R.I.P., Tony Curtis

From Criss Cross (1947). His first scene in movies, dancing with Yvonne deCarlo:

The Sweet Smell of Success (1957):

The Defiant Ones (1958):

Some Like It Hot (1960):

A Rich And Dying Fall

In the house the women begin to sing. We hear the first line commence, beginning to swell as they take hold, and we rise and move toward the door, taking off our hats and throwing our chews away. We do not go in. We stop at the steps, clumped, holding our hats between our lax hands in front or behind, standing with one foot advanced and our heads lowered, looking aside, down at our hats in our hands and at the earth or now and then at the sky and at one another's grave, composed face.

The song ends; the voices quaver away with a rich and dying fall. Whitfield begins. His voice is bigger than him. It's like they are not the same. It's like he is one, and his voice is one, swimming on two horses side by side across the ford and coming into the house, the mud-splashed one and the one that never even got wet, triumphant and sad. Somebody in the house begins to cry. It sounds like her eyes and her voice were turned back inside her, listening; we move, shifting to the other leg, meeting each other's eye and making like they hadn't touched.

Whitfield stops at last. The women sing again. In the thick air it's like their voices come out of the air, flowing together and on in the sad, comforting tunes. When they cease it's like they hadn't gone away. It's like they had just disappeared into the air and when we moved we would loose them again out of the air around us, sad and comforting. Then they finish and we put on our hats, our movements stiff, like hadn't never wore hats before.

As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner

William Faulkner spent much as his spell as a Hollywood screenwriter scheming to return home to Mississippi. He did, however, strike up an unlikely friendship with the famously ignorant Clark Gable. It was a perfect relationship, said one wag: Faulkner had never seen a movie and Gable have never read a book.

Jamaicans for Justice

Madeleine Bair reports from Jamaica:

(Human Rights Fellowship with Jamaicans for Justice from mad bair on Vimeo.)

The New York Times exposes the paucity of ideals and logic in the Republican platform. What's left is a cynical hodgepodge that aims to put the country -- with a few privileged exceptions, of course -- as deep in the ditch as it was by 2008...

Sunday Funnies and Arts

As always, click to enlarge.

One of the management texts I've been reading has a chapter on ethics. Now, before you laugh, there are plenty of managers with a sound ethical sense; as the annals of the financial collapse develop, much of the information will no doubt come from managers who made strenuous internal objections to the practice of making money based on predatory loans. The book was published in 2004, after news of the Enron shenanigans broke, but before the meltdown. It makes ready reference to increased public demand for ethical management, evidence not always in evidence in the wake of the meltdown.

The perpetrators of the meltdown have expressed no remorse about their role and practices; they've been bolstered by large swathes of a public that blames their victims for taking out loans they couldn't afford, as if these people were presented with a number of clear alternatives, one of which they chose despite being labelled as "unaffordable and dangerous to the international economy." Of course, the victims of the loans are perceived of as being poor, minority, and underserving, even though that's a false perception: Besides targeting inner cities as for predatory loans, lenders looked also to the exuurbs and young, white, first-time homebuyers.

We've come to a pretty pass when youth, color, and economic status deprive one of the right to ethical treatment in the eyes of their fellow citizens. But such is the right-wing vision of freedom and liberty: A society of every man for himself and devil take the hindmost, unless you're a man like us. In which case, you deserve citizenship, Social Security, Medicare, and -- of course -- your gun...

The Town. D: Ben Affleck. Ben Affleck, Jon Hamm, Rebecca Hall, Jeremy Renner. Standard caper pic bolstered by strong performances (Hamm's miscasting notwithstanding), the Boston locale and accents, and a penetrating examination of the Charlestown criminal ethos. The friendship of Affleck and Renner serves as a flip side to the friendship of Affleck and Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting, and the strengths of the film pivot off of that. Ironically, the most lingering bit of a violent movie is a brief silent vignette in which the bank robbers enjoy a family respite within the protective embrace of Charlestown, a vision of false fantasy and security that drives them to violence. Other highlights include the tense opening robbery and an exciting chase scene through the North End. The culminating heist of Fenway Park proceeds from a Yankees series takes us deep into the bowels of the "cathedral of Boston" (as one character has it), although the sequence is undermined by a costuming decision that has Affleck and Renner looking like members of the Village People. All in all, though, a solid film greatly enhanced its take on a fascinating milieu and its feeling for the locale. Nice cameos by Chris Cooper and Pete Postlethwaite...

