The Mysteries of
Eight at BlogspotThe Mysteries of
Eight at Blogspot
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.
posted by Peter 6:15 AM
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.
posted by Peter 7:52 PM
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.
posted by Peter 6:39 AM
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
posted by Peter 4:57 AM
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.
posted by Peter 10:15 AM
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.
posted by Peter 6:59 AM
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.
posted by Peter 2:01 PM
I'm taking off Monday, April Fools' Day observed, because I am ....
posted by Peter 1:23 PM
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.
posted by Peter 7:41 AM
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.
posted by Peter 11:05 AM
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.
posted by Peter 9:03 PM
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.
posted by Peter 9:05 AM
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.
posted by Peter 1:21 PM
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.
posted by Peter 10:48 AM
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.
posted by Peter 9:27 AM
"I Hope the Day Is Soon"
I luxuriate 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.
posted by Peter 11:04 AM
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..."
posted by Peter 1:05 PM
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
posted by Peter 8:15 PM
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?
posted by Peter 7:51 AM
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."
posted by Peter 5:08 PM
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.
posted by Peter 1:30 PM
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.
posted by Peter 8:38 PM
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.
posted by Peter Dizozza 2:02 PM
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 Hilburn Kamiak High School Stagecraft Teacher Mukilteo, Washington
posted by Peter Dizozza 7:53 AM
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
posted by Peter Dizozza 3:36 PM
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
You'll 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
posted by Peter Dizozza 9:03 AM
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?
posted by Peter Dizozza 11:55 AM
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.
posted by Peter Dizozza 11:35 AM
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...
posted by Peter Dizozza 10:51 AM
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.
posted by Peter Dizozza 10:51 AM
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
posted by Peter Dizozza 1:03 PM
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?
posted by Peter Dizozza 8:16 PM
I'm enjoying August Kleinzahler's modern day memories of travel.
posted by Peter Dizozza 9:47 AM
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.
posted by Peter Dizozza 8:39 AM
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.
posted by Peter Dizozza 11:09 AM
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.
posted by Peter Dizozza 1:40 PM
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!
posted by Peter Dizozza 11:17 AM
An unfair loss.
posted by Peter Dizozza 1:53 PM
My wife was saying just the other day how expletives often pepper the speech of comics because the expletive "butches up" the joke.
posted by Peter Dizozza 1:21 PM
News flash. In keeping with the karaoke mood, Diana and I were singing, My Eyes Adored You (So Close and Yet So Far), and there, in front of us, another tragedy, the event of which was substantially over, its after-effects reverberating into mere everyday occurrence, UNLESS YOU TELL ME OTHERWISE. WHAT HAPPENED HERE?We were experiencing the transitory stillness of 5PM Saturday becoming sunny and warmer, walking along Irving Place to the car to go to Connecticut again, this time to Greenwich to attend a piano concert of children, ages 8-10, the students of one particular piano teacher, one particular student being Diana’s nephew.
The last time, last summer, (June 6, 2002) we were going to Liam’s wedding, a similarly radical separation from our day-to-day existence. Driving along route 54 we came upon a doe, its side smashed by the front of a car zipping round the bend. At first stunned, it popped into life to run wild, frothing, bleeding, red innards escaping from it rump, bashing walls and fences, finding its way down the valley to the shade and the water, Diana ready to take in the entirety of the deer’s internal disruptions. We prolonged our experience of the agony, basically until the deer disappeared down the hill never to be seen again. The other car drivers assured us they would call the ambulance. We were late for the wedding. With much difficulty, we I extricated ourselves.
Diana entered the mind of the deer encountering the car.
Why aren’t people more careful? It’s a hot afternoon. The deer are coming from the forest, crossing the street to gain access to the lake. The poor deer become so thirsty then, pow, (This reminds me now of the fantastic moment in “my cousin vinny,” when Marisa Tomei enters the mind of the deer encountering the deer hunter.)
In the months that followed, Diana and I acquired and developed various ailments from the physical and emotional strain we assumed from the event. It looked as if we had finally recovered when…
This time, Saturday, May 17th, 2003, eleven and a half months later, as we were walking to the car, we came upon a pretty girl who had just smashed a glass menu frame, a table, some flowerpots, having bent the wrought iron fence enclosing the outdoor dining of the cursedly stupefying Sal Anthony’s. Yes, it’s 55 Irving Place and the unknown girl dropped herself off the fourth floor window ledge of a colonial historic building with floor to ceiling bay windows enclosed by more of that historic wrought iron fencing.
The New York Times reported the very next day about the Street of Irving Place and its history. It’s Samuel Ruggles Place, but he felt like naming it after Washington Irving while he was, in 1830, developing Gramercy Park into the delightful enclave that it remains to this day.
It’s as if her gesture of dropping in on siesta time, as an obscene heap, without a care for her blue underwear, was a non-issue after the fact, and before the fact she was apparently dangling her legs over the ledge, not thereby garnering the dramatic attention associated with people trying to stop her, but to some lucky recipient, perhaps a 75 year old smoker suddenly obscenely rejuvenated with his 24 year old girl heart, she was a harvest.
Bellevue can bring her back to life, and they did, pow, to keep those organs alive, awaiting transplant permission from her parents. Just her brain was dead.
The real monster falls crashing to the floor, gets up and walks away, and is he or she ever mad!
After the piano recital, we went to Cabrini, then to Bellevue in search of her (Saturday evenings at the Emergency Rooms tend to be quiet.).
