An Adrienne Rich's Day Celebration

     I celebrated Adrienne Rich's Day by eating breakfast at my local poet house. A poet house, you’ll find, is like a pancake house, but with better coffee.

     Adrienne Rich's Day (May 16) is a made-up holiday. It doesn’t exist, although Rich was born on the 16th of May. But that doesn’t stop me from celebrating Adrienne Rich's Day to the fullest. I’d already written out my Poets’ Day cards, trimmed the Poets’ Day tree and opened each one of my Poets’ Day gifts. All that was left to do was brunch at the Poet House.

     There I heard Lewis Carroll as he ordered the seafood omelet with extra oysters.

     "We cannot do with more than four," his server responded. "To give a hand to each."

     Carroll frowned, and when his omelet came, he complained that the lobster was baked too brown. "I must sugar my hair," he said in frustration. He had the server take away the omelet and bring the soup of the evening, beautiful soup, instead.

     George Gordon, Lord Byron said that he wasn’t hungry, but I caught him staring at Emily Dickinson’s waffles. Dickinson led the poets in saying grace in the name of the butterfly, and of the birds, and of the breeze, amen. She washed down her waffles with the sherry which the guest leaves.

     Allen Ginsberg let me have a bite of his kosher Zen New Jersey nowhere, howling as he sipped his hot matzo ball soup. Meanwhile, Lawrence Ferlinghetti ate a good deal of spaghetti.

     Along came Adrienne Rich, who ordered strong black coffee. It came nestled sensuously between the waitress’s breasts.

     Langston Hughes had the raisin toast in the sun, but said that it was dried up. Edgar Allan Poe had the toast as well. His came with cognac and three red roses. When asked if he wanted a side of bacon with that, Poe said, "Nevermore." When the check came, Poe was nowhere to be found.

     Oscar Wilde went wild when served his Oscar Meyer wiener. Robert Frost stopped by to watch the powdered sugar fall on my french toast, but he couldn’t stay. "I have promises to keep," he said. "And miles to go before I sleep."

     William Shakespeare ordered the turkey dinner, and made much ado about stuffing. But all was as he liked it in the end. He washed down his meal with a winter’s ale.

     It was impossible to tell what Robert Pinsky wanted for an entree, so we put him in charge of ordering dessert. He chose Basho, banana pudding. It was the perfect ending to the perfect Adrienne Rich's Day celebration.

***Author's Note: An earlier version of this poetic fantasy appeared in Wild Violet literary magazine. ***

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Erin Watches Movies

In March, I read The Big Short, and over the past weekend, I finally watched the movie version on Netflix. 

It’s a very good film. Although it's no secret I’m a big Christian Bale fan, and I really enjoyed his performance as Dr. Michael Burry, I thought Steve Carell’s performance was the best. (I did appreciate how Bale was framed so that the left side of his face was de-emphasized to help create the illusion that he had a glass eye, like the real Michael Burry. Good cinnamon tography.)

I didn’t realize it while I was watching it, but later when Tit Elingtin watched the movie at my suggestion, I noticed Tracy Letts in the cast list. As you may recall, I heard his name in “HardcoverBound 2,” first thought he was a female and probably quite feminist playwright, and then thought to associate him with the films Bug and August: Osage County. 

Tracy Letts has a small role in The Big Short. It makes sense. He’s a theatre kid, writing plays and acting in movies. Also, his mother was the writer Billie Letts, who wrote Where the Heart Is. It was turned into a movie starring Natalie Portman and Ashley Judd. (I saw it in the movie theater with my friend Jamie in 2000.) Judd, who was in Bug, has thus appeared in films by two different Lettses. 

I didn't read this.

But I digress. In trying to find out a little more about Letts’ acting career, I found upon a photo of Letts with Rebecca Hall and Michael C. Hall (no relation to one another). The Halls and Letts are involved in a film called Christine, scheduled to be released in October (next month).

