Barcelona at Midnight

Happy Birthday, Woody Allen. At 72, he's working now on Vicky Cristina Barcelona / aka Barcelona at Midnight. I suspect it'll be beautifully shot, and with Penélope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall, it's going to be hot.


General American release of Cassandra's Dream is slated for January 2008.

Today's Rune: Gateway.

RIP, Evel Knievel.

Roger, Romeo and Out

Last day of November 2007. Roger Smith, former CEO of General Motors, foil to Michael Moore in Roger & Me (1989), is dead. As is Henry Hyde, rabid critic of Bill Clinton. Though I was a fan of neither, may they RIP.


Happy birthday to my pal Amy Patrice Spade (b. Dearborn, Michigan, 1970), now living in the San Francisco Bay area. More in the pipeline.

Selma Blair of Southfield, Michigan.

Other birthdays: Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, Jacques Barzun, Gordon Parks, Abbie Hoffman, Billy Idol -- classic Sagittarians. Jacques Barzun turned 100 years old today!

Today's Rune: Movment.

The Shadow Knows!

Yesterday was the birthday of Friedrich Engels (1820-1895). Besides co-authoring the 1848 Communist Manifesto / Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei with Karl Marx, he was an astute social observer in his own right, a Germanic version of Mark Twain even. Years ago, someone quoted him as saying, for instance, "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."

At almost seventy, he wrote: "What each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed."

And in 1891: People think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy.

German writers may not be the cheeriest kind, but they certainly have things to say.


"Never underestimate a man with something to say." Today is Don Cheadle's birthday (b.1964). This guy is a gem of an actor. I still recall his supporting role in Things Behind the Sun (2001) and have been impressed by all of his performances -- most recently as Petey Greene in Talk to Me (2007). He's also well-known for his lead role in Hotel Rwanda (2004). Now is his time: with Toussaint (a biopic of Haitian revolutinary general Toussaint Louverture) in the works and a biopic of Miles Davis in the planning stages, Don Cheadle's arc is something to keep a keen eye out for.

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.

6 Frimaire, Revolutionary Year 216

If we didn't run around looking at calendars, we'd probably lose track of days and weeks, maybe months. Why? Because they're made up by humans and used "for convenience." But whose convenience? If it's all pretty random, why not add some new weekend days into the mix?

First, what a mess we have:

Thirty days hath November,
April, June, and September:
Of twenty-eight is but one,
And all the remnant thirty-one.

Oh really? Don't forget: only eat raw oysters in "R" months. Spring ahead, fall back, get up at the crack, don't be late, time's-a-wasting.

My rhetorical response to all these rules? Bite me. (Except for the raw oysters, of course).


Gregorian, Julian, Islamic 28-day lunar months, Mayan calendar end-of-the-world, blah blah blah. Why don't we consult the French Revolutionary calendar while we're at it? It's still running, ticking away in the background though mainly consulted, I suspect, by ghosts.

Today is 6 Frimaire, Revolutionary Year 216.

The calendar begins with the academic year. Frimaire (Frost) is the second month.

Each month is divided into three décades (in place of seven-day weeks).

There are twelve months of thirty days.

At the end of the year in late summer, there are five sans-culottides days, crazy holidays of sorts: Genius Day, Labor Day, Noble Action Day, Awards Day, Opinion Day. On Opinion Day you can poke fun at anybody without nasty repercussions, sort of an All Fool's Day. On Leap Years, there's Revolution Day. Nothing about Superbowl Day, though it could probably be arranged -- but would it be American football or European? And what about Guillotine Day -- watch a few billionaires get their heads lopped off? Woo-hoo! Bring out your rich! Bring out your dead!

Today's Rune: Growth.

Axis: Bold As Love

Time is so strange and even now we use dueling clocks, analog vs. digital. It's sort of like the difference between handwritten cursive and computer-generated font. Yet both tend to keep to the double 12-hour cycle, and if you wake up in darkness at this time of year, you might not be so sure if it's p.m. or a.m. Which is exactly what happened to me this evening. I was so exhausted from work, I fell asleep and later woke up, wondering if I was late for work in the morning. I wasn't; and in fact, have the whole night ahead -- but the cycle will repeat itself in twelve hours and the blink of an eye.

Railroad and military time make things plainer with the 24-hour clock and I've experienced both, nostalgic for the ambiguities of the 12-hour version. When you get up at 0600, you know it's early, but at that peculiar twelve o'clock axis on ordinary clocks, is it Chimes at Midnight or High Noon?

Calling Sister Midnight, happy birthday to Jimi Hendrix, a man very much of his own time.

Today's Rune: Separation (reversed).

Ciao!

The "Yellow Peril" Shoots the Moon

So you think we are the lazy type,
you should know better
And I don't know why
I don't know why

And you say I got a dirty mind,
I'm a mean go getter
And I don't know why
And I don't know why anymore
Oh no

So come on feel the noize
Girls rock your boys
We get wild, wild, wild,
Wild, wild, wild


Meanwhile, back in the P-R-C, boyz
Come on feel the noize!


Girls rock your boys
We get wild, wild, wild,
Wild, wild, wild!

RIP Kevin DuBrow, lead singer of Quiet Riot. He died at the hoary rock star age of 52 living out the last vestiges of the American Dream in Las Vegas. Rehab, the Riot's last album, came out a year ago to mixed response.

Birthday: Charles Schulz.

Today's Rune: Partnership.

The Space Age, Chinese Style

Ten years to the Moon!

A Bombshell for a Vase

There's usually more to the story than the narratives handed down by conventional and official versions of just about anything and everything. The last thing anyone should believe wholesale is government or corporate propaganda. But the same is true culturally. How much, for instance, do Americans know about the Vietnam War from the Vietnamese perspective? Have Americans seen clearly through the scrim of the lives of women and children? Most of the many Americanized Vietnam movies I've seen portray women as "love you long time" prostitutes or nurses, as passive victims or as girlfriends/lovers of soldiers/officials, or if they're Viet Cong or North Vietnamese, as nameless ant people/automata.

Since the Clinton Administration ended the US embargo against Vietnam in 1994 -- and with the burgeoning internet -- much more is being revealed.

Even the Women Must Fight: Memories of War from North Vietnam by Karen Gottschang Turner with Phan Thanh Hao (1998) is one of several emerging books that give a fresh perspective on what the Vietnamese call "The American War." I'm learning a lot, from specific experiences of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, to pure numbers and large scale. An estimated 60,000 women fought as part of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA), for instance. Some 1.5 million served in militias (p. 20). When American men rained bombs on North Vietnam, women and children bore the brunt -- but not passively.

Of course, if American women were ever drafted, US foreign policy would proceed on a vastly different course -- and don't you know it.

Today's Rune: Movement.