Journal: Sep 08, 2010
Past Entries: December 2006
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Media viewing during my winter break
Movies
Four and Five Stars
* The Incredibles -- So I'm told the incredibles are a rip-off of the fantastic four (yeah!) -- it exceeds its parent.
* Pillow Book -- this was a re-viewing. not till half way through does it become a candidate for my favorite movie. Mangled approximate quote: there are two great pleasures in life, great sex and great literature. Ideally, both should be pursued. Yes, this movie achieves the worship of both activities.
* The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl - if you're an adult, it's a 3 star movie, if you're a four year old imaginative boy, it's over the top five stars. Andrew has never watched any movie multiple times until this one entered his life. He's seen it four or five times now.
* The Promise - by the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon people. I think they used the same voice as for Jaylen on Yu Gi Oh GX for the main bad guy, who was extremely good looking. Sean Connery is the dubbed voice for the general I think. Or a sound alike. It's a beautiful film.
* Clerks II - awesome - but then I'm a fan of silent Bob. Don't you think Jay looks like a Lord of the Rings elf in the manner Orland Bloom?
* Bewitched - yeah, I really liked Bewitched with Will Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Michael Cain, and Shirley McLain.3 stars
* Pom Poko -- by the maker of Spirited Away, Miyazaki. It's A good movie, with a surprising use of scrotal material.
* Spy Kids I & Spy Kids II - by Robert Rodrigez who did Sharkboy and Lavagirl. I couldn't stay awake through either one. The kids loved them.Under 3 stars:
*Fantastic FourThursday, December 28, 2006
Writers' Block Open Mic went pretty well last night. Brief notes (I'm on break):
It was nice to hear some new work and new poets. Some of it was pretty good. We have an awesome open mic group.
A poet Chicago poet, J.W. Baz graced the night. It was great to see him read solo work. I remember hearing him only in team pieces with another Chicago poet, Alvin Lau.
And then it was a fun group at the Rooster afterward.
Record-keeping: I read "Death Row Cook" and "Who [sic] to Blame for Bad Poetry". I am considering changing the title of that first one to "Interview with a Death Row Cook" and I added a line for readings. That line is the line at the beginning is added "What do they ask for?" When I wrote it it felt like I was writing down some of the answers to typical questions people would ask a cook in a prison who does the last meals. What do they ask for? Do they eat a lot? What would you pick? Does it bother you what they did? That kind of thing.
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
What have I been doing? I've been doing a lot of reading. Cleaning, cooking, reading, movies, reading, and reading. And I've played the snowman game a 100 times. (It's like an even simpler version of Trouble.) I taught Carolyn backgammon, did jigsaw puzzles, and watched movies. I can beat the Empire Earth computer on a higher level. After this break, there will be a media entry.
O and I've been accused of not being Christmassy enough by multiple parties. That's what I get for taking a secret joy in cleaning the bathrooms on Christmas day.
Friday, December 22, 2006
I've had a lot of near misses lately on all fronts of poetry. To add to the what has been set down here previously and a funky second-place in a local contest, I also missed a grant this year by a point (what a point means, I'm not going to go into, but it was kind of close). And two sets of poetry submissions came back thus: "we liked it, send more, but we aren't accepting these."
Before the gap, I had fleets of near misses. I had a few hits too, in the end.
I'm reading Bone by Fae Myenne Ng now. Before starting, I flipped through the beginning pages and saw her list of thank-yous. Whoa, this person got a lot of grants for her first novel. A lot. Then I started the book. Yep. She deserves a lot of grants. The prose is clear and substantial and charming and packed, but it's not dense, there just aren't many skip-able paragraphs. She's written a lot of short stories some of which have been anthologized -- which explains the backing on the novel.
Thanks for the book, Mom.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
My hosting company -- dear to me because it's cheap -- replaced the server on which my site resides (and it's high time), but restored from back-up from two days ago. I lost beautiful comments about Howard Chenfeld and two posts about books:
Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides -- wow.
Fast, cheap, and under control by John Gaspard -- seems to be about low-budget films...or is it?
Fragile things, short fictions by Neil Gaiman -- inconsistant but I'm liking it.Monday, December 18, 2006
Local poet Howard Chenfeld died a few days ago. He wrote some wonderful poetry. The poem of his that I remember best was about his wife, Mim, digging in the soft earth with her toes. It seemed so filled with affection, intelligence, respect, and sensuality. From his bio on the Epstein Memorial site, it sounds like he was a great and interesting person in a lot of ways. He will be missed.
There is an online guestbook at www.epsteinmemorial.com.
For those who went to my last feature at Peripatetic Poets: he was the older gentleman with long white hair, sitting diagonally from me and next to Dave.
