HOMELAND CONNECTIONS

I think I've posted these two photos before but since I just caught up on the first two episodes of the new season of HOMELAND, I thought I'd post them as my indirect connection to the show:

That's Claire Danes watching me as I read a poem at The Bowery Poetry Club before she began starring in HOMELAND (don't know the identity of the man)...

That's Michal O'Keefe who will start as a regular on HOMELAND next episode, c. 1990, sitting in the white shirt with me standing behind him in a black one (and Yvonne De La Vega on his lap, Katy Sagal in front of her, Tommy Swerdlow in the beard leaning in behind Katy, Ann Beatts standing behind him leaning in front of Hubert Selby Jr. on my right, on my left Jack Grapes, Eve Brandstein, Lotus Weinstock, Joel Lipman, Michael Harris and Miriam Mezzierres leaning in front of Joel and Robert Downey Jr. sitting in front of Lotus with Michael DeBarres down in front of him and Caroline Ducroq)...

WHAT IT'S ABOUT

If you watch this to the end and aren't moved, well, you better get out of the way...(so grateful I got to be a part of it...)

MARC PICKERING AS NUCKY THOMPSON AS A YOUNG MAN

Brilliant. If you watch BOARDWALK EMPIRE and saw tonight's episode where Steve Buscemi's character "Nucky Thompson" flashes back to when he was a young assistant sheriff, the actor who plays him at that age is a young English actor who proved himself in THE BORGIAS and other shows and movies and tonight made me think for a minute it had to either be Steve Buscemi's son or the actual Steve Buscemi with some kind of CGI that erased the years from his face. But no, it was just feckin' brilliant acting.

GRAVITY

Finally saw GRAVITY. I understand what the fuss was about, though only by imagining it on a big screen, and why Sandra Bullock was nominated. The tension was often impressive, the visuals too at times, and the acting extremely competent, especially considering the actors were working with green screens etc.

But, it certainly wasn't worthy of the "best" of anything other than special effects award, despite it's being very good. And I found the ending unsatisfying, wishing it had gone on to a more complete resolution, I mean that we had been allowed to see that. As it was, it seemed stagey as can be to me.

ANOTHER FACEBOOK ROUNDUP

ANOTHER LIST!

Once again I reiterate that ever since the brain operation (five years ago next month), my constant compulsive list-making has been gone, and for most of that time to list more than two of anything has been almost impossible for me to do without help, except rarely. I have been able to make a few lists (which pre-op was way more than any other category in the archive section of this blog) by using my book shelves or the help of the Internet now and then.

But for the following list of favorite memoir/autobiographies I was able to come up with six titles (the first six on the list) over a period of a few days and nights thinking about it, so maybe something is reconnecting in my brain to the list-making compulsion, or at least capacity. The rest I came up with by browsing my book shelves. If there are any I missed by people I know forgive me and my brain, and observational powers when it comes to my pretty large library (constantly trying to trim it but still filling four ceiling high bookshelves, with seven shelves, and three other "smaller" bookcases...so I'd guess a few thousand books...).

So here's the list broken into two sections (which amazingly and totally unintentionally came out to ten authors each): those that are unique (in my opinion) either in structure or approach and those that are more conventional...

THAT SPECIAL PLACE by Terence Winch
I REMEMBER by Joe Brainard
HERE COMES THERE GOES YOU KNOW WHO by William Saroyan
SKY by Blaise Cendrars
CLEARVIEW/LIE by Ted Greenwald
RECOLLECTIONS OF MY LIFE AS A WOMAN by Diane di Prima
HIS LIFE by Glen Baxter
FINISHING THE HAT by Stephen Sondheim
IN HIS OWN WORDS by Louis Armstrong
THE INVENTION OF SOLITUDE by Paul Auster

BORSTAL BOY and CONFESSIONS OF AN IRISH REBEL by Brendan Behan
THE VILLAGE OF LONGING, DANCEHALL DAYS and OUT OF OUR MINDS by George O'Brien
DAWN and NEWSPAPER DAYS by Theodore Dreiser
TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE by Solomon Northup
SMILE PLEASE by Jean Rhys
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS by William Carlos Williams
CHRISTOPHER AND HIS KIND by Christopher Isherwoood
LIVING ROOT by Michael Heller
THE MEMORY OF ALL THAT by Betsy Blair
THE STAR FACTORY by Ciaran Carson

(That last one may belong more in the first group since though a relatively conventional memoir it is also the history of a place—Belfast—making it a little more unique in its approach...)

SOME FAVORITE QUOTES

All from EVERYBODY'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Gertrude Stein, her follow-up to THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS, and even more accessible, too much so for some of her purist fans, but an interesting take on her unexpected literary success with her clever autobiography couched as though from the perspective of her "lifetime companion" Alice Toklas (which EVERYBODY'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY makes clear Alice preferred to the middle initial version of her name).

"Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something."

"It is natural that if anybody asks you to go anywhere, once you have the habit of going anywhere, that you go anywhere once. If you go again you go again but if you have a lot of interest in seeing anything you will go anywhere once. Anyway I will."

"I have been writing a lot about money lately, it is a fascinating subject, it is really the difference between men and animals, most of the things men feel animals feel and vice versa, but animals do not know about money, money is purely a human conception and that is very important to know very very important."

"Too few is as many as too many."

"Identity always worries me and memory and eternity."

"The periods of the world's history that have always been most dismal ones are the ones where fathers were looming and filling up everything."

"Anytime is the time to make a poem."

"Choice is always more pleasing than anything necessary."

"I was then and ever since filled with the fact that there are so many millions always living and each one is his own self inside him."