Quote of the Night-William S. Burroughs

Tonight, we continue quoting famous American authors with a quip from my personal favorite William S. Burroughs (1914-1997). His best-known work is the novel "Naked Lunch" (1953) which was made into a film of the same name in 1991 by Canadian director David Cronenberg. Other famous novels by Burroughs include "Junky" (1953) and "The Soft Machine" (1961, pictured here).

Here are some brief facts about his life:

_Lived much of his abroad including time spent in London, Paris, Mexico City and Tangier (Morocco), and he lived most of his senior years in Lawrence, Kansas.

_He had a son named William Burroughs Jr. (1947-1981) who wrote the novel "Speedy." Tragically, the younger Burroughs died at age 33 from liver disease.

Here is the quote from the author of "The Soft Machine:"

"A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, and its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering."

Casulaties of Modern Technology (6 of 12)_ The Typewriter

First of all hello to those of you in Davos, Switzerland, and Montego Bay, Jamaica, who have somehow found time to check us out today. We also wish to congratulate teh citizens of Mali, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Zambia for reaching the finals of the African Cup in world soccer play over the weekend. Lastly, kudos to Eli Manning and the New York Giants for winning the Super Bowl over the New England Patriots 21-17.

And, you thought Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich were the only ones kissing babies left and right!

Today's Casualty of Modern Technology is the typewriter. Since I am a big fan of the Tom Robbins novel "Still Life with Woodpecker" (1980) and the novelist typed the whole work on Remington SL3, that is the image we are going with today.

In his novel, Robbins even alluded to the machinery with the line: "I sense that the novel of my dreams is the Remington SL3_ although it writes much faster than I can spell."

The typewriter was also an external force in the excellent William Burroughs novel "Naked Lunch" (1959), a surreal masterpiece that was turned into a David Cronenberg film many years later in 1991.

There are many serious collectors of typewriters, including actor Tom Hanks and politcian/business leader Steven Soboroff, who has typewriters from Jack London and Ernest Hemingway in his collection.

The legacy of the typewriter, which was first invented circa 1868 remains today as the QWERTY keyboard is found on all personal computer keyboards.

Typewriters became more standard around 1910, and they were gradually implemented into newspaper journalism. The IBM selectic typewriter was developed in 1961 as a replacement for the originals. The newer typewriters were less noisy and printed more effectively.

But, by the 1980s, the world processor evolved, and typewriters were soon allegedly sent off to former Soviet republics, such as Azerbaijan, where even today, the computer is highly preferred.

Quote of the Week- William S. Burroughs

Today's quote of the week comes from one of my favorite writers William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) who is, of course, best known for his signature, surreal subversive novel "Naked Lunch:"

"A paranoid is someone who knows a little bit about what's really going on."

SIDEBAR: As Keith Olbermann pointed out on his Current TV show "Countdown" on Tuesday night, Fox News has been obsessive over the fact that President Barack Obama was taking a family vacation in Martha's Vineyard, Massachussetts, which has an elitist reputation.

The liberal political pundit E.J. Dionne of "The Washington Post" made a point on the Friday edition of "All Things Considered," which I am inclined to agree with in that it may have been politically wiser for Obama to take a vacation on the Outer Banks or the shores of Lake Michigan instead.

Obama has actually viisted Asheville, NC, twice since becoming president, including a stay at the Grove Park Inn Hotel in late April of 2010.

Since Cong. Heath Shuler (D-NC), one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress, is actually in danger of losing his seat to a potential Tea Party whacko (well, aren't they all whackos?), we imagine Obama will be back in western North Carolina again quite soon.

UPDATE_ NPR is reporting that Hurricane Irene is potentially heading for the Outer Banks of North Carolina, so perhaps it's better that Obama chose Martha's Vineyard after all!

Quote of the Week- Allen Ginsberg

Gazooks! I forgot to save while I initially wrote this entry. At any rate, our subject in our continuing series of quotes from left-wing circles continues with a quip of the great American poet Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) who was a close friend of William Burroughs.

In 1956, the year he wrote his landmark poem "Howl," Ginsberg professed admiration for the then-new Cuban leader Fidel Castro according to Wikipedia. But, Ginsberg said he had his own idiosyncratic views of communism.

In the 2010 film "Howl," actor James Franco played Ginsberg who was also a gay rights activist.

Here is his quote:

"Follow your inner moonlight, don't hide the madness."

SIDEBAR: Honeymoon in Kigali? Yes, the east African country of Rwanda which underwent a dreadful period of ethnic strife and genocide in the 1990s is literally ready to put their past behind them.

Rwanda's tourism site (yes, there is such a place) is recommending that travelers viist the Akagea National Park where one can see zebras and elephants and a large concentration of waterbirds, such as the shoebill stork.

The site also states that Kigali offers many great restaurants with both regional and international cuisine.

The Lonely Planet does recommend that visitors take precautions, and that the border with Burundi is among the areas that one should avoid in Rwanda.

