101 Get-a-'bout alley...

The Byronic Hero...

 

...so named because it evolved primarily due to Lord Byron’s writing in the nineteenth century. On this day, he entered the world.

The Byronic hero provides the title character of Heathcliff from Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights Rochester, and from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. More recently you can even find him in Severus Snape and Sirius Black from JK Rowling's Harry Potter series.

It was 1987, I was an adolescent. A woman in my bed saw my ragged copy of “Interview with a Vampire” at the nightstand. The book was planted there to impress her. She picked it up, rolled her eyes and said “Another tired rework of the Byron-Shelly myth…”. I did not know what she was talking about, but I defended the gothic pop-lit like it was Nabokov. I made a quick mental note to check in to the comment. 

The next week I was in the used bookstore pouring through a Byron Biography. I could recite “She Walks in Beauty” at age 12, but knew nothing of the man who wrote it, or the people he kept company with.

Some guys hung pictures of Brando, or Eastwood on their bedroom walls. I hung a Byron. He was my back pocket public persona. I would brood just to brood. I would wear the black trench coat like a cape. I practiced my stare and my dramatic flare. My friends who knew me through the late 80’s should be awarded the Purple Heart of Tolerance for dealing with it all. Now, much of my gothic black has faded to gray. It’s nice to know the dream is alive in so many sullen 19yr olds, in the dark corners of coffee houses.

...for your resolutions,

Love Poem with Toast


Some of what we do, we do
to make things happen,
the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc,
the car to start.

The rest of what we do, we do
trying to keep something from doing something
the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting,
the truth from getting out.

With yes and no like the poles of a battery
powering our passage through the days,
we move, as we call it, forward,
wanting to be wanted,
wanting not to lose the rain forest,
wanting the water to boil,
wanting not to have cancer,
wanting to be home by dark,
wanting not to run out of gas,

as each of us wants the other
watching at the end,
as both want not to leave the other alone,
as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone,
we gaze across breakfast and pretend.
~by Miller Williams, from Some Jazz a While

The Original Vamp... Born Today

Pola Negri, the silent vamp.
 
She was a talented actress whose dark and exotic looks earned her many fans. At the height of her stardom, she was considered a rival to the popular actress Gloria Swanson and at one time was even engaged to Rudolph Valentino as well as Charlie Chaplin.
Born Barbara Apolonia Chałupiec on NYE,1894, in Poland as an only child in a poor family, her mother had to make a living alone after Chałupiec's father was arrested by the Russians and sent to Siberia. She was forced to give up dancing and ballet when she was struck with the threat of tuberculosis. She then turned towards acting, where she was accepted into Warsaw Imperial Academy of Dramatic Arts. In 1923, she signed a contract with Paramount, with a weekly salary of $3,000. Paramount Pictures spent a huge fortune to promote her, with advertising slogans such as: "the woman who pays and makes men pay" (Men 1924). Audiences loved her vamp roles, and soon, her salary was raised to $10,000. Paramount made her the star of celebrated films such as Hotel Imperial (1927) and The Last Payment (1922). What forever doomed Pola from the land of Hollywood was the coming of talky films. By the late twenties, silent films were greatly in decline and talkies were replacing them. By this time, Pola had become so unpopular that Paramount refused to use her name in advertisement. Her thick European accent was also a great obstacle which Pola was never able to overcome as talky films soon became the rage.

Buried in: Los Angeles

Husbands: Count Eugene Domsk (1919), Prince Serge Mdivani (1927), both she divorced.

Death: Died of a brain tumor in San Antonio, August 2, 1987.
"Damn sympathy! I don't care whether they love me or not. I don't care whether I am beautiful or not. I want a chance to act."

Apt poem

Call It Quits

If you're not a movie mogul, rock star, or President
if  you're not a CEO sitting on a billion in the bank,
no on will answer your e-mails, phone calls or letters.
You'll be helpless, hopeless, too old, too young,
in too much pain, the wrong color, some unacceptable
sex, a non-believer in some religion people kill for.
You could be struggling to see through everyone's
skin to their slick, writhing guts, including your own.
Or, you could call it quits, and slip into the unknown,
inexhaustible, frothing teeth of the sea that turns us
all to brine, sweet salt of the universe.

~by Freya Manfred, from Swimming With A Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle.
 

