Almanac for May 18th

Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for May 18th: https://ko-fi.com/post/May-18-Go-Tell-It-On-the-Mountain-C0C01FR4CC

Author Julie S. Howlin post of the day: Bertrand Russell

Bummer May 18th

May 18, 1927: Local school board treasurer Andrew Kehoe rigs explosives inside the Bath Township, Michigan elementary school to explode. He murders his wife and sets his house and barn on fire. Kehoe also fills his automobile with nails and explosives, detonating it and killing himself and sending shrapnel flying. The local mail carrier loses a leg when the vehicle explodes and later dies from his injuries. 

As a result of the school explosion and detonation of the vehicle, 38 children and a total of five adult victims are killed. The exact reason for Kehoe’s rampage is unknown, but he may have been upset about losing a local election and his wife’s increasingly poor health.

May 18, 1980: Mount St. Helens in Skamania County, Washington State, erupts. An estimated 57 people die as a direct result of the volcano, and over one billion dollars’ worth of property is destroyed.

May 18, 1996: 29-year-old musician Kevin Gilbert is found dead of apparent autoerotic asphyxiation at his home in California.

May 18, 2017: Musician Chris Cornell, age 52, dies of suicide by hanging.

Now let's move onto something significantly more life-affirming: My all-time (2017-2026) most-played songs on Spotify, Part II.

"Love Is Blindness" by Jack White is the only cover of a U2 song that I actually like better than a U2 song.

"Gettin' It" features into the plot of the tv series Blindspotting, an amazing musical love story starring the uber-talented Jasmine Cephas Jones of Hamilton (the musical) fame. Her character's beloved is played by Rafael Casal and he is also great in this. He's basically playing the most ride-or-die husband in modern musical history.

Cillian Murphy has his own tag HERE.

"Ava Gardner" has its own post HERE.

I like the soundtrack to Disney's The Greatest Showman a normal amount. Don't worry about it. It's probably fine.

"Soul Kitchen" by the Doors is playing in the Umbrella Academy episode where Klaus meets Dave, the closest thing he has to a love of his life. It's beautiful and tragic and I was more than a little obsessed.

I should watch the Bruce Springsteen movie starring the gorgeous Jeremy Allen White of The Bear fame. (The Bear also had Jon Bernthal, who is about to return to playing The Punisher on Disney+. Right after the latest season of Daredevil: Born Again showed us Jessica Jones and Luke Cage as a couple, with their daughter, future Captain America Danielle Cage. I hyperventilated. JonesCage was all I ever wanted out of Marvel's The Defenders. Well, that and for [spoilers] Electra to still be alive, but we can't have everything, can we?)

(P.S. Jon Bernthal is also starring on Broadway in the theatre version of the classic Al Pacino movie Dog Day Afternoon. And while I have mixed feelings about Jews and Italians being used interchangeably in media - don't get me started again - that's pretty fuckin' awesome. I love that guy. I just love him, period.)

I'm done listening to Nicki Minaj now that she's joined Team Maga (a.k.a. the American fascists who want to reinstate white supremacy) and how we just all know instinctively that if she was in that juke joint in Ryan Coogler's Sinners, she would have let those vampires in and fixed them a Myx Moscato to boot.

Doechii is a better rapper, anyway.

I like Murray Head a normal amount. Don't worry about it.

"My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors" has its own page HERE.

"Buttons" is a very catchy pop song, and also I hear it in the voices of Bob Belcher and Jimmy Pesto (senior). And this makes me laugh.

"The Future" from Batman (1989) isn't actually my 121st most-listened song, it's in fact the first song I ever listened to on Spotify on March 31, 2017. I wonder what I was thinking that day. It's true that as a 12-year-old in 1989, I was hella excited about Batman, and I saw it in the theater twice, once regular movie theater and once drive-in. Maybe I was leaning into 1980s nostalgia, as I sometimes do, with or without Murry Head. Maybe I was fantasizing about Christian Bale's Batman, as I sometimes do, with or without Cillian Murphy.

