Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Nowhere to Run


Happy Birthday to Martha Reeves! Her collaborative Motown output included "Dancing in the Streets" and the powerful "Nowhere to Run," which is the situation most Americans face under the Bush-Cheney regime. I can tell you when I'll be dancing in the streets -- at that priceless moment when the next president takes office, of course! Martha Reeves is now, incidentally, serving on the Detroit City Council. It was cool to see where she recorded in Detroit's original Motown studio last weekend.


Happy birthday to my man Hunter S. Thompson:

Did you see Bush on TV, trying to debate? Jesus, he talked like a donkey with no brains at all. The tide turned early, in Coral Gables, when Bush went belly up less than halfway through his first bout with Kerry, who hammered poor George into jelly. It was pitiful. . . . I almost felt sorry for him, until I heard someone call him "Mister President," and then I felt ashamed. . . . .

Some people say that George Bush should be run down and sacrificed to the Rat gods. But not me. No. I say it would be a lot easier to just vote the bastard out of office on November 2nd.

Excerpt from “Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004,” 10/20/2004. The depressed Thompson killed himself four months later, after Bush’s reelection. I'm not depressed, but I get his point.


Belated happy birthday to beautiful Mexican actress Lupe Vélez. Unlucky in love and with nowhere to run, she killed herself, too. She didn't have herself shot out of a cannon, though.


Today's Rune: Fertility.

Birthdays: Immanuel Hermann von Fichte, William Makepeace Thackeray, Tristan Corbière (b. Édouard-Joachim Corbière), The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonssøn Quisling, Machine Gun Kelly, Nathalie Sarraute, Mary Jessamyn West, Lupe Vélez (María Guadalupe Villalobos Vélez), Harriet Nelson (b. Peggy Lou Snyder), Red Skelton, Nelson Mandela, Hunter S. Thompson, Paul Verhoeven, Ian Stewart, James Brolin (b. Craig Kenneth Bruderlin), Martha Reeves, Elizabeth McGovern.

Please Mr. Custer, I don't wanna go /And spend my night in a bar with some stupid dodo! (Iggy Pop, "Loco Mosquito," 1980)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hunter was addicted to "The Great Gatsby." That ought to tell you something.

Charles Gramlich said...

I hope Thompson didn't even give a single thought to Bush when he killed himself. What a lame reason to do yourself in.

Johnny Yen said...

Thompson is sorely missed, isn't he?

I can point to his writings as something that changed my life.