Listics

Leslie, she whose given name makes a complete sentence but let’s not get her started, is back with a post that continues in the comment thread below it recounting many of her experiences  and feelings about her performance at "All Tomorrow’s Parties," curated (I think that means "hosted") by Vincent Gallo (whose hat is not as cool as my own, but whose guitar makes one ask "is that dreadnaught or are you just glad to see me?")  Go read it for it’s humor, it’s pop cultural insights from the Richie Rich thing to the  hello kitty umbrellas and viv westwood hats.  Read it for the 21st century performance revelations ("we had some computer problems with some of the backing tracks") and the eternal performance truths ("if you’re not nervous you’re not nothing").  Read it to find out if Scottish guys really can play pool and to find out if there were free go-karts.

Read it here.

Cruised through the usually torpid leavings at languagehat and discovered that it’s Nabokov’s birthday.  Today would be his 106th.  What gives one hope is he was Ratzo’s age when he died in 1977. 

Alex Golub shares with us, "Shooting Snowy," a farce of post-modern anthropological proportions… and a good shaggy dog story too.

Madame L. posted regarding the death of Julia Darling. 

Julia Darling was a poet, a playwright, an artist, a blogger — another of the brilliant people whose work I do not know.  Fortunately, I am part of a community whose knowledge, tastes, experience, awareness transcends my little slice of our shared reality.

When I read Julia Darling’s blog, I felt tears coming.  She is a woman I wish I knew.  Her writing is clear and open and direct.  I am sorry for the pain that those who knew her must be feeling now.

I hope her family and friends see fit to preserve her work online. I recommend to you her archives.  She maintained a weblog from September 7, 2024 through April 12, 2024.  Here is Ms. Darling’s first post:

It’s a rainy Saturday, and I’ve got to finish the script for my play
which is on at Live Theatre in November. This is a play for actors
Charlie Hardwick and Trevor Fox, called Attachments, and though it’s
only forty minutes long I seem to have been tinkering with it for
months. Two handers feel very mercurial to write. There is no room for
clutter, and I’m trying not to be over lyrical and to just let the
characters go. On Monday we start rehearsals for Doughnuts Like
Fanny’s, a play about Fanny Cradock, that’s being produced by a company
over in Penrith.

After two days over there I must return to my novel which lies waiting for attention.

Otherwise, my health is good, and I’ve just finished
reading The True Story of The Kelly Gang by Peter Carey, which is
really good. I can’t stop thinking about Ned Kelly’s armour, which I
saw once when visiting Melbourne. Next I am going to read Salley
Vickers new novel Instances of The Number Three. I really loved Mrs
Garnett’s Angel which was her first novel.

This is my first entry into this diary, and a bit of an experiment. I wonder if anyone will read it?

 

Posted by Julia on 7 September 2024 at 3:21 PM

Guy asks, "What’s the meaning of life?"  I’m wondering: when it comes to that, how can people feel so affected by John Paul Deuce when I know in my heart that Bob Dylan’s more important.  Reminds me of John Lennon’s simple observation that indeed the Beatles were more popular than Jesus.  Freaked a lot of people out — proof that it needed saying.

Where’s Mike Golby?  I think we’re taking up a collection to straighten out his content but not to straighten out his head. 

Who’s more important, the virgin Mary or Madame L?  My money’s on Madame L. 

I read an Onionism about Tommy Thompson, how he tried to tell Bush that Rowe and Wade were not simply two ways to cross the Potomac.  The old boy’s back in Madison and welcome I say.

I need some Golby insight on the papal pickage that is about to ensue.  I read an article today that claimed the antediluvian assholes in Rome are protecting their privacy, screening the Vatican for bugs (cheap shots about buggery may be lubed up and inserted here).  Who gives a good god damn who the next pope is gonna be, as long as they don’t pick that Nazi Ratzenfracker.  But they’re playing it like it’s a big production mysterioso and like it is somehow under their control.  Any fucking addict knows that their only hope in Rome is to LET GO AND LET god TAKE CARE OF THAT BULLSHIT.  But no… they suffer under the illusion of power and control.  Remind me of the Carlyle Group in a way.  Carlyle Group just bought a Milwaukee company - Falk, heavy into pumps, compressors and controls.  Sounds like the war in Asia is about to evolve into a pipeline and pumping project.  Control.  Illusory bullshit.  China is buying into Venezuela because we’ve so alienated the government there.  We’re burning millions of years of biomass in a short century or so and we expect old Gaia to hang tight in her orbit?  No way, Jose.  Ain’t gonna happen.  We have fucked it up enormously and if old John’s peyote visions from the book of Revelation are to be credited, then the demons in DC will soon be shedding their serpents’ skins and slithering about in the dark and the cold, the thousan year storm.  Does anybody really give a shit who the next curator at the Vatican is going to be?  Let that strange ranger bury himself in the world’s greatest pornography collection while denying families’ the right to manage their own lives and denying women the dignity that comes with equality.  Suffer the little crucifices to fall from the walls and shred the sandals of the faithful and lacerate the knees of the penitents.

I could go on but I have a Dog that deserves attention now.  And she’s a sweet thing.  Natural.  Doesn’t twist things out around some ancient death trip.  Just wags her little butt and barks from time to time.  Kind of reminds me of Mary.   

Where did that Polish guy get off naming himself after a great existentialist?  Did he ask the atheists and anartchists if that was okay?  I hope the next guy is more sensitive to people of faith.

Okie from Muskogee opens for godless hippie commie rat poet bastid…

Coulda been the headline.  I asked Emily from Shorewood to tell me about the concert.  Here’s what she said,

Totally killer.

Bob played harmonica and keyboard all night. Dressed very dapper and
cowboy-ish. The band totally rocked and "All Along the Watchtower" was
kinda funky/reggae. Sort of dire-straight ish and super tight.

Could hear and see really well from where we were.

Here is the set list:
www.bobdylan.com/live/spring2005setlists.html#20050406

Merle Haggard was one of the opening bands and he was great too. We
were a little late and missed the first band, Amos Lee, and part of
Haggard.

A magnificent white elephant with six tusks descended from the heavens
surrounded by a chorus of beatific praises. The elephant approached
her, its skin white as mountain snow. It held a brilliant pink lotus
flower in its trunk, and placed the flower within the queen’s body.
Then the elephant, too, entered her effortlessly, and all at once she
was filled with deep ease and joy.

Thanks to Whiskey River…

She’s "…rolling out snake families on an oilcloth covered
picnic table dream"