LEGENDS! like dinosaurs!

Last Tuesday, Feb 20th Paul and I saw LEGENDS!

An onstage endorsement for BOTOX, and probably setting the stage for an eponymous chain of quick laser plastic surgery kiosks, stop in at JOAN (Collins) AND LINDA (Evans)'s, free crows feet removal with every chin lift. I enjoyed it, first play we had seen in a long time. Paul said the storyline was lacking, a few days later so did the reviewers.

Check it out:

www.legendsthecomedy.com

Before the play we went to Carson Pirie Scott for one last time, it closed the next day. There were mannequins, I love MANNEQUINS! There is a picture of Paul.....


I love google docs…….

Ah the theater of the aged replaces the theater of the ABSURD....

Winter as Migraine

I think the extreme cold weeks are like a migrain in slow motion. Dull, stifling, aching. Tormenting. I expect cold in the winter – but not sub zero wind chills for weeks on end. Its slowly depressing, creating aches in knees, enough immobilizing layering to qualify as basic training gear. HELL.

Like a migraine.

Now when the SUN comes out I grin like an idiot- ok, more of an idiot than normal. Even if the wind makes it feel like -15.

SO in a week or two when the sun comes out and the temperature hits, oh, maybe 33 what will happen? That merging of weather joys?

If you have ever had a migraine you know how debilitating it is. BUT YOU ALSO KNOW THE EUPHORIC JOY when it lifts: you lived, the pain is gone. The metal spikes that were boring into your head are gone. Relief. EUHPORIA. You feel like a new person.

After the cold spell (so fitting a term if not almost backwood patois) will the Midwest feel a Euphoria? Will Upstate New Yorkers dance in the streets like Druids at solstice? Will it be akin to the last survivors of a nuclear war opening the bomb shelter door in an old movie and looking up at a blue sky? The end of a long winter St. Petersburg night: to see the SUN?

In Chicago its odd; there are large black birds, crows. Paul and I call them flying dinosaurs - . Even in this weather they are gliding from building to building. They will survive (I have not seen a cockroach in years, but they too will survive).

Ah, weather.com indicates Euphoria may strike next week!

oh, where is Tippi Hedren when you need her?

books, authors, rare books, collecting

I read this fine book on books. If you are curious about the interplay between authors and their (or other's) physical works this is a great read. Gekoski knew them all, from Tolkein to Graham Green to Rushdie and relates great quirky stories. . .

The Toronto Star

December 19, 2004 Sunday

HEADLINE: True tales between the lines

Author Rick Gekoski might cringe to
hear it but his wildly readable Nabokov's Butterfly is like the E! True
Hollywood Story of celebrated 20th century literature. It's a behind-the-scenes
tell-all with all the hallmarks: huge successes, bitter rejections, elicit
affairs (straight and gay), bad planning, worse executions and piles of money
made and lost.

Call it word porn for book nerds. Nabokov's
Butterfly is a page-turner. Bet you never thought you could say that and James
Joyce in the same breath. As we're told in the introduction, Gekoski, an
expatriate American in England, early on traded a career in teaching for a tour
of duty as a "full-time rare book dealer specializing in 20th century first
editions and manuscripts.

"Admittedly," he writes, "it was a risky
thing to do but it worked. I was happier being my own boss, swanning about
buying and selling the odd book. In the first year I made twice my previous
university salary, and had three hundred times more fun."

BBC Radio
soon realized anyone diving headlong into - not to mention wagering thousands of
dollars on - coveted copies of Salinger, Golding, Kerouac, Tolkien, Rushdie, et
al., would have some neat tales to tell. Nabokov's Butterfly picks up where
Gekoski's Rare Books, Rare People radio series left off.

The
criteria for inclusion are simple yet arbitrary. Books must have what Gekoski
describes as "complex biographies. They must be valued in the rare book market.
In many cases I have good stories to tell about them, from a dealer's point of
view."

Truth in advertising there. Gekoski dishes riveting back
stories about such hallowed titles as Lord Of The Flies, The Catcher In The Rye,
Brideshead Revisited, Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, Animal Farm,
Ulysses, Lolita and The Satanic Verses, to name eight of the 20
explored.

Gekoski hammers some titles mercilessly, though he's very
funny. Take this passage about Salman Rushdie:

"Like many readers,
I never finished The Satanic Verses. On every page I found something to admire
... It had genius, but there was something unrelentingly same-y about the prose,
and the succession of scenes, that made me feel that, after a few hundred pages,
I'd had enough. I wasn't disappointed exactly, just prematurely
satisfied."

Or this, detailing Gekoski's litigious brush with
reclusive author J.D. Salinger: "No sooner had the material arrived, than I
received a phone call from the offices of Salinger's literary agents ... I was
informed by a woman with a voice racked by indignation and cigarettes, which
could have frozen the blood of an Orc, that I was in serious
trouble."

Naturally, nothing compares to the stories, some
well-worn, some apparently fresh, about the books themselves. How Harry Potter
author J.K. Rowling was initially rejected by everyone from Penguin to
HarperCollins. How Kerouac's buddy Ginsberg carved On The Road as "crazy in a
bad way." How D.H. Lawrence was unable to craft Sons And Lovers until his
mother, who Gekoski reckons had "appropriated" her son's life, died in
1911.

Supporting such drama are juicy bits detailing how Gekoski
came to buy and sell copies of the books in question, including the prices he
paid and the sums he earned through shrewd maneuvering. We meet everyone from
Graham Greene to "Mr." Tolkien, Frodo's creator.

Nabokov's
Butterfly is irresistible for anyone who digs real-life yarns stuffed with
triumph, tragedy and a litany of mishaps by publisher.

Kim Hughes
is a lead reviewer for amazon.ca.

Nabokov's
Butterfly:

And Other Stories Of Great Authors And Rare Books

are you somebody? do you think?

I KNOW I need to ad corn starch to this.

THE NEXT GIANT DISSONANCE:

The FIRST PERSON’S NEED for the THIRD PERSON’S SMILE: (as in grammar)

A Clash of Civilization, or maybe a nascent cultural war: a future battle between musical lyrics and philosphy, between a statement written by the Father of Philosophy (pointless over thinking) with rat pack popularized lyrics (pointless nostalgia).

Descarte’s 1637 observation (to call it a realization imples accpetance, huh?) “COGITO ERGO SUM” versus a song from the waning years of WW II’s “You’re nobody till Somebody Loves You” made famous by Dean Martin, then Frank Sinatra. Hardly known are the big name THINKERS/composers, Cavanaugh, Morgan and Stock.


I have telepathied this to the UN SECURITY COUNCIL about this inchoate conflict, but they had left the Chambers for PJ CLARK’S after a question about a deaf mute in a forest who saw a single armed man attempting to clap while a flock of vultures suffering unmedicated incontinence flew over head.


GUESS being/thinking is second to that one, illusration by Van Gogh forthcoming.

FYI:


KEY Lyrics:
You're nobody, nobody 'til somebody loves you
So find yourself somebody

Gotta get yourself somebody

Because you're nobody 'til somebody loves you
You're nobody 'til somebody cares

(http://www.geocities.com/merrystar3/allysongs/YoureNobodyTilSomebody )


You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You"
By James Cavanaugh, Russ Morgan and Larry Stock


“You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You" is a popular song.