Big hair in Cowtown...

PHOTO GALLERY

Garden, Beauregard-Keyes House...

Waves of neon...

Bayouecreole tucks into the world's biggest king cake...

James Dean gives directions to bicyclist. The residents of Marfa, TX, where Dean filmed Giant, remember him fondly as an unassuming man who mixed easily and often with locals...

Iconic Moment Dept: Paul Simenon of the Only Band That Matters smashes his guitar...

Blackberries in Indian Valley, ID...

Streetcar Sunday in Leipzig...

Roy's World in pastel...

Premium T. and the BVM...

Lakewood buttons up for cold weather...

ON THE JUKEBOX

Joan Baez sings "Sweet Sir Galahad"...

Lowell George and Little Feat perform "Dixie Chicken" with Emmylou Harris, Bonnie Raitt, and Jesse Winchester...

Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets...

Chet Flippo extols the Hank Williams box Complete Mother's Best as "a breathtaking display of the width and breadth of American music and culture from the first half of the 20th Century and even earlier..."

Justin Townes Earle sings "I'm Learning to Cry" and "One More Night in Brooklyn," from his excellent new CD Harlem River Blues:

This Week in Conservative Hyprocrisy

It's shooting fish in a barrel, but Media Matters weekly summary of conservative media hypocrisy is always worth checking out. This week:

This week again proved that consistency isn't prized among the conservative media.

Earlier this week, Fox News and Rush Limbaugh criticized President Obama for supposedly being responsible for huge deficits. However, both recently attempted to defend former President Bush's for not paying for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars or his tax cuts - two things which, of course, greatly increased yearly deficits.

Fox News personalities have also repeatedly attacked President Obama for purportedly not sending as many troops to Afghanistan as the military requested. The crew of Fox & Friendscalled it "unbelievable" and "wrong" that Obama didn't listen to "the military experts." However, President Bush dismissed Gen. Eric Shinseki's recommendation that "several hundred thousand troops" would be needed in Iraq and Fox virtually ignored the story. When Fox News eventually covered the story, a contributor suggested that critics "shut up and let daddy drive."

Right-wing media like Fox & Friends and conservative blogs also attacked President Obama's reported comments that the United States can "absorb a terrorist attack" and that the country "absorbed [9-11] and we are stronger." Conservatives used the reported remarks to suggest that Obama was "inviting another 9/11" and that he "doesn't care about Americans dying." Yet when conservatives - including President Bush - made similar statements, the right offered not so much as a murmur of complaint.

Finally, on Wednesday, Glenn Beck -- a noted hypocrite -- promoted Eustace Mullins' bookSecrets of the Federal Reserve. Mullins, who died earlier this year, was a 9-11 Truther and was described in his obituary as an "anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist" and a "nationally known white supremacist." Beck, however, heavily criticized former White House green jobs adviser Van Jones for purportedly being a 9-11 Truther.

Stay tuned next week for the same consistent inconsistency

All (completely justifiable) snarking aside, keep in mind that, in the topsy-turvy conservative moral universe, none of this is hypocrisy because anything said or done in the name of conservatism is inherently good and therefore justifiable, whereas anything said or done in opposition to conservatism is inherently un-American. One might say that, to them, lying in an attack on President Obama is no vice; consistency in the pursuit of power is no virtue...

I left my heart to the wild hunt a-comin':

Contract for America

The Republican "Pledge to America" is of course a muddle of contradictions: You can't reduce the deficit by extending the Bush tax cuts (and it doesn't bother to explain otherwise) and you can't ensure access to health insurance for patients with pre-existing conditions without mandates (and it doesn't bother to explain otherwise.

But one little remarked on pledge stands out to me: The promise to provide a constitutional justification for every bill passed. I realize that -- especially for major legislation -- this is generally vetted in advance. Nonetheless, isn't there the potential to politicize the judiciary by inserting it into the legislative process? After all, the only federal judges can truly give a constitutional thumbs up or down to a bill. Or perhaps the intent is the opposite: To render the judiciary irrelevant by determining constitutionality in advance.

Of course, there's always the possibility that this is an insincere nod to teabagger ignorance of the meaning of the separation of powers, and it won't actually go anywhere...