That night I dreamt that rather than stopping us at the door, the nurse let us in. Ms. Unknown was brain dead, all right, smiling and chatting away, saying hello and, I am NOT a baby, as she slithered off the bed to the floor, her reddened membranes exposed as she shrunk smaller and smaller. The nurse came in, to reattach life support, reminding us again, her brain is dead.
Diana entered the mind of the girl. She was so alone sitting indecisively on the ledge, her legs dangling over, and then, after smashing the table, the plant pots and the wrought iron fence, people came from everywhere to surround her.
The police and ambulance quietly arrived within 10 minutes of our arriving there, blocking traffic and dispersed. A street-fair along Third Avenue was winding down. We rushed through the traditional traffic of I95 to get to Greenwich. The Sal Anthony maitre ‘d suggested we send condolences care of the super at 55 Irving Place, apt 1A.
posted by Peter Dizozza 3:01 PM
Nowhere to hide except together. It's about time.
posted by Peter Dizozza 2:08 PM
Is this where I assemble the silliest strings of words? I suppose so. This is called, "A Union of In-Laws" and draws from a suggestion I received from another and refers to a wall street journal on-line extra editorial by, well, here goes.On March 24th, 2003, echoing the title of Leni Reifenstal's 1938 Olympics film, Triumph of the Will, Peggy Noonan announced, with the invasion of Iraq, that we are witnessing the triumph of activism over fatalism (Among the actions not taken, consider: Saddam's sons, George's daughters, we never saw any efforts to bring together these perfect couples, and the possibility of solving with a wedding, in the tradition of the great rulers, any conflicts of interest with a union of in-laws. Can anyone suggest other actions?) Well, don't just stand there. We must do something, but let's
do it for a purpose
'cause to later find a purpose
is a steeper uphill struggle
than the purpose set in place
at the outset.
Hey, what WAS that at the outset? Is there reason behind the action?
We have to do something.
We cannot just stand here.
Fatalaties when activism
triumphs over fatalism
escalate to numbers
we can count in yonder galaxy.
What's at stake, enlightenment?
That comes to all in time.
posted by Peter Dizozza 3:05 PM
Burl Ives appeared in a TV musical version of Bluebeard.-------------------------
I go out for the day. See you tonight,” he told his redeemer, his beloved bride. And he added a warning, “Go in all rooms but one.” His words echo those of our most famous God, you know the one, who said (It’s just the just of it.) to his most God-like creations, “I leave you in paradise; eat from all trees but one.”What do you expect Bluebeard’s bride to do? What do you and I want and wait for you and I to do?
Remember that his beard repelled most women, but her soul was sensitive, and his eyes gained her trust. She loved him and accepted his love for her. And we know from experience, from those nights by the fire, hers was a premium brand of love, on which they rise to new heights of awareness. Her empathy, surely, matches his toward her,
But she broke trust when she googled him, or rather;
When she entered the forbidden room, she found corpses, and she knew. Her husband is a killer, who insulates himself from the feeling of his prey. He is a coward nourished by the fears of his prey. He is a man who willingly causes what in the end must come to all.There is only one ending to the story. She escapes to live another day, and Bluebeard, exposed, forthwith, is destroyed.
My variation is to say, feel free to explore all of my rooms, my papers, my website, and then watch me squirm as I try to defend what are clearly rotting corpses with my initials carved into them. I leave myself exposed, not out of honesty, but out of awareness that only truth is easy.
No one cares where no one goes, unless to consider my candidacy.
How could you allow the wolf to lead you down the garden path.
Do the wolf and the granddaughter ever save each other?
Let it be known, Bluebeard’s secret starts with an empty room, which he gradually fills with the corpses of the faithless, the independent minded fighters who refuse to obey him.
That’s his problem and he rots in it.
In our search for self-understanding, we allow ourselves to be misunderstood.
copyright 2003 Peter Dizozza ------------------
posted by Peter Dizozza 8:26 AM
Hi, Tightness!
Hi, Taughtness!
Now that you've tightened me, what can you teach me?
Naught have I taught you.
How thoughtless,
Why think so?
'Cause I'm here to hype you.
Then I'm here to haunt you.hit it.
Blow tropic wind,
Fill the air
With sound vibes, with light vibes, with solids, with liquids.Thank you, O content provider. You're bill I'll pay monthly.
Stromboli Meets Snagglepuss by Peter Dizozza
posted by Peter Dizozza 8:34 AM
All right, so the computer takes time re-establishing itself and its programs fight one other; it can process massive calculations, store them and translate them into familiar colorful sounds and images. It's my responsibility and a welcome one to catalogue and draw from the catalogue, even as I create new material.
posted by Peter Dizozza 3:01 PM
'm getting blogged down just turning the computer on and off, loading up programs and shutting them down, moving files rather than using them. I threw away many papers and letters over the weekend and now I will attempt to follow their pathway to mulshland.I'll take one task at a time, preferrably a new one. This is my journal essay moment, typing into a foreign repository. The doors are caving in, the computer's confiscated. Watch out you with your clicking and typing and seeing what is there to be seen, for the criminial indictment surprise.
Such affirmative action as that taken with Pete Townsend is for purposes of communication only. The punishment, after all, is contained within the crime.
posted by Peter Dizozza 1:02 PM
We attended midnight mass at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Church in Forest Hills, the church I attended as a child, the altar I walked off of when, at the height my holiness, I was relievedly dismissed from being an altar boy, the pews where I shook my eyes and stared and, as all around my pinpoint focus went dark, I would launch into a trance.During the midnight Christmas service, this church had a tungsten brightness hitherto unavailable during the 20th Century. The priests brought a porcelain child around the pews and landed it in a nest made of hay.