It was written by Russ Morgan, Larry Stock, and James Cavanaugh (musician) and published in 1944. The song was first recorded by Morgan, but it is best known in versions by Dean Martin and by The Mills Brothers. It has also been recorded by many others.

or

COGITO ERGO SUM:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-epistemology/#4

[ from the looks of things the song has one the minds of the today, for in an episode of the Simpson’s giant monster advertising CHARACTERS came to life and terrorized Springfield after a bolt of lightning and incensed by Homer’s theft of a donut. THE MONSTERS VANISHED when they were ignored . . . clearly not thinking to being on their parts –unloved and ignored they DIED. But wait, they were inanimate, but no, they were alive, like frankensteins monster. Without his moral underpinings – they are Madison Avenue thought controllers after all.]

Dateline: the Ice Station Zero Chicago Style, but no fire in the moors!

I made a fine stew, you know its kind of cold here. Zero now and then below zero; and a wind chll of -15 – 30 now and then. So stew, made in a slow cooker a devoted friend sent me for my birthday. I still have the Walt Whitman she sent me in 1997 sitting right here. GREAT birthday momentos. Recipe below.

That is a fine WESTBEND SLOW COOKER, a delectable stew with little to do (stay in bed covered up). By the time I snapped this we had eaten half.

The recent birthday: well momentos of that day have not stoppped: AARP sent a membership offer, now that’s a cheery piece of mail.

So, Saturday, Paul and I were watching Perry Mason in his room. Snug as bugs in rugs with bowls of stew. Then the fire alarm schrieked: Stay in Your Apartment until the Fire Department advises you to leave. Yes, stay in, we knew that, 46 floors, we are on 26 everyone 84 years old . . . . a single unit disaster most likely if anything.

Ok, zero, wind chills. We got dressed up, Paul put on his best watch, I put the book of the moment in my bag. Lined up our prescriptions to grab last. We watched the lobby camera. NO FIRE (no announcement of safety either tho); seems a motor in a heating fan started to smoke. On the floor below us. On the 25th floor.

Do not be alarmed, the planet is ending was on the evening news.

Ah so cold, and global warming seems to exist (but not in Chicago in February). Long ago I read The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilisation by Brian Fagan
284pp, Granta, £20 (review that got me interested: http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/scienceandnature/0,,1226990,00.html )

a charming book on what sudden climate shifts did to people in the past 20,000 years – most died or moved – think Katrina, or have you seen THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW? Change long ago was so gradual, now . . . . well . . .

Of course modern man will breed a super potato that can grow in the desert and a 10 foot tall asparagus too - by then the food POLICE WILL have BANned HOLLANDAISE I AM SURE—I think there already is a self basting turkey in DC. Smile and be calm: Pangloss says we will be safe –wait, Pangloss’s smile is knotting up, my god it’s a just a happy mask, ITS ITS : Dick Darth Vader Cheney in an Exxon sweatshirt!

Imagine an unimaginable change in the jet streams that would leave the southeast or the southwest arid deserts. Of course that would never happen, how could it (solar flares, sun spots, man made nuclear devices detonated by some James Bond villain, giant forest fires . . . .). Nah, never happen.

Get out the bagpipes, instrument of choices for dirges . . . . What if Scotland vanished, here today, gone tomorrow? Nah, never happen.

What are those reserved Scots themselves saying?

The Herald (Glasgow, Scotland (UK), and established in 1783)
February
4, 2007

RISING SEA LEVELS THAT POSE THREAT TO
SCOTLAND

Rising sea levels could cause huge damage to low-lying
areas of Scotland, including its major cities, scientists warned
yesterday.

Glasgow, Edinburgh, Perthshire and Dundee, as well as
numerous coastal and river areas, are all under threat, they said, as they
issued their bleakest warning yet about the threat from climate
change.

And:

Agriculture could be particularly hard
hit, with warmer temperatures leading to the possibility of new diseases and
pests and decreased water supplies. Climate change is also likely to affect
tourism hot spots, causing greater erosion in Scottish hills and a rising risk
of fire in the moorlands in hotter, drier summers.

Entire clips: http://www.theherald.co.uk/display.var.1167886.0.0.php?utag=27754


[[ Cheney also defended U.S. opposition to a global warming pact in his comments. He said the accord would have "devastating economic consequences" for this country and cited unresolved scientific questions about the causes of global warming. (Cheney spoke Wednesday afternoon at the National Press Club. The gathering was co-hosted by Milwaukee-based Johnson Controls Inc. -- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Wisconsin)
June 14, 2001 ]]

A terror free environment with wealthy oil companies and no life on the planet…

++

More stew? Oh, time for hot chocolate……

Try it:

SLOW COOKER BEEF STEW

2 1/2 lbs. beef stew meat
5
lg. potatoes, cut in chunks
1 med. onion, chopped (not fine)
4 lg carrots,
chopped in chunks
3 lg. ribs celery
1 1/2 c. tomato juice
1/2 c. dry
red wine or water
1/4 c. quick cooking tapioca
2 tsp. salt
2 sm. bay
leaves
1 tsp. dried basil
1/4 tsp. pepper

Mix all ingredients
in 4 or 6 quart slow cooker. Cover and cook at setting #3 (low) for 7 to 9 hours
or at setting #5 (high) for 3 to 4 hours until meat and vegetables are tender.
(Stir stew several times throughout cooking time.)

OH, the COLD, the TRIBUNE, the cold:

I mastered burning (backing up) DVDs. For a long time I have made audio CD’s for paul, taking songs from this or that cd so he’d have a CD with his favorites.

He listens all night long, sometimes its kind of too much and wakes him up. I found some old radio broadcasts of the NYC blackout of 1971 and burned them to cd.

HERE IT IS: HG WELLS’ TIME MACHINE, turn the lights out and you are there as they travel Manhattan describing the blackout, what was on First and 40th, up town, downtown, east side, west side…. But not one Eloi to be seen…

http://donswaim.com/wcbssoundpage.html scroll down its all fun, even the recent blackout is there (we were there, but did not have a radio to listen to it)

NYC POWER OUTAGE, FEB. 6, 1971. Long time Newsradio 88 fans will recognize the voices of George Reading, John Lynker, Palmer Payne, Jack Welby, Allegra
Branson, and meterologist Gordon Barnes. On part 3, Bob Scheiffer anchors a
network hourly along with Robert Shackney. Then an excerpt of the WCBS
public affairs broadcast Let's Find Out with Dick Reeves and Steve Flanders.
Audio courtesy of Charles Sanzone.

Backout Part I 2/6/71 (33:43)
Backout Part 2 2/6/71 (53:23)
Backout Part 3 2/6/71 (34:49)

In a New York kind of mood I finished Paul Auster’s NEW YORK TRILOGY, a fine book. Fun stories, kind of surreal in the beginning, demanding, the last one is the best one.

Hear an interview with Auster, from 1987 (more time travel)

http://wiredforbooks.org/paulauster/index.htm

I am reading THE BRAM STOKER BEDSIDE COMPANION (10 stories by the author of Dracula) at the moment. I was reading about Stoker while reading Dracula and saw it mentioned. It has a story, DRACULA’S GUEST, that was extracted from the published novel – so I felt a bit cheated…AND ITS IS A GOOD LITTLE STORY. I got it used from abebooks.com -- old.

http://librivox.org/dracula-by-bram-stoker/ if you want to listen . . .


http://librivox.org/newcatalog/ is a page that I JUST LOVE, find anything from Poe to the Owl and the Pussycat…..


on Bram, did you know he wrote this fascinating book, I am still looking.

New York Times
SOME FAMOUS IMPOSTORS; Mr. Bram Stoker Includes Among Them the "Man" Known as Queen Elizabeth

February 26, 1911, Sunday
Section: Review of Books, Page BR107, 549
words

FIRST PARAGRAPH - IN his book entitled "Famous Impostors,"*
Mr. Bram Stoker, after sketching for us the careers of a well-selected group of
acknowledged pretenders, swindlers, charlatans, and masqueraders, such as Perkin
Warbeek, Stephen Mali, Princess Olin, John Law, Arthur Orton, La Maupin,
Chevalier d'Eon and Hannah Snell, invites our attention to an alleged tradition
to the effect that Queen Elizabeth was a man.

