Good Day To Die, But...

When I was being wheeled in for surgery on my ACL they gave me some very good drugs, and Emma asked me if I had any last words. I don't remember this, but apparently I offered my own spin on the Lakota Battle Cry, "It's a good day to die, but a better day to not die."

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We lost Allen Ginsburg on this day in 1997. He considered Father Death Blues the height of his Buddhist training.

Hey Father Death, I'm flying home

Hey poor man, you're all alone

Hey old daddy, I know where I'm going

Father Death, Don't cry any more

Mama's there, underneath the floor

Brother Death, please mind the store

Old Aunty Death Don't hide your bones

Old Uncle Death I hear your groans

O Sister Death how sweet your moans

O Children Deaths go breathe your breaths

Sobbing breasts'll ease your Deaths

Pain is gone, tears take the rest

Genius Death your art is done

Lover Death your body's gone

Father Death I'm coming home

Guru Death your words are true

Teacher Death I do thank you

For inspiring me to sing this Blues

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Gretel and I in our work calendar.

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All of my political predictions are wrong, but here's another. Trump either gets impeached, or wins reelection using his non-impeachment as the quintessential symbol of Democrats' inherent namby-pambiness.

April 5, 2018

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I'm going to watch the first 10 minutes of Baby Driver first thing every morning every day of the rest of my life.

April 5, 2018

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Teenagers at a party in Tusla, Oklahoma, 1947

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While driving home reflecting on my work day, I realized my decision to hire a Christian minister was based in part on a Buddhist parable.

April 5, 2018

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Taste of Cinema- The 10 best Kubrickian films not by Kubrick.

10. Birth- Glazer

9. Melancholia- von Trier

8. Grand Budapest Hotel- Wes Anderson

7. Eraserhead- Lynch

6. Enemy- Villaneuve

5. Interstellar- Nolan

4. Beyond the Black Rainbow- Cosmatos

3. Ex Machina- Garland

2. There Will Be Blood- P.T. Anderson

1. Under the Skin- Glazer

http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2016/the-10-best-kubrickian-films-not-by-stanley-kubrick/

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Mad Men Season 7- to be resolved, with minor predictions

-Don must in some way come to terms with his previous self. Might have something to do with recanting his crappy advice to Peggy after she had her baby- “just move on, it will amaze you how much this didn’t even happen,” or something like that. Advertising has been the symbol of him living a lie. Somehow those idiot beatniks from the first season nailed it. The first part of season 7 ends with “the best things in life are free.” Yes, they are. Never has there been a more anti-advertising slogan.

-Peggy as well must come to terms with her past too. Her and Pete get together? I’m saying yes. Perfect book end to the very first episode. They really have become close, but Pete’s such a douchebag. Peggy’s relationship with Julio in the first part of season 7 sets up her mother role. 

-Something must change with Pete, he needs to be straightened out, and that’s what could change the dynamic of his relationship with Peggy. 

-Sal must return in some sense. It will be part of Don’s realization of his past errors.

-Don’s love life must end on a high note. (Right?) After facing who he is, it’s sets the scene for its possibility. Betty? She’s not happy with Henry, is she? Rachel returns? Faye? Faye was herself, Brooklyn accent… same as Peggy’s accent comes out at times that she becomes herself. 

-Glen must have an appearance, could be part of Sally’s resolution. And Betty’s? The Glenn/Betty dynamic was a key to the first season, and Don letting Glenn drive back to school was a high note in the episode with Lane’s suicide. Betty and Don as surrogate parents, become parents-in-law? Or we are to see that they will be in the future.

-Megan’s story needs to end somehow, but how? They drew the curtain on her last season, but she’s in the promotions. The previous season ended with the moon landing… Mason murders were like two weeks later. I’m guessing the first episode deals with this.

-The moon has been the focus the entire series- Hilton demanded the moon, wisecracks about astronauts crapping their pants, we make it at the end of the first part of season 7. Somehow the moon is going to be a major player.

-Ginsberg needs a return/resolution- it’s somehow going to be absolutely insane, and also cut through layer after layer after layer of nonsense, to be the most truthful line of the show. 

-It will end modern day.

-What will be the final song? It will be immediately iconic, a song we’ve heard a thousand times but it will seem like the first time.

What I’ll miss most- Elisabeth Moss’s ingenious, subtle, nuanced reaction faces.

April 5, 2015

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If the people I quote keep dying I'll have to start making up quotations myself.

April 5, 2013

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To my friends who would want to know what Werner Herzog had to say about the passing of Roger Ebert- "There will be a long, long echo [of his work] reverberating for a long, long time.... I've always tried to be a good soldier of cinema myself, so of course since he's gone, I will plow on, as I have plowed on all my life, but I will do what I have to do as if Roger was looking over my shoulder. And I am not gonna disappoint him."

April 5, 2013

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On this day in 1934, in Mooresville, Indiana, John Dillinger took his girlfriend Billie Frechette home to see his father and family.

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On this day in 1943, United States Army Air Forces accidentally bombed the Belgian town of Mortsel cause more than 900 civilian deaths, and 1,300 wounded.

