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- “I know why the caged bird sings, ah me…” — poet Paul Laurence Dunbar
- “[Poetry is] a way of trying to come to peace with the world.” — poet Lucille Clifton
- “The films that I love are very straightforward stories, like really old-fashioned stuff.” — Paul Thomas Anderson
- A Personal Memory: or: What Dog Day Afternoon Means to Me
- Happy Birthday, Hediyeh Tehrani
- “All I actually wanted was for my work to be useful.”–Claudius Afolabi Siffre
- “I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts.” — George Orwell
- “People are always asking me if I thought Elvis was a handsome man and my answer is ‘I am not blind you know’!” — Millie Kirkham
- Physical Media Booklet Essay: The Podcast
- “And the role of the fatal chorus / I agree to take on” — Anna Akhmatova
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Category Archives: On This Day
“If you have to be in a soap opera try not to get the worst role.” — Judy Garland
It’s the great, the irreplaceable, Judy Garland’s birthday. The screengrab above is from John Cassavetes’ 1963 film A Child is Waiting. This film is not really well-known, except among Cassavetes/Garland completists – but some serious Cassavetes fans don’t know about … Continue reading
Posted in Actors, Movies, On This Day
Tagged John Cassavetes, Judy Garland, Stanley Kramer
6 Comments
Mike Doughty, if you’re out there …
It’s singer-songwriter Mike Doughty’s birthday today. My brother Brendan introduced me to Doughty’s music back in the day – specifically the album Skittish, which I still own – because I still believe in owning my music, not renting it from … Continue reading
Happy Birthday to “Mr. Excitement”, Jackie Wilson
Jackie Wilson’s voice is otherworldly. He had a four-octave range. You listen and there are times where you can’t even believe what you’re hearing. Wilson started out in Detroit talent contests, where he had a tendency to win. Big fish … Continue reading
“I was smart enough to go through any door that opened.” — Joan Rivers
It’s her birthday today. A couple of days before Joan Rivers died, when there was still some hope she would pull through, I thought it would be a great opportunity to talk about this legend with someone who loves her, … Continue reading
Posted in Actors, On This Day, Television
4 Comments
“Art is about building a new foundation, not just laying something on top of what’s already there.” — Prince
It’s his birthday today. It still doesn’t seem real. I still have moments where I think, “…. wait a second … he’s dead?” In April of 2016, I attended Ebertfest. Directly following that, I flew to Albuquerque to attend the … Continue reading
“I dread to think about life without singing.” — Tom Jones
I’ve written about him before, mostly here. He’s still out there. His voice is not only intact but as powerful as it ever was. He is recently a widow after 59 years of marriage. He is beloved by his fan … Continue reading
“I want them to think ‘He was a nice guy. He did pretty good and we loved him’.” — Dean Martin
From Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams, by Nick Tosches. Getting to the heart of it all. His schoolmates had never really known him. Even his loving family could not tell for sure what lay within this … Continue reading
“I want to write poems that will be non-compromising.” — poet Gwendolyn Brooks
It’s her birthday today. I first encountered Gwendolyn Brooks’s stuff in Humanities in high school. Let’s hear it for public education. It’s only in retrospect that I can really see how good the curriculum was. We did a unit on … Continue reading
“When people ask me if I am a feminist film maker, I reply I am a woman and I also make films.” — Chantal Akerman
It’s her birthday today. The news of the death of pioneering Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman in 2015 came as a shock. She was young. 65 years old. Even worse, it was reported as a potential suicide. Either way, it was … Continue reading
“Rock n’ roll! It’s the music of puberty.” — Suzi Quatro
Suzy Quatro was born on this day. In July of 2020 , I reviewed the documentary Suzi Q, about Suzi Quatro. Because it was July 2020, the tour she had planned, alongside the doc, had to be canceled. Or, at … Continue reading