It's just a passing fad...

On this day in 1895, Auguste and Louis Lumiere demonstrated the first movie projector, the cinematographe, in Paris, France. It projected its images out onto a screen, unlike Thomas Edison's kinetograph, which was a peep show that the viewer looked into, and it weighed only 20 pounds compared to Edison's half-ton invention. The first film they showed was "Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory." The movie opened with a concierge unlocking the gates, showed people walking through, and ended with the concierge closing the gates again. They made more than 2,000 films like this, without plots or characters, and thought of them just as moving pictures, and despite the thousands of people who lined up at their viewings every night, the Lumieres thought that movies would be a passing fad and Auguste went off to school to become a medical scientist, and Louis went back to working on still photographs.

5 Stages of Drinking by Larry Miller

It’s been around a while but it still makes me laugh…

LEVEL 1:

It’s 11:00 on a weeknight, you’ve had a few beers. You get up to leave because you have work the next day and one of your friends buys another round. One of your UNEMPLOYED friends. Here at level one you think to yourself, “Oh come on, this is silly, why as long as I get seven hours of sleep (snap fingers), I’m cool.”.

LEVEL 2:

It’s midnight. You’ve had a few more beers. You’ve just spent 20 minutes arguing against artificial turf. You get up to leave again, but at level two, a little devil appears on your shoulder. And now you’re thinking, “Hey! I’m out with my friends! What am I working for anyway? These are the good times! Besides, as long as I get five hours sleep (snaps fingers) I’m cool.”.

LEVEL 3:

One in the morning. You’ve abandoned beer for tequila. You’ve just spent 20 minutes arguing FOR artificial turf. And now you’re thinking, “Our waitress is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen!” At level three, you love the world. On the way to the bathroom you buy a drink for the stranger at the end of the bar just because you like his face.

You get drinking fantasies. (like, “Hey fellas, if we bought our own bar, we could live together forever. We could do it. Tommy, you could cook.”) But at level three, that devil is a little bit bigger….and he’s buying. And you’re thinking “Oh, come on, come on now. As long as I get three hours sleep…and a complete change of blood (snaps fingers), I’m cool.”.

LEVEL 4:

Two in the morning. And the devil is bartending. For last call, you ordered a bottle of rum and a Coke. You ARE artificial turf! This time on your way to the bathroom, you punch the stranger at the end of the bar. Just because you don’t like his face! And now you’re thinking, “Our busboy is the best looking man I’ve ever seen.” You and your friends decide to leave, right after you get thrown out, and one of you knows an ….after hours bar.

And here, at level four, you actually think to yourself, “Well….as long as I’m only going to get a few hours sleep anyway, I may as well….STAY UP ALL NIGHT!!!! Yeah! That’d be good for me. I don’t mind going to that board meeting looking like Keith Richards. Yeah, I’ll turn that around, make it work for me. And besides, as long as I get 31 hours sleep tomorrow………………..cool.

LEVEL 5:

Five in the morning. After unsuccessfully trying to get your money back at the tattoo parlor (”But I don’t even know anybody named Ruby!!!”), you and your friends wind up across the state line in a bar with guys who have been in prison as recently as…that morning. It’s the kind of place where even the devil is going, “Uh, I gotta turn in. I gotta be in Hell- at nine. I’ve got that brunch with Hitler, I can’t miss that.” At this point, you’re all drinking some kind of thick blue liquor, like something from a Klingon wedding. A waitress with fresh stitches comes over, and you think to yourself, “Someday I’m gonna marry that girl!!”

One of your friends stands up and screams, “WE’RE DRIVIN’ TO FLORIDA!!!!!”- and passes out. You crawl outside for air , and then you hit the worst part of level five- the sun. You weren’t expecting that were you? You never do. You walk out of a bar in daylight, and you see people on their way to work, or jogging. And they look at you-and they know. And they say…”Who’s Ruby?”

