Literary Life
Posted: April 17, 2017 Filed under: heroes, Texas, writing Leave a comment
Some real talk from Larry McMurtry
One of these days I’m going to rank all of McMurtry’s non-fiction books. They’re all chatty and great. This is the single best one.
Either Film Flam or Hollywood tells what it’s like to be friends with Diane Keaton and her mom.
McMurtry has really meant a lot to me. Here are some other posts about him:
about the time I heard him talk about Brokeback
Oh What A Slaughter and Sacagawea’s Nickname
Joshua Tree from the air
Posted: April 15, 2017 Filed under: the California Condition Leave a comment
from Google Earth. A little closer to the ground:
Bob Marley’s lawyer
Posted: April 11, 2017 Filed under: Jamaica Leave a comment
Diane Jobson, as seen in the Marley doc. (contender for best doc ever?)
250 points if you can guess the pun headline for this article about sorting out the Bob Marley estate.
Marley had eleven kids with seven women and left no will. Good luck, Diane!
More on Chikamatsu
Posted: April 8, 2017 Filed under: Japan, writing Leave a comment
Donald Keene isn’t having any of this Japan’s Shakespeare business:
A poem:
Railroading was a talent
Posted: April 7, 2017 Filed under: music, travel Leave a comment
Reading about Casey Jones:
Railroading was a talent, and Jones was recognized by his peers as one of the best engineers in the business.
Campfire cooking
Posted: April 7, 2017 Filed under: food, the California Condition Leave a comment
Something Biblical about roasting lamb chops right on the fire. A true al pastor. Plus it seemed to honor(?) the local fauna:
Of course you need a charcuterie plate.
Working on taking campfire cooking to the next level. HT various campmates for the photos and ideas.
Some notes:
- Foil packeted onions and peppers came out pretty well. More elaborate foil pack meals have been a bust for me. I tried some stew meat / potatoes sitch once, pointless. Keep it simple.
- Wrapping a potato in foil and putting it in the ashes is such a crapshoot. You have to leave it in there for a good hour I believe.
- You always want the cheapest hot dog buns you can find.
- Enjoyed reading these camping experts’ recipes from kayakcritic.net and would like to try Cristina Lash’s cast iron apple cinnamon oatmeal.
Man vs. nature. A tie, in this case.
You’re the puppet
Posted: April 4, 2017 Filed under: Japan, the theater Leave a comment
Bunraku is Japanese puppet theater. It’s been around since the beginning of the 17th century. The puppets are maybe three feet tall and are operated by people all in black.
Must credit young adult book The Master Puppeteer by Katherine Paterson for giving me some background in this bizarre art when I was a boy.
When I was in college the Awaji Island Puppet Troupe of Awaji Island came and did a performance in Boston. I went to see it and only left with more questions. Awaji puppets are similar to but not exactly bunraku.
Here we see Chikamatsu Monzaemon, who wrote at least 130 plays and is sometimes compared to Shakespeare. Until 1705, he wrote kabuki plays, for human actors. Then he abruptly switched to puppets.
WHY?
Why did Japan’s greatest dramatist switch to writing plays for puppets?
Wikipedia wagers some guesses:
The exact reason is unknown, although speculation is rife: perhaps the puppets were more biddable and controllable than the ambitious kabuki actors, or perhaps Chikamatsu did not feel kabuki worth writing for since Tōjūrō was about to retire, or perhaps the growing popularity of the puppet theater was economically irresistible.
Perhaps in Chikamatsu’s day the puppets weren’t really point, the point was the lyrics and the music, so you may as well have puppets instead of actors.
How cool would it be if Aaron Sorkin switched tomorrow to puppets? Or better yet Shonda Rhimes?
“I only do puppets now!”
After the switch, Chikamatsu’s career followed an all too familiar path:
Chikamatsu’s popularity peaked with his domestic plays of love-suicides, and with the blockbuster success of The Battles of Coxinga in 1715, but thereafter the tastes of patrons turned to more sensational gore fests and otherwise more crude antics
I feel I’ve reached the end of what I can learn about this art form unless I actually go to the National Bunraku Theater in Osaka to see a performance of The Love Suicides at Sonezaki.
The National Bunraku Theater – Mc681 on Wikipedia.
“Art is something that lies in the slender margin between the real and the unreal.” — Chikamatsu Monzaemon, Naniwa Miyage
Roundup of books I haven’t read all the way through but have in a crate in my garage
Posted: April 3, 2017 Filed under: advice, America Since 1945, heroes Leave a comment
Wow.
PFC Albert Bullock took this one of the damaged Franklin.
My copy is pre-owned and comes already highlighted:
I’ve always hated Hugo’s. On acting technique:
How about this one, about Australian historians?
Geoffrey Blainey’s recipe for peach-tin eggs:
Graeme Davison on the wrong side of the law in Melbourne:
There are no wasted humans:
from the boss Thomas Cleary:
And finally, some Daily Drucker:
History of theater
Posted: April 2, 2017 Filed under: actors, Japan Leave a comment
Trying to help Filip and Fredrik out on their commedia del’arte question, I pull down my Oxford Illustrated History of the Theater.
