Happy birthday, etc. 2

On this date died Kurt Vonnegut.

Just came by to add a comment so you wouldn't feel so lonely on the new thread, Peter. But since I'm here: Kurt was a good guy. I used to see him wandering up the street sometimes when I went to pick up or drop off a manuscript to edit or that had been edited for Dell Books, when they were on 50th Street in Manhattan and I lived in Brooklyn. In fact I did copyedit one of his: Palm Sunday, for Delacorte.

Just as it should be. Tanks for dropping by.

Happy birthday to hoofer Ann Miller and to ukelesinger Tiny Tim.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AM4L38u5vpE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skU-jBFzXl0

A big birthday day: Gary Kasparov, Al Green, Lowell George, Howard Kael, Eudora Welty, Thomas Jefferson, Christopher Hithchens, Seamus Heaney, Samuel Beckett.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p856CfM64w8

Died: Muriel Spark and Wallace Stegner.

Happy birthday to Julie Christie, Rod Steiger, Pete Rose and Sir John Gielgud.
7 or so parts to this 1988 interview :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITdL_D_T9vg

Happy birthday to Henry James, Emma Thompson, Roy Clark, and Elizebeth Montgomery.

Happy birthday to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Peter Ustinov. Charles Chaplin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps6ck1ejoAw

More happy birthdays to Spike Milligan, Kingsley Amis.
Died: Aphra Behn, Abe Lincoln, Toqueville and Ralph Ellison.

Happy birthday Kareem!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOenYJER1Hk

Happy birthday to Olivia Hussey and Nikita Krushchev, there's a pair for you.
And to Thornton Wilder.

Happy birthday to Clarence Darrow and Leopold Stokowski.

Happy birthday to Paloma Picasso, Maria Sharapova and Dudley Moore.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fY-M41FGzI

Happy birthday to Harold Lloyd and Don Mattingly.
Died: Bram Stoker 8 Nov.1847 - 20 April 1912

Happy 4/20!

Happy birthday to Iggy Pop, Anthony Quinn and Charlotte Bronte. Include John Mortimer.
Died: Racine and Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain).

Ha Ha.... LMAO!!! Happy 4/20! Shouldn't we be celebrating on "the sixties" thread, Gene?

Happy 18th birthday to my son, Osama!

Could be I'm a dunderhead, or I've been traveling too much. Then again, I hardly ever understand what Tani writes until she translates it for me. What is the sixties significance of 4/20, please? Actually, I'll accept significance of any kind.

Earth day is April 22, that might be what she is thinking of, though the first Earth Day was of course in 1970. It's the 40th anniversary tomorrow, happy Earth Day in advance everyone.

Gene? Should we tell them? 4/20 is code for ganja, grass, smoke, weed... it's a big thing with the younger generations.

Why?

from what I know and quite frankly it's very little... they would meet at 4:20 every day to smoke.

wiki 420

And now after reading this... did not know that it was started in the early 70s...

The fact that it started in the seventies, not the sixties, is why I put it here and not there.

I can't get your link to work Tani, so try this.

And this courtesy of YouTube via Andrew Sullivan's blog. I just about dropped my teeth when I saw this.

Okay. Thanks for the clarification. I am falling so far behind popular culture that I will soon be an anachronism. Didja you know, for instance, that it was I who first added to the ethersphere the notion of half birthdays? Yep, that was me.

Half birthdays? Pray tell, Pietro...

Gene, Holy Smokes! I would never have believed it... here is another link explaining the song:

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=2506

Happy birthday to Peter Frampton, Glenn Campbell and Yehudi Menuhin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZGkRtr3Yxg
Peter Kenneth Frampton was b. on this date in 1950 in Beckenham, England. Just about 465 days after my self.

A great song written by John Hartford
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToRLCh4m3vA

The shop-worn and the frozen cannot have indeed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV0IcFyXUWs

More birthdays: Henry Fielding (1707) Immanuel Kant (1724) Vladimir Nabokov (1899)

Of course some deaths: Mircea Eliade (1984) Ansel Adams (1986)

A fortuitous circumstance, Tani, led to my discovery. Turns out my brother was born 182.5 days after me (four and a half years after, actually), and so I began to wish him a happy half birthday when I had my full birthday. Many years later--not quite a hundred--Hallmark actually began to issue half-birthday cards.

My best friend and I used to have what we called Birthday Demands... We were 6 months (roughly) apart and on each shift we would have to do whatever the other *demanded* which if you knew either of us you would know that that can be a very scary proposition. Needless to say, well into our 30's, we got into a LOT of dicey situations arising from the other's demands.

Yesterday on my younger son's 18th birthday, my eldest son tried to borrow $20 from me so he could get his girlfriend a "6 months anniversary" gift.

:)

"Tried" implies that you didn't give it to him. Bad mother!

It's tough love. I did give him some bus tickets. I told him to write her a poem.

I love it, Anna... stay strong! And encouraging his artistic side is a bonus!

The same friend above and I, when our sons would beg us for quarters to play video games, would make them say "Oh most beautiful and generous mother may I..." Course they weren't 18 at the time. ;-)

What are the odds that Mircea Eliade and Ansel Adams would die on the same day? No, really, I'm serious. What are the odds?

I'll bet your son was less than thrilled at the opportunity to work on his artistic side, huh.

Well, no, he was not thrilled. But he will survive. He has written interesting poetry, though it's very dark, so I know he is capable.

Today is Shakespeare's birthday AND deathday, which has already been flagged on the plnats thread by Porius.

I have the advantage over everyone else here, being a day ahead of you all.

*smugness*

Here, for your edification, is a sonnet I frankly don't understand, but our friend Will Shakespeare does seem to be making some play on his name, among other kinds of wills, which may possibly have some bearing in the 'who wrote Shakespeare' debate.

135
Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy will,
And 'Will' to boot, and 'Will' in over-plus,
More than enough am I that vex thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus.
Wilt thou whose will is large and spacious,
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
Shall will in others seem right gracious,
And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
The sea all water, yet receives rain still,
And in abundance addeth to his store,
So thou being rich in will add to thy will
One will of mine to make thy large will more.
Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill,
Think all but one, and me in that one 'Will'.

don't get too smug about that, Peter, this 23rd day of the fourth month is almost over already here.

Wilt thou whose will is large and spacious,
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?

Oooer Mrs!

Happy birthday to Michael Moore, Roy Orbison, Vladimir Nabokov, Sergei Prokofiev, Max Planck and the Swan of Avon William Shakespeare.

And a busy death day: Miguel de Cervantes, 1616.
WS, 1616 - and yes my fingers did type out 1864 by mistake, but copyedit was there on the job to catch me in my carelessness.
Wiliam Wordsworth, 1850.
Jules Verne, 1905.
David Halberstam, 2007. Ck. out Halberstam's series on the 1950's, he is brilliant as always.

I don't know if it's Donald Fagen's birthday but I'm mad about Brubeck.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU5oY9z0s7w&feature=related

The Nightfly, a great, great album, PorMan.

Though I'm partial (predictably perhaps) to this, from Fagen and Becker: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Vduo2uBfSo

As you should be EF. Two Against Nature is also fine.

What happened to Brubeck¿¡¿¡¿¡

What indeed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faJE92phKzI

Does this help Ch:Muse?

Whoever has her wish, you have your will, and will indeed, and
Will in overplus: for I am more than enough in continuing to
annoy you, thus adding one more to your sweet will. Wont you
whose will is large and spacious, condescend to hide my will in
yours? Shall will in others seem very acceptable and mine gain no
acceptance? The sea, all water, goes on receiving rain and adds to its
store in abundance: so you, having plenty of sex, add to yours one
will of mine, to make your large will more. Let no fair suitors be un-
kindly refused: think them all one and include me in that will.

To make sense of this we must summon up the courage to confront what
Hyder Rollins calls coyly the 'less supposed meanings of will'.
Why 'less pleasant'? Without them we should not be here. And, after LADY CHATTERLY'S LOVER, why make such a fuss? why the humbug? - David Herbert will have lived in vain. 'Will' to the Elizebethan meant also sex, and the sexual organs. Understand that and the sonnet becomes plain as a pikestaff. It must have given Shakespeare's young friends much amusement.
It's not clear who comes off better here: the young man or the young woman.

mostly from Alfred Leslie Rouse's SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS

Seriously, Por-Man? what are you mad about? I LOVE Brubeck!

I am hardly ever mad. Oh, I am always mad at basketball refs and politicians but that's another story. Yes, far from mad, indeed. Of course my love for Brubeck is without question.

Ah, thank you for that clarification... you are mad *for* Brubeck! I was quite worried for your jazz soul and I can sleep better now with that knowledge.

Sorry. It was a line in Fagen's NEW FRONTIER : I heard youre mad about Brubeck. Meaning mad for Brubeck, which I am. He finishes : like your eyes I like him too.

Duh! Me thinks, the lyrics left me brain... I have been on heavy pain meds for two years now and my prized memory of lyrics has all but flown the coop. 'Tis a sad day on the high desert... :-(

Not sad. Never sad.
From that fine movie THE DRESSER.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv4fcwonaUQ

I saw a more recent movie pairing the two--Courtenay and Finney--in which Tom's wife had just died and he moved in with the bombastic Albert. You know it, Peter?

The Salford (Manchester) native starred with Joanna Lumley (Absolutely Fabulous, Cold Comfort Farm, etc. etc.), Tom Courtenay, in A RATHER ENGLISH MARRIAGE I believe. Have not seen but will, soon. How careless of me, T.C. was born in Hull.

A little bit from the 1998 movie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kzpixyh6d2g

How could I forget to mention Joanna Lumley's birthplace: She was born 1 May in Srinagar in the princely state of Jammu & Kashmir. 1 May coming soon and Albert Finney's is on the 9th

Tomarrow 24 April is the birthday of the great novelist Anthony Trollope.
24 April 1815 - 6 Dec. 1882
from the BBC Barchester Chronicles with Nigel Hawthorne and Geraldine McEwan (from the LUCIA series).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXxgXwUOIxc

And died: John Michell of Sacred Geometry Headquarters and wrote a good book on the Shakespeare controversy.

Happy birthday to Meadowlark Lemon and Ella Fitzgerald.

Immediately I saw the words Meadowlark Lemon and the Globetrotters theme started playing in my head. Now I see the Washington Capitals. Oh, God, what have you wrought, poor man?

Sweet Georgia Brown!

Sweet Georgie Brown! Hey, way to go, Tani. That's what I call a good pluck.

I have always loved the Globe trotters... saw them once as a kid. Such fun!

Happy birthday to John James Audubon.
http://www.1artclub.com/uploads/09-0035.jpg
Often less than comfortable for the birds but there's no denying the greatness of the results. Audubon unlike Dick Cheney shot many birds, hardly if ever his mates.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQijoWmzvTo
Another birthday: David Hume b. in 1711.
And died: Daniel Defoe in 1731.
http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/gazette/david_hume.jpg
D.H.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Daniel_Defoe_1706.jpg
D.D.

Happy birthday to Edward R Murrow, Albert King (blues man extraordinaire playing with Stevie Ray), Al Pacino and Talia Shire

Holy shit! Hubert Selby died on this day in 2004? I had no idea he died. The author of Last Exit to Brooklyn, including the stories "Tra-La-La," and "Strike." Christ. Why didn't anybody tell me sooner?

Happy B-day to David who would have turned 50 today.

Hubert Selby isn't the guy who played Quentin Collins?!?! Somebody could have told ME that before now, too.

>45 Porius:: ooh thanks Porius. First time I've posted something risque online.

*showing my naivety*

Happy birthday to Ulysses S. Grant and Earl Anthony. Both great bowlers, on different lanes though.

You say Earl Anthony, Por-Man, while I say, Mark Roth.

1981 Showboat (part I)
1981 Showboat (part 2)

Saturday morning PBA bowling on channel 7 was AWESOME.

You da bes, EF.

And died as they always do die: Ralph Waldo Emerson.
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/Cober/mathesis/emerson.jpg

Forgot to mention Edward Gibbon 1737- 16 Jan. 1794
http://www.risefallandsurvival.org/edward_gibbon.jpg

Happy birthday to James Monroe
In 1992 'Ice Berg" Slim died.

Happy birthday to Johnny Miller, Duke Ellington, Zubin Mehta and Celeste Holm.

One more birthday: Humphrey Carpenter, biographer of Wystan Hugh Auden and other things.
Deaths: Russell Kirk, conservative from my home state and John Kenneth Galbraith.

I read Russell Kirk's tome on conservatism, The Conservative Mind, and recall thinking about it that 75% of it was pretty good and right on. It also made me realize that there is nothing conservative at all about the current Republican party.

Mostly clownish pelfers like palin & co. joetheplummer never heard of Kirk.

Gene, I think I might have agreed with Kirk even more than you and have concluded, probably largely because of him, the same thing about Republicans. The Republicans will tell us that Kirk was first silly and second not conservative.

Robert

SILLY! I suppose he was a bit, meeting adjourned forever.

What is a conservative who cares supposed to do these days? It's almost like any sane person either has to sit it out (the worst possible action) or hold their nose and vote Democrat. As the Tea Bags have dried out, we see they are just another arm of the radical right, wholly owned subsidiaries of Coors.

Happy birthday to Eve Arden. And A.E. Housman died on this day.
http://www3.amherst.edu/~rjyanco94/literature/alfrededwardhousman/poems/ashropsh...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO JOSEPH HELLER b. 1923. And to Judy Collins and Jack Parr. Died Eldridge Cleaver - SOUL ON ICE.

Happy birthday to Englebert Humperdinck and Jerome K. Jerome.
Died Leonardo Da Vinci and Marylyn French.