I must say that I resent the title of the pledge: I'm an American and I certainly am not signed up for this nonsense. I suppose, though, that since I don't see it precisely their way, the 'baggers question that I am an American...

More fun from Stan and Ollie:

Dazed and Confused

We returned Monday evening after a solid 24 hours of airports and airplanes. Despite departing from what must be the most benign airport in Europe (Shannon) and laying over in the relatively friendly confines of Newark's C terminal, it occurred to me -- and not for the first time -- what a dehumanizing experience air travel has become. A morning flight out of Seattle for the east coast involves getting up a 4a, fighting through traffic, standing in the ticket line, and standing in the security line, all for the privilege of being jammed into a coach seat for 5-6 hours to be served by overworked flight attendants. It's a wonder there haven't been more incidents like the one involving the Jet Blue attendant...

Desperate to avoid airport hotel dining in Ireland -- not exactly a consummation to be devoutly wished -- we stopped in the town of Adare for what turned out to be a delightful experience at The Arches restaurant. Not only was the down-home cooking hearty and reasonably priced (by European standards), an Irish gentleman at the next table engaged us in one of those conversations that make the country so worth visiting. They also begin with,

"Are ye from the States?"

and take off from there with stories about his visit to the states and people he knows there. In this case, it involved some "lads" from Limerick who went to New York and never returned to Ireland. He eventually visited them, and loved New York. He asked where we had been, dismissed Dublin as not the real Ireland, and told us about a new route to the airport that shaved a half hour off the rest of the trip...

Then I return home to the senate's dismissal of the repeal of Don't Ask/Don't Tell, in which Susan Collins (R-ME) distinguished herself by setting aside her convictions in order to support the Republican agenda of larding the legislation with poison pill amendments. If it weren't for the human rights involved, I'd say that this has gotten downright silly -- a group of old men obstructing a clear societal trend...

Meanwhile, Washington state Republican senate nominee Dino Rossi states unequivocally that he

opposes allowing any of the estimated 11 million people already in the United States illegally to apply for legal residency. However, he hasn't called for deporting them. He has offered no options, saying he hasn't "heard a good solution for the people that are already here that makes sense."

Rossi, a real estate baron who is in the hip pocket of the Building Industry Association of Washington, of course reflects exactly the desire of his chief benefactor: Keep them here, keep them illegal, keep them scared...

Not to be outdone, Delaware witch, teabagger, and Republican senate nominee Christine O'Donnell tells national media personality Sean Hannity that she will no longer talk to the national media because "that's not going to help get me votes," whereas presumably running and hiding from them will...

It's all enough to make a guy go back to Ireland, or at least to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia:

Ring of Kerry Road Trip (2010)

Thank You, Sir...

An AP poll reports that "46 percent of voters say they want Republicans in charge of the economy." Kevin Bacon has the story:

North Mayo Road Trip

Yesterday, we prowled the back roads of North Mayo, driving along the coast and through bogs and farm land. We even came across two holy wells, one for St. Brigid and the other for St. Patrick. After returning to Westport by dark, we had dinner at An Port Mor, then caught a trad session at Geraghty's (punctuated with a pair of Hank Williams songs, including "Lost Highway"). Enjoy!

Photographed with the Hipstamatic iPhone app, John S lens and Black Keys Ultrachrome film.

Great Endings: Huckleberry Finn

Tom's most well now, and got his bullet around his neck on a watch-guard for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so there ain't nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I'd a knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn't a tackled it, and ain't a-going to no more. But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

R.I.P., Hadley Caliman. Rock fans know the jazz saxophonist for the wispy, ethereal opening declaration he contributed to Santana's Caravanserai. Here he is in 1979 with Freddie Hubbard (that's Leon Thomas on scat):

Waiting Here For Everyman

As good a place to wait as any:

And, on a more prosaic note:


This kind of thing happens to me all the time.

Sunday Funnies and Arts

"This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender." John Hayes finds the link between 9/11, Pete Seeger, Johnny Cash, and Herman Goring...

Defrocked and half-cocked...

My parties are never this good. Maybe it's because I never lived in Santa Fe...

PHOTO GALLERY

Scene shop entrance, or Vermeer in New Orleans...

Perfect pitch in the French Quarter...