There I learn the reason there are no female kabuki actresses:
The earliest kabuki performers were women, but later all roles, including female, were played by men. This was because the government banned women from the stage in 1629, their policy being that nobody should follow more than one profession: this prevented women from being both prostitutes and actresses.
source: ukiyo-e.org
JCO on Twitter
Posted: April 1, 2017 Filed under: writing Leave a comment
a consistently wild experience.
At Hungry Cat
Posted: April 1, 2017 Filed under: the California Condition Leave a comment
© Andrew Stuart source
Ran into a bartender I’ve seen there before who greeted me by saying “Have you seen Logan yet?”
Good sentence
Posted: April 1, 2017 Filed under: women, writing Leave a comment
from Jean Rhys wikipedia page:
After her father died, in 1910, Rhys appeared to have experimented with the prospect of living as a demimondaine.
This period in the life of Bob Marley
Posted: March 31, 2017 Filed under: Jamaica Leave a comment
In 1966, Marley married Rita Anderson, and moved near his mother’s residence in Wilmington, Delaware in the United States for a short time, during which he worked as a DuPont lab assistant and on the assembly line at a Chrysler plant, under the alias Donald Marley
The War Between Mochi and Sake
Posted: March 30, 2017 Filed under: art history, food, Japan, war Leave a comment
Ametora
Posted: March 29, 2017 Filed under: Japan Leave a comment
Strong endorse to my bud Dave Marx’s book.
Would love to see a doc about the Farleys, who bought classic jeans across the heartland and sold them to Japan.
Sylvanus Morley: hot or not?
Posted: March 28, 2017 Filed under: Mexico, Wonder Trail Leave a comment
I say hot!
Also quite sexy if you can draw this:
His boyhood:
It was during his later schooling in Colorado that Morley first developed an interest in archaeology, and in particular Egyptology. However his father—a man trained in the hard sciences and who had graduated at the top of his class in civil engineering at PMC—was initially unsupportive of his ambitions. Seeing little scope for employment opportunities in archaeology, the Colonel encouraged his son to study engineering instead.
The other Sylvanus Morley I can find no picture of. From Wiki’s The “other” Sylvanus G. Morley, Sylvanus G. One says:
However, the person with the most right to complain was my cousin Sylvanus Griswold Morley, the celebrated archaeologist. The move made us homonyms, and gave rise to endless confusion. Look in a Who’s Who in America and you will learn the facts. Look in a library catalog, and you will be lucky to learn anything but errors. Sylvanus, a most good-natured soul, never protested. He was an undergraduate at Harvard while I was in the Grad. School. I sometimes received his Univ. bills, and less often, billets doux from his lights of love. I think he has none of mine.
More about eccentric heroes drawn to Central and South America can be found in:
The Ordnance Survey
Posted: March 27, 2017 Filed under: Ireland, maps Leave a comment
A friend is going to Ireland to do some landscape painting. I’m like, amazing. Plus this is a guy who usually gets it with maps. One day I sit down at my desk which has under its top an Ordnance Survey map of the Dingle Peninsula.
And I’m like oh friend make sure you get the Ordnance Survey map for where you’re going!
Why, he says.
Look, the Ordnance Survey Ireland website doesn’t have the smoothest experience.
But the treasures within!
Ordnance Survey Ireland is headquartered in the Phoenix Park.
The origins of the Ordnance Survey lie in the aftermath of the last Jacobite rising which was finally defeated by forces loyal to the government at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. Prince William, Duke of Cumberland realised the British Army did not have a good map of the Scottish Highlands to find the whereabouts of Jacobite dissenters such as Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat so they could be put on trial.
They just missed him here.
You don’t want to have a map that marks every stone row and holy well?
A map that shows the ancient druid stones and the ruined churches like something a wizard would have?
good to have a waterproof map
Legion
Posted: March 26, 2017 Filed under: bible, comics, Marvel Leave a comment
Consider Mark, chapter 5. Possible spoiler alert for the TV show Legion — keep hearing it’s awesome, that’s what led us here.
Jesus Restores a Demon-Possessed Man
5 They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes.[a] 2 When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an impure spirit came from the tombs to meet him.3 This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. 4 For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.
6 When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him.7 He shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In God’s name don’t torture me!” 8 For Jesus had said to him, “Come out of this man, you impure spirit!”
9 Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”
“My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many.” 10 And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area.
11 A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. 12 The demons begged Jesus, “Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them.” 13 He gave them permission, and the impure spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.
14 Those tending the pigs ran off and reported this in the town and countryside, and the people went out to see what had happened. 15 When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. 16 Those who had seen it told the people what had happened to the demon-possessed man—and told about the pigs as well. 17 Then the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region.
18 As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him. 19 Jesus did not let him, but said, “Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” 20 So the man went away and began to tell in the Decapolis[b] how much Jesus had done for him. And all the people were amazed.
near where this is said to have happened.
That’s the New International Version.
(Funny that Bible Gateway, at least on my computer, makes their money from ads for Theory.
The King James ends:
And all men did marvel.
Helytimes 
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