one thing today

Shawn Jackson and his wife, Destiny, both 26, said they were driving home from a son’s basketball game when the family found themselves caught in a clash between protesters and federal agents in North Minneapolis. The couple sensed the encounter could quickly spiral out of control, they said, but when they tried to turn their car around to exit the blocked-off street, they were surrounded by federal agents. “From the side, the front and from behind me, it was nothing but ICE,” Mr. Jackson said in an interview on Thursday. One agent told the couple that they needed to get out of the area. Ms. Jackson said she and her husband responded that they were trying to do exactly that, but their path was blocked by agents coming up the street. Then, agents let loose on the crowd, the couple said. The crowd-control grenades went off around them and one tear gas canister rolled beneath the car, Ms. Jackson said. A concussive blast — from the tear gas canister or another device, she wasn’t sure ...

  Miguel, a young Latino man, was in a subway station and saw a father with his young daughter in his arms jump down onto the tracks right before a train enters the station. Miguel jumped down onto the track and saw the child underneath a car in front of her dead father.     Please don’t look back at your papa, baby girl. Look at me, look at me.  I can’t get under the track with you.  I need to stay here and help you.  And please, young one, leave your back pack behind.  I can see it is stuck.  It don’t matter.  We will get it later.  Come to me.  Come to me like a puppy.  Pretend you are a cute, little, hungry dog.  I help you.  I don’t have big words.  But I know something.  And I need to tell it to you.  You will be good.  I promise.  I promise you, pretty little puppy girl.  I will save you.  You will go home today to your mama and  family and your toys and bed. Come to...

 

An actor who did my fav play I've written ... in 2013 ... Rent a Beatnik ... sent it to me after I thought I had lost it forever. It's great when you re-read something after a very long time and it's better than you remembered - he says.  One of the niks recited the following nutty poem in a party scene. The ad above was real.  I love that it says badly groomed but brilliant.  a popcorn puppet strolls down the shrinking street long shadows the color of softness show the way the day waves goodbye a silver spot of falling fluid neon light  buzz saws beneath hard winter skin  as beauty follows the body’s leave adorned by the dying old man dawn in the cryptic crossfire spin of growing dusk   there grows in him and yes, in us a rise, an edenic sense of tribal events  commencing themselves  to the word we proclaim ”earth”  we catch a crazy itch here of unsung subterranean sounds   as lightning sizzles the bones of shattered names  and bur...

 

“…when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.”  —  Audre Lorde Audre Lorde was an activist who dedicated her life to confronting all manner of injustice. She  made it clear in her writings and speeches that silence is the oxygen injustice breathes. Power thrives when people doubt their own eyes, when they’re told that the story they witnessed isn’t the story that occurred. And that’s why Lorde’s words feel even more urgent today. We live in a time when institutions rewrite events before the truth has even settled. When videos contradict official statements, and people holding cameras are treated like threats. When accountability is promised in press releases but avoided at all costs in practice. In moments like these, speaking out becomes more than expression. It becomes evidence.

I'm watching Margot Robbie on Kimmel and as I've said before and now say it again - she could turn a gay man straight. She is the current queen of movie star dazzling can't top it beauty. Watch her in Tarzan with Alexander S who honed the most beautiful male body in film  history in the movie.  The above photo inaugurates my new occasional bit -  What in the World Were They Thinking Photo # 1.

  … just yesterday my feel got thinking its great  to still be not gone and do what I do do And not think my tv doesn’t like me  And lets me enjoy the genius and think about when he was young  and had to have people get girls off his car When now its time to turn white While songs I’ve taken in life  tell me again of trouble and prison and moon shingles and jangles and salt spray  as we move our bodies and sway Taking youth for granted and old age as dream While people sit in rooms and wait for what’s next  Listening to lonesome stranded sisters  and seeing thru see thru blouses and offers from natures and wait watchers and doing imitations of him  sans intimidations and attitudes like  first is first and second is nothing  nothing's happening everything’s happening  snow and guns and zeitgeist philosophers still   and tears and quiet and new songs,  dreams in and on and then some.  It was Diane Keaton day on TCM...

  One kiss, one man to save it for One love for him alone One word, one vow and nothing more To tell him I'm his own One magic night within his arms With passion flower unfold But I will try to love only one man And no other man in the world 

  Song of My City is 2025 17-minute "ode" to 1970s New York City. It features iconic imagery from classic films like  Taxi Driver  and  The Warriors , set to music by the Velvet Underground and Philip Glass.