Premium T. treks to Ballinrobe, Roundfort, Kilmaine, and Cong on a Harry Clarke pilgrimage. Clarke was the Michelangelo of stained glass, and five churches right here in County Mayo can boast examples of his brilliance. The locals we conferred with in a Roundfort didn't know this, though, and had trouble getting their heads around the idea that two people from Seattle would visit Roundfort intentionally. One older gentleman may have known who I was talking about; it was hard to tell as his Mayo brogue bordered on brick-like thickness. As we drank tea (on the house, it turned out), the men at the bar placed bets on televised horse races. The publican phoned them in while a 30-ish blonde out of an Edna O'Brien novel surveyed the proceedings quietly from her perch at the end of the bar.

You've seen her before: No rivals in Roundfort, but just another pretty face in Dublin. She appreciates the male attention, but despairs of her choices. She hates Roundfort, but fears to leave...

Sailor suits galore...

When I get back to Newport, I want Roy to show me sights like these...

Valentino leading lady Agnes Ayres gets carded...

ON THE JUKEBOX

Emmylou and Steve Earle say "Good Bye" with help from Sharon Shannon...

Ball of Confusion...

Jack White signs on to produce Wanda Jackson...

The Labyrinthine Way

On a good day, the Atlantic Drive along the rim of Achill Island reminds me of California's Central Coast minus the cars. On other days, that is to say most days, Achill is like Wuthering Heights: windswept, chilly, remote, and soulful. Yesterday was a Wuthering Heights day. Listen to the wind:

By mid-afternoon, we were ready for an Irish coffee, and the Minaun View pub is happy to provide them. I first ducked into the Minaun View on a bitterly chill afternoon seven years ago. I took my seat at the bar, ordered my Irish coffee, and listened in to the local radio station broadcast death notices ("turn it up," urged one of the bartenders) when I took a look around. I noticed a poster praising the IRA hunger strikers of the 70s, an autographed photo of Gerry Adams, several copies of his books for sale, and a large glass jug for donations to Sinn Fein.

Half expecting a gang of balaclava'd Provos to burst in with Thompsons and Uzis ablaze, I considered leaving. But it was awfully cold, and the Minaun View was the only place I could find that served Irish coffee. So I stayed, lived, went in peace, and returned year after year. One time, the publican recommended a trip to the incomparable views of Minaun Heights; this year, a different barkeep wondered whether "they" were really going to burn the Quran. The regulars, none of whom looked especially different than the regulars in any other Irish pub, seemed to find the whole idea mystifying and silly.

The publican recommended a nearby hamlet and rocky beach as being the "real Ireland." As hard living as life in the village must be, it abuts a spectacular rocky beach, aching in its lonesomeness:

We're not sure where the labyrinth came from. It took planning, time, and effort to finish. It's condition is too good to be ancient, too well-planned and executed to be the work of kids, and no adult would put in the required time voluntarily. And yet there is no plaque or marker. Chalk it up as another mystery in a mysterious land.

From there, we drove to the village Dugort, perhaps the most remote place in the most remote place in Ireland. Perched along a cliff's edge, it's notable for the absence of a pub. We inched past a low-slung house advertising "Artist's Books, Photography, and Silkscreen Prints;" in our experience, the contents of such places rarely live up to even the most modest billings. But, we often stop just to make sure, and stopping in at Redfoxpress turned out to be the equivalent of sinking consecutive holes-in-one at Pebble Beach.

Francis Van Maele, the co-proprietor, turned out to be a world-class printer and bookmaker who sells his limited editions internationally and whose work is collected by museums. I bought Archives de l'oubli, a set of found photographs from the collection of the Luxembourg Jean Delvaux. T. discovered Booksbook, a "...collection of all different kinds of books -- accounting book, manual book, family book, cookbook..." Each two-page spread features a book cover on the left and a page from the book on the right. We also invested in the Fish Box, a collection of 25 silk screen prints from 11 countries on the theme of fish, contained in a fish-and-chips box with a unique piscine surprise at the bottom.

I visit Achill Island every time I'm in Ireland, and I find something new every time. Years ago, a mainlander asked me if I had been there yet. I shook my head. "Ye have to go," he said. "The craic there is mighty."

Cronin's Sheebeen

Cronin's Sheebeen is a thatched roof pub about a mile from Westport. The Guiness is cold, the atmosphere warm, and the mussels served in a garlic cream sauce. I ate and drank and read The Ghost Light, Joseph O'Connor's new novel based on an affair between the Irish playwright John Millington Synge (The Playboy of the Western World, Riders to the Sea) and the actress Molly Allgood (sister of Sara Allgood, known best to American audiences for her portrayal of Beth Morgan in How Green Was My Valley). Though Ghost is overwritten at times, its dialogue is impeccable and the view into a time when actors and playwrights were disdained as well as revered never ceases to fascinate.

Sunday Funnies & Arts

As always, click to enlarge.

Do you have a passion for David Goodell? Here's the Facebook page you've been looking for...

Marguerite makes Creole stuffed bell peppers...

ART GALLERY

Art of the Poster: The Gods Must Be Crazy...

Earth, air, and sky: The transformed Petro-Save...

My Life in the French Quarter: The Face...

Premium T. does love her horses...

...and Bayou Creole loves her brothers. (Is that HO race track the ultimate in cool or what?)...

Bridal Cave...

Roy talks to Earl...

Dogfight over Lakewood...

A broke ass and a hot dog...

FROM THE JUKE BOX

So he's milking the tour. But considering that the guy's out of money and the magnificent songs he's written, I'll give him a pass. And I'll buy his new CD, too: I always do...

Nurse Myra's musical tales...

A great American singer sings a great American song...

Whatever you wish to keep, you'd better grab it fast...

John Hayes reminds us that it's Labor Day weekend while Natalie Merchant asks "Which Side Are You On?"...

And, finally, just in case you missed it:

Sheefry Pass

Yesterday being sunny and clear, we dropped plans to run errands and hit the road to Leenane through the Doolough valley, which I've written about before. Leenane means eating a sandwhich on the sea wall facing Killary Harbour while talking with a gentleman on holiday from Belfast, then taking an outdoor pint. After, we returned to Westport via the Sheefry Pass for a drink at McGing's and a terrific dinner at a new restaurant called the Pantry and Corkscrew.

The Pantry and Corkscrew, open less than two months, was a very pleasant surprise. I started with a salad of fresh pears and pecorino cheese with honey and balsamic vinegar on a bed of arugula, then moved on to a hamburger made of organic beef infused with cheese and sage and served with homemade catsup and fresh chips. Dessert was a Irish cheese plate big enough for four, a great contrast to the four slivers for $12 that I stopped ordering a long time ago in the States as the portions diminished while the price rose.

A nice place to take a pint:

Sheefry Pass:

Under His Own Vine and Fig Tree

Don't miss Hendrik Hertzberg's excellent account of the GZ community center uproar. It's the kind of reasoning that should put the "controversy" to bed once and for all, but that smug Philistines like Newt Gingrich will declaim as elitist liberalism, mainly because its inescapable logic punctures a hole in their demagoguery. Hertzberg artfully turns John McCain's own words against him, destroys the rationale of bigots like Abraham Foxman, and disarms the wild myths propagated about Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf (author of What's Right About Islam Is What's Right About America).

Hertzberg concludes by quoting the one American who remains, one assumes, unassailable. As George Washington put it in a letter to the Jews of Newport, RI, the United States

gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens...May the children of the stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants, while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.

The children of Abraham, as Hertzberg points out and as Washington surely knew, include Muslims as well as Jews.

Louisburgh Days and Westport Nights

Yesterday, we drove the back roads near the town of Louisburgh, then finished up in Westport with a drink outside The Clock pub and dinner at Sage, Westport's best restaurant. I had aubergine parmigiana; a homemade ravioli with spinach, ricotta, and marinara; and fogata, dessert with ice cream, espresso, and biscotti. T. countered with a chicken liver pate with crostini and a cherry preserve; sage ravioli with Italian sausage and a parmesan white sauce; and a dessert of vanilla ice cream, bananas, chopped toasted almonds, and whipping cream.

What's wrong (or right) with this last picture? Those are children playing at the water's edge, aged about 4-10. There isn't an adult in sight, whereas in America there would be a perimeter of grownups no further than ten feet away. Are Irish parents less alert or too blase? Or do they not participate in the fearfulness that characterizes so much of American child-rearing...

He's not worth it. No one is. You wonder how a sophisticated, educated person could come to this...

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight writes that Alaska's Lisa Murkowski is "between the fourth and eighth most liberal Republican in the Senate." Isn't that like saying that someone is between the fourth and eighth most tolerant member of the Ku Klux Klan? If you have any thoughts about what else being the fourth to eighth most liberal Republican is like, comment away!