Anyway, those are my songs. 

My Spotify Top 99 of 2023, Annotated, Part I

1. "Sex on Fire" - Cannons (cover)

2. "Batman, Wolfman, Frankenstein or Dracula" - The Diamonds

3. The Greatest Show - movie cast

4. A Place Above - Jehnny Beth, Cillian Murphy

5. "Binz" - Solange Knowles

6. "Goo Goo Muck" - The Cramps. From the soundtrack of Netflix's Wednesday, of course.

7. One Night in Bangkok - Murray Head

8. "Not Enough Time" - INXS

9. "Until You Come Back to Me (That's What I'm Gonna Do)" - Aretha Franklin. As I heard on a plane on Monday, June 12, 1995. 

10. "My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors" - Moxy Fruvous

11. "Runaway Crush" by Stella Soleil [Part of a really long journal entry written on Thursday, July 29, 2021] Super deep dive into a Disney program here, but to return to Baron Zemo for a moment, someone on Tumblr translated the title of a book that Zemo is seen reading while on a plane with Sam and Bucky, the Falcon and the Winter Solder. The book is in German; the English translation is How to Say No to the One You Love: Demarcation and Devotion in the Erotic Relationship. Well, that is a weird book for Zemo, a widower who has been in prison for the last few years, to be reading. Apparently one shot shows where he is in the book, and he's reading a chapter called "Same Sex Fantasies in Heterosexuals."

Um, does Zemo think that the best approach to manipulating Bucky is to try to seduce him? Now that Bucky can't be manipulated with code words anymore? Or does he have a different love interest in mind? Or is he just genuinely attracted to Bucky? But you can't trust him because he's a master manipulator.

So, uh, yeah, I'm still a little hung up on Captain America and the Winter Soldier. And now we wait until November 24 for the Hawkeye series starring Hailee Steinfeld as Kate Bishop.

One more thing about She by Theodora Siranian. [This is a poetry chapbook I'd found at Irvington Books & Vinyl.] 

"Oh my god, Erin, you can't just sit around with a hardbound journal writing about poetry and media all day."

Oh, but can't I, though?

This is an excerpt from "Some Infinite Thing:"

"choosing to listen
to you die
through the telephone
while thinking
about fucking strange men,
in strange places, running
my tongue along
their bodies like some
desperate, wintered animal 
to the salt lick,
pupils to the peripheral, always
the exit, the exit,
the exit."

[Note: "wintered animal" might be a typo. A Freudian slip. The text might actually read "wounded animal."]

Juxtaposition of death and sexual imagery to highlight the contrasts between life and death: a poetic technique as old as time. But the salt lick imagery is what's appealing to me. I've had salt and salt licks stuck in my head like a meme or earworm lately, for a number of reasons:

1. Possibly back on July 13th, I heard an episode of the podcast Cult or Just Weird. The episode was about Throwawaylien - that is a Reddit (online messaging board) user's name which is a play on "throw away" and "alien." Throwawaylien claims he gets abducted by aliens once every 7 years. His story is wild, but the one detail that sticks in my brain is that, he says, the aliens always give him a gift of salt when they return him, apparently because they recognize that we need electrolytes to live.

too long/didn't read: Salt is the typical gift given to humans by space aliens.

2. There's this on Tumblr by a native speaker of the Russian language about Daniel Brühl's bad Russian pronunciation in Captain America: Civil War. The original poster (op) says when Brühl, as Baron Zemo, says Bucky's trigger word "soldier," which is "soldat" in Russian, he sounds like he's either saying it in baby talk or asking Bucky "want some salt?" Apparently he's saying the L in "soldat" in a very German way and not the correct Russian way.

So now I think "want some salt?" is either something aliens say when they return you from abduction or a thing you say to your kidnapped mind-controlled supersoldier to get him to comply.

