The day Peter Sellers kidnapped Jesus

Spare a thought for the man who spent one Christmas coping with a deranged comic genius
By John Antrobus
27th December 2009

The call came on Christmas Eve, probably 1977. 'What are you doing tomorrow?' asked Peter Sellers. 'Not a lot,' I told him. 'Would you like to come and do not a lot with Lynne and me?'

'I'd be delighted,' I said. 'Please, don't be delighted; be depressed,' said Peter. 'That way, there's room for improvement.'

'When would you like me to come?' 'It's not really that I'd like you to come, John - though I've nothing against you, of course.

'It's more that I don't know how to enjoy Christmas. I don't even know how to get through Christmas, and I thought you might have some ideas. I'd pay you, of course.'

'You don't need to pay me. Peter, because you're Jewish, it doesn't mean you can't enjoy Christmas.'

'But it helps.'

'Basically, treat it like any other day.'

'As threatening,' he said. 'You never know which day will be your last. Look, come to lunch.'

'But if you don't really want me...' I protested.

'I don't really want anything. I've got everything that money can buy.'

'But you can't buy the joy of Christmas!' I exclaimed.

'Exactly. Come,' responded Peter. He hung up.

The next morning, Christmas Day, I walked through the deserted streets of Victoria to Stag House, where in this recently-built development (modern, I suppose, for five minutes), Peter Sellers lived on an upper floor.

I found the apartment and rang the bell, and shouted through the letterbox: 'It's the Bexhill Christmas Pudding Hurler!'

Peter opened the door, white-faced. 'Please don't try to make me laugh,' he said. 'Even to smile uses 84 face muscles. I don't work out this early.'

With curiosity, I entered the apartment. It was spacious and quite empty. The furniture - what there was of it - was not art deco, more art stucko, just stuck around on an expanse of white carpet.

'Would you like to remove your shoes?' asked Peter.

'And your belt, braces and false teeth.'

I took off my shoes and gave them to Peter. He threw them against the wall.

'I hate Christmas!' he shouted. 'And while you're here, you'd better stay for Easter.'

'Where's Lynne?' I inquired. 'I strangled her an hour ago,' said Peter. 'You can help me dispose of the body.'

Lynne entered, her un-strangled body radiant, wearing the prettiest of dresses. She gave me a kiss, a smile and a hug, while Peter looked on, appalled.

'Merry Christmas, John,' she said. 'What's merry about it?' drawled Peter. 'Everyone's on holiday. Nobody's making movies.'

'You hate the film industry,' Lynne reminded him.

'There's no industry to hate today,' he replied (it seemed to me, pitifully). 'It's all a big white blank with reindeer.'

'We can make a home movie later, darling,' Lynne said, brightly.

Then, to me: 'Peter's suffering from withdrawal symptoms. There's no production office open today. There's no director he can phone up and fire today, is there darling?'

Peter laughed then said: 'Ouch, that hurt. I will now give you my world-famous impression of a human being.'

He stood there in his pyjamas and dressing gown.

'As opposed to what?' asked Lynne. 'As opposed to another human being. One who is not world-famous.'

'I can't see any difference.'

'Which proves that fame is an illusion,' said Peter.

'I thought it was the impression which is world-famous,' I suggested.

'That's an illusion, too,' Peter said. 'I will get dressed, and we will go for a drive.'

We were driving towards Brighton. Peter was at the wheel of the drophead Bentley - his latest toy - dressed in a long leather coat and a German World War II helmet. The sky was blue, the sun shone upon us, and it was quite chilly.

'You could close the hood, Peter,' suggested Lynne. 'John might be cold.'

'I like John cold,' announced Peter. 'Who wants a hot John?'

The road was empty as we sped along. We were in the countryside, the fields passing us by rapidly.

'Mein Gott!' said Peter, lapsing into Gestapo German to match his outfit. 'See those cows? They are escaped prisoners-of-war!'

He slammed on the brakes, jerking us violently forward.

'Kum!' he shouted, and leapt from the Bentley, now doubtless in his mind a Wehrmacht vehicle, probably the half-track favoured by Erwin Rommel.

Leaping over the five-bar gate, he stood and pointed at the cows dramatically. 'You! Yes you! The game is up, Englishers!'

'Oh, stop mucking about Peter,' said Lynne, stamping her feet to keep warm. We had followed him out of the car and gathered around the gate. 'Come on, or it will be dark before we get to Brighton.'

She looked at me, raising her eyebrows. 'He's like a child. He's either playing games or he's deeply depressed, wondering who he is.'

'Heinrick,' said Peter, addressing me (for I was now Heinrick). 'Which cow would you say is the fake cow?

'Come on, man, you have been on the Spot-A-Fake-Cow course in Berlin: you know all the ploys of escaped Britishers. In one of those cows are two RAF swine, who have been bombing our cities. My collection of Dresden china is ruined! Which cow, Henrick, is the fake?'

'Vell,' I ventured. 'Zat cow at ze back of the field looks very pantomime to me. If you bring in ze bull, that should sort things out quickly.'

'Not for the Britishers. They would love the bull to cover zem. That would tell us nothing, Heinrick.'

A farmer drove up on his tractor. 'What's going on?' he demanded.

The actor had an ability find the comic ability in most situations

'You! Silence when you talk to me! You are harbouring British prisoners of war. There are at least two in your field disguised as a cow.'

'Well, I milked them all this morning,' replied the farmer.

'You were obviously pulling the wrong knobs,' said Peter, bursting into hysterical laughter and collapsing in a heap by the gate. 'Oh, mein Gott! Mein Himmel! Can we do that bit again? I'll try not to laugh next time.'

The farmer looked at him steadily. 'I recognise you,' he said. 'You must be that Peter Sellers.'

'I'm not that Peter Sellers: I'm this Peter Sellers,' said Peter. 'Appearing for a limited season in your field.'

'Never mind that,' said the farmer. 'Merry Christmas, one and all. Would you care to come up to the farm for a hot toddy and a cheese straw with my family?'

'I thought you'd never ask,' replied Peter, staggering to his feet and brushing down his coat.

He mounted the back of the tractor, standing, steadying himself with one arm on the farmer's shoulder. He flung the other arm forward in a dictatorial gesture.
'Advance!' he yelled. 'Cairo next stop!' The tractor started off. We followed in the Bentley. Lynne pressed a button to bring the hood forward.

