Theater, Movies, Art and Literature

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/07/weavers-folk-legend-ronnie-gilbert-dies-in-california-aged-88

The learned Doctor just gets better and better. http://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin

Great modernist classical percussion piece.

This is a very bizarre trailer. Has anyone seen this movie?

So I discovered a new way of putting myself into a hypnotic trance -- namely, trying to read Dirac's barely-comprehensible-even-to-specialists The Principles of Quantum Mechanics: http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/dirac/chapter_1.html

Martin Luther King Jr.: An Interview with Playboy Playboy Interview: Vladimir Nabokov By ALVIN TOFFLER • PLAYBOY • JANUARY 1964 Stanley Kubrick Playboy Interview part 1 50 Years of the Playboy Interview: Bette Davis Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs By DAVID SHEFF • PLAYBOY • FEBRUARY 1985

Music to go mad by.

What Did Qaddafi’s Death Smell Like? By Nicola Twilley, The New Yorker One of the installations at this year’s Art and Olfaction Awards consisted of four mortuary coolers, inside which visitors could smell the last four minutes of a famous person’s life. Last Friday, at the second annual Art and Olfaction Awards, in Los Angeles, four of the evening’s five Golden Pears went to traditional fragrances. Vegetal aromas fared particularly well. Black Pepper & Sandalwood (“a veil of Oriental spices”), Eau de Céleri (“a fresh celery blast”), and Woodcut (“an archetypal tale of man’s rape of the earth”) each claimed a trophy. Skive, an “animalistic” unisex homage to the …

Been a long time since I watched Beautiful Thing. About as sweet a coming out story as I remembered plus a couple of really cute Brit working class twinks. And the occasional flash of boy butt with a happy ending. What more could you want? Now if only I could find that Australian coming out movie from (more or less) the same time. Anybody remember the title?

Nice summary/review of my favorite book by SF writer Stanislaw Lem. Imaginary Magnitude/Golem XIV “ I think that as the years passed my impatience for conscientious and slow craft steadily grew. In order to turn illumination into narration one has to work very hard — on a quite nonintellectual level. This was one of the main reasons for taking this shortcut — from which these books emerged. I tried to imitate various styles — that of a book review, a lecture, a presentation, a speech (of a Nobel Prize laureate) and so on. These experiences were ‘boxes’ that formed the stairs I climbed high enough in order to make Golem speak. ” Stanisław Lem From his official…

'I got a scheme!' the moment Saul Bellow found his voice Ten years after his death, Bellow is still considered the greatest US prose stylist of the 20th century. His biographer Zachary Leader explores how he transformed fiction, and looks at the day in Paris that changed the course of his career http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/17/i-got-a-scheme-the-moment-saul-bellow-found-his-voice

"...Much controversy at the time came from the portrayal of Mr Humphries, the screamingly camp menswear assistant. Certainly at a time when there were so few representations of gay men it was a stereotypical one. However, now it seems much less offensive, partly because Mr Humphries emerges as the only character with any dignity and self-respect. Compared to the self-loathing of his downtrodden colleagues, his cry of 'I'm free' seems apt." http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/579093/

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/apr/12/listen-to-stephen-hawking-cover-monty-pythons-galaxy-song?CMP=share_btn_link

Well, where else to put this? http://www.veranda.com/luxury-lifestyle/a1103/joan-rivers-nyc-apartment-for-sale/?src=spr_FBPAGE&spr_id=1455_164696536

The Idea of Order at Key West Wallace Stevens She sang beyond the genius of the sea. The water never formed to mind or voice, Like a body wholly body, fluttering Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry, That was not ours although we understood, Inhuman, of the veritable ocean. The sea was not a mask. No more was she. The song and water were not medleyed sound Even if what she sang was what she heard, Since what she sang was uttered word by word. It may be that in all her phrases stirred The grinding water and the gasping wind; But it was she and not the sea we heard. For she was…

Inferno Canto III Per me si va ne la città dolente, per me si va ne l'etterno dolore, per me si va tra la perduta gente. Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore: fecemi la divina podestate, la somma sapienza e 'l primo amore. Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create se non etterne, e io etterno duro. Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate. THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE CITY OF WOE, THROUGH ME THE WAY TO ETERNAL PAIN, THROUGH ME THE WAY AMONG THE LOST. JUSTICE MOVED MY MAKER ON HIGH. DIVINE POWER MADE ME, WISDOM SUPREME, AND PRIMAL LOVE. BEFORE ME NOTHING WAS BUT THINGS ETERNAL, AND I ENDURE ETERNALLY. ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE.

John Waters at Williams festival: 'Trash and camp just don't cut it anymore' Director and writer headlining Tennessee Williams literary event in New Orleans recalls his brush with a satanic cult and the continuing importance of filth ...One of the few vice-friendly cities left in the US, New Orleans remains his spiritual home, or whatever the atheist equivalent is. Waters's supposed favourite bar in the world is here in the historic French Quarter. The Corner Pocket is a gay dive bar with tattooed strippers - filthy in exactly the way Waters likes... http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/28/john-waters-at-williams-festival-trash-and-camp-just-dont-cut-it-anymore

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/25/alfred-hitchcock-peter-ackroyd-review-catholic-controlling-celibrate

Most of What You Think You Know About Grammar Is Wrong And ending sentences with a preposition is nothing worth worrying about Smithsonian Magazine You’ve probably heard the old story about the pedant who dared to tinker with Winston Churchill’s writing because the great man had ended a sentence with a preposition. Churchill’s scribbled response: “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.” It’s a great story, but it’s a myth. And so is that so-called grammar rule about ending sentences with prepositions. If that previous sentence bugs you, by the way, you’ve bought into another myth. No, there’s nothing wrong with starting a sentence with a conjunction, …

INSIDE ARTHUR C. CLARKES MYSTERIOUS WORLD http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/14/inside-arthur-c-clarke-s-mysterious-world.html