"Every move Republicans make, from gutting consumer protections to polluting the environment, is designed to aid the rich—even if it requires borrowing from China, dismantling Medicare