Caesar had called for a census that year, sending everyone back to their hometowns to be counted, during which life went on, children were born, one child even born in a manger, among the calves, there being no room at "the inn." Try counting him in your census. (Only Isaac Assimov's actuarial table would dare factor in such a mule.)
His life would run a spectrum starkly displayed in the church: To our left was a stable dotted with an angel, to the further left, a wood carving of a man hammered to a cross bookended by two kneeling women prayerfully gazing up at him. Relive this individual's human path, from the manger to the crucifix -- a lifespan of 33 years -- from Christmas, Dec. 25, 2002 until Good Friday, April 18, 2003.
posted by Peter Dizozza 8:41 AM
Everything's lovely, while we're eating and chatting when suddenly, chomp, my sharpened molar severs a piece of my own big tongue. Yum. and the dabbed blood makes the paper towel smell like hamburger meat served mmm mmm rare... Seven hours later the puncture wound's cauterized at last.
posted by Peter Dizozza 8:02 AM
This is why I watch Curb Your Enthusiasm.
The day began at 7 when Diana called me on the phone. I gradually awakened from there with the usual washing and preparing, not only to attend my Uncle’s funeral in Suffolk County, but to be in formal attire for the Annual Christmas Party thrown by The Men’s Club of Forest Hills, of which my sister’s grammar school friend and my more recent close friend, Peter Vairo, is president and of which I am one of the Vice Presidents. I piled the tuxedo into the car and picked up some coffee and drove to Diana, warning her of my immanent arrival, as the time neared, well, 8:15… The low coolant light in the car went on and stayed on. I double parked in front of her apartment and rang the bell. Then I phoned and she said I’ll be right down and I said, I’ll be right up. I need gallons of water. When I arrived up there she asked if I knew from where the coolant was leaking. Leaking? I thought it was just low. Down by the car pouring in two gallons of water I noticed the green fluid from the front. I saw dripping after I poured in the water, probably because I missed. It took my eye a while to catch the glint of the steady stream creating the green puddle on the street. Meanwhile a thousand guys, at least, were lined up along the block across the street, not for some parole program, but to take the fireman’s exam. How wonderful. I called Diana to say I was driving to the repair shop, the Three Amigos on Attorney Street. Oh, I called them first. Eduardo accepted my request for an invitation to come right over. When I then called Diana she said she was coming down and coming with me. We loaded her formal wear for later that evening along with mine hanging in the back. We were then driving to the shop, maybe twenty-five blocks away, and the low coolant light went on again and Diana noticed she had forgotten her ring. It was our engagement ring. I was wearing the wedding band her grandmother had worn. Her ring was the engagement ring my grandmother had worn. We would get it later. In fact, I said I didn’t have to take her to the repair shop but she said it was fine. Eduardo, pulling the wire of a plugged-in lantern, immediately located the leak in a hose covered with a plastic slinky wrap. I thought the slinky wrap was the hose and it sure looked terrible. I was about to open the radiator cap to release the pressure and get him started with the repair and he said no and Diana said no and he became emotional about the burn scars he still had on his arm. He went off to work on another car. I opened the radiator cap and left it on the radiator. Then we sat back in the car for coffee and a pecan ring. I called my mother’s portable phone, no answer, and then my sister called me. I just said what was happening and that I’d call them back. I stressed to Eduardo and then began conversing about the details, we are going to a funeral. Yeah, it was my father’s younger brother. He was driving a bus in June and it was lymphoma that made him appear like he had a rapid decline from Alzheimer’s. Two weeks ago I was at the residence where he kept saying “We got the wrong kid.” He must have thought he had a disabled boy who needed to be on another bus in order to get home, but it made sense to me, God, you got the wrong kid. What are you doing to this guy? What is he doing to himself? He retired from being a shoe salesman. His wife and constant companion, Diana, died 10 years ago and he wanted other work, so, until June of his seventy-fifth year, he was driving disabled children to and from school. The night before the funeral at the wake we saw his beautiful picture against the yellow background of his Bus Operator ID card. Talking to Eduardo, I only got up until the lymphoma diagnosis. The pipe was replaced (oh, you don’t wear goggles during welding – no. I close my eyes.). I gave him 60 when he asked for 45 and we were off, to the apartment to pick up the ring.
