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"I'm not an actor, I'm a MOVIE STAR!" - Alan Swann, My Favorite Year


My favorite movie quote from Peter O'Toole. What a wonderful performance in a wonderful film. He was such a great, sardonic, witty performer. He was fantastic in The Ruling Class (what a great Jesus), and phenomenal in The Stunt Man (what a great Satan). Had The Lord of the Rings been made ten years earlier, he would have had my vote to play Gandalf, as he would have played him much closer to the character in the book. (Not that I'm knocking McKellen, just that the Gandalf in the book wasn't nearly so cuddly.) And of course, his Henry II, in Becket and The Lion in Winter was not to be equalled.

*sigh* They're all going, one by one. The way of things, of course, but still...*sigh*

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RIP Neil Armstrong


The television image was grainy, fuzzy. His voice crackled and sputtered as it made its way over hundreds of thousands of miles. Looking back, it can seem anti-climactic - just a guy going down a ladder. But how my heart leapt into my eight-year-old throat when his foot came down and touched the surface: the first human being to arrive elsewhere. It changed me, it changed my life. It changed so many lives. It changed...the world. We weren't earthbound anymore. For a brief time, we ventured away from our little blue jewel. Only baby steps, but humanity took them. We took them, and for a time, it seemed inevitable that we would take another, and another, and another. One day, we would grow up, leave the nest, make our way in the wider cosmos. And now I wonder, will we ever go out our front door again?

*wipes away tears*

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Nicol Williamson, who gave such sardonic, witty life to the great Merlin in Excalibur, passed away on December 16.

His recording of The Hobbit was a masterpiece. Since we're all awaiting the film so eagerly, here is your chance to hear the master artist using that brilliant voice to bring life to Tolkien's little hero:

The Hobbit - read by Nicol Williamson
Part One

Part Two

Part Three


Despite the fact that he finally got sick of acting and left it all behind years ago, I and many others still feel he was one of the greatest to come out of Britain.

RIP, good man. You will (and still are) missed.

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The West African Black Rhino is now extinct.



RIP, big guy


*sigh*

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This one's for slipperieslope...

May the sweet and peaceful river
bear you onward to the sea.


( Click for desktop-size image )

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( Click for desktop-size image )

The next time you hear someone going on about whoever is a "threat", just remind them:
the only nation on earth that has proved its willingness to use nuclear weapons

is US.

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Yet another untimely death this weekend. Man, what a fucking DAY!

People Who Died - Jim Carroll

Those are people who died, died
They're all my friends
And they died...


Poet, writer, singer, musician Jim Carroll died on Friday night.

I remember being stunned by the power and honesty of this song. It was 1995, my life was in upheaval - a mini-breakdown led to my leaving my job in Santa Cruz and moving back to L.A. Somehow this loud, desperate paean to lost friends energized and amazed me. Life can be so fucking unfair - "she gives awards to some and penitent's cloaks to others," in the words of Luis de Gongora. And yet the other side of the coin is the beauty, intensity and energy of it. This song is not a mournful ballad, but a pounding in-your-face FUCK YOU to Death, the great leveller.


RIP, Jim. Your voice still amazes.

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An early entry today:

Part One

Part Two


There's little I can say about this. Please watch.


The last of the brothers to whom we owe so much. Goodbye, sir. You were a true Christian.

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RIP Walter Cronkite.

Apollo 11 Moon Landing, with Walter Cronkite reporting


He was always there. Every evening, the most dependable father-figure we Americans had spoke to us in grave, avuncular tones about what went on the world - accomplishments, tragedies, wars, deaths, elections, disasters, celebrations, and all the other events that shaped our daily lives. Presidents, kings, movie stars, popes, came and went with the years, but Walter Cronkite was always there.


He was there during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world was on the edge of its collective seat, terrified that a single misstep would lead to death for millions and millions. He guided us through, gentling our fears.

He was there when President Kennedy was assassinated, when Martin Luther King was murdered, when Bobby Kennedy was taken from us. He held our hands through the medium of television, weeping with us, consoling our terrible griefs.

He was there at the event whose anniversary we celebrate this week, the Apollo 11 moon landing, awestruck at the impossible accomplishment, smiling and celebrating with us all as we realized how very much we could do if we truly wanted, if we pulled together.

It's been a long time since Walter sat in that chair to tell us each night what was going on in the world. So many of us have missed him terribly - his studiousness, his dependability, his craft. Those who have inherited the post have been lesser, each year becoming more trivial, more self-involved, more eager to insert their own opinions and personalities into what should be an impartial, non-judgmental service. The news is no longer news, sad to say. It's now entertainment, and no one on the airwaves can be trusted the way we trusted Walter, that is to say, absolutely, implicitly, with no doubt or hesitation. The people he told us about might not have deserved our trust, but Walter? Always.


Goodbye, old friend. Goodbye, trusted advisor. Goodbye, sir. You were the Grandfather Of Us All, and there will never be anyone like you.


*weeps*

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*sniffle*

Kodachrome - Paul Simon

When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school
It's a wonder I can think at all...


I was so saddened to hear of the demise of Kodachrome. It was the film I learned to take pictures on, in a class on photography at Hollywood High School, back in the 70's. The class was taught by the most endearingly sweet, formal old German gentleman, a consummate photography lover, who taught the class not for the low fee, but because he felt he had to pass on what he knew. Which was a LOT.

All of which is now obselete, and that makes me sadder than you can know. I especially remember learning about the mystery of solarization, in which the photographer risked the existence of an image in order to achieve a particular artistic effect. That mysterious risk, that charge of adrenaline when you printed the photo and for the first time saw what happened when you were in the darkroom - that is completely impossible now. Digital media has destroyed that sense of risk in creating images, because no photo is ever at risk anymore. Once it exists in your camera (unless you're clumsy enough to delete it), the image can be copied onto any number of media, and manipulating it is safe as houses, since you're always working on a copy.

It may not seem like much to someone who's never done it, but those hours in the temple of the darkroom, slowly creating art, physical art, that you had to build with paper and chemicals and cut mattes and the right kind of light, had an extraordinary magic for me. So much so that, although I've had times when I had the money to buy a good digital camera, I just can't do it. It feels like cheating, like a pale neurasthenic cousin of photography, all convenience and no sweat, no sacrifice, no immersion, no mystery. No art. I know it's considered a form of art now, but for me it lacks something, and that something is the end process - creating the photo itself, beyond the image. Pressing "print" just doesn't cut it for me.

*sigh* Goodbye, old teacher. Your greens of summers taught me so much.


R.I.P.