Sunday
Last night we watched "Goodbye Lenin". Good movie.
Today, we go to hear Philharmonia Northwest.
After that, it's a few minutes with my book group, then to The Chapel at Good Shepard
to hear Octava and talk to Matt Weiss about playing my violin duet.
Then, If it don't rain on Monday I will ride Fidelio to Marymoore park and back.
Starting from Log Boom park, of course, I'm not ready for another trip around the lake yet.
If it do rain, things will get wet.
I'm about out of books by Tony Hillerman and Jonathan Gash, so I think I'll tackle some Norman Mailer. That should be safe now, I don't think he'll try to stab me or anything, but you can never be too careful with people being like they are.
I don't know if he was a "Christian" so maybe I needn't have worried.
Anyway R.I.P Norman.
A national treasure.
Actually, Mailer reminds me a lot of the poet Buttkus.
It's about time I read something of a more than entertainment nature.
I don't know why, just for the self abuse, I guess.
Like the bike trips.
None of it is making me a better human being or stronger or more socially acceptable.
Or any more imaginative.
In fact
I seem to me less and less of what I was supposed to become for having had a "free education" as time passes and I rattle along the the creaking rusty conveyor belt toward the edge of it all.
Truly, I'd just as soon get off and walk, but that never seems to work.
What was I supposed to do with all that "education" anyway?
Seemed to me that all it was was training to be a football hero or something just as unlikely.
The main thing I remember is that if you didn't go, the cops had the right to turn you into a drug addict and shoot you.
Some scumbag school admin. turkey back east somewhere punished a couple of kids recently for a hug.
A local football team, ready to go to finals, was stripped of all it's years triumphs because one of them didn't have his physical exam up to date.
It's garbage like these snotty little commie power sickos who cause school shootups,
not the poor children they so cheerfully abuse.
I don't know why, but The SSO just popped into mind.
Today, we go to hear Philharmonia Northwest.
After that, it's a few minutes with my book group, then to The Chapel at Good Shepard
to hear Octava and talk to Matt Weiss about playing my violin duet.
Then, If it don't rain on Monday I will ride Fidelio to Marymoore park and back.
Starting from Log Boom park, of course, I'm not ready for another trip around the lake yet.
If it do rain, things will get wet.
I'm about out of books by Tony Hillerman and Jonathan Gash, so I think I'll tackle some Norman Mailer. That should be safe now, I don't think he'll try to stab me or anything, but you can never be too careful with people being like they are.
I don't know if he was a "Christian" so maybe I needn't have worried.
Anyway R.I.P Norman.
A national treasure.
Actually, Mailer reminds me a lot of the poet Buttkus.
It's about time I read something of a more than entertainment nature.
I don't know why, just for the self abuse, I guess.
Like the bike trips.
None of it is making me a better human being or stronger or more socially acceptable.
Or any more imaginative.
In fact
I seem to me less and less of what I was supposed to become for having had a "free education" as time passes and I rattle along the the creaking rusty conveyor belt toward the edge of it all.
Truly, I'd just as soon get off and walk, but that never seems to work.
What was I supposed to do with all that "education" anyway?
Seemed to me that all it was was training to be a football hero or something just as unlikely.
The main thing I remember is that if you didn't go, the cops had the right to turn you into a drug addict and shoot you.
Some scumbag school admin. turkey back east somewhere punished a couple of kids recently for a hug.
A local football team, ready to go to finals, was stripped of all it's years triumphs because one of them didn't have his physical exam up to date.
It's garbage like these snotty little commie power sickos who cause school shootups,
not the poor children they so cheerfully abuse.
I don't know why, but The SSO just popped into mind.
Labels: Norman Mailer
posted by Lane Savant at 11:50 AM
4 Comments:
Hallo, Lane and Meredith!
Glad you liked "Goodbye Lenin", a GREAT movie!!!!! The West German miscreant creator of "The Lives of Others" said he made that movie explicitly to counter the positive image of East Germans in "Goodbye Lenin", which is MUCH more typical of the typical East German than "Lives of Others": East Germans are much more responsible toward their parents (LL visits her 98-year-old Mom at least once daily in the Seniors' Home), neighborliness (house parties and invites to neighbors; we're having the LL's next door neighbor and wife to dinner tonite; people accept packages for not-at-home neighbors (never in West Germany), etc., etc., etc.
PLEASE, Lane,
do NOT call power-abusing officials (incl. those @ SSO) "commie power sickos"!!!
The REAL "Commies" as you call us are more like the people in "Goodbye Lenin" -- and Norman Mailer, who was a Socialist in spirit, if not Party membership.
The Party newspaper her ("Neues Deutschland") had a full (SeattleTimes-sized) page obituary on Norman Mailer in yesterday's edition.
