tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17249783714429517582024-03-12T22:33:17.657-06:00The Red WheelbarrowHermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.comBlogger60125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-30284274141832310502018-05-27T22:37:00.000-06:002018-05-27T22:37:00.815-06:00Bantu NativeGrowing up in the patrician township of Wyckoff, New Jersey in the 60s, I had the coolest bike, by far.
I just didn't KNOW it was the coolest. Not all the time.
My dad had bought the bike from the want ads, finding it at a cheap price at the house of some Wyckoffian across town somewhere.
The bike was small and green. We, my dad and I, added a cool red Hermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-55645819757272241042017-07-22T17:33:00.000-06:002017-07-23T03:02:55.488-06:00Baby Driver: Sound and Silence
The second time I saw Edgar Wright’s wonderfully fun, fast, iconic take on the heist film genre, I noticed how surprisingly much of BABY DRIVER does not have music under it. Several pivotal scenes, notably some flirty business between young getaway car driver Baby (Ansel Elgort) and Debora (Lily James), the impossibly cute and charming waitress in Bo’s Diner (where, we learn, Hermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-17456340996660215822016-02-21T03:37:00.000-07:002016-02-21T03:37:25.931-07:00Opera: Black Caesar
"I will now turn aside and see this great sight. . ."
For Moses it was the Burning Bush. For me earlier tonight, it was the Esquire Theatre's midnight showing of BLACK CAESAR, an amazing, brutal, and yes, operatic Blaxploitation film starring Fred Williamson.
The film, from 1973, is a straight-up gangster film played out with black characters. It depicts the rise to power of the 1950s Hermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-43821806458705580772013-02-19T00:38:00.000-07:002015-09-07T13:09:29.473-06:00"Once Upon a Time in the South"
Quentin Tarantino's outrageous, audacious slave narrative, "Django Unchained," does not at any point tread lightly. It stomps, it romps, it blusters, it brutalizes unblushingly; it is raucous, irreverent, low, hilarious; it lies, it steals, it cheats, it manipulates; it swaggers before your eyes for 2 hours and 45 minutes, and, finally, it explodes.
It does not tip-toe or Hermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-14713011205091873172013-01-27T04:40:00.000-07:002013-01-27T04:40:08.270-07:00Some Things That Made Me Laugh When I Was a KidCome back with me to this luxuriantly tree-filled township of clapboard houses in northern New Jersey. Here, in the 1960s, you'll find a little boy: me. I'm growing up in one of those white houses with my two brothers and my parents, listening to WABC on my transistor radio, walking to school down Van Houten Avenue under those towering oaks, or riding my quirky but cool little green Hermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-1062030225127794742012-03-25T02:55:00.000-06:002012-04-08T02:22:17.308-06:00YokelI was talking to Tom, the General Manager at work, a year ago or more. We were talking about hats, and specifically the size of our heads. I think I overheard him saying he took a 7-5/8, which is essentially huge.
Turns out that 7-5/8 is my size, too. We were commiserating in our huge-headedness there for a bit.
Next thing I know, Tom has brought in a hat for me. IHermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-36660610645663627402011-12-11T04:46:00.000-07:002011-12-11T06:30:53.026-07:00Walking With Lycidas
"Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forc'd fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year."
So begins John Milton's great re-invention of the pastoral elegy, "Lycidas."
And so begins my recitation of the piece as I walk through my now-leafstrewn Hermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-81102053467267702872011-11-18T03:35:00.000-07:002011-11-18T03:56:11.617-07:00__________Cummings:____________"next to of course god america i
E. E. Cummings
"next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be Hermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-30534437836974240462011-08-21T01:17:00.000-06:002011-08-21T03:30:34.242-06:00"Would You Believe. . .?": For "Get Smart" Fans Only!
Many Friday nights these weeks you will find me down at my stepmother Amy's place, sitting with her on the couch and enjoying Channel 3's reruns of "Get Smart."