Happy birthday to Bing Crosby, Mary Hopkin and James Brown. Can't get enough of Rapp Payback lately. Especially the rhythm section.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecnehcLIVeI
Der Bangle as my old Dad called him was the Squarest of Squares and the Hippest of Hippsters at one and the same time. Yeats would have liked him for this.
Happy birthday too to Nicolo Machiavelli and Christopher Hibbert.
Died: Charles Fort and Jerzey Kosinski.
"Damned Things"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UU-bSAlRac

For those who may wonder who Mary Hopkin is/was, she did this. Ah, yes, those were the days, indeed. These sort of sentimental songs have always stirred my blood. The best one, imnho, you ask, well it just might be this. This cover seems to be the best version of this on youtube.

Cant git nothin by you geneg you old dawg. And the Edward Hopper pictures - splendidious. I used to (though I am most likely talking to myself here) go to the Rathskeller to listen to an old Cornish sailor sing this song in a hearty baritone; I loved the old salt. Also saw Mary Hopkin at Meadow Brook way back when - she was great.

Edward Hopper? Where?

see the you tube of Mary Hopkin on #83
or:
http://www.canvasreplicas.com/images/New%20York%20Movie%20Edward%20Hopper.jpg
http://www.raisethehammer.org/static/images/tgarm_edward_hopper_lobby.jpg
http://www.tqnyc.org/2006/NYC063370//edward_hopper04.jpg

Enjoy another great American dauber:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv12840Z2lQ

Oh yes. I do like the cleanness of his work. There's a row of two story buildings in Nyack, New York, that's the subject of one of his pieces. He lived there awhile. It's just as it was then, except everything's different, in accordance with the now pricey town's renovation; the ground floor stores, I mean.

Yes PW there is very little sfumato in Hopper's pictures.
Sfumato,( Ital. evaporated, cleared like mist) is a word used to describe the transitions of color or, esp., tone from light to dark by stages so gradual as to be imperceptible. Leonardo attached great importance to this as a means of maintaining that effect of relief which he regarded as essential to the art of painting, and in some of his works the softness of the contour and the darkness of the shadows have now combined to spoil much of the effect intended. In his notes on painting he says that light and shade should blend 'without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke."

In which sense it would be Hopper, not Da Vinci, who fits the age of noir mystery, black and white, in your face prose. That's what comes to (my) mind, looking at his colorful but starkly alienated depictions.

Happy birthday to Tyrone Power and Karl Marx. And to Soren Kierkegaard who put out an interesting work the same year as Dostoyevsky's, NOTES FROM BENEATH THE FLOORBOARDS.

A special happy birthday to Willie Mays, Stewart Granger and Orson Wells
http://z.lee28.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/willie_mays_54w...
Also to Richmond Lattimore.
Died: L. Frank Baum

Happy birthday to Robert Browning, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Peter Carey, and Goodnight-I-Rena.

I see a Nigerian born, British singer-songwriter and dancer named May7ven even shares my birth year. Why didn't I think of changing my name to that?

Well first happy birthday to shawculottemuse. Along with Browning and Tcaikovsky I would add the great Baltimore quarterback Johnny Unitas.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aihFz9_uPuU
Brahms
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD-HHR4Ixso
Tchaikovsky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW_LNxEt8QU

Guy just looks like a QB, don't he?

That he do.

Johnny U.

On this date in 1941 James George Frazer died.
http://www.nndb.com/people/600/000099303/sir-james-frazer-1.jpg
Born 1 Jan. 1854

Robin Roberts died yesterday:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/88962&newpost=1#lastmsg

Happy birthday to Rick Nelson and Fulton J. Sheen (Bishop).
Died: John Stuart Mill and Gustave Flaubert.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxdiraVxwkI

You can't please everyone, Por-Man, so you got to please yourself.

Oh I know.

Well, it's all right now, I learned my lesson well...

and happy birthday to the author, Traci Lords.

Had I read all that Ricky Nelson stuff at the time, I might have suggested it's late, but alas, I didn't and it isn't so now I just feel like a poor little fool, Oh, well.

#104 Gene? Huh?

I've edited my post #104 ,hopefully, they've added clarity. I keep forgetting not everyone was cruisin' around in an old '53 Chevy with Lakes Pipes and a Glasspack, hair back in a ducks ass, cigarettes rolled up in their t-shirt sleeve back in 1959.

Thanks for the clarification and for making me feel young... ;-)

Happy birthday to Glenda Jackson, Sid Vicious, Donovan and Fred Astaire.

all these DWM clips ! Let's listen to some LBG clips

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUOkg4jFNus&feature=related

Happy Birthday to Albert Finney and my daughter.

Happy birthday, Piero's daughter!

Piero's daughter, like Piero, also has an eye-talian name: Raphaela. Only she's had hers since birth.

Oh, I love that! What is her nick name? Cuz I know you have one for her... ;-)

No, I don't. But her friends call her Raph.

Happy birthday to Irving Berlin, Salvadore Dali, and Mort Sahl
Irving Berlin's CHEEK TO CHEEK sung by Old Blue Eyes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yyhOtPAXK4&feature=related
Dali
http://www.arts-wallpapers.com/wallpaper/salvador_dali/paintings3/landscape_of_b...
Mort Sahl, and I saw Orson Wells' THE STRANGER the other day, he isn't half wrong.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cuhc2VCTHeU&feature=related

Happy birthday to Steve Winwood and Yogi Berra.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWptXUblA4E
Died: William Dean Howells.

G.C.
http://www.louisck.net/images/george%20carlin%2003%20extra%20goofy.jpg

Happy birthday also to Katherine Hepburn.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94cGZlE1KZE

12 May
Happy birthday to Arthur Sullivan (what a fine movie was Topsy-Turvy), Joe Louis (the Brown Bomber), and Stevie Wonder.
TT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXWkIZUPmDY
Timothy Spall is perfect in his role.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqG7iDCxgqc
There's more, happy birthday to Edward Lear and George Carlin.
Died: Joris-Karl Huysmans (1907), and August Strindberg (1912)

Happy birthday to Jack Bruce, Thomas Gainsborough and Cate Blanchette.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFI_wh5wdQ0
And died on this date in 1987 the great James Joyce biographer and scholar Richard Ellmann.
Ellmann with an Irish poet.
http://irishstudies.emory.edu/images/HeaneyEllmann.jpg

Happybirthday to George Brett. James Mason and Joseph Cotton.
Died: Rider Haggard (1925)

Happy birthday to Holly Martins, eh? Joseph Cotton is/was one of my favorite actors.

Happy birthday to Gabriella Sabatini and Henry Fonda.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypcL2Z0V8uY
More happy birthdays go out to Mikhail Bulgakov and L. Frank Baum.
Died: Emily Dickinson (1886)
Charles Williams (1945)

Happy birthday to the lovely Maureen O'Sullivan, Mia Farrow's mom.
http://dirtyharrysplace.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/mosdf4h6.jpg
http://www.vanityfair.com/style/features/2009/03/hollywood-kids-slideshow200903#...
She played Jane opposite Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan.
http://explorepahistory.com/images/ExplorePAHistory-a0h2z2-a_349.jpg
What about that Cheeta? Wouldn't be complete without Tarzan's entreaty to the denizens of the Jungle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WylcBisy39Q

Happy birthday to Rick Wakeman.

Maureen O'Sullivan is Mia Farrow's mom? Get outta town!

That she is.
Happy birthday to Eugen Weber. A great lecture series on Western Civilization

Died today: Lloyd Alexander. As a young reader tearing through the elementary school library and not getting into the fiction about horses, sports, tom swift, school kids etc., I finally found something I liked to read. The rest is history. Thank you, Mr. Alexander!

RIP Lloyd Alexander.

I just read Time Cat recently. It's a great history lesson for a pre-teen and a very cute book as well. I loved the Prydain Chronicles when I was a kid. Never did figure out how most of those names should be pronounced.

Happy birthday to Malcolm X, Peter Townshend, and Grace Jones.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdGlWRmh-uM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmAmayD5Zf0
Idonwancho
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC-tIJ9cgIY
There's some who'll say it's not enough
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvRjGLRQQVk
Also happy birthday to Bertrand Russell.
These were the 19th of May

Died: James Boswell, Nathaniel Hawthorne and T.E. Lawrence (1935).

19 May

LOVE Townshend. I think my first experience was Live at Leeds and Who's Next... I would sneek into my brother's room and play them over and over and over.

A little late, or early, and surfeited with good red wine I would like to extend happy birthdays to Honore de Balzac, John Stuart Mill and Joe Cocker.
And died: Max Beerbohm, Stephen Jay Gould and Paul Ricoeur.

Happy birthday to "Fats" Waller. Born Thomas Wright Waller, 21 May 1904 - 15 December 1943.
http://www.weblo.com/music/images/artists/thumbnail/Fats_Waller_48f736813e49c.jp...
Alexander Pope was born in the year 1688.
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/popea/pope.jpg
Died: Lord Kenneth Clark (1983)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9lmepH9STs

I have Pope's translation of The Illiad through The Heritage Press.

Happy birthday to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Laurence Olivier, Richard Wagner and Mary Cassatt.
Died: Maria Edgeworth, Victor Hugo and Langston Hughes.

Happy birthday to Artie Shaw and Marvin Hagler.
Henrik Ibsen died on this date in the year 1906.
Ibsen after a series of strokes died. It is believed that when the nurse reported to those around the death bed that old Henrik appeared to be rallying, he returned: "on the contrary." Then died.

one of my favorite Artie Shaw tunes.

The splendidious Eleanor Parker and Fred dancing to one of yourfavorite tunes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpRU-vyelks

Fats Waller; I almost missed that. "Your Feets Too Big."

Happybirthday to Rosanne Cash and Bob Dylan.
Also to William Trevor, Charlotte Mary Yonge & George Lakoff.

Died: E.M.W. Tillyard and John Wain, authore of a Samuel Johnson biography and much else.

Bob Dylan? Is it Gemini already?

Happybirthday to Ian McKellen and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Died: Samuel Pepys.

Miles Davis, Jay Silverheels and Al Jolsen. happy birthday.

Happy Half Birthday to Oscar Robertson and me. And Happy Birthday to my brother.

My wife tells me Levon Helm is 70. He sure seems older than that.

And R.I.P. Martin Gardner.

Yes Martin Gardner's AMBIDEXTEROUS UNIVERSE was an influence on me.
Happy birthday to Slammin Sammy Snead and Isadora Duncan. Sam told one of his student's, when asked what could he do to improve his golf game, the Slammer thought carefully then replied: "take two weeks off then quit forever." Perfect advice in my humble estimation.
Happy birthday also to Balzac. Who can forget that Woody Allen movie wherein Woodrow has his way with, I believe it was Shelley Duvall, rolled over and exclaimed: "as Balzac would say, there goes another novel."
And died: Thomas Bulfinch, of Bulfinches Mythology.

Dashiell Hammett, Harlan Ellison and Joseph Roth on the list today. Like them all.

Happy birthday to Jim Thorpe and Gladys Knight. And to Ian Fleming and Walker Percy;
And passed away on this date Anne Bronte of the writing Bronte sisters.

Happy birthday to Gilbert Keith Chestrerton.
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/chesterton.jpg

Died: William Schwenck Gilbert (1836 - 1911)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjQoHZfxdGs
http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/90/11490-004-EEC73053.jpg

Happy birthday to Benny Goodman and Vanessa Bell.
http://thegood.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/2-vanessa-bell-7.jpg
http://www.tomdaughertyorchestra.com/images/BennyGoodmanSmall.jpg

"Kit" Marlowe was stabbed through the eye this date in Deptford by Frizir, Poley and co.
Francois-Marie Arouet died also on this late May day.
http://www.thequoteblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/voltaire.jpg
http://www.cantatasingersottawa.ca/sharedimages/composers/Christopher_Marlowe.jp...

Goodnight to one of the cleverest of all men. And a great humanist.

"Voltaire" says bonne nuit to Monsieur slickdpdx.
Has anybody seen Cardinal Richlieu lately?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QUVJFJe8Ds

Forgot to mention that Joe "Willie" Namath, Don Ameche and Walt "No Fawlt" Whitman have a birthday today.
Died: Edith Hamilton, Angus Wilson (who has a splendid THE WORLD OF CHARLES DICKENS), and Tim Leary. I witnessed an interesting debate featuring Leary and G. Gordon Liddy at the Michigan Theatre in Ann Arbor in the 70's. I hate to admit that Liddy wiped the floor with Tim. Though Leary was a good sport throughout.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQIzm3ypzBQ
One of the lovelier old songs by the Moody Blues.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPEMZteFjWc&feature=related

Happy birthday to the inimitable Frank Morgan.
1 June 1890 - 18 September 1949

http://oumathclub.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/frank-morgan-wizard-of-oz.jpg
Nobuddyseesthewizid!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rzBajI1kHw

Louise Bourgeois 98.

Happy birthday to Thomas Hardy, Barbara Pym, Johnny Weissmuller, and Sir Edward Elgar.
Died: Vita Sackville-West, friend of Virginia Woolf, and when she found time, wife of Harold Nicholson - a pretty good biographer himself.
http://users.library.fullerton.edu/scox/vitas-w.jpg
http://www.mantex.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/nicolson_h.jpg
http://www.born-today.com/btpix/sackville_vita.jpg
Thomas Hardy
http://images.filedby.com/images/creators/Thomas_Hardy_small.jpg

3 June
Happy birthday to Allen Ginsgberg and Tony Curtis and Leo Gorsey (Slip Mahoney).
L.G. and Satchala
http://www.doctormacro.com/Images/Gorcey,%20Leo/Gorcey,%20Leo_02.jpg
T.C. aka Bernard Schwartz.
http://handson.provocateuse.com/images/photos/tony_curtis_01.jpg
A.G.
http://digilander.libero.it/istitutoargentia/didattica/english/immagini/ginsberg...

