Nurse Jackie

Nurse Jackie (Showtime, 2009-present) stars Edie Falco. It's a nifty series with Falco building on her previous work (The Sopranos, etc.). Anyone else seen this one? 

Looking back, the number of American TV shows with a woman protagonist has expanded over time. I remember reruns of Hazel (working as a house maid) from the 1960s, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Julia (Diahann Carroll). Lucille Ball, of course, before that. I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, The Flying Nun. Oh yeah, Gidget and The Patty Duke Show.

Today's Rune: Movement. 

Dexter

Dexter ("A Showtime Original Series") will conclude this year at the end of its eighth season.

Questions for today's post:

If you've seen all or some of the series' episodes, what's your overall response?

If you haven't seen the show, what do you know about it through cultural osmosis -- and what's your response?

Today's Rune: Signals.

Ray Donovan

Ray Donovan, Ann Biderman's new series, began recently on Showtime. So far, excellent work. It's sort of like The Departed meets Dostoyevsky,* The Sopranos meets The Brothers Karamazov -- with a dash of Entourage and Californication on the side.

Ray Donovan (Liev Schreiber) is the badass protagonist and generally laconic "fixer" holding it all together; Mickey Donovan is his creepy but resilient father (Jon Voight) and main antagonist.

It's fun to watch how the ramshackle Donovan family system is revealed through various actions, pictures and flashbacks, bringing constant reminders of Boston to the West Coast. Very entertaining. 

Today's Rune: Movement.  *(or Dostoevsky, if you prefer).       

Jean-Pierre Melville: Le cercle rouge (Take I)

Jean-Pierre Melville's Le cercle rouge (1970) comes from a point in time two decades after Les enfants terribles, and it's in color. With it, Melville delivers a meticulous mix of crime drama, film noir and neo-noir (depending on your lingo preferences).

It's a real cool film that moves in no particular hurry. 

Early on I started thinking "Sergio Leone," and then it hit me -- the character Vogel is played by Gian Maria Volonté, the same dude that plays Ramón Rojo in Per un pugno di dollari / A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and El Indio in Per qualche dollaro in più / For a Few Dollars More (1965).  

Synchronicities. In the final season of Dexter on Showtime, the new main character, played by Charlotte Rampling, is also named Vogel.

In tonight's season opener of Dexter, a dude is trying to figure out how to "fence" jewely he robbed from a mob-owned jewelry store, while sleeping with Deb, who is on hiatus from the police force.

In Le cercle rouge, a guy is hiding from mobsters while plotting to rob a jewelry store and fence the loot, along with Vogel, who is on the lam from the police.

In tonight's series opener for Ray Donovan also on Showtime, an opening scene has Mickey (Jon Voight) emerging from prison, ready for mischief. In Le cercle rouge, an opening scene has Corey (Alain Delon) emerging from prison, ready for mischief.

Worth noting, even if it means nothing other than that crime tropes repeat themselves across the decades.

Also in Le cercle rouge are two actors who played key roles in Costa-Gavras' Z (1968/1969) the greatest political thriller flick of the 20th century (so far as I have seen): Yves Montand (as Jansen, an alcoholic ex-police sharpshooter in Le cercle rouge) and François Périer (as Santi, a mob-connected club owner in Le cercle rouge). 

Finally, André Bourvil plays Le Commissaire Mattei with gravitas and extra decency, probably because in real life he was dying, and this was his last film. 

Today's Rune: Warrior.  

The English Beat in Dallas, Texas

The English Beat put on a relaxed, superb show that sent my mind floating through time. This has happened before, often at jazz venues. It may have something to do with the sound of a saxophone, in part. The English Beat has a very cool sax signature. I don't know how they do it -- reverb? 

Anyway, in my mind I was seeing the band in the 1980s, and General Public, remembering the theme music to The Avengers (the Diana Rigg series from the 1960s) blasting just before one of these incarnations came out on stage, back in North Carolina. Also, Doppelgängers abounded throughout the night. Gabby Giffords was dancing with Kurtwood Smith (the dad in That '70s Show). There was an Amy Spade. A Frank Freeman. A Stephen Wallem (Thor in Nurse Jackie), A Jerry Bjelopera. A David J. Thompson. There was a Bryan Cranston (main guy in Breaking Bad). And an Erin Burnett (the mean-eyed CNN journalist). Even a Milton (Stephen Root) from Office Space. And hey, all I had was a little Shiner Bock from the Spoetzl Brewery. Besides The Avengers theme, I remembered Jane's Addiction opening for Iggy Pop back in the 1980s. I got into the free flow of time-space-memory. Something about The White Stripes, too.