Let’s be honest, if you’re 19 and you stay up all night, it’s like a victory like you’ve beat the night, but if you’re over 30, then that sun is like God’s flashlight. We all say the same prayer then, “I swear, I will never do this again (how long?) as long as I live!” And some of us have that little addition, “and this time, I mean it!”

from Jeff Buckley, 'woke up in a strange place'

"...Ghost comes to visit with my keys in his pocket
Kisses in my mouth with his eyes hanging out of his sockets
Memories crumbling under still resistance
I was torn out like pages from the book of existence

I woke up in a strange place
Music so loud that i spilled all my beer
I made a call for a blackened cab
Some destination was moving on in
I remember the words that you told me
Now they come down so hard, so plain
Fate is gonna find your love in a glass of champagne

Love came calling as a counterfeit mistress
Stealing from the pockets of a sadomasochist
And she's mouthing for this place like a tongue on crystal meth
Her cigarette smelling like the fear inside my chest

I woke up in a strange place
My mind a blur and some red on my chin
I made a call for a blackened cab
Some destination was moving on in
Easy now, this car was speeding up
For my last chance crashing to freedom
Fate is gonna find your love in a glass of champagne

Sweat pours down
You're in the back seat sleeping
And she waits by the window
From an empty bed, weeping
The ghost guns the motor
To the promised land he promised you
I guess this is the time when the best intentions become facts again

Well, this is no story for the dislocated
You're gonna love but it turned to be hated
Because the lies of the spirit possessed you
Because the eyes of your lover resist you
Listen now, you keep your aim steady
As your temple turns to kiss the pistol
Fate is gonna find your love
In a glass of champagne..."

Please Drink Responsibly This Halloween

A point...

Reconsidering the Seven

Deadly Sins? Please — let's replace Pride
with Modesty, especially when it's false.

And thank goodness for Lust, without it
I wouldn't be here. Would you?

Envy, Greed — why not? If they lead us
to better ourselves, to Ambition.

And Gluttony, like a healthy belch, is a guest's
best response to being served a good meal.

I'll take Sloth over those busybodies
who can't sit still, watch a sunset

without yammering, or snapping a picture.
Now that makes me Wrathful.

by Peter Pereira

Hey man nice shot

Cause And Effect

by Charles Bukowski

the best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them

The Beautiful and the Damned... Happy Birthday

"First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you."       
~F. Scott Fitzgerald

 Fitzgerald's Silver Hip Flask

the engraving reads:

"To 1st Lt. F. Scott Fitzgerald
65th Infantry
Camp Sheridan

Forget-me-not
Zelda
9-13-18
Montgomery, Ala"

 

Tom Waits - Poetry In Motion - 1974

Bobby say:

“Every two or three years I knock off for a while. That way I'm constantly the new girl in the whorehouse.”

Robert Mitchum

Poem of chance...

To Luck

In the cards and at the bend in the road
we never saw you
in the womb and in the crossfire
in the numbers
whatever you had your hand in
which was everything
we were told never to put
our faith in you
to bow to you humbly after all
because in the end there was nothing
else we could do
but not to believe in you
still we might coax you with pebbles
kept warm in the hand
or coins or the relics
of vanished animals
observances rituals
not binding upon you
who make no promises
we might do such things only
not to neglect you
and risk your disfavor
oh you who are never the same
who are secret as the day when it comes
you whom we explain
as often as we can
without understanding

~W. S. Merwin

The Decemberists - Los Angeles, I'm Yours

It says it all... and with the current heat, you feel it all..

Timely & unexpected conversations, I have them also...

Hook

I was only a young man
In those days. On that evening
The cold was so God damned
Bitter there was nothing.
Nothing. I was in trouble
With a woman, and there was nothing
There but me and dead snow.

I stood on the street corner
In Minneapolis, lashed
This way and that.
Wind rose from some pit,
Hunting me.
Another bus to Saint Paul
Would arrive in three hours,
If I was lucky.

Then the young Sioux
Loomed beside me, his scars
Were just my age.

Ain't got no bus here
A long time, he said.
You got enough money
To get home on?

What did they do
To your hand? I answered.
He raised up his hook into the terrible starlight
And slashed the wind.

Oh, that? he said.
I had a bad time with a woman. Here,
You take this.

Did you ever feel a man hold
Sixty-five cents
In a hook,
And place it
Gently
In your freezing hand?

I took it.
It wasn't the money I needed.
But I took it.

~James Wright

Born in the heat, made a sizzlin' film...

Here's to Fred MacMurray... Happy Birthday...

Happy Birthday Marty

"The trouble with jogging is that the ice falls out of your highball glass."       
~Martin Mull