(a nice photo of a pensive Cohen in 1966 by John Max)
Leonard Cohen who died two years ago today.
In his honor I am hosting a Remembrance Party.
We’ll watch his Live in London concert on DVD and
peruse some Lenny memorabilia from my collection.
Followed by a Chinese food repast. My oldest teacher-friend, Ken once said to me, “Richard, you sure know how to live.”
makes eminent sense. That way you don’t scratch your face or eyes or those of your family, kids, and grandkids. Likewise, you won’t scratch your glasses’ lenses. Rendering towels and washcloths harmless and less dangerous is as simple as single scissor cuts. (You heard this here first.)
Growing up in the early ’60s in Winnipeg, I was used to going to movies by myself in junior high: ’61-’64. American International Pictures was in its heyday, particularly with adaptations of the works of Edgar Allan Poe. These movies were often scary and funny for junior high kids.
Many years later I came to own these movies, including all the ones made by Roger Corman (who mentored Coppola, Scorcese and other subsequent maverick directors.
Yesterday evening, I watched The Comedy of Terrors, one from 1964 that wasn’t directed by Corman, but which was written by Richard Matheson, who wrote also many of these classics.
What great fun with Vincent Price heading the stellar horror cast as a corrupt undertaker, Peter Lorre (who is always fun in the Poes) as his underling who has eyes for the bosomy Joyce Jameson, Price’s neglected operatic wife. Boris Karaloff is the wife’s deaf father whom Price is trying to poison. Basil Rathbone plays a recurringly not-so-dead corpse and steals the show, quoting from Macbeth throughout the attempts to bury him! Funnyman Joe E. Brown is a quirky Irish grave attendant with the best scream during the climax.
Very simple, straightforward, but still humorous fare after all this time. Timelessly perfect, in particular for junior-highers who like more obvious humor like farce.
Also on the DVD is a very funny version of The Raven. (Most of the series DVDs are ‘twofers’. My own personal favorites in the series are The Masque of the Red Death (a very serious version with undertones of Bergman’s The Seventh Seal) and Tales of Terror (especially “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar”).
affect one’s life, choices, and what happens to one.
Anyone who doesn’t think politics is significant and incredibly influential is denying facts and reality, and lives in illusion, denial or a dream-world. Of late, for instance, we’ve seen how much politics can kill civility and foster hate south of the border. Many Americans are only now just waking up to the relevance of politics in daily life and their futures.
Politics literally gets into everything including child-rearing, schooling, work, careers, relationships,–all well beyond the simple view that politics is just about elections.
When I taught English in high school for 30 years, both politics and ethics were the core of what I taught. Examples:
Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear.
Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird, Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-four, The Grapes of Wrath.
You can go beyond this to literature at large and include such works as the following:
The Odyssey
War and Peace
Animal Farm
The Iliad
The Divine Comedy
Candide
Pride and Prejudice
Bleak House
Middlemarch
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Madame Bovary
Les Miserables
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Germinal
Heart of Darkness
Metamorphosis
The Magic Mountain
Catch 22
In Cold Blood
The Handmaid’s Tale
In short, the greatest books and literature of all time.
Fact: politics and ethics influence and rule our lives and choices.
A key truth of The Human Experience. No question.
in the weeks before the American midterms. Add Clint Watts to the list, who points out the military did not have Christmas at home with family last year and it looks like this one too.
Imagine how they must feel being mere mercenary pawns for Trump’s selfish agenda.
He points out, too, that voting this election would be made easier by a split-screen photo with the shot-up Pittsburgh synagogue on one side and a central American mother holding a baby on the other. Where’s the real danger, Watts ponders. Is it the domestic terrorism at the synagogue or pipe-bomb mail deliveries spurred on by Trump’s words and actions or the extremely low risk presented by marchers who want to peacefully seek asylum in the States?
These past few weeks tv commentators are no longer holding back or mincing words. Many are openly and fearlessly calling Trump what he is: a racist and a serial liar.
the winter outside, that I’d come to in the warmth of blankets and the smell of toast and coffee as my young parents moved about, still alive, on their ways to make a life for all three of us. The radio on, some male announcer, in the background, magically, in our ’50s first floor suite on Victor in Winnipeg.
In the end, much is forgotten that far back except for a sense of your immediate people and perhaps days when you didn’t have to do much, were looked after, having no place special to go, as the day began abruptly.
(Among my earliest memories…)
The City of Edmonton will go broke overspending probably within 5-10 years. You heard it here first.
Everything Trump Touches Dies by Rick Wilson
I have no trouble supporting Lemon’s observation that crazy whites have been doing all the massacre shootings of late. He’s just stating a fact, not a mere unsupported opinion.
Trump: “When I can, I tell the truth.”