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Filthy.

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Anne Frank wrote this in her diary on this day in 1944.

"When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived! But, and that's a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer? I hope so, oh I hope so very much, because writing allows me to record everything, all my thoughts, ideals and fantasies."

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Walter Huston, who performed Plato's Perfect Form of a Jig, was born on this day in 1884. "Gold!"

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Good day for silver screen birthdays. Spencer Tracy, and Bette Davis were each born on this day, in 1900 and1908 respectively. 

Spencer said this about his looks- "This mug of mine is as plain as a barn door. Why should people pay 35 cents to look at it?"

Bette said this of her looks- “I have eyes like a bullfrog, a neck like an ostrich and long, limp hair. You just have to be good to survive with that equipment.”

Good day for humility too, some founded, and some extraordinarilt unfounded.

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And don't forget about Gregory peck, he joined us on this day in 1916. AFI voted Atticus Finch the greatest screen hero of all time.

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70's pop star Agnetha Faltskog of ABBA was born on this day in 1950. May the four members of ABBA live forever.

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Other notable birthdays- Booker T. Washington (1856), Colin Powell (1937)

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FDR's little Scottish terrier, Fala, passed away on this day in 1952.

Republicans accused FDR of sending a battleship back to the Aleutian Islands to get Fala, who was supposedly abandoned there by accident. This was his response.

"These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don't resent attacks, and my family don't resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I'd left him behind on an Aleutian island and had sent a destroyer back to find him — at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars — his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself ... But I think I have a right to resent, to object, to libelous statements about my dog."

Orson Welles was campaigning for Roosevelt, and it was his idea to turn the Aleutian Island thing into a joke.

After FDR died in 1945, for the rest of Fala's life, he looked to the doors of their house waiting for him to return anytime he heard sirens. They buried him near FDR, and he's immortalized at the FDR memorial in DC.

Incidentally, do you know the name of John Adams' White House dog? That's right- Satan!

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Novelist, essayist and short story writer, and Nobel Prize laureate Saul Bellow died on this day in 2005. 

“A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”

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Charlton Heston died on this day in 2008. He said something like, "You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers, you filthy stinking ape."

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60's pop star Bobby Rydell died on this day in 2022. He sung Volare. My first car was a forest green Plymouth Volare station wagon. It was a wild one. Bobby Rydell also sung Wild One.

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Another 60's pop star died on this day in 2006, Gene Pitney. What a knockout singer- Only Love Can Break a Heart, It Hurts To Be In Love, basically a lot of songs about love and heartbreak.

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Kurt Cobain is also believed to have died on this day in 1994. He said, “It’s okay to eat fish because they don’t have any feelings.” I think I agree with that. 

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Another notable deathdays- Sam Walton (1992)

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Email to Jen, using Mitch Hedberg jokes as parables.

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"Passover is the perverse celebration of an immoral and incompetent God killing innocent children."

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2017/04/passover-god-kills-bunch-babies-except-jewish-ones/

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Werner Herzog on the passing of Roger Ebert- "There will be a long, long echo [of his work] reverberating for a long, long time.... I've always tried to be a good soldier of cinema myself, so of course since he's gone, I will plow on, as I have plowed on all my life, but I will do what I have to do as if Roger was looking over my shoulder. And I am not gonna disappoint him."

Apr 05, 2013

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Sam Harris- Neuroscience versus the afterlife

https://youtu.be/oDcZkrl-eoY

Apr 05, 2014

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Daily Show Salute to the Heroes of the Coronavirus Pandumbic

A bit cathartic to look back and see how perfectly backwards these jokers were, even though I wish I could say they were right. So what else are they wrong about on a daily basis, i.e. which experts do they ignore?

https://youtu.be/NAh4uS4f78o

April 5, 2020

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Happy birthday to Agnetha. May these four live forever.

Ring, Ring

https://youtu.be/TL0EoXdpOqg

April 5, 2022

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"You want the macaroons?" - Tony Soprano 

"I don't care. Leave some out for the lunatics." - Livia Soprano 

Brilliant scene. That split-second look on her face when he asks her if she wants some. She desperately wants some, but doesn't want to let him know that she wants some, so she asks him to leave some out for the others. Get them out all haphazard, he knows what's going on. You know the second he left she gobbled them down.

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Machiavelli- "A sign of intelligence is an awareness of one's own ignorance."

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Rumi- "If you are looking for a friend who is faultless, you will be friendless."

Shams Tabrizi- "When everyone is trying to be something, be nothing. Range with emptiness." ~ 

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Sam Harris- "It's strange that God made Shakespeare a better writer than himself."

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Einstein- "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

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Ricky Gervais- "Have a lovely Easter. And remember, if you don't sin, then Jesus died for nothing."

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Francis Bacon- "Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much."

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Walt Whitman- "Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth."

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Richard Dawkins- "After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings."

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Dumb Short Joke of the Day:

I couldn't figure out why the baseball kept getting larger. Then it hit me.