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editor
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 Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2007 9:52 am Post subject: |
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Bootleg Series
Volume I
CD Audio
Bob Dylan
Listen at bobdylan.com.
and again in:
Older But No Wiser
Clancy Brothers and Robbie O'Connell
CD Audio
| Quote: | Rambling, Gambling Willie
Come around you rovin' gamblers and a story I will tell
About the greatest gambler, you all should know him well.
His name was Will O' Conley and he gambled all his life,
He had twenty-seven children, yet he never had a wife.
And it's ride, Willie, ride,
Roll, Willie, roll,
Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows.
He gambled in the White House and in the railroad yards,
Wherever there was people, there was Willie and his cards.
He had a reputation as the gamblin'est man around,
Wives would keep their husbands home when Willie came to town.
And it's ride, Willie, ride,
Roll, Willie, roll,
Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows.
Sailin' down the Mississippi to a town called New Orleans,
They're still talkin' about their card game on that Jackson River Queen.
"I've come to win some money," Gamblin' Willie says,
When the game finally ended up, the whole damn boat was his.
And it's ride, Willie, ride,
Roll, Willie, roll,
Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows.
Up in the Rocky Mountains in a town called Cripple Creek,
There was an all-night poker game, lasted about a week.
Nine hundred miners had laid their money down,
When Willie finally left the room, he owned the whole damn town.
And it's ride, Willie, ride,
Roll, Willie, roll,
Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows.
But Willie had a heart of gold and this I know is true,
He supported all his children, and all their mothers too.
He wore no rings or fancy things, like other gamblers wore,
He spread his money far and wide, to help the sick and the poor.
And it's ride, Willie, ride,
Roll, Willie, roll,
Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows.
When you played your cards with Willie, you never really knew
Whether he was bluffin' or whether he was true.
He won a fortune from a man who folded in his chair.
The man, he left a diamond flush, Willie didn't even have a pair.
And it's ride, Willie, ride,
Roll, Willie, roll,
Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows.
It was late one evenin' during a poker game,
A man lost all his money, he said Willie was to blame.
He shot poor Willie through the head, which was a tragic fate,
When Willie's cards fell on the floor, they were aces backed with eights.
And it's ride, Willie, ride,
Roll, Willie, roll,
Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows.
So all you rovin' gamblers, wherever you might be,
The moral of this story is very plain to see.
Make your money while you can, before you have to stop,
For when you pull that dead man's hand, your gamblin' days are up.
And it's ride, Willie, ride,
Roll, Willie, roll,
Wherever you are a-gamblin' now, nobody really knows. |
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| Posted: Wed May 02, 2007 11:43 am Post subject: |
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Poker Nation
Hardcover
By Paris Review editor Andy Bellin
| Quote: | There's a guy who lives in Indiana.
One morning he wakes to hear a voice in his head. The voice says, "Quit your job, sell your house, take all your money, and go to Las Vegas."
He ignores the voice and goes to work.
Later in the day, he hears the voice again.
"Quit your job, sell your house, take all your money, and go to Las Vegas."
Again, he ignores the voice.
Soon he hears the voice every minute of the day.
"Quit your job, sell your house, take all your money, and go to Las Vegas."
He can't stand it anymore, so he takes the voice's advice. He quits his job, sells his house, takes all his money, and flies to Las Vegas.
As soon as he steps off the plane, the voice says, "Go to Binion's Horseshoe."
He goes to the Horseshoe.
The voice says, "Buy an entry to the World Series of Poker."
He puts up his $10,000 and buys a seat in the tournament.
He goes to his assigned table.
In his first hand the guy is dealt two Aces of spades.
The voice says, "Go all in."
He pushes his entire $10,000 bankroll into the pot.
Three players call.
The dealer lays down the flop: nine, ten, Jack of spades.
The voice says, "Fuck."
(From What card did you fold at the beginning of the game? at pgs. 186-187) |
Not even a dyslexic editor can spoil the fun of this poker classic.
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| Posted: Tue Jul 31, 2007 4:23 pm Post subject: |
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Cup of Gold
A Life of Sir Henry Morgan,
Buccaneer, with
Occasional Reference to History
Paperback
By John Steinbeck
| Quote: | "Could not a man who thought and planned carefully take a Spanish town?"
"Ho!" the cook laughed; "and are you going to be a buccaneer?"
"But if a man planned carefully?"
"Why, if there were such a buccaneer who could plan at all, carefully or otherwise, it might be done; but there are not such buccaneers. They are little children who can fight like hel and die very nicely - but fools. They will sink a ship for a cup of wine, when they might sell the ship."
"If a man considered carefully and weighed his chances and the men he had, he might --"
"Yes, I suppose he might."
"There was one called Pierre le Grand who was no fool."
"Ah, but Pierre took one rich ship and then ran home to France! He was a fearful gambler, not a wise man. And he may come back to the Coast and lose it all and his head, too."