I recently saw Michael C. Hall in Kill Your Darlings, the drama in which Daniel Radcliffe played Allen Ginsberg. I loved that movie. David Cross was adorable as Ginsberg’s poet father, Dane DeHaan* is dreamy even though Lucien Carr was a shit boyfriend to Allen (repressed much?), and Radcliffe is now my second-favorite movie Ginsberg after James Franco. I’ll always have a special place in my heart for the Norman Reedus/Keifer Sutherland/Courtney Love film Beat, with my sweet sweet baby Kyle Secor as David Kammerer, Carr’s creepy stalker. The Kammerer character in KYD is much better written and sympathetic, and Hall does an excellent job playing him.

Rebecca Hall, of course, played the long-suffering wife of Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) in The Prestige. It’s one of my favorite movies, and I’m not the only fan. The Simpsons had its season premiere this past weekend. Mr. Burns re-instated a vaudeville-like stage show like he remembered from his childhood, including a magic act performed by twins Sherri and Terri that referenced The Prestige.

I DID read Christopher Priest's novel - after I saw the movie

I’ve also been watching Rebecca Hall as Edwardian narcissist Sylvia Tietjens, opposite Benedict Cumberbatch, in Parade’s End. She will play the title character in Christine.

Christine is Christine Chubbuck, a real person whom I read about in He Who Shall Remain Shameless. 

Sylvia Tietjens isn’t a very sympathetic character. One tends to feel more sympathy for husband Christopher, who is desperately in love with spunky suffragist Ms. Valentine Wannop (Adelaide Clemens, a young Australian who played Myrtle Wilson’s sister in The Great Gatsby), but too old-fashioned to divorce Sylvia. I'm on episode 2 of the 4-part miniseries, and so far the most scandalous thing Christopher and Valentine have done is get lost in the fog and stay out together all night…sitting next to each other. Just sitting, physical contact at an absolute minimum. It’s like the opposite of Jane Eyre. Where Edward Fairfax Rochester was not concerned enough about pursuing the woman he loved while in a bad marriage, Christopher Tietjens was probably too concerned. Lots of unresolved longing and surreptitious eye contact ensue.

Christine Chubbuck, conversely, is a very sympathetic character. Life dealt her a hand so much worse than she deserved. Her severe depression cost her her life. Live on television. We can't see the actual footage, thank Something, but we will see a dramatized version. 

*I saw him in the trailer for Tulip Fever while waiting for Love and Friendship (a Jane Austen adaptation) to start in the movie theater. I want to see that. Christine might be too sad, even though I'm sure Rebecca Hall's acting will be great. Let's see Tulip Fever instead. As of this writing, its release is planned for February 2017. 

No, I did not read this book.

Why You Should Watch ’11.22.63’ on Hulu

First, a confession: I’ve never read a Stephen King book. Not a one. I’ve read a short story from the Salem’s Lot universe in a vampire anthology, and I’ve read an excerpt from On Writing. I did not read 11.22.63. I didn’t even pay much attention to the Under the Dome miniseries when it was on, although I have seen Misery more than once.

I wanted to watch 11.22.63 because the gal one cube over from me at the Day Job recommended it. I soon discovered there are many reasons to watch this Hulu miniseries, reasons that make it much better than Under the Dome.

1. James Franco. I enumerated the reasons I appreciate the older Franco brother one Hanukkah night. He’s still my favorite film Allen Ginsberg. (Yeah, I still haven’t seen Kill Your Darlings. I’m behind on my writer biopics.) He may be one of my people, one of the bi/pans, but that remains undetermined. He’s definitely a cute Jewish boy with curly hair, though.

In this miniseries, he plays a high school English teacher. He does so convincingly. I think James Franco might actually make a good English teacher in real life. He would be a distraction to the students who like boys, but still.

2. Lucy Fry is Marina Oswald. You may remember Lucy Fry as the Moroi princess Lissa Dragomir in the Vampire Academy movie. Here she plays the physically and emotionally abused wife of Lee Harvey Oswald. She warms to the advances of historically fictitious character Bill Turcotte, played by the lovely young English actor George MacKay, a Kentucky farm boy enlisted as a helper by Franco’s character Jake. Sadly, Bill and Marina are not destined for the happy ending that Lissa and Christian Ozera enjoy.

I read in a Goodreads discussion group that the character Bill did not appear in the book, but was added for the miniseries.