'He's crackers,' she said. 'Thank God, this is one of his good days.'

In the farmhouse kitchen, we relaxed in the warmth of the cooking range. There was a Christmas tree with pretty coloured lights, and some homemade paper decorations strung across the ceiling with the drying laundry.

We were served a warm toddy - or Peter was, because both Lynne and myself would not take anything with alcohol. We had ginger beer.

The farmer's daughter, who was about eight years old, showed Peter the Christmas crib she had made, containing the Baby Jesus.

'If it had been possible,' said Peter, 'I would like to have adopted the Baby Jesus and to have had him barmitzvahed later on, then sent to Harvard Business School.'

The farmer's wife looked dubious. 'That would have been the end of Christianity,' she said.

'No, it would have put it on a proper business footing, right from the start,' replied Peter. 'But you can't rewrite history, can you ?'

Lynne looked bored. 'We should be going,' she said.

'No,' said Peter. 'Not without Baby Jesus.'

'You could stay here with Baby Jesus until the Twelfth Day of Christmas,' said the little girl. 'That's when it all finishes.'

'I'd like that,' said Peter. 'I'd like to stay here for ever, with Baby Jesus.

'Why should it finish? This is real, Lynne. This is real life. Look at that laundry hanging up there. That's real laundry.

'What happens to our laundry? It disappears, and then turns up in a box, starched and clean. It's like you've killed somebody and they disappear. Then they turn up in a box, all starched and neat, in a box ready for burial.

'Yes, I will have another hot toddy, Mr Farmer. Can I stay here? Upstairs. Have you a little room? A real room, in a real house, with real fields and earth and cows who are not escaped prisoners-of-war.'

'Peter, come along, darling, or we won't get to Brighton before it gets dark.'

'The sooner it gets dark, the sooner it gets light again,' shot back Peter.

'Stop being silly, Peter,' demanded Lynne. 'You are a film star, not a farm hand. It won't work.'

She turned to the farmer. 'Please, tell him to go. We have a life. We have people to meet. We have films to make.'

'Right,' said the farmer. 'Mr Sellers, you must listen to your wife.'

'I'm not going without Baby Jesus,' declared Peter. 'Or the three wise men.'

We were motoring towards Brighton. Lynne was driving. Peter was asleep in the back, beside him the crib, for which he had paid the little girl £50, with Baby Jesus, three wise men, and shepherds and sheep, and a cow - probably containing Roger and Ian, who had baled out of their flaming Lancaster bomber.

I was becoming as mad as Peter Sellers, I decided. Perhaps I was him.

'We'll go to the Grand and see if we can get lunch. We haven't booked. What chance do you think we've got?' asked Lynne.

'Well, with Peter Sellers they'll probably make room for us. It could be fun. I never dreamt I'd be having Christmas lunch in Brighton. At the Grand. With both of you.'

'John,' Lynne said, staring hard at the road. We were heading down a street towards the sea. 'John,' she repeated. 'When he wakes up, it may not be fun. It may be hell. This could be as good as it gets.'

The Bentley turned along the promenade. On the left, the Grand Hotel appeared. There was still light in the day, reflected on the sea, somehow complicit in this uneasy moment of peace.

Peter would wake up soon, yes, but who would he be this time?

A short time later, when I entered the dining room, Peter was struggling, or jostling, with an elegant though elderly lady.

'Let us have your table, madam. You have finished your pudding and we have not begun. What is wrong with you? Have you no Christmas spirit ? You can have coffee and liqueurs in the lounge, at my expense.'

'How dare you! Leave my chair alone, you uncouth lout,' the lady protested.

'I am not name-calling. Who is name-calling?' Sellers was talking in a slightly foreign accent.

'You want me to call you names? Very well. You are a rude - and greedy - woman.
'Do you mean to start again with the soup? Very well, no. Then you do not need this table. I will sit at it until you go away, Madam. Until you retire, because I am couth, not uncouth. Couth, do you hear?'

He sat at the table as the lady tried to push him away.

'Call yourself a Christian? What is this? Unhand me, madam.'

A gentleman appeared. 'What's going on?'

'Charles, this man is trying to take our table.'

'Because we are famished. How else will we have our Christmas lunch? She is finished. You are both finished.'

'You bounder,' said Charles. 'I am Major Farnsworth of the Fourth Hussars, and I object to your behaviour, sir.'

'And I am Major Bloodnok of the Fifth Knives and Forks,' giggled Peter. 'And I object to your red nose. It's a danger to shipping. I advise you to stay well inland.'

Major Farnsworth grabbed Peter, ready to haul him out of his chair. 'I'll teach you . . .'

'Oh come on, mate. Can't you take a joke?' Sellers turned on his Lavender Hill Mob cockney.

The Major stared at Peter. 'Don't I know you?

'God almighty, it's Peter Sellers, mother! He's having us on!' He let out an almighty guffaw.

'Do join us, old boy. With your friends, yes. Waiter!' he shouted. 'Bring more chairs.'

'He's a very naughty man,' said mother, not at all mollified.

'It's all the same with the film crowd, mother,' explained Charles, for everyone was soon on firstname terms.

By the time Lynne arrived in the dining room, having been powdering her nose, all was serene. She had no idea that the Maitre d' had been about to phone the police and have her deranged husband carted off to the nick, or straight to the local looney bin.

'How nice of these people to invite us to share their table, Peter. Are you sure you don't mind?'

Charles Farnsworth replied: 'Not at all, my dear. Great fun, a great adventure. Wait till I tell Larry how the fantastic Peter Sellers had us on. Ho, ho.'

'That would be Larry Olivier, wouldn't it?' said Peter, still East End-like. 'I could get him on the blower and ask him to drop by. Him and Joanny.'

'They're in the Bahamas, this Christmas. Great loss to Brighton,' said Charles, who seemed proud of knowing the town's most famous thespian.

'Well, we could charter a Boeing and all go over and...'

'No, Peter.' Lynne cut him off. 'What's that man doing over there, holding a cardboard box?' inquired Charles's mother.

'Oh, that's John Antrobus. He's a writer,' said Peter. 'In that box, displayed, is the Nativity scene, Baby Jesus in a manger, surrounded by his mother, lots of animals and hangers-on trying to get their names in the Bible.'

