes of Wrath,'' 1940. saw it. Spectacular presentation of problems.
24. ``E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,'' 1982. saw it. only remember feeling like a tool.
25. ``To Kill a Mockingbird,'' 1962. read the book. Gregory Peck is vaguely unsatisfactory... sorry.
26. ``Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,'' 1939. saw it. Confused which one it is. One of them has a great ending atop a building.
27. ``High Noon,'' 1952. saw it. great countdown film.
28. ``All About Eve,'' 1950. saw it. don't remember if Kirk Douglas is in it... he's not. That's the Bad and the Beautiful.
29. ``Double Indemnity,'' 1944. saw it. Another guy film, probably Wilder's best. Great threesome.
30. ``Apocalypse Now,'' 1979. saw it. It was a lot of work.
31. ``The Maltese Falcon,'' 1941. saw it. This movie is the work of pure talent of all involved.
32. ``The Godfather Part II,'' 1974. saw it. Great introduction to Vegas and to Lee Strasbourg.
33. ``One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,'' 1975. saw it. Dynamic directing. Great blue tinged bathroom ending.
34. ``Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,'' 1937. saw it. What is she, the four seasons? (Yes.)
35. ``Annie Hall,'' 1977. saw it. A fluid assembly of scenes.
36. ``The Bridge on the River Kwai,'' 1957. saw it. Interesting activity and unique alec guiness.
37. ``The Best Years of Our Lives,'' 1946. saw it. remarkable time capsule... memorable 5 and dime...Hoagy plays Lazy River.
38. ``The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,'' 1948. Sad and beautiful. vaguely annoying.
39. ``Dr. Strangelove,'' 1964. saw it. introduces an awareness of water flouridation. great countdown. great improv when all else fails. I think the use of music was both nasty and beautiful.
40. ``The Sound of Music,'' 1965. saw it. It's hard for me to get over that cut when Ms. Andrews begins singing. Richard Rodgers at the height of his genius.
41. ``King Kong,'' 1933. saw it. great self-examination of exploitation using stop action photography.
42. ``Bonnie and Clyde,'' 1967. saw it. I love those clouds moving over the field. superstar ensemble acting.
43. ``Midnight Cowboy,'' 1969. saw it. Good time capsule of 60's New York.
44. ``The Philadelphia Story,'' 1940. saw it. posing for magazine editors?
45. ``Shane,'' 1953. saw it. pretty landscapes.
46. ``It Happened One Night,'' 1934. saw it. romantic...
47. ``A Streetcar Named Desire,'' 1951. saw it. confused about original script. great sequel to gone with the wind.
48. ``Rear Window,'' 1954. highly professional filmmaking.
49. ``Intolerance,'' 1916. saw it. Good countdown at the end.
50. ``The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,'' 2001. saw it somewhat. I failed again to connect with this world.
51. ``West Side Story,'' 1961. saw it. great on-site filmmaking. Already off the chart materials given a cinematic dimension. Best wide-screen cinematic combination of everything great going for this piece...The low-ceiling indoor parking garage performance of "cool."
52. ``Taxi Driver,'' 1976. saw it. the best self-angrandizing I've ever seen (raging bull is second best). Beautiful score.
53. ``The Deer Hunter,'' 1978. saw it. it all comes down to russian roulette. The director made christopher walken magic. Why is Walkin magic? Something to do with photography.
54. ``M-A-S-H,'' 1970. saw it. great episode assembly. it does feel like I was there.
55. ``North by Northwest,'' 1959. Technicolor prequel to Psycho. two sides of the same coin. more beautiful music.
56. ``Jaws,'' 1975. saw it. somehow sexually charged. did not see the entire film.
57. ``Rocky,'' 1976. saw it. that's good simple script to film-making.
58. ``The Gold Rush,'' 1925. saw it. A very successful artist adding the Klondike to his world. It's a great movie.
59. ``Nashville,'' 1975. saw it. Nasty. Thanks for letting them do their songs.
60. ``Duck Soup,'' 1933. saw it. a great big world.
61. ``Sullivan's Travels,'' 1941. saw it. serious fun.
62. ``American Graffiti,'' 1973. saw it. uh... good cast. good assembly of materials.
63. ``Cabaret,'' 1972. saw it. Bob Fosse was highly dedicated and talented. The music and cinema are seemlessly woven.
64. ``Network,'' 1976. saw it. a sequel to The Hospital, which is a great script.
65. ``The African Queen,'' 1951. saw it. Likeable. sometimes disoriented by the use of interior tub-sets and realism.
66. ``Raiders of the Lost Ark,'' 1981. saw it. again there's a scene with a monkey at an outdoor cafe. I like that scene.
67. ``Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'', 1966. saw it. They do well together.
68. ``Unforgiven,'' 1992. somewhat saw it. I don't have the pre-quel awareness to appreciate what this does to the western.
69. ``Tootsie,'' 1982. saw it. Another great star turn.
70. ``A Clockwork Orange,'' 1971. saw it. Great Walter Carlos opportunity. Malcolm already knew this role. Well structured book well adapted although with disproportionate star power.
71. ``Saving Private Ryan,'' 1998. saw it. I don't know. Very helpful vision. Another great product of an ongoingly cinematic director.
72. ``The Shawshank Redemption,'' 1994. No. Is it about Capital Punishment in prison?
73. ``Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,'' 1969. saw it. Good chemistry. Filmmaking is highly respectful of the stars.
74. ``The Silence of the Lambs,'' 1991. saw it. Good peripheral matters coalescing in a weird variation on the mink stole.
75. ``In the Heat of the Night,'' 1967. I don't know. Sydney Potier is in it...?
76. ``Forrest Gump,'' 1994. saw it. Great follow-up to Zelig. I am very confused by the watchability of this film.
77. ``All the President's Men,'' 1976. saw it. great adaptation well cast.
78. ``Modern Times,'' 1936. saw it. Ms. Goddard is in this one.
79. ``The Wild Bunch,'' 1969. saw it. vaguely followed it. The stills look great.
80. ``The Apartment, 1960. saw it. Another Wilder commentary, helped by likeable twosome.
81. ``Spartacus,'' 1960. saw it. what an appocalypse. stirringly annoying.
82. ``Sunrise,'' 1927. saw it. Consistently great visualizations by Murnau applied to this country.
83. ``Titanic,'' 1997. saw it. Liked the spinning top on the ship's wood floor.
84. ``Easy Rider,'' 1969. saw it. It's a hodgepodge of star turns.
85. ``A Night at the Opera,'' 1935. saw it. A smooth balance of brothers.
86. ``Platoon,'' 1986. saw it. Something crucifying was memorable.
87. ``12 Angry Men,'' 1957. saw it. worthwhile statement-- you can change the world.
88. ``Bringing Up Baby,'' 1938. saw it. love carries them through.
89. ``The Sixth Sense,'' 1999. saw it. Small budget, big impact... I think...
90. ``Swing Time,'' 1936. saw it. Is this a Kern score? I know Follow the Fleet and Shall We Dance better. I love Roberta.
91. ``Sophie's Choice,'' 1982. great Brooklyn Bridge scene.
92. ``Goodfellas,'' 1990. Martin Scorsese continues to improve his filmmaking style.
93. ``The French Connection,'' 1971. I don't think I've ever really seen this film. I thought it was a mystical lead-in to The Exorcist. Maybe it's not.
94. ``Pulp Fiction,'' 1994. Groundbreaking assembly of episodes.
95. ``The Last Picture Show,'' 1971. He realistically adjusted his pants when he got out of the car. I should remember more from this film.
96. ``Do the Right Thing,'' 1989. pleasantly incenidiary.
97. ``Blade Runner,'' 1982. City claustrophia.
98. ``Yankee Doodle Dandy,'' 1942. Good ensemble work. Again, all forces behind the glory of a great songwriter.
99. ``Toy Story,'' 1995. I don't know. Is this the weird one with the Tom Hanks voice.
100. ``Ben-Hur,'' 1959. Something about leprosy.
What is really curious is my need to engage in this exercise to get this list out of my system, as though I can move onto other matters thereafter. Anyway, it is great to have common ground.