Happy birthday to Robert Merrill and Rosalind Russell.

Happy birthday to Bill Moyers, Tony Richardson and Margaret Drabble, who wrote a biography of Arnold Bennett and a lot else. AB is one of the three hated Edwardians who appeared in Virginia Woolf's famous essay.
The great John Wooden died at 99 years old tonight. A stickler for detail and a very literate man if there ever was one.

Nearly moved me to tears with this John Wooden anecdote :

Nellie ( his wife ) died on March 21, 1985 from cancer.

Wooden remained devoted to Nellie, even decades after her death, until Wooden's own death. Since her death, he kept to a monthly ritual (health permitting)—on the 21st, he visited her grave, and then wrote a love letter to her. After completing the letter, he placed it in an envelope and added it to a stack of similar letters that accumulated over the years on the pillow she slept on during their life together.

I don't know the specifics dates, but at some point after Nellie's death, UCLA administrators wanted to name the floor (the basketball court) of Pauley Pavillion after John Wooden. John said okay, but with one amendment: that they name it the "Nell and John Wooden floor," and its been named so ever since.

R.I.P., Coach Wooden!

Happy birthday to Thomas Mann and Bjorn Borg.
Died: Carl Gustav Jung and Kenneth Rexroth.

Thomas Mann! The greatest of the great ! Happy Birthday !

Happy birthday to Paul Gaugin, Prince, Tom Jones and Dean Martin.
Died: George Sand, Dorothy Parker, E.M. Forster and Henry Miller.
http://www.janeresture.com/tahiti_gauguin/PAUL%20GAUGUIN.jpg
http://electrodes.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/paul_gauguin__am_meer__-fatata_te_...
http://www.janeresture.com/tahiti_gauguin/PAUL%20GAUGUIN2.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Paul_Gauguin_-_Deux_Tahitienn...
Gaugin of the magnificent 'gobbo' nose.
http://echostains.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/paulgauguinblackwhite.jpg
http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/paintings-by-paul-gauguin-5.jpg

Happy birthday to Frank Lloyd Wright and Nancy Sinatra.
Died: Samuel Butler and Thomas Paine.
Nancy & Lee Hazelwood
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnkuRQ8tjIE

Nancy and Lee died together ?

Last time I checked Nancy was still kicking. Born in 1940, she's 70.
Barton Lee Hazelwood died in 2004 or thereabouts.

David Markson died this past Saturday. Experimentalist mostly. Wittgenstein's Mistress is his most widely read work.

Happy birthday to Jackie Mason and Cole Porter.
Died on this date in 1870 'The Inimitable', CHARLES JOHN HUFFAM DICKENS, 7 Feb. - 9 June 1870
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dickens_Gurney_head.jpg

Happy birthday to Saul Bellow.
Died: Sigrid Undset.
http://lemondegala.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/saul-bellow-by-fay-godwin.jpg
http://serina.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/sigrid_undset.jpg

Happy birthday to Hugh Lawrie.

Happy birthday to Malcolm MacDowell and William Butler Yeats.
http://www.valdosta.edu/library/blog/wp-content/uploads/william_butler_yeats_1.j...
http://www.essortment.com/all/yeatspoem_rddb.htm

Died: William Blake, Edmund Wilson and Saul Alinsky.
http://thedivineimage.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/william-blake-portrait1.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/William_blake_beatrice.jpg
"Bunny" Wilson
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/09/04/books/wilson2.450.jpg
http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/11/38811-004-FD3B3D57.jpg
Saul Alinsky and students
http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/ware/images/1967_Saul_Alinsky.jpg
http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Third_Party_Photo/2007/03/04/1173002616_4309....
These are radicals already?
http://patdollard.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/ph2008033100939.jpg

Happy birthday to Jerzy Kosinski & Burl Ives.
http://ckuik.com/A_Little_Bitty_Tear__Burl_Ives
The song is the second box top row, Burl's picture.
Happy birthday also to Dorothy L. Sayers.
Died Douglas Southhall Freeman
http://img.tfd.com/wn/E2/6A20D-dorothy-l--sayers.gif
http://whitepaintedwoman.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/dorothysayers.jpg

Happy Birthday yo Erroll Garner.
Died: Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Jerome K. Jerome and Jorge Luis Borges.

Happy birthday to Stan Laurel.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/71/StanLaurel.jpg

Ah yes, the partner of Savannah, Georgia's own favorite son, Oliver Hardy, the master of the slow burn, in some of the funniest comedy ever made. I have never looked at a sailor or a piano in quite the same way since I first saw them. They were what The Three Stooges wanted to be but just couldn't quite. "But Ollie...".

Oh, and on a different note, Jimmie Dean, the Sausage King and sometime musician/TV show host died Sunday.

For you of the strong stomach for old, maudlin, narrated country songs:

Big Bad John.

This here is a literary endeavor.

Come back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean!

(touchstone not working)

Sorry Stan Laurel lovers his birthday is today, I screwed up. Also a birthday for Irving Penn (great shudder bug), Hank Luisetti ( first one-handed jump shot), and Enoch Powell (classics scholar and politician). And Idries Shah (writer on all Sufi subjects).
It seemed he wasn't gung-ho about immigration, etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDcCFzRpkjQ
Last but not least in 1313 was born Giovanni Boccaccio.
A daubers imagination doubtless:
http://enloehs.wcpss.net/projects/west42002/boccaccio6/boccacci.jpg

Happy Bloomsday, Porius!

I love Laurel & Hardy too...

Idries Shah changed my life. The Sufis is the single most important book I have ever read in terms of my own personal outlook in life.

Thanks Anna, and happy Bloom's Day also to you. I've enjoyed the several books I've read by Shah. I love that Nasrudin cat. I've been looking into Gurdjieff since college and am an admirer of the great theatre director Peter Brook who did that fine movie on the mysterious fellow.

M.C. Escher and Igor Stravinsky have a birthday today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mta3-sGMi5Q
Died today in 1963 John Cowper Powys
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01182/arts-graphics-2007_1...
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/p/john-cowper-powys/porius.htm

John Cowper Powys. Por-Man, suppose we were to read Powys in '11 as a non-tome read, which one would you suggest as a solid introduction to his work?

MAIDEN CASTLE would be good. Let me think on it .

Please do. We'll read a John Cowper Powys of your choosing. I've eavesdropped on yours and slick's messages, and am intrigued.

Makes me very happy.

Died: Djuna Barnes and I.F. Stone.
http://www.sleepinanestofflames.com/Web%20pictures/Djuna_Barnes_by_B_Abbott.jpg

I missed Jeanette MacDonald's birthday yesterday. I missed too Isabella Rossilini & Carol Kane's. Thomas Hardy met A.E. Housman for first time.

19 June
Happy birthday to Lou Gehrig, Blaise Pascal, Moe Howard, Louis Jordan and Pat Buttram (one of my favorite side-kicks).
Died: Lord Acton (1902), J.M. Barrie, who thought about marrying the second Mrs. Thomas Hardy, but thought better of it and broke off the engagement (1937) - he outlived Hardy by 9 years, William Golding (1993) - favorite of Macumbeira

Say that again Por ! Genial Golding. Finished close Quarters a week ago and I have been toiling with the understanding and the review.
The more I think it over, the more I find, the greater it is.

Say no more I will revisit Golding immediately if not sooner.

Gimme a hug !

This will have to do
http://knirk.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/william_golding.jpg
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a44/moxievision/Golding.jpg

Happy birthday to Brian Wilson, Chet Atkins and Erroll Flynn.
Happy birthday also to Claire Tomalin.
Died: Clifton Fadiman.

Happy birthday to one of my very favorites Ray Davies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs2kFrGluKs

Ditto that!

Still getting it done like nobody else: http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=2YnDTpzmiho

Double ditto!

Do It Again

Happy birthday to Rider Haggard, Billy Wilder and Todd Rundgren.
Died: Walter de la Mare and George Carlin.

Todd used to live up here, in Woodstock, and in fact had his own recording studio in the hills. I saw it, and his house, when I went to a garage sale there a few years ago.

Happy birthday to Ambrose Bierce, Jeff beck and Jack Dempsey.

Happy birthday to George Orwell, Carly Simon and Anthony Bordain.
Died: ETA Hoffman, Margaret Oliphant and Lyall Watson.

A very very happy birthday to that truly great man Colin Wilson. Also to the fine actress Eleanor Parker and to the the great character actor Peter Lorre.
Died today funny Ford Maddox Ford, I just finished reading two pieces from his fine study PORTRAITS FROM LIFE (on Thomas Hardy and HG Wells) and he upped and died on me, well it was some few years ago, but I've got much enjoyment from his works. Also passed away on this June day: Malcolm Lowry and Irving Stone, who if memory serves wrote a fine novel about Darwin's adventures.

Happy birthday to Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo)
http://www.americanprofile.com/asset/file/art/58/19758/87y388.jpg
Died: Giorgio Vasari and Shelby Foote.

Happy birthday to Mel Brooks & Richard Rodgers. On this date in 1929 Thomas Stearns Eliot was accepted into the bosom of the Anglican Church.
And finally happy birthday to Jean-Jacques Rousseau
http://www.mimifroufrou.com/scentedsalamander/i/Jean-Jacques-Rousseau-Armenien.j...

Happy birthday to Slim Pickens and Antoine De Saint-Exupery - what a pair! On this day in 1857 in London Dickens, hey Pickens & Dickens, read from his works.
Died: Kate Hepburn & Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
http://blog.syracuse.com/shelflife/hepburn.jpg
http://www.florin.ms/ebbgordigiani1.jpg
http://images.npg.org.uk/790_500/3/3/mw111433.jpg
http://www.frederickleebridell.co.uk/images/elizabeth_barrett_browning.jpg

Happybirthday to my favorite Sz Bz, Lena Horne.
Died: Nancy Mitford

Happy birthday to Dan Ackroyd, Twyla Tharp, Leslie Caron, Charles Laughton, and Olivia De Havilland.
Died: Bucky Fuller (1983) and C.P. Snow (1980). Lord Snow has a great study of old Anthony Trollope, AN ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHY. One of the best, in my humble opinion, studies of the great man. I've read the important biographies and critical works, Snow's TROLLOPE is a valuable contribution. One great writer accessing another.
One of my favorites
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NSvlBnyuEHY/SwMCQxAqELI/AAAAAAAAAjs/XwqMAoo0t8U/s320/L...

Happy birthday to Herman Hesse.
Died: J.J. Rousseau, E. Hemingway, 1961, Ketchum, Idaho, he was 62., Vladimir Nabokov, dreaming of lepidoptra doubtless and Mario Puzo.

Vlad the Impaler
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/resources/2008/01/vladimir_nabokov1.jpg
http://www.jewcy.com/files/images/nabokov.img_assist_custom.jpg
http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/63/46263-004-A74F04C5.jpg

Happy birthday to Franz Kafka, Tom Stoppard, G.M. Cohan, George Sanders, Alfred Korzybski.
'The Saint'
http://tedstrong.com/graphics/sanders4.gif
Just maybe?
http://realitystudio.org/images/people/alfred_korzybski/alfred-korzybski.b.jpg
Died: Mordecai Richler

Happy birthday to Eva Marie Saint, Richard Beckinsale and Gina Lolobridgida.
Happy birthday to Natahaniel Hawthorne & Robbie Robertson
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/files/2009/09/eva_marie_saint_b.jpg
http://userwebs.batnet.com/mfwright/lollobrigida7.jpg
http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/r/robbie-robertson/album-robbie-robertson.jpg
http://www.spotlight.com/hallfame/portraits/richard_beckinsale.jpg
An odd way to grow up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyq1JPOJ-2k
Beckinsale was one of Digsby's tenants
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0YOaH5n2x0
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Arts/Arts_/Pictures/2009/1/14/1231938065702/...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Rossiter
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/12_01/perrinDM0512_468x709.jpg

Gina LOLO ... ( sigh )

Happy birthday to Frida Kahlo & Jennifer Saunders.
Died: Guy de Maupassant & William Faulkner aka Count Noaccount.

Happy birthday to Richard Starkey & Marc Chagall.
Died on this date in 1930, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
http://maudnewton.com/images/2008/20090106_conan_doyle.jpg

Seventy! Oh, my. Ob-la-di Ob-la-da, life goes on. Richard Starkey, the luckiest man in the history of Rock N Roll.

Happy birthday to Marty Feldman, Billy Ecstine, Nikola Tesla, Jeffrey Tambor (Hank Kingsley, Hey Now), Marcel Proust (I almost forgot), Virginia Wade (my favorite tennis player, she won Wimbledon in 1976, beating the Dutch Amazon, Betty Stove)'
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/06_02/VirginiaWade_468x362.jpg
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40621000/jpg/_40621018_wade_bbc.jpg
http://www.sixtiescity.com/Events/Images/EVE166.jpg
Hank Kingsley
http://koalafiedpeople.com/images/koalafied_jeffrey_tambor.jpg
Marty Feldman
http://www.uglymales.com/wc/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/marty-feldman1.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB4S7fhrdbA
Died on this date (drowned) in 1822, Percy Bysshe Shelley

Happy birthday to Lee Hazelwood, David Hockney, Oliver Sacks, Mervyn Peake, 1911, John Archibald Wheeler, Ann Ward Radcliffe, Arthur Schopenhauer.
M. Peake
http://flcenterlitarts.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/mervynpeake_large.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_FKxj7S66vU4/SKWxnPA667I/AAAAAAAABLM/p9oM-k3kIOM/s400/m...
Died: Edmund Burke, 1797; Loren C. Eiseley, 1977.
I have enjoyed Eiseley's books including ALL THE STRANGE HOURS
http://www.nndb.com/people/438/000048294/loren-eiseley-2.gif

Happy birthday to Marcel Proust & Saul Bellow & Arthur Ashe & Nilola Tesla.
http://www.freewilliamsburg.com/archives/sb.jpg
http://arjunpuri.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/6-marcel-proust.jpeg

Happy Birthday Marcel !

