Thursday, October 31, 2019

LAST HALLOWEEN POST OF 2019


First movie I was in as a member of The Screen Actors Guild, so had to add my middle name David because there was already another Michael Lally in SAG. It was also the last movie Gloria Grahame was in before she died, and one of John Carradine's last. 1981. Originally called THE NESTING but I found this poster with this different name online. It's in a few cult classics books.

COSTUMED


me as Sykes the pit bull owner on the set in Alaska of the movie WHITE FANG in a costume I helped pick out, with James Remar on my right and Bill Mosley behind my left shoulder 1990

YET ANOTHER LIST

Maybe posting about the movie THE RIDER recently sparked my unexpectedly making an alphabetical list of movies in my mind with titles that begin with "THE" as I fell asleep last night, here's as much as I got (and yes, I realize a few of these films have scenes or themes that are politically incorrect, and characters that are at times far from being "woke"—but they were old (mostly) favorites of the art of movie making that came to mind):

The Americanization of Emily
The Big Sleep
The Commitments
The Devil And Daniel Webster
The Equalizer
The Full Monty
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2009 Swedish original)
The Hustler
The Informer (1935)
The Jerk
The Killers
The Last Of The Mohicans
The Maltese Falcon
The Naked Civil Servant
The Ox-Bow Incident
The Princess Bride
The Quiet Man
The Rider
The Searchers
The Thin Man
The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg
The Verdict
The Wind That Shakes The Barley
The X?
The Young Savages
The Z?

Monday, October 28, 2019

FYI

Just a reminder that a week from today on Monday, November 4th, at 6PM, I'll be reading my poetry and Nadia Owusu reading her work at Pace University, Schimmel Theater entrance, 3 Spruce Street (a block East of City Hall), up one curving flight of stairs, then bear left to Bianco Room on right, introduced by Charles North (includes a Q&A). Free and open to the public.

Sunday, October 27, 2019

NONA

Another movie I missed last year that was recommended by friends but only just caught tonight on cable, NONA is an incredibly powerful film that will open and then break your heart, and is meant too. But still totally worth watching, partly for the cinematography and writing and direction. But mostly for Sulem Calderon's performance in the title role. Exquisite work. Deserving of an Oscar.

Friday, October 25, 2019

THE RIDER

I finally got to watch THE RIDER straight through and now understand why my friends kept recommending it. It deserves every award it was nominated for and more. It's as perfect a film as there can be. Director/writer/producer Chloe Zhao uses "real people" (as opposed to previously professional actors) so well, anyone in the film could have been nominated for their performance.
And the breathtaking cinematography by Joshua James Richards only enhances the performances. But it's Brady Jandreau in the lead who carries the entire film on his shoulders, and wow is he good. A must-see film I'm sorry I waited so long to see, but know I'll be watching it again and again over the coming years,

Thursday, October 24, 2019

LAST YEAR

Two photos from my reading in LA (Venice, actually) last December, hugging old friend Eric Avery who I hadn't seen in years, and with old friend Eve Brandstein who helped organize the reading, and old friends Blaine Lourd, Emil Schneeman, and Flo Lawrence behind us. Yay poetry.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

EVERY MONTH IS POETRY MONTH TO ME

That's me in the last row with my hand to my head (astonished by a word or line I'm guessing) (and to my left poet Jeff Wright and to my right, my youngest Flynn and next to him his friend Luke) at a poetry reading last night in Manhattan, where everyone of the five poets (Keisha-Gaye Anderson, Gillian Cummings, Heather Treseler, George Guida (who took the photo), and Mark Statman), and one prose writer (Katherine Koch reading from a memoir) had their moments of word magic. I had gone to see Mark and Katherine and was pleasantly surprised to discover some of the others, and totally delighted by the work Mark and Kathrine read.

I've been attending poetry readings since the late 1950s and running weekly reading series for a lot of that time, so at this point and age I not only have some challenges getting to readings but my initial impulse is to feel the cumulative weight of sixty years of going to them at least once and often several times a week and decide to skip them. But when I do feel up to it, I am always engaged and even entertained and often inspired. And despite the occasional disappointment, and even then, I find it always worthwhile and almost always fulfilling. Happy to see so many others still do too.

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

ANOTHER LIST

Almost ten years after the brain operation that knocked out my lifelong list-making compulsion, or even capacity, the latter occasionally returns, as in my waking up this morning and starting to compose in my head a list of favorite movie musicals or movies with music in them (probably prompted by my ROCKET MAN post yesterday) and for some reason they came in couplets (I'm sure there are more, because I have always loved musicals, but these are what came to me):

A HARD DAYS NIGHT
ACROSS THE UNIVERSE

AN AMERICAN IN PARIS
AMELIE (I don't remember if this is an actual musical
but somehow I remember it as such, the music of her whimsy?)

THE BAND WAGON
BILLY ELLIOT

CAROUSEL
CABARET

THE COMMITMENTS
CRY BABY

DREAMGIRLS
FIDDLER ON THE ROOF

42ND STREET
FUNNYFACE

GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933
GOING MY WAY

HAIRSPRAY
INTO THE WOODS

JAILHOUSE ROCK
KING CREOLE

LES MISERABLES
MOULIN ROUGE

MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS
THE MUSIC MAN

OKLAHOMA
OLIVER!

ON THE TOWN
ONCE

RAY
SATURDAY CHURCH

SINGIN' IN THE RAIN
SING STREET

SWING TIME
SOUTH PACIFIC

TOP HAT
THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG

WEST SIDE STORY
WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY

THE WIZARD OF OZ
YESTERDAY

Monday, October 21, 2019

ROCKETMAN

Finally caught ROCKETMAN on cable and sad to say I was disappointed. I like Taron Egerton but he was either miscast or misdirected or both. And not served by the script, so reductive the story could've been a fifteen or twenty minute movie. There were a few scenes that worked but the framing device of the group therapy sessions where it's all about Elton and no one else didn't help (except when he finally embraced his boyhood self). The rest was music videos that did not bring me, at least, anywhere near as much emotion and engagement and sheer joy and exhilaration than just listening to the original Elton John/Bernie Taupin songs still does. Oh well.

Sunday, October 20, 2019

KATE BRAVERMAN R.I.P.

I didn't know Kate well, and in my memory of our few encounters they were contentious, which I certainly could be and so could she. But I was happy to have my work in a poetry anthology along with hers. It was called "POETRY LOVES POETRY" An Anthology of Los Angeles Poets edited by Bill Mohr and came out in the mid-1980s when we were both still living in L.A. She had lived there since she was nine and was famous for her darkly lyrical prose about the city. You can find many quotes online from her novels and interviews that are exceptional, here are two:

"They will say I smoked cigarettes and marijuana, cursed hoarse as a crow in all my languages, and loved morphine and Demerol and tequila and pulque, women and men. I will shrug my illusion of shoulders and answer that I am a water woman, not a vessel, not something you can sail or charter. I am instead the tributary, the river, the fluid source, and the sea itself. I am all her rainy implications. And what do you, with your rusted compass, know of love?"

"Women have waited millions of years, growing separate as another species, with visions and priorities no man-words, no man-measurements can comprehend."

They sum up nicely her intentions and impact I think. And here's a lovely stanza from "Fortunate Season" one of two poems of hers in the anthology:

In a silk-lined drawer
I keep a gold bracelet
wide as a fat man's thumb.
And a ruby ring bright as Mars
that one night in August
when she hangs low and close,
almost touching the gate
like a great rare moth.

If you don't know her work, check it out, that's where writers rest when they're gone.

Friday, October 18, 2019

SAVE THE DATE

POETS @ PACE

Michael Lally & Nadia Owusu

Monday Nov. 4, 6:00 pm

Free and open to the public


Pace University Bianco Room

Schimmel Theater entrance: 3 Spruce St (a block east of City Hall)

Up one curving flight of stairs, then bear left; Bianco Room on right


Introduced by Charles North

Thursday, October 17, 2019

THEN

Photo booth shots of me in an amazing coat someone gave me in the early 1970s when I was still in DC (taken on a trip to New York) and in the mid-1970s when I was living in New York with my second child, Miles (making what he thought was a funny face), who stopped needing glasses a few years later and hasn't needed them since. He turns 50 next month.

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

THE LATEST DEBATE

I watched all three hours and can say that everyone on the stage had at least one moment I could applaud or even cheer. But also most of them had moments that bugged me. I'll vote for whoever wins the nomination anyway. But here's my short take on this debate.

Sanders gave us classic Bernie lines and passion and energy. Looked good.

Biden showed why a lot of older African-Americans and white blue-collar men like him. He still has what I call political charisma at times. But his language glitches and fumbles are growing more frequent.

Warren fielded the most incoming and for my taste handled it all with her usual schoolmarm/professorial charm and poise. (The moderators and a few candidates kept trying to get her to say the phrase "I will raise taxes," but she knows any candidate who says that will be hearing that soundbite for the rest of the campaign and will lose, so she made her point repeatedly that her plan will lower overall costs for working folks etc.)

Klobuchar did her best yet, I'd say. Clever at times, tough at times, but also shaky at times.

Booker may have done his best yet as well, and won the not-demeaning-other-candidates medal.

Castro seems to have less and less political charisma the more debates he takes part in, unfortunately.

O'Rourke's moment has come and gone, too often he looks like an ambitious child among adults, despite his good positions on some policies.

Harris still has impressive moments, where her intellect and experience make her seem the toughest and smartest debater on stage, but she also always has a moment of too obviously thinking she's clever when she actually seems mean.

Gabbard is still the most mysterious, which adds to her attractiveness but at times comes across as on the wrong drug or in the wrong cult. Not meaning to sound so snide, but at times she just seems like she's almost unaware of what's actually going on.

Steyer was a pleasant surprise to me. I liked pretty much everything he said, but he definitely doesn't have the kind of political charisma necessary to win.

Yang said some great things but seemed disconnected from the wider world of experience and reality and more like an ambassador from techville.

Buttigieg scored in the eyes of the TV pundits, but not mine. For the first time I saw his manipulative and even cold side and didn't find it reassuring.

That said, any of them will still make a better president than the present one.

Monday, October 14, 2019

JOHN GIORNO R.I.P.

John and I were friends during a few years in the 1970s. He introduced me to William Burroughs and took me to Burroughs' pad—"the bunker"—in a converted men's locker room in an old "Y" on the Bowery (at least as I remember it). John was a star in the downtown scene and poetry world, with his reverb style of reading poems where the words echoed, each word or phrase or line repeated. He admired the confrontational sexual honesty in my sometimes controversial poetry of the time, not unlike some of his. But then he included part of a reading I did at The Saint Mark's Poetry Project on one of his "Dial-A-Poem" record albums—this one a two lp set called BIG EGO—that caused him some flack from some other stars of the downtown scene for including my piece they misinterpreted in ways that made it seem I was what I was writing against. After that I didn't see him much, but he went on to have an even bigger impact on the world, and rightfully so. Here's the group photo of some of those on that recording:
As far as I can tell from the viewer's left to right, that's the late great poet Ted Greenwald, Laurie Anderson, me, John Giorno, Jackie Curtis, Harris Schiff, Eileen Myles, Robert (I can't think of his last name), and Steve Hamilton.

Sunday, October 13, 2019

MASS TRANSIT REUNION

I didn't see anyone filming it, but I hope it was at least audio recorded, as today's Mass-Transit-reading-series-from-the-early-1970s-in-DC reunion was a deeply moving and satisfying event. I so love to be among my poetry clan and share the creative spirit that moves through all of us. Happy to have seen old friends even if I didn't get a chance to talk to all of them. May the spirit of that time and place continue to live on.

Friday, October 11, 2019

NATIONAL COMING OUT DAY

Photo of me taken by the late Len Randolph, around the time I came out as gay in 1972, because calling yourself "bi-sexual" in the radical circles I traveled in was considered a liberal cop out. I never liked the idea of "bi-" anyway, since it implies only two kinds of sexuality and love interest, when I feel I've experienced as many kinds as I possibly could in one lifetime, and every experience with every love and lover was different, thank the gods and goddesses.

Thursday, October 10, 2019

AND THIS

My recently turned 22-year-old son Flynn, between his friends Chloe and Dante, in the set up spot for photos (with a choice of various words for backdrop) at the venue I read my poetry at in Manhattan a couple of Wednesdays ago. New generation.

Wednesday, October 9, 2019

FYI

On October 13th, at 3PM, I'll be reading at Rhizome, 6950 Maple Street NW, in Washington DC, with other poets (Terence Winch, Tina Darragh, P. Inman, Bernard Welt, et. al.) commemorating the early 1970s weekly poetry reading series Mass Transit. Here's a link.

Monday, October 7, 2019

THE KURDS

I've always romanticized The Kurdish people. Probably because they're an ethnic group without a country that has never given up fighting for their land since white Westerners created the arbitrary boundaries of The Middle East and left The Kurdish territory divided among several nations. And because they are more democratic, including socially, respecting women in ways most other Middle Eastern countries do not. Some of their most famous warriors and leaders, even now, are women.

Yet in recent times the democracies of Europe and the USA have sided most often with the repressive authoritarian misogynist Islamic countries against the Kurds in their struggle for a homeland, with the few exceptions being when we need them to fight for us, like against Saddam Hussein or more recently ISIS. And now that they've helped, even led, in the defeat of ISIS, once again we're abandoning them. This time to the Turks, who have been waging a war against The Kurds for decades, including trying to wipe out their language and customs in the Kurdish parts of Turkey.

Ack.

Sunday, October 6, 2019

GINGER BAKER R.I.P.

I never met him, but admired his musicianship. Here's the isolated drum track for "White Room" where you can hear his solid yet subtle rhythmic genius. What drum machines attempt to emulate but never can.

Friday, October 4, 2019

DIAHANN CARROLL R.I.P.

I never knew her personally, but admired her "from in front"—as we used to say. She was a political activist, but her acting career as an "African-American" leading lady on TV and on Broadway and in films was its own kind of political activism, breaking barriers that should never have existed in the first place.

Thursday, October 3, 2019

BACK WHEN

I saw where there was some kind of designated and separate days recently for honoring "sons and daughters" but I celebrate all three of my children every day in my heart. These are my oldest children, Miles and Caitlin, when they were little and briefly blondes c. 1971. [Not sure who took the shot.]
 And this is my youngest child, Flynn when he was fairly little c. 2002. [Jamie Rose took the photo.]

Tuesday, October 1, 2019

THIS

In good company at Provincetown's East End Books, next to friend and renowned poet Patricia Spears Jones. Thank you book goddesses. [photo by friend and renowned poet Bernard Welt]