I am considering adding a "recent acquisitions page" to the Cinema VII website...

When I sell it will be the entire catalogue.

The Cinema VII Library includes other materials as well as my own...

For example, yes to those looking for the 35 cent 1960 Cardinal Edition paperback with the cover that looks like it was painted by Darryl Green of Voices in the House, with authorship reclaimed by Pearl S. Buck following her years of publication as John Stedges. It's in the library, a foundation-worthy creative building block.

Is the building block opaque, reflective or translucent? All types of materials go into building the usable construct.

I'm taking off Monday, April Fools' Day observed, because I am ....

Quick notes on placing a death notice in the New York Times: This paper "outsourced" its paid death notices to a phonebank in Buffalo where people speak to you on a first name only basis. Anyone of a number of people are available. Their phone number is 866-602-6990 and they answer, "New York Times Classifieds." They charge $50.40 for 28-32 characters, including spaces. Some letters such as the big "W" take up more space. The email for placing a paid death notice is nytimes@classifiedsplus.net. We could not correspond through my Compuserve email address but rather through gmail. The price for the printed death notice does not include the New York Times on the Web. For an extra $50 the paid death notice will appear for one year on Legacy.com, which is a link on the New York Times on the Web.

That other blog (michaeldouglas.blogspot) offers quips on 56 minutes of Gibson's Aramaic Passion Play before degenerating into a simple personal discovery of my feelings of vacuous cluelessness about coming or already arrived and/or coming-again messiahs.

The issue of capital punishment returns recently since some of you may have wanted to ask Saddam a few questins, but maybe most people didn't care what he had to say and it was all self-serving, anyway....