--john

Now that my birthday has past and I enter the 2nd half of my first century I keep noticing ‘age’ remarks in what I read. First it was the Somerset Maugham I quoted in my birthday post. Sane and rational were his words. See somewhere below.

Of course it didn’t help when I was called to work on Saturday: stand outside a skyscraper on the river and watch for billionaires. Ok, a building with half a dozen entrances, some underground. 15 degrees. What billionaire in his right mind is going to waltz out the front door and hail a cab (in a part of the city with very very very little Saturday traffic?). I watched from a plexi glass bus shelter/ ice cube maker until my water bottle started to freeze, about 3 hours. Then I returned home, joints chilled, knees stiff.

And now my reading attacks me with more age remarks:
BUT NOW:

I just finished EVERYDAY LIFE by Lydie Salvayre (a modern day french novelist), so its cross cultural, a hilarious book kind of like the Wall Street Journal's column CUBICLE CULTURE run amuck, an older, rather paranoid secretary, Suzanne encounters time’s menace:

My Dear Suzanne, begins Monsieur Meyer in an unctuous tone . . . you may be unaware, my dear Suzanne, that for the ailing or burned-out who are closing in on sixty . . time passes so quickly doesn’t it . . we have a provision for the ailing and the burnouts, and you do fit in that category, my dear Suzanne . . . . there’s the option for an early retirement that offers nearly all the benefits of a normal retirement. (page 117)

On Lydie:
http://www.pen.org/page.php/prmID/1163

http://www.frenchbooknews.com/detail.php?livre_id=133&categorie_livre=Livre_Francais


http://www.frenchculture.org/a_lydie-salvayre-everyday-life_531.cfm



_)_)_)_)()()()()

and I have been trying to read this for the first time, but rarely get past this section ….:

Dostoevsky, Fyodor . Notes from the Underground
Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library

That is my conviction of forty years. I am forty years old now, and you know forty years is a whole lifetime; you know it is extreme old age. To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral. Who does live beyond forty? Answer that, sincerely and honestly I will tell you who do: fools and worthless fellows. I tell all old men that to their face, all these venerable old men, all these silver-haired and reverend seniors! I tell the whole world that to its face! I have a right to say so, for I shall go on living to sixty myself. To seventy! To eighty! ... Stay, let me take breath ...

god, they're killing me softly . . . Killing me softly with his song, Telling my whole life with his words, Killing me softly with his song ... With his song ... where is Roberta?

I must return to Victor Pelevin, something comical/satirical/ -- almost conspiratorially hilarious . . . is that chicken talking to me or the possum I’m having a drink with?

-all grins

I never thought I’d enjoy this, and mispronounced it as Canary Road for nearly 50 years, the most ignorant of dislike -based solely on the fact that the movie version of the GRAPES OF WRATH is so upsetting for me . . .


But I read it, MONTHS AGO, and it has everything. Sadness so profound is hilarious, or hilariousness so profound its suicidally depressing . . .


…. I wonder if the St. Regis is aking to the Palace Flophouse and Grill?

"I thought of giving a little party tonight," said Mary.
"On what? You're not going to cut out the baked ham picture from a magazine again and serve it on a platter, are you? I'm sick of that kind of kidding. It isn't funny any more. It's sad."
"I could give a little party," she insisted. "Just a small affair. Nobody will dress. It's the anniversary of the founding of the Bloomer League--you didn't even remember that."

From:


CANNERY ROW
by John Steinbeck


Copyright 1945 by John Steinbeck.


CHAPTER XXIV


Mary Talbot, Mrs. Tom Talbot, that is, was lovely. She had red hair with green lights in it Her skin was golden with a green undercast and her eyes were green with little golden spots. Her face was triangular, with wide cheekbones, wide-set eyes, and her chin was pointed. She had long dancer's legs and dancer's feet and she seemed never to touch the ground when she walked. When she was excited, and she was excited a good deal of the time, her face flushed with gold. Her greatgreat-great-great-great grandmother had been burned as a witch.
More than anything in the world Mary Talbot loved parties. She loved to give parties and she loved to go to parties. Since Tom Talbot didn't make much money Mazy couldn't give parties all the time so she tricked people into giving them. Sometimes she telephoned a friend and said bluntly, "Isn't it about time you gave a party?"
Regularly Mary had six birthdays a year, and she organized costume parties, surprise parties, holiday parties. Christmas Eve at her house was a very exciting thing. For Mary glowed with parties. She carried her husband Tom along on the wave of her excitement.
In the afternoon when Tom was at work Mary sometimes gave tea parties for the neighborhood cats. She set a footstool with doll cups and saucers. She gathered the cats and there were plenty of them, and then she held long and detailed conversations with them. It was a kind of play she enjoyed very much-- a kind of satiric game and it covered and concealed from Mary the fact that she didn't have very nice dothes and the Talbots didn't have any money. They were pretty near absolute bottom most of the time, and when they really scraped, Mary managed to give some kind of party.
She could do that. She could infect a whole house with gaiety and she used her gift as a weapon against the despondency that lurked always around outside the house waiting to get in at Tom. That was Mary's job as she saw it--to keep the despondency away from Tom because everyone knew he was going to be a great success some time. Mostly she was successful in keeping the dark things out of the house but sometimes they got in at Tom and laid him out. Then he would sit and brood for hours while Mary frantically built up a backfire of gaiety.
One time when it was the first of the month and there were curt notes from the water company and the rent wasn't paid and a manuscript had come back from _Collier's_ and the car. toons had come back from _The New Yorker_ and pleurisy was hurting Tom pretty badly, he went into the bedroom and lay down on the bed.
Mary came softly in, for the blue-gray color of his gloom had seeped out under the door and through the keyhole. She had a little bouquet of candy tuft in a collar of paper lace.
"Smell," she said and held the bouquet to his nose. He smelled the flowers and said nothing. "Do you know what day this is?" she asked and thought wildly for something to make it a bright day.
Tom said, "Why don't we face it for once? We're down. We're going under. What's the good kidding ourselves?"
"No we're not," said Mary. "We're magic people. We always have been. Remember that ten dollars you found in a book--remember when your cousin sent you five dollars? Nothing can happen to us."
"Well, it has happened," said Tom. "I'm sorry," he said. "I just can't talk myself out of it this time. I'm sick of pre.. tending everything. For once I'd like to have it real--just for once."
"I thought of giving a little party tonight," said Mary.
"On what? You're not going to cut out the baked ham picture from a magazine again and serve it on a platter, are you? I'm sick of that kind of kidding. It isn't funny any more. It's sad."
"I could give a little party," she insisted. "Just a small affair. Nobody will dress. It's the anniversary of the founding of the Bloomer League--you didn't even remember that."
"It's no use," said Tom. "I know it's mean but I just can't rise to it. Why don't you just go out and shut the door and leave me alone? I'll get you down if you don't."
She looked at him closely and saw that he meant it. Mary walked quietly out and shut the door, and Tom turned over on the bed and put his face down between his arms. He could hear her rustling about in the other room.
She decorated the door with old Christmas things, glass balls, and tinsel, and she made a placard that said "Welcome Tom, our Hero." She listened at the door and couldn't hear anything. A little disconsolately she got out the footstool and spread a napkin over it. She put her bouquet in a glass in the middle of the footstool and set out four little cups and saucers, She went into the kitchen, put the tea in the teapot and set the kettle to boil. Then she went out into the yard.
Kitty Randolph was sunning herself by the front fence. Mary said, "Miss Randolph--I'm having a few friends in to tea if you would care to come." Kitty Randolph rolled over languorously on her back and stretched in the warm sun. "Don't be later than four o'clock," said Mary. "My husband and I are going to the Boomer League Centennial Reception at the Hotel."
She strolled around the house to the backyard where the blackberry vines dambered over the fence. Kitty Casini was squatting on the ground growling to herself and flickering her tail fiercely. "Mrs. Casini," Mary began and then she stopped for she saw what the cat was doing. Kitty Casini had a mouse. She patted it gently with her unarmed paw and the mouse squirmed horribly away dragging its paralyzed hind legs behind it. The cat let it get nearly to the cover of the blackberry vines and then she reached delicately out and white thorns had sprouted on her jaw. Daintly she stabbed the mouse through the back and drew it wriggling to her and her tail flicked with tense delight.
Tom must have been at least half asleep when he heard his name called over and over. He jumped up shouting, "What is it? Where are you?" He could hear Mary crying. He ran out into the yard and saw what was happeing. "Turn your head," he shouted and he killed the mouse. Kitty Casini had leaped to the top of the fence where she watched him angrily. Tom picked up a rock and hit her in the stomach and knocked her off the fence.
In the house Mary was still crying a little. She poured the water into the teapot and brought it to the table. "Sit there," she told Tom and he squatted down on the floor in front of the footstool.
"Can't I have a big cup ?" he asked.
"I can't blame Kitty Casini," said Mary. "I know how cats are. It isn't her fault. But--Oh, Tom! I'm going to have trouble inviting her again. I'm just not going to like her for a while no matter how much I want to." She looked closely at Tom and saw that the lines were gone from his forehead and that he was not blinking badly. "But then I'm so busy with the Bloomer League these days," she said, "I just don't know how I'm going to get everything done."
Mary Talbot gave a pregnancy party that year. And everyone said, "God! A kid of hers is going to have fun."