Through the Midtown Tunnel and off to Suffolk we went. Diana knew Pine Lawn but when I spoke to Monica she said St. Charles, but that’s a part of Pine Lawn. There’s even a Pine Lawn Road which runs through a military cemetery. Over the tracks we made a right. We were there before the funeral procession. They came in, after others came in, got in front of us, we followed and they stopped. My cousin Anthony was in the big white family truck/van in front of us. I walked past him to my parent’s car to say hello after tossing the coffee bag in the trash across the lawn divided roadway. I told him about my engagement to Diana and suggested I get her and he got out instead. We were talking for a minute. They shared Huntington in common. She grew up there; he was raising his family there. They knew the same places. This cemetery was actually nearby. We would put a wreath on her mother’s grave in the St. Pat’s cemetery after the burial. Again, the conversation didn’t get that far. When next we looked the procession was gone. They had just vanished. I called Monica after we followed Anthony around the chapel and she described being at a place exactly where we were. Lots 23 and 23 met as signs at an intersection. Then she said she also saw lots 110 and 43, which made no sense. There were plenty of other processions, some of which were stopped at the chapel and it was possible I could have asked a garden truck if it didn’t accelerate away from us in front of us… Oh, I had many ideas, like ask someone in the chapel when Diana kept saying, the only place to ask is administration. Yes, everyone in the chapels was preoccupied with the newness of the place and what had brought them there. Someone designed the chapels in a circle like slices in a round cake. I ran around the chapel circle. Each time I came to another chapel I thought I’d gone fully around. There must have been seven slices in that chapel cake. There was a big cross on the top. On the phone with Monica it was clear that from where she was, the chapel cross was nowhere in sight. When I got back in the car Diana was on the phone talking to the switchboard operator who was apparently on site in the cemetery. When I got on the phone she put me on hold until a man picked up who had no idea what I was talking about. I said, “Put the operator back on,” she got back on and after a moment I handed the phone back to Diana. I took the turn back to administration so that the operator could actually see us out of the switchboard operator window. We’re the ugly gray Ace Ventura-dented car. She told us by sight what to do. Turn to a completely different section where of course we came upon the lot 23/lot 23 intersection signs, and a scrawled sign hammered in the ground saying this way to lot 110. Come to think of it, the word before the numbers was always “Section,” not “lot.” The burial was done. All they did, they with the casket, after removing it from the black 1960s style Station Wagon, was leave it on wood beams over the open grave. All the flowers are laid around it including the ones Diana had sent from us. We said our Hail Mary over the casket as the rain lightly drizzled and poor cousin Anthony was still in his van, and as the funeral procession left, my parents also remained behind. Then I ran to my parent’s car, which also held Monica in the back seat. Next stop, Miller Ridge Inn. Follow us. OK. Then Anthony who was waiting for us gave us instructions how to get there and bid us “farewell” because he had to return to his wife and children. My father took us out of the cemetery and made a turn into Welbranch or some such horrible Dickensian name for the welfare district of Suffolk. Diana said it was hopeless and had me call them to follow us. She called the Miller Ridge Inn for general instructions and then used her general long Island sense developed over the years to figure out which direction was West on a sunless cloudy rainy day. Eventually we reached 110 and the Long Island Expressway but not without the passage of an inexplicable amount of time. We quickly thereafter arrived at the Inn, Long Island’s Christmas Central. The shops, the tree, the fireplace, the clean food smell -- a lovely luncheon followed during which we heard about what we’d missed. My Uncle, Tony Dizozza’s grandchild, also Diana, chose Revelations Chapter 21 and Psalm 48. Never, said the priest, had he read these at a funeral, and asked who chose the passages. Her parents must have proudly referred the congregation to their daughter, Uncle Tony’s granddaughter. She is only 15 and during her free time participates as an imaginary delegate for India in an after-school Junior UN. Then I read through her father’s, Tony’s son-in-law’s, eulogy. He recalled the barbecue where he met Cathy at their house and of the love between Tony and his wife, Diana. Clichés like All You Need is Love began to be part of larger sentences. You don’t need material things to have a family meeting place, because that’s what their home in far off Brentwood was to us growing up, we’d go there once a month and Tony would barbecue and Diana would be making food in the kitchen. The house was a mirror image to the houses around it, except for those enormous hedges, but to create a place of warmth, welcome and abundance, ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE, and they had that magic formula running smoothly throughout our childhood. Then there was Diana’s bout with cancer and by then, we were no longer making those long family trips through the traffic to visit, and I never visited my Aunt Diana. All this came tumbling upon me as I realized how I hadn’t thought of this in years and perhaps never would have. I was grateful to have visited Tony before he died. The whole pointlessness of existence came tumbling down and I cried. I don’t know why, but I did have a good feeling because of the love they had, and it was hard to find other comparisons. Most hosts make for material abundance, and there’s that, too, but first, and another cliché finishes the sentence, THERE MUST BE LOVE. I don’t know where this leaves me, for I have buried love in irony and sarcasm. Diana is willing to go where I have allowed no person to go before, because I was sure the person who went there would just as quickly leave there, and that is no longer my experience.
Next we left the party -- all were delighted by our engagement announcement -- and proceeded to a nursery in Huntington. Diana had an idea for a floral arrangement for my grandmother and the young lady from FIT who worked there and who had created Uncle Tony’s Flower Basket created it precisely to her specifications. She also made a lavender ribbon for the wreath we chose. We picked out a few red and green leaved plants for my mother. That and an eight-foot bead for the Christmas tree amounted to 175. I missed the calculating as I was off getting v stands for the cemetery wreath, also missing the paying of it. We visited Joan’s grave. I thanked Joan for creating such a wonderful person and for having her after already having five children. She had a beautiful lavender grave with an inscription Diana wrote, Let the heavens ring with laughter, an angel is welcomed home… oh, that’s an inaccurate paraphrase… I wondered if we’d find a fully sculpted Celtic cross amidst the old tombstones. Her mother looks out over the entire valley of graves. The darkness was falling rapidly upon us. We drove to my parents because my mother brought my grandmother there for the evening. We call my grandmother Nanny. We presented nanny with the flowers and showed her the beauty of her ring on Diana’s finger. After dressing, we went to the community house where everyone welcomed Diana and we had a lovely time, even though I forgot it was a bring your own bottle affair. Maybe I just thought the idea of drinking was completely unnecessary. They do, after all, serve a constant flow of sparkling wine. Peter Vairo poured us a smooth cabernet. Everything worked out well.
