Saturday, October 20, 2007

Running Down a Dream


Tom Petty is only 57, pretty young for a grand 'ole rock star these days. Gotta love the shades, his playing with Bob Dylan from time to time, and still damning the torpedoes -- don't have to live like a refugee if you're lucky. And we are lucky in Detroit today with dreamy weather, sunny and mod plus some wind to remind us spiritual matters.


Luck Mervil in Betty Fisher et autres histoires / Alias Betty (2001), a strange and interesting French language film.

Bauhaus, "Bela Lugosi's Dead" -- their first single. 1979 seems like yesterday, and at the same time like a lifetime ago. Peter Murphy has that dramatic deep voice thing going for him. Goth rock city. Last time I heard it live was in the City Club, a place full of vampiric energy and nasty drinks.


Bela Lugosi really is dead, of course -- but still lives "undead" thanks to celluloid and digital imaging. The grand master of Dracula tales, though I'm also partial to Werner Herzog's 1979 version of Nosferatu with Klaus Kinski in the main role. There's a great visual of plague rats scattering through a sleepy European town, spreading contagion.


Arthur Rimbaud's birthday. The precocious French poet spread his hallucinatory images throughout the world thanks to people who resurrected his work for the twentieth century. My old pal Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) wrote an English translation that was carried around by Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison, among others. A season in hell, indeed . . . . .


Michelle Borth from the brutally frank HBO series Tell Me You Love Me. Not for the squeamish, but riveting and ground-breaking.

Today's Rune: Partnership.

Birthdays: Marie Paulette Pauline Bonaparte, Arthur Rimbaud, John Dewey, Béla Lugosi/Arisztid Olt (Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó ), Jelly Roll Morton, Ellery Queen/Barnaby Ross (Frederic Dannay), Arlene Francis (Kazanjian), Art Buchwald, Wanda Jackson, Robert Pinsky , Tom Petty, Susanna Haavisto, Valerie Faris, Michie Tomizawa, Julie Payette, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (Ahmad Fadeel al-Nazal al-Khalayleh), Luck Mervil, Michelle Malkin (b. Maglalang), Dannii Minogue, Snoop Dogg (Cordozar Calvin Broadus, Jr.), Jennifer Freeman.

2 comments:

JR's Thumbprints said...

... oh and don't forget Ed Wood. Who says it takes alot of money to make a movie?

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