CHAPTER XXV


Certainly all of Cannery Row and probably all of Monterery felt that a change had come. It's all right not to believe in luck and omens. Nobody believes in them. But it doesn't do any good to take chances with them and no one takes chances. Cannery Row, like every place else, is not superstitious but will not walk under a ladder or open an umbrella in the house. Doc was a pure scientist and incapable of superstition and yet when he came in late one night and found a line of white flowers across the doorsill he had a bad time of it. But most people in Cannery Row simply do not believe in such things and then live by them.
There was no doubt in Mack's mind that a dark cloud had hung on the Palace Flophouse. He had analyzed the abortive party and found that a misfortune had crept into every crevice, that bad luck had come up like hives on the evening. And once you got into a routine like that the best thing to do was just to go to bed until it was over. You couldn't buck it. Not that Mack was superstitious.
Now a kind of gladness began to penetrate into the Row and to spread out from there. Doc was almost supernaturally successful with a series of lady visitors. He didn't half try. The puppy at the Palace was growing like a pole bean, and having a thousand generations of training behind her, she began to train herself. She got disgusted with wetting on the floor and took to going outside. It was obvious that Darling was going to grow up a good and charming dog. And she had developed no chorea from her distemper.
The benignant influence crept like gas through the Row. It got as far as Herman's hamburger stand, it spread to the San Carlos Hotel. Jimmy Brucia felt it and Johnny his singing bartender. Sparky Evea felt it and joyously joined battle with three new out of town cops. It even got as far as the County Jail in Salinas where Gay, who had lived a good life by letting the sheriff beat him at checkers, suddenly grew cocky and never lost another game. He lost his privileges that way but he felt a whole man again.
The sea lions felt it and their barking took on a tone and a cadence that would have gladdened the heart of St. Francis. Little girls studying their catechism suddenly looked up and giggled for no reason at all Perhaps some electrical finder could have been developed so delicate that it could have located the source of all this spreading joy and fortune And triangulation might possibly have located it in the Palace Flophouse and Grill. Certainly the Palace was lousy with it Mack and the boys were charged. Jones was seen to leap from his chair only to do a quick tap dance and sit down again. Hazel smiled vaguely at nothing at all. The joy was so general and so sdfused that Mack had a hard time keeping it centered and aimed at its objective. Eddie who had worked at La Ida pretty regularly was accumulating a cellar of some promise. He no longer added beer to the wining jug. It gave a flat taste to the mixture, he said.
Sam Malloy had planted morning glories to grow over the boiler. He had put out a little awning and under it he and his wife often sat in the evening. She was crocheting a bedspread.
The joy even got into the Bear Flag. Business was good. Phyllis Mae's leg was knitting nicely and she was nearly ready to go to work again. Eva Flanegan got back from East St. Louis very glad to be back. It had been hot in East St. Louis and it hadn't been as fine as she remembered it. But then she had been younger when she had had so much fun there.
The knowledge or conviction about the party for Doc was no sudden thing. It did not burst out full blown. People knew about it but let it grow gradually like a pupa in the cocoons of their imaginations.
Mack was realistic about it. "Last time we forced her," he told the boys. "You can't never give a good party that way. You got to let her creep up on you."
"Well when's it going to be?" Jones asked impatiently.
"I don't know," said Mack.
"Is it gonna be a surprise party ?" Hazel asked.
"It ought to, that's the best kind," said Mack.
Darling brought him a tennis ball she had found and he threw it out the door into the weeds. She bounced away after it.
Hazel said, "If we knew when was Doc's birthday, we could give him a birthday party."
Mack's mouth was open. Hazel constantly surprised him. "By God, Hazel, you got something," he cried. "Yes, sir, if it was his birthday there'd be presents. That's just the thing. All we got to find out is when it is."
"That ought to be easy," said Hughie. "Why don't we ask him?"
"Hell," said Mack. "Then he'd catch on. You ask a guy when is his birthday and especially if you've already give him a party like we done, and he'll know what you want to know for. Maybe I'll just go over and smell around a little and not let on."
"I'll go with you," said Hazel.
"No--if two of us went, he might figure we were up to something."
"Well, hell, it was my idear," said Hazel.
"I know," said Mack. "And when it comes off why I'll tell Doc it was your idear. But I think I better go over alone."
"How is he--friendly ?" Eddie asked.
"Sure, he's all right."
Mack found Doc way back in the downstairs part of the laboratory. He was dressed in a long rubber apron and he wore rubber gloves to protect his hands from the formaldehyde. He was injectingthe veins and arteries of small dogfish with color mass. His little ball mill rolled over and over, mixing the blue mass. The red fluid was already in the pressure gun. Doc's fine hands worked precisely, slipping the needle into place and pressing the compressed air trigger that forced the color into the veins. He laid the finished fish in a neat pile. He would have to go over these again to put blue mass in the arteries. The dogfish made good dissection specimens.
"Hi, Doc," said Mack. "Keepin' pretty busy?"
"Busy as I want," said Doc. "How's the pup ?"
"Doin' just fine. She would of died if it hadn't been for you."
For a moment a wave of caution went over Doc and then slipped off. Ordinarily a compliment made him wary. He had been dealing with Mack for a long time. But the tone had nothing but gratefulness in it. He knew how Mack felt about the pup. "How are things going up at the Palace ?"
"Fine, Doc, just fine. We got two new chairs. I wish you'd come up and see us. It's pretty nice up there now."
"I will," said Doc. "Eddie still bring back the jug?"
"Sure," said Mack. "He ain't puttin' beer in it no more and I think the stuff is better. It's got more zip."
"It had plenty of zip before," said Doc.
Mack waited patiently. Sooner or later Doc was going to wade into it and he was waiting. If Doc seemed to open the subject himself it would be less suspicious. This was always Mack's method.
"Haven't seen Hazel for some time. He isn't sick, is he?"
"No," said Mack and he opened the campaign. "Hazel is all right. Him and Hughie are havin' one hell of a battle. Been goin' on for a week," he thudded. "An' the funny thing is it's about somethin' they don't neither of them know nothin' about. I stayed out of it because I don't know nothin' about it neither, but not them. They've even got a little mad at each other."
"What's it about?" Doc asked.
"Well, sir," said Mack, "Hazel's all the time buyin' these here charts and lookin' up lucky days and stars and stuff like that. And Hughie says it's all a bunch of malarky. Hazel he says if you know when a guy is born you can tell about him and Hughie says they're just sellin' Hazel them charts for two bits apiece. Me, I don't know nothin' about it. What do you think, Doc?"
"I'd kind of side with Hughie," said Doc. He stopped the ball mill, washed out the color gun and filled it with blue mass.
"They got goin' hot the other night," said Mack. "They ask me when I'm born so I tell 'em April 12 and Hazel he goes and buys one of them charts and read all about me. Well it did seem to hit in some places. But it was nearly all good stuff and a guy will believe good stuff about himself. It said I'm brave and smart and kind to my friends. But Hazel says it's all true. When's your birthday, Doc?" At the end of the long discussion it sounded perfectly casual. You couldn't put your finger on it. But it must be remembered that Doc had known Mack a very long time. If he had not he would have said December 18 which was his birthday instead of October 27 which was not. "October 27," said Doc. "Ask Hazel what that makes me."
"It's probably so much malarky," said Mack, "but Haze! he takes it serious. I'll ask him to look you up, Doc."
When Mack left, Doc wondered casually what the build-up was. For he had recognized it as a lead. He knew Mack's technique, his method. He recognized his style. And he wondered to what purpose Mack could put the information. It was only later when rumors began to creep in that Doc added the whole thing up. Now he felt slightly relieved, for he had expected Mack to put the bite on him.