Saturday, December 16, 2006
I wrote 203 poems this year not counting haikus. (This number won't jibe with the livejournal count because a few were not listed there.) 34 of these were read publicly. So far, only one ("Woodsman") is slated to be published outside of the poem of the day chapbook series. (That series is going to cut into my publications, but I think it is more valuable that individual publications in journals.)
In sum:
[more]
Friday, December 15, 2006
Yesterday I said in the comments on Joanna Schroeder's blog that I thought Ed Mabrey's poems had lines from other people's poems in it. I asked him to send me the poem later, but found I was wrong. And I was wrong not to check first, especially with a criticism like the one I made, regardless of my opinion of the originality or lack thereof in someone's body of work. I was too tired to do the research and that is a problem. I'm sorry.
Joanna has stated her feelings on the topic on her journal. Here they are.
One of the books I'm reading right now is Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. This is an amazing book. It's compelling, thoughful, articulate, brilliant. And I get the same feeling I got -- way back in college -- reading Bertrand Russell's book of essays Why I Am Not a Christian.
That thought is: Oh, I think it's compelling, but I know, having grown up with them, this isn't going to change any minds and the few arguments that will are so buried in the text, Christians won't get far enough into the book to read them. The result is, it is essentially preaching to the choir. What I want to see is someone talk to them so they will listen. I've see it done. It can be done. But it must be done gently and with respect.
The language is not strident or less than compelling, it's just too complete and forceful. I know. I know. I agree with the complete-ness of the arguments, but a fanatic isn't going to listen to that kind of talk.
I do love the book. Thank you, Zelda. I'll probably read it again, study it.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
It was so close last night. Here are the scores copied from the Writers' Block official results.
1st - Ed M. (83.1)
2nd - Scott W. & Louise R. (83.0)
4th - Joanna S. (82.3)
5th - Donielle J. (82.2)
6th - Gina B. (81.7)
7th - Vernell B. (81.1)Ed M. is Ed Mabrey who is the slammaster at Black Pearl Poetry, another poetry slam here in Columbus. But he'll be the Writers' Block representative at the Vancouver 2007 iWPS.
There were new comers last night and old regulars. I think a few of the new people will be coming out to see poetry more. They were talking that way anyway.
There was someone I knew by sight because I have worked with images of her for the ADR conference web site. (The Law School hosts this conference every year. It's not really the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) conference; it's got a much longer title, but everyone calls it ADR.) She didn't know me before. I wonder what she'll report to the guy who runs ADR who is an awesome person and brilliant professor.
There were three rounds. The first for 3 minute longs poems; the second for 2 minute poems; the third for 1 minture poems. I love events with varying times. They seem to speed up. Recordkeeping: in this order, I read "Number 3", "Your Poem", and "Asparagus". I had a bunch of other poems ready. My whole sideboard had like 12 poems on it. It was so close. I was close.
It was a fascinating slam. These events really give a heartbeat to poetry, even when weird things happen.
As usual I missed some because of being focused on myself. But I saw some great new stuff and stuff that was just new to me.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
My hosting company's server blew up -- a semi annual event it seems -- and I lost a post about the book and movie Possession and some of your wonderful comments. (I personally liked the title I have for that entry: "I've never skipped so many pages in my life".) Re-create the post maybe? Eh. We'll see.
Tonight is the Writers' Block Poetry iWPS grand slam. It promises to be really good.
Friday, December 8, 2006
I've got a feature at Liberty Books (1649 West Lane Avenue at the Shops on Lane Avenue), at 7:00 pm, November 8, 2007. That's some lead time. I think I'll do something special for it. They asked for a couple of specific types of poems. I'll either have to write something or fudge on something from what I have in the vault. (I am now calling my cache of poems from three years of writing "the vault." Future poems live somewhere else, like unborn cats.) But what the hell, I've got nearly a year.
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
I should mention that I joined some other poets around here for an impromptu field trip to the Kamikaze venue in Cleveland on Sunday night to see the amazing poet Dasha Kelly. It was a good night and that venue is really nice. Nice people, nice everything. The only hold up was traffic on the way up. When we got up to see what the matter was, it was an incinerated semi truck. It looked like it had been blown up. What was the matter? Some kind of vegetable matter. I found the news item on it yesterday but couldn't find it again this morning. So you'll just have to trust me.
Friday, December 1, 2006
So where's the poetry mine? Where's the cache? How do I get some new stuff? O, I know that answer. I have to take something I've been thinking about for years and years and talk about it as candidly as I can while trying to kick my ego to the curb. I often get to the point where I think, "That's it, I've got nothing more. I have used everything." Then, well, that's not so true.
Every poem feels like it was created differently, like I can't use the same thought patterns twice.
A here to relieve you of and go along with these my musings, is a great poem I read this a few weeks ago: Bach's Idiot Son. I feel like the son, minus of course the genius father. (O, there's genius in my parents, I'm just not related to them.)