I pointed at the tiny figures and added: 'Including three wise men who followed a star to Bethlehem.'

'They followed a star to Brighton,' said Peter, beaming.

Later, after dinner, we all sang carols round the crib. The lights were lowered and candles produced to make a poignant scene of a Christmas Truce in the Great War of Peter Sellers's emotions.

All was mellow. All was love. 'The hopes and fears of all our years, Are met in Thee tonight.'

Those lines we sang sweetly from O Little Town Of Bethlehem summed up a feeling of Oneness that this odd assortment of people, gathered together around a cardboard crib, could not otherwise express.

'Excuse me,' said Peter. His eyes were glistening. Did I detect tears?

That was the last we saw of him. Peter, we discovered, had hired a taxi to take him back to London on his own. He'd had enough.

We drove back to London through the night, Lynne and myself. She was rather upset by Sellers's bizarre departure.

'It's happened before,' was all she said, tight-lipped. She dropped me off in Chelsea.

'Merry Christmas, John. What's left of it,' said Lynne, sadly.

That was all I saw of either of them for almost a year. I suppose it was the most remarkable Christmas I have ever experienced. And I still have the little figure of Baby Jesus in a crib to remind me of that day.

www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1238363/Peter-Sellers-kidnapped-Jesus-Spare-thought-man-spent-Christmas-coping-deranged-comic-genius.html
© 2009 Associated Newspapers Ltd

You left your guitar at mine, Ian!

Steely Dan on Radio Two

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00h30yr

With the execrable David Hepworth

BABES IN TOYLAND

March of the Wooden Soldiers: A New York Christmas TV Memory

The Village Voice
Friday, Dec. 25 2009 @ 8:00AM
by James H. Burns
On an arctic December night in Brooklyn when I was a tot, my family went to visit a local Christmas attraction. It was one of those "Christmas wonderland" houses, popular at the time, and people lined around the block to take in its colorful lights and seasonal set pieces.

Atop my mother's shoulder I caught my first glimpse of this candy-cane world and a couple of lifesize, papier mache soldiers, and asked:

"Do Laurel and Hardy live here?"

No adults laughed at me, but they may have smiled, because they all knew what I was talking about: Laurel and Hardy's March of the Wooden Soldiers (originally Babes in Toyland), which had already become part of New York's holiday traditions.

In 1933 Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were at the height of their success. Hardy, from Georgia, and Laurel, a Brit, were solo silent film performers when they were teamed by the Hal Roach Studio in the mid 1920s. After more than sixty shorts and seven features, they were among the few silent film stars to make the transition to talkies.

That autumn Roach decided that their next movie would be based on Babes in Toyland, the operetta by Victor Herbert with lyrics and book by Glen MacDonough, which -- thirty years previously -- had been a smash on Broadway.

Laurel, the creative lead in the duo, sequestered himself with the studio's writers, and they created a musical only loosely inspired by Herbert's and MacDonough's opus.

Laurel and Hardy would play Stannie Dum and Ollie Dee, craftsmen in Toyland (home village to many of our favorite nursery rhyme characters). Aided by Bo Peep and Tom Tom (the Piper's Son), they ultimately confront the villainy of the aged miser, Silas Barnaby, and his legion of fierce "Bogeymen."

Barnaby, one of the great eccentric screen villains, was portrayed by Henry Brandon who, despite his apparently wizened status, was only twenty-two years old.

A scenario elegant in its simplicity ensued, and the Roach crew were painstaking in their efforts to bring the fantasy to life.

"Babes in Toyland's" most unusual aspect is rarely noted: Mickey Mouse appears throughout the film, in what's essentially his sole non-animated movie -- and certainly the only one in which he's portrayed by a costumed monkey. Walt Disney had given Roach permission to use Mickey in the film, though he might have thought better of it after he saw the freakish, simian Mickey in action.

Disney's association with Laurel and Hardy may have helped impact the world of pop culture in another way: According to some of his oldest friends, Disney had been thinking of ideas for a family amusement park as far back as the 1920s. Does it seem a stretch to imagine that the elaborate Toyland helped give the filmmaker some of ideas for Disneyland?

Distributed for Roach by MGM, Babes in Toyland was almost universally well-reviewed when it premiered just after Thanksgiving 1934, but never received a widespread national rerelease.

In 1948, Babes began to be sold to different distributors, which is when it was rechristened March of the Wooden Soldiers. March made its New York television debut nine years later. Usually broadcast on Thanksgiving or near Christmas -- sometimes both -- March soon became, for some of us, nearly as significant a seasonal icon as Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade or the tree at Rockefeller Center.

In the 1970s rumors began to circulate among film buffs that March of the Wooden Soldiers was missing extensive footage. But in New York, we had been seeing those allegedly missing scenes for years -- WPIX, without anyone realizing it, had somehow become the caretaker of the most complete print of March of the Wooden Soldiers in the country.

But in the late '70s Channel 11 lost the license to broadcast the film. And when WPIX's parent company, the Tribune Corpration, acquired all rights to March of the Wooden Soldiers a year or two later, they somehow wound up with the same cut version that was shown throughout the United States; the more complete version appeared to have been lost.

In 1989, a native New Yorker, came to the rescue. Ray Faiola, a CBS executive and film historian, received a phone call from CBS-Fox Home Video's Ken Horowitz, who asked him to find something to make their planned package of Laurel and Hardy comedies a little more special. (Faiola was also heavily involved with The Sons of the Desert, an international Laurel and Hardy appreciation society, which still meets monthly at Manhattans' Players Club.) Faiola began searching for a mint Babes in Toyland. He called the British Film Institute, an archive in Italy, and other likely venues, but no one knew where the missing footage might be.

Finally Richard May, an executive at Turner Broadcasting, suggested that Faiola call Eastman House, a film depository in Rochester that various organizations use to store their films. There he found a pristine copy of Babes in Toyland, from which new prints were struck.

In 1991, Tribune licensed the Samuel Goldwyn Company to produce a colorized version of March. Even most cinema purists didn't object, perhaps because everyone involved with Babes in Toyland who'd been heard from on the subject said they rued that the picture was shot in black and white instead of color.

March of the Wooden Soldiers is a fantasy, but it's not cloying. Laurel and Hardy were comic artists of the first rank, and when they finally made a movie aimed at children, they didn't talk down to their new audience.