3. This one's a much looser connection because it's a misheard song lyric, but I recently rediscovered the Stella Soleil song "Runaway Crush." Ugh, such a great song. According to online lyrics aggregators, the proper lyrics of a certain line are, "I'm kissing the soft of your skin/It's like a runaway sin." But I always mishear "soft of your skin" as "salt of your skin."

So...that's a rather random collection of salt images....

Yep, that's what goes on inside my mind: Poetry, salt, and horniness.

My Top 10 Tumblr Posts 2023

My #1 post this year, about the end of Ted Lasso, got 401 notes.

This was my #2 post.

The answer is, Jonathan Crane did earn his degrees at a young age, but he wasn't an M.D. He didn't go to pre-med, medical school, and a psychiatric residency. He was a Ph.D. That's still a lot of years of school, but fewer than the psychiatry track.

My next-most-popular post was about Hanukkah.

Then there were 2 posts stolen from Facebook, followed by a photo I snapped of my neighbor's Barbie-themed Halloween decorations.

My chosen Richard Scarry car is pickle, by the way.

I feel very strongly about the human right to bodily autonomy.

And I also think about Bob Dylan a lot.

Sometimes I read graphic novels.

Affiliate link: https://amzn.to/47k3K4Y

My 10th post popular post was: 

...a comparison between this M*A*S*H text post meme and Audra McDonald, Anne Hathaway, and Raul Esparza starring in a production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night that ran from June-July 2009 in Central Park, part of New York City’s annual Shakespeare in the Park tradition.

Follow me on Tumblr for more literary and pop culture shenanigans.

My Spotify Wrapped 2023

Of course the Wallflowers were one of my top artists this year; we finally got to see them live. I listened to plenty of both Jacob Dylan and his dad Bob. 

My favorite podcasts have hardly changed at all since last year. 

Of course my top artist is Lady Gaga again this year. It's always Lady Gaga. I just like so many of her songs. 

I think this is the first time one of the songs from my Halloween playlist, the charmingly innocent 1950s bop "Batman, Wolfman, Frankenstein or Dracula" by the Diamonds, made my top 5. I guess I hit the Halloween playlist hard this spooky season. I indulged my urge to listen to songs that made me feel nostalgic. 

Tell me some fun facts about YOUR Spotify Wrapped in the comments. Were you surprised by anything?

#ManCandyMonday Manday Hotties Hop, Irish Edition

La Fhéile Pádraig Shona Daoibh! That's "Happy St. Paddy's Day" in Irish, one of the languages of my ancestors. My dad's family came to the U.S. from Derry/Londonderry (now Northern Ireland, U.K.).

Here are some very Irish hotties. Representing County Cork, the lovely Cillian Murphy.





Born in Germany to a German dad and an Irish mum but raised in County Kerry, Michael Fassbender.





Representing Northern Ireland and County Antrim, Liam Neeson.





Representing County Dublin and originally named Jonathan Michael Francis O'Keeffe, Jonathan Rhys Meyers.





Born in County Louth and raised in County Meath, former "James Bond" Pierce Brosnan. I'll be completely honest with you: my favorite one of his movies is Mamma Mia!





Representing Belfast (most of which is in County Antrim, but a little is in County Down), the capital of Northern Ireland, I present Sir Kenneth Branagh. He's Gilderoy Lockhart, he virtually owns Shakespeare, and he directed Thor.





Saving my favorite one for last, representing Dublin, the capital city of the Republic of Ireland, Gabriel James Byrne. Still my sweet, sweet baby.





This is an Amazon Listmania! list of my favorite Gabriel Byrne movies. The best of the best? The Usual Suspects, Miller's Crossing, and Polish Wedding, although Stigmata will always have a special place in my heart.

