i want two books for christmas

Just in case you’re getting your list ready on what to get your Tumblr pals, I want two books for Christmas. The first is the new Neil Young book, Waging Heavy Peace and Morrissey’s “Autobiography”. 

Here’s an early review of the book. 

Go get it.

happy birthday, maurice sendak

If you noticed the Google Doodle today, you'd know it would've been Maurice Sendek's 83rd Birthday.
Originally, I was going to post an interview or a classic reading of Sendek's landmark creation, Where the Wild Things Are. However, I found this. Christopher Walken reading the popular children's book. This will be your best laugh of the day. Or maybe, even week.

"And now", cried Max, "Let he wild rumpus start!".

dinner with henry miller

Tonight, I'm having dinner with Henry Miller. Bon Apatite.

rip nora ephron

Writer for such Hollywood staples as You've Got Mail, and her classic, When Herry Met Sally. Cancer sucks.

fitting farewell

Had to go for a meeting over on Main Street in Newmarket, yesterday. I ended up taking another route so I would pass the Public Library. Remember Libraries? Went inside and marched to the second floor. Straight to the Science Fiction Section. Searched out Bradbury. I took a minute to say my farewell to the amazing author and then went to a quiet corner in the back, by the window, and read a few pages of his Short Stories. Before I left, I got a library card. I think Ray would be happy about that.

rip ray bradbury

Was going to watch this a few months ago when I gave up looking for my copy of Ray Bradbury's short stories I bought at a garage sale back in '08. Today, I will make sure I sit through and watch the whole thing..

Memories of coffee boiling. Smoke burnin'. Me turning your pages. Thank You for Your Words, Ray Bradbury. Rest Well.

anyone lived in a pretty how town

When I'm not listening to music, I listen to this kind of stuff. Lay back with your morning beverage, snack in hand and enjoy the reading...

one percent

The great Maya Angelou speaks about what the world would be like if one percent of the population became complaint free.

blake's book..

As a web junkie and avid Google user, I know I should've known about Google Books before. I just started using it today. Granted, they need more selection for the cheap readers who don't want to spend a buck to buy a virtual book, but what I found I'm content with. Classics are always worth another whirl. The first e-book I read while having my tomato soup lunch (which was excellent, by the way, especially with my whole grain bread slices), was Songs of Innocence and Experience With Other Poems by .. In his manner, Blake delighted me with a few great poems that had me both laughing, tearing and a bit of both for a couple. Thought I'd share a couple of dandies with you..

A Little Boy Lost

``Nought loves another as itself,
Nor venerates another so,
Nor is it possible to Thought
A greater than itself to know:
``And Father, how can I love you
Or any of my brothers more?
I love you like the little bird
That picks up crumbs around the door.''
The Priest sat by and heard the child,
In trembling zeal he siez'd his hair:
He led him by his little coat,
And all admir'd the Priestly care.
And standing on the altar high,
``Lo! what a fiend is here!'' said he,
``One who sets reason up for judge
Of our most holy Mystery.''
The weeping child could not be heard,
The weeping parents wept in vain;
They strip'd him to his little shirt,
And bound him in an iron chain;
And burn'd him in a holy place,
Where many had been burn'd before:
The weeping parents wept in vain.
Are such things done on Albion's shore?

The Little Girl Lost

In futurity
I prophetic see
That the earth from sleep
(Grave the sentence deep)
Shall arise and seek
For her maker meek;
And in the desart wild
Become a garden mild.
* * *
In the southern clime,
Where the summer's prime
Never fades away,
Lovely Lyca lay.
Seven summers old
Lovely Lyca told;
She had wander'd long
Hearing wild birds' song.
``Sweet sleep, come to me
Underneath this tree.
Do father, mother weep,
Where can Lyca sleep?
``Lost in desart wild
Is your little child.
How can Lyca sleep
If her mother weep?
``If her heart does ake
Then let Lyca wake;
If my mother sleep,
Lyca shall not weep.
``Frowning, frowning night,
O'er this desart bright
Let thy moon arise
While I close my eyes.''
Sleeping Lyca lay
While the beasts of prey,
Come from caverns deep,
View'd the maid asleep.
The kingly lion stood
And the virgin view'd,
Then he gamboll'd round
O'er the hollow'd ground.
Leopards, tygers, play
Round her as she lay,
While the lion old
Bow'd his mane of gold.
And her bosom lick,
And upon her neck
From his eyes of flame
Ruby tears there came;
While the lioness
Loos'd her slender dress,
And naked they convey'd
To caves the sleeping maid.

wallpaper is stuck on me...

It has been my favorite read for a long time. Since I got over the fallen off Hip Hop 'zines and sport reads. I needed something more to feed my instinctual apatite. With the right mix of seasoning and meat, Wallpaper Magazine's website is not only easy to navigate, but also pretty cool looking. What I like the most is that it fits the magazine's image. If you haven't read the magazine yet and into Art, Architecture, Fashion and Lifestyle, check out the site and then pick up the hardcopy version next time you grab that Grande at your local coffee pub slash magazine stand.

Check the Site Here.

the release..

Reading and Brahms Tonight. Before some television time with the cast of Modern Family. The only time of week where I plump myself in front of the boob tube and laugh out loud at a television sitcom. It feels great. After, I will lock myself up in my room. Turn off the big lights. Turn on my reading lights and enjoy some quiet time listening to classical music and catching up on a book I'm reading. Urban Nightmares. I read it before, but I thought I would take another glance at it. It's a great book if you're into the whole lawless immorality and crime of the 1990s thing. Soft stuff. Really. Today I got by. I felt sweat itching off my forehead. Headache creeping in, but I handled it. I took a breather. Stood back and realized the now. Wondering what needed to be done and took charge of it. I don't know. Maybe this little sober streak I've been on, I've been more at touch with my subconsciousness and cluing in to what I am about to think and stopping myself from letting in negativity. Any of that makes sense? It did in my head. I even reunited with my acupressure mat the other day. We haven't talked in a while.

The lesson of the day. Don't be afraid of being a nerd. Energizing your mind and taking a breather when it gets hectic. Nothing is more important than your mental health. Live in the now and know what's going on inside you. Find the positivity and release that onto the world.

the history of american graffiti

A cool PBS piece about the new book covering the history of American graffiti..

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

missin' jim carroll

Today a friend of mine posted a picture of one of Jim Carroll's books. Fear of Dreaming. Immediately, I thought of how I haven't read one of his lymrics in a long while. How I haven't taken the time to pick up his book. But I also thought that I have come a long way since I was a young inspiring writer who wanted to write like him. Before I started a blog, I used to jot down my thoughts and poems on scrap-paper or if I were lucky, a notepad I would buy for a dollar at the corner store. Carroll inspired me to write. The movie Basketball Diaries gave me the strength and courage to write my deepest feelings. Even then, it took me years to really write what I was really feeling. But he paved the way. Whenever I feel like I'm in a creative drought. Whenever I feel like I feel to go back to my roots and feel how I once felt about writing and my love for the English language, I think of Carroll.

I'm sorry I haven't thought of you in a while. I will always be indebted to you for what you inspired me to be and who I have become as a writer.

Thanks, Jim.

our kids: local emcee makes reading cool

As a former hip-hop promoter in the Toronto area, I was able to make friends with a bunch of the unsigned hype in the city. Since I first met many of them over a decade ago, all of them have made moves in the city to evolve and progress their selected craft – be it DJing, Emceeing, Graffiti or Breakdancing. One of these esteemed homeboys is MC Abdominal, also known as Abs. Recently, Andy, another alias Abs goes by, was asked to make up a hip-hop version of the most classic pieces of literature. The first one he tackled was The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The philosophy behind this movement is that it has been scientifically proven that music helps people remember more. Furthermore, they’re also doing this in hopes that if kids hear a hip-hop dude speaking about the book, they’ll want to pick it up and read it too.

The cover of a 1979 movie version of The Scarlet Letter, directed by Rick Hauser. So far so good. The crew has been picked up by American outfit SparkNotes to do a “whole slew of songs,” as Andy explains in a video made by TVO (TV Ontario). The site wants them to do fiction books aimed at high school students. This new concept should’ve been around since I was in school. I know, as a high school student and impressionable hip-hop mind, if my favorite rapper were to talk about some literature in his songs, I would have read more instead of tossing the books aside and sketching my next piece in my notepad. No matter what type of student you have at home, or what type of school they go to, this new endevour will help them. I know for me, coming from a Waldorf school that surrounded students in Shakespeare education, it would have been ideal. Moreover, maybe this will also show skeptical parents that hip-hop is more than what they hear on the radio, and they’ll give it a chance.

Here’s a short interview with Abdominal talking about The Scarlet Letter.

in the words of rza

rip jd salinger

He was an inspiration for many. Including me.

The writer J. D. Salinger, who died yesterday aged 91, was as famous for his five decades of stringent reclusiveness as for his best-known novel, The Catcher In The Rye, which was an instant bestseller when it was published in 1951.
It also marked the beginning of an obsessive withdrawal from the world. This hermit, who guarded his privacy with a shotgun and guard dogs behind high walls, was equally fierce in protecting his anonymity with squads of lawyers who attempted to block anything intimate being written about him.
He was the ultimate anti-celebrity, refusing interviews and insisting his photograph was removed from the dust-jackets of his books.

Genius, hermit and sexual predator: Novelist J.D.Salinger was also the ultimate anti-celebrity
The only recent photograph of him (taken many years ago) is of him wearing a furious face as he fends off an intruding cameraman.
Along with this quest for total seclusion went a predilection for teenage girls - not so much a Lolita syndrome as an urge to discover innocence and then mould it to the shape he wished.
Born in New York on January 1, 1919, J.D. (Jerome David) Salinger's early life gave little hint of what he would become, although there were several factors that affected him deeply.
One was the shock of believing he was Jewish and then discovering that he was only half-Jewish - his mother was, in fact, a Catholic.

Another was his doomed first love affair, in 1941, with the 16-year-old Oona O'Neill, whom he had wished to marry - she later wed Charlie Chaplin.

Their romance ended when he was called up by the Army in 1942, after the bombing of Pearl Harbour.
More scarring still, however, were his experiences in World War II, in which he saw numerous comrades killed around him.

He landed on Utah Beach on D-Day and fought all the way to Paris. There, he met Ernest Hemingway who encouraged his writing.
Still in Europe when the war ended, he was sent to Germany to interrogate Nazis.

There, he fell in love with a girl called Sylvie - later believed to be a former Nazi official - whom he married and, after eight months, divorced.

He later described her as 'an evil woman who bewitched me'.
He returned to the U.S. and began his writing career with short stories. Then, in 1951, he published the novel on which he had been working for ten years.
J.D. Salinger alongside copies of his classic novel The Catcher In The Rye and his volume of short stories Nine Stories
This was The Catcher In The Rye, a tale that captured the essence of teenage angst before anyone knew it existed, and it had instant and lasting success.

So far, it has sold more than 120 million copies worldwide and still regularly tops polls of the most popular novel of all time. When Mark Chapman shot John Lennon, he was carrying a copy.
Told in the voice of its tall, grey-haired hero, Holden Caulfield, who runs away from boarding school to New York, where he finds everyone 'phoney' except his adored little sister Phoebe, it spawned a new genre of fiction that remains stupendously popular: the first-person narrative of someone young, neurotic, misunderstood, insecure and vulnerable. It was an undoubted masterpiece.
But two years after this literary and financial success gave him untold freedom and independence, Salinger headed off to the remote rural town of Cornish, New Hampshire - and the isolation that characterised the rest of his life.
The house he chose stood behind high walls and a screen of trees and was located on a bluff overlooking the Connecticut River valley. It was reached by a rough road that winds for several miles up a hill.

There was no name on the mailbox at the end of the steep drive leading to the house, and No Trespassing signs hung on several of the trees.
Works: The Catcher In The Rye has sold more than 60million copies. Right, J.D. Salinger with his daughter Margaret on the cover of her memoir about her father
At first, he made occasional forays to New York. At a party, he met a young student, Claire Douglas, the 18-year-old half-sister of a British aristocrat.
Soon she moved in, and in 1955, when Claire was 20 and Salinger 36, they married. But as Salinger's desire for solitude increased, he made her burn all her papers and cut off all contact with her friends and family.

He also built himself a separate cabin a quarter of a mile away in the woods, painted it dark green as camouflage against possible intruders, and spent most of the time there working.
Claire, who had tried desperately to please him, found herself plunged into an isolation she had never sought.