Is that Macel Poust?

No it's Dingleberry Mc Gillicuddy.

I heard, yesterday, listening to Garrison Keilor on NPR, that it was Barbara Cartland's birthday. (Is that her name?) I mean, the woman wrote 700 books, for chrissake, however insipid some might consider her writing.

How can you avoid the mixtre as before writing 700 books?

You've lost me, Peter. What is le mixtre, or is it la mixtre?

The mixtree as before as George Kell would say. He would also say temp-rat-tour for temperature. He was from Georgia. His side kick, Al Kaline, a wonderful baseballer would say at moments of admiration for someone (that is someone who did something special) 'he always ceases to amaze me.'

Happy birthday to Leon Spinks, Yul Brynner, J.Q. Adams, Harold Bloom, Robert Greene, 1550 (who called Shakespeare an Upstart Crow), Robert Bruce, 1284.
Died: Par Lagerkvist, 1974.
http://clubdecatadores.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/par-lagerkvist.jpg
The Influence of Anxiety. And what's so t-t-t-t-t-transumptive about peas, grub and who'sstillstanding.
http://www.focusdep.com/images/Harold_Bloom_1175088470032881.jpg
http://www.nndb.com/people/146/000095858/robert-greene-1-sized.jpg

Happy birthday to Uncle Milty, William Osler, Bucky Fuller, Josiah Wedgewood, H.D. Thoreau, Christine McVie, Paul Silas, Van Cliburn.
Died: Desiderius Erasmus & Alexander Hamilton.

Harvey Pekar died today, in Cleveland, at 70 years of age.

Christine... One of my favorite Songbirds

226: Who's going to write the funeral? Who will draw it? And, will David Letterman be invited?

Happy birthday Kenneth Clark, Spud Webb, Roger McGuinn, Patrick Stewart, and Sydney Webb.
Died: Frida Kahlo.

Hb to Ingmar Bergman, James McNeil Whistler & Woody Guthrie & Rembrandt Van Rijn & Iris Murdoch & Julian Bream & Nina Van Pallandt & Inigo Jones.
Died: Anton Chekhov, 1904.
http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/life/1821-1.jpg
http://www.wearysloth.com/Gallery/Actorsv/17528.gif

Hb to Ginger Rogers, Margaret Smith Court, Barbara Stanwyk, Barry Sanders.
Died: Henrich Boll.

MSC keeping her eyes on the ball
http://www.sporting-heroes.net/files_tennis/COURT_Margare_19710630_EL_R.jpg

Heinrich Böll. Now there's a writer not making it on to too many radars these days. The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum is a great, quick, but deep read. Remains relevant even today, especially in its uncanny resemblance to that case in Italy involving the American college girl convicted of murdering her roommate, despite the abundant evidence of her non-involvement.

Happy birthday to James Cagney, Connie Hawkins, Spencer Davis, Dion Di Mucci, Red Skelton, Erle Stanley Gardner, Nicholas Alexander Faldo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxA3atHD2QM

Happy birthday to William Makepeace Thackeray (1811); Thomas Kuhn.
Died on this date in 1817, the great Thackeray of course having arrived at the age of reason, Jane Austen.

The decidedly not dumpy WMT
http://www.discoverlismore.com/images/williamthackeray.jpg
Emma Woodhouse had to look down at her beagle-like companions
http://www.boston.com/ae/specials/culturedesk/2010/04/06/jane-austen.jpg

Happy birthday to Edgar Degas.
http://dreamingradiance.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/paintings-by-hilaire-germain...

Died: Frank McCourt

Happy birthday to Diana Rigg, Gregor Mendel, Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Chuck Daly, Tony Oliva, Peter Forsberg, Cormac MacCarthy.
Died: Andrew Lang.

Diana Rigg played one of the terrible sisters in Brook's KING LEAR.
http://redriverpak.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/diana_rigg_01.jpg

"We're wanted, Mrs. Peel". Or something like that. It's been a while.

Don't forget today John Lodge is 67. For all you life noobs out there he's the bassist and vocalist on this tune.

Happy birthday ti Issac Stern, Marshall McLuhan, Ernest Hemingway, and Cat Stevens, John Gardner (October Light), Robin Williams, Slick Watts, Doug Collins.
Issac Stern
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqAqQiP61co
Cat Stevens
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jek6iP6AuAQ

Died: The poet Robert Burns
http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=iLPKwnpoQK4&feature=related

John Gardner won an award for October Light but some folk feel that The Sunlight Dialogues was his big deal. I recently reread it, still don't get it, and think it's pretty good.

Robert

Both pretty good Mr D.

Happy birthday to Don Drysdale, Harold 'Pee Wee' Reese, Tom Robbins, Edward Hopper.

Died: Carl Sandburg and Jessica Mitford.

Great read! Fortunately, there is room on my shelves and time enough to read many conception of what fiction ought to be...

This link would make a nice addition to aesthetics week!

Happy Birthday, Raymond Chandler

Happy birthday to M.H. Abrams.
Died: Eudora Welty and Chaim Potok.

Happy birthday to Slash.

Happy Birthday to Chief Dan George, Zelda Fitzgerald, Edward JMD Plunkett (Lord Dunsany, Amelia Earhart, Frank Wedekind, Alexander Dumas, Bella Abzug, and the poet Robert Graves.

Died: Issac Bashevis Singer

Sometimes the Magick works, CDG
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLso0ZBqOi4&feature=related
R.G.
http://www.palatin-project.com/PicsRobertGraves/Robert%20Graves%20(standing).jpg
http://englishcoach.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/robertgraves-7782.jpg

Happy Birthday to Maxfield Parrish, Walter Brennan, Jon Barry, Roger Clinton, Steve Goodman, Nate Thurmond.
M.P.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAparrish.jpg
Died: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
http://www.general-anaesthesia.com/images/samuel-taylor-coleridge.jpg
http://img.tfd.com/authors/coleridge.jpg
http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0019/62335/Poems_Samuel_Taylor.jpg
http://www.tabula-rasa.info/Images/Coleridge.gif

Happy Birthday to Dorothy Hamil, Kate Beckinsale, Helen Mirren, Mick Jagger, Stanley Kubrick, Aldous Huxley, Carl Gustave Jung, Bernard Shaw.
Lucia Anna Joyce was born in 1907.
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/english/cgi-bin/deptWeb3.0/newsImages/joyce.jpg
http://nothingisnew.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/abbott7.jpg
http://moicani.over-blog.com/article-31231820.html

Died: the great shutterbug Diane Arbus
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qU5izFTl1eA/SoDy4ccy42I/AAAAAAAAAf4/g38R3His1V8/s400/d...

Happy Birthday to Peggy Fleming and Bobby Gentry.
And Giorgio Joyce b. 1905.
Died: Gertrude Stein
I loved the skaters Peggy Fleming and Janet Lynn
http://www.biography.com/images/database_images/fleming_peggy.jpg
http://www.harlick.com/img/gal/history/peggyf.jpg
Giorgio
http://www.themodernword.com/joyce/JJ_nora_kids.jpg
http://www.finneganswake.org/images/JJfamilyparist.jpg
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/english/seidel/joyce/edit/images/week6/joyce_giorgio...

Happy Birthday to Gerard Manley Hopkins, Bill Bradley, Jaqueline Onassis, Joe E. Brown, Rudy Valee
http://www.companymagazine.org/v163/hopkins.jpg
http://www.bartleby.com/122/13.html
More happy birthdays to Robert Hughes.
Died: J.S. Bach
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spUT-2tU2Yk

Happy Birthday to Marilyn Quayle and Clara Bow.

Happy Birthday to Emily Bronte, Casey Stengel, Henry Ford.
Died: Walter Pater & Ingmar Bergman, and the poet Thomas Gray.
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/bronte/emily/portrait.jpg

Can you imagine being in the dugout or the clubhouse when both Casey and Yogi were at their philosophical peak. Talk about making your head spin! Casey, the master of the malapropism with Yogi the master of the short, pithy one liner.

A YB quote apt enough for this musing: 'if the world was perfect, it wouldn't be.'

I'd never realized Emily Bronte was today. Mine today as well.

The Mets used to always have a big birthday cake for Casey, five feet high, and 50,000 fans would sing happy birthday. Ah, those were the days!

Happy birthday A_musing! Mine's next Monday.

256: Happy Birthday you!

Happy Birthday A_Musing

Well the 2010 July birthdays have just about come & gone.
I've a hopesome's choice if I chouse of all the sinkts in the colander. From the common for ignitious Purpalume to the proper of Francisco Ultramare, Last of scorchers, third of snows, in terrorgammons howdydos.
FW by JAAJ

Well the 2010 July birthdays have just about come & gone.
I've a hopesome's choice if I chouse of all the sinkts in the colander. From the common for ignitious Purpalume to the proper of Francisco Ultramare, Last of scorchers, third of snows, in terrorgammons howdydos.
FW by JAAJ

many thanks and Happy birthday anna.

but isn't there one more day of birthdays left to July? A little bonus day, the 31st, for those who might have been August but for a few hours.

Didn't they move all July 31st birthdays to February 29th a few years ago?

Happy Birthday to Evonne Goolagong, Geraldine Chaplin, Curt Gowdy.
Died: Denis Diderot & Antoine De Saint Exupery.
GC
http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/life/1412-1.jpg
DD
http://www.lib-art.com/imgpainting/6/0/13106-portrait-of-denis-diderot-louis-mic...

Happy Birthday to Herman Melville, Dhani Harrison, Dom De Luise, Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine Monnet de Lamarck

Happy Birthday to Annapdx (who always manages to be real in this LT madness), Peter O'Toole (who has a terrific autobiography), Louis Pauwels (who with Jaques Bergier ushered in the age of Magick in the 20th C.), the beautiful and witty Mirna Loy.
M.L.
http://sistasmiff.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/myrna-loy.jpg
Pauwels like Fritz Peters thought he saw through G.s business.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFfa8Ae1Qog&feature=related
And HB to James Baldwin & Isabel Allende.
Died: Wallace Stevens & Wiliam S. Burroughs
I.A.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_JqQEbxtfTQo/RyDUXSBrgdI/AAAAAAAAAAc/PoaH7UbGcpw/s320/a...
One way of looking at Wallace Stevens
http://quizilla.teennick.com/user_images/A/awy/1118279935_stevens.jpg

And I thought Louis Pauwels finished second in the Tour de France in 1926.

Who knows, P., you might be accurate, that is your business, no?

Yes, Yes, it is. Though I do occasionally get my Louises mixed up. Yes too on Myrna Loy, beautiful and witty. I liked Maureen O'Sullavan too. (Notice the odd spelling.) And yes, happy birthday, anna.

Saw Maureen O'Sullivan in a DAVID COPPERFIELD with W.C. Fields, & Co. A plu-perfect Dora.
Mother of Mia Farrow, but you knew that.

Actually, I once did know it, and then I forgot, and now I know it again. That happens at a certain age.

According to my local paper, the keyboard player on this track, Garth Hudson, turned 73 today. I saw these guys in Atlanta during the tour that yielded "Rock of Ages", but without the horns. One of the stoniest moments of my life occurred when after sharing a couple of bowls of really good hash (anyone ever have hash that wasn't really good?) I was at the concert, the lights went down, a spot was put on Garth and he played something he called "The Organic Method" which is the organ lead in to this song, It started in the upper registers, with a sort of skewed tone like fingers on a chalkboard, and over about five minutes built and built, scrambling my brain completely, until finally the Band kicked into this song. I've never heard anything like it before or since, and when the full group kicked in on the first downbeat chord the house lights went up and waves of light assaulted me on the beat as my pupils expanded. God, I've never experienced anything like it, it was truly awesome. I've been a major Band Fan ever since. Well, actually, I was a major fan before that, but that concert sealed the deal. I was about ten rows back from the stage. I was close enough that I could see the tears (or was it sweat) streaming from Pietro's neighbor's eyes as he sang this song. Oh, those'uns were the days.

The Boys in the Band: a Brief, Somewhat Jaundiced Update

I heard the boys in the old Fillmore East, on Second Avenue in NYC, and a few years later at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. They were great in both venues. When I came up here, Rick Danko was playing around with a few guys and I went to hear him, but he was usually so stoned (on hard drugs), it was painful to watch and listen; though he still had that sweet voice. I went to a New Year's Eve show at the local Bearsville Theater--built, along with recording studios, by Albert Grossman, the impresario for Bob Dylan and others back in the day--where he and the local band were so fucked up, they petered out, took a break, and disappeared after playing only a few songs. Bummed everyone out.

Nowadays, I never see Garth; perhaps he shaved off his beard. But Levon pops up all over, doing benefits and shopping in town--one of these days I expect to run into him the bread and soup store, and I will introduce myself to him as the Baguette Man. He had money problems, and so began that monthly barn-burner thing (you pay $100 to be fed and hear music for the night), and now it's a fixture; plus, he's had a few movie roles, apparently having been shepherded into it by Tom Lee Jones, most notably as a blind man in The Three Burials of Malquiades.

Rick Danko died a few years ago, following years of addiction. Richard Manuel killed himself within a year or two of when I moved up here; long ago. Many people don't know that he played the piano in the group. And Robbie Robertson, the heart throb, is held in disdain by anyone connected to those old days, for having somehow screwed them all (something about music rights) about the time he went out to Hollywood, where he reputedly hung out with Martin Scorsese, doing coke.