"Still," said Henry with a grown finality, "still, I think it could be done, so only a man thought about it and considered it." (From Chapter Two, Part II, at p. 58) |
Then later:
| Quote: | | "But I do not want to buy the ship - only the captaincy. Look, Grippo! I'll make this compact with you. I will give you five hundred pounds for a half interest in the Ganymede, and all of her command. Then we will put to sea. I think I know how to win plunder if there be no interference in my company. Grippo, I will give you a writing to this effect. If I fail in one single undertaking in the Ganymede, then you shall have the ship back and keep the five hundred pounds." (-- p. 93) |
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| Posted: Fri Aug 17, 2007 9:12 am Post subject: |
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Birds Without Wings
Hardcover
By Louis de Bernieres
'
| Quote: | In those days we came to hear of many other countries that had never figured in our lives before. It was a rapid education, and many of us are still confused. We knew that our Christians were sometimes called 'Greeks', although we often called them 'dogs' or 'infidels', but in a manner that was a formality, or said with a smile, just as were their deprecatory terms for us. They would call us 'Turks' in order to insult us, at the time when we called ourselves 'Ottomans' or 'Osmanlis'. Later on it turned out that we really are 'Turks', and we bcame proud of it, as one does of new boots that are uncomfortable at first, but then settle into the feet and look exceedingly smart. Be that as it may, one day we discovered that there actually existed a country called 'Greece' that wanted to own this place, and do away with us, and take away our land. We knew of Russians before, because of other wars, but who were these Italians? Who were these other Frankish people? Suddenly we heard of people called 'German', and people called 'French', and of a place called Britain that had governed half the world without us knowing of it, but it was never explained to us why they had chosen to come and bring us hardship, starvation, bloodshed and lamentation, why they played with us and martyred our tranquility.
I blame these Frankish peoples, and I blame potentates and pashas whose names I will probably never know, and I blame men of God of both faiths, and I blame all those who gave their soldiers permission to behave like wolves and told them that it was necessary and noble. Because of what I accidentally did to my son Karatavuk, I was in my own small way one of these wolves, and I am now burned up by shame. In the long years of those wars here were too many who learned how to make their hearts boil with hatred, how to betray their neighbours, how to violate women, how to steal and dispossess, how to call upon God when they did the Devil's work, how to enrage and embitter themselves, and how to commit outrages even against children. Much of what was done was simply in revenge for identical atrocities, but I tell you now that even if guilt were a coat of sable, and the ground were deep in snow, I would rather freeze than wear it.
But I do not blame merely myself, or the powerful, or my fellow Anatolians, or the savage Greeks. I also blame mischance. Destiny caresses the few, but molests the many, and finally every sheep will hang by its own foot on the butcher's hook, just as every grain of wheat arrives at the millstone, no matter where it grew. (From Part I, The Prologue of Iskander the Potter, at pgs. 4-5) |
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| Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 3:17 pm Post subject: |
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Summer Lightning
Paperback
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | 'He (pink Ronnie Fish) bounced tennis-balls on my pig!'
'Do you mean to tell me,' he said sternly, 'that all this fuss, ruining my morning's work, was simply about that blasted pig of yours?'
'I refuse to allow you to call the Empress a blasted pig! Good heavens!' cried Lord Emsworth passionately. Can none of my family appreciate the fact that she is the most remarkable animal in Great Britain? No pig in the whole annals of the Shropshire Agricultural Show has ever won the silver medal two years in succession. And that, if only people will leave her alone and refrain from incessantly pelting her with tennis balls, is what the Empress is quite certain to do. It is an unheard of feat.'
The Hon. Gallahad frwoned. He shook his head reprovingly. It was all very well, he felt, a stable being optimistic about its nominee, but he was a man who could face facts. In a long and chequered life he had seen so many good things unstuck. Besides, he had his superstitions, and one of them was that counting your chickens in advance brought bad luck.
'Don't you be too cocksure, my boy,' he said gravely. 'I looked in at the Emsworth Arms the other day for a glass of beer, and there was a fellow in there offering three to one on an animal called Pride of Machingham. Offering it freely. Tall, red-haired fellow with a squint. Slightly bottled.'
'Pride of Maqtchingham belongs to Sir Gregory Parsloe,' he said, 'and I have no doubt that the man offering such ridiculous odds was his pig-man, Wellbeloved. As you know, the fellow used to be in my employment, but Parsloe lured him away from me by the promise of higher wages.' Lord Emsworth's expression had now become positively ferocious. 'The thought of George Cyril Wellbeloved, that perjured pig-man, always made the iron enter into his soul. 'It was a most abominable thing to do.'
The Hon. Galahad whistled.
'So that's it, is it? Parsloe's pig man going about offering three to one- against the form-book, I take it?'