But when she became pregnant, Salinger cut off all contact with the outside world and from the fourth month of her pregnancy, she saw no one whatsoever.
Thirteen months after the birth of their daughter, Margaret, Claire had spiralled into depression and ran away with the baby. But she returned four months later to the husband she still loved, and in 1960 their son Matthew was born.
Salinger shifted the entire focus of his life to the cabin in the woods, staying there for up to two weeks at a time, burning wood in his stove to heat up the cans of food or meals brought to him by Claire or their children.

Sometimes he would sit outside between the reflectors he had installed to help him tan.
Margaret's 2000 biography of her father, Dream Catcher, paints a vivid, and disturbing, picture of her parents' life in Connecticut.
Salinger became increasingly eccentric, drinking his own urine and sitting in a special device known as an orgone box, which was supposed to promote health.
He hated sickness, which he tried to cure in his children with homeopathy and acupuncture practised with wooden dowels instead of needles; when they cried with pain or his methods failed, he would fly into a rage.
He worked sitting in an old car seat, typing on an ancient typewriter at a desk made from a plain slab of wood. He hated being disturbed, even by Margaret.

One remark he made at this time to his ten-year-old daughter expresses much of his attitude to women. After a quarrel he told her: 'We'd better find a way to make up because when I'm through with a person - I'm through with them'.
It was perfectly true; but in his first marriage, it was his wife who cracked first. By 1966, the strain of Claire's life of isolation had begun to have a physical effect on her.

She suffered from sleeplessness, loss of weight and sexual problems. In 1966, she filed for divorce, which was granted the following year.
Then, in spring 1972, Salinger saw a picture of a young writer, Joyce Maynard, on the cover of the New York Times Magazine with the headline An 18-Year- Old Looks Back On Life. Soon, Joyce was receiving fan letters from him.
Intrigued, she wrote back - and soon gave up her degree course at Yale University to live with him in New Hampshire.

She was 19; he was 53, with a lifestyle based on macrobiotics and Zen Buddhism - at various times he was also to become involved with Scientology and Christian Science.
Their sexual problems began at once. Salinger did not want more children and their relationship, according to Joyce, was based on oral sex - she had a condition that made full sex painful.
The nine-month affair ended while on holiday in Florida with his children, whose custody he had kept. Salinger told her to leave at once, go home and clear her things out of his house before he returned. (In 1999, she put the story of their affair in a memoir, At Home In The World, and sold 14 letters from Salinger at Sotheby's, where they fetched almost £100,000.)
Salinger went back to his life of seclusion in the hidden cabin, around which he now owned 450 acres. Dressed in a blue boiler suit, he wrote every day, although not for publication - a possible treasure trove of up to ten novels are believed to lie in his locked safe.
In 1981, he began a relationship with the 36-year-old actress Elaine Joyce, again initiated by letter. This lasted for several years, until he met Colleen O'Neill, the director of the annual town fair, who was 40 years his junior. They married in the late Eighties.
Salinger's privacy was momentarily breached in October 1992 when a fire broke out in his house and Colleen had to drive her blue pickup truck to a telephone box to call the fire brigade.
One of the reporters who were drawn by the news spotted him looking at the damage, but as soon as he approached, the white-haired writer darted away.
Give or take the reprinting of an early story, Hapworth 16, 1924, it is almost 50 years since the publication of his last book, Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters, in 1963, a silence he explained himself with words that could be his epitaph: 'I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.'

do you with russell simmons

jonestown documentary..

Produced for the PBS series American Experience, Stanley Nelson’s Jonestown: The Life and Death of the Peoples’ Temple, written by his frequent collaborator Marcia Smith, examines the infamous religious cult formed by Jim Jones and the events that led to the group’s horrifying mass suicide in 1978. The film traces Jones’ history from his unhappy childhood in rural Indiana.

Witnesses describe a strange, charismatic young man who nursed a seemingly sincere desire for social justice, but also reputedly murdered small animals as a child. Jones’ desire to befriend people across color and class lines alienated his family and neighbors. Eventually, he moved to Indianapolis, where, as a young Pentecostal minister, he started the city’s first integrated church.

Eventually, Jones moved his church to California to escape the racism he perceived in Indiana. In Redwood Valley, his church took on a new life, and he began aggressively recruiting new members. At first, members were required to tithe a percentage of their worth, but eventually, they were expected to relinquish all of their “worldly goods” to the Temple. In 1974, Jones moved to San Francisco, where he acquired some political clout before his high profile caught up with him.