As for the set list, here's my first crack at it. Hopefully I won't miss much here.

The English Beat, Granada Theater, Dallas, Texas, January 19, 2013:

They played, bantered and toasted for about 90 minutes, starting at approximately 9:45 p.m. Dave Wakeling: "Happy Summer in January!"

Rough Rider
Tears of a Clown
Twist and Crawl
I'll Take You There
I Confess
Click Click
Save It for Later
Hands Off, She's Mine
Best Friend
Whine & Grine
Stand Down, Margaret
Two Swords
Can't Get Used to Losing You
Sole Salvation
Tenderness
Mirror in the Bathroom

I can't fully reconstruct the banter and toasting, etc., but Wakeling and his sidekick Antonee First Class were excellent with the audience. "Two-Tone Tonee and Whistling Wakeling at your service!" Snippets about song-writing and inspiration, often fueled by ten to twelve pints of Guinness "back then." Wakeling's voice is distinctive, gravelly and deep when he speaks, like the actors Oliver Reed and Ian McShane (Swearengen on Deadwood). He ended the night with a coda: "On a beautiful summer's day in January . . ."

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune. Note: photos taken a couple of hours before showtime, which was well-attended. I didn't go into the Granada until about ten minutes before The English Beat began, missing the opening acts.           

22 Thermidor CCXIX

What makes a red letter or banner year? Years like 1968 pop to mind, and years wars start or end -- 1945 of course, continuing all the way back like that to beyond the mists of early calendar time. Today, 22 Thermidor / Fervidor, Revolutionary Year 219, known in the parlance of our day as August 9, 2011 and to some as Nagasaki Remembrance Day -- lest the world forget that day an atomic bomb was dropped on a (second) Japanese city filled mostly with civilians during a cataclysmic conflict in 1945 -- today we pull back and consider 2011 as another red letter year perhaps more along the lines of the 1968 upheavals. But who knows? There are several months left to go.

What have we learned this year?  What has happened?   The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster has got to take the radioactive cake; surely the Arab Spring / Arabic Rebellions roil the status quo; and, of course let's not forget climate change (mostly bad news) . . .  But what else "big" has happened or will happen this year?  In the words of one Detroiter: What else you got?

Today's Rune: Journey.

Sing the Blues on Every Decoration Day

Many layers of meaning attach themselves to Memorial Day and its worldwide equivalents. Soldiers, military veterans, wars -- of course. Mortality and contemplation. The meaning of life and the worth of a life. Loss. Remembrance.

In the past century, the technology of war has become increasingly sophisticated, greatly expanding in possibility through air power, advanced communications, high exposive armaments, submarines, tanks, laser-guided munitions, remotely piloted attack drones, poison gas, atomic weapons, mass electronic propaganda and mediated filtering. And, when nations coalesce together to fight "Total War" or "assymetrical war," everything is brought to bear against perceived enemies, including children, animals, woman and men together, not to mention their combined social spaces. 

Given mass killing realities like the 9/11/2001 attacks, the Holocaust, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Nanking, the Armenian Genocide, indiscriminate firebombings of great cities, the Great War, and the U.S.-Vietnam War -- just to recall a handful of grisly atrocities perpetrated by human societies or tribes or groups in the past century -- it may be wise to expand the official scope and acknowldgement of Decoration Day, of Memorial Day, to include all societies touched by war and massacre, to think beyond the uniformed.

But hell, what do I know?  In the spirit of John Lee Hooker, "I sing the blues every Decoration Day." 

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.   

Christopher Butler: Postmodernism

I am digging these little Oxford "Very Short Introduction" books. Learning new stuff every day -- far better than a stick in the eye or an eye on a stick.

In Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2002), Christopher Butler takes a shot at an overview of Postmodernism in five chapters:

1 The rise of postmodernism
2 New ways of seeing the world
3 Politics and identity
4 The culture of postmodernism
5 The 'postmodern condition'

Butler also takes shots at postmodernism as a sort of set of ideas and ways of seeing that are all well and fine but may not offer enough specific ways of creating the kind of enlightened liberal society he would like to see.

From Butler's perspective, some good stuff: "What postmodern theory helps us see is that . . . all of us are combinations of class, race, ehtnic, regional, generational, sexual, and gender positions" (p. 56).  From my perspective, this has a ring of truth, offering a contact lens of clarity along with an aroma not unlike that of freshly made French roast coffee.

Mission: challenge the received "grand narratives" and linear thinking we are mesmerized with (or try to ignore, probably with about as much success as ignoring the daily bombardment of commercial advertisements) as little school kids. But replace these with what, and how?

On the "postmodern condition" since 1945 (why 1945?  Hiroshima-Nagasaki-Auschwitz-Cold War?): "in which the global condition of societies is seen, not as determined by traditional economic or political frameworks, but as a state of culture" (p. 116). 

"Compression of time and space" (p. 117) . . . "The Internet is at present a typically postmodernist phenomenon -- it is (currently) a non-hierarchized, indeed disorganized, collage. This goes along with a change from concentration on the production of goods, to a concentration on the production of information services" (p. 117). 

Finally (read the book for more details, depth and specific examples!), "We are subject everywhere to a sensory overload of images, in magazines and advertisements, on the TV, in the cityscape, etc." (p. 117). Doh! Really?

Today's Rune: Fertility.    

Alain Resnais: L'Année dernière à Marienbad

Alain Resnais' L'Année dernière à Marienbad / Last Year at Marienbad (1961) won't seem particularly bizarre to anyone even tangentially familiar with Surrealism, Existentialism, Theatre of the Absurd, The Twilight Zone (1959-1965) or David Lynch films. 

If you are not in an altered state at the beginning of this flick yet stick with it, you probably will be by the time it's done.

As Joyce Carol Oates posed the question also in the 1960s, where are you going, where have you been? Where are we now? Who are we? Where is here? Were we here before at Marienbad?  Who is the man with the Italian accent?  What does it mean if some things cast shadows and others don't?  Who is Godot and why are we waiting for him? Makes perfect sense that these kinds of questions might be inspired by the War, the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We need to be asking the same kinds of questions in 2011, too.

If nothing else, enjoy the visuals.

Walk on the Wild Side I

Just stumbled across this excellent, trippy montage and ode to Walk on the Wild Side (1962) by "showtimepoppy." A separate post on the movie to follow soon.

Today's Rune: Defense.

Futureworld Revisited: Fifty Years On

Fifty years on, I'd say we're situated somewhere between The Flintstones (1960-1966) and The Jetsons (1962-1963).  How about you?

This 1959 advertisement promises a future as easy and lazy as the one depicted on The Jetsons. We're not exactly there yet half a century later.  (The Jetsons takes place around 2062, so we still have time to catch up). 

Except in dreams, this part of the ad is nowhere near right: "YOUR PERSONAL 'FLYING CARPET' . . . Take off and land anywhere; no parking problems."  As if.  But we do have the internet, so kids can indeed "dial a library book, a lecture or a classroom demonstration right into your home -- with sound." As if they would, the ingrates!  




















At least there have been no more atomic or nuclear attacks since the Hiroshima-Nagasaki nightmares of sixty-five years ago, just underground and above ground atomic tests and nuclear accidents, such as at Chernobyl, chemical accidents like the one at Bhopal and petroleum diasasters such as in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Despite the Cuban Missile Crisis specifically (1962) and the Cold War umbrella in general (Холо́дная война́ circa 1944-1991), despite nuclear-tipped saber rattling over Iran and North Korea today, the "whole shithouse" has not gone "up in flames" yet, as Jim Morrison once put it (-- mulling over civilization's chances from the vantage point of forty years ago.)  At the very least, that's fortunate; or as Martha Stewart would say, "it's a good thing." Almost anything is still possible, good and bad.

So we've got central air conditioning, big TVs, sensors everywhere, mobile phones, internet, digital pictures and music downloads, fast-paced social networks and scanners.  What next?  What would you like to see come next?

Today's Rune: Wholeness.  

Rorschach Slide Shot / Nagasaki Remembrance

I. I took this slide transparency shot in 1981. What does it look like to you? Anything jump to mind?

II. August 9 is Nagasaki Day, a commemoration of one of the Disasters of War. It was certainly not a highpoint in human evolution when the crew of Bockscar dropped Fat Man on the city of Nagasaki, killing or mortally maiming 80,000 people, mostly civilians, on August 9, 1945. Always worth noting -- Nagasaki is too often overshadowed by Hiroshima.

As fate or luck would have it, the city of Kokura escaped atomic attack twice: first as a secondary target, secondly as the primary target.

Today's Rune: Defense.

The Three Faces of Eve

In The Three Faces of Eve (1957), a school teacher, wife and mother of one in early 1950s Georgia suffers from headaches at first and then, the rotation of full-blown multiple personalities (aka dissociative identity disorder). Joanne Woodward won an Academy Award for her performance, based on the real case of Chris Costner Sizemore (b. 1927).

This topic is explored in many books, movies, series and soap operas and remains fluid in interpretation. Also makes me think of some of the weird complexities of twins.

In The Three Faces of Eve, the husband (nicely played by Michigander David Wayne) is irritated and skeptical, even angered by his wife's behavior. When Eve Black, the "bad" girl alter ego of Eve White, brings home a pile of glitzy clothes, hubby goes ballistic. In a similar scene in HBO's Hung (2009), hubby Ronnie is equally irritated when his wife Jessie brings home glitzy clothes at the urging of her new life coach Lenore, who backs her up to his face. Times have changed, even during an economic downturn. Showtime's United States of Tara (2009; conceived by Diablo Cody of Juno fame) goes even beyond this: Tara's husband Max (played by John Corbett) provides complete support, though her sister is more skeptical.

Are multiple personality disorders social constructs, coping mechanisms, or something eerily deeper? Remember Flip Wilson playing Geraldine? "The Devil made me do it!"

Today's Rune: Partnership. See also Flip Wilson's album, The Devil Made Me Buy This Dress! (1970).

A Terrible Love of War

If memory serves, Friedrich Engels quipped (in German, well before the First World War): "You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you." James Hillman's A Terrible Love if War (2004) gets at war from a Jungian archetypal perspective. Hillman, now in his eighties, shows a wide-ranging understanding of the history of war. The book is arranged in four major chapters, designed to evoke and provoke thought:

War is Normal
War is Inhuman
War is Sublime
Religion is War


Nagasaki mushroom cloud, August 9, 1945.

A Terrible Love of War inspires additional posts, at some point. But for now here's a chillingly frank sample:

New day? New wars. More self-righteous killing . . . more earth despoiled in the name of the nation [-- any nation --] the leader, the cause, the god. And more prayers. Wars will go on; they will not cease and they will not change. . . [W]e can imagine and therefore understand -- not all of it, but enough to step away from delusions of hope and love and peace and reason. (p 217).

Maybe it's better to think in terms of truces, rather than permanent peace. Certainly the idea of a truce is more accurate, more realistic, a reminder of how fragile the state of non-war ever is.

Today's Rune: Mystery. Posted during Iraq (2003-present), Afghanistan (2001-present), the War on Drugs (ongoing), and so on.

Kickin' Out the Jams: Proud to Be an American

It's showtime, folks. It's time for Americans of Barack Obama's age cohort -- including me -- to kick into high gear and make big things happen. And it's only fitting that this should be so. For the first time in my life, I'm really proud to be an American.

Today's Rune: Fertility.

It's Showtime at the Apollo!

Happy 2009, everybody! Rather than another account of The Great Depression, here instead is a scanned artifact from a memorable show. 1991 was a good year for me in the way of cultural absorption. While doing an adequately paid internship in London for English Heritage, I probably saw more plays and small venue concerts for cheap than I have in all the years since. Siouxsie & The Banshees at the Town & Country Club in Kentish Town London NW 5, June 29, 1991 was certainly one of them. Man, they even had a nifty coat room and a nearby tube stop, so no car needed. Got to see The Pogues and Kraftwerk at the Brixton Academy, and a memorable play about Édith Piaf and Billie Holiday, and another one at a micro-theatre based on Dostoevsky's / Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground.

Anyone have a favorite concert or artist they loved to see? Since London '91, the ones I'm happiest to have experienced include Iggy Pop, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Kraftwerk (again), David Bowie, The Lords of Acid, Irma Thomas, The Pretenders, Dwight Yoakam, James Brown, The Gap Band, Wilco, The Old 97s, Jim Carroll, The Guess Who, Eric Burdon & The Animals, Maria Muldaur and just about anyone playing jazz at the Detroit International Jazz Festival or Baker's Keyboard Lounge in Detroit. In fact, every one of these shows was in Michigan, most of them in Detroit or environs.

Besides losing about ten pounds or so and travelling around, one New Year's resolution for me is to see at least a few cool shows of this calibre. Seek and find, seek and find . . .

Here's a courthouse lawn that obviously doesn't adhere to any separation of church and state rules . . . Not surprisingly, I saw this in Palinist country in the American South. No joke!

Today's Rune: Joy.

Guernica/Gernika in Memory

Guernica/Gernika represents all violent attacks on primarily civilian targets -- that is why it's so important and lasting as a symbol. It was also a real incident (April 26, 1937) in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), a conflict that helped spark the Second World War. But it was not the first such incident. The German Condor Legion bombed the Basque town of Durango on March 31, April 2 and April 4, 1937, killing some three hundred people -- including at least fourteen nuns and a priest giving communion.

At Guernica, perhaps another two hundred civilians were killed. Most of the townspeople were able to run for their lives after the first bombs fell, though Guernica itself burned. In 2007, some 200 survivors of that attack still live and remember.

After Durango and Guernica, air forces on all sides ramped up the scale and scope of such attacks, so that by 1945, the world experienced hundreds of such mass atrocities ranging from the London Blitz to attacks on Warsaw and Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Civilians killed en masse. It's happening today in Mogadishu and around the world, and it is perpetuated by suicide bombers and Stealth bombers alike.


"Guernica was not bombed by my air force . . . it was destroyed with fire and gasoline by the Basques themselves." Generalissimo Francisco Franco, May 5, 1937.

"Guernica can offer nothing of interest to anyone concerned with its past, nor is ther any value in discussing what happened then with anyone here." Gervasio Guezurago, mayor of Guernica under fascist dictatorship, 1974.

Sources:

Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts, Guernica: The Crucible of World War II (1975).

Paul Haven, "70 Years Later, Guernica Holds Secrets" (Associated Press, April 22, 2007).

We're Professionals! Reservoir Dogs at Fifteen

I recently watched Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992) again, for the first time since 9/11/2001. It holds up well. It's not one of my favorites in the macho film department, but it's really good. And its influences, references and homages are more apparent than ever -- including nods to Sergio Leone's Il Buono, il brutto, il cattivo / The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966/1967), which is my favorite macho/existential movie (and reportedly also Tarantino's favorite film).

Violent with only secondary (at best) female roles? Yes. Disturbing? Not really, given that these are celluloid fantasies. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are disturbing. Abu Ghraib and the torture, rape and/or murder/mutiliation of real life prisoners and defenseless men, women and children are disturbing. Stylized adult warrior-type male vs. adult warrior-type male violence, even with pools of red blood as seen in Reservoir Dogs, is not particularly. A movie like Boys Don't Cry (1999, based on real life incidents) is the kind that truly disturbs, to the point that I don't want to ever see it again even though it's also very good. Once was enough.

Reservoir Dogs is effective across the board. Tarantino took a traditional setup (highly dangerous plan to get rich quick or die trying) and, with very limited budget, spins a compelling story that includes double-crossing, edgy moments and snappy dialogue. In Leone's case, he had a comparatively much larger budget and used it to set his story against the backdrop of the American Civil War and the American West. With Leone, two of the three main characters -- Tuco (Eli Wallach) and Blondie (Clint Eastwood), as opposed to the sadistic Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef) are fleshed out in some detail and it's evident that these three hombres have crossed paths before, plenty of mystery nonetheless left intact. In Reservoir Dogs, we see the same kind of "Mexican standoffs" as in Leone's epic but at much closer range, without the grand buildup. Blood, though, runs more profusely from Tarantino's characters.

Another comparable film is Joseph Sargent's The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), set in New York City. In this story, Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw), disgruntled ex-transit worker Mr. Green (Martin Balsam), Mr. Brown and Mr. Gray hijack a subway train and demand ransom in an hour or else. In Reservoir Dogs, we see men dressed in trademark black suits operate under monikers Mr. White (Harvey Keitel), Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi), Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen), Mr. Brown (Tarantino), and Mr. Blue (Eddie Bunker) under the aegis of Joe Cabot (Lawrence Tierney of film noir fame) and his son, "Nice Guy" Eddie (Sean Penn's brother Chris, now deceased).

Last snap comparison of these three films: use of music. Ennio Morricone's original score for Sergio Leone's stands out (he won a career Oscar this year), as does David Shire's hip soundtrack for Pelham. Tarantino, though, uses "found" music -- mostly pop songs he likes that mordantly fit certain scenes, like "Stuck In The Middle With You," Joe Egan and Gerry Rafferty's 1972 hit, during Mr. Blonde's sadistic treatment of a police prisoner.

Today's Rune: Strength.

Birthdays: Maxim Gorky, Dirk Bogarde.

Hasta La Vista!

Troy Was Golden Once And Now Is Only Dust

The legendary Trojan War remains even in 2007 A.D. the near-perfect metaphor for all lengthy conflicts. It's existential, with heroes and villains on all sides. But, a combination of fate and luck -- the interplay of supernatural forces (we are the sport of the gods) -- determines more than human hopes, plans and actions in actual outcomes, and unintended side consequences. The impact is felt for generations, even centuries. Human nature evolves very little in the grand scheme of things.

The Trojan War also has a very modern character -- Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships. Unlike most "uppity" women characterized in art and literature right up through most of the twentieth century, Helen gets to do pretty much whatever she wants and is not punished. In fact, she lives more happly ever after than probably any other character male, female, god or goddess, in the Trojan War epics, plays and fragmentary tales. She is Aphrodite's darling, survives the destruction of much of the Greek invasion force, the capture and sack of Troy, and the dispersal of the surviving Trojan women.


Besides Homer's epics, one of my favorite takes on the Trojan War and its aftermath is Euripides' The Trojan Women (415 B.C.). It can be read in one sitting and very quickly, or watched in movie or play versions. I just finished an English translation by Nicholas Rudall, which is simple, straightforward, and powerful. A lamentation on the squander of war and the fate of Troy's survivors, it is timeless and universal. Who, it asks simply, can justify with any moral certainty the killing or enslavement of noncombatant women, children, invalids? And in our world, who can justify the mass bombings of civilians and cities -- even in World War II -- without citing the "ends justify the means" rationalization? And once the precedents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are established, who has the right to claim a moral high ground in today's warscapes?

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Happy Spring!

Fight the Good Fight

Pearl Harbor must seem like yesterday to those who lived through it. The Japanese precision surprise military attack will always excite people's imagination. By contrast, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, Tokyo, Hamburg, or the 9/11/2001 attacks are too horrible to absorb or comprehend. When civilians are tageted en masse from the air, a line has been crossed. Or has it? The Japanese confined their December 7 Pearl Harbor attacks to the naval forces; of 2,403 Americans killed, 63 were civilians, and most of them, from what I've read, were accidentally killed by American counter-fire against Japanese warplanes. All the other named air attacks intentionally sought to kill men, women and children outright. And they succeeded. Way to go, human race! We can do better -- or can we?

December 7 is also Tom Waits' birthday (1949). He rivals Marianne Faithfull in the gravelly voice department. A crafty English instructor in Chapel Hill played an early Tom Waits record in the one composition class I ever took at UNC. "Now that's poetry, man," he said. I liked it. We had to write a response after a few songs. He also made us look up the roots of words in the massive Oxford English Dictionary (OED), another clever "activity" designed to torment static thinking and apathy. Fomenting cognitive dissonance, as it were. Now I teach composition and history using the same kinds of tactics. Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards, Tom's new 3-CD anthology, was released in November 2006.

Other birthdays today include:

Willa Cather (1873-1947): "There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before."

Eli Wallach (b. 1915): "One bastard goes in and another bastard comes out." (as Tuco)

Noam Chomsky (b.1928): "If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged."

Ellen Burstyn (b. Detroit, 1932, as Edna Rae Gillooly): "Just remember, beautiful, everything gets old if you do it often enough. So if you wanna find out about monotony real quick, marry Duane." (as Lois Farrow)

Today's Rune: Separation (Reversed).

Hasta La Vista!