'Most decidedly. Pride of Matchingham was awarded second prize last year, but it is quite an inferior animal to the Empress.'
'Then you look after that pig of yours, Clarence.' The Hon. Galahad spoke earnestly. 'I see what this means. Parsloe's up to his old games, and intends to queer the Empress somehow.'
'Queer her?'
'Nobble her. Or, if he can't do that, steal her.'
'You don't mean it.'
'I do mean it. The man's as slippery as a greased eel. He would nobble his grandmother if it suited his book. Let me tell you I've known young Parsloe for thirty years and I solemnly state that if his grandmother was entered in a competition for fat pigs and his commitments made it desirable for him to get her out of the way, he would dope her branmash and acorns without a moment's hesitation.'
'God bless my soul!' said Lord Emsworth, deeply impressed.
'Let me tell you a little story about young Parsloe. One or two of us used to meet at the Black Footman in Gossiter Street in the old days - they've pulled it down now - and match our dogs against rats in the room behind the bar. Well, I put my Towser, and admirable beast, up against young Parsloe's Banjo on one occasion for a hundred pounds a side. And when the night came and he was shown the rats, I'm dashed if he didn't just give a long yawn and roll over and go to sleep. I whistled him...called him...Towser, Towser...No good...Fast asleep. And my firm belief has always been that young Parsloe took him aside just before the contest was to start and gave him about six pounds of steak and onions. Couldn't prove anything, of course, but I sniffed the dog's breath and it was like opening the kitchen door of a Soho chophouse on a summer night. That's the sort of man young Parsloe is.'
'Galahad!'
'Fact. You'll find the story in *my book.' (From Chapter 3, The Sensational Theft of a Pig, at pgs. 65-67) |
| Quote: | Summer Lightning
Complete and Unabridged
Audio Cassette ONLY!
By P.G. Wodehouse
Narrated by British satirist John Wells
Again, a perfectly wonderful piece of fiction probably brilliantly narrated but available only on cassette. Fire the bloody publisher! Unfortunately, we were unable to locate any samples of the narrator's work online but we'll search our local libraries. His resume certainly recommends him. Please check back soon for a fuller review. |
Our indignant e-mail to the fools at Chivers:
| Quote: | Date: Sun, 2 Sep 2007 13:52:59 -0700 (PDT)
From: legal@pokerpulse.com
Subject: Hatred and bitterness! P.G. Wodehouse out of PRINT?!
To: nick.forster@bbc.co.uk
Nick -
Are you MAD?! What is the meaning of this outrage?
How can Summer Lightning be out of print?
And why, why, WHY are so many of the audio books available only in useless, breakable, outrageously expensive audio cassette? I am trying to run an ESL guide and you are not cooperating! Harumph! And furthermore, faugh!
Never mind rubbery rationales - please just fix it.
I'd like to hear a sample of narrator Wells but I must say Jonathan Cecil is the best I've heard so far. If Chivers was going to do the thing again - hint, hint! - I'd vote for him.
Please include me in Chivers e-mail alerts, catalogue - all of that stuff:
legal@pokerpulse.com.
Thanks very much.
Please let me know if/WHEN! Summer Lightning is again available. |
... and the not unexpectedly charming reply:
| Quote: | Subject: RE: Hatred and bitterness! P.G. Wodehouse out of PRINT?!
Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 10:12:14 +0100
From: "Nick Forster" <nick>
To: legal@pokerpulse.com
Quite mad, as it happens.
Alas I cannot say whether it's a prerequisite for the job, or simply a consequence of it.
Many of our Wodehouse titles are out of print, but this is merely a hiatus while shiny new CD editions are prepared for release; we have some 1,500 titles in the catalogue that need to be reissued in CD form and it's taking a little while to work through them.
Meantime let me stress that there are no,
as in none at all,
not any,
no, not even that many
plans to drop any of the Wodehouse books: all of them will reappear on CD in due course.
As for those cassettes, which stay stopped where they are when you switch off and which are so readily portable from the player in the drawing room to the one in the potting shed and from that to the one in the car without the need to fiddle about skipping tracks to find your place? They, astonishingly enough, remain the format of choice for many of our listeners, although this is slowly changing, hence the programme to reissue on CD as quickly as we can.
Summer Lightning is the only book John Wells ever read for us, so regrettably I cannot help with a sample of his narration - he was, however, an accomplished actor - and writer - http://oxforddnb.com/view/article/69101?_fromAuth=1 and would, no doubt, have done much more with us were it not for his untimely demise in 1998.
Sacking the publisher? That's just not my bag, I'm afraid.
I remain yours, etc.
Nick Forster
Nick Forster, Sales and Marketing Manager
BBC Audiobooks, St James House, The Square, Lower Bristol Road, Bath BA2 3BH
T: +44 (0)1225 878065 F: +44 (0)1225 448005 M: 07890 996980
mailto: nick.forster@bbc.co.uk |
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| Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 9:33 am Post subject: |
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Skin
and Other Stories
Hardcover
By Roald Dahl
| Quote: | The purser, small and fat and red, bent forward to listen. "What's the trouble, Mr. Botibol?"