I will continue to confront dormant emotions. I went home to sleep. Dreams of people politely suggesting I not perform as I was searching the world just to get to them, arriving late, unprepared, alone… It was a big school with many locked entrances and exits. There was a tremendous audience laughing raucously at the act performing before me. I was supposed to perform Prepare to Meet Your Maker. The two impresarios took issue with my telling the story of Isis and Osiris suggesting that the conservative administration would not approve. I was a mess. Oh, I was walking around in my bed sheets.
posted by Peter Dizozza 7:41 AM
One of the controversial events Tyr Throne instigated occurred nearly three years ago at his Duane Street Dance Loft, which was, since then, lost or rather returned into the domain of the building's property owners. Tyr negotiated a 10 year 2,000 a month lease for the loft and by the end of the term other lofts there were renting for 16,000.Last night we were deciphering the Prepare to Meet Your Maker performance history for suggestions of where it will next go. The performance that Tyr stressed was most worth screening was the one he called the Rimshot performance because that was the one in which he told everyone to improvise freely, and, we could see when we started watching the performance, following a long and shocking process of figuring out which tapes it was on, that the 11 castmembers entering the stage 'round midnight on Friday, December 10th, 1999, were clearly "in their cups," milling about with drinks in their hands like guests at a cocktail party. (The exception, I believe, was Chris West. I was delighted to see how outrageous Chris became during the performance because when he first entered the screen he was clearly holding a water bottle.)
What a window into the past was this tape. To Tyr's credit -- and it is sometimes a chore to suggest to some people that there is anything to his credit, when there is, in fact, a lot -- he directed us to perform the show within an imaginary cone. He placed the camera on the front and center aisle. We filled the flat frame picture with action. This is a rather effective idea. Only cast action is within the video frame. When we moved back (upstage)we had plenty of area but when we moved closer toward the audience we imagined we were moving into the funnel tip of a cone.
So, thanks to a VHC camera that was already 7 years old at the time, we viewed the chaotic festivity; and everyone was, in a word, rambunctious.
Remember MASH (1970)? It was on TV the night before, and I imagined the chaos of being there versus the pleasure of watching it. I'm talking about the conditions that appear to have actually existed during the filming.
Onto the personal ego element of realization. I saw myself playing Quasimodo, the lead role, in the videotape. In case you don't know, I'm a skinny fellow. I weighed 130 and looked kind of frightening and, well, like we were saying about John Candy and early Jim Carey, I'm acting almost like a whore for the comedy. Why is the implication contained in that statement encouraging to the audience? Actually, I'm miles away from my inner whore. Since when do I have dignity? Elegance is incidental. Children forgive me, your shameless, issueless father.
My last performance as Quasimodo was in December of 1999.
Tony Hightower took over at the height of the PTMYM popularity, as you may also know, but even before, the Tyr Throne backlash was clearly formenting, something that concerns me still, since it is pressure from many sides that suggests I break off involvement with him, and I once again affirm the benefits of his company. By the way, Tyr benefits from interaction with Gabrielle Roth, who must be quite an inspiring person. He called the Prepare to Meet Your Maker script "a map." He believes in shocking people into aliveness. I do, too.Actors get the benefit of learning from their participation in the organized social interaction that is their script.
Audiences get the benefit of kernals of inspiration from observing from a safe distance a disorganized mess.
posted by Peter Dizozza 2:31 PM
An expose' on the inner workings of the meme infested brain of Peter Dizozza.
posted by Peter Dizozza 2:26 PM
Ah, the words of that great songwriter, David Byrne, come back to me as I open these pistachios...
"They say animals (ana muls) are hairy. They're living on nuts and berries." mmm, good. More nuts, more berries.I love the moment, "Some people don't know... shit about the Ayyyyyyyyyyer." ( from "Air" on that live four sided talking heads album, the one where he coughs out, "mee mow mow, mama me mow mow.") I also love the song on there about "The Book I Read was in your Eyes." Is that the one with the chant, "wash that love away"? I think so. There is happiness in discovering that one's yelping can be pleasing.
It helps to have easy access to music, but there is a glut on the market, I think in all areas of US culture, disposable hundredmilliondollarmovies, more music than I can listen to in a weekend, in fact, why don't I a) listen to more music, b) see more movies, d) watch more TV shows, e) attend more live shows... I don't now and when I did, well, I was very controlling of the circustances under which I did. I enjoy my own material, it's full of illuminating surprises... I want an audience. Come on, I want to BE an audience. What if I told you I only write to fill what's lacking in what's already out there? It's true. I've gotta get more pistachios.
Art is my consolation. Trash it if you must. Our value system is askew, and I would dare to willingly profit from that.... I'm currently paying 120 a month for it, oh Time Warner Cable, would it were provided to me for free.
A friend faxed the inheritance letter from South Africa, she's the lucky recipient and if she doesn't claim it, it reverts to the South African Government, those scoundrels, of 25 Million Dollars!!! Then comes the letter from Canada requesting a transfer of 6500 in administration fees. They'll even loan her the money.