Capital Punishment, like suicide, is not justice, but rather a presumptuous acceleration of the inevitable. The more extreme an action, the more equally it accomplishes its opposite intention.

I'm full of non-sequitors because I can't be bothered linking one thought to the next, well maybe I can. You're worth it...

Recent events include a staging of The Golf Wars at La Mama, directed by Tom Nondorf, which was in time for Election Day, when the tied election tide decisively turned.

I suggest before writing a redundant new play, a festival of the last decade of plays with music, such as they are, to get a fuller picture of the joyous magical world we live in.

Our performance of the song Chimney Flu/Heigh Ho worked well with the New York Composers Circle concert deep within the depths of the Baruch Performing Arts Center. Piano, voice and electric guitar played by Roger Blanc, each, had notated independent lines and accompaniments, just like in earlier songs.

I see I'll be a master of ceremonies of sorts for the Lambs Holiday party.

This world is so big, and the City keeps filling. Apparently, and additionally, there are universes beyond it.

I wonder how terrorized I've felt and how injurious of myself I've been to balance and take command of that feeling.

Trust in humanity and think for yourself. Put your joyous life first.

Now through a circuitous circuit, I am reading the short stories of Carson McCullers, called "Seven" after her recognition of the effectiveness of the number by her character, Miss Amelia.

Many great writing samples may already be familiar to you; the one I want to include here (from "Sojourner") describes a Bach prelude and fugue. "The prelude was as gaily iridescent as a prism in a morning room. The first voice of the fugue, an announcement pure and solitary, was repeated intermingling with a second voice and again repeated within an elaborated frame, the multiple music, horizontal and serene, flowed with unhurried majesty. The principal melody was woven with two other voices, embellished with countless ingenuities - now dominant, again submerged, it had the sublimity of a single thing that does not fear surrender to the whole."

Yes, that describes us-all in the universe!

So the free Friday Target Museum of Modern Art night included, along with the closing of the Dada exhibit, a screening of "Reflections in a Golden Eye," a shockingly technicolor print in one of the only two familiar rooms left in that museum, the basement screening room atop the super submerged 5th avenue subways. I saw the first hour of that.

And I still carry the memory of the last two reels of "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" in James Wong Howe's technicolor cinematography. It occurred to me that an author is the progenitor of these unique visions. Tennessee Williams films are their own genre; perhaps the same is true of Ms. McCullers.

Colleen McCullough, the Thorn Birds, no, I can't be so lucky as to have a book by McCullers, oh, there it is, the 35 cent Bantam Giant with the cover of tall woman leading the hunchback up the stairs, some figures in red behind her....the act of my reading it destroying its brittle paper.

The Baghdad Cafe? No, the lead story is "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe." Was she too rejecting and controlling? It looked like a delicate balance existed for a time, and that was a good time for the town... It was all so infinitely relatable in its strangeness...

Edward Albee wrote the play?

I read it on the bus to West Point. Was West Point the setting for "Reflections in a Golden Eye?" This is my circuitous route to the great writing of Carson McCullers.

I suppose this post has spoiler potential for those of you eagerly about to read Willa Cather's short story, "Paul's Case," and, yes, do so without delay.

Please consider yourself warned.

On the subway I paged through the 1936 edition of Burrell and Cerf's Bedside Book of Famous American Stories. Willa Cather wrote "Paul's Case." It is one of the 67 stories in the collection and I read it with great illumination as I already had a fondness for Madame Bovary. I remember spending an adolescence feeling as misplaced as Paul ("There's no one quite so worthy of the way I feel."). To his credit he didn't make a fool of himself rightfully settled into the Waldorf with his stolen loot. When money ran low he even took the train toward home, but this I cannot condone... and I doubt she did, although she did write the story... he saw fit to accelerate his body's inevitable demise. End of story.

-----

There was a woman last night outside of the Theatre for the New City sitting on the corner of East 10th and 1st as the light rain fell pleasantly upon us. She was equipped with a bag containing a gallon of gin. According to the theatre manager, the fellow she attended the theatre with, thanks to complimentary tickets, may have run off after injuring her. She could not put standing pressure on one of her legs. Was it broken? She sat back down. I called 911. She took gulps from the bottle. One of the attendants in the Beth Israel ambulance that arrived promptly, greeted her familiarly... Hi, Peg.

It was only 11:30 PM. I used to love sitting in on the midnight plays running at Theatre for the New City in the 1980's when it was on 2nd Avenue and East 10th. The most familiar memory I can share is that of Ethel Eichelberger playing accordion.

As for the Cather story, money can cost so much emotion that, having undergone the trauma of acquiring it, you will be truly gifted to relax and enjoy the doubtful luxuries it can purchase.

Question to self:
Peter, you obsessive troll, what are you doing outside of the bubble of comical musical visual melodrama?

Answer:
I'm reconciling subjective and objective realities.

Question 2 to self:
Do you promise to help and do no harm?

Answer:
Haven't I been?

Question 2 to self repeated:
Do you promise?

Answer:
Yes.

Dear everyone, If I can't write about it, everything gets me annoyed.

I visited the Uniformed Firefighters Association building last night for a TV spot with James Chladek, thanks to my personable trivia expert friend, John Barbieri, and had the pleasure of 15 minutes of Mr. Chladek's company before a well run set of studio cameras. Good work, guys! I talked about whatever is going on lately, my collaborations with the East Village Antifolk Fest, Sharon Fogarty's Flying Dreams at Manhattan Theatre Source, the visit to Guild Hall with Bruce Jay Friedman, and of course my being forced to vacate or buy my apartment of 17 years...

"We will never sell, only rent," has become, "we will never rent, only sell."

Well, it's a buyer's market.

"I Hope the Day Is Soon"

I luxurate in generalized anxiety. I'm anxious for something to happen, anxious throughout a lifetime, for something to happen -- the anxiousness is while it doesn't... The anxiousness happens while the happening doesn't, though a life time. It finally happened! Anxiety fulfilled.

There are some things men do that women don't do and some things women do that men don't do and there are some things that people just don't do.

"This is an empty room."
"But there's a pink elephant in this room."
"Oh, that..."

Daniel Keyes wrote Flowers for Algernon and Alexander Key wrote The Forgotten Door, among other novels. Flowers for Algernon began as a short story, available since 1959. I so looked forward to the expanded novel. It (the short story) was in a book with a ferris wheel on the cover, which also contained August Heat and The Monkey's Paw, and some story about climbing a gas tank and the title story about the disappearance of a daughter on the ferris wheel, she with the delicate condition that she kept pressuring her father to worry less about. Yes, I recommend that story collection.

The idea that intelligence is what we need to appreciate art stemmed from Flowers for Algernon. Of course I saw a portion of the Cliff Robertson film on TV this evening.

Night in Funland And Other Stories from Literary Cavalcade ed. Jerome Brondfield (Scholastic Book Services TK1056, 1968, 75¢, 238pp, pb)
7 • Foreword • Jerome Brondfield • fw
13 • Night in Funland • William Peden • ss The New Mexico Quarterly Win ’60
26 • Four O’Clock • Price Day • ss AHMM Apr ’58
32 • August Heat • William F. Harvey • ss Midnight House and Other Tales, J.M. Dent, 1910
39 • The Vertical Ladder • William Sansom • ss Good Housekeeping Nov ’46
57 • The Sea Gulls • Elias Venezis • ss Atlantic Monthly Jun ’55
67 • Antaeus • Borden Deal • ss The Southwest Review Spr ’61
83 • Exchange of Men • Howard Nemerov & W. Ryerson Johnson • ss Story Jan ’63
102 • Flowers for Algernon • Daniel Keyes • nv F&SF Apr ’59
145 • One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts • Shirley Jackson • ss F&SF Jan ’55
161 • The Most Dangerous Game • Richard Edward Connell • nv Colliers Jan 19 ’24
191 • Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket • Jack Finney • nv Colliers Oct 26 ’56
215 • As Best He Can • Geoffrey Household • ss, 1958
219 • Too Early Spring • Stephen Vincent Benét • ss The Delineator Jun ’33

The Exquisite Corpse.

Whatever my suspicions of a collaborative effort, including herein my superfluous admission of the supernatural, I can't imagine her going any other way. She was not interested in downtime, her body was not up to her ambitions, and falling is what she talked about it doing when we spoke two days prior.

Thank you?

Here is an extremist statement: I've lost all joy in the world and writing this was one of those joys.

And then I go on to write:

I thought I covered this problem.

Sleep deprivation leaves me without an iota of an idea. Just let me sleep. Competent filmmakers don't consider this problem because they don't have it. They know how to care for themselves and they do. The only person interested is the one who needs to sleep.

What am I saying? When I imagine that people know how to care for themselves, what I am saying is that I know how, and I'm just not because I'm punishing myself, diffusing what I fear is potential punishment from another. I'm sorry.

"Just SAYING it can even make it happen."

I remain flabbergasted by the concept of my grandmother tripping and dying. She only had one head impact, a single bruise in the lower left corner of her head, not even a fracture. There were only a few steps after the bottom landing where she fell. It is inconceivable to me that she could have let herself fall backwards. To fall back with that hard an impact, her feet had to slip forward, as if someone pulled a rug out from under her.

The fact remains, every day is a gift.

Margaret Carillo insisted my sister and I call her Nanny because she was never old enough to be a Grandmother. Well, this is a most elegant and formidable Nanny. She was born Domenica Giovaniello in New York City on March 15th, 1905, and for 100 years and 97 days she existed here.

I can’t begin to express our love for her. Thank you for your love and support during these days since our loss of her.

While our manner of departure still remains a mystery, the mystery of Nanny’s departure was solved on June 20th, 2005. Until then her presence never wavered, she was fully present in the fragility of consciousness, with hers as powerful as it had ever been, it being an authentic awareness of self-manifested wisdom and experience.

In terms of her age, because she was only a hundred, shrinking size can only go so far in consolidating the physical being, and the mind can only go so far in compensating for weakening senses. She spoke with me on Saturday, prophetically as it turned out. She was becoming restless and her body was not up to her plans. No one could take charge of her being, and when they tried, she rebelled. She remains a rebel to this day.

Energy is neither created nor destroyed, and on June 20th, hers dispersed, first into mom, her daughter, and now, we are all its recipients.

I had my whole life to take advantage of her, although having the greater benefit of actually getting to know her did eventually dawn on me. She could be selflessly generous, because she had the ability, willingness and natural organization skills to take care of her family without, and this she insisted upon, without burdening them. Her sensitivity to being a burden is outrageous even today.

Hers was a private presence, shared one person at a time, shared through us, and beholden to us, her family. Yet she was first and foremost her own lady. She took care of herself, and of us, too. We’re the echoes of her greatness.

Let’s acknowledge her presence in us, passing into others, as we will as well. Let’s welcome the release of her presence into the universe. The mystery of how her spirit will be released is solved, in time on Monday, June 20th, 2005, the end of spring on a full moon solstice day. Her spirit lives in Madeleine, Nicholas, Monica, Peter, Diana, Danny, Polar Bear. It is a responsibility and an inspiration for us as it blends with us, even as our generations echo what they were.

Thank you, Nanny. I love you. God, please help her adjust to her new presence in the universe.

The iterations of digital music resemble the frames of moving pictures. The persistence of hearing, of all our senses, is why we allow those iterations to mimic reality.

A tremolo of a note, of a frequency, offers wider presence in the audial spectrum, so, folks, spread out in microtones.

Effective tremolo produces a frequency strong enough to vibrate a needle as it cuts into acetate.

Subj:
Re: Coppelia
Date:
3/2/2005 11:32:04 PM Eastern Standard Time
From:
Dizozza600
To:
JefHilburn@aol.com Hi, Jeff, From Mapquest I see that Mukilteo must be very beautiful. What brought you there? Tell me about your class. I can offer you the script and some incidental music. The script continues beyond the ballet story to include a second withdrawal of Franz into Dr. Coppelius's world of dolls, and the further charade of Swanilda who arranges for Franz to unknowingly sire a batallion of children while in there. The children eventually march in to disassemble the Dr.'s dollshop and drag Franz out to be their father... Some of the language requires modification for high school students....Thank you for your inquiry.Best regards, Peter Dizozza917-915-7635. In a message dated 3/2/2005 11:09:06 PM Eastern Standard Time, JefHilburn@aol.com writes:
Hello, I just wanted to write and find out more about your script for Coppelia. I realize it's now been a few years ago for you, but I am considering it as a project for one of my high school classes. Not for profit, or even for public consumption, but am wondering if your script is available? Thanks for your time, Jeff HilburnKamiak High School Stagecraft TeacherMukilteo, Washington

Dear Professor Haine,

Thank you for your email.

As theatre director of The Williamsburg Art and Historical Center I was commissioned to create a musical theatre piece to run concurrent with its 2003 International Surrealist Exhibition, "Brave Destiny." That project is the US version of "Les Maries de la Tour Eiffel," so I placed it in front of a US monument with French influence. The symbology of this monument resulted in my play being more inspired by, then an adaptation of "Les Maries de la Tour Eiffel." In addition to the concept and script I also provided an original score consisting of three dances and three songs.

The Statue of Liberty is on Bedloe Island near Manhattan. Ferries daily carry tourists there. What the statue represents is not without controversy because our U.S. welcoming of immigrants has, sadly, become more guarded, not to mention the fact that since September 11th, 2001, the statue itself remained closed to visitors for security reasons. It was partially reopened in August of 2004.

The question of who officiates the marriage of "Bride" and "Groom" is what "The Marriage at the Statue of Liberty" is about, with Ms. Liberty herself, completing the ceremony. It is night. The last tour boat leaves. The still unmarried couple remains on Bedloe Island, but are they alone? As a seagull is about to fly into her copper frame, Ms. Liberty flexes her body to allow it to safely pass. Since she sees the gull, she must be able to see us, reasons the couple below. Where others have failed, Ms. Liberty will prevail. She comes to life to complete the ceremony. The couple is married at last! Bride and Groom are Old World supplicants of Colossus. Having found one another, they seek new world religious independence to sanctify their new bond to one another. They escape from their cloister. Vulcan, the God of Fire, shields them. He discovers they suffer from "The Mortal Tedium of Immortality" (Cocteau's line at the end of "Blood of a Poet.") Vulcan advises the couple that to marry they must regain their mortality, and to do so they must pass through the eternal flame. And where is the eternal flame? The nearest eternal flame is in the torch held by the New Colossus (as Emma Lazarus calls her), The Statue of Liberty.

Unwilling to lose supplicants, Colossus and his eternally unmarried fiancée, Colossa, masquerading as tourists, go chasing after Bride and Groom to scuttle their marriage ceremony.

A DVD of the 2003 production is available, featuring the beautiful nocturne that concludes the play. I am not sure about TV compatibility but it will be playable on your computer.

My previous effort to pay homage to Cocteau may be found in my monologue with song cycle entitled, "Doping the Blood of a Poet."

As a composer, I would love to add to the occurrences of Cocteau texts set to music, and will be honored if you would suggest a text for me to set.

Very truly yours, Peter Dizozza

Separate Attachment: The performance program including ballet descriptions.

Dear Mr Peter Dizozza, I am writing a Catalogue of Jean Cocteau’s Texts set to music. So far I have recorded some 600 occurrences. I came across your production Marriage at the Statue of Liberty which is inspired by Cocteau’s play. I would like to ask you a few questions: 1°/ Could you please tell me what parts of Cocteau’s play you kept in your production, or if your play is completely something else. As far as the characters are concerned, I could see that some of them were kept (Bride, Groom). 2°/ On which translation of the play did you base your production? 3°/ As to the music, I heard some of it on the web site (www.cinemavii.com...) but how many parts are written in your production? Do they correspond to the 3 main parts of the ballet? 4°/ Is it possible to receive a program and some press reviews? 5°/ I would appreciate any sort of information about your play that seems so interesting. Thank you in advance, Yours faithfully, Prof. Dr Malou HaineConservateur du MIM1 rue Villa Hermosa1000 Bruxelles - Tél. 00.32.(0)2.545.01.36Professeur à l'ULBDirecteur de la Collection "Musique/Musicologie", éditions Mardagawww.malouhaine.be

Separating us from chaos is The Law. I love the Law.

I woke up one morning in a restless daze,
My life had hit an impasse as an office aide.
I went at night to law school, and it changed my ways to a
Player from one who is played.

Adverse litigation is the path I choose.
Contingent is my fee on if I win or lose.
It’s not to win or lose, it’s how you play the game.
The law’s a jealous mistress,
In time I came to love the

Law, I love the
Law. Professors
Asked in Law School
Do you love the
Law? I love the
Law. I love the
Law. I love it.
No one is above it.

Please approach but not too close
Let us go forth.
Some requests are useless ‘gainst fate.
Fate, defer to precedent. What’s your case worth?
Would you rather hurry and wait? Then

Close your eyes, imagine how it was before
And see a world in turmoil crying, "Nevermore!"
The skills of legal practice are like flags unfurled,
We’re citizens of the world.

We guide and shape the future from the courthouse steps.
The past is but the history of our records kept.
Rewritten as a footnote, there is only this
Separating us from chaos, It’s the

Law. It’s the
Law. I love the
Law. I love it.
No one is above the
Law? I love the
Law I love the
Law. Great peace have they who love the Law. Peter Dizozza 1/23/05

December 30th, 2004 THE PENULTIMATE DAY OF THE YEAR
Do we go right along as we always do?
Or next year will we change the way we wanted to?
I’ve been feeling less than certain since the year began.
Did we learn? Did we try?
In a year set for change but a day is left
To unite the division of change bereft.
Opportunity demands a unity
To connect one and all.

January began with an overture.
Things went wrong. We approved them, for the end was sure.
February even gave to us an extra day.
Just a day, turns the tide.
But the gradual won over the radical.
Silent day, silent night, so incredible.
When I woke up in the morning, all was very much the same.
When you told me nothing happened I had
Nowhere else to turn; none but me to blame.

I will admit that the change has been slow, but it’s
Changing in front of our eyes, like a
Plant as it grows, like a Flower that opens, it’s
Blossoming fast as it can.
Changing according to plan!

In a day tides can turn with a seismic shift.
Though we’re safe in our homes, they’re built on some cliff.
For in stillness platelets rise most dramatically,
When they’re rubbed under tons.
Join your hands with the new transcendentalist.
As the fairies appear in the morning mist.
As we wake up in a twilight zone where we’re
Solely on our own. That is not the way to go, but I am
Running to my grave without you to save me.

I will admit that the change has been slow, but it’s
Changing in front of our eyes, like a
Plant as it grows, like a Flower that opens, the
Amaryllis is sprouting from out of its soil-covered bulb.
While the best laid plans have an outcome that yields them a different result
So if we all are the best as we are, and the best is the most we can be,
If there’s something to gain from our going insane it’s that we’re
Finally starting to see. Everything’s as it should be.

Do we go right along as we always do?

Another Florida Post
Posted by PD on 12/23/2004, 2:28 pm

In a continuing effort to keep track of life, and to share, and to stimulate explorative conversation, I offer
The Resurrection of Aileen Wuornos

Your writer herein had no precognition of the woman. All I’ve seen so far is the film adaptation of the difficulties Ms. Wuornos encountered caught in the grind of “bringing home the bacon.”

Thanks to Time Warner’s cable offer of media content, we have Monster on Demand. As we near the holidays, what better celebration than the life of one who dreamed of being an icon portrayed in a movie that makes her one; and, Ms. Theron, is that a performance or a resurrection?

Aileen is here now and in us all. Although it was a chore to watch her tortured, her sadist “John” provided the transcendent moment that inflamed her gaze, turning it into a soul scorcher. The incendiary moron who chose to waste his time squashing her smoldering hustle with lighter fluid caused her to blow out.

In Toontown, Daffy Duck kicks and punches the puff-genie back into its lamp.
A second of silence precedes the laser blaze of the genie’s resurrection blast.

After the first murder, no more hustling, at first.

However, most job markets reject volatility in upstart freelancers.

Then the police officer that picked her up for loitering at a temp agency
drove her into a garage and let her off (filled her mouth)
With a license to KILL.

And don’t touch her stomach. It’s filled with ignited lighter fluid. She is in physical pain.
Something alive within her has snapped.

Her friend, Selby, had a cast on her arm.
It’s got to fall off on its own.
Though she may bask blithely in financial windfall,
Her cast is off;
She is free.

One of the later dead fellows, the one with the gun in his car, is a retired police officer.
Remember, perhaps, when Monty Python’s criminal, Dimsdale, set off an atomic bomb. Then, even the police stood up and took notice.

The death penalty achieves its opposite, which is the letter “Z,” which means, she lives on.

I think that the penultimate line in the film, preceding
“Well, you have to say something,”
is
“Where there’s life, there’s hope.”

Consider an alternate adage gleaned from the lesson of
Jesus Christ,
WHERE THERE’S DEATH,
THERE’S RESURRECTION.

And that is not even why I’m against the death penalty.

Upon the making of the motion picture film,
Monster,
Aileen Wournous rose to judge the living and the dead,
Until she was cast into the sea of fire.

I await the sequel, not The Bride of Frankenstein, but
“The Adopted Parent of Aileen Wuornos” (It is Arlene Pralle. She adopted Aileen on death row. Thank you, internet search.)

Most significant is Aileen's relation to the shell-shocked Vietnam vet portrayed by Bruce Dern. Those two knew!

Music note, what better way to distract the viewer with the antecedent to the songs by Velvet Underground than in playing Crimson and Clover over and over under dialogue?
(WRONG… Tommy James and the Shandells released Crimson and Clover in 1969. Velvet Underground’s first album was 1967.)

Quick “John” note: If someone offers sex for money,
And you reach the point where you would actually agree to the transaction,
Give the money and go, savoring the true masturbatory pleasure of getting NOTHING in return.
Further gratuity: If the person offering is engaged in a sting operation, you will be arrested.

Has it been four years? It feels like decades have passed, and while humanity was embracing differences, a single lapse set us back to the dark ages. That it was a SINGLE lapse demonstrates how under our control the world has become. In an effort to take after-the-fact control of that lapse we can suggest that it occurred with our tacit approval, to make our justification for a retaliation that much greater. Let's continue to learn about and understand one another, and grow in our ability to appreciate and shape our world. It remains my firm belief that our world exists apart from our perception of it. For our own sake and for the benefit of all the manifestations of energy of which we're a part, may we bless and not curse...

One of Eugene O'Neill's characters talks about the moment when the veil lifts and our awareness is lucid. Then the veil falls.

I preserve moments when the veil lifts, because, indeed, for most of my life I exist beneath the veil.

and for now
---------------
I am writing to cheer you up on this beautiful day because I need cheering up.

I am scratching your back because my back needs scratching.

I am doing for you what I need done for myself.
---------------
I am grappling with the above sentences' structure because I perceive it as a conundrum.
Are not all sentient being's needs identical? We all need love.

Pass it forward.

THE ILR CHARTS

TH LW HP WI WORLD INDEPENDENT
01 - 01 01 "Don't leave me behind Prisoners of war" - Peter Dizozza
02 - 02 01 "Jungles of Dagenham" - Paola
03 - 03 02 "Maybe I'm a dreamer" - Warren Muzak
04 - 04 01 "Your Enemy" - Citizen Kane
05 - 05 01 "Its hard believing" - The Drive
06 - 06 01 "The Spider Song" - Nutronstars
07 - 07 01 "Generation" - Mahoon
08 03 03 02 "The truth" - Tim Chaplin
09 - 09 01 "Fine Looking Woman" - Jason Chesworth and the Pocket co.
10 - 08 08 "Take your own advice" - Danyluk & card

Our language has the contradictions built in. Holier than thou, or is that Hole-ier? Don't use mistreatment of the people as a reason to invade them and then go in and mistreat them. The latest act of terrorism is to show citizens of the United States engaged in acts of terror. Who's holier now?

I'm enjoying August Kleinzahler's modern day memories of travel.

Takealookatmenow
KONG, KONG, KONG, wellit'sjustan
KONG, KONG, KONG, KONG.

I'm enjoying Mr. Merrill's weejeeboard memories of Ephraim.

Getting into the car this morning I cleared off some of the snow and plowed out, straight to the tunnel where the security guards pulled me over and one of them watched while I cleaned off every snow speck. I feel so invigorated. I knew it was nervy to enter that controlled (and troll toll patrolled) environment, and fun! Last time I was pulled over we were off to our honeymoon flight at the quiet hour of 5AM. Good thing I had my papers in order... So take a look at me now KONG.

Some projects left unfinished I find myself, thanks to technological advancements, capable of completing at present, at home, to the exclusion of all present concerns. I must complete what I began, and I'm actually looking at material created twenty-five years ago, just by chance, because my friend in Maine, Ed Reichert, asked me several months ago to dig up the videos I took of his piano recital rehearsal, his music/theatre Queens College Variety show, and other things I haven't yet found featuring his fantastic involvement, so he can show them to his father.

After his recital video I found a video of the colored pencil drawings on my then attic wall. They were already at least four years old when I videoed them. I and my highschool friends drew them. The curved ceiling wall was cracking, creating the outline for the mountains and valleys containing them. And after seeing them, do you still want to be my friend?

There's a recent reference to that cottage attic wall in the golf wars cd, the "make your own" chant leading into the dizozza/espinola Forests of Neurosis. Aha! I have a potential music video, glorifying frustrated immature prolonged orphan boyish adolescence. You call that FUN?? Get on with your life... no no this'll just take a few minutes. please. it's valuable. you don't want to live now. go back to your hole. why is this choice exclusionary? Yes, it's valuable. Encourage me, allow me, or condemn me. It's all about me, getting on with my life's work. This is my promo blurb.

You can sing Sinatra Stuff, Can't you?
Posted by Pete Dizozza on 12/19/2003, 4:13 pm

"You keep saying you got something for me, something you call love but confess..."
Lee Hazelwood.
Both Frank and Tony Bennett began with these almost generically pleasant voices.
Tony Bennett doesn't strike me as psychotically maintaining his career. His smoking just created his now unmistakable voice, and his general pleasantness shines through.
I think the velvet fog describes the also pleasant Mel Torme voice (I like his recording of "Again").
Apparently, Frank hurt his voice singing and he needed to turn to acting, after appearing to great hilarity in MGM musical films. I saw some parts of some of them. Maybe, amazingly, he started in a classic, On the Town with songs mostly by Leonard Bernstein and Comden and Green ("New York New York a helluva wonderful town not to be confused with "Wonderful Town," by Bernstein, Comden and Green with, currently, Donna Murphy, live, which is probably very wonderful indeed.)

The mgm film of Jerome Kern songs, Til The Clouds Roll By, features his rendition of "Old Man River." So funny... "lands in jaillllll --- no breath --- I gets weary ...." that is a funny event.

stupider was anchors aweigh, the one with gene kelly dancing with one of those terrytoons.

So without a heartthrob voice, frank needed a film career without singing and the getting of the role is the robert evans godfather movie horror scene of the producer with the horse's head. (Another italian descent singer plays the frank role in the film. They say he knocked up who, Ava Gardner?)

The book, From Here to Eternity, was followed by a book about an author who had just written a big hit novel, From Here to Eternity, and was trying to write another. It's called SOME CAME RUNNING, and its film has a wild Shirley MacLane cameo, and Dean Martin as the sidekick to the author, portrayed by the actor who was formerly the skinny obnoxious victim killed by marty Borgnine in the prior acadamy award winner of the downtrodden bored militia stationed at pearl harbor.
It's like Norman Mailer following Naked and Dead with Deer Park... the film is the return of debonair Sinatra (directed by Vincent Minelli). James Jones wrote those books..

Frank pulled Manchurian Candidate after Kennedy's murder, yet he actually played the oswald role in Suddenly.

Sinatra recorded mostly great songs. In fact, that's his phenomenon.

He slowed down songs while increasing the speed of the beat beneath them.

Also, the slidy gruff vocal quality, under his obsessive control, became innovative, microtonal....

Finally, at that low point in his treasured career when Nelson Riddle's orchestra announced his new voice like a sunrise and he declaims,
"I've got the world on a string, sitting on a rainbow," the only good thing, the one reason to lift him (and us) out of the depths of despair is that song.

As for that once ubiquitous song of songs, New York New York, remember: Frank Sinatra is a singer who chose to highlight the most important of ampersands... Aaaaaaaaaannnnnnd.

Do you hear the song of a music box? It sounds the hope of ice cream.
There isn't a melody I have heard as many times as this one.
It plays through once then plays again. It blurs my sense of reason.
It's up to me to concentrate but still I blame that ice cream truck.

And even the blackout could not deter the call of Mr. Softy.
The silence around it helped isolate its musical invasion.
That's why I'm glad when this ice cream truck leaves.


-- as for turning out the lights every now and again. Yes!

An unfair loss.

My wife was saying just the other day how expletives often pepper the speech of comics because the expletive "butches up" the joke.