The show, which was utterly hilarious to me and my brothers as kids in the 1960s, is still pretty funny.
If you weren't watching the show back in its original run, between 1965 and 1969, it is hard to communicate its wacky cultural Hermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-67424671777643146602011-07-24T03:20:00.006-06:002011-08-14T05:26:44.113-06:00Ignatz' First Brick - A Krazy Kat Anniversary
A cat. A dog. A mouse. A brick.
From such simple materials George Herriman, a true genius of 20th-century art, fashioned a world of wacky and winsome wonders!
In case you are one of the blissfully uninformed who has yet to discover this multifarious and mystifying realm, I am talking about the delightful and hilarious comic strip Krazy Kat, which ran Hermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-63289652411275655822011-07-17T03:21:00.001-06:002011-07-17T03:21:01.659-06:00Overheard at the Village Inn, 3 AM.A group of young people was seated next to me just now.
Girl, thumbing her smartphone: "Do you know that a PhD is a 'Doctor of Philosophy'?"
Boy sitting next to her: "No! You mean that's what it means? No. What does it mean?"
Girl: "'Doctor of Philosophy.' PhD means 'Doctor of Philosophy.' That's what it means!"
Boy: "No! Really?&Hermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-5493845117547381512011-06-16T02:04:00.003-06:002012-12-21T23:42:54.922-07:00Ramayana: Divine Loophole - Sanjay Patel Colorfully Retells the Indian Epic.
I was prowling the Hinduism section at the Tattered Cover Colfax when I found this delightful new gem.
Published just last year (2010) by Chronicle Books, it is Ramayana: Divine Loophole, by Sanjay Patel. Every page of this retelling of the Indian epic is another visually arresting illustration by Patel, who works as an animator and storyboard artist for PixarHermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-79283911468968741732011-05-29T04:23:00.001-06:002011-05-29T04:23:44.154-06:00"The Birth of the Human Soul"
At one point in his thrilling, eerie new documentary film, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Werner Herzog is interviewing a genial French scientist on a hillside near the caves of the title. The camera is on the white-haired scientist, a character we have come to respect and enjoy by this point in the film. We can hear Herzog's gentle German accent asking questions.
He comes Hermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-21963785679606672792011-05-27T00:24:00.002-06:002011-05-27T00:34:25.266-06:00The Country's In the Very Best of HandsI woke up this morning thinking of. . .and soon after singing. . .this excellent song from the 1956 Broadway musical Li'l Abner.
This number is hilarious and brilliant and has not lost one iota of its wry wit and incisive truth.
Listen to these great Johnny Mercer lyrics!!
(This version is from the 1959 film, with Peter Palmer as Li'l Abner Yokum and the great Stubby Kaye as Marryin'Hermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-22703320153746811372011-05-22T02:18:00.003-06:002011-05-22T02:21:53.865-06:00Broken Down Film - by Osamu Tezuka
Museum of Film Damage.
This marvelous piece of animation from Osamu Tezuka dates from 1985.
I remember seeing it at the Ogden Theater in Denver as part of one of their annual "Tournee of Animation" programs. I'd guess in 1986.
The genius of this film relies heavily on the viewer knowing a bit about the medium of film itself. It strikes me that some younger people might not "get" this Hermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-76793873305064099202011-04-25T19:44:00.007-06:002011-04-25T21:29:54.289-06:00Search Me: A Personal Search Engine Test
Readers, since I published my big (long!) piece on the Walt Whitman cylinder recording controversy, "The Voice of the Poet," I have been unreasoningly obsessed with people reading it.
Well, I guess it is understandable. It is not the best thing I have ever written, perhaps, but I worked on it the longest of anything I've put up here at The Red Wheelbarrow. Like any good human Hermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-2887758470802206122011-04-02T15:58:00.001-06:002011-04-02T19:31:32.247-06:00Three Big Pigs
What an impressive and hilarious little video!
It struck me, watching it, how it is woven of so many interlocked levels of discourse.