Link up with the other participating bloggers here:



Past St. Paddy's Day posts that may interest you:

Great Irish-American Women
The Forgotten Saints of Ireland
To Love an Irishman
Kemberlee Shortland's Irish Pride Trilogy

Enter to win Midsummer Night - Pagan Spirits Book 2 - from Goodreads through March 27

What Happens at @GoodReads Doesn't Necessarily Stay at #GoodReads

A huge topic of discussion at GoodReads is always which actors should play certain roles in the movie versions of our beloved books. There's only one answer, really: no one. What mortal human is ever good enough to compare to the way we imagine our favorite fictional characters (and, let's face it, fictional boyfriends/girlfriends) in our heads? The fun of fictional people is that they're better than real people, possessing only those flaws with which the author lovingly bestows them, as needed for the plot and/or to make them charmingly quirky.

Therefore, I have no very strong opinions on who should play Finnick Odair in Catching Fire and Mockingjay. Whoever gets to play Christian Grey, I'll be disappointed in, because he won't be my imaginary Christian Grey. I won't hate seeing Michael Fassbender or Cillian Murphy get the role, but I won't love it, either.

(Okay, I'll probably come to love it eventually, the same way I wholeheartedly embrace Dan Radcliffe - whom I just recently found out is half-Jewish, the kosher icing on a cake I already adored! - as Harry Potter and Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen.)



I definitely, definitely have no strong opinion on who should play Matthew Clairmont, the medieval knight/modern vampire in A Discovery of Witches. My opinion is "nobody." Matthew Clairmont is so utterly inhuman, so otherworldly, so supernatural. How could he be played by a mere human? Still, I had to take a peek when a GoodReads discussion was labelled, "Who would you like to see play Matthew in the movie, if one were made?"

The first suggestion is Fassbender - an excellent choice. Then, a few comments down, Ms. Jackie Frye throws out Jim Caviezel as a suggestion...and I die a little, 'cause that's what happens when you take two of my sexual fantasies, jam them together and make them wrestle over who gets to be on top.

Some people agree. Some don't. One who doesn't is this chick Suay, who writes:

"Didn't really like any of the suggestions I have looked up so far. Jim Caviezel looks a bit too sleazy in my opinion (I apologize for the choice of words but can't think of a more polite word for this right now), Fassbender looks more vulnerable than I would have imagined Matthew to be. I agree with a previous comment that an unknown or less know actor would probably be best. I would have thought that a dark / sinister character would depict him best. But there aren't too many of that type around I suppose." 

...and I choke my chai latte, just a little. Oh no, book bitch*, you did not just call James Caviezel "sleazy." That is no way to talk about my own personal Jesus. I grant you the following points:

1. He's a dick to Demi Moore in G.I. Jane. Being a dick to Demi Moore is not cool.



2. He's a total dick to Ashley Judd in High Crimes, trying to kill her and all. He also makes being ambidextrous look creepy. But he gets punished for it, 'cause as Kat Bjelland sang/shrieked in "Bluebell," "You're dead meat, motherfucker/Don't try to rape a goddess."



3. His redneck domestic terrorist character in Deja Vu is completely sleazy. I give you that. He set a woman on fire. Again, he's severely punished. (He does, however, totally rock the back-of-the-neck tattoo. Makes me wanna be the chick who inked that, with the needles and the blood and the pain. Be still, my injury fetish.)



His style of acting can best be described as "intense," but "intense" can be a good thing, too. Intense can be passionate, and not just in the Christ sense. Suay says sleazy; I say man-pretty. I know I wrote in "Womb Pride," quoting Rob Bell's brilliant book Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections between Sexuality and Spirituality:

"Picture a group of high school boys standing by their lockers when a girl walks by. One of the boys asks, 'How do you rate that?' They then take turns assigning numerical values to the various parts of her anatomy, discussing in great detail how they evaluate her physical attributes...The problem is that 'that' is actually a 'she.' A person. A woman. With a name, a history, with feelings. It seems harmless until you're that girl, and then it hurts. It's degrading. It's violating. It does something to a person's soul."

So, please believe me when I say I mean no disrespect when I ask you to consider the following.



Those beautiful blue eyes.



These lips.



The cheekbones.



The hipbones.



The smile.



The really big hands...  



...and feet. 