Tschüß,
Anonomann + LL
Yes, GOOD-BYE LENIN (2003), directed by Wolfgang Becker is a smart and sensitive dramedy. A woman goes into a coma just as the Berlin Wall is coming down. She lives in East Germany, and when she awakens fragile and exhausted 8 months later, a kind of female Rip Van Winkle --the world has changed radically around her, as East Germans rush toward consumerism and free enterprise. But the kicker is that she cannot face ANY kind of a shock, or it could kill her, according to her doctor. So the elaborate hoax that her loving son must perpetuate is wonderful to behold. So we witness a love story, and a political statement, married to a philosophic treatise on the nature of both Russian Communism and the many headed Hydra of Capitalism.
Philharmonia Northwest:
1119 Eighth Ave
Seattle, WA 98101-2738
+1 206 675 9727
tickets@philharmonianw.org
Open Hours
See their website for event times
http://www.philharmonianw.org
In a city thronging with musical talent, this little orchestra still manages to stand apart. Concerts usually feature works by well-known composers such as Brahms, Strauss and Beethoven, along with a decent representation of more obscure works by little-known composers such as Busoni and Kraus. Call or visit the Web site for individual concert information.
Octavia Thurina Minor (69 - 11 BC), also known as Octavia the Younger or simply Octavia, was the sister of the first Roman Emperor, Augustus (known also as Octavian), half sister of Octavia Thurina Major, and fourth wife of Mark Antony. She was one of the most prominent women in Roman history, respected and admired by contemporaries for her loyalty, nobility and humanity and for maintaining traditional Roman feminine virtues. Octavia lived at a time when many succumbed to treachery and intrigue
The Roman Unrest, or The Noble-Minded Octavia (German:DIE RÖMISCHE UNRUHE oder DIE EDELMÜTIGE OCTAVIA), commonly called Octavia. Three part tragic opera by Reinhard Keiser, libretto by Barthold.
Response to Handel's now-lost Nero, using the same period, material and plot but with Barthold substantially improving the libretto. It unites the insidious machinations of the mad emperor Nero, including the assassination plots against his stepsister and wife Octavia, the Pisonian conspiracy and its suppression, with a multicoloured sub-plot of the philosophical instructions of the wise Seneca versus the amusing observations of a clown named Davus. The action is held together by the interweaving of all these plots.
It has an abundance of slippery allusions, grotesque elements like a ballet of the dead, which seems to have been taken from a Shakespearean comedy, but above all shows its librettist's opposition to happy endings beloved of his Hamburg audiences.
5 August 1705: Premiered in Hamburg, Germany. First ever use of French horns
How did it go with Matt Weiss? Hopefully your violin duet will come to life soon.
There was a ton of rain on Monday, and quite probably that will have had its effect on the run of Fidelio. As per the next comment of yours, but since I am responding after the fact, I will pretend not to know such things.
Norman Kingsley Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007) was an American novelist, journalist, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.
Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe, Mailer is considered an innovator of creative nonfiction, a genre sometimes called New Journalism, but which covers the essay to the nonfiction novel. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize twice and the National Book Award once. In 1955, Ed Fancher, Dan Wolf, and Norman Mailer first published The Village Voice, as an arts- and politics-oriented weekly newspaper initially distributed in Greenwich Village. In 2005, he won the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from The National Book Foundation.
Personal life
Mailer was married six times, and had several mistresses. He had eight biological children by his various wives, and adopted one further child. For many years, he had a house on the Cape Cod oceanfront in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Like many novelists of his generation, Mailer struggled with alcohol and drug abuse throughout his life. [4]
He was married first in 1944, to Beatrice Silverman, whom he divorced in 1952.
Mailer married his second wife, Adele Morales, in 1954. In 1960, Mailer stabbed her with a penknife at a party. While Morales made a full physical recovery, in 1997 she published a memoir of their marriage entitled The Last Party, which outlined her perception of the incident. This incident has been a focal point for feminist critics of Mailer, who point to themes of sexual violence in his work.
His third wife, whom he married in 1962, and divorced in 1963, was the British heiress and journalist Lady Jeanne Campbell (1929-2007), the only daughter of the 11th Duke of Argyll and a granddaughter of the press baron Lord Beaverbrook; by her, he had a daughter, Kate Mailer, who is an actress.
His fourth marriage, in 1963, was to Beverly Bentley, a former model turned actress. She was the mother of his producer son Michael and his actor son Stephen.
His fifth wife was Carol Stevens, whom he married in 1980, with whom he had a daughter Maggie Alexander, born in 1971. They separated one day after their wedding, and later divorced.
His sixth and last wife, married in 1980, was Norris Church (née Barbara Davis), a former model turned writer. They had one son together, John Buffalo Mailer, and Mailer informally adopted Matthew Norris, her son by her first husband, Larry Norris.
He appeared in an episode of Gilmore Girls entitled "Norman Mailer, I'm Pregnant!" with his son Stephen Mailer.
In 2005, he co-wrote a book with his youngest child, John Buffalo Mailer, titled The Big Empty. In 2007 Random House published his last novel, The Castle in the Forest.