To fully "get it," you have to be familiar with the game Angry Birds, with the original 1930s Disney cartoon, with the 3 Little Pigs story, with current world politics, with Twitter, and with broadcast journalism, to name just the obvious ones.
There is a Hermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-89847486176098518502011-03-27T19:12:00.012-06:002019-10-20T18:07:55.479-06:00The Voice of the Poet?
Recording.
Picture it: the old man sits in a tall wooden rocker in his second-floor bedroom, a wolf skin draped over the top of the chair behind his shoulders. He is a strikingly familiar figure, bragging once to friends that "no man has been photographed more than I have." Images of him have been widely distributed, appearing in newspapers and magazines and on products. His unruly Hermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-24103210070460633482011-02-27T02:12:00.006-07:002011-02-27T02:12:35.816-07:00Something Funny I DoIn the interest of full disclosure (something I am not REALLY interested in) I thought I'd tell you about a little odd habit I have developed. Just a funny thing I do sometimes, which brings me a certain joy.
It is in the morning, when I make my oatmeal on the stove, or, alternately, re-heat some saved oatmeal in the microwave. I'm making my oatmeal, in any case. This is my Hermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-12675437448784603132010-11-07T15:00:00.004-07:002010-11-10T18:08:02.294-07:00It Happened at the Museum
Last night I set out to attend Denver's Night at the Museums.
In the early evening, I circled around and around the Museum of Contemporary Art looking for a parking place. No luck.
So I abandoned downtown and drove through the Denver night east, toward my alternate choice museum for the free admission event: Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
Eventually Hermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-84980408937752948892010-09-18T17:14:00.000-06:002010-09-18T17:14:19.400-06:00William Carlos Williams' Birthday TributeWilliam Carlos Williams was born on September 17, 1883 in Rutherford, New Jersey.
He lived for 79 years, until March 4, 1963.
I was 5 years old, living just 18 miles away in blissful ignorance of the great poet when he died.
Roger Ebert posted a marvelous birthday tribute to WCW on his blog yesterday. It consists of a series of paintings, artworks, songs and video pieces all Hermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-52676268635025440192010-07-18T04:30:00.003-06:002010-07-23T20:57:09.177-06:00Precious ImagesIn 1986, I was working at the Denver Center Cinema (a repertory film theater in the Denver Center for the Performing Arts), when we were chosen as one of a handful of small theaters in the country to participate in an exciting year-long program by the Directors Guild of America (DGA). In celebration of DGA'S 50th Anniversary, the DCC would host a different American film director each month. Hermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-34207534292030191472010-06-13T04:50:00.002-06:002010-06-13T17:28:12.468-06:00Time MachineWe often can benefit from other people's obsessions.Nowhere is this more truly or more often dramatically demonstrated than on the internet. How many times have you just discovered or been told about what to you was a new, bizarre, but fascinating topic, only to find that there is an extensive Wikipedia article about it, as well as a healthy selection of websites where variously driven people Hermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-56495117190757858472010-05-21T21:57:00.001-06:002010-05-24T21:09:37.540-06:00Canterbury Tales RapSince there can never be too many viewings of this absolutely marvelous and ingenious setting of the Prologue from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, I throw it out here on my blog, on the off-off chance that it catches a new pair of eyes. If you have not seen this before, please leave me a comment!This gem was the brainchild of Jon Wilkerson. The slick video editing, direction, and organization were Hermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1724978371442951758.post-11374720333989922612010-05-16T04:16:00.001-06:002010-05-16T04:16:13.453-06:00Fear FridayFor a variety of reasons, mostly involving neglect, disinterest, and sheer laziness, I do not have TV service at home. What I do have is a 20-year-old 19-inch TV that I use to watch my DVDs on. Recently I am thinking that this has got to change. One of the reasons I can state in two words. Fear Friday.On many Fridays, I go down to Littleton to spend the afternoon and evening with my stepmother, Hermhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15112768059176776457noreply@blogger.com0