3. The plot is genuinely intriguing. It has a wrinkle in time – a magical closet that takes a person back to a specific date in 1960, and no matter how long they stay, only two minutes have passed in the modern world. Diner owner Al, losing a battle with cancer, recruits Jake to use the portal to go back in time and follow Lee Harvey Oswald to determine if Oswald is, in fact, the sole killer responsible for the murder of President Kennedy. If he is sure of Oswald’s guilt, Jake is supposed to kill Oswald so that the president lives and, Al hopes, the Vietnam War will end much, much sooner than it did historically.

4. Al is played by Chris Cooper. I enumerated in the In Cold Blood post the film projects that make Cooper such an important character actor. It helps that he kissed Kevin Spacey. I mean, I don’t know if it helps his career, but it helps me, personally. It’s not a positive example of lgbtq+ media representation, but in the 1990s, we were lucky to see same-sex kisses on the big screen at all.

5. Speaking of kisses, this Stephen King-derived material is surprisingly romantic. Bill/Marina is only the secondary romantic plot; Jake finds love in the past with Sadie Dunhill (Sarah Gadon, the heroine of Dracula Untold), a librarian. Of course, as Al warns Jake, if you push against the past, the past pushes back. Jake’s pursuit of Oswald places Sadie in grave danger, causing Jake to wonder if his true mission is to live a long, happy life with Sadie, and the president be damned.

6. Sadie’s favorite book is From Here to Eternity. When Jake first lays eyes on Sadie, she’s sitting on a park bench, reading From Here to Eternity. The dust jacket photo of James Jones appears prominently in the scene. The two discuss the book, mentioning that the book is better than the movie. (It is. It is much, much better. And the movie’s still great.) Later, when Jake thinks all is lost, he hallucinates or imagines Sadie sitting on a bench in a bus depot, reading From Here to Eternity.

All 8 parts have now been released, so if you have access, check it out. It’s science fiction, and there’s a touch of Kingly horror, and there’s even a touch of a dystopian present, but don’t feel bound by any one genre. It’s much more interesting stuff than Under the Dome, although maybe not quite as spectacular as The Shining.

The Hanukkah Hotness, Night 3: The Franco Brothers

Tonight's Hanukkah Hotties are a 2-fer, like the Gyllenhaal sibs: James and Dave Franco. The Francos have a father of Spanish and Portuguese descent, and their mother is the Jewish one. James is the older of the native Californian brothers.



The first time I noticed James Franco was in Spider-Man (2002). He's in all three of the Spiderman films that star Tobey Maguire. I'm not a big fan of the first two, but I do have a certain affection for the third, as I wrote about in "Spiderman's Aunt May is a Goddess."

Lately, you may have seen him and Seth Rogan in "Bound 3," a frame-for-frame remake of Kimye's (Kanye West and Kim Kardashian's) "Bound 2."

By far my favorite James Franco project, though, is Howl, in which he plays Allen Ginsberg (like yesterday's Hanukkah Hottie, Daniel Radcliffe). His other literary projects have included the film adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert's phenomenally popular Eat, Pray, Love (book review here by Mal at Lazy Boleyn blog) and William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.

The latter caused a bit of a flap in September 2013 when a tie-in edition of the classic was released with Franco's face on the cover.

This inspired Minh Le to postulate what might happen if Franco's face were on ALL the book covers.









Okay, so maybe James Franco isn't William Faulkner or Allen Ginsberg, but he does write. As Goodreads will tell you, he's written Actors Anonymous, A California Childhood, and more. He also wrote a foreword to Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth by Hermann Hesse (translated into English from the German by Damion Searls).



Some scoff at his Renaissance-man literary pretentions, but I think it's rather sexy.



Bonus: James rates his own page in Color Me Swoon, a coloring book for big girls.

Note last year's Hanukkah Hottie Joseph Gordon-Levitt to the left of Channing Tatum on the cover. I may have bought this for myself earlier this month at Barnes and Noble.

Dave is a bit less well-known than his big brother, but he's in one movie I particularly like: Warm Bodies. Unfortunately, his character gets eaten by a zombie. But Dave is still fun to look at.



