My Journal
Confessions of St. Augustine (a 21st Century Main Street II)
Not technically a Main Street, but every town (at least in the past) had its edge of the town (now they tend to all run together - e.g., Boshington - urban sprawl from Boston to Washington with hardly a break in between. And if nothing else, the railroad tracks at...
Confessions of St. Augustine (a 21st Century Main Street)
Unlike Sinclair Lewis's love-hate relationship with Main Street America, our hero waxes nostalgic on a Tom Sawyer's America that's as harmless as a Mayberry, R.F.D. Not out of naivete but more out of loss. Loss for an Eden haunts his art throughout the book. An...
Confessions of St Augustine (a 21st Century James Dean)
A special tribute to James Dean. In the history of film - who better than Dean typified the troubled teen? Certainly not Brando. In fact, in The Wild One - we don't see him as a teen. Or any of Newman's. Or Nicholson's. Granted there were a lot of good ones long after...
LXXXI (81): A 21st Century?
Okay, we've made a lot of outrageous claims here, so let's just examine them a little more closely. Let's take Daniel Burt's book The Novel 100: A Ranking of the Greatest Novels of all Time. There are lots of lists, but this is as good as any, better than most, if not...
A voice of the 21st Century?
Art defines a people. Has any culture developed without its being defined by its art? Not only our conception of them - but their perception of themselves? Could the Greeks and the Romans have achieved what they did without the very art that defined them? Or has...
Lists
Interesting categorization. Top 10. Top 100. One of my son-in-laws said Rolling Stone peaked years ago, and all they're good for now is making lists. Top 100 songs, singers, albums, etc., you've heard them all - whether it's AFI or all the other credible institutions...
A 21st Century Holden Caulfield, Alexander Portnoy, Jimmy Porter?
When I read Catcher in the Rye, my life changed. From that point on, I had to read everything Salinger wrote and was not disappointed until Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Seymour: an Introduction. But it was worth the journey, considering Fitzgerald led me...
Indians?
What’s with the Indians? Aside from paintings and drawings of Indians plastered all over the book, what’s it got to do with some wise guy New Yorker who wants to “go back to where I used to live when I was a kid in New Hope and see my best friend Smedley Fagan here,...
A 21st century Dean, Brando, Newman, Nicholson
Who are the great movie anti-heroes? Gable? Bogart? Brando? Dean? Newman? Nicholson? AFI picked Bogart as America's favorite movie star - and his appeal was on that basis, the anti-hero - as was Gable's (the King) and all the rest of the aforementioned. Rhett, Rick,...
A 21st Century Catch-22
North Korea! Front page today. Tomorrow? Or by the time you read this? Who knows? But I mention it because I served 13 months in the closest camp of significance to the DMZ where we all knew we were mere cannon fodder (or, at best, speed bumps) if they ever decided to...
Read My Lips: Cool Conversations with Creatives with akaRadioRed
On the Read My Lips stage, where passion beams true, akaRadioRed, on her Scarlett mic in the live-streaming hue, welcomes you to The Opportunities of Creativity today. The show features a trio of Creatives with much to say, including our James Mueller; watch or listen...
LXVI (66): Confessions of St. Augustine (a 21st Century Second Coming)
Not to sound like a numerologist, but if you were to add another 6 to this post, you'd have the number 666. And then, on page 666 (a number not without significance), our hero finally reaches the end of his story, too (more on that in a minute). Because 666, of...