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May 29, 2022
Scottish: Glasgow-born Angus Young is Bobby Burns on Crack.
Angus McKinnon Young (1955- )
Robert Burns, Bard of Ayrshire (1759-1796)
Posted by JD Hull at 01:02 AM | Comments (0)
May 27, 2022
Sterling Hayden: Our Greatest Lover of Being Alive.
Although actor Sterling Hayden (1916-1986) was not in love with Hollywood or acting, he was a highly regarded actor who was cast in westerns, action films and film noir for over forty years, usually as a leading man. He was also a spy, war hero, seeker, sailor, adventurer, rebel, gifted writer and eccentric's eccentric, all six foot five of him. He was authentic. Never contrived, posed, phony or obliged to be different. Never sucking up. A pure lover of being alive. Read his biography, artful screed and best work, in "Wanderer" (1977).
Posted by JD Hull at 11:17 PM | Comments (0)
May 24, 2022
Mircea Eliade's "Shamanism": A classic in the history of religions.
Or you may view it as a classic of anthropology. Whatever you call it, it is serious scholarship and in a class by itself. Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) was a famously-erudite and highly regarded University of Chicago religion professor and writer. His study "Shamanism" (about 600 pages in my 2004 edition pictured below) was first published in 1951. It covers 2500 years of shamanism all over the planet, including the Americas, Siberia, China, Indonesia and Tibet. Consider reading all or part of this deeply interesting and often strange study of the drive for a spirit-life that comes up from the Earth and dwells in the infinite.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
May 22, 2022
Anthony Burgess, Polymath: Clockwork Orange, novella or Kubrick movie, is besides the point.
Anthony Burgess's frightening 1962 dystopian novel Clockwork Orange and satire is not my favorite book. Its spectacular 1971 adaptation to Hollywood blockbuster, starring Malcolm McDowell as the sociopathic droog leader Alex DeLarge, is not my favorite Stanley Kubrick movie, either. But Burgess, a Brit who died in 1993, was a simply amazing human being who may have regarded what his now most famous work as simply a short if odd detour in his career. Burgess (1917-1993), in addition to being a celebrated writer, he was an accomplished playwright, critic, producer, linguist, translator and composer, with over 200 musical scores to his credit. Polymath--the term some of us use when Renaissance man would be an understatement, may be the right category for Burgess.
God did not make many of them.
When I was a junior in college, I went to hear Burgess, then in his mid-50s, talk extemporaneously to maybe 250 undergraduate students and answer questions. He was up there for an hour at most. He was, hands down, the most fluent, articulate human being I had ever heard speak the English language. Burgess did this without pretension, glibness or any apparent awareness of his gift for seizing exactly the right word for every nuance and sentiment out of his mouth. And his speech, rhythms and inflections were the same fielding our often precocious questions as when he was speaking continuously without notes for the first 45 minutes at the Page Auditorium lectern.
"Natural" is too wimpy and understated a word to describe what he was doing. "Symphonic" maybe? That suggests that he was somehow being carried with the sound or import of his own voice. He wasn't. I can't summon up any right words for what Burgess could do. And, of course, I am not Burgess. I've still heard no live speaker with the quality of the command of the English language Anthony Burgess had. (I heard William Buckley speak twice the following year and, as brilliant as Wild Bill was with words, it just wasn't the same.) I wish I had an audio tape of that fall evening. Burgess was joy to see and hear.
Original: May 23, 2015
Posted by JD Hull at 10:55 AM | Comments (0)
May 17, 2022
May 17, 1928
"There’s not a man in a carload of you."
- John Daniel Hull III (May 17, 1928 - December 12, 2012)
Happy birthday, Big John.
Posted by JD Hull at 06:25 AM | Comments (0)
May 16, 2022
Jack London: On Real Life
You can’t wait for Inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
— Jack London (1876-1916)
London in 1905
Posted by JD Hull at 07:55 PM | Comments (0)
May 15, 2022
Robert Frost's Work-Life Pulitzer
The difference between a job and a career is the difference between forty and sixty hours a week.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) spent his life as a poet, student, teacher, newspaper reporter, farmer, factory worker, father, husband and accomplished Yankee. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize four times.
(New York World-Telegram & Sun)
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
May 10, 2022
Partner Emeritus on Half-Windsor Knots, Bow Ties, Real Men, Everything.
Last week, in the comments of an article at Above the Law by Shannon Achimalbe entitled Guess Who Else is Reading Your Legal Blog?, our muse, hero and law god Partner Emeritus was asked out of the blue (and by yours truly) about half-Windsor knots versus full-Windsor knots in straight ties for men. He answered:
Full Windsor is credited. If you were with a "10" model, would you give her a "half" or "full" effort?
As subsequent comments that day reflect, I and many others were grateful for the answer and advice.
But that apparently got the Great Man thinking about bow-ties, which unbeknown (hopefully) to him I've worn myself frequently over the past 30 years. An hour later he also commented:
For the record, I always thought males who donned bow ties (exception: Nation of Islam) and half Windsor knotted ties were queer and it was a subtle call sign to other like minded depraved monsters. So Dan, perhaps the folks you see on K Street sporting the half Windsor are looking to swallow or ride the baloney pony; after all, AmeriKa has been on the buggery express ever since the Kommissar seized the reins of power.
So I am rethinking bow ties. And to be honest, I felt funny when I wore a bow tie one day last week and two days this week. Normally I don't care about what anyone says. But with PE, it's just different. As you know, Rhodes scholars, SCOTUS clerks, polymaths and Renaissance men around the world would kill for his fleeting approval on anything. Word is that even Brad Pitt looks to PE on how to dress his children.
I keep thinking. Bow ties. Is there something wrong with me?
J. Daniel Hull, Budapest, before the Great Neutering.
Original post: 12/24/2015
Posted by JD Hull at 12:13 AM | Comments (0)
May 06, 2022
Wilder
“If you are going to tell the truth be funny or they will kill you.”
— Billy Wilder, American Filmmaker (1906-2002)
Posted by JD Hull at 07:20 PM | Comments (0)
May 02, 2022
Prisoner of Rock 'n' Roll: Van Morrison.
All the girls walk by dressed up for each other. And the boys do the boogie-woogie in the corner of the street.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:05 PM | Comments (0)
May 01, 2022
The Governess, 1739, Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin (1699-1779)
Posted by JD Hull at 11:53 AM | Comments (0)