Paul got me this object de art for my birthday.

++++++++++++++++++++


A pre note/quote:

Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.
(CAVAFY, ITHACA, 1911)


heading to 50:
On January 12th I did State Mandated pre birthday paperwork. I took the day off, oh so wonderful? First a visit to the doctor, who added a pill to control my blood pressure (well, its still pumping, inhaling and exhaling). Then off to the see the State of Illinois apparatchik to renew my state IDs at the DMV... I don't drive, but that’s the line to wait in. An alert apparatchik told me I could renew my driver's license (there was a year grace period that is not mentioned on their web page). It was the last day I could do that, so I did. Now I have TWO VALID id's - sadly in the same name so no DID here.

ONWARD

Birthday resolutions: figure out secondlife (internet thing); meaningful blog entries; read (reading Paul Auster's NEW YORK TRILOGY; finished the Christopher Moore I won -YOU SUCK about vampires, Pynchon is resting for a bit, I will return to him soon; DEAD SOULS might delay that aspiration).

www.librarything.com/catalog/jbeckhamlat

http://jbeckhamlat.blogspot.com/

and deal with RSS feeds . . ..

ALMOST THERE:
Saturday night I went to bed more mindlessly hopeful than realistically confident that I'd awaken as a roach. Opposed to waking up 50. FIFTY.

To wake up as anything other then what I fell asleep as. No such luck, although I have déjà vu type dreams of dancing cans of Raid in a sunny gnat free cemetery. The Raid cans were doing a legless CanCan dance while ghost like roach played harmonicas. There was a short mosquito like guy name Henri something Trekie sketching posters. As all my dreams it was a black and white with a harmonica based score. Absinthe flowed.


ARRIVAL:
50. A simple fulcrum day. Watched a few movies, my favorite: VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (1960) based on John Wyndham's great read of a novel THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS, a DVRed episode of BOSTON LEGAL, then VAN HELSING -2004 (the Bram Stroker rationalist character widly updated). Made a beef rib roast and twice baked potatoes. Asparagus. Black berries and cottage cheese - two items from my childhood . . . Paul took those as some sign of delayed crisis.

And I re-read a little Maugham --I had just read a bit of Maugham days before. (I had lent a Maugham reader to a neighbor, who returned it - ironically the print was too small.) A bit of consolation if not comfort:

EXTRACTS FROM ''A WRITER'S NOTEBOOK''
By Somerset Maugham
1944

BY way of postscript. Yesterday I was seventy years old. As one enters
upon each succeeding decade it is natural, though perhaps irrational, to look
upon it as a significant event. When I was thirty my brother said to me: "Now
you are a boy no longer, you are a man and you must be a man," When I was forty
I said to myself: "That is the end of youth." On my fiftieth birthday I said:
"It's no good fooling myself, this is middle age and I may just as well
accept it." At sixty I said: "Now its time to put my affairs
in order, for this is the threshold of old age and I must settle my accounts." I
decided to with-draw from the theatre and I wrote The Summing Up, in which I
tried to review for my own comfort what I had learnt of life and literature,
what I had done and what satisfaction it had brought me. But of all
anniversaries I think the seventieth is the most momentous. One has
reached the three score years and ten which one is accustomed to accept as the
allotted span of man, and one can but look upon such years as remain to one as
uncertain contingencies stolen while old Time with his scythe has his head
turned the other way, At seventy one is no longer on the threshold of old age.
One is just an old man.

Not really sad, but on the mark for 1944. Most people now see 60 as the new 40 (back in early december 2006 that was a news story); and 40 the new 30.

Of course Somerset pointed out at 50 most of life had been spent . . . who lives to be 100?

But then there are places where you can live forever . . . . Inferno type places . . .

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Ah me! how hard a thing
it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the
very thought renews the fear.

And you can find them in any library or google:

A NOTE ON LIBRARIES:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6396388.html

(if Umberto Eco were dead he'd be spinning in his grave; ever since the closing of smoking rooms the sophistication of learning has suffered; next the thought police -hide those library records; then ultimately THE DREAM POLICE, conceal those aspirations)...

onward to 60!

Finally final:

A note from actor George Sanders 26 apr 1972, Barcelona, the seaside hotel Rey Don Jaime at Castelldefels.

From the NYT:

A police spokesman said five empty tubes of Nembutal were found in Mr. Sander's
room.

One note read: "Dear World: I am leaving because I am
bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your
worries in this sweet cesspool -good luck." The other, written in
Spanish, asked that Mr. Sander's sister in London be notified of his death.

===

TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW . . . now where is my copy of Thanatopsis by Bryant?


+++++++++++++++++
THIS WAS AN ICE MAN STANDING ON MICHIGAN AVENUE TALL AND PROUD MONDAY - when I did not have my camera. By Tuesday he had tumbled, even tho the temperaturs had not.

Today as I was walking to work I saw a piece of spectacular art in the window of the Atlas Gallery on Michigan avenue. I have a smaller version, this looks life sized, a Jules Verne dream come to life. You can find more of his work on my walls at home, or at http://www.atlasgalleries.com/ under Sergey Tyukanov. His daughter is great as well, Tanya Miller, under painters at http://www.perfectpeargallery.com/ .