I couldn't find a picture of him reading, though.



So, which Franco is your favorite Franco?

The Hanukkah Hotness, Night 2: Daniel Radcliffe

Happy second night of Hanukkah!

For a long time, I didn't realize Daniel Radcliffe was Jewish. When I found out, I was really excited. Not that there's anything wrong with being non-Middle Eastern. It's just nice to belong to the same tribe as the cool kids.

From Sorceror's Stone and Chamber of Secrets, Daniel Radcliffe was just "that kid who plays Harry Potter." In Prisoner of Azkaban, Daniel Radcliffe became "that cute kid who plays Harry Potter." Then, right around the time of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - right about the time he starred in Equus on London's West End - it became, "Wow, Dan Radcliffe is an actual hot guy."



As I wrote here, I do not mind his vertically-challenged status. Height is not required for hotness.

Grace Norwich published Daniel Radcliffe: No Ordinary Wizard in 2005, when Radcliffe was 15-ish and still in the "cute; I'd be into him if I was in high school" phase. I bought it (at a card shop that also sold books, now out of business) because I was as Potter-obsessed then as I am today, and I read it, too, although the writing is clearly intended for a teen/tween audience.

For your edification, I'll quote a few passages.

"...Dan shares a lot of similarities with the fictional character that has made him a household name. First off, they are both British, and very cute!...'We have curiosity [and] loyalty,' Dan told People magazine...Another similarity that Dan and the fictional wizard seem to share is a level of wisdom and maturity that is beyond their years, which is probably due to the fact that they both had to handle a great deal of responsibility at such a young age."



"Daniel Jacob Radcliffe was born on July 23, 1989, in London, England, to Alan Radcliffe and Marcia Gresham. He grew up in the well-to-do neighborhood of Fulham, in the southwest part of the city. Daniel attended Sussex House, an exclusive all-boys private school in Chelsea, where his favorite classes were gym and science."



On how Dan came to audition for the role of Harry Potter: "One summer Dan went to the theater with his parents to see Stones in His Pockets, a comedy about two extras on a big American movie shooting in Ireland. In the row directly in front of the Radcliffe family were two men who knew his father. And they were behaving oddly. Instead of concentrating on the play in front of them, the men kept turning around to stare at Dan....The two men turned out to be none other than David Heyman and the screenwriter, Steve Kloves."



"More than ten thousand fans gathered to scream and swoon when Dan arrived at the world premiere of Harry Potter in London. At the momentous event, Dan watched the film for the third time. Although he loved the final product, he hated seeing himself on the screen, especially that evening."



"There were a lot of people who would weigh in on this film, but perhaps there was no one more important than J.K. Rowling. She made her firm pronouncement after seeing the film. 'I think Dan nailed it,' she said in a written statement later published by the Toronto Star..."



"Not surprising are Dan's sophisticated tastes. He likes music from bands that broke up way before he was even born. But Dan has been hanging around adults on film sets for a long time now, and has picked up a thing or two. He also is the only child of two very sophisticated parents, who took him to the theater regularly and exposed him to a lot. Dan wasn't going to settle for any Britney Spears or the latest boy band. Instead Dan is into edgier stuff. In fact, with his main musical passion, punk, he doesn't even like the current bands."



"He has a ton of crushes on the leading ladies of rock. He admitted to Radio 1 that he is a sucker for Brody Dalle, the lead singer of the punk band the Distillers, who sports enormous tattoos and thick black eyeliner. 'I'm madly in love with her!' Dan said. He also professed love to Marcie Bolen, the adorable red-head guitarist for another punk band, the Von Bondies."



"When the inevitable time arrives for Dan and Harry to go their separate ways, Dan's future will be wide open and anything is possible. Who knows what he will try next?"



We do! We've already seen him in The Woman in Black. Next up, we'll see him in the adaptation of Joe Hill's horror novel Horns and as Allen Ginsberg (squee! He's my dead gay Jewish boyfriend) in Kill Your Darlings.