I get something intangibly helpful from entertainment, but it's helpful for me as an entertainer. We are experiencing a glut from good entertainers. In fact, when I hear inspiring music I want to and actually start to write. That's not self motivation. That's the bandwagon. But everything arises out of something else, it's just some things only affect a few of us.
posted by Peter Dizozza 2:26 PM
We all know that Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl, but can you imagine calling The Crown Prince of Denmark a pretty nice boy? Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah yeah. He is.I'm listening to songs by Serge Gainsborough (thank you, Adam Green). Randy Newman (thank you, Brian Wayne) and Ben Folds (thank you, Kenny Davidsen).
posted by Peter Dizozza 2:35 PM
The New York Film Festival is in its fortieth year! The panel respects the right of expression. Last night we saw a comedy produced by an auteur from Palestine.
posted by Peter Dizozza 7:10 AM
All right, I saw the Palestinian film. There was formerly a British Colony, whose contract expired in the 1940's, called Palestine.There was also once a country called Lebanon.
Moving right along, there was also a performance last night at the Bruno Walter Auditorium of songs from Johnny Johnson by Paul Green and Kurt Weill. We caught the last four pieces. What beautiful music!
I adopt Mr. Suleiman's suggestion of a world without borders. Does that mean I let people walk into my apartment at will? Yes, and they do not. They have their own lives to lead. Better we work together. Everything I have and am are yours!
posted by Peter Dizozza 7:59 AM
I'm taking atenolol. And tegretal, a name I just made up because I never heard it before, is actually a name for another medication. Try it sometime. Make up something believable, or even unbelievable, and, surprise, it already exists.
posted by Peter Dizozza 1:42 PM
Yeah, I'm actually feeling quite weird regarding my heart's ability to palpitate uncontrollably in a uselessly short-circuited rhythm. What's the sequence? Oh, forget it. I'm taking tegretal. Also, I lost my keys out of the hole in my jacket. Also, I managed to have a superhoot with no one there. I had a good set. Other people were there staying after the act before or waiting for the act after and I received 20 dollars in tips for a half hour set. Your events are what you make them, and sometimes more. I disappointed Fenton Lawless who came out for the superhoot. Apparently there was no 10:30 act so there was dead space from 10:30 until 11. That's what I get for leaving during the prior act. I'm on jury duty, too. The criminal cases are fascinating, but stupid! A rich callgirl cocaine afficianado calls his DEA friends when someone tries to extort from him, the other two I know less of... One involved asking the prospective jury the question, Do you have any reservations about the gypsy people or, as they are called, Gypsies???? Then one about an eccentric memorabilia collector who may have been robbed by a long haired lanky friend.
posted by Peter Dizozza 9:48 PM
I'm transferring notes from a piece of paper, one step from being refuse, to the electronic media! Having just jumped from the michaeldouglas.blogspot I will proceed with the Goethe/Lange Werther quotes: Stir within me sensations of love, joy, rapture and delight, which I already possess, though otherwise dormant. I must already possess them for you to be able to make me feel them, because you cannot make happy he who stands before you cold and indifferent. -- that's quite a paraphrase. Werther was leaving the company of a prince to return to his principle obsession/love interest, the married Charlotte (She gives me access to all I possess.).Here are some of his problems with the prince:
And now, here he is, talking only of things which he has either read or heard of, and always from the point of view from which they have been represented by others, it's The Prince!
I lose patience when, glowing with imagination, I express my feelings about art and nature and he, thinking to be especially understanding, spoils everything with his cliches!
Finally, "I have heard of a noble race of horses that instinctively bite open a vein when they are hot and exhausted by a long run, in order to breathe more freely. I am often tempted to open a vein to gain everlasting liberty for myself."
(Paraphrases and quotes from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), translated by Victor Lange (1949).
posted by Peter Dizozza 12:14 PM
nothing nothing nothing monumental momentary clarity nothing nothing repeat repeat repeat repeat
posted by Peter Dizozza 9:12 PM
Moods are off kilter tonight.The words that reduce me to tears, sung by composer Kate Bush, are "I just know that something good is going to happen. I don't know when, but just SAYING it can even make happen."
"Comfort ye, my people."
posted by Peter Dizozza 8:44 PM
That dip in the Atlantic Ocean yesterday during Patsy's party really unrested my inner expansiveness! Help.
posted by Peter Dizozza 5:50 PM
One indictment of selfishness after the other... I'm selfish. It limits me. I go from one avoidance to another. I got a taste of something last night, of limitless possibility, and I became afraid of the serendipity. Behaviour is predictable, especially the behaviour of the unobserved.
posted by Peter Dizozza 7:49 PM
I really have to cut out this 120 dollar a month all in one time warner cable. "Who the hell are you to touch my niggers?" It's Mandingo, a movie about to burst with violence but for now, it's just master slave sadism. This movie was everywhere meaning along the subway walls in a monster ad campaign when I was riding that old F train to Arch Bishop Malloy High School. I'm shocked to see James Mason doing an accent job on the US South. "Marry a white girl, then no more black girls, can't have 'em." "Oh yes you can, saves her from having to submit and when she do you keep on your shirt and drawers..." "New Orleans, that's the place to go, they remove clothes there." Mason has his feet on the cute little black boy and now it's time for a horsedriven carriage ride. The slaves are a marchin' with their american flag leading the way. What am I watching here at 12:24 Thursday morn? Tomorrow, perhaps to the Guggenheim, all I have to do is find the invitation for the Moving Pictures Exhibit opening. "You got that old Mandingo buck, the best fighting niggers..." I see a Spartacus in the making... The hotel staff just dropped off the girls for the guys, little black girls pawed by the white men. You take the virgin, I don't want no hard work. Wap, slaps the no hard worker, a real surprise for her. "Yes master." This does play upon issues of inadequacy and domination. These guys need serious therapy, or serious acknowledgment. One of the guys is sickened by the others whipping tendency. The pretty skinny girl with the tightly cut hair looks compassionately back at him for being different, for caring what a white man does with his wenchy. His leg is somehow lame... Oh, it's getting romantic and except for their size the male and female could be compatible. "I like you, sir... please you..." Tears for both. Press the info button. 1975.I liked Ghost World, an infinitely watchable film, nearly 'til the end, it's the sequel to Revenge of the Super Nerds Part One, which is better known as Crumb. (Thank you, Queens Library DVD Collection)
I saw the exact same portion, the last hour, of Polanski's The Ninth Gate, again tonight following my visit to Don Shaw's for some Latin Jazz playing, an experience that stands apart from my daily activity, as does the experience yesterday with Amachi...