"What I want to know is this." The man's face was anxious and the purser was watching it. "What I want to know is will the captain already have made his estimate on the day's run - you know for the auction pool? I mean before it began to get rough like this?"
The purser, who had prepared himself to receive a personal confidence, smiled and leaned back in his seat to relax his full belly. "I should say so - yes," he answered. He didn't bother to whisper his reply, although automatically he lowered his voice, as one does when answering a whisperer.
"About how long ago do you think he did it?"
"Some time this afternoon. He usually does it in the afternoon."
"About what time?"
"Oh, I don't know. Around four o'clock I should guess."
"Now tell me another thing. How does the captain decide which number it shall be? Does he take a lot of trouble over that?"
The purser looked at the anxious frowning face of Mr. Botibol and he smiled, knowing quite well what the man was driving at. "Well, you see, the captain has a little conference with the navigating officer, and they study the weather and a lot of other things, and then they make their estimate."
Mr. Botibol nodded, pondering this answer for a moment. Then he said, "Do you think the captain knew there was bad weather coming today?"
"I couldn't tell you," the purser replied. He was looking into the small black eyes of the other man, seeing the two single little specks of excitement dancing in their centers. "I really couldn't tell you, Mr. Botibol. I wouldn't know."
"If this gets any worse it might be worth buying some of the low numbers. What do you think?" The whispering was more urgent, more anxious now.
"Perhaps it will," the purser said. "I doubt whether the old man allowed for a really rough night. It was pretty calm this afternoon when he made his estimate."
The others at the table had become silent and were trying to hear, watching the purser with that intent, half-cocked, listening look that you can see at the racetrack when they are trying to overhear a trainer talking about his chance: the slightly open lips, the upstretched eyebrows, the head forward and cocked a little to one side - that desperately straining, self-hypnotized, listening look that comes to all of them when they are hearing something straight from the horse's mouth.
"Now suppose you were allowed to buy a number, which one would you choose today?" Mr. Botibol whispered.
"I don't know what the range is yet," the purser patiently answered. "They don't announce the range till the auction starts after dinner. And I'm really not very good at it anyway. I'm only the purser, you know." (From Dip in the Pool, at pgs. 131-133) |
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| Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 3:01 pm Post subject: |
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Where There's a Will
Hardcover
By Sir Jack Falstaff Mortimer, Q.C.
| Quote: | If you feel stuck in any kind of a rut you might contemplate the chameleon life of Lorenzo Da Ponte, the Jew who became a Catholic priest, the librettist of the three greatest operas ever written, the friend of Casanova, Mozzart (as he always spelled the composer's name) and two successive Austrian emperors, who married an English wife and ended up living in New York, owning an opera house and teaching Americans about Italian poetry.
In that great period of history which included the Age of Reason and the French Revolution, the world of Rousseau and Napoleon, Byron, Wellington, Shelley and Goethe, Mozart and Beethoven, Da Ponte appears in flashes of light, enjoying extraordinarily different lives in various disguises. Even his name wasn't his. The child of a Jewish family which had converted to Catholicism because, in the province of Venice, Jews were not allowed to marry, the future librettist was given the name of the bishop who baptized him.
We get a glimpse of Da Ponte in the priests' seminary at Cenada, where, in six months, he learned most of Dante's Inferno by heart, as well as the best sonnets and songs of Petrarch and 'the most beautiful works of Tasso.' He was fluent in Latin and became a brilliant teacher. Now we see him taking holy orders, followed by a succession of unpriestly love affairs. An anonymous denunciation accused him of an 'evil life.' Someone had seen a woman put her hand in his breeches. He fled from Venice to avoid his trial by the Inquisition and was sentenced, in his absence, to seven years in a prison cell without light.
After a tender love affair with the wife of an innkeeper, and having renamed himself for a short while with the eccentric pseudonym of 'Lesbonico Pegasio,' he appears again in Vienna as 'poet' to the Burg theatre, and the favourite of Emperor Joseph II. So we find him writing libretti for three operas, one by Mozart, one by Salieri and one by Martini, feeling as he writes that 'I am reading the Inferno for Mozart, Tasso for Salieri and Petrarch for Martini.' He is working twelve hours at a stretch, assisted by a bottle of Tokay on his right, his inkwell in front of him and a box of Seville snuff on his left, with a beautiful young girl, the housekeeper's daughter, to bring him a biscuit, a cup of coffee or merely her smiling face.