The Hanukkah Hotness, Night 2: Hank Azaria

Henry Albert (Hank) Azaria is my Sephardic Hanukkah Hottie, 'cause after all, you can't even spell Hanukkah without Hank. Why do I love Hank Azaria? The short answer is, The Simpsons. But he's so much more than the voice of Chief Wiggum, Apu, Comic Book Guy, Frank Grimes, et al.

Though that would be enough.

His literary-leaning accomplishments include:

• Playing the role of Mitch Albom in the TV-movie version of Tuesdays With Morrie
• Reading the role of Allen Ginsberg in voiceover in the PBS documentary Chicago 10
• Playing Walter Plane in Great Expectations (the version with Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow)
• Appeared in a production of David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago in London's West End

I like the sound of that last one. 

Of course, when our people actually lived in Egypt, we weren't the pharaohs, we were the slaves.

David Mamet, by the way, is himself an Orthodox Jew. Along with Rabbi David Kushner, he wrote a series of Torah commentaries called Five Cities of Refuge, and he's explored anti-Semitism in works including The Old Religion and The Wicked Son.

My #1 reason for interest in David Mamet, though, is that in 2005 he wrote a screenplay for James Jones' Whistle. See this listing at IonCinema, for example. Apparently it's never been produced. That makes me sad. I want it to be produced, and I want Jim Caviezel to have a small role as, say, the doctor who wants to cut off Prell's leg, or something.

Mamet was a guest star on one episode of The Simpsons. He was supposed to have written the treacly 1980s family sitcom Thicker Than Waters, with which Homer becomes obsessed.

Evernight Birthday Blog Hop Winner + Caturday

I'm going to kill two birds with one post and announce the winner of my leg of the Evernight Publishing Birthday Blog Hop while hooking up with A Catlike Curiosity for Caturday (at the risk of being labeled a crazy cat lady).

The winner of a signed paperback copy of my Evernight Press anthology title, Indecent Encounters, as randomly selected by Random.org, is Laurie. Congratulations! I'll be e-mailing you for your mailing address. If you didn't win my prize, don't worry - you're still entered in the grand prize drawing. Good luck!

Now enjoy these frisky felines. This fancy lil guy cracks me so consistently up.

Kitten in a man's shoe.

Jack Kerouac and a cat.

Allen Ginsberg had a cat named Howl.

"Taco cat" is a palindrome.

Doing her impression of Mark Twain.

If you like bookish cats, perhaps you will enjoy The Literary Cat on Tumblr. It has featured my own lil guy, James.

When Bigger Isn't Always Better

I saw Daniel Radcliffe on The Talk yesterday. This was the first I'd heard of his upcoming role in a film called Kill Your Darlings, in which he'll play Allen Ginsberg. The plot revolves around a murder committed by Lucien Carr in 1944.

[Sidebar: Presumably, this refers to the killing of David Kammerer. In the film Beat, David Kammerer is played by another actor I greatly admire - Kyle Secor, who played the sexually conflicted homicide detective Timothy James Bayliss on Homicide: Life on the Streets (on the right; his TV partner is the brilliant actor Andre Braugher).

In Beat, Ginsberg is portrayed by Ron Livingston. Norman Reedus, perhaps best remembered from Boondock Saints, played Lucien Carr, and Courtney Love made an appearance as Joan, the wife of William S. Burroughs.]

I'm so excited that Daniel Radcliffe is attempting to play Ginsberg. I think I will like this as much as, or even more than, James Franco's portrayal in Howl.

Some of the discussion on yesterday's talk show was about the fact that Dan hasn't really grown much (in height) since he first donned the robes of the Boy Who Lived.

This does not bother me at all. I still say Radcliffe's grown into a very attractive young man. Here he is at age 18 in a photo by David Dj Johnson.

You don't have to be tall to be beautiful - right, Tom Cruise as Lestat?

Tom Cruise as Lestat agrees.

This height-challenged hottie gets tons of great movie roles based on books, from The Outsiders to The Firm to War of the Worlds. You know, I used to think he wasn't very attractive, but the older I get, the more I like Tom Cruise. (No Scientology jokes - I respect everyone's religious freedom. But I will say this again - his wife is not as good a Rachel Dawes as Maggie Gyllenhaal is.)