I have't been to a barn-burner, but I still listen to them all the time while driving around: "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," "The Weight," and the rest.

The Three Burials of Malquiades ... great movie!

Happy Birthday to Wojtek Fibak, Marcel Dionne, Lance Alworth, Gene Kelly, Delores del Rio, Rupert Brook.
Died: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Flannery O'Connor (her stories spook the hell out of me), Joseph Conrad.
http://www.youpimobile.com/telecharger-image-gratuite-dolores-del-rio.html
http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMjQ2NzQ2MzM0NV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTYwOTYyNjU2._...

Well, the dead ones died in excellent company.

Lance Alworth - The original NFL Bambi. Take that, Chris Collinsworth.

Happy Birthday to Knut Hamsen, Walter Pater, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Louis Armstrong, Helen Thomas.
Died: Hans Christian Andersen.

Happy Birthday to Guy de Maupassant, Hoot Gibson, Jaquetta Hawkes, John Huston, Charles Fort, Alfred Lord Tennyson.
Died: Alec Guiness, and Budd Schulberg.
Hoot
http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com/j/Hoot%20Gibson.jpg
J.H.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_x_awAKkZ1o0/R5IxFyzLk3I/AAAAAAAACKU/hPorztixrKU/s400/B...
The 'Dirty Monk'
http://www.jadwin.net/295/images/tennyson_2.jpg
Charles Hoy Fort contemplating those 'Damned Things' or what was on the lunch menu
http://www.nndb.com/people/893/000031800/charles-fort-1-sized.jpg
Bud Schulberg looking like someone from Gehenna.
http://autographmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/BuddSchulberg5_finished....

Happy Birthday to
Died: Ben Jonson
Rare Ben
http://www.quotationsofwisdom.com/portraits/Ben_Jonson_002.jpg

Happy Birthday to Rodney Crowell b. 1950, Iseult Gonne, Don Larsen, B.J. Thomas.
I.G.
http://content.ll-0.com/apolloartg/apolloartg_e_a000478431.JPG?i=102805100544
http://images.tribe.net/tribe/upload/photo/812/d20/812d209f-05a8-46e0-8953-30b16...
Maude Gonne
http://www.nancymonaghan.com/maudegonne.jpg
Rodney Crowell
http://blogs.knoxnews.com/brown/archives/crowellSMALL.jpg

These birthdays are for today, 9 Aug 2010
Happy Birthday to 'Rocket' Rod Laver, Charles Bullfinch, Phillip Larkin, John Dryden, Izzak Walton, of THE COMPLEAT ANGLER.
http://www.australianhistory.org/images/rod_laver.jpg
Died: Thomas a Kempis, 1471
More happys': Bob Cousy, Ralph Houk, Robert Shaw.
Died: Hermann Hesse, 1962, at his home in Montagnola, Switzerland, age 85

Happy Birthday to Ronnie Spector and Rocco Dominico Colavito.
Rocco with 'Teddy Ballgame'
http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Globe_Photo/2007/10/11/1192139716_6129.jpg
Ronnie Spector
http://philspector.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/ronnie-spector.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD0166KpAhs
And to Alfred Doblin.
Died: Montague Summers

I remember one day in 1959, I think, Rocky Colavito hit four homers in one game. Even though I've seen others do it since (I was at the game when Bob Horner did it), that was the first time I remember it being done.

Me too. He came to Detroit in a trade for Harvey Kuenn. The papers said we got a 'Hamburger for a steak.
http://www.vintagecardtraders.com/virtual/54topps/54topps-025.jpg
The trade took place in 1959. That year Kuenn hit for a 340+ ave, and Rocky hit 42 homeruns. Neither fan group liked the trade much at first. I remember one night R.C. pitching a couple of innings or so. He had a cannon for an arm but precious little control. I remember the hitters being terrified by the prospect of facing the wild Colavito.

Remember Ryne Duren with the coke bottle glasses and the 100 mph fastball and no control? There was a guy hitters feared.

I have always preferred singles and doubles to four baggers. A guy bats .220 with 40 homers and 42 rbis (Careful! Hyperbole at work!) and he's a hero. Another guy hits .300+ with 10 homers and 136 rbis and he's trade bait. I hate homers. They skew the game toward the first type of player and away from the people who actually, you know, like, win ballgames.

Ryne Dure was also a submariner/sidewinder. I would get the yips just watching on the tv. He hurled for the hated Yanks. Though I worshipped Mickey Mantle. Who could hit singles or homers, what ever was called for.
I agree on the 'singles' hitter. The 'Georgia Peach' was the ultimate example. He said he could hit em but chose to hit for ave. The 'Kid' could do the same. As for more up-to-date hitters, I loved Rod Carew (he'd caress the ball out there safely), George Brett (I'd pay just to see him putz around in the on-deck circle), Roberto Clemente (words fail), Pete Rose (those pencil-necks who would keep him out of the Hall should go f - - k
themselves), Yaz (need I say more), Freddy Lynn (I loved watching this guy play). I could go on but I will finish with a name not so well known, Mickey Stanley (he played the game as it should be played). Oh heck, Al Kaline, I WORSHIPPED Al as a youngster. He played a right field that the players of today do not begin to understand.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/gallery/2010/aug/03/authors-last-words-death

Literary last words

Great Slick, as you might know I love the Great Cham of literature this side of idolatry.

Thanks P! I did know of your affection for Johnson, enough so that I knew to whom you referred even before I looked up "the Great Cham!"

One of the greatest reads of my life was when I decided that I had to read Life of Johnson because I had read so many books that referred to it or quoted it. I found a non-abridged 3 volume set at Powell's and it was so fun to read. I really admire Johnson for so many reasons. It was an affecting story about how he died.

And how he lived.

Happy Birthday to Angus Wilson and Louise Bogan (b. Livermore Falls, Maine, 1897).
http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/pictures/louise_bogan.jpg
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-alchemist/
Died: John Henry Newman and Edith Wharton.

Happy Birthday to Christy Mathewson and Edith Hamilton and Mark Knopfler and Helena Petrova Blavatsky and Erwin Shrodinger and Frank Swinnerton.

Died: Thomas Mann and Ian Fleming.

HB to Dan Fogleberg, Bobby Clarke, Saul Steinberg, Don Ho, George Shearing, Ben Hogan, Bert Lahr, Alfred Hitchcock.
Died: H.G. Wells (1946), and Julia Child.

Dan Fogelberg. Haven't thought of him in so long. No Christmas is ever complete w/out "Same Old Lang Syne". Beats "Jingle Bells" for sure.

Along the Road
Netherlands
There's a Place in the World for a Gambler

Awww, Burt Lahr! I loves me a lion! Happy B-day you lovable Leo!

HB to Wim Wenders, David Crosby, Earl Weaver, Russell Baker, John Galsworthy, Walter Besant, Charles Hutton.
Died: Clark Ashton Smith, and Bertolt Brecht.

HB to Huntz Hall, Julia Child, Ethyl Berrymore, Walter Scott.
W.S.
http://www.knowledgerush.com/images/scott.jpg
Died: Will Rogers.

Happy Birthday to Maureen O'Hara, Marcus Garvey, Davy Crockett. Now there's a pair.
Died: Andrew Marvell. The year 1678. 62 yrs. or so after Stratford's William passed away. Or about the length of my own wretched days.

Davey Crockett.

Happy Birthday to Martin Mull, Roberto Clemente, Monty Wooley, Wilfred Scawen Blunt, Oliver St. John Gogarty.
WSB
http://www.tallarmeniantale.com/pics/Blunt-Wilfrid-Scawen.JPG
SATAN ABSOLVED
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/33193/33193-h/33193-h.htm
http://books.google.com/books?id=bMUsAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=wil...

Also to Ted Hughes & V.S. Naipal
http://flcenterlitarts.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/ted_hughes.jpg

Spicoli turns fifty today.

Bobby Thomson, 86 years old, died yesterday. Hit the most famous home run of all time for the N.Y. Giants, to beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in the decisive third game of the N.L. pennant playoff with a looping fly ball into the right-field bleachers in the Polo Grounds in 1951. A year or two before my time, but I knew all about it, and in later years came to feel good about the way he handled it, and the way Ralph Branca, the losing pitcher who gave up the homer that turned a 4-1 lead into a 5-4 defeat in the ninth inning, was equally gracious in defeat. R.I.P., Bobby.

Yes. I just overheard on some news chat show, I am trying to put these things behind me, really, that Bobby T. kept his number in the phone book all this while. Oh for those Lebron-less days of yore. When they offered Al Kaline 100,000 at the end of his career, he turned it down saying he wasn't worth it. Now I'm glad the owners don't gobble up ALL the profits, but does some numbskull who can only dunk a ball, I'm not speaking of LeBron here, deserve millions and millions of dollars. A tangled matter indeed.

For a fictional account of whatever became of Bobby Thompson's priceless home run ball, read the first 75 pages or so of Underworld. Don't really care for the entire novel, but those first chapters on that baseball are fascinating.

Happy Birthday to Ring Lardner, Quentin Bell, Arthur Waley, and Samuel Richardson, who came to the Great Cham of Literature in his hour of need.
Ringgold Wilmer Lardner
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v280/tomasutpen/Album%202b/lardner.jpg
If you call S.R. a dog I shall love him
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_18c/richardson/richardson...
Son of Clive and Vanessa Bell, biographer of his famous writing aunt
http://www.modern-humanities.info/people/portraits/Bell_Q10.jpg
Sinologist A.W.
http://www.umass.edu/wsp/images/waley.jpg

Died: Honore de Balzac
I forgot to mention yesterday the death of L.A.G. Strong, apologies to his shade.

Ring Lardner, coiner of the term the World Serious. Confessions of a Busher. Or something like that.

Freeque: Did you read Jason Pettus' take down of DeLillo's 21st Century output? Good stuff!

I didn't. Was that in his Falling Man review I saw?

Point Omega. Epic.

And Frank Kermode has died today.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/18/frank-kermode-dies-aged-90

RIP Frank. One of the last of the old school. I learnt a huge amount from reading him.

Yes. I've read many of his books and his numberless contributions to the NY Rev. of Books and other publications. A critic who was also a Wise Man.

It's that birthday time again kiddies. Isaac Hayes, Jackson Teagarden, Howard Phillip Lovecraft, Paul Tillich, Herman Melville, Edgar A. Guest, Eliel Saarinen, Corneille.
Died: Blaise Pascal and George Gamow.
That sonambyoolaytinsonofneworleans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MlFCDcP2zM
That panjandrum of eldritch
http://media.photobucket.com/image/lovecraft/Alexm920/H_P_Lovecraft.jpg

Paul Tillich's Courage to Be changed my life when I was a college student.

Here's from John Dowland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbCWa87lvU0&feature=related

Happy Birthday to Wilt 'the Stilt' Chamberlain, Count Basie, Aubrey Beardsley, Jules Michelet, St. Francis de Sales.
Died: Leon Trotsky

Some of us know all about that death now from The Lacuna.

Robert

Which one's of us Mistah D?

Happy Birthday to Mats Wilander, Carl Yaztrzemski, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorthy Parker, Claude Debussy.
Died: Jacob Bronowski

Actually when I was very young I got briefly into some bubble gum trading cards that were of historical events and knew before I knew what communism, let alone Soviet communism, was that Stalin had had Trotsky murdered in Mexico.

Anyway, it is those of us who have read The Lacuna or at least that part of it in which the SPOILER ALERT murder occurs who now know about it, or at least the fictionalized version.

Robert

No wonder I am so inspired by Claude and Dorothy! 'Tis a good day to be born. ;-)

Happy Birthday to Keith Moon, Sonny Jurgensen, Edgar Lee Masters.
Died: R.D. Laing
ELM
http://www.daypoems.net/poems/1495.html

Happy Birthday to Cal Ripkin, Stephen Fry, Malcolm Cowley, Max Beerbohm, Robert Herrick, Geoffrey Plantagenet.
A slight disorder in the dress indeed
http://www.poetryconnection.net/images/Robert-Herrick.jpg
Max
http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/18/76518-004-817E6B22.jpg
And to A.S.Byatt, Jorge Luis Borges.
Died: Simone Weil, and Elizebrth Kubler-Ross.

Geoffrey Plantagenet of the Plantagenets? Sacre bleu!

b'day of Dorothy Dunnett, Queen and Empress everlasting of the historical novel.

Happy Birthday to Martin Amis (son of the much better novelist Kinglsey Amis), Elvis Costello, Sean Connery, Ruby Keeler, Althea Gibson, Leonard Bernstein, Monty Hall, Bret Harte.
Died: David Hume and Fredrich Nietzsche.
Check out the footwear
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01186/arts-graphics-2008_1...
I used to eat every friday at a place called Lucky Jims in Ann Arbor, Mi. It was owned by an ex-wife of Kingsley Amis, Martin's father. As he is exactly the same age as I am, he was born in August of 1949, as you can see plainly in this thread, and I was born in January of the same year, the woman who owned and ran and did just about everything at Lucky Jims, could very well have been Martin's mother. I will look into the matter for those of you who would like to know.

One of my Pandora stations is a Leon Redbone station. Sometimes I like some crooning even thought classical is on most of the time.

Robert

I knew it, Hillary Amis nee Bardwell ran a fish place in Ann Arbor called Lucky Jims. Mother of Martin, Phillip and Sally.

http://www.tripatlas.com/Hilary_Bardwell

It also appears that she passed away this past June. May she R.I.P. I had some pleasant moments munching on some fish & chips at her place way back when. She took care of K.A. his last few years even while married to Lord So and So. I could see, as young as I was, that she was the real item.
Sally Myfanwy died in 2000 at only 46.