++++++++++++

Then out the window of the office I spied an long ship heading north, probably laden with iron ore in this modern age. Imagine working on that ship, out in the lake, today was a wintry day (unusual I know) with temps in the teens. On land. This was telephoto both optical and digital, so its dark, I did catch the Lighthouse blinking red.

and now the word/phrase of the day defined in Wikipedia:

Folie à deux (literally, "a madness shared by two") is a rare psychiatric syndrome in which a symptom of psychosis (particularly a paranoid or delusional belief) is transmitted from one individual to another. The same syndrome shared by more than two people may be called folie à trois, folie à quatre, folie à famille or even folie à plusieurs (madness of many). Recent psychiatric classifications refer to the syndrome as shared psychotic disorder (DSM-IV) (297.3) and induced delusional disorder (folie à deux) (F.24) in the ICD-10, although the research literature largely uses the original name.

Teaching old dogs new tricks. This might have been a dream, felonies are not permitted.

Last night this guy tried to copy a dvd (rip, burn, pirate). He have tried now and then for a few months. Finally I saw a light and gave up on the software that came with my PC. Rome was burning and Nero arrived.

Then he managed to get the movie, but the menus did not come for the ride. Then again: total failure: this is not a dvd my dvd player said.

Then this morning, he got the menus, special features, all of it except the languages captions and directors commentary. THE achievement is great. He PUT in the dvd player, the first thing that came up was the studio's DON'T YOU DARE even think of COPYING THIS.

So you can teach an old snarling dog new tricks!

BUT CAN THEY DO THEM TWICE?

For most people, memory itself is a kind of revival house in which only the most vivid things survive.

IN the past few days I read stuff here and there. But the one thing that really held my attention was a great article in The New Yorker by David Denby on the movie industry and the public ‘taste’ versus what the public finds in the theaters (relics).

http://www.newyorker.com/printables/critics/070108crat_atlarge


Many fine lines, relevant to more than movies:

This very end of empire remark:

As these theatres age, the gold leaf doesn’t slowly peel off fluted columns. They rot, like disused industrial spaces. They have become the detritus of what seems, on a bad day, like a dying culture.

and this great sentence waiting for its novel:

For most people, memory itself is a kind of revival house in which only the most vivid things survive. But if there was never a golden age there were a few structures that encouraged superior work—or at least didn’t actively defeat it.

Or this remark on plutocrat cultural hegemony (cultural imperialism turned inward):

Today, the conglomerates are saying, ‘We have the resources to tell the public what it wants to see.’ ” But for how long? Teen-agers are making their own movies and showing them on YouTube and MySpace. They’re multitasking for fun, with computer games, instant messaging, and television. They may be unwilling to sit in a darkened theatre for two hours, submitting to someone else’s control

.

Finally not to bore you any more, this, The funerial epitaphs for movies, tv, newspapers?

Linklater said, “On the Internet, the people who have been shut out of the national conversation on those movies will now be able to take part in it, and for the independent filmmaker that’s an incredible gain.” For the beginning filmmaker, the game is afoot. Shooting with lightweight digital equipment, he could put together a feature-length movie for very little money and then distribute it through the Internet. All he needs is ability and a cast and crew open to adventures.

++++


Last week and observant friend commented on my hotmail signature line:

"People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned." - Saul Bellow

to which I replied:

The nearest public library is a very very long walk - something I don't care to make. Between it and me there are 3-5 book stores including Borders, Afterwords - the used book store with the savvy odd looking staff and hard to find old titles in hardback. You cannot loose your live in AMAZON.COM, there is no serendipity in online shopping aside from misspelling. You can engage randomness in a bookstore. BUT THE REFERENCE SHELVES OF A LIBRARY, I DO miss those, especially of a University. I must figure this out.

I now have over 700 books in my catalog of books, check it out:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/jbeckhamlat

bookended on one end by a book on Absinthe (a fine beverage) to the other end with books on Wrinkles in Time (real and imagined). And a few things in between.

THIS IS a guide I use:
99 Novels
The Best in English Since 1939
by Anthony Burgess
a.b.e-books v3.0 / Notes at EOF

reading at the moment:




+++++++++++++++++++++

SUNDAY, a day of cooking and . . . I take liberties, no red peppers, then I don't need an extra pepcid, and the shape can very. LEFT OVERS IN THE FRIDGE.

Sunday’s lunch:


FROM THIRTY YEARS OF RECIPE REQUESts TO THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
BY Rose Dosti

MEAT page 125

MEAT LOAF 72 MARKET STREET

The best meat loaf (readers will testify) comes from 72 Market Street, a restaurant in Venice, California. According to Chef Leonard Schwartz who developed the recipe, it was a result of years of experience, not just an experiment.

1/4 cup minced onion
3/4 cup minced green onion
½ cup minced celery
½ cup minced carrot
1/4 cup minced green pepper
1/4 cup minced sweet red pepper
2 teaspoons minced garlic
3 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon white pepper
½ teaspoon ground cumin
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ cup half and half
½ cup catsup
1 ½ pounds lean ground beef
½ pound lean ground pork
3 eggs, beaten
3/4 cup dry bread crumbs
Sauce (below)

Saute onion, green onion, celery, carrot, green pepper, red pepper and garlic in
butter until vegetables are soft and liquid is evaporated. Set aside to cool. Combine salt, cayenne, black pepper, white pepper, cumin and nutmeg and add to vegetable mixture. Stir in half and half, catsup, beef, pork, eggs and bread crumbs. Mix well.

Form into loaf and place on greased baking sheet or in 9 x 5 inch loaf pan. Bake at 350 degrees 45 to 50 minutes. Let stand 10 minutes before slicing. Pour off excess fat. Slice and serve with Sauce. Makes 6 to 8 servings.

SAUCE

4 shallots
2 tablespoons butter
1 sprig thyme
1 bay leaf
Dash crushed black pepper
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup veal or beef stock
1 cup chicken stock
Salt, pepper

Saute shallots in 1 tablespoon butter with thyme, bay leaf and black pepper. Add white wine and stocks. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Simmer until reduced by half and sauce thickens slightly.

LATER!

Today is almost over. I got a book in the mail, that I won – being one of the first 25 to respond to an email. Happy 2007! YOU SUCK by Christopher Moore (see below). That promises to be fun. BUT I am reading the PYNCHON, AGAINST THE DAY at home, and INSECT POETICS during free time during the day. Bugs is in discrete chapters, so I start YOU SUCK after I finish “VOICES OF THE LEAST LOVED: The Cockroach in the Contemporary American Novel." You have to admit that is some chapter title, right?

Now, that classmates.com thing I signed up for, I got an email saying someone looked at my profile (very little info). If I pay they will tell me who, is that not blackmail, or marketing genius? Someone (real or imaginary) looked at my profile with days of my putting it there. By mistake, looking for one of my siblings (none of who have signed up). WHO DID THIS profile patrol? Do I care enough to spend 5 bucks a month to find out? Would you? From the mids 1970s, who remembered my name enough to click on it?

KILLING PEOPLE IS RUDE
I snapped a picture in front of Saks Fifth Avenue, sprayed on the sidewalk – perhaps by some band of Pro Life Nuns or Anti-gun violence zealots? Or by the police in some kind of reverse-reverse psychology: graffiti as the medium?

And a picture of one of my Christmas presents from Paul . . . and the shoes I wore today – it was almost 50 and sunny . . .

And you?

What is this thing called myspace.com ??

For the past few weeks I have been 'wired' in a few main ways. I check youtube.com daily (I have lists of people I watch, and topics); veoh.com, similar to youtube, not as gigantic; this blog, motivating me to take a few pictures every day; and classmates.com. None of these are new, some are old (classmates.com was used for story research a few years ago).

And I find its better to search youtube.com and what ever in google compared to searching the youtube.com search box.

