And its final shot is a badass view of the Millennium Falcon just barely cresting a treeline. What a nice change from the special effects of the prequel trilogy, which sometimes looked like a videogame.
I am strongly getting the sense that the coming trilogy will not disappoint, as the prequels did.
I’m becoming concerned … I keep seeing more troubling signs that I am getting older.
I can’t eat pizza and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream all day without feeling yucky. And I have gone shopping and DELIBERATELY looked for vegetables.
I bitch inwardly about the quality of America’s public education system all the time. (Don’t even get me started.) I actually begin some of my (admittedly peculiar) inner monologues with the words, “There was a time in this country when …” I have also lamented that “things were different 20 years ago.”
It recently dawned on me that my longstanding idolization of Kevin Smith may be waning … last year’s “Tusk” just didn’t do it for me, and his recent appearance on “The Talking Dead” just seemed to feature too much childish sex humor. I cringed. (Lengthy analogies about oral sex aren’t THAT hilarious, people. I suggest they have a 10-second half life.) I still think that Smith is brilliant; I just think maybe his particular style of humor might better appeal to a guy in his 20’s.
In the Marvel movies’ upcoming “Civil War” storyline entries, I’m firmly on the side of Captain America, and not Iron Man. Yeah, Tony Stark has the wit and the charm and the girls and the cash. But Cap has character and good American values, with an emphasis on civil liberties. Cap would never subject black people to an unreasonable search and seizure. He wouldn’t enter a private home without a warrant. And he would uphold a legal wall of separation between church and state. Dunno about Tony.
Tori Amos is still cool, but she sounds NUTS in her interviews.
I played with a friend’s little girl on the swings the other day … and I actually got DIZZY after donning a swing myself, and trying to swing as high as her. THAT was disconcerting.
My doctor told me to knock off all the sugar, and I am totally taking her seriously.
My buddy shared a picture today of the original Star Wars cast in 1977. When I was a tot, I looked up to Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia. When I was in fifth grade, “Return of the Jedi” Leia was my heart’s desire. (I need not even mention in which outfit.) Today, 1977 Carrie Fisher looks like a sweet girl who could be my college sophomore daughter. (Seriously, she looks YOUNG, people.) Harrison Ford looks like that older kid in our hometown with the camaro, who I need to keep away from her. Mark Hamill looks like that sweet kid down the block who wants a date with her, but won’t get one.
My friends from Longwood High School are now teachers at Longwood High School. The cognitive dissonance connected with that is significant.
And tonight it has dawned on me that (I can’t believe I am saying this) Depeche Mode is getting maybe a little played out for me. Oh God, I can’t believe I just typed that. I still love MODE, I swear it! I just think that after “Violator” has been in my playlist for two decades, it’s maybe time to retire the lesser songs like “World In My Eyes” and find some more new music.
But not “Policy of Truth.” THAT SONG WILL LIVE FOREVER. (And never again is what you swore the time before.)
You heard it here first.
Okay, you probably DIDN’T hear it here first; because every time there is new footage for “Star Wars: the Force Awakens,” the Internet goes bananas.
Here it is anyway.
Here’s a particularly nice shot of the Whitestone Bridge, connecting Queens, New York, with the Bronx (and Connecticut beyond). My Longwood High School Alumnus James Dentel shot this recently, and he was kind enough to let me use it.
This is the bridge referenced in my poem, “Amanda,” which was featured by Dagda Publishing and by Dead Snakes.
I used live not far from here. Yes, New York can be a rough place, but Whitestone, Queens and adjacent Beechurst were two of the greatest neighborhoods I ever inhabited.
It’s the quick November dark that descends annually, silently on us like a vast black cat – just after we turn our clocks back for daylight savings time.
I’ll be greeting the newly early dark tonight by relaxing with Issue 8 of Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine. I’m going to revisit two poems that I especially like: Scott Thomas Outlar’s “Sucking Vapors” and Erren Geraud Kelly’s “Coffeehouse Poem #43.”
“One link is missing, Prospero,
“My magic is my own;
“Happy Miranda does not know
“The figure that Antonio
“The Only One, Creation’s O,
“Dances for Death alone.”
— from Antonio’s refrain, in W. H. Auden’s
“The Sea and the Mirror”
Known also as the praying mantis.
We’ve got ’em in New York. But they are both larger and far more numerous in Virginia.
Apparently, the ancient Greeks regarded them as magical creatures who could tell lost travelers the way home.
“Oh mother,
“What tree is this?
“What wounds are these?
“I am Attis on the pine.
“Christ on the cedar.
“Odin on the world ash.”
— from “Arkham Asylum: A Serious House On Serious Earth,” by Grant Morrison and illustrated by Dave McKean
People tend to think of either “The Dark Knight Returns” of “The Killing Joke” as the seminal “dark” Batman graphic novel.
I suggest that this trounces both of them.
Well, this is pretty meta … Dead Snakes has featured two poems about “Dead Snakes,” by author Mary Bone. And they’re both quite good.
http://deadsnakes.blogspot.com/2015/10/mary-bone-two-poems.html
I visited the gardens at Dumbarton Oaks in Georgetown the other day — after a cruise down Wisconsin Avenue past a couple of old haunts I frequented in my 20’s with characters like Nickolai Butkevich and Rhett Carlson.
The gardens were beautiful, and a sharp fir smell greets entrants like a rarefied, ethereal, quiet host. It reminded me of Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, another quiet place to which I’d like to return one day.
If you’re in the Washington area, and you’d like to see for yourself, check out Dumbarton Oaks’ website here:
