Esther Press

Vincent Price, in Dragonwyck


Continuing the Gene Tierney retrospective here, the following have been seen recently:

The Razor's Edge--overwritten, yet enough good to save it. Clifton Webb appears here as well with Tierney, causing the thought that a Clifton Webb retrospective may follow.

Dragonwyck--Vincent Price and Gene Tierney, once again. Price steals the show as the patroon/drug addict. A menacing performance. Recommended.

Whirlpool--not the best, but enjoyable for some fairly campy moments. Psychoanalysis seems to be the new talk of cinema in the 40s.

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Heaven Can Wait is next.

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I thought I'd pass this on for all cinephiles:

David Bordwell's website on cinema

Pink, "Sober"


It is certainly an odd feeling being sober, and though I've been sober for 10 years and 11 months (May 19th is the day) I've still not quite gotten fully comfortable with it. Alcohol was an enormous locating agent--though it was a dislocator--that much of my present identity is even at odds with the genesis of it. That is, so much of my quirks and disposition seems born out of seeking whatever--refuge, solace, distance, comfort, fun--in alcohol that it shaped, pretty amazingly, who I am, or who I was before I knew more or less more about who I am.

Drinking alcohol drove me inward, not outward, as it does many. Yes, one becomes bold in situations that one normally wouldn't, but the general register tilted toward an interiority. It seems this perhaps prodded natural inclinations toward a fuller blooming, a more detailed practice. I think, significantly, this happened when I was 17. That was the time period, amid so much nonsense and crippling uncertainty, where I believed, or accepted, that I might have a propensity toward writing. I had been told enough times by teachers and so on, but I wasn't listening.

All of those early days of aping writers and their ways of living are mostly a pathetic remembrance of uncritical stupidity. I remember feeling most drawn to the loutishness, the prickliness, the audacity, the assholery of writers. I remember wanting to emulate them. I remember emulating them--the ones that I was drawn to--in their non-writing ways: drinking ridiculously, smoking constantly, reading, reading, reading, reading, and having various ill-considered couplings. Yet, the trashier the better. Nowhere did it seem to interest me that my behavior was affecting real people, with real feelings. It seemed much of it was a playground.

But I am not writing this to be remorseful. It was what it was, and I have attempted to make amends to those that would listen to me, sometimes many years after the fact. I am writing this mainly to put out into the world more information about another way. I am a firm believer in morphic resonance--basically that putting this out into the universe changes things, even if imperceptively at first, or even for awhile. But ideas congregate, they assemble, they drift and depart, and cling to new particles. That's all this writing is, really, a grouping of particles.

I was struck today, in thinking about being sober, and being a writer, and what a small group it really is. I mean, writers and drinking just seem to go hand in hand. Like ink in a pen. In fact, just now I can only think of a few poets/writers who no longer drink: Michael Burkard, Eileen Myles, Ron Silliman, Gabe Gudding, Mary Karr, Christopher Kennedy, and myself. I'm certain there are hundreds of others, but I don't know them. It's interesting to me as well that now I feel most comfortable among sober people, whereas when I drank the reverse was the case. Likewise I looked at sober people then as dangerous people, people to steer away from. I don't believe either mentality is mistaken--it's just what feels most understandable now. I understand sober minds moreso now, or at least the need for them.

HAHAHA


Someone should keep a running list of the variations on the same racist joke that I keep hearing regarding Obama and taxation. The latest involved the mode of aspirin--anything white will do--and some mention of a tax. In this case, it was a 40% tax on aspirin. The numbers vary. The punchline is always the same: Do you know why Obama's put a 40% tax on aspirin? "No, why?" "Because it's white, and it works." Ha, ha, ha. This is always told by a upper-middleclass white person who feels comraderie with our mutual whiteness, though it has been whispered, the punchline has, in two of the three cases.

Of note (sixty years after the fact):

Leave Her To Heaven, directed by John Stahl--the calm ice of Gene Tierney, in the rowboat, with the swimming, crippled boy. (1945)

Laura, directed by Otto Preminger--Gene Tierney and a young Vincent Price try to throw gumshoe Dana Andrews off; quip-witted Clifton Webb is wonderful. (1944)

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz--headstrong--as they once said--and feisty widow, Gene Tierney, starts seeing and hearing a captain in his old house, played with fierce machismo by Rex Harrison. (1947)

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Whirpool, directed by Otto Preminger, is up next. (1949)

Reduced to condensity 3:


Gutenberg Project

Patti Smith singing "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine."

In Second Life, animated character, mis-shapen, underwater, chatting and sending a URL of website that exists only in the Deep Web.

SHMFA x LOL + 12 (.5 WTF x ababc) = career paths - d1/2 = (1+x)1/2

Let SHMFA equal self-hating master of fine arts. ababc is rhyme scheme of what the fuck. d is detoxification. Express as fraction.

Patti Smith singing HORSES, HORSES, HORSES.

Received and/or purchased:

Gizzi, M. (2009). New Depths of Deadpan. Providence: Burning Deck/Anyart.

Mesmer, S. (2007). Annoying Diabetic Bitch. Cumberland: Combo Books.

Mohammad, K.S. (Ed.). (2009). Abraham Lincoln, 4, Winter/Spring. Ashland: Abraham Lincoln.

Raleigh, D. (1998). Knots & Ropes for Climbers. Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books.

Ramke, B. (Ed.). (2009). Denver Quarterly, 43 (3). Denver: University of Denver.

More links for you (direct from Reference studies!):

Reverso--"Welcome to Reverso.net, the free online translation service" (from the website). Puts Babelfish to shame.

The Merck Manuals Online Medical Library--"Based on the world's most widely used textbook of medicine—The Merck Manual—but written in everyday language by 300 outstanding contributors" (from the website). Useful, though keep in mind that Merck is one of the largest pharms.

CIA World Factbook--"US government profiles of countries and territories around the world. Information on geography, people, government, transportation, economy, communications...." (from the website). An enormous amount of data stored here--everything from country to country HIV/AIDS - people living with HIV/AIDS tabulations to electrical consumption to total amount of roadways in kilometers. Of course, after the facts, keep in mind this is the CIA.

David Rumsey Historical Map Collection--"The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection has over 20,000 maps and images online. The collection focuses on rare 18th and 19th century North American and South American maps and other cartographic materials. Historic maps of the World, Europe, Asia, and Africa are also represented. Collection categories include antique atlas, globe, school geography, maritime chart, state, county, city, pocket, wall, childrens, and manuscript maps. Some examples are United States map, maps New York, California map, Arizona map, America map, New York City map, Chicago map, and Colorado map. The collection can be used to study history, genealogy and family history" (from the website).