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Drawings.

VIII
The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise
Were all at prayers inside the oratory
A ship appeared above them in the air.
The anchor dragged along behind so deep
It hooked itself into the altar rails
And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,
A crewman shinned and grappled down the rope
And struggled to release it. But in vain.
‘This man can’t bear our life here and will drown,’
The abbot said, ‘unless we help him.’ So
They did, the freed ship sailed, and the man climbed back
Out of the marvellous as he had known it.

Seamus Heany – From Lightenings

Even though I don’t want to set up any expectations, the first one reminded me of what might happen if Per Petterson took a stab at the vampire genre.  I watched Let the Right One In and that’s the thought that kept running through my head.  The vampire story is almost secondary, and I’m interested if you guys would describe the primary theme in the same way I would.  There is still quite a bit of blood, but the movie doesn’t contain any of your typical “shocks” that Hollywood seems so fond of.  Thank goodness this isn’t Hollywood.

The other movie is Moon, which I can’t really even describe to you without giving things away.  Let’s just say, it has to do with the moon.

Anyone up for discussing these if you’ve seen them?  Or watching, then discussing?

Carolina Chocolate Drops | Genuine Negro Jig

01 | Peace Behind the Bridge
02 | Trouble in Your Mind
03 | Cornbread and Butterbeans

Peter Gabriel | Scratch My Back

01 | Heroes
02 | Flume
03 | The Book of Love

Every time they come out with a new video, I wonder how they’re going to top the old one.  Same feeling with this one.

As it happens, the audio poem of the day at poetryfoundation.org is by Tony Hoagland.

Romantic

NY Times Article

Here’s one I clipped from the New Yorker and tacked to the studio wall a while ago.

Violent Oils?  Midnight Femmes?  No, it’s the Break.

Listen to Cylinders.

What do those who are fans of the Oils and/or the Femmes think? 

Me, I wish I lived in Australia this February.

Bulwer-Lytton Contest Winners

For all lovers of good writing, here are this year’s winners of the Bulwer-Lytton contest, (aka “It Was a dark and Stormy Night” Contest) run by the English Department of San Jose State University, wherein one writes only the first line of a bad novel.

10. As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break wind in the echo chamber, he would never hear the end of it.

9. Just beyond the Narrows, the river widens.

8. With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied, a tanned unblemished oval face framed with lustrous thick brown hair, deep azure-blue eyes fringed with long black lashes, perfect teeth that vied for competition, and a small straight nose, Marilee had a beauty that defied description.

7. Andre, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he crept along the East wall: “Andre creep… Andre creep…Andre creep.”

6. Stanislaus Smedley, a man always on the cutting edge of narcissism, was about to give his body and soul to a back alley sex-change surgeon to become the woman he loved.

5. Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her from eking out a living at a local pet store.

4. Stanley looked quite bored and somewhat detached, but then penguins often do.

3. Like an over-ripe beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage cheese, the corpulent remains of Santa Claus lay dead on the hotel floor.

2. Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn’t know the meaning of the word “fear;” a man who could laugh in the face of danger and spit in the eye of death — in short, a moron with suicidal tendencies.

AND THE WINNER IS…

1. The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog’s deception, screaming madly, “You lied!”

and these: The new 2009 crop of Bulwar-Lytton winners are pretty good, too. Here’s the winners in the Detective category:

She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida – the pink ones, not the white ones – except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn’t wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren’t.

Eric Rice
Sun Prairie, WI

Runner-Up

The dame sauntered silently into Rocco’s office, but she didn’t need to speak; the blood-soaked gown hugging her ample curves said it all: “I am a shipping heiress whose second husband was just murdered by Albanian assassins trying to blackmail me for my rare opal collection,” or maybe, “Do you know a good dry cleaner?”

Tony Alfieri
Los Angeles, CA

Dishonorable Mentions

The appearance of a thin red beam of light under my office door and the sound of one, then two pair of feet meant my demise was near, that my journey from gum-shoe detective to international agent had gone horribly wrong, until I realized it was my secretary teasing her cat with a laser pointer.

Here are some of my favorites from In This Light & on This Evening.

01 In This Light And On This Evening
02 Papillon
03 Like Treasure
04 Walk the Fleet Road

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