Nat Turner was born 208 years ago today, but I've already covered him, and besides, after the last two diaries, I'm plumb tired of crying.
I could go for some Wallace Stevens (born 129 years ago today) or Groucho Marx (118 years ago today).
If I were a drinker, I'd have one for Samuel Adams, who died 205 years ago today.
Paavo Nurmi stopped running 35 years ago today.
Rock Hudson 23 years ago today. What was might have been more, Roy.
And Gene Autry 10 years ago today.
For the victims of the Beltway sniper attacks, which began six years ago today.
And for 1864house, for whom Leonard Cohen has special meaning, and for whom this diary is not just a series of phoned-in videos.
Charles Monroe Schulz's first published drawing was of the family dog, Spike. He (Schulz, not Spike) was 15.
His last drawing was published the day after he died.
(Source)
In between, things were ... truthful:
"A Charlie Brown Christmas" Chapters 1 - 3
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown 1
That music makes me smile so hard. I hadn't seen the beginning of that movie until now. The way the music jumps -- naturally -- as Linus finds the right pumpkin for Lucy ...
Not only was writing poetry not this next man's day job, it wasn't even important enough for him to quit his day job when a prestigious university came calling.
Why?
He might have had to stop dictating the stuff:
Wallace Stevens in his forties, living in Hartford, Connecticut, hewed to a productive routine. He rose at six, read for two hours, and walked another hour—three miles—to work. He dictated poems to his secretary. He ate no lunch; at noon he walked for another hour, often to an art gallery.
Stevens wrote in relative obscurity for a number of years, partly because he wasn't attached to a university and partly because who the hell keeps up with the poetic musings of an insurance executive?
Unfortunately for humanity, soon after Stevens gained significant notoriety for his poetry (the link includes files of Stevens reading his work), he died of intestinal cancer.
Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens
Parts Eliot (it begins, for all the world to me, as a postscript to "Prufrock"), Keats, cummings and others.
But all Stevens.
I have written, here and elsewhere, far more than I would like to about Rock Hudson and AIDS.
I have written as the tears gripped my cheeks, afraid to go down my face for fear that there is no more room at the inn, which has already absorbed so many more.
I have written with my eyes closed and images of his gaunt, sagging face haunting me even as images of his healthy days tried in vain to break through.
No use.
If we are lucky, our end is short and painless (for us; brutal for those we leave behind).
And if fate has determined, in her (in)finite wisdom, that we shuffle off miles at a time, instead of leaving our legacy timeless, the world cannot help but remember what had been, what was, and what became of it all.
Most of our most famous leading (Eastwood, Wayne, Hudson, Cruise) have, historically, played themselves, but with different names. Robin Williams is perhaps the best of them all, partly because "himself" changes with any factor, and sometimes none at all. He is really the world's oldest 2-year-old.
Rock Hudson played straight. Pretty easy job for most people, and he got paid for it.
Pillow Talk - Rock Hudson feigns gay to get Doris Day
Now, on the one hand, this is a pretty tame characterization of gay people. "Yeah, we like recipes, cats and our mothers." I don't know the history of the movie, and for at least until I'm done writing this diary, I don't really want the distraction. (I'd watch it all, get distracted on something else and then finally come back to this five minutes before I wanted it done.)
On the other hand, kind of daring for a guy like Rock to do back in the day. Did anyone suspect anything? Nobody who was saying anything.
I was born in 1981, and I do not remember Rock Hudson at all. Part of that is that I do not remember much of anything from before about nine years ago (coinciding nicely with escaping from high school and no longer being in destructive settings all the time), and part of that is that Rock Hudson looked like shit in the 1980s.
In my research for this diary and others, and for other articles and plain old curiosity, I have come across two very strong story lines:
- Rock Hudson looked and acted very manly. He was a serious presence.
- Yeah, but boy did he look like shit those last few years.
Six years later, when Magic retired because he had HIV, people who remembered Rock Hudson expected no different. Why should anything be different? Had anyone not gone down that road to long, painful ruin?
Magic announces his retirement
Even his cool-natured pal Larry Bird wept.
Have a happy video:
And here's something old-timey from Gene Autry and Roy Rogers: