Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Desperados Waiting for a Train

Monday, September 28, 2009

Beetlejuice Song

Saturday, September 26, 2009

A Thing of the Past

rcobb

"I hate entertainment. Entertainment is a thing of the past, now we got television." —Archie Bunker, "All in the Family"

Brando

I picked up Marlon Brando's autobiography, Songs My Mother Taught Me, at the Orange County Public Library book sale last week for $1. Here are some of the highlights:

ON TALLULAH BANKHEAD
"I always thought that if she hadn't been so banged up emotionally, she could have been a great actress and an extraordinarily attractive person, but I think she cared more about fucking and alcohol than about performing . . . I would rather have been dragged over broken pottery than make love to Tallulah."

ON VIVIEN LEIGH
"Like Blanche [DuBois] she slept with almost everybody and was beginning to dissolve mentally and to fray at the ends physically. I might have given her a tumble if it hadn't been for Larry Olivier. I'm sure he knew she was playing around, but like a lot of husbands I've known, he pretended not to see it, and I liked him too much to invade his chicken coop."

ON MARILYN MONROE
"Marilyn was a sensitive, misunderstood person, much more perceptive than was generally assumed. She had been beaten down, but had a strong emotional intelligence—a keen intuition for the feelings of others, the most refined type of intelligence."

ON ELVIS PRESLEY
"It seems to me hilarious that our government put the face of Elvis Presley on a postage stamp after he died from an overdose of drugs. His fans don't mention that because they don't want to give up their myths. They ignore the fact that he was a drug addict and claim he invented rock 'n' roll when in fact he took it from black culture; they had been singing that way for years before he came along, copied them and became a star."

ON JAMES DEAN
"I think he regarded me as a kind of older brother or mentor, and I suppose I responded to him as if I was. I felt a kinship with him and was sorry for him. He was hypersensitive, and I could see in his eyes and in the way he moved and spoke that he had suffered a lot. He was tortured by insecurities, the origin of which I never determined, though he said he'd had a difficult childhood and a lot of problems with his father . . . We can only guess what kind of actor he would have become in another twenty years. I think he could have become a great one. Instead he died and was forever entombed in his myth."

ON ANNA MAGNANI
"With her teeth gnawing at my lower lip, the two of us locked in an embrace, I was reminded of one of those fatal mating rituals of insects that end when the female administers the coup de grace. We rocked back and forth as she tried to lead me to the bed. My eyes were wide open, and as I looked at her eyeball-to-eyeball I saw that she was in a frenzy, Attila the Hun in full attack. Finally the pain got so intense that I grabbed her nose and squeezed it as hard as I could, as if I were squeezing a lemon, to push her away. It startled her, and I made my escape."

ON CHARLIE CHAPLIN
"Comic genius or not, when I went to London to work with him late in his late, Chaplin was a fearsomely cruel man . . . A Countess from Hong Kong was a disaster, and while we were making it I discovered that Chaplin was probably the most sadistic man I'd ever met. He was an egotistical tyrant and a penny-pincher. He harassed people when they were late, and scolded them unmercifully to work faster . . . Charlie wasn't born evil. Like all people, he was a sum of his genetic inheritance and the experiences of a lifetime. We are all shaped by our own miseries and misfortunes."

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Friday, September 25, 2009

Dirty Driving

Sunday, September 20, 2009

John Coltrane

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Facts & Theories

"We do not talk—we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests." —Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, 1945

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Before the Law



"Before the law, there stands a guard. A man comes from the country, begging admittance to the law. But the guard cannot admit him. Can he hope to enter at a later time? 'That is possible,' says the guard. The man tries to peer through the entrance. He had been taught that the law should be accessible to every man. 'Do not attempt to enter without my permission,' says the guard. 'I am very powerful. Yet I am the least of all the guards. From hall to hall, door after door, each guard is more powerful than the last.' By the guard's permission, the man sits down by the side of the door, and there he waits. For years, he waits. Everything he has, he gives away in the hope of bribing the guard, who never fails to say to him, 'I take what you give me only so that you will not feel that you have left something undone.' Keeping his watch during the long years, the man has learned to know even the fleas in the guard's fur collar. The man growing childish in old age, he begs the very fleas to persuade the guard to change his mind and allow him to enter. His sight has dimmed, but in the darkness he perceives a radiance streaming immortally from the door of the law. And now, before he dies, all he's experienced condenses into one question, a question he's never asked. He beckons to the guard. Says the guard, 'You are insatiable! What is it now?' Says the man, 'Every man strives to attain the law. How is it then that in all these years, no one else has ever come here, seeking admittance?' His hearing has failed, so the guard yells into his ear, 'No one else but you could ever have obtained admittance! No one else could enter this door! This door was intended only for you! And now, I am going to close it.' This tale is told during the story called The Trial. It has been said that the logic of this story is the logic of a dream . . . a nightmare."

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Saturday, September 05, 2009

No Laughing Matter



"The life of a part-time wrestler is no laughing matter. It's not just fun and games like most people think. You work out, train constantly, push your body to the limit of endurance and nobody seems to care. I have wrestled and defeated over 400 women and what do I get? The men call me a wimp, the women say I'm a sexist pig." 
—Andy Kaufman

Friday, September 04, 2009

Fighting Drunk

aleistercrowley

"Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales . . . Knowing nothing and fearing everything, they rant and rave and riot like so many maniacs. The subject does not matter. Any idea which gives them an excuse of getting excited will serve. They look for a victim to chivy, and howl him down, and finally lynch him in a sheer storm of sexual frenzy which they honestly imagine to be moral indignation, patriotic passion or some equally avowable emotion."
—Aleister Crowley

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Luca Brasi



"Luca Brasi was indeed a man to frighten the devil in hell himself. Short, squat, massive-skulled, his presence sent out alarm bells of danger. His face was stamped into a mask of fury. The eyes were brown but with none of the warmth of that color, more a deadly tan. The mouth was not so much cruel as lifeless; thin, rubbery and the color of veal . . . Luca Brasi did not fear the police, he did not fear society, he did not fear God, he did not fear hell, he did not fear or love his fellow man. But he had elected, he had chosen, to fear and love Don Corleone." —The Godfather, Mario Puzo, 1969