Some of us who saw those WPIX showings long ago remember March of the Wooden Soldiers like the shimmer of a jingle bell, or with the warmth of the first light reflected off a snowflake. For us, it was part of childhood. And seeing it again after all these years is like a holiday in the heart.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/12/march_of_the_wo.php

Senate approves broad healthcare overhaul

The U.S. Senate approved President Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul on Thursday, backing sweeping changes in the medical insurance market and new coverage for tens of millions of uninsured Americans.

More at: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22/20091224/tts-uk-usa-healthcare-ca02f96.html

FRIDAY NIGHT BOY COOL #37

Santa Bing wishes all the FNB, past and present, and our loyal followers around the world, a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year and a peaceful and prosperous future!

Robin Wood (no relation) RIP

Robin Wood, Film Critic Who Wrote on Hitchcock, Dies at 78

December 22, 2009

By WILLIAM GRIMES

Robin Wood, a film critic who published the first serious work in English on Alfred Hitchcock and who applied formal rigor and moral seriousness in his book-length appraisals of Howard Hawks, Arthur Penn, Ingmar Bergman and other directors, died on Friday at his home in Toronto. He was 78.

The cause was complications of leukemia, said Richard Lippe, his longtime partner.

Mr. Wood, who was British by birth and education but spent much of his career teaching in Canada, made a remarkable debut as a critic. While teaching English at a secondary school, he placed an article on Hitchcock’s “Psycho” in Cahiers du Cinéma, the celebrated journal associated with the French New Wave and auteur theory. With this validation, he began writing for a variety of British publications and followed up with a series of influential studies of important directors.

Influenced by the Cambridge critics F. R. Leavis and A. P. Rossiter, whose morally committed approach to literary criticism galvanized a generation of British university students, Mr. Wood never lost sight of the ethical and political aspects of film. This tendency became more acute after he came out as a gay man in the 1970s and took a sharp turn to the political left.

He had come to believe, he told the reference work Contemporary Authors in 2005, that there was only one defensible motive for writing about film: “To contribute, in however modest a way, to the possibility of social revolution, along lines suggested by radical feminism, Marxism and gay liberation.”

Robert Paul Wood was born in Richmond, Surrey, on Feb. 23, 1931. A fractious child, he was often taken by a maid to the movies to get him out of his parents’ hair and soon developed an infatuation with the Hollywood comedies of Jean Arthur, Claudette Colbert Cary Grant.

After earning a degree in English from Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1953 and a diploma in education a year later, he taught English at secondary schools in Britain and France. At one, he started a film society and encouraged students to write critical appraisals of the films they watched.

Following his own advice, he wrote an essay on “Psycho” and submitted it to the British journal Sight & Sound, whose editor returned it with the comment that Mr. Wood had failed to see that the film was intended as a joke.

Infuriated, Mr. Wood sent it to Cahiers du Cinéma, which, despite its contempt for British film criticism, accepted the article, a careful teasing out of the themes of sex, death, money and compulsion in the film. The Cahiers cachet afforded him instant entree to the British journal Movie, to which he began to contribute in 1962.

“I began to realize that all of these films that I had loved in the past could be taken seriously, that some real artistic claims could be made for them,” he told Your Flesh magazine in 2006. “That was a revelation, and really all I needed to understand. So it was purely from that article in Cahiers that I became a film critic. I think if they had turned it down, I probably wouldn’t have written about film anymore, and I would probably still be an English teacher today.”

Mr. Wood, a penetrating critic with a graceful prose style, soon emerged as one of Britain’s most influential film writers, a reputation enhanced by the groundbreaking “Hitchcock’s Films” (1965). “A lot of people thought it was ridiculous, this idea of taking Hitchcock seriously,” he told Your Flesh. “He was seen as simply an entertainer; one was merely amused by his films, had a few shocks, a few laughs, and that was it.”

A series of important monographs followed: “Howard Hawks” (1968), “Arthur Penn” (1968), “Ingmar Bergman” (1969) and “The Apu Trilogy” (1971), which dealt with Satyajit Ray’s work. With the critic Ian Cameron he wrote “Antonioni” (1968), and with Michael Walker he wrote “Claude Chabrol” (1970). Many of his essays were collected in “Personal Views: Explorations in Film” (1976).

In 1973 Mr. Wood was invited to create a film studies program at the University of Warwick, in Coventry, where he lectured until accepting a post as professor of film studies at York University in Toronto in 1977. He retired in 1990.

In addition to Mr. Lippe, he is survived by his children Simon, of Toronto; Carin, of Bath, England; and Fiona, of Bordeaux; and five grandchildren.

In his later film criticism, Mr. Wood concentrated on politics, specifically sexual politics. A 1977 speech to the British Film Institute, “Responsibility of a Gay Film Critic,” gave notice of his new critical program, which he pursued in “Hollywood From Vietnam to Reagan” (1986) and “Sexual Politics and Narrative Film: Hollywood and Beyond” (1998). With colleagues at York, he started a radical film studies journal, CineAction, in 1985.

His enthusiasm for Hitchcock never flagged. In 1989 he returned to the subject in “Hitchcock Revisited,” appraising the director from new angles but maintaining his admiration. “I think the best of Hitchcock films continue to fascinate me because he’s obviously right inside them, he understands so well the male drive to dominate, harass, control and at the same time he identifies strongly with the woman’s position,” he told the World Socialist Web Site (wsws.org) in 2000. Hitchcock’s films, he continued, “are a kind of battleground between these two positions.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/arts/22wood.html?_r=1&hpw

The weather according to Winslow Homer

Premier League Arrests Table 2008-2009 season

Premier League arrests table

1. Manchester United - 185

2. Newcastle - 144

3. Everton - 139

4. Sunderland - 138

5. Arsenal - 133

6. Stoke City - 118

7. Chelsea - 102

8. Liverpool - 100

9. Manchester City - 82

10. Aston Villa - 77

11. Middlesbrough - 75

12. Tottenham Hotspur - 71

13. West Ham United - 65

14. Hull City - 61

15. Bolton Wanderers - 50

16. Blackburn Rovers - 31

17. Portsmouth - 31

18. West Brom - 26

19. Wigan Athletic - 23

20. Fulham - 13

Full article:
http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/23122009/58/premier-league-manchester-united-top-hooligan-arrest-league.html

Shamefully, Newcastle were rather more successful at this than at playing football to a level good enough to keep us in the league.