And I have been fiddling with
Classmates.com, find your old friends, No not really. Its just as I near 50 there is some interest in the past. While cleaning over the weekend I found an elementary school yearbook. I was in the 3rd grade. IT DID NOT LIST ANY NAMES! Along with it were a few random reports cards, one from elementary school, a few from high school. Such mediocrity in marks, I could be president! At any rate it more than a walk down memory lane. I was surprised by how many names were in classmates.com (a snobbish feeling: those people can use email? The web?). classmates.com wants money to see more than a name, and I am not sure about that. A few bucks a month (it would take a few hours to swipe the info into word files for my graduating class). I do have high school yearbooks with names in them. But to see that people actually went to classmates.com and signed up was amazing. – and it may list current location and personal stuff.

The great video wasteland:
Youtube.com and veoh.com are video sharing services. If you want to hear a song go to youtube and you most likely will find a clip from MTV, of you’re a member of the class of 75 a grainy snip stolen from Dick Clark's BANDSTAND. VEOH.COM will let you download stuff (small selection of movies, tv episodes, movie trailers). You can move it to a thumbdrive for at the office viewing! Comic remakes of Dark Shadows on youtube . . . snips from the Simpsons (some complete episodes). A lot of stuff has vanished (the DAILY SHOW with JON STEWART had a ton of election stuff that has been removed . . . probably by court order. Youtube.com is not downloadable, so veoh lets you keep KEEP stuff incase the poster decides to remove it.

There is one youtube poster from Spain who tries to post something for every minute of every hour of the day. A zillion posts. Its incredible. At times desperate.

In youtube.com I watch a ranting atheist, vulgar, crude, ego driven. But a lot of laughs. He did a bit on Mark Foley . . . and his stuff on Osama - he is trying to earn a fatwa on himself is . . . then there are some college dorm students who post things, bits of parties, drives to MacDonalds, all the time chattering. When I hear of something new I may google it (like the BRIGHTS - http://www.the-brights.net/ ).

The ink blots say: youtube, my god you are 50 not 25 (I THINK someone said that to Norma Desmond in SUNSET BOULEVARD yesterday). The classmates.com says, retrospective? Paul says my chance for a midlife crisis past 10 years ago and I can forget that.

On New Year’s Eve a local bar closed. Opened in 1961 (I was four and in ohio). Its on the way to work, if I walk down Ontario, as I have hundreds of times in the past 12 years. Business cyle live and death. OH THIS IS TOO morbid, I have been overtaken by chthonic forces and am seeing a darkening (soon a quickening?).

BUT ITS FUN to look at the bar, all closed up, to become a 'luxury' condo. I hate that word LUXURY, so pretentious in advance. How many drunks walked out the front door of O'Neils into traffic? I have had take out from it a few times, burgers and super greasy fries. Under the fries they put this miniature pack of M&Ms. Health Food all the way. Owner Joe O'Neil must have gotten a bundle of bundles, 4 floors will be replaced by 50 with 160 condos.

And they are building a new apartment building near the office, I have a bird’s eye view. CRANE OPERATORS OF THE WORLD UNITE, YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOOSE BUT YOUR VIEWS!

A 3 day posting!

Saturday:

Taking down the tree . . . ornaments from 1985! Then on to 1987 . . . Snoopy from 1988-I think from Bullocks in Sherman Oaks, 1999, 2001 and all years between. An odd feeling feeling a decorated artificial tree. Some decorations seem a million years old, others elicit a ‘what is this?’ often followed by: it was part of a gift wrap. Certainly gives the season, and year a closure. Then tomorrow is New Years Eve, a sense of ‘openture’ perhaps? It has not been the best of years and I will be mixed about seeing it go. The holly wreath has just come off the door. And its oddly warm, forecasts 10 days out anticipated temps in the teens, now there are lows in the 30s. Its not bright and cold, but gray and chilly. 10:00 a.m. and the street lights are still on (if they ever went off). The endless night of the North Pole . . .

SUNDAY:

On New Years EVE morning, putting the branches in large plactic containers. Lots of artificial pins a poking…. Afternoon: 3 trips to the storage locker with branches and other accoutrement of Christmas. Then after dinner around 7 I did a last load of laundry!

At midnight we clanged sparkling cider – I had a fig to start the new year, then a few pieces of Godiva . . .

TODAY TODAY JANUARY FIRST :: MONDAY:

And now it’s the new year. Some fine tuning cleaning, dusting and . . . then a long nap. A dreary day, back to work Tuesday – and its to be sunny. Of course. Some how putting away the holiday cheer lead to cleaning the pantry and my closet.

NAPTIME will be february, the entire month.

GOOD THINGS HAPPENED in 2006. A friend opened an art gallery, a nice place to sneak into, http://www.perfectpeargallery.com/ . Tanya Miller, under PAINTINGS AND PRINTS is a friend of mine. Others friends have moved on (and up?) to the NYT. Many have started books, some have finished books . . . Some have regained their sanity. The luckiest are entering academe . . . an atmosphere that can be political and full of backbiting; BUT one that has students with a bit more curiosity and flexibility than slaves to the bottom line and 20 inches no more no less.

Soon to arrive, in 2007!:

And last week I WON, yes WON a book, by Christopher Moore called YOU SUCK, about a vampire. Be the one of the first 25 to email . . . his Lamb The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal http://www.chrismoore.com/bookpage.asp?PB_ISBN=0380813815 is one of my favorite reads (after TIBOR FISHER’S THE THOUGHT GANG
http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/fischert/thoughtg.htm

13 DAYS TILL . . .

Today my catalog of books hit 700 (its now at 702). The 700th book was The Collectors by David Baldacci, a signed first edition first printing.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/jbeckhamlat

Including a signed copy of Myra Beckinridge by Gore Vidal (1968), [1st ed.] from a used book seller in Beverly Hills (from the Northridge Public Library). I had read about Vidal, he seemed very frail, and it was cheaper having library marks. In a way that makes it more interesting, how many sat reading this very book spilling gin . . . one of those famed 20th century titles . . .

Not that I have even cracked it, I just finished a fine Simenon (3 Bedrooms In Manhattan). It was my light read while attempting Pynchon's weighty AGAINST THE DAY, which is enthralling. The new light -only in that is its not physically as heavy as the Pynchon -- -- paperback is INSECT POETICS, about bugs in literature. A fascinating chapter on ants v. bees in Vergil's AENEID. Ants plunder while bee's produce (find a dead beetle or rotting apple opposed to buzzing flower to flower and creating honey). Ants administrate (ROMANS); bee's create . . . .

A picture I took last summer:

Bees fly in splendor and brightness, ants, well are underground burrowing.

There was a non bug statement that I liked as well: Augustus took Rome from a city of brick to a city of marble.

from ugly Caterpillar to beautiful butterfly . . . where is Gregor Samsa? gone buggy. [next is a chapter on performing insects featuring a flea circus, I hope to learn how the little devils were trained ]

ah for the joys of summer...

;-)

I see a lot of blue between the last picture and the previous post. Scroll.

A Partridge in a Pear Tree!

27 December 2006

Here are some pictures from the holidays. Starting with Santa arriving in November's FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS PARADE, the Hancock Center Tree, then some from our apartment.

What do you think?

Now its been 4 months since that crazed knife waving urologist worked on me. Last week he told me: "this is progress as expected, come back in 6 months."

BUT WHO CARES!

Tis the day after Christmas, cold and clear. I am going to make a pre-new years resolution. To find interesting quotes and what not and post them often. For now one will do. I ordered the book TIN DRUM by Gunther Grass. He's one of those you should read something by I feel, and I have not. The title came up in a few things as I read, then I was looking for a list of first lines. Can you beat this:

BOOK ONE
The Wide Skirt

Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me.