Death
Mailer died of acute renal failure on the morning of November 10, 2007, a month after undergoing lung surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, New York.[5] He was 84 years old.
Thank you, sir, for the tilt of the Palmer Borselino, and the very nice compliment that even in a vague or insignificant way, the poet Buttkus reminds you a bit of Norman Mailer. Both are shortish, and bullish, and sometimes boorish I suppose. Both favor muscular prose. Both loved many women. Both stirred up controversy wherever they worked or went. Buttkus never put on boxing gloves except when he was a kid in White Center, that sophmore year of High School. He knocked his stepfather Art down in one match, and probably he challenged his good buddy Doug "Mercer" to a slug fest at some point. It is hard to recall actually. But yes, RIP Norman Mailer. One can only imagine those conversations he is already engaged in with Kurt Vonnegut, John Steinbeck, and Tennessee Williams.
Well, at your age, your forays into the hinterlands on Fidelio do make you stronger, and they do give you fodder for FFTL, which is always a good thing. Perhaps it is a form of self abuse. The fitness nuts would argue that to pound one's body and muscles is "good" for it/them --but then we look at Schwartzenegger, who no longer pumps iron, and we see what happens to a magnificent morsel of muscle when the normal life sets in. He is starting to look like all the rest of us older fat guys now. Odd that you would include Tony Hillerman in the "entertainment" genre of reading material. I have always liked his sparse style and Indian wisdom. Being "socially acceptable" is overrated, as well you know. When you know more post-reading are you a "better human being"? Now that is a question for the ages. I think Hitler read a lot; was quite a history buff, but did it make him better as a person?
Yes, your education came to you in great gulps as you read, watched films, became an operaphile, studied music, built cars, repaired cars, read some more, and created your own space in this life. Formal educations seem necessary in order to succeed in life, in work, in maturation. But you are living proof that that whole notion is horseshit, just a ruse to keep the schools and colleges in business; and you had better believe that education is a damned "business". I returned to college three times, racking up 8 years and three degrees and in the final analysis it did not do that much for me. In my chosen current profession, my MaEd was a necessary evil to get one's foot in the door. But my BFA was more a joke degree. It hangs on my office wall, and I hear it snickering often. It knows what a joke it is.
I love your literary description of life as a "creaky rusty conveyor belt" moving you along "to the edge of things", as if when you get to the end of days, it will be this dark abyss that you will pitch into. The writers of the new BBC show, TORCHWOOD, that pushes the old X-Files line of believe in UFO's, evil fairies, alien technology, and such, keep stating that those who have been brought back from death found only emptiness and blackness and nothingness and lonliness beyond the veil. How sad to promulgate such absurdity. Life pulstates all around us, through us, in parallel dimensions, in other universes. Life is inexhaustable, and infinite, and can stand up to several lifetimes of abuse. The nature of things can be "positive". So many of us cling to the notion that there is something there, something grand; not Heaven, just another place, many other places.
Odd that with your intellect, with your creativity, with your dreams, you became a mechanic, and then a small business owner, and then a landlord. I always thought you would find a home in Music, as a musician, composer, band member, something --and music is still with you, orchestrating your retirement, humming through your old veins, vibrating between your ears, and between your knees. Go for it, Sir Savant, the cosmic themes are many and eternal and significant, and you are connected to them, piped into the heart and guts of things. Just grow some confidence, and become your own promoter--and things will rattle into place; probably, or not; but you will be kept awake with dreams, with compositions,with poetry, with visions --and you will rise up with expectations and hope and vigor.
Yes, your points are well taken relative to the abuse of our youth by school administrators and so-called teachers. Think back to your school days. How many good teachers did you ever have? Most of them were sad and sick assholes, poor excues for the system, going through the motions, living in a fantasy. But even so, this rash of shootings by teenagers, and the high suicide rate, and the universal world wide distraction of our youth plugged into the media, their phones and games --it is spinning my consciousness into a dark place. Our youth can not make change, pay little attention to history, still do not see the wisdom of exercising their right to vote, do not rise up and throw Bush Jr. into the oblivion and shame he deserves, the idiotic gutter snipe that he is.
And at the end of the day, there it is, that burr under your blanket, 100 feet high, blinking neon, schreeching like a siren, piercing like a sharp rock, like a stiletto in your abdomen, clinging to your ass like an incurable roid, covering your corneas like a cataract, numbing your mind like Rap music --the SSO, the behemoth of remorse, or stupidity, or irony, of repression and depression, the SSO rising taller than the Space Needle blood red against the city scape. Yeah, I can dig it, and so far I do not dig graves for a living.
Glenn
Growing up in the 50's gave me a different meaning to the word "commie". J. McCarthy's to be exact.
Meredith's grand parents claimed to be communist. They were loggers. They ran their own business. Bought and sold property.
It's just words, isn't it?
Power sickos are power sickos no matter what label they apply to themselves.
If i were to label myself, it would be "conservative capitalist"
So there.
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