Happy Birthday to Leon Redbone and Christopher Isherwood.
L.R.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Epwj0JTLv7U&feature=related
Died: William James & Irving Stone.

Today is Gene Simmons birthday.

In 1978, all four members of KISS released solo albums. Here's the big hit off of Gene's release, Radioactive.

And here's Freeque, circa 2009, a grown married man, age forty, putting on his Gene Simmons makeup for the KISS concert at Staples Center: http://www.librarything.com/pic/117328

Booya!

Scary guy.

I think I have made a link to my Leon Redbone station on Pandora. It was a major trial and probably not worth the effort. I hope he had a happy birthday.

Robert

Happy Birthday to Michael Holroyd, Antonia Fraser, Lester Young, L.B.J., Man Ray, Theodore Dreiser.
Lee Miller by Man Ray
http://blindflaneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/lee_miller_man_ray_1930.jpg
More HB's to Jeanette Winterson and Cecil Scott Forster (the pen name of Cecil Lewis Troughton Smith).
Died: W.E.B. DuBois, Le Corbusier, Ivy Compton-Burnett (who was a model for Muriel Spark), and Bennett Cerf.

Happy Birthday to Robertson Davies, Goethe, Leon Trotsky. Lou Pinella, and Andy Bathgate and last but not least Leo Tolstoy.
Robertson Davies
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_hSm0VqGQRDg/R-K8lMfss-I/AAAAAAAAABA/oHU_hNUanbY/s320/2...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/17/RobertsonDavies.jpg
http://terryfallis.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/robertson-davies-photo.jpg
http://alexwaterhousehayward.com/blog/uploaded_images/Robertson-Davies-copy-7752...
Died: Bruce Catton.

nevermind

HB to Ingmar Bergman, Diana Cooper, Maurice Maeterlinck, W H Pachelbel, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Locke and Valery Larbaud.

Died: Manly P. Hall and De Valera (1975).

Additional note: 1963, the State Department sent Robert Lee Frost on a good will trip to the USSR.
R.L.F.
http://www.abm-enterprises.net/robertfrost.jpg

HB to Ted Williams, Mary Shelley, Jaques-Louis David, Huey Long, Peggy Lipton, Lewis Black.
'The Kid' from San Diego's Hoover H.S.
http://blog.detroitathletic.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/ted-williams.jpg
http://www.esquire.com/cm/esquire/images/ted-williams-0209-lg.jpg
P.L.
http://www.fiftiesweb.com/tv/peggy-lipton-c.jpg
J-L D
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Jacques-Louis_David_019.jpg

HB to Eldridge Cleaver, Jean Beliveau (Le Gros Bil), Arthur Godfrey, Fredrick March.
Le Gros Bil
http://simpleplanfoundation.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/jean_beliveau1.j...

HB to Harriet Weaver (1876), Archie Bell (the Pair takes the breath away), Jacob Bronowski (Bell & Bronowski have so little in common, they might as well have come from different planets).
tighdenetduehonthaawgen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wro3bqi4Eb8&feature=related
Also to Edgar Rice Burroughs
Died: Siegfried Sasoon

Happy Birthday to James Scott Conners and Nate 'Tiny" Archibald.
And ascended or what ever they do to get to 'the Next Whorl of the Spiral. J.R.R. Tolkien.
That's John Ronald Reuel, 3 Jan. 1892 to 2 Sept. 1973
http://www.enjoyfrance.com/images/stories/world/entertainment/JRR-Tolkien.jpg

Happy Birthday to Loren Eiseley and Dick Matta.
L. E.
http://www.doyletics.com/arj/tncaut.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPG6WJfQ1Lc
Died: Ivan Turgenev and e.e. cummings.
'The Gentle Barbarian'
http://russianmemory.com/Ivan_Turgenev_Portrait.jpg

My very favorite poem of all time:

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

By whom? pray tell.

e.e. cummings
(sorry)

i shoulda known,whatwith all lowercase letters and the way he runs his punctuation into the text(so you can hardly breathe)

Dionysian rather than Apollonian. Ruthian rather than Cobbian. Raw rather than cooked.

HB to Dick York, Raymond Floyd, and Richard Wright.
Died: Walter Kauffmann

Arthur Koestler, Louden Wainwright, Stevie Miller, were born on this date.

Roger Waters,Vince DiMaggio, and Robert M. Pirsig were born on this date.
Arthur Rackham and Olaf Stapledon died on it.

Here's a pair, on this date was born Al Maguire and Edith Sitwell. Breathtaking, no?
Died: A.J.P. Taylor and Karen Blixen.

Maurice Cheeks.

HB to Billy Preston, Otis Redding, Leon Edel, Leo Tolstoy, Cardinal Richelieu, Molly Bloom (1870) - was on the 8th actually.

Died: Mallarme.

Added note of interest: JAAJ moved into Martello Tower on this date in that magical year of 1904.

Hallelujaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

HB to Kate Burton, Barriemore Barlow, Stephen Jay Gould, Arnold Palmer, Roger Maris, Cyril Connoly.

And to George MacDonald, writer of Tales who in his spare time brought Ruskin together, if that is the word, with Rose LaTouche.
http://homeopathy.wildfalcon.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/200px-george-macdona...
Died: Mary Wollstonecraft & Dalton Trumbo.

D.H. Lawrence, Leo Kottke, Franz Beckenbaur, Mickey Hart, Paul 'Bear' Bryant, O. Henry, Pierre de Ronsard.
FB
http://freddysetiawan.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/franz-beckenbauer.jpg

Maria Muldaur, Mark Knopfler, Rachel Ward, Mickey Lolich, Ian Holm, Jesse Owens, Louis Macneice, Maurice Chevalier, Henry Louis Mencken, Henry Hudson.

A most heavy dieingday: Montaigne (1592), tending to his cabbages no doubt; Peter Mark Roget (1869), lucubrating over like words, we know; Robert Lowell; Johnny Cash, doubtless searching the Empyrean for the real man in Black; David Foster Wallace, comparing lengthy footnotes with The Great Architect of the Universe, does DFW know all the grips?

Also: JJ writes Nora at Finn's Hotel from Martello Tower; Thornton Wilder and Gene Tunney (who beat Jack Dempsey for the Heavy Weight Title, set off for a walking tour of Europe.

Tunney got off the canvas to beat down Dempsey. Dempsey valiantly attempted to regain his title, but couldn't. The year was 1927. A Golden Year in the Republic. Two years later things would change for the much worse.

Ah.... ( sigh ) Maria Muldaur...

HB to Neil Peart,

my favorite rock drummer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa0C5Uxpd3c

Peart is also an above-average poet/lyricist:

Witch Hunt

The night is black
Without a moon
The air is thick and still
The vigilantes gather on
The lonely torch lit hill

Features distorted in the flickering light
The faces are twisted and grotesque
Silent and stern in the sweltering night
The mob moves like demons possessed
Quiet in conscience, calm in their right
Confident their ways are best

The righteous rise
With burning eyes
Of hatred and ill-will
Madmen fed on fear and lies
To beat and burn and kill

They say there are strangers who threaten us
In our immigrants and infidels
They say there is strangeness too dangerous
In our theaters and bookstore shelves
Those who know what's best for us
Must rise and save us from ourselves

Quick to judge
Quick to anger
Slow to understand
Ignorance and prejudice
And fear walk hand in hand...

Witch Hunt

"Witch Hunt" isn't Peart's best lyric by a longshot (or Rush's best song), but I thought it apropos, nevertheless, in light of today's socio-political climate.

I dont know about best but pretty darn good rime.

Oh good, glad you think so.

Here's, imo, Neil Peart's best poem/lyric (and also one of Rush's finest songs):

The Trees

There is unrest in the forest
There is trouble with the trees
For the maples want more sunlight
And the oaks ignore their pleas

The trouble with the maples
(And they're quite convinced they're right)
They say the oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light
But the oaks can't help their feelings
If they like the way they're made
And they wonder why the maples
Can't be happy in their shade

There is trouble in the forest
And the creatures all have fled
As the maples scream, 'Oppression!'
And the oaks just shake their heads

So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights
'The oaks are just too greedy
We will make them give us light'
Now there's no more oak oppression
For they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe and saw

----------------------

I think the song is relevant to our discussion in another thread: The potential pitfalls of coerced "equality".

When evaluating song lyrics, I think you have to keep in mind that no one can be great in more than one respect (with a few exceptions). (And, of course, most of us are great in no respects at all!) To be a top rank percussionist and a decent lyricist is more than respectable!

Oh definitely. No impugning of Peart's prose talent intended at all. His best lyrics, like the one above, I think, could be defined as poetry, and I doubt a Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell would blush at all if they could lay claim to being the author of "The Trees". I suspect they'd be proud.

Compare with Frost's

THE SOUND OF TREES

I wonder about the trees.
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?
We suffer them by day
Till we lose all measure of pace,
And fixity in our joys,
And acquire a listening air.
They are that that talks of going
But never gets away;
And that talks no less for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,
That now it means to stay.
My feet tug at the floor
And my head sways to my shoulder
Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
From the window to the door.
I shall set forth for somewhere,
I shall make the reckless choice
Some day when they are in voice
And tossing so as to scare
The white clouds over them on.
I shall have less to say,
But I shall be gone.

from MOUNTAIN INTERVAL (1916)
Robert Frost

Taryn Power, David Clayton-Thomas, Mel Torme, Ray Charles, J.B. Priestly, Sherwood Anderson. William Cecil (Lord Burghley).

David Foster Wallace took his own life two years ago this evening.

Lord Cecil (Chelwood), Franz Joseph Haydn, Agrippa von Nettesheim, and the great actor Nicol Williamson.
Died: Dante, Richard Brautigan, James Fenimore Cooper, and Wellington's duke.

Norm Crosby & James Fenimore Cooper.
Died: Thomas Wolfe & Robert Penn Warren

Thomas Wolfe
http://www.ideachampions.com/weblogs/thomas-wolfe-1.jpg

Bill Hicks, Orel Hersheiser, Lauren Bacall, John Gay, Clive Bell.
Not a favorite of the Bloomsbury hagiographers but
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2qufU-7Ou4Y/SZRxmXXd_wI/AAAAAAAAAM8/HjBeTPuCEOQ/s400/c...
Died: Sir James Jeans

Orel Hersheiser! 59 consecutive innings pitched w/out giving up an earned run in '88, thus breaking Don Drysdale's previous MLB record.

SAMUEL JOHNSON, Marquis de Condorcet, Hank Williams, William Carlos Williams MD, Ken Kesey.

Died: Tobias Smollett MD, Karl Popper.

Garbo.
Died: William Hazlitt, George MacDonald, Katherine Ann Porter.
WH
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Books/Pix/covers/2009/01/03/wu2.jpg

Jeremy Irons, Brian Epstein, and William Golding.
W.G.
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1983/golding.jpg
Died: Italo Calvino & George Gamow.
G.G.
http://www.tamu-commerce.edu/physics/links/Gamow.jpg
http://gamingreverie.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/calvino.jpg

Guy LaFleur, Red Auerbach, Stevie Smith, Jelly Roll Morton, Upton Sinclair.

John Housman
Died: Anthony Burgess

Harry Connick Jr., Bruce Springsteen, John Coltrane, Walter Pidgeon, Walter Lippmann.

Died: Snorri Sturlsson, Sigmund Freud, and Wilkie Collins.
W.C.
http://robertarood.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/wilkie-collins.jpg

Debby Boone was born today too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC9sEAqEjxs

Isn't she the daughter of Pat Boone?
http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=DhJfxHh1d9U

Gerry Marsden, Horace Walpole, Scot Fitzgerald.
G.M.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x45rat_ferry-cross-the-mersey-gerry-the-pa_musi...
I love some songs as much but none better
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juzm3BRksf0

Bob McAdoo, Glenn Gould, and Red Smith, Shel Silverstein, and William Faulkner.
Died: Edward Said

Time for a new Happy Birthday et cetera III

Wait, Por-Man!

We can't forget that this is the 30th anniversary of John Bonham's death. I expect several youtubes from Bonham aficionados.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed5YvFkcR7g

365 posts max. We have bben round at 1 post a day ?

"bben"?

Have you been drinking, Big Mac Daddy? If so, what?

bean, euh I meen been or wat it bien together

Still; awake over there ? It is 0700 in the morning

It's only 10:31 here MacumBEERa. Bedtime ain't till 4:30.

George Gershwin, who told Cole Porter, whose songs were selling less frequently than he would have liked that, his tunes didn't sound Jewish enough. No minor keys!?
George Raft, Thomas Stearns Eliot, and Martin Heidegger.

Irvine Welsh, William Empson, George Cruikshank.

Died: Ivan Goncharov and William Safire.

Jim Thompson (b-day) too.

Lou Piniella, Caravaggio, Mike Buonnarratti, Simon Winchester.
Died: Herman Melville, Emile Zola, Andre Breton, John Dos Passos.

Greer Garson, Gene Autry, Elizabeth Gaskell, Cervantes.

Died: Wystan Hugh Auden, Francis A. Yates, Emile Zola, Carson McCullers.

Marc Bolan, Martina Hingis, Rula Lenska, Angie Dickenson, Elie Wiesel, Robin Roberts (the pitcher),Michael Powell, Rumi.
Deborah Jane Kerr-Trimmer, 1921, Helensburgh, Scotland, - 16 October, Botesdale, Suffolk

Died: James Dean and, last night, Tony Curtis.

Annie Leibovitz, Rod Carew, Stella Stevens, Richard Harris, Jimmy Carter, Daniel J. Boorstin, STANLEY HOLLOWAY, Louis Untermeyer.