You know who does a hella good impression of Tom Cruise? Miles Fisher.

Howl, and One Lovely Blog Award from Shah Wharton

Everyone over the age of 16 should see the movie Howl, starring James Franco as American poet Allen Ginsberg. It's a brilliant film about a seminal American book. Every word of dialogue comes from Ginsberg's poetry and writings or the transcript of the obscenity trial to which the book's publisher was subjected. (The publisher won.)

James Franco is a fine actor, and I like him in this, but I don't quite buy the illusion of him as Allen Ginsberg. He doesn't quite have the right spirit. Maybe that's just because I so admire Ginsberg and his poetry. When he died in 1997, losing his cancer battle at only 71, I grieved for his loss as if I knew him. I didn't know him, except through his words, but that's what good poetry does to you. When the poet dies, a little part of the reader dies, too.

The movie also has David Strathairn, as the prosecutor in the obscenity trial. Why do I love David Strathairn? For playing the regal Theseus in A Midsummer Night's Dream. (The Hippolyta opposite him isn't very Amazonian, but it's too late to go back and fix that now.) He's kind of big in literature-based films. If you're a huge fan of children's books and their screen adaptations, you may know him as Arthur Spiderwick in The Spiderwick Chronicles. If you're a fan of Stephen King adaptations, you might known him as Dolores Claiborne's asshole husband. However, his best-known role may be as Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck, an intriguing historical drama with the hotness factor of George Clooney + Robert Downey, Jr. (That one was not based on a book; Clooney wrote it with Grant Heslov.)

(This is Titania and Bottom, not Theseus and Hippolyta, but we do know from the play that Theseus and Titania had been lovers.)

I wrote a derivative poem once, based on "Footnote to Howl." I call it "Moist Howlette."

"Sacred! Sacred! Sacred! My poet, my prophet, my Jewish saint and guru declares that all is sacred!

The world is divine! The soul is divine! The skin is sacred! The vulva is sacred! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole sacred!

Everybody’s sacred! Everywhere’s sacred! Every thing is sacred! Every day is an eternity! Every man and woman is an angel!

The sacred whore’s as holy as the seraphim! The sex worker is holy as you my soul are holy! The clitoral orgasm’s as sacred as the vaginal orgasm!

The keyboard is sacred the poem is sacred the voice is sacred the hearers and readers are sacred the ecstasy is sacred!

Holy Erin holy Allen holy Purrrrrrrrr holy Kathryn E holy Walt Whitman holy Joan Jett holy fuckers holy every human angel!

Sacred the vibrators! Sacred, the cock and the cock ring and the clit and the clit ring!

Sacred the groaning saxophone! Sacred the orgasm apocalypse! Sacred the womb scrotum balls peace and junk and drums!

Sacred the solitudes of men’s rooms and elevators! Sacred the strip clubs filled with the millions! Sacred the mysterious rivers of cum and pussy juice and blood and sweat and tears under the sheets!

Sacred the lesbian and the gay man! Sacred the bisexual! Sacred the straight feminist and sexual shepherds of rebellion!

Sacred forgiveness! Mercy! Charity! Faith! Love! Affection! Touch! Sacred! Ours! Bodies! Pain and pleasure! Magnanimity!

Sacred the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of Allen Ginsberg’s dear departed soul!"

And now for something completely different.

This award comes from Shah Wharton, writer extraordinaire and proprietress of Words in Sync. As an award recipient, I'm supposed to pass the award along to 15 other bloggers.

These are 15 of the most fabulous-est blogs, in alphabetical order:

Catch the Rush
DAT's So Cute
Dorothy Surrenders
For the Love of Blogs
Gee/K/Ink
Gene's Rattle Bag
Jeffrey Beesler's World of the Scribe
Little Luck Tree
Mom's Bookshelf and More
Poetry and Zombies
The Best of Everything
The Demon Stole My Pencil
The Gypsy Art Show
Where Fantasy and Love Take Flight
Word Up, Nerd Up

Quite an eclectic collection, is it not?

If your blog is on the list, this post serves as your notification that you've been awarded. Thanks again, Shah!

James Franco image: Charlotte Badalucco, Creative Commons license