SIDEBAR TWO: It may not be as exciting as Katie Holmes telling the world that she is pregnant with Tom Cruise's third child, but "City Paper" in Washington, DC, has reported that the female Chinese panda Mei Xiang is apparently pregnant. Zoo officials will be checking to see if the panda, who is believed to be mating with male Chinese panda Tian Tian, is indeed expecting.

Pardon the Interuption...

Yes, we have been offline for three-to-four days due to some rather awful (can anyone use that word objectively?!) life circumstances which lead to having a nightmare which ended with me waking up and yelling: "Naked Lunch!" at 5:30 a.m. I have no idea how William Burroughs came to invade my subconscious!

While I can not tell you of the many terrible ordeals I've been through lately, I can tell you that our friends at The Washington Ballet (ok, so we don't anyone there!) in our nation's capital are performing Septime Webre's version of "Romeo and Juliet" from Nov. 3-7, 2010.

Incidentally, the image above is a test screen from TRT (Turkish Radio and Television). When I lived in Turkey as a child from 1977-1979, I was so excited to watch "Uzay 1999" (which is really the American cult sci-fi series "Space 1999") that I would watch these test bars before the show would finally air. Back in Turkey in the late '70s, tv did not often air until 7:00 p.m., during the week.

Of course, back in those days, when I returned home to Roanoke, Va., I had to wiggle the antenna to watch one of my generation's favorite cartoon "Superfriends" (which featured all the main DC Comic Book characters, even Aqua Man) from Channel 13, which is still the ABC affiliate in nearby Lynchburg, Va.

Quote of the Day- from Portuguese Writer Jose Saramago

Unfortunately, the famed Portuguese writer Jose Saramago, pictured here, died last week at his home in The Canary Islands at the age of 87.

Like many great writers, including the late Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet who lived in Russia and the late American writer William Burroughs who spent many years in Tangiers, Morocco, Saramago was an exiled man. This was mainly due to his political views for Saramago (like Hikmet) was a communist even though the Portuguese writer's exile (from what we gather) was a personal choice.

Saramago's novel "Blindness" had been made into a 2008 film with Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore, and the writer won the first Nobel Prize for Portugal in 1998.

We are featuring Saramgo as one of the 32 people from the 32 countries in the World Cup.

The Portuguese team made headlines on Monday with a 7-0 thumping of North Korea, which assuredly did not go over well at the Kim Jong Il residence in Pyongyang.

As many soccer fans know (and I consider myself a casual one though I did watch virtually every game of the 1978 World Cup which host Argentina won when I was a child while we were living in Turkey), Portugal has a bonafide superstar in Cristiano Ronaldo, whom David Fellerath of "The Independent Weekly" in Raleigh, NC, called 'a glowering metrosexual.' Ronaldo is also starring in a series of tennis shoe ads with Homer Simpson?!


Here is today's quote from Saramago. It is, as one would fully expect, a political one in nature:

"People used to say about me: 'He's good but he's a Communist. Now they say: 'He's a Communist, but he's good."

Quote of the Week-Allen Ginsberg

The poet Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) is our choice for The Quote of the Week as we continue our series on left-wing rdicals. Ginsberg was part of the beat movement, which included the late William Burroughs ("The Naked Lunch") who is perhaps my favorite writer/novelist.

We quoted Ginsberg earlier in April for National Poetry Month. This particular quote came across 'our desk' by chance, and we love it!:

"Democracy! Bah! When I hear that word I reach for my feather Boa!"

The Last 10 Films I've Seen

This may qualify as an in-joke since I am using two images from the original books to two movies I've recently seen on my two respective blogs.

The in-joke is that because I watch so many films, I rarely get around to actually reading novels, but perhaps I can read the original book to "Where the Wild Things Are" (pictured here) since it is reportedly less than 300 words! Perhaps, my friends Sam Riddleberger (pseudodymn) and CeCe Bell (a married couple, both of whom are children's book authors) would be proud of me.

I have read William Burroughs' novel "Naked Lunch" several times though, but I haven't read Upton Sinclair's novel "Oil!," which was the basis for "There Will Be Blood." However, I have read Sinclair's most famous work "The Jungle," which I don't believe ever got made into a movie.

I got this idea from "Film Comment" magazine which lists the last ten films that film directors or esteemed film critics have seen. I forget whose list I saw last (I think it may have been Wes Anderson) though I would love to see the list of films that Quentin Tarantino and John Waters have seen.

Here is my list, going from the film I've seen most recently backwards. I actually saw all but three of these films at a movie theatre, including a midnight screening in Greensboro, NC, of the ever-disturbing Japanese horror film "Audition."

The star indicates that I had viewed the film previously:

1. "In the Loop"
2. "Zombieland"
3. "Where the Wild Things Are"
4. "Audition" (Japan)*
5. "Death at a Funeral"
6. "Bright Star"
7. "Capitalism: A Love Story" (doc)
8. "Naked Lunch"*
9. "There Will Be Blood"*
10. "Cold Souls"