So you see, my keeper can't be an enemy. I've come to be very fond of him; when he stops looking at me from behind the door and comes into the room, I tell him incidents from my life, so he can get to know me in spite of the peephole between us. He seems to treasure my stories, because every time I tell him some fairy tale, he shows his gratitude by bringing out his latest knot construction. I wouldn't swear that he's an artist. But I am certain that an exhibition of his creations would be well received by the press and attract a few purchasers. He picks up common pieces of string in the patients' rooms after visiting hours, disentangles them, and works them up into elaborate contorted spooks; then he dips them in plaster, lets them harden, and mounts them on knitting needles that he fastens to little wooden pedestals.

On August 22nd I had a bit of surgery. It was to be outpatient, meaning in and that same day. They kept me over night. Instead of 2 days of recovery I have a doctors appointment in Late December, "by then things should be back to normal."

That is a cheap reason, but I fell behind in everything. Now I hope to return. I may play catch up with what I have read (but with medicines you are to skip what you have missed). For now - well I watched Saturday Night Live last night with high hopes. Hopes that were dashed, a new episode, with a fodder rich news environment. The skits were lame or lame and irrelevant.

If I spend more time here and less time in youtube.com I'd be better.

Last week reuters opened a buro in cyberpace, in Second Life. That is the most interesting news, and maybe the most prescient.

-john....

;-))

Chicago is famous for its Water Towers, but they seem go missing. It could be a kidnapping ring, aliens in search of water, or a monstrous child named Stewie shrinking them for his own reasons. AN ATTEMPT AT A PICTURE. hum, some control issues, but . . . Another frontier crossed, quick tell Spock!


OK, i thought I could do this daily. But . . . I am just too dull, too lazy or too tired. So a simple august observation to start: the days are getting shorter; the shadows longer earlier. We used to open the blinds at 8, now its 7; the sun used be up high all afternoon, now by the time I leave the offices its behind buildings.

I am reading THE DOCTOR IS SICK by Anthony Burgess; if you check my book catalog you will see he is very popular with me. The main character has a brain disorder. The cafeteria served stewed brains (a joke on the patients?); he left the hospital clandestinely wearing his street cloths and slippers . . . His wife is a bit of tramp (with license to be so). The main character, with the brain issue, is a linguist and insist the medical doctors call him Doctor.

so....

Have you ever wondered what God does when His PC crashes? Does he hit Start, All Programs, Accessories, then SYSTEM TOOLS, then SYSTEM RESTORE?

After He/She hits System Restore what divine choices appear when RESTORE MY COMPUTER TO AN EARLIER TIME, and the SELECT A RESTORE POINT pop up? How far back does His calendar go? Does God ever click '?' For help?

Being all knowing and all encompassing I kind of doubt it.

Now, if his calendar goes back, say 2500 years, and he chose that - 500 BC, for His sole (not soul) amusement what would happen to the Present? JUST WHAT WOULD HAPPEN??? Would I be here on the coast of Lake Michigan living as an aborigine? Or in a slave ship in the Agean? Or snorting magic Fumes at Delphi? Where would you be?

Or does He call a Holy HELP Desk, then damn thousands to a small font Hell when the 73rd voice prompt techie says "This is Mohammed, Sorriee but that is not a valid user code, please return to main menu." CLICK . . . Divine Anger then HELL for all?

Peace be With You.

We are on the mend as they say. I still hack myself unconscious, Paul still congested. But much better......

Having finishing Svev's ZENO'S CONSCIOUS, I picked up 2 or 3 books. I stared one on Grammar -Woe is I, easy to read a chapter then go back. What is not an easy read is My Life among the Deathworks: Illustrations of the Aesthetics of Authority by Philip Rieff. Egghead is an understatement, the writing is incredible, the ideas way way out there. YOU NEED a relief between chapters. a provocative anachronism . . .

So I read from cover to cover Anthony Burgess's ONE HAND CLAPPING. A funny quick read. Like Muriel Sparks in storyline (He would die again if he saw that comparison, he did not take too seriously little old lady at home typing literature). But then I guess he evolved. ONE HAND CLAPPING is about a married couple in a small English town muddling through life. The quirk: the husband has a photographic memory, they get rich, then . . . There are a lot of literary references, more than references they are so in your face in the book. A lot of nostalgia, an anti TV, anti Newspaper, anti pop culture (1961 ok) sentiments. AND SOME hilarity, some affection, some cheating, and even, even MURDER.

What to read next . . . .

and now a line from the NYT, to help you sleep easier (as the Polaris missile threat that popped up now and then in ONE HAND CLAPPING has abated leaving us but promised joy, right mousie?)

“The great problem is that Al Qaeda has moved far beyond being a terrorist
organization to being almost a state of mind,” said Simon Reeve, author of a
1999 book on Osama
bin Laden and his associates. “That’s terribly significant because it gives
the movement a scope and longevity it didn’t have before 9/11.”
(NYT 11Aug06 by Scott Shane)

now think along an old verse:

But, mousie, thou art not alane,
In proving foresight may be in vain,
The best laid schemes of mice and men,
Go oft astray,
And leave us nought but grief and pain,
To rend our day.
(Robert Burns, 1759 - 1796, TO TO A MOUSE On turning her up in her nest, with the plough, November, 1785)

HAVE A GREAT WKND!!

SUNDAY
Paul's cold seems to have been morphing to pneumonia the doctor said friday, and gave him a week's worth of strong antibiotics. They both agree I am the source of the cold. I have a vile cough still. Paul no longer has the 102 fever, or the wild shakes and trembling. Its incredible, since his accident any cold goes to bronchitis or pneumonia . . . no retirement in Alaska, that is for sure. Maybe summers?

Hopefully this will be a better week. We spend the weekend watching Mama's Family and Murder She Wrote. A lot of fun actually.

Ah, monday is right around the corner (one doctor monday, Paul's follow up).

Today Paul caught my cold, and colds and Paul equal one thing. Bronchitis in 3 days. (a doctor's appointment for next week was moved to Monday, and may be moved to Friday).

I finished CANNERY ROW and cannot say much I liked it. Its one of those titles that exists in your mind even if you have never read it. You know it means hardscrabble downtrodden folk more or less. But the comedy snuck in is incredible. I read it described as a low class utopia as most inhabitants were content, happy or alright. Those that were not committed suicide - so as not to harsh the buzz of the rest??

Got a bit cooler, not getting warm again. I am taking plop plop fizz fizz alka seltzer cold for my cold. Tired......

Another HOT day in Chicago. The walk to work was fine, this morning. I did cut through the hospital (Northwestern). It covers 2 blocks, the ground floors are mostly large open lobbies. The walk home, well when you open the oven to look at roasting chicken, that blast of hot air is what the walk home was. BUT IT IS THUNDERING, lightning and rain, and the temp has dropped from the mid 90s (heat index 106) to the high 70s. I opened the window, it was like opening the dishwasher right when it beeps finished. A bit steamy.

Still reading Cannery Row, and that short story is beautiful. Memorable characters, events, place names. This Steinbeck did know how to put words together in phrases, phrases into sentences, sentences into grafs, and graphs into chapters. A struggling couple, the husband says he does not want a picture of ham cut from a magazine on a platter again. Laugh then cry.

Today an old copy of PEYTON PLACE arrived, for Paul. He loves that movie. I have never sat through it, but read about the book. For me a few books, including WOE IS I - a book on how to write clearly. And a few others.

Time to catalog!

Tuesday. Very hot. I stayed home today, a sick day. Allergies or a summer cold. Reading Cannery Row (a short story by Steinbeck). A lot of fun. Paul and I went to the farmer's market, a Tuesday summer tradition. Outside for a hour and we were near dead. And you?