Bringing Back the Dead … 1999 … never even heard of it. Nobody does off center city curly swirl fryndies like Scorsese … nick cage w/those eyes, ving r, Rosanna A, gone Sizemore … fab no name characters actors who deserve names … horses and whores and smelly men. Overnight central one minute out. Don’t make em like this that now. Shish kebab shenanigans and  Senagalian ragheads. That’s gotta hurt. Better bring it all. Do. Does. Things have changed. O looka that and what I can do call I live in the land of the free and home of the brave I think

  The poet Hart Crane created his private lexicon of ecstatic apprehension, a witchy alchemy of sound and signifier both seductive and frustrating. a language somehow teasingly just short of yielding itself up, supremely intelligent but shy of complete intelligibility, a kind of crystalline transparency.                                                                                                                              - Ron Rosenblum

  I ’m trying to find a play of mine in my Mac … from 2014 … rent a beatnik, maybe my fav thing I’ve written and lo and behold the doc won’t open up … a “temporary error” message that seems very permanent.  I am currently on hold with Apple support … hoping they can help me with the matter. It’s my fault … being careless and lazy about protecting/securing my work … but it raises questions about loss.  There seems to be so much of it lately …. in machines, on mountain sides and streets, in peoples minds about things leaving and uncertainty and cruel, self serving only leaders. It’s a thing at this time worth exploring. I imagine if I had no home, no family, no memory … what or who or where would I be. And so much time passing and less to come and … what we need versus what we want or have. Writin’ in circles here which maybe is part of the thing. What is the thing?

  4 Things you cannot recover  THE STONE..........After it is thrown  THE WORD..........After it is said  THE OCCASION.....After it is missed  THE TIME............After it is gone 

my oldest sis scored another birthday  talk about cut from the same cloth / 2 peas in 1 pod  she was my heaven then 

         ....  Hugo, Marcos, Larry, Paco, Jacob, Tony ...                                   like she wrote ...                                  when nothing                                           seems right                                           they b da best

... is possible to become addicted to power — particularly for certain character structures. Individuals with pronounced narcissistic, paranoid or psychopathic tendencies are especially vulnerable. For them, power does not merely enable action; it regulates inner states that would otherwise feel unmanageable. Donald Trump is an extreme illustration of this dynamic. From a psychoanalytic perspective, his narcissism is malignant in the sense that it is organized around a profound inner emptiness. Malignant narcissism is a combination of narcissism and psychopathology. Because there is little internal capacity for self-soothing or self-valuation, he requires continuous external affirmation to feel real and intact. Power supplies that affirmation. Visibility, dominance and constant stimulation temporarily fill the void.                                          ...

...  our human fate, and the reality of war and disease, it is crucial that we keep the idea of pleasure in circulation. We are desiring animals who arouse one another through speech and touch. Our pleasures support our activity and imagination. Play sustains our lightness and curiosity; it is itself a therapy. And so we must, until the end, insist on our appetites and delights.                                                                   Hanif Kureishi - Dispatches From My Hospital Bed  

I have been obsessed with Beverly di Angelo of late - she of horse riding in Central Park Hair fame,   Patsy Cline in Coal Miners Daughter  and and and ... mother of twins at 49 with Serpico and sexy super sexy voice. She bought the Dan Akroyd haunted house who bought it from Ringo Starr who bought it from Mama Cass. It was built for Natalie Wood. In her prime, Bev left show biz for a decade and married a young blond Italian comely count … who told her Pacino was a fantastic actor … so go be with him. Her kids are another example of beautiful people having surprisingly less than the same looking dazzling offspring … like Bruce and Demi. I feel a little mean writing this but just sayin'  and nobody cares and life’s relatively short and ultimately tragic so … so what.  

Ti me was not something then we thought of as an item that possessed an ending, but something that would go on forever, all rested and stopped in that moment.                                                                                                -Sebastian Barry

  From my good friend Paul ...  by Heather Cox Just after midnight on January 1, in a private ceremony in the long-closed former City Hall subway station in Manhattan, New York Attorney General Letitia James swore Zohran Mamdani into office as mayor of New York on a historic Quran. Hours later, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) swore Mamdani in publicly in a ceremony on the steps of City Hall. “My fellow New Yorkers—today begins a new era,” Mamdani said. The new mayor emphasized that he represents the everyday people of New York City, “construction workers in steel-toed boots and halal cart vendors whose knees ache from working all day” and “neighbors who carry a plate of food to the elderly couple down the hall, those in a rush who still lift strangers’ strollers up subway stairs.” “I stand alongside over one million New Yorkers who voted for this day nearly two months ago,” Mamdani said, ”and I stand just as resolutely alongside those who did not…. I promise you this: if you are...

  Network Notorious Sunday Bloody Sunday Holiday Godfather Tootsie Klute Hair Last Tango in Paris Mockingbird Taxi Driver Member of the Wedding Women in Love Rosemarys Baby A Special Day Looking for Mr. Goodbar My Beautiful Launderette Sweet smell of success Jean de Florette Dog Day Afternoon The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Giant East of Eden Manon of the Spring Breathless Day for Night Lion in Winter Petulia The Conformist Don’t Look Now Nashville Deer Hunter Shoot the Moon Night of the Hunter Sunset Blvd Once upon a time in America Hannah and her sisters Topkapi My Left Foot Far From the Madding Crowd Shampoo My next door neighbor texted me and said we should catch up. We have never caught up. It was a nice gesture. He came over with chocolates. We talked about the building, our neighbors, our nyc histories and both of us noted how fast time has  passed.  I sent him the above list of great films upon his request.  What are your fav movies?