Just before a damaging exposé was published, he moved his people to what was meant to be a “paradise” outside the racism and oppression of America, in Guyana. Nelson interviews eyewitnesses, including many former members of the Temple, and members of Congressman Leo Ryan’s staff who managed to escape when the congressman’s investigatory visit ended in bloodshed. The film had its world premiere at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival.

To check out the full doc, click here. Worth the watch....

english language. i'll love you forever. will like you for always...

Got up. Forgot about the pain. It's still there. It seems like it'll always be there. Read Casie's blog. She felt the same way with her back. It's funny how when people wake up from a nice peaceful dream, the world seems all good. It's when you regain consciousness you realize what's really going down and you're back into reality. My reality today was my injured knee. I tried to walk around the house today to see if it would be feasible to get back to school. Nope. I called in. Told them by Friday, hopefully. I doubt it. It has its moments. I thought I would give it a little workout today. It started to really hurt and almost fell over. Sat back down. Feeling helpless. Went around the net looking for something to do to wake me up. Entertain me in an educational way. Found these videos of lectures from Yale. They're pretty cool. All about some really cool books. They even talk about Franny and Zooey by JD . JD was my first favorite author in high school. Before he was replaced by Carroll. Both took the literary game to a whole new level. They inspire me. To this day. Just like the kid authors. Sometimes I read some old kid stories like Robert Munsh's Love You Forever and forget how writing so simple could be more effective than writing with complicated verses. I try to balance between both. Easy and hard. Depending on my mood. I'll Love You Forever. I will Like you for Always. So poetic. So simple. I love the English language.

rip jim carroll

I always loved writing. But it wasn't when I got older and started to understand the philosophy of building a sentence was when I started to come in to my own. Created my own identity as a writer. I learned from some of the best in radio and the newspaper game to be a journalist however it was Jim Carroll - author of Basketball Diaries - that taught me that writing was about self expression and not about grammatical correctness. He taught me to throw out the rule book for writing. Write what you want. How you want. With the language you want. For this I owe him a lot. Thanks for teaching me, Jim. You will be missed.

From The Australian

POET and musician Jim Carroll, who chronicled his teenage drug use in The Basketball Diaries, has died in New York at age 60.

In the 1970s, Carroll was a fixture of the burgeoning downtown New York art scene, where he mixed with artists such as Andy Warhol, Patti Smith, Larry Rivers and Robert Mapplethorpe. His life was shaped by drug use, which he wrote about extensively.

The son of a bar owner, Carroll attended Trinity, an elite private school on Manhattan's Upper West Side, on a basketball scholarship. He excelled at sport but from the age of 13 was leading a double life.

He experimented with heroin and supported his addiction by hustling gay men; he wrote about these experiences in The Basketball Diaries.

The book, which began life as a journal, was first published in 1978 and became particularly popular on university campuses when it was issued as a mass-market paperback two years later. A 1995 movie version starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Wahlberg.

Carroll's poetry career started even earlier. He was in his teens when he first received recognition for his poems, especially Organic Trains in 1967, then 4 Ups and 1 Down in 1970.

It was his raw and fiery poetry, in verse form and in his lyrics for the Jim Carroll Band, that quickly earned him a reputation as a new Bob Dylan.

"I met him in 1970 and already he was pretty much universally recognised as the best poet of his generation," singer and poet Patti Smith told The New York Times.

"The work was sophisticated and elegant. He had beauty."

Carroll spent time with and around some of the most acclaimed poets, musicians and other artists of his and other generations: Smith, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, and beat poet Allen Ginsberg, who lauded the younger man's poetry and occasionally performed with him.

In the 1970s Carroll worked with Warhol at his famous Factory and contributed to the pop artist's films, collaborated with the likes of Lou Reed and lived for a period with Smith and Mapplethorpe.

In music Carroll had an outsized influence on underground rock and punk, and his 1980 album Catholic Boy is considered a punk classic. The album's biggest hit, People Who Died, was a litany of his friends who had passed away, many of drug overdoses or murder, and was featured on the soundtrack to the Steven Spielberg blockbuster ET: The Extra-Terrestrial.

Carroll's former wife Rosemary Carroll told The New York Times he died on Friday of a heart attack.