It should be noted that if the table had the showed the percentage of arrests in relation to attendance figures, Middlesbrough would have topped the chart comfortably.

Dean'n'Judy'n'Frank

Arnold Stang RIP

Arnold Stang, Milquetoast Actor, Dies at 91
By BRUCE WEBER
Published: December 22, 2009

Arnold Stang, a character actor whose bespectacled, owlish face and nasal urban twang gave him a singular and recognizable persona, whether on radio or television, in the movies or in advertisements, or even in cartoons, died on Sunday in Newton, Mass. He was 91 and lived in Needham, Mass.

The cause was pneumonia, said his son, David.

Mr. Stang considered himself a dramatic actor who could play serious roles. But even he was aware that with his signature heavy glasses and a manner that could be eagerly solicitous, despondently whiny or dare-you-to-hit-me pugnacious, his forte was comedy.

Like Wally Cox, who was a friend, and Don Knotts, Mr. Stang was a natural for roles requiring a milquetoast, a pest or a nerd. At 5 foot 3 and never much more than 100 pounds, he once said of himself, “I look like a frightened chipmunk who’s been out in the rain too long.” And in a story he frequently told, after an auto accident in 1959 that left him needing extensive plastic surgery, he said to the doctor, “For God’s sake, don’t make me look pretty.”

His memorable moments as an actor were oddly varied signposts of popular culture. He was the spokesman for Chunky, the candy bar, in the 1950s, delivering the slogan: “Chunky! What a chunk o’ chocolate!”

In Otto Preminger’s 1955 film about drug addiction, “The Man With the Golden Arm,” he played Frank Sinatra’s pal Sparrow in a performance that is often cited as a precursor of Dustin Hoffman’s turn as Ratso Rizzo in “Midnight Cowboy.”

On “Top Cat,” the animated television series of the early 1960s, he was the voice of T. C., aka Top Cat himself, the leader of a mischievous cat gang. (The character was based on Phil Silvers’s Sergeant Bilko.)

He was one of two gas station attendants (Marvin Kaplan was the other) who witness the destruction of their station by Jonathan Winters in the 1963 lunatic film comedy “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”

Most sources indicate that Mr. Stang was born in Chelsea, Mass., in 1925, but according to his family, though he had relatives in Chelsea, he was born in Manhattan on Sept. 28, 1918. His father was a lawyer until the 1929 stock market crash and earned a living afterward as a salesman.

The Chelsea story was one Mr. Stang perpetuated himself; he told interviewers that he got his first job in radio in 1934 at age 9 after he wrote to “Let’s Pretend,” a New York children’s radio show, and asked for an audition. Told he could audition when he was next in New York, he took the bus from Boston, alone, the following Saturday and was hired.

“We were married 60 years and I never managed to get him to correct that,” his wife, JoAnne Stang, said in an interview Monday.

The truth, Ms. Stang said, was that her husband grew up mostly in Brooklyn and graduated from New Utrecht High School. He wrote the note asking for an audition from Brooklyn, and he was older than 9.

He began his show business career as a teenager — his first radio appearances were on the shows “The Horn and Hardart Children’s Hour” and “Let’s Pretend” — and he went on to perform on dozens of radio programs in the 1930s and ’40s, including soap operas, mysteries and comedies, and was often called on to play more than one role.

He was probably best known at the time for “The Goldbergs,” the long-running family series set in Bronx on which he played the character Seymour Fingerhood, the teenage neighbor to the title family, and later as a sidekick to stars like Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny and especially Milton Berle.

Mr. Stang was a regular on “The Henry Morgan Show,” a showcase for Morgan’s astringent satire, often playing a complaining, goofball New Yorker named Gerard who traded banter and one-liners with the host. After Berle moved his radio show to television, Mr. Stang appeared from 1953 to 1955, bringing along his character, Francis, a pain-in-the-neck stagehand who bugged the star relentlessly.

In addition to his wife, whom he married in 1949 (Wally Cox, a skilled goldsmith, made their wedding rings, she said), and his son, who lives in Cambridge, Mass., Mr. Stang is survived by a daughter, Deborah Stang, of Brighton, Mass., and two granddaughters.

Mr. Stang landed on Broadway three times, the last being a revival of “The Front Page” in 1969. He was a regular on the 1960s comedy “Broadside,” a short-lived, distaff version of “McHale’s Navy,” and was a guest star on numerous series, including “Bonanza,” “Batman” and “The Cosby show.”

He was also the voice of many cartoon characters, including Nurtle the Turtle in the 1965 film “Pinocchio in Outer Space.” Other film credits include Otto Preminger’s 1968 gangster comedy “Skidoo,” with Jackie Gleason; “Hercules in New York” (1970), a comedy with Arnold Schwarzenegger; and “Dennis the Menace” (1993), with Walter Matthau.

“He loved the cartoons, and he liked doing commercials, too,” Ms. Stang said of her husband. “But most of all, he loved radio. It offered him such a span of roles.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/ar...ref=obituaries

Jennifer Jones RIP

Jennifer Jones, who won an Academy Award for playing a saint in "The Song of Bernadette" and became a popular sinner in Hollywood melodramas, including "Duel in the Sun" and "Love is a Many-Splendored Thing," died Thursday at her home in Malibu, Calif. She was 90.

Miss Jones, who in her later years was a leader of the Norton Simon Museum, in Pasadena, died of natural causes, museum spokeswoman Leslie Denk said.

Miss Jones was the widow of the museum's founder, industrialist Norton Simon, and served as chair of the museum's board of directors after his death.

Known for her intense performances, Miss Jones was one of Hollywood's biggest stars of the 1940s and '50s.

Among her most memorable roles were the vixen who vamps rowdy cowboy Gregory Peck in "Duel in the Sun," and the Eurasian doctor who falls for Korean War correspondent William Holden in "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing."

Miss Jones conveyed an aura of shyness, even aloofness, offstage. She rarely gave interviews, explaining in 1957: "Most interviewers probe and pry into your personal life, and I just don't like it. I respect everyone's right to privacy, and I feel mine should be respected, too."

