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Nolan vs. The Bird Bullies!

Avian altercation!  A chirpity-chirpity ruckus erupted at my fifth floor windowsill this morning … two sparrows were biting and plucking at a third.  The aggressors had darker head coloring; the victim’s was lighter — I’m guessing this means it was either a female or a juvenile?

I tapped the glass pretty hard, and the bad birds took off.  Then this beleaguered bird-twerp hung out for a minute and actually looked at me as if in acknowledgment.  (Yeah, the picture quality is cruddy, but you can see the little fluff-nugget looking at me.)

I started searching my memory for a bird-themed superhero I could then proclaim myself to be … but both Marvel’s “Falcon” and Michael Keaton’s “Birdman” (2014) seemed fairly lame.  My girlfriend, who is ever more cultured than I am, invoked Walt Whitman instead:

“I sound my barbaric ‘YAWP’ over the roofs of the world!!!”



Postcard of The Ritz Grill Drive-In, Little Rock, Arkansas, circa 1930-1945

Tichnor Brothers.

“Growth isn’t loud.”

“The Kiss,” Ambrogio Alciati, circa 1900

“There is a tide in the affairs of men …”

“There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.”

― William Shakespeare , Julius Caesar



Amazon Kindle Edition, Washington Square Press, 2004

Throwback Thursday: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning. It smells like … victory.”

“Apocalypse Now” (1979) was an institution in the house where I grew up.  I think most fans will agree that Robert Duvall’s line here was the most iconic.

I am linking to The Dollar Theater on Youtube for the clip below.



Illustration by Franklin Booth for Rosamund Marriott Watson’s “Wind of Dreams,” 1909