She was an accident, born to a fourteen-year-old black girl in Depression-era Los Angeles. She never knew her father, but thought that he might have been the famous white pool player, Rudolf “Minnesota Fats” Wanderone, whom she met in the nineteen-eighties.
Both John Lennon and George Harrison loved and admired Hoagy’s songs, George singing Hong Kong Blues here.
His attempt to compose movie scores failed when his score for Hatari! was replaced by that of Henry Mancini, although his song “Just for Tonight” (a re-working of “A Perfect Paris Night”) is used in the film. (wiki)
Bats have no bankers and they do not drink
and cannot be arrested and pay no tax
and, in general, bats have it made.
Henry for joining the human race is bats,
known to be so, by few them who think,
out of the cave.
Instead of the cave! ah lovely-chilly, dark,
ur-moist his cousins hang in hundreds or swerve
with personal radar,
crisisless, kid. Instead of the cave? I serve,
inside, my blind term. Filthy four-foot lights
reflect on the whites of our eyes.
He then salutes for sixty years of it
just now a one of valor and insights,
a theatrical man,
O scholar & Legionnaire who as quickly might
have killed as cast you. Olè. Stormed with years
he tranquil commands and appears.
Li-Young Lee was born in Djakarta, Indonesia in 1957 to Chinese political exiles. Both of Lee’s parents came from powerful Chinese families: Lee’s great grandfather was the first president of the Republic of China, and Lee’s father had been the personal physician to Mao Tse-tsung. In Indonesia, Dr. Lee helped found Gamaliel University. Anti-Chinese sentiment began to foment in Indonesia, however, and Lee’s father was arrested and held as a political prisoner for a year. After his release, the Lee family fled through Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan, arriving in the United States in 1964. Lee and his parents moved from Seattle to Pennsylvania, where Dr. Lee attended seminary and eventually became a Presbyterian minister in the small community of Vandergrift. Though his father read to him frequently as a child, Lee did not begin to seriously write poems until a student at the University of Pittsburgh, where he studied with Gerald Stern.
(repost)
Happy birthday Gustavo Santaolalla 19 August 1951 is an Argentine musician, film composer and producer. He has won two Academy Awards for Best Original Score in two consecutive years, for Brokeback Mountain in 2005 and Babel in 2006. (He composed the soundtracks for North Country, Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Motorcycle Diaries)
Picking Berries from “Into the Wild” – directed by Sean Penn.
Happy birthday Michael Cacoyannis.. found this film, Women in Black, I have not seen. Life is Trouble, Death is Not from Zorba the Greek (this many of us have seen).
Previous post (Michael Cacoyannis with Jacques Cousteau)
Richard Strauss birthday too. (June 11) – ( A Space Odyssey 2001)
Malalai is one of the only police women in Kandahar. Unlike other women in the region, Malalai works alongside men, apprehending criminals and restoring justice in one of the most dangerous cities in the nation. When working outside her home and office she is always armed beneath her burka.
The story goes that Frederico Garcia Lorca (the pilot here) erroneously believed that the film by Dali and Bunuel Un Chien Andalou (an Andalucian Dog) referred to him, coming from Granada, having recently fallen out with his surrealist friends. This to my mind seems doubly pained paranoia if you have seen the film. And who needed Dali as a friend anyway? (Walt Disney actually).
One reader of my blog pointed out to me the word APOCRYPHAL is a perfect anagram of HAPPY LORCA. I took this as a sign that my examination of the apocryphal Lorcas of American poetry and poetics was ultimately a felicitous one.
“I offer myself to be devoured by Spanish peasants,” writes the poet Federico García Lorca in a newly-discovered manuscript of a poem from his portrait of the United States during the Great Depression, Poeta en Nueva York (Poet in New York).
“He had a wide network of friends, a legendary thirst for knowledge and a just-as-legendary generous nature. “When Lou found a book that he liked, he would buy at least three copies,” said George Zelenz, an architect who lives nearby. “One for himself, one in case the first got lost and one for a friend he thought might like it.”
Some people are simply compelled to create art, caring nothing for art history, critical theory, or career strategies. Bill Traylor was born a slave in 1854; after a lifetime as a cotton laborer, destitute and living on a Montgomery, Alabama, sidewalk, he began drawing. He was 83, and sold his work for nickels.
Roberta sings Fine and Mellow (youtube)
My man don’t love me
Treats me oh so mean
My man he don’t love me
Treats me awfully
He’s the, lowest man
That I’ve ever see
“I thought it was a fine movie. That night I was in the studio and received a call from Hollywood. It was from Bob Altman saying he would like to use my music in a film. Quite honestly, I said, ‘I don’t know your work, could you tell me some of the films you’ve done?’ He said Mash, and I said that’s fine, I understand that’s quite popular, but I’m really not familiar with it. Then he said there was a film I’ve probably never seen called ‘Brewster McCloud.’ I told him I just came out of the movie and thought it was an extraordinary film, use any music of mine.” From Robert Altman: Oral Biography)
On James Dean’s 80th birthday, this film probably deserves its own little mention. The James Dean Story, a 79 minute documentary chronicling the life and times of Jimmy Dean, came out two years after the young actor’s death. Most notably, the film was directed by Robert Altman, a young director who would eventually make MASH, Nashville, The Player, Gosford Park, etc. (Watch the James Dean Story by Robert Altman )
– AND DIED – BY THE GUN.
(
born on 5 June 1898 
weeps 
Godzilla composer on the left, his brother Isao (right)
(
and Leonard Cohen