Early in her career, Miss Jones had become nearly as famous for her high-profile marriages as for her movie work. She met actor Robert Walker when both studied acting in New York, and they married and went to Hollywood, where her stardom ascended more rapidly than his.

Her boss, David O. Selznick, became obsessed with his star and spent much of his time promoting her career; some critics say he helped ruin it, too. The two married four years after she divorced Walker in 1945.

Selznick died in 1965, and in 1973 Miss Jones married Simon. After his death in 1993, she assumed a major role in leading the Pasadena-based museum.

She initiated the museum's celebrated gallery renovation by architect Frank Gehry and spearheaded the development of its public programming and outreach initiatives.

She was born Phylis Isley on March 2, 1919, in Tulsa, Okla., to parents who operated a touring stock company that presented melodramas in tent theaters in the Southwest. She began doing roles in their plays at age 6.

After graduating from high school, she toured with another stock company, studied drama at Northwestern University for a year and persuaded her father to support her for a year at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York.

She married Walker in 1939, and they spent their honeymoon traveling to Hollywood. They could find only bit roles in small pictures, she in a western, "New Frontier," and a serial, "Dick Tracy's G-Men."

The pair retreated to New York before Miss Jones was selected for the prize role in "The Song of Bernadette" about a French peasant girl who claimed to have seen a vision of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes in 1858.

Her performance and the Oscar for best actress helped make her one of Hollywood's most popular leading ladies.

Director Henry King recalled testing the six finalists for the role of Bernadette: "A man held a stick behind the camera; the girls focused their rapt attention on that stick. The other five did very well. But only Jennifer looked as if she saw the vision."

Among her 27 films, she is also remembered as the ghostly beauty who attracts painter Joseph Cotten in "Portrait of Jennie" and as a world-class swindler in John Huston's "Beat the Devil," with Humphrey Bogart as a rival adventurer seeking uranium riches in Africa.

Among her other films were "Love Letters" (with Cotten), "We Were Strangers" (with John Garfield), "Madame Bovary" (with Louis Jourdan) and "A Farewell to Arms" (with Rock Hudson).

In "Carrie," William Wyler's version of Theodore Dreiser's novel "Sister Carrie," Miss Jones held the screen well with Laurence Olivier playing her self-destructive lover. But Miss Jones' character, a crafty opportunist in the book, became a more-sympathetic role on-screen that offended Dreiser purists.

Meanwhile, she lost important roles that Selznick deemed unworthy, including parts that made stars of Eva Marie Saint in "On the Waterfront" and Julie Harris in "East of Eden." Selznick also alienated many directors with demanding memos and on-set fretting about lighting, costumes and script changes to benefit Miss Jones.

Film scholar Jeanine Basinger, who specializes in the history of women in cinema, said, "One of the tragedies of Jennifer Jones' career is that she will always be viewed through the filter of David O. Selznick."

Miss Jones received a supporting actress Oscar nomination for "Since You Went Away," and lead actress nominations for "Love Letters," "Duel in the Sun" and "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing."

While in Rome filming "A Farewell to Arms," Hudson told a reporter, "I heard fantastic stories about this girl, that she was neurotic, temperamental, under hypnosis by Selznick. Not a word of truth in any of it. From the first take, she's been cooperative with everyone, except reporters."

Her last film under Selznick's guidance came in 1962 with F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Tender is the Night," a failure.

Several months after Selznick's death in 1965, she went to England to film "The Idol." She made only two more film appearances, in 1969's "Angel, Angel, Down We Go" and 1974's "The Towering Inferno."

Miss Jones, who admitted to "mental problems" and was known to have twice attempted suicide, became an advocate of mental-health funding. Her only child from Selznick, Mary Jennifer Selznick, jumped to her death from a Los Angeles office building in 1976.

Survivors include a son from her first marriage, Robert Walker, of Malibu; a stepson, Donald Simon, of Los Angeles; eight grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. A son from her first marriage, Michael Walker, died in 2007.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2010536426_jonesobit18.html

Performance of the Year - Da

Pat Keysell RIP

Pat Keysell with Tony Hart, 1969

Pat Keysell, who has died aged 83, took her passion for mime and promoted it as a therapeutic and enabling vehicle for disadvantaged people. Her cause's most prominent outlet was the award-winning television programme for deaf and hard of hearing children, Vision On, which she presented in the 1960s and 70s.

More at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/dec/18/pat-keysell-obituary

WOMEN IN MUSIC #34

http://sophiemadeleine.bandcamp.com/

Sophie Madeleine

Frank and Bing - at Christmas!

The weather according to Sir Henry Raeburn

JIM SPEAKS, WE LISTEN... 2009 remembered.

They're troubled and they don't know why. Estragon and Vladimir reflect on Friday Boy life.

The weather according to Pieter Brueghel (the Elder)

A Christmas message

Bing and Louie

Bob Dylan with Ry Cooder and Van Dyke Parks - DO RE MI

Gateshead Car Park - all Tesco's fault!

SUPERMARKET giant Tesco has been told the controversial Get Carter car park will not be knocked down until firm assurances are given that a new town centre will be built.

Gateshead Council bosses have revealed they have been forced to delay demolition work on the eyesore as they await a promise from Tesco that all the new developments they asked for in exchange for the go-ahead will be delivered.

The retailer has been told it must meet several conditions before the local authority will allow bulldozers to finally tear it down.

Gateshead Council’s chief executive Roger Kelly has told colleagues he was carrying out their orders to make sure the best possible deal is secured before allowing the car park, which is on land leased to the supermarket, to be knocked down.

The eyesore has had to be left to blight the town centre because the council did not want to risk giving Tesco bosses permission to develop the site as it wishes with no assurances the local authority will get what it wants.

Mr Kelly said he expects to reach a final agreement with the supermarket chain this week.

The council boss was responding to a question from Liberal Democrat councillor Jonathan Wallace, who said there were serious concerns over how long the development was taking.

“Having seen the proposals in 2007, we are now heading into 2010 and it still has not come down,” Mr Wallace said.

“A lot of people would really like to know what the problem is behind this.

“My concern is that next year we will still have this car park blocking development and as a result we could miss out on the economic recovery.”

Tesco is still to submit a planning application for the redevelopment of the Trinity Square shopping centre in Gateshead, which should include the flattening of the multi-storey car park.