Ah movies. What impressed me, and that's what the mysteries of 8 will consider here, was the Ninth Gate's ever changing landscape. It is an elegant film. Note that Lena Olin recieves suitably sadistic treatement, Polanski subtly stimulating the sadists with the details, her nudity beneath the cape, her flesh wobbling when Frank Langella kicks her away.
Do you expect me to believe The Ultra-Elegant Johnny Depp concerns himself with finding the book pieces for himself? I can't imagine, although he has a convincing response to his delightful female companion, Emmanuel. Okay, I'm posting now, I'm looking up info on her quirkiness. I rather enjoyed their interaction. In fact, I rather enjoy the film. Is that great filmmaking on a panderingly popular level? I love Polanski's film, Cul de sac. For reasons perhaps perhaps obvious to all but myself,
I feel very close to his work.
posted by Peter Dizozza 9:47 PM
Emmanuelle Seigner is married to Roman Polanski. She makes looking tired look good. Thank you for that and good night.
posted by Peter Dizozza 9:57 PM
Tomorrow is my 15 year Law School Reunion and the opening of The Prepare to Meet Your Maker SIng-A-Long Song-A-Thon at the WAH Center. How to attend both... hm.
posted by Peter Dizozza 9:16 PM
In 1949 Maurice Sandoz wrote about the Tsatsa, the Jivaro's shrunken head (The woman for whom he was obtaining it dies before he can give it to her! His head, thereafter, shrinks while the Tstasa's head expands. The fun in the story precedes these disappointing denouements.). The book containing this and other stories about conversations with the insane, with illustrations by Salvador Dali, is entitled "On The Verge."
posted by Peter Dizozza 9:50 AM
The mixture of elation and sadness is extreme again. It is tempered with an unusual hope based upon the uniqueness of the circumstance, despite its elements of familiarity. It's something new based upon a new combination.
For those who don't know, 'cause I didn't...
1. You ask me challenging questions about myself.
2. I answer.
3. You listen.
4. I fall in love with you.
It's narcissism. I do the same with you. It's narcissism. Two people in love? Narcissism. Speaking like someone who knows about this is also narcissism.
posted by Peter Dizozza 9:20 AM
Go forth with the intent to do something and see what you get. If you don't find love, the consolation prize will be to achieve what you set out to do.
posted by Peter Dizozza 1:32 PM
Edward Di Maio came by the office today. I worked with him in the distant past and knew him as Eddie Dimaio. He resides with a family of Quakers in Lafayette Indiana. Major breakthroughs occurred in his life when he met his father -- he no longer needed to look for his father in other people. He teaches breathing as a meditation and is preparing for publication a book of poetry. His website is http://www.thefaceofmay.com.
posted by Peter Dizozza 1:09 PM
I herein acknowledge the death during the month of April of three friends under 45, in order of departure, Alex Reyes, Horace White and Robert O'Connor.
posted by Peter Dizozza 12:23 PM
Listening to Marshall Mathers I realize,
If it's not sex to have babies, it doesn't matter which sex you are.
posted by Peter Dizozza 8:04 AM
Kim pointed out that The Piano Teacher looks interesting. To my surprise, the film credits Isabella Hupert as the lead. There is an isolated history within the vast subgroup, French Cinema. I'm trying to remember any films that do not stem from the isolated history -- Oh, Cocteau's films. That's another subgroup including Melville. One of my favorite films is Melville's film of Cocteau's Les Infants Terribles.The other delightful stream of films connects with Depardeau and others, including Ms. Hupert above. Bertrand Blier is director.
Oh, The Piano Teacher is from Germany. Michael Haneke directed. David Denby writing for The New Yorker loved it.
posted by Peter Dizozza 8:24 AM
666
777
888
big dealExcuse me, I saw some scenes from Chinatown, the names Alonso, Polanski, Houston, Nicholson Dunnaway, Towne, may come to mind. Are there any shots that look like when it was made? Are there hairstyles or minor details that reveal THE NINETEEN SEVENTIES? Finally, please filmmakers, be careful with manipulating and enhancing natural lighting. If you are filming during what is supposed to be a certain time of day you may only have 10 or 15 minutes in which to do so.
posted by Peter Dizozza 8:51 AM
Who governs the land I own? Me. I am Caesar and this is my Palace. If I say you're on the 31st floor, you are, even if there are only 15 below you!
posted by Peter Dizozza 8:07 AM
A great big debt I left unpaid
I borrowed on love I’d not yet made.I have to go to love today
I’ve got to love. I love to live.
I love so hard from nine to five.More than any buccaneer is
How much love I make a year.But now I’m on vacation, dear.
Pornography is knowledge here.
And knowledge shatters paradise.