Da Ponte's lasting fame rests on his writing the wrods for Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro and Cosi fan tutte. He was convinced, in these works, as in his life, that quick and complete changes of mood are essential. So, in Don Giovanni, scenes of farce (the changing of clothes between the Don and Leporello) are followed by moments of high comedy, tragedy and, finally, the refusal to repent, which has made Don Giovanni into an existentialist hero as he is dragged down to hell.
... We can't resist a look at Da Ponte in a country house party just before the first night of Don Giovani. The house was on the outskirts of Prague and the October weather was still warm and beautiful. 'People lingered happily in the open air, with the feeling that days like this were a blessing,' one of the guests wrote. It was at this party that Mozart was lured into an upstairs woom and the door was locked until he finished the yet unwritten overture. Da Ponte appears at this party with an aged librarian from the Castle of Dux. This was a man who may have been a model for the sensual Don, and who also had a rascally servant. 'Signor Casanova seems to be a worthy old man,' one of the guests is reported to have said to Da Pone, who replied, 'There you are making a terrible mistake. He's an adventurer who has spent his days playing cards, brewing elixirs and telling fortunes.'
... He travelled to England and then turned up unexpectedly in Boston, after a terrible crossing of the Atlantic without a mattress or regular meals, to teach and sell Italian books. And then he was in New York, opening his new opera house.
... Finally the opera house burnt down, but Da Ponte lived on until his ninetieth year, respected, grey-haired, still handsome and smiling through all life's changes. When he died, he had an elaborately theatrical funeral at the Roman Catholic Cathedral on 11th Street. His grave was, like Mozart's, unmarked, the cemetery has been built over and no trace of this extraordinary consumer of life exists except on the stage.
Changing the life that's been allocated to you, throwing in your hand and asking for a redeal, may require courage and determination. ... (From Changing Your Life - and 'The Man in Sneakers,' pgs. 7-10) |
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editor
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| Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2007 2:56 pm Post subject: |
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Come On In!
Hardcover
New Poems
Still another posthumous collection
by Charles Bukowski
| Quote: | the fucking horses
"the fucking horses," she said, "you keep bringing me
out to these fucking horse races and I lose, god damn it,
it's all so useless and ignorant, I hate it, I just
hate it!"
her purse had a long strap and she was swinging it
around and around with great velocity.
we were walking out of the track after the
last race.
"I told you," I said, "not to bet the horses with
high speed ratings, especially at comparative
distances."
"but shit," she screamed, "why doesn't it work?
the horse that ran faster last time, why doesn't
he win against the slower ones?"
"anybody can take a short price on exposed form,"
I said. "it's self-defeating."
"goddamn you!" she screamed. "I hate you and I hate horses!"
and she swing her purse around and around on its
long strap.
then there was a hard harsh thud:
she had just hit the man on the head
who was walking behind us.
the poor soul was badly staggered.
an elderly Mexican.
I held him up by the arm.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I said,
"it was an accident!
she didn't mean to hit you with her
purse!
she has lost a great deal of money today
and she's a little crazy!
I'm very sorry!"
"it's all right," the fellow said.
I let go of his arm and we turned and
walked on.
"what's the matter?" she screamed.
"are you afraid of that man?
are you afraid of a real fight?"
"of course I am," I told her.
"I thought so!" she screamed. "let's
get the hell out of here!"
it was when we got to the car
and after I got it started that
this thought
went through my mind:
baby, I don't know why the hell
I'm living with you!
I stopped at the first light.
then as we drove up Huntington Drive
she said to me,
"you know, I don't know why the hell
I'm living with you!"
I kept on driving up Huntington.
then I turned on the car radio.
we had been together one and one-
half years.
it's always easier to meet than
to part.
I know
because after that day at the track
we managed to live together for another
year.
(-- p. 107-109) |
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editor
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| Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2007 2:58 pm Post subject: |
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run with the hunted
Audio Cassette
Masterfully edited by Buk's publisher, John Martin
Written and read by Charles Bukowski
| Quote: | Luck
Once we were young at this machine
drinking smoking typing
it was a most splendid
miraculous time
still is
Only now instead of
moving toward time it moves
toward us makes each word
drill into the paper
clear
fast
hard
feeding a closing space
Friendly Advice to A Lot of Young Men
Go to Tibet
Ride a camel
Read the Bible
Dye your shoes blue
Grow a beard
Circle the world in a paper canoe
Subscribe to the Saturday Evening Post
Chew on the left side of your mouth only
Marry a woman with one leg and shave with a
straight razor
and carve your name in her arm
Brush your teeth with gasoline
Sleep all day and climb trees at night
Be a monk and drink buckshot and beer
Hold your head under water and play the violin
Do a belly dance before pink candles
Kill your dog
Run for mayor
Live in a barrel
Break your head with a hatchet
Plant tulips in the rain
but
Don't write poetry
(Both from Side One) |
| Quote: | To his publisher, John Martin (of Black Sparrow Press)
| Quote: | 8-12-86
Hello John:
Thanks for the good letter. I don't think it hurts, sometimes, to remember where you came from. You know the places where I came from. Even the people who try to write about that or make films about it, they don't get it right. They call it "9 to 5." It's never 9 to 5, there's no free lunch break at those places, in fact, at many of them in order to keep your job you don't take lunch. Then there's OVERTIME and the books never seem to get the overtime right and if you complain about that, there's another sucker to take your place.