The upgrade could include leisure and community facilities, student accommodation, a new Tesco store, shops, cafes and restaurants, a hotel and car parking.

Speaking at a meeting of the full council, Mr Kelly said: “The recession has affected some of their (Tesco) thinking and slowed this down.

“We are in the final stages of negotiations – we think we are in the last week of this and once the agreement is signed we would be in a position to speed it up.

“There are three outstanding issues I would hope that before Christmas will be resolved and we will be in a different position.”

The chief executive said he was authorised by councillors to seek the best possible deal and was acting within his remit.

It is believed Mr Kelly has had to use the car park as a bargaining tool because Tesco has presented “unacceptable” draft proposals.

The existing town centre development was approved by Gateshead Council in 1961.

The £200,000 car park was designed by architect Owen Luder, but by the time it was finished the stark concrete architecture was out of fashion.

In 1971 the structure featured in the film Get Carter, which starred Michael Caine.

Jennifer Duncan, Tesco corporate affairs manager, said: “We are making good progress on the Trinity Square development, and hope to announce further details in the New Year.”

http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays-evening-chronicle/2009/12/14/council-blocks-get-carter-car-park-demolition-72703-25386958/

So the fact that the council and Tesco's have been 'partners' for years means nothing nor, clearly, does the fact it's been an eyesore for years nor that there's been talk of getting rid of it for years... Is it Tesco's fault the rest of the place is such a mess? Is it Tesco's fault that tourists visiting the Sage or the Baltic or those staying at the Hilton rarely venture into central Gateshead to spend their money at Wilkinsons or stop for gastropub fayre at The Metropole or get a ringside seat for the impromptu bare knuckle boxing at the Trafalgar?

An alternative and more aesthetically attractive proposal would be to cover it with plants and turn it into a kind of Hanging Gardens of Gateshead...

Song for the New Depression?

Mr 'Bissonay' takes a nap

The weather according to Hokusai

MARCO POLO CALLS

Marco Polo booked for 9pm. Meeting at the Crown from 7.30pm....

FNB CHRISTMAS MEAL?

T.A.M.I. Show - finally on DVD

Celebrate!! The TAMI Show finally comes to DVD!
December 14, 4:09 PM Vintage Rock 'n' Roll Examiner Steve Marinucci

One of the rarest rock events ever captured on film, the 1964 concert known as "The T.A.M.I. Show," is finally being released on DVD March 23.

The concert, filmed at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on Oct. 29, 1964. features performances by the Rolling Stones, James Brown, Chuck Berry, the Beach Boys, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, the Supremes, and many others. The release will feature new commentary by director Steve Binder, original T.A.M.I Show radio spots, and a 20-page booklet with liner notes and rare photos and memorabilia.

The film has long been in demand by collectors and was released on VHS in edited form as "Let It Rock" that combined a second show, "The TNT Show." This release, the full show, includes the Beach Boys segment, which was edited from VHS versions. Special features include an interview with director Steve Binder, original T.A.M.I Show radio spots and a 20-page booklet featuring detailed essay and rare photos and memorabilia.

Here's the lineup on the DVD:

Jan And Dean: (Here They Come) From All Over The World
Chuck Berry: Johnny B. Goode, Maybellene
Gerry And The Pacemakers: Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying, It’s Gonna Be Alright
Chuck Berry: Sweet Little Sixteen
Gerry And The Pacemakers: How Do You Do It?
Chuck Berry: Nadine
Gerry And The Pacemakers: I Like It
Smokey Robinson & The Miracles: That’s What Love Is Made Of, You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me, Mickey’s Monkey
Marvin Gaye: Stubborn Kind Of Fellow, Pride And Joy, Can I Get A Witness, Hitch Hike
Lesley Gore: Maybe I Know, You Don’t Own Me, You Didn’t Look Around, Hey Now, It’s My Party, Judy’s Turn To Cry
Jan & Dean: The Little Old Lady (From Pasadena), Sidewalk Surfin
The Beach Boys: Surfin’ U.S.A., I Get Around, Surfer Girl, Dance, Dance, Dance
Billy J. Kramer And The Dakotas: Little Children, Bad To Me, I’ll Keep You Satisfied, From A Window
The Supremes: When The Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes, Run, Run, Run, Baby Love, Where Did Our Love Go
The Barbarians: Hey Little Bird
James Brown and The Flames: Out Of Sight, Prisoner Of Love, Please, Please, Please, Night Train
The Rolling Stones: Around And Around, Off The Hook, Time Is On My Side, It’s All Over Now, I’m Alright

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-19248-Vintage-Rock-n-Roll-Examiner~y2009m12d14-Celebrate-The-TAMI-Show-finally-comes-to-DVD

The weather according to Randy Newman

Meteor Shower

Shooting Stars Set To Light Up UK Night Sky

More than 100 shooting stars per hour could streak across the sky tonight in one of the year's most dramatic meteor showers.

The Geminid shower is one of the most anticipated sights on astronomers' calendars and is expected to peak at midnight tonight.

Forecasts show that people in the South and North West should get a cloudless view of the stars and the new Moon, coming two days later, should not interfere with visibility.

Dr Claire Bretherton, from Royal Observatory Greenwich, said: "The Geminid shower moves quite slowly so it will give people a chance to see anywhere between 120 and 160 meteors an hour.

"It's often easier to spot the stars in the early hours of the morning."

The paths of Geminid meteors appear to point back to a spot near the bright stars Castor and Pollux in the constellation Gemini, giving the shower its name.

Meteors, also called shooting stars, are the result of small particles entering the Earth's atmosphere.

As they speed towards earth they release a trail of light that quickly fades as the meteor disintegrates.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20091213/tuk-shooting-stars-set-to-light-up-uk-ni-45dbed5.html

FRIDAY NIGHT BOY COOL #36

Starfish Graveyard

'Starfish Graveyard' In Norfolk After Storm

More than 10,000 starfish have died after being washed on to a beach along the Norfolk coast during a storm.

The creatures are thought to have gathered in the shallows to feed on mussels, before being swept ashore during high tide.

Nigel Croasdale, from Hunstanton Sea Life Sanctuary, told The Times the starfish would have only survived for a few hours without water.

"This type of thing may happen once a year, depending on the weather," he said.