Died: Corneille.

Ah Corneille !! One of my first loves

Yesterday was the birthday of the Sufi poet and founder of the Mevlevi school of Sufism, Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi (in 1207).

Graham Greene, Gore Vidal, Maury Wills, Bud Abbott, Groucho Marx, Wallace Stevens, Gandhi, King Richard III (England).

Died: P.D. Ouspensky and August Wilson.

Dennis Eckersley, Chubby Checker, Thomas Wolfe, Elenora Duse.

Died: William Morris, Alfred Leslie Rowse, and Woodie Guthrie.

Sam Huff, Buster Keaton, Edmund Malone, Lucas Cranach.

Died: the seargent-majorly pfunny Graham Chapman.

Flann O'Brian (Brian O'Nolan), Rex Chapman, Peter Ackroyd, Steve Miller, Vaclav Havel, Phillip Berrigan, Chester A. Arthur.

Britt Eckland, Thor Heyerdahl, Carol Lombard, Le Courbusier, Melvyn Bragg (who did a fine bio. of Richard Jenkins).

Died: in 1892 Alfred Lord Tennyson.

Ah, yes, little Stevie Miller.

Raymond Federman died one year ago today.

Louis B. Leakey, Yo-Yo Ma, Andy Devine, Henry A. Wallace, Niels Bohr, John Marston, William Laud, William Zinsser.

Died: E.A. Poe and Radclyffe Hall.

JOHN COWPER POWYS (1872)
http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/img/gray_11_07.jpg

Died: Henry Fielding, the only novelist Dickens named one of his kids after. Henry Fielding Dickens.

Porius,

When will we begin reading Porius in '11? Wait till April when you're back in Detroit? Or begin January and give it a full year?

Probably April as my school commitments are pretty intense in jan/feb/mar. We'll talk.

Jackson Browne, John Entwistle, John Lennon, Joe Pepitone, Bruce Catton, Lewis Cass, Cervantes,

Harold Pinter, Thelonius Monk, Benjamin West, Jean-Antoine Watteau.
Watteau
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_tctztiYGFd0/SqO1MjMRo_I/AAAAAAAABsE/bz9YGPw_XPk/S692/1...

Cherokee Parks, Earl 'Dutch' Clark

Died: Lewis of Lewis and Clark and Jean Cocteau.

Dick Gregory, (The Wickedest Man in Europe) Aleister Crowley.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Aleister_Crowley_2.png

Died: Anatole France

Paul Simon, Lenny Bruce, Cornel Wilde, Art Tatum, Pierre Bonnard.

Italo Calvino, C.P.Snow, Robert Merrill and P.G. WODEHOUSE (Pelham Grenville), E.E. Cummings, Hannah Arendt and Katherine Mansfield.

I've been collecting C.P. Snow whenever I come across him, particularly his 12 volume something-or-other series whose name I forget.

A man of discriminating taste. Snow is excellent. I chose to defend his TWO CULTURES way back in my student daze. It was to be given in front of a class full of voters who were Jesuits in training. Well they ripped me to shreds, but it was a good thing to go through. There was no where to run and no where to hide in a Jesuit college. They were yelling at me in Latin and Greek and all I could do was strain to ferret out what Latin I could and smile knowingly at the Greek that was Greek to me. Gads there is much that I would change around if I could but go back. Instead of reading everything I could get my hands on in English, I would have concentrated on a half a dozen tongues and picked up a few more as the months changed to years and the years changed to decades. Because of this deficiency I feel only partially educated. Sure I've read enough volumes in English to sink battle ship, but I still feel far, far, far from complete. I was just too stupid to understand. It got so I wouldn't take any time from my reading. I still can't find any time in my day for study, say, of, you name it. What a world, what a world.

http://cruiselinehistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/woodhousepg074.jpg

Go back one for today's birthdays and include that Philosopher with a Hammer Freddy Nietsche.
I should say one more time that it's Pelham Grenville Wodehouse's birthday. il migliore fabbro.

says Pound to Eliot or vice versa

Dave de Busschere, Gunter Grass, Goose Goselin, Oscar Wilde, Eugene O'Neill, Noah Webster.

Evel Knieval, Arthur Miller, Rita Hayworth,Irene Ryan, Nathanial West, John Wilkes. Spring Byington.
Hell-Fire enthusiast J.W.
http://blather.net/img/featured/article_accidental_wilkes.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UBtaVgaw84
Evel - Portland 1973

I wonder which book is Knievel's favourite... Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance ?

or The Motorcycle Diaries?

LOL

Chuck Berry, Klaus Kinski, Anita O'Day, Miriam Hopkins, Leo G. Carroll, Thomas Love Peacock.
TLP
http://www.sffaudio.com/images09/LIBRIVOXNightmareAbbey500.jpg

Leo G. Carroll was over a barrel...

Ah Kinsky ! Here he shines in Herzog's adaptation of Nospheratu, Phantom des Nachtes ;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1KO55JBuFE

and here he is again in Fitzcarraldo, or rather not....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yITx7txr-7M&feature=related

John le Carre, Louis Mumford, Mordecai Peter Centennial (Three-Finger, or Miner) Brown, 1876 - 14 Feb 1948, Leigh Hunt, Marsilio Ficino, Sir Thomas Brown (the author of RELIGIO MEDICI also passed away on this October day)
Three-Finger B.
http://images.bleedcubbieblue.com/images/admin/brownhand.jpg
http://www.nndb.com/people/031/000031935/mordecai-brown.jpg

Died: Jonathan Swift (1745), Edna St. Vincent Millay (1950), I was all of one years old.

E. St. V. M.
http://smokesignalsmag.com/OldIssue/signalimages/EdnaStVincentMillay.gif

J.S.
http://www.bestpriceart.com/shop-online/images/vault/cgfa_pooley1.jpg

Juan Marichal, Tom Petty, Mickey Mantle, Arthur Rimbaud, Christopher Wrenn, Benjamin Franklin.

Died: Richard Francis Burton
http://www.nevadaobserver.com/Richard%20Burton.jpg

Manfred Mann, Edward 'Whitey' Ford, Dizzy Gillespie, Martin Gardner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lamartine.

Whitey Ford: a quintessential New Yorker from "the boroughs." Went to Aviation High School in Queens, presumably to become an airplane mechanic. I believe Aviation won the city championship the year he pitched; a few years later Lafayette won it, with Sandy Koufax on the mound.

August Strindberg, Doris Lessing, Ichiro Suzuki, Catherine Deneuve, Derek Jacobi, Timothy Leary, Jimmy Foxx, Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas, Franz Liszt, Sarah Bernhardt.

Died: Kingsley Amis

Doug Flutie. Chi-Chi Rodriguez, Johnny Carson, Robert Bridges.

Bill Wyman and The Big Bopper.

Oh Baby, you know what I like!

Robert

Apropos Bill Wyman, Keith Richards wrote a bloomin' bouk about the Rolling Stones:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/arts/music/24richards.html?th&emc=th

That should prove an interesting read.

I was finally able to nab a copy of Hammer of the Gods and look forward to its arrival.

Bill Wyman wrote one several years ago. Shortly after he quit the band. Stone Alone.

died: Geoffrey Chaucer; Mary Mc Carthy; Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett 18th Baron of Dunsany (Lord Dunsany)

HB to Dan Issel, Dave Cowens, Ian Anderson, Robert Montgomery Knight, John Berryman, Minnie Pearl, Abel Gance, Pablo Picasso.

"Locomotive Breath"

In the shuffling madness
Of the locomotive breath,
Runs the all-time loser,
Headlong to his death.
He feels the piston scraping --
Steam breaking on his brow --
Thank God, he stole the handle and
The train won't stop going --
No way to slow down.
He sees his children jumping off
At the stations -- one by one.
His woman and his best friend --
In bed and having fun.
He's crawling down the corridor
On his hands and knees --
Old Charlie stole the handle and
The train won't stop going --
No way to slow down.
He hears the silence howling --
Catches angels as they fall.
And the all-time winner
Has got him by the balls.
He picks up Gideon's Bible --
Open at page one --
God stole the handle and
The train won't stop going --
No way to slow down.

Jethro Tull

life's a long song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rioYOoFqyAo

Or is it the wrong song?

Bob Hoskins, Felix the Cat, Sid Gillman, Leon Trotsky.

Happy b-day to my oldest brother, Jr.

Zadie Smith, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, John Cleese, Niccolo Paganini.

Erasmus, Evelyn Waugh, Randy Newman, Lenny Wilkens, Joan Plowright, Francis (Painter) Bacon.

Died: John Locke and Ted Hughes.

By Ted Hughes, you mean the renowned author of Verjaardagsbrieven : gedichten, don't you?

TH poet married to Sllvia Plath author of WINTER POLLEN and much more.

That's the one!

The interpreter of Phedre by Jean Racine.

Robert

Died: G.I. Gurdjieff
HB to 'Bozzy' (James Boswell), Amanda Beard, Zoot Sims, Henry Green, Akim Tamiroff, Bela Lugosi, Edmund Halley, Ch: Ebbets.

Wow, Bela Lugosi was born on Halloween? How apropos.

James MacArthur, Danno on Hawaii 5-0, died the other day. He was in his early seventies. What does Ch: Ebbets mean?

Charles Hercules Ebbets Jr. of Ebbets Field fame.

Ahhh, thankis.

No kidding? Charlie Ebbets. Hercules? For such a teeny tiny ballpark?

Oh, I heard about James MacArthur... Very sad. He was one of my favs when I was a kid. Loved him as Clay-boy in the film of Spencer's Mountain. One of my favorite scenes was when he and that little hussy are in the library and she starts talking about how fiction sounded so dirty. (Is that why I lean toward fiction?) ;-)

HB to FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY, Ezra Pound, Grace Slick, Diego Maradona, Otis Williams, Louis Malle, THEODEORE SAMUEL WILLIAMS (The Kid), Alfred Sisely, Richard Brinsley (Sherry-Derry) Sheridan, John Adams.

'The Kid'
http://blog.detroitathletic.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/ted-williams.jpg
http://visualrian.com/storage/PreviewWM/0895/39/089539.jpg?1208167443

Grace Slick. One of my favorite Airplane tunes. Special references in here for Freeque. And a touch of the exotic With a Halloween touch, listen for the arm. Jack Cassady was never better.

HB to Johnny Keats, John Candy, Dinsdale Pirahna.

Died: Zane Gray, Joseph Campbell, Claude Levi-Strauss.

J.K.
http://www.chrishorner.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Keats3.jpg

Died: Ezra Pound & Steven Runciman.

HB to Stephen Crane, Edward W. Said, Kinky Friedman, Grantland Rice, Antonio Canova. Nicholas Bouileau, Benvenuto Cellini.

Everyone's favorite Grantland Rice:

"Outlined against a blue-gray October sky the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below."

Died: Bernard Shaw (1950), James Thurber (1961).

HB to Warren Gamaliel Harding.
http://www.visitingdc.com/images/warren-harding-picture.jpg

One of the heroes of my youth, and to this day, B.S.
http://www.tcnj.edu/~bearer/shaw352.jpg

Died: E.H. Gombrich and Wilhelm Reich.

HB to Andre Malraux and 'Bullett' Bob Feller.
Bob Feller
http://lesterslegends.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/bob-feller.jpg
http://www.landloyalty.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/bob_feller1.jpg
http://www.clevelandseniors.com/photos/larrydolan/bob-feller-pitching.jpg
http://www.clevescene.com/images/blogimages/2010/04/15/1271359110-bob-feller.jpg
Wilhelm Reich
http://www.marxist.com/images/reich.jpg
Andre Malraux
http://profviseu.com/pessoal/teresa/malraux.jpg

Died: Wilfred Owen

HB to Edmund Kean and G.E. Moore
Kean
http://www.vandaprints.com/lowres/39/main/1/12698.jpg
One great one playing another
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O-Ib2ep1hc

Died: John Fowles, Lionel Trilling, Isaiah Berlin.

HB to Bill Walton, Peter Noone, Ike Turner, Roy Rogers.
Roy & Trigger
http://imagecache5.art.com/p/LRG/27/2785/9XRTD00Z/roy-rogers--trigger.jpg
Roy & Dale
http://www.richardbealblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/224-038.jpg
Roy & Gabby Hayes
http://wpcontent.answers.com/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/dc/Gabby_Hayes_%26_Roy_Rogers....

Sparky Anderson died today too.

http://www.videosurf.com/video/no-ad-pete-rose-on-sparky-anderson-1237428374

HB to Robert Musil, James A. Naismith, Joni Mitchell, Joe Niekro.
Died: L. Sprague de Camp.
J.A. Naismith
http://www.thebasketballworld.com/images/james_naismith.jpg
Joni Mitchell
http://www.vinylrevinyl.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/joni-mitchell.jpg
http://crete.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/jmitchell.jpg

Ahhh ... Joni Mitchell!

Thank you, Por-Mawn!

Here's my fave of hers, a non-Christmassy Christmas song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpFudDAYqxY ... haunting, evocative, melancholic, approaching the numinous ... no?

A good one indeed.
Here's another good one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQQA5KtDCOs&feature=related

Thanks Por-Mawn.

Harry Mulisch died on Oct. 30th. He was 83. The L.A. Times ran a poignant obituary I thought I'd share a portion that struck me as powerful:

"Mulisch's 1982 novel, The Assault, was seen as helping the Dutch come to terms with the German occupation of the Netherlands during WWII. It looks at the difficulty of attributing innocence and guilt to those who resisted the Nazis, those who cooperated with them and the many who didn't take sides.

An adaptation of The Assault won the Academy Award for best foreign language film of 1986."

