Tuesday, May 29, 2007

The Half Century Mark


I was going to deconstruct Patrick Henry's "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" speech, the later printed version that he never gave in reality, or the other great fairytale line, after (really truly) suggesting the assassination or overthrow of George III -- "If this be treason, make the best of it." Along similar lines, it could have been JKF's "Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You" speech, but that's no good these days, either. So, instead, a nod to the Beat Generation plus Sputnik equals beatnik, Fiddle equals Faddle, and a happy birthday (why not?) to Brazilian model Ana Beatriz Barros (yes, that's her below -- not Patrick Henry).

The big Jack Kerouac craze begins this summer -- fifty years after the initial publication of On the Road. In the fall, I'm guessing we'll hear all about the multiple Sputnik launches and the dog cosmonauts Laika ("Muttnik"), Belka and Strelka, among other things.


Today's Rune: The Warrior.

Birthdays: Patrick Henry, G. K. Chesterton, Oswald Spengler, Josef von Sternberg, Bob Hope, T. H. White, John F. Kennedy, Danny Elfman, John Hinckley, Jr., Annette Bening, Ana Beatriz Barros (pictured above), Casey Sheehan.



Até a vista!

4 comments:

the walking man said...

Jack who?

Johnny Yen said...

Funny coincidence-- this morning, as I was leaving for work, I was looking at the bookshelf, at the copy of "On The Road" that I took from my late friend Mark's book collection when we were clearing out his house last summer after his death, and thinking that I need to read it. I've never gotten around to reading it.

Birthday boy G.K. Chesterton was the author of one of my favorite quotes: "My country right or wrong is like saying 'my mother, drunk or sober.'"

t said...

How do you explain blogger families thinking about the same things? it happens so often - like here. A lot of last week, i was going to post two drawings, one an old drawing that I captioned "Give me Liberty or give me death" but somehow I thought "or give me death? - how dramatic. what was I thinking? I couldn't really re-live the rage or whatever it was that made me pour that orange number on paper years ago. Then I read that you shrank from discussing the same photo.
Telepathy? Too weird.

Parsa said...

Thomas Wheeler was my 3G grandfather