What was I saying? Oh yeah. Matthew Clairmont? Maybe not. But definitely not sleazy. Just an intense actor and very, very man-pretty.

*Used affectionately. We're all book bitches here. No offense intended.

Go Mutants!, Cat Women and the Ikette ~ Sunday Randomness

I won't be adhering to the rules of SOC Sunday this morning, because I feel an untimed, unthemed ramble coming on. I need to collect my literary thoughts.

First, I read Go, Mutants! by Larry Doyle this week. Doyle is a former writer for The Simpsons, so he gets my sense of humor. The blue-skinned, James Dean-esque alien on the cover is J!m. (Like P!nk. Only blue.) His mother is Miw, a cat woman. Brief mention is made of the mysterious death of Miw's sister Sakhmet.

Sakhmet, also spelled Sekhmet, is one of my favorite Egyptian goddess. A personification of the harsh and sometimes deadly rays of the sun, the death-goddess is depicted as a woman with a lion's head. In Beltane, Allie - a priestess dedicated to the fire goddesses of the world - is tattooed with the image of Sekhmet.

The B-movie convention of cat women from outer space was kept alive in the '90s by Shakespear's Sister. It was a theme of the album Hormonally Yours, which included a track called "Catwoman." I seem to remember hearing on the radio that the track, and some of the other visitor-from-another-world-themed songs on the album, were inspired by the old film Cat-Women of the Moon.

But the original cat woman, Sekhmet, was from ancient Egypt, and so (according to her belief in reincarnation) was Tina Turner. In her autobiography (co-written with MTV reporter Kurt Loder) I, Tina, Turner expressed the belief that she is a reincarnation of the Egyptian woman pharoah Hatshepsut.



I had to get I, Tina off the shelf when Anderson Cooper had as his talk show guest Robbie Montgomery. I recognized her name from the book - she was one of the original Ikettes. The story goes that in 1965, the Ikettes scored a string of pop hits independent of Ike & Tina. To capitalize on their newfound fame, Ike Turner sent out touring groups composed of three random female singers under the name "The Ikettes."

Screwed out of royalties (they were paid as band members, not recording artists) and not even getting to tour behind their accomplishments, Robbie Montgomery and the other two original Ikettes walked. Since Ike Turner owned the name, their attempt to make it on their own fizzled.

If you're a '90s girl and you knew exactly what I was talking about when I said Shakespear's Sister, you probably know the Salt N Pepa jam "Shoop." I have to share it just for the fashion alone, the very epitome of '90s style. (Well, this and X-Girl by Kim Gordon.)



You may or may not remember that it contained a sample of The Ikette's "I'm Blue," with Tina Turner as a backup singer.

According to Anderson, Robbie Montgomery, who was homeless for a time, now stars with her son on a restaurant reality show called Welcome to Sweetie Pie's on Oprah's OWN network. (I don't have cable, and I've never seen it.) It's never too late for a comeback. I wish her restaurant venture much success.

My Irish granny and I both like to watch Anderson. When I was a high school girl in the '90s, Anderson Cooper was a reporter for Channel One, the news program we watched in class at the start of every school day. (So was Lisa Ling, the reporter who has her own show on OWN.) Next week he has some more great guests: Janet Jackson on Monday, Madonna on Wednesday.

Random fact: Janet by Janet Jackson was the first CD that I ever bought.

Sometimes I also watch Dr. Phil. He had Eric Roberts last week. Eric Roberts is sexy, with his lazy Southern accent - even as the smarmy gangster in The Dark Knight. (Not sexier than Christian Bale, of course - or Cillian Murphy, my new fave since I saw him in In Time. I would never have guessed that he's from County Cork - his American accent is really good.) But Roberts is on my permanent shit list, not only because of his domestic violence conviction (he admits he shoved his wife into a wall) but because he's one of those really damaged addicts that it's so hard to love. I finally know how Julia Roberts feels - my brother is mean when he's drunk, too. I wish him much success - just away from women.

This is Cillian Murphy.