How many writers throughout world history can claim one of their novels helped heal a nation from the effects of evil and injustice?

and here's A_Musing's great treatment of his most popular novel: http://www.librarything.com/work/1518/reviews/61162197 .

Died: Leo Tolstoy, Will Durant, Lawrence Durrell, Richard Yates, John Fowles.
HB to Albert Camus, Stephen Greenblatt, Ricki Lee Jones, Bonnie Raitt, Katherine Hepburn, Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

Chuck E's in love
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrLgvQzzzqE&feature=related

Died: John Milton and Francis Parkman.

HB to Bram Stoker, Carl Perkins, Hedy Lamarr, Owen Barfield, Ivan Turgenev.
Hedy L.
http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/hedy-lamarr.jpg
The Gentle Barbarian
http://danassays.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/ivan-turgenev.png
Honey Dont
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-IfamsP3KQ

I really enjoyed Parkman's Oregon Trail. One of the first books I read on my kindle. ;-)

Thanks Freeque, I'd missed Mulisch's transfiguration. A truly fine writer, and fun to boot.

So he left a body? That's mildly disappointing. I wonder: will it rot and stink?

Died: DYLAN THOMAS (1953)
HB to Ivan Turgenev, Ann Sexton, Marina Warner, Carl Sagan, RICHARD BURTON, Vachel Lindsey, Oliver 'Goldy' Goldsmith, William Hogarth, Robert Devereux Second Earl of Essex (1565-1601).

Well, that great good night comes to us all, whether we accept its inevitability or rage against it, there is no escape in the end.

We haven't firm evidence that it comes to us all. I, for example, haven't died.

Robert

Died: Arthur Rimbaud, Ken Kesey, Norman Mailer, Soren Kierkegaard.
HB to Martin Luther, Fuzzy Zoeller, Bibi Andersson, Mose Allison, Kurt Vonnegut, Paul Signac, Edouard Vuillard, Phillipus Aureolus Theiophrastus, Bombastus von Hohenheim, FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY O.S. 30 Oct. 1821 - 9 Feb. O.S. 29 Jan. 1881
http://community.middlebury.edu/~beyer/publications/books/publications/BrosK%5B1...

Also died Dennis Wheatley, writer and anthologist of occult thrillers.

got my dates screwed up. the last post with rimbaud & co. should be for today, 11 nov. sorry. very busy these daze, and for the next few months. no excuse though.

It is always tomorrow somewhere.

And then you die.

Just east of the International Date Line it is never tomorrow, but yesterday.

Died: Elizabeth Gaskell and Chester Himes.
HB to Wallace Shawn, Grace Kelly and Auguste Rodin.

Died: H.H. Munro (Saki) 1916; Bernard de Voto 1955.
HB to Rosie Jones, Mel Stottlemyre, Jean Seaberg, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edwin Booth, Lady Caroline Lamb, St. Augustine, Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Saki
http://www.silksoundbooks.com/gfx/lrg_12920089849.jpg
Jean Seaberg
http://www.filmreference.com/images/sjff_03_img1335.jpg
LCLamb
http://www.quotesup.com/_Images/Thumbnails/Lady%20Caroline%20Lamb.jpg
Mel S.
http://lesterslegends.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/mel-stottlemyre.jpg

Happy Birthday to Veronica Lake, Dick Powell, Aaron Copeland, Claude Monet, Charles Lyell, Johann Georg Leopold Mozart, G.W.F. Hegel, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Dawn Powell.

Happy Birthday to Greg Anthony, Tilda Swinton, 'Macho Man' Randy Savage, Petula Clark, Aneurin Bevan, Georgia O'Keefe, Marianne Moore, Gerhart Hauptmann, Johan Caspar Lavatar.

Randy Savage
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_JlrN8f-HDhk/RqlaEH1bpQI/AAAAAAAAASU/vd67cLesW7Y/s320/m...
Lavatarizing
http://frillr.com/files/images/Tilda%20Swinton.jpg

Died: Alan W. Watts
http://www.planetthoughts.org/userfiles/image/2009/Feb/Alan-Watts-Conversation-w...

Israel Regardie, Sophie Marceau, Elvin Hayes, Lauren Hutton, Auberon Waugh, Peter Snell, Peter Cook, August Sander.

Died: MERVYN PEAKE, Immanuel Velikovsky

HB to WYNDHAM LEWIS, Sir Edward Marsh, W.S. Gilbert ( William Schwenck), Louis J-M Daguerre, Peta Wilson, Margaret Atwood.
J L-M D
http://www.energyhill.com/assets/louisDaguerre_720.jpg
Wyndham Lewis
http://www.born-today.com/btpix/lewis_wyndham.jpg
http://www.toqonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/wyndham-lewis-self-portrait....
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Books/Pix/pictures/2008/04/17/wyndhamlewi...

Died: Marcel Proust (1922), Man Ray, Paul Bowles.

Man Ray
http://blindflaneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/lee_miller_man_ray_1930.jpg
http://www.themodernword.com/joyce/JJ_man_ray.jpg
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Arts/Dali/DaliManRay.jpg

I've absolutely no idea where Por-Mawn is tonight. Hot date tonight w/a Southern Cali female, Por-Mawn?

Anyway,

My oldest daugher's (Ashley) birthday is tomorrow (or rather) today, since right now, today, even though I ain't gone to bed yet, is techinically tomorrow ... she's 14.

Also, Don Delillo was born today. Hel-looooow? Don. D. wrote Americana; End Zone; Ratner's Star, The Names, and all that was before he became a postmodern God with (my God!) White Noise; Libra; Mao II, and finally Underworld. He may be over the hill today, churning out barely 100 page "novels" disguised as novels, but back in the day, Don D. kicked supreme postmodern ass! And I didn't even mention The Body Artist! Read Delillo sometime, his best stuff, the stuff I've delineated above, and you won't be disappointed.

Nadine Gordimer was also born this day. I have one novel (whose name I forget) and one collection of short stories of hers, unread also. Anybody with some Gordimer love please pontificate soon! ...

I've no idea who died today ...

Regarding Nadine Gordimer's works, see here.

Robert

exhausted. will try tonight but even my fingers are tired. at almost 62 the so. cal. females avoid me like wormwood. i must admit, i'm not the most attractive voter on the bull-i-varde these daze.

Well EF, after just a little investigation it seems that Tolstoy (1910) wore his peasant get up for the last time on this day, and S.L. MacGregor Mathers (1918) whirled over to the nextwhorlofthespiral on this November day.

There's more: Alistar Cooke, Joe Walsh, Gene Tierney, and Thomas Chatterton.

livingston taylor, dr. john, earl 'the pearl' monroe, sid luckman, sir arthur quiller-couch

'the pearl'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lILFYXr-XKE
sir a. q-c
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_mWff9DstfQE/S8MM35B6DWI/AAAAAAAAASM/yZnAjHCkg3g/s1600/...
http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg55/storeynicholas/D183-Qonhisporch-194-.jpg

more birthdays: Francois-Marie Arouet, Issac Bashevis Singer, Michael Grant.

Died: Heinrich von Kleist, Julian Jaynes, Quentin Crisp.

Voltaire
http://www.culturetheque.org.uk/media/item/12195/369/Voltaire.jpg

Julian Jaynes' Origin of Consciousness was one of the four most influential books in shaping my world view. The others were the Bible, Fritjof Capra's psychedelically inspired meditation on quantum physics The Tao of Physics, and Gleick's Chaos. Pretty much everything I hold about life and the world we live in has its roots in these four books.

can't say twas as influential, but a good one. Lois Halle's OUT OF CHAOS was the seminal book for me.

22 November
Terry Gilliam, Benjamin Britten, Hoagy Carmichael, Andre Gide, George Eliot (Mary Ann, Marian Evans).

Died: Jack London (1916), C.S. Lewis (1963), Aldous Huxley (1963), John Burgess Wilson (25 Feb. 1917 - 22 Nov. 1993)

In the died column let's not forget John Fitzgerald Kennedy, assassinated in Dallas, Texas, Nov. 22, 1963.

23 November
Diana Quick, Luis Tiant, Boris Karloff, Billy the Kid
http://www.murphsplace.com/olivier/images/marchmn.jpg

Died: E.A. Wallis Budge (1934), Andre Malraux (1976), Idries Shah (1996).

I beg to differ, Peter. Oscar and I share the same birthday, and it ain't today.

Sorry P. the Big O.'s birthday, and your own special day is tomorrow, the 24th.

Sorry P. the Big O.'s birthday, and your own special day is tomorrow, the 24th.

Thanks for the correction, Peter. Me and Oscar and Benedict de Spinoza appreciate it.

Arundahti Roy, Billy Connolly, Pete Best, Jim Northrup, William F. Buckley, Teddy Wilson, Margaret Anderson, Scott Joplin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Laurence Sterne, Bram Stoker, Baruch Spinoza, Oscar Robertson, Peter Weissmann.

25 Nov.
Joe Di Maggio, Joseph Wood Krutch, Leonard Woolf, Henry Mayhew, Harley Granville Barker.

26 Nov.
George Emlyn Williams, William Cowper.

27 Nov.
Bruce Lee, Jimi Hendrix, James Agee, Charles A. Beard.

28 Nov.
Jon Stewart, Randy Newman, Claude Levi-Strauss, Berry Gordy, nacy Mitford, Dawn Powell, Stefan Zweig, WILLIAM BLAKE.

29 Nov.
Gary Shandling, Suzy Chafee, John Mayall, CLIVE STAPLES LEWIS.

Charles A. Beard -- he and (I presume) his wife, Mary, were listed in the 105 Greatest Living Authors Present the World's Best, and I've no clue who they are. Who are they, Por-Man?

Historians of the first magnitude EF, lookemup.

30 Nov.
Billy Idol, Richard Crenna, G. Gordon Liddy, Allen Sherman (hello mudda, hello fahdda), PHILLIP BURTON (mentor of the great Richard), Winston Churchill, JONATHAN SWIFT (one fastidious voter), Phillip Sidney, John Dillinger, Andrea Palladio, St. Gregory of Tours.

Died: OSCAR WILDE, James Baldwin.

Died: Johan Huizinga, Aleister Crowley.
HB to Jaco Pastorius, Richard Pryor, Lee Trevino, Woody Allen, Dick Shawn, Walter Alston.

Highjinks was this brewer's sons' middle name.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Aleister_Crowley_2.png

Crowley was probably disappointed to discover he wasn't immortal.

He got the immoral part just about right, didn't he? Tricky sentence P., just how did he discover this disconcerting information. If there is simply nothing he would discover nothing, no? Nothing? Mend your tongue lest you marr your Fortune.

Purposefully paradoxical, my friend. As to whether he's still around in another body, I'll leave to someone else to decide.

Socrates's notion was that we live on without the inconvenience of a body. We can after death give ourselves over to thought and perhaps discourse. I wonder whether Crowley and Socrates would get along in the afterlife.

Robert

P!

Nikos Kazanttazkis, Seurat.

Died: ROBERTSON DAVIES, Rostand, PHILIP LARKIN, Marquis de Sade.

my heartfelt condolences, Por-Man, regarding Davies.

It still hurts EF as RD was truly a hero of mine.

HB to Ozzy Osbourne, Jean-Luc Goddard, Ferlin Husky, Joseph Conrad, Gilbert Stuart.
Ozzy
http://www.taylorherring.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/ozzy-osbourne.jpg
G.S.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_CvDCiEFbNy8/SikYAurnB2I/AAAAAAAAJV0/qwO-NcBp0xA/s400/1...

Died: Robert Louis Stevenson & Lewis Thomas.

Ozzy!

Goodbye to Romance

Ozzy snorting ants

Ferlin!

A Dear John Letter

Wings of a Dove.

SAMUEL BUTLER, Bernard King, Chris Hillman, Max Baer Jr., Wink Martindale, Alfred Leslie Rowse, Vassily Kandinsky, Ranier Maria Rilke.

Art Monk, Little Richard, Werner Heisenberg, Sunny Boy Williamson, George Armstrong Custer, Christina Rossetti.
The pride of Monroe, Michigan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWGAdzn5_KU

Stephen Wright, Mike Smith (DC5), Peter Handke, Wally Cox, Dave Brubeck, Paul de Man, Agnes Moorehead (Endora), Ira Gershwin, Sylvia Townsend Warner, F. Osbert Sitwell, William S. Hart (gone all slit eyed), Joyce Kilmer, Dion Fortune (Violet Firth) 1890.

Died: ANTHONY TROLLOPE (1882).
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_kRPyoQ-5PNA/TI-KP-TY2SI/AAAAAAAAAFE/FHgByqstbFY/s400/A...

Looking for a great under-the-radar-read? Read Stephen Wright's Going Native.

One of the problems with my birthday is that no one except myself and St. Nick seem to share this date. Today I am sixty-six. Probably a really olde guy to most of you, yet not so old to some of you and most likely not even the oldest person here.

Many happy returns of the day, geneg.

Yes, happy birthday, Gene. You are not as old as I.

Robert

Joyeux Aniversaire !!!

Thank you all for the good wishes. I know there are a few of us here, Mr. Durick. I just don't know who they are. However, I have a fairly good feel for whom they aren't.

When I first joined LT one of the most active (and I still see her from time to time) was an elderly woman in her eighties. I can't remember her nom de LT, but recognize it when I see it.

Naughty Hottie ?

Be quiet Mac! Stop tempting her to show up, or suspensions might occur!

Unhappy Birthday Gene!

Gene is a Sagittarius? Mon dieu, c'est merveilleux.

Happy Birthday to Kenneth Copeland!

Here's a swell clip of him along with "Dad Hagin" engaged in some dee-viiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine Holy Laughter.

"Be Ye Drunk in the Holy Spirit!"

Woo hoo!

Happy Birthday Gene.