"When the tide returns, the bodies are usually washed back into the sea."

A local resident described the scene on the beach as "a starfish graveyard".

Starfish feed by pushing their mouths out of their stomachs and digesting other sea creatures using enzymes.

If they lose one of their five arms they have the ability to grow it back.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20091209/tuk-starfish-graveyard-in-norfolk-after-45dbed5.html

Slow Turning

Looking For The Right One

You Better Move On

Paul and Art... and Andy

Simon & Garfunkel and Andy Williams - Scarborough Fair
Uploaded by Saklas. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

Too Far Gone - the better version

NEIL YOUNG @ Too Far Gone
Uploaded by ivaxavi. - See the latest featured music videos.

Things Have Changed

Bob Dylan - Things Have Changed
Uploaded by peakers. - Explore more music videos.

Gene Barry RIP

Gene Barry, Actor of TV, Film and Stage, Dies at 90
By MICHAEL POLLAK
Published: December 11, 2009

Gene Barry, who portrayed debonair lawmen on television but whose career of more than 60 years ranged from song and dance on Broadway to science fiction, died Wednesday in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 90 and lived in Beverly Hills until about a year ago.

His death, at an assisted-living facility, was confirmed by his daughter, Elizabeth.

As the dapper star of “Bat Masterson” from 1958 to 1961, Mr. Barry sported a derby hat, gilt-tipped cane and spangled vest in the days, as the theme song said, “when the West was very young.” (The real Bat, whose full name was William Barclay Masterson, was a gambler, gunslinger and marshal who spent his later years as a New York newspaperman and died in 1921.)

In “Burke’s Law” (1963-66), Mr. Barry played the equally insouciant Los Angeles police captain, Amos Burke, an independently wealthy crime fighter with a mansion, a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce and a stream of beautiful women. In its third and final season, Burke changed professions and the show was renamed “Amos Burke, Secret Agent.” A generation later, in the 1994-95 season, Mr. Barry reprised the role, this time as chief of detectives.

Mr. Barry starred as a magazine tycoon in “The Name of the Game” (1968-71), in which he rotated starring roles with Anthony Franciosa and Robert Stack. He also starred as a wealthy movie celebrity and secret government agent in “The Adventurer” in 1972-73.

He won a Tony nomination in 1984 for his performance as Georges, the less flamboyant half of a gay couple, in “La Cage Aux Folles,” the first Broadway musical in which the principal lovers were gay men. Mr. Barry “proves a most sensitive foil — far more sensitive than you’d ever guess from his starring roles on such television series as ‘Bat Masterson’ and ‘The Name of the Game,’ ” Frank Rich wrote in The New York Times, adding that Mr. Barry sang his love songs “with tender directness.”

Mr. Barry said at the time, “I’m not playing a homosexual — I’m playing a person who cares deeply about another person.”

In 1999, the 78-year-old Mr. Barry combined musical comedy with show business reminiscences in the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan, in a show that included among other things a Maurice Chevalier impersonation. He had made his nightclub debut in the Latin Quarter in 1962.

Gene Barry was born Eugene Klass on June 14, 1919, in New York to Martin Klass, a jeweler, and Eva Klass. He was attending New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn when he won a singing contest and a scholarship to the Chatham Square School of Music. While studying there, he began singing on the New York radio station WHN.

He soon went from the Catskills to Manhattan bistros to Broadway productions, making his debut in the labor musical “Pins and Needles.” He also performed in a series of operettas at Carnegie Hall and in Broadway productions of “Rosalinda,” “The Merry Widow” and “The Would-Be Gentleman.”

The impresario Mike Todd hired him to play opposite Mae West in “Catherine Was Great” (1944). Mr. Barry met his wife, Betty, who acted under the name Julie Carson, during rehearsals.

He left “Catherine” for the musical “Glad to See You” and then moved on to straight acting roles, winning a Critic’s Circle Award for his leading role in an Equity Library production of “Idiot’s Delight.”

Mr. Barry signed a Hollywood contract in 1951. Two years later he starred in perhaps his most famous movie role, the scientist Dr. Clayton Forrester, in the George Pal production of “War of the Worlds,” based on the H. G. Wells novel. He also had a role in 2005 as Tom Cruise’s ex-father-in-law in the Steven Spielberg remake. His more than 20 movies also included “Soldier of Fortune” (1955), with Clark Gable and Susan Hayward, and “Thunder Road” (1958), with Robert Mitchum.

From the 1950s through the 1980s, Mr. Barry appeared in scores of television specials and series, including “Playhouse 90,” “General Electric Theater,” “The Twilight Zone,” “Fantasy Island,” “The Love Boat,” “Charlie’s Angels” and “Murder, She Wrote.”

His wife of 58 years died in 2003. Besides his daughter, Elizabeth, of Los Angeles, he is survived by two sons, Michael L. and Frederick J., both of Topanga, Calif., three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

In an interview with Nan Jarrett for an Internet fan site in 2000, Mr. Barry recalled that he was appearing in the final season of the television comedy “Our Miss Brooks” when a producer asked him to play Bat Masterson.

“The idea of playing a saddle-type cowboy was repulsive to me,” he said. “Then he told me about the derby hat and cane, and I went by the costume department and saw the outfit that Masterson would wear, and I couldn’t resist.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/ar...ref=obituaries

New Frontier

Donald Fagen New Frontier (1983)
Uploaded by Crichton44. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

I hear you're mad about Brubeck

... who was 89 on December 6th.



http://www.davebrubeck.com/live/

Something So Right

John Irving talks about A Prayer for Owen Meany

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p3v2j

New Paul Muldoon interview

"I’m sure there are poems that have all sorts of roles in the world, and it’s conceivable that a poem might have a moral force and be very successful. In general though I shy away from poems that have designs on one. In some sense all poems have designs [on the reader], but I mean poems that have designs as pamphlets or items of propaganda. I’m always very wary of poems that most immediately aspire to some kind of political position. Which is not to say I haven’t written any myself."

Part 1: http://www.literateur.com/2009/11/paul-muldoon-interview-part-1/
Part 2: http://www.literateur.com/2009/11/paul-muldoon-interview-part-2/
Photo by Matt Valentine http://www.mattvalentine.com/

Censored version

WOMEN IN MUSIC #33

FRIDAY NIGHT BOY COOL #35