Meet me there. I’ll see you guys!Love, Peter
posted by Peter Dizozza 2:07 PM
The John Seroff Eleventh Hour played for four performances at The WAH Center. Guided by the 1999 version and inspired by the recent discovery of the 1974 version, he raised the dramatic opportunities.In 1999 I received a La MaMa commission to write a play for their Experiments reading series and, with nothing but the Lost Horizon album with the reordered track sequence to guide me, I wrote it.
In December I found the electronics notebook with the 1974 version
John has the thirteen year-old boy create the story for the audience in real time. The six actors do all in their power to share his visions. I have enpowered John Seroff and he, unlike me, is not afraid of people not liking him. He willingly creates and braves the storm.
The Eleventh Hour history is as follows: Note that every presentation has received a good attendance. Despite and because of the danger in content and presentation, mounting a production of this play is a good investment opportunity.
March 13, 1999 at La Mama La Galleria with Cheryl and Jeff
Two more performances at La TeaDecember 30th, 2001, the Sidewalk Toby and Cockroach event.
My reading at The Dempsey's Pub of the 1974 version on February 10th, 2002
March 15, 16, 22 & 23 2002 WAH Center performances of the John Seroff version (Jennifer Stuckert and Nadja Stokes).
posted by Peter Dizozza 1:10 PM
Oh sure, I saw Pollock, the movie, thanks to Jon Berger and his efforts to obtain interesting DVDs from the library, and through it I learned how to make the work of a well know artist appear negligible: Ignore the continuous line dripping that made studying his paintings such fun for some.[2/6/2002 8:46:30 PM | Peter Dizozza]
posted by Peter Dizozza 10:10 PM
[1/11/2002 10:17:02 PM | Peter Dizozza]
You know, the ever expanding universe is not the greatest thing because it means
that the distance between us is increasing. Nor is love necessarily the answer,
especially for intellectuals who are more susceptible to passionate obsession as
a result of allowing it into their lives. Ask Sherlock Holmes. You know, this is
a little post.
[12/20/2001 7:32:54 PM | Peter Dizozza]
A day passes and a project is that much closer to completion in a race against
time. There are so many projects in various stages of development, and what of
the necessities of life? Take care of the barest of them and proceed with
project development. We'll get it done, then others can take it and grow with
it. Everything is in process. I can go back in time to recover works imperfectly
preserved, newly preserved in this digital age. I found a cassette recording of
songs from The Augusteia, an opera I worked on in the 70's. I made a wave file
out of a performance of "Out of The Grave." The first verse is
Feels like I've just woke up out of the grave,
And every evening I'm expecting the same,
The same sleepy spoof of what I have done
Throughout the makings of a typical day. I'd hate to
Look back on all this as being some kind of highpoint cause I'm
Just feeling strangely in the usual way.
There. It's regenerated.
What's the point of being prolific if the work's not great? Is the material
worthwhile? It's not a question, it simply is. Enough of that. I have my own
life to live, I life I barely care to live in an effort to transfer life into
work, and myself into my own audience. Sharing and developing go hand in hand.
Beware of recidivism... Now back to my old ways...
[11/24/2001 10:41:17 PM |
Peter Dizozza]
The mystery of the November 12th post below is my reaction to the apparent
malfunction crash of the Dominican Republic bound American Airlines jet. Since
then I have learned that Chris and Laura Evangeliste would have been on that
flight had it not been for a fundraiser at the West Side Tennis Club. Anyway,
the fundraiser was not for the WTC disaster so I still have no direct awareness
of or contact with any order or sense in the universe.
[11/12/2001 8:55:10 PM | Peter Dizozza]
Talk about coincidence, these morning surprises two months apart, and one year
after the car vandalism, well, the car vandalism was highly personal. It was a
year ago that we returned from Art OMI for my friend, Jeff's birthday, and, Oh
My. I'm calling now to wish Jeff a happy birthday.
I'm on the phone with him .
[11/9/2001 7:47:15 PM | Peter Dizozza]
and the accidents occurred at either the point of departure or destination...
[11/9/2001 7:46:39 PM | Peter Dizozza]
On September 26th I posted here that "Dr. Evil did this to pit East against
West! This is the classic James Bond story. Thank heavens we haven't taken
the bait and have shown such restraint." On October 7th, the US attacked
Afghanastan. A friend suggested that we had and have to do something; the
anonymous aggressive act against us serving to focus our efforts, which had
frankly grown dissipated.
This week I came across many motor vehicle cases that reminded me of the world
trade center tragedy, in that drivers of stolen cars kept smashing into
passenger filled gypsy cabs. hmm...
[10/21/2001 8:28:31 PM | Peter Dizozza]
Here's a mystery. My sister, Monica, was a member of the choir in the soundtrack
to the movie, Fame. You remember that insanely melodramatic early Alan Parker
production that became his and MGM's gift to the student bodies of the NYC High
Schools of Music and Art and Art and Design.
Well, Joie DBG understandably mispelled my surname in the upcoming East Village
Outdoor Antifolk Revue at the Central Park Bandshell (The Revue is this Sunday,
October 28th.) so I ran a search under the name as mispelled, with the reversed
zs.. dizzoza.. during my search for listings...
Monica came up with the mispelled last name in the Barnes and Nobles credit
listing for Fame, with a link to Naytionz
Capital. So the question is, Why does Barnes and Nobles list my sister as one of
the producers of Fig Naytionz new album,
Naytionz Capital? Here it is:
Album Credits
Fig Naytion
Primary Artist
Phonk Beta
Producer <