Save a Landmark Program -
Edgar Allan Poe Museum - Richmond, Virginia
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
LA Kompany - June 2009 Posts
The Death of Michael Jackson
The "King of Pop" has died. Michael Jackson is dead at fifty. This was the scene outside UCLA Reagan Medical Center in Westwood, Los Angeles, California on Thursday, June 25, 2009 where Michael Jackson's body was taken in a failed effort to revive him. His fans flocked to the scene where they exhibited their grief, their joy, their love for their fallen hero. As would be expected, the press, both professional and amateur, showed up to record the event. The crowd consisted of several colorful and eccentric personalities eager to share themselves with posterity.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Poe Forward - May 2009 Posts
Edgar Allan Poe and The Economy of Horror
“My whole existence has been the merest Romance,” Poe wrote, the year before his death, “in the sense of the most utter unworldliness.” This is Byronic bunk. Poe’s life was tragic, but he was about as unworldly as a bale of cotton. Poe’s world was Andrew Jackson’s America, a world of banking collapse, financial panic, and grinding depression that had a particularly devastating effect on the publishing industry, where Poe sought a perch. His biography really is a series of unfortunate events. But two of those events were transatlantic financial crises: the Panic of 1819 and the Panic of 1837, the pit and the pendulum of the antebellum economy. Poe died at the end of a decade known, in Europe, as “the Hungry Forties,” and he wasn’t the only American to fall face down in the gutter during a seven-year-long depression brought on by a credit collapse. He did not live out of time. He lived in hard times, dark times, up-and-down times. Indigence cast a shadow over everything he attempted. Poverty was his raven, tapping at the door, and it was Poe, not the bird, who uttered, helplessly, another rhyme for “Nevermore.” “I send you an original tale,” Poe once began a letter, and, at its end, added one line more: “P.S. I am poor.”
Jill Lepore has written a compelling essay on Poe's manipulation of the then contemporary media. Jill asks "Was the man an utter genius or a complete fraud?" She has good reason. However, if we compare Poe's journalistic efforts in 1840s media to today's free-for-all, we would find him an abject amateur at manipulation. Again, perhaps Poe is the true originator of media explotation. Perhaps he is the grandfather of our contemporary exploitive media? I don't mind Jill's criticism. But Poe was trying to make a buck in a time when real writers were hardly and barely paid. Like most writers, he worked for money and he wrote miracles at home.
But please read the essay. Jill's work illuminates so much of Poe not known to the average public. She reveals much of the true Poe. She even concludes by questioning herself, which I think is the best role of a critic.
Poe: Visionary or Humbug?
The New Yorker - The Humbug: A Critic at Large by Jill Lepore
Friday, May 1, 2009
Poe Forward - April 2009 Posts
Poe Forward - April 2009 Posts
Manny and Poe
We've had pet store rats for years. They are terrific apartment pets. They are self-contained and behave much like cats. They clean themselves. They can be trained to sit on your shoulder for a period of time before you must put them back in their cage to shit. But they can be more friendly than cats. If you spend quality time with a rat, they will bond with you. They will cheer when you enter the room and live to play with you.
Manny enjoyed the back rubs we gave him, but didn't get the rat-human thing at all. He remained a "scaredy" rat. But we loved him just the same. His cagemate and probable brother MOE served as the aggressor. Moe took the food to his corner and Manny ate the scraps. We compensated by feeding Manny separately. After Moe died, we cared for Manny through his old age. He warmed up to us at the end and made it through our move from Santa Monica to Westwood. He died quietly. At this moment he resides in our freezer with Moe. We plan to bury them at the earliest convenience.
MANNY was a very shy rat, but despite his reserved temperment, Manny proved to be a nice rat with a big heart. We miss him.
LA Kompany - April 2009 Posts
Look at that Meat !
- Century City Farmers' Market
Look at that meat! They should call themselves GRILLING HEAVEN. The line at this Century City Farmers' Market concession could rival the line at Space Mountain. Starving office workers were waiting up to 30 minutes to feed here. Not liking lines, I had a roasted eggplant sandwich from a different vendor. I like food, but I'm not crazy. I don't like lines. I don't like waiting in lines. I don't wait in lines. But the devil/god of "waiting in lines" has it out for me.
The produce looks juicy. The fountain in the background was a good idea.
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