You know my old saying, "Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors."
And what hurts is the steadily diminishing humanity of those fighting to hold jobs they don't want but fear the alternative worse. People simply empty out. They are bodies with fearful and obedient minds. The color leaves the eye. The voice becomes ugly. And the body. The hair. The fingernails. The shoes. Everything does.
As a young man I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions. As an old man, I still can't believe it. What do they do it for? Sex? TV? An automobile on monthly payments? Or children? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did?
Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: "Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don't you realize that?"
They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn't want to enter their minds.
Now in industry, there are vast layoffs (steel mills dead, technical changes in other factors of the work place). They are layed off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned:
"I put in 35 years . . . "
"It ain't right . . . "
"I don't know what to do . . . "
They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work. I could see all this. Why couldn't they? I figured the park bench was just as good or being a barfly was just as good. Why not get there first before they put me there? Why wait?
I just wrote in disgust against it all, it was a relief to get the shit out of my system. And now that I'm here, a so-called professional writer, after giving the first 50 years away, I've found out that there are other disgusts beyond the system. . .
I remember once, working as a packer in this lighting fixture company, one of the packers suddenly said: "I'll never be free!"
One of the bosses was walking by (his name was Morrie) and he let out this delicious cackle of a laugh, enjoying the fact that this fellow was trapped for life.
So, the luck I finally had in getting out of those places, no matter how long it took, has given me a kind of joy, the jolly joy of the miracle. I now write from an old mind and an old body, long beyond the time when most men would ever think of continuing such a thing, but since I started so late I owe it to myself to continue, and when the words begin to falter and I must be helped up stairways and I can no longer tell a bluebird from a paperclip, I still feel that something in me is going to remember (no matter how far I'm gone) how I've come through the murder and the mess and the moil, to at least a generous way to die.
To not to have entirely wasted one's life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.
yr boy,
Hank |
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editor
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| Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 3:46 pm Post subject: |
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Beyond the Outer Shores
The Untold Story of Ed Ricketts, the
pioneering ecologist who inspired John
Steinbeck and Joseph Campbell
Hardcover
By non-'Billy Frostback Eric Enno Tamm
| Quote: | Ricketts has been called Steinbeck's alter ego, his persona in art, his fictional voice. However lionized, exaggerated or sentimentalized Ricketts may be in Cannery Row's Doc, there is no doubt that the character contains all the energy, spirit and philosophy of the friend whom Steinbeck loved. Taken as a whole, the novel is fiction, but many passages and details contain a ring of truth. One anecdote from Cannery Row, for instance, is taken directly from Ricketts' life:
Cannery Row
Paperback
By John Steinbeck
Once when Doc was at the University of chicago he had love trouble and he had worked too hard. He thought it would be nice to take a very long walk. He put on a little knapsack and he walked through Inidana and Kentucky and North Carolina and Georgia clear to Florida. He walked among farmers and mountain people, among the swamp people and fishermen. And everywhere people asked him why he was walking through the country.
Because he loved true things he tried to explain. He said he was nervous and besides he wanted to see the country, smell the ground and look at grass and birds and trees, to savor the country, and there was no other way to do it save on foot. And people didn't like him for telling the truth. They scowled, or shook and tapped their heads, they laughed as though they knew it was a lie and they appreciated a liar. And some, afraid for their daughters or their pigs, told him to move on, to get going, just not to stop near their place if he knew what was good for him.
And so he stopped trying to tell the truth. He said he was doing it on a bet - that he stood to win a hundred dollars. Everyone liked him then and believed him. They asked him in to dinner and gave him a bed and they put lunches up for him and wished him good luck and thought he was a hell of a fine fellow. Doc still loved true things but he knew it was not a general love and it could be a very dangerous mistress.
However strange, the facts of this account are essentially true. Ricketts was a student at the University of Chicago and did go on such a walk. He even wrote about the experience in an article titled "Vagabonding Through Dixie" for the June 1925 issue of Travel magazine. (From Stories to Tell, p. 128) |
| Quote: | Cannery Row
VHS
Another John Huston classic,
featuring Nick Nolte and Debra Winger,
who jitterbug with reckless abandon on
the hardwood floor of FAuna's infamous
home for wayward girls.
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editor
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Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Fri Dec 28, 2007 5:09 pm Post subject: |
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Ghost in the Shell 2
Innocence
DVD
| Quote: | Batou (a cyborg): Just as luck appears in threes, misfortune also arrives three times. A gaze averted in discomfort, a realization unspoken, advice unbidden. Without noticing, we welcome catastrophe. But our world can't afford to ignore the first sign, let alone all three. I told you, Kim, I don't have time for your stupid jokes!
Kim: When did you catch on?
Batou: No one's easier to trick than the trickster. |
Explores the usual gamut of stock Asian emotions - irony and anger, then irony again. As earnest as any undergrad cultivating post-existential angst.
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editor
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| Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 2:56 pm Post subject: |
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Uncle Dynamite
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | Pongo stiffened. He did not actually say 'Ha!' but the exclamation was implicit in the keen glance which he shot across the table. His suspicions had been correct. His wife's loving sureillance having been temporarily removed, Frederick Altamont Cornwallis, fifth Earl of Ickenham, was planning to be out and about again.
'You ask me,' a thoughtful Crumpet had once said in the smoking-room of the Drones Club, 'why it that at the mention of his Unlce Fred's name Pongo Twistleton blenches to the core and calls for a couple of quick ones. I will tell you. It is because this uncle is pure dynamite. Every time he is in Pongo's midst, with the sap runing strongly in his veins, he subjects the unfortunate young egg to some soul-testing experience, luring him out into the open and there, right in the public eye, proceeding to step high, wide and plentiful. For though well stricken in years the old blister becomes on these occasions as young as he feels, which seems to be about twenty-two. I don't know if you happen to know what the word "excesses" means, but those are what he invariably commits, when on the loose. Get Pongo to tell you some time about that day they had together at the dog races.'
It was a critique of which, had he heard it, Lord Ickenham would have been the first to admit the essential justice. From boyhood up his had always been a gay and happy disposition, and in the evening of his life he still retained, together with a juvenile waistline, the bright enthusiasms and the fresh, unspoiled mental outlook of a slightly inebriated undergraduate. He had enjoyed a number of exceedingly agreeable outings in his nephew's society in the course of the last few years, and was pleasantly conscious of having stepped on these occasions as high, wide and plentiful as a man could wish, particularly during that day at the dog races. Though there, he had always maintained, a wiser policeman would have been content with a mere reprimand.
... Pongo knocked the ash off his cigar and took a sip of brandy. There was a cold, stern look on his face.
'Now listen, Uncle Fred,' he said, and his voice was like music to the ears of the Recording Angel, who felt that this was going to be good. 'All that stuff is out.'
'Out?'
'Right out. You don't get me to go to the dog races again.'
'I did not specify the dog races. Though they provide an admirable means of studying the soul of the people.'
Or on any other frightful binge of yours. Get thou behind me, about sums it up. If you come to me in London, you will get lunch at my flat and afterwards a good book. Nothing more.'
Lord Ickenham sighed, and was silent for a space. He was musing on the curse of wealth. In the old days, when Pongo had been an impecunious young fellow reading for the Bar and attempting at intervals to get into an uncle's ribs for an occasional much-needed fiver, nobody could have been a more synpathetic companion along the primrose path. But coming into money seemed to have changed him completely. The old, old story, felt Lord Ickenham. (From Chapter 2, pgs. 22-24) |
| Quote: | Uncle Dynamite
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
Audio CD
Narrated by our favorite Wodehouse voice,
British actor Jonathan Cecil
Learn the language by studying its expressions of comedy. Of these, there can be none sunnier than the ones contained in the complete works of British humorist P.G. Wodehouse! This work represents but one example of the master in his prime. |
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editor
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| Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2008 3:38 pm Post subject: |
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Lord Hornblower
Paperback
By C.S. Forester
| Quote: | | The batteries of the Cotentin coast would protect her; the chasse-marees and the Seine gunboats would be ready to come to her aid. Both at Cherbourg and at Le Havre there were French frigates and ships of the line, half-manned and unready for sea, but always able at a pinch to push out a few miles from port and cover the escape of the Flame. At the approach of superior force she would certainly run; she might stand and fight an equal, such as this Porta Coeli, but Hornblower found himself hesitationg at the prospect of meeting on equal terms a British ship manned by English sailors filled with the courage of despair. Victory would be dearly bought - what a triumphant clamour Bonaparte would raise through Europe at the news of a battle between two British ships! There would be many dead - what would be the effect on the navy at the news of British sailors killing each other? What would be the results in Parliament? And the chances were certainly large that the two brigs would cripple each other so badly as to fall easy victims to the chasse-marees and gunboats. And worse than that, there was the chance of defeat. Equal ships, equal crews; a chance as arbitrary as the spin of a coin might decide the action. No, only as a last resort, perhaps not even then, would he fight a simple action against the Flame. But what the devil was he to do? (-- pgs. 35-36) |
| Quote: | The growing light revealed the Porta Coeli's position, over towards the southern shore of the estuary of the Seine.
"That was an excellent piece of navigation last night, Mr. Freeman."
"Thank you, Sir Horatio."
Hornblower would have added more words of warmer praise, if it had not been for Freeman's rather chilling manner; he supposed Freeman was entitled to be short-tempered before breakfast if he wished. And any lieutenant was entitled to be jealous of a captain; in the opinion of every ambitious lieutenant, a captain was just a lieutenant who had been lucky and who would continue to be lucky, drawing three times a lieutenant's pay and prize money, reaping the harvest of the lieutenant's labours, and secure in the knowledge that time would make an admiral of him in the end while the lieutenant's promotion still depended on the whims of his superiors. Hornblower could remember feeling just the same when he was lieutenant; for Freeman to show it was natural even though foolish. (-- pgs. 55-56) |
| Quote: | | Orders were orders, even when they dealt with such extraneous matters as making sails while negotiating with a mutinous crew. Hornblower stared over at the Flame, still lying hove-to out of gunshot. The mutineers held a strong, an unassailable position, one which no frontal attack could break, and whose flanks were impregnable. It would be a very roundabout route that could turn such a position; maybe he had thought of one. There were some odd circumstances in his favour, fortunate coincidences. It was his business to seize upon those, exploit them to the utmost. He would have to take reckless chances, but he would do everything in his power to reduce the chances against him. The lucky man is he who knows how much to leave to chance. (-- p. 65) |
| Quote: | Lord Hornblower
Audio Cassette Only!
(Damn their eyes, sir!)
Narrated by Welsh actor Ioan Griffudd
Another in Forester's excellent Hornblower saga of British naval life during the Napoleonic wars. We're anticipating this selection with a great deal of relish based on the actor's excelent portrayal of Mr. H. on the hit TV series. There is rather a lot of old sea terminology to puzzle over in the book but it adds a certain color to the rousing adventures of our hero. |
| Quote: | Hornblower - The Complete Collection
DVD
Adventure classic featuring first-class actors sporting a broad sampling of English English. |
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editor
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| Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2008 1:06 pm Post subject: |
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Lucky Number Slevin
DVD
View the trailer at YouTube.com which
makes the movie look MUCH better than it is.
| Quote: | The Rabbi: You must be Mr. Fisher.
Slevin: Must I? Because that hasn't been working for me lately.
Rabbi: But I'm afraid you must.
Slevin: Well, if I must.
Rabbi: Do you know for what reason you've been brought here?
Slevin: For starters, I'm unlucky.
Rabbi: The unlucky are nothing more than a frame of reference for the lucky, Mr. Fisher. You are unlucky so that I may know that I'm not. Unfortunately, the lucky never realize that they are lucky until it's too late. Take yourself, for instance. Yesterday, you were better off than you are today, but it took today for you to realize it, but today has arrived, and it's too late. You see? People are never happy with what they have. They always wish they had what someone else has .
Slevin: Kind of like a rabbi who would rather be a gangster or a gangster who would rather be a rabbi. I mean, what is that? Some sort of 'the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence' thing? I mean, how do you justify being a rabbi and a gangster?
Rabbi: I don't. I'm a bad man who doesn't waste time wondering what could have been when I AM what could've been and could not have been. I live on both sides of the fence. My grass is always green. Consider, Mr. Fisher. There are two men sitting here before you and one of them you should be very afraid of. Where's my money? |
A charmless cast but for the excellent Ben Kinglesy. Somebody please call us when America passes Elocution 101. Honestly, how do these people get work?
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editor
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Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 12:41 pm Post subject: |
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Probably the most compelling reason for legalizing and regulating Internet gambling:
Good Time Girls
of the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush
Hardcover
By Lael Morgan
| Quote: | The city of Fairbanks - well organized from its inception and guided by Judge Wickersham's policy of moderately taxing vice for civic betterment - established a system of monthly fines that served as "license fees" for illicit operations, and welcomed the influx (of prostitutes and pimps). "Are you a lady or a whore?" the city attorney would ask, meeting females off each incoming boat. "If you are a lady, pass on; if you are a whore, seventeen dollars and a half." (footnote omitted)
The take averaged $1,200 a month, according to an informant for the Valdez News, and moralists in the rival settlement were scandalized. (footnote omitted)
"Fairbanks papers are going into ecstasies over the fact that the town has been conducted for the last year woithout levying a property tax. Why the people should be proud of the condition of affairs there is incomprehensible," the Alaskan Prospector editorialized.
"The money, apart from licenses, used for running expenses of the town, has been collected entirely from the sporting class by a system of fines. Every game in operation has to pay monthly tax and the sporting element are assessed a heavy per capita tax. The town is supported by licenses collected from prostitutes and gamblers. ..." (footnote omitted)
Nome's crackdown on prostitutes and gamblers in 1904 and closure of dance halls and gambling dens in Dawson left Fairbanks as the only major gold camp where the demimonde could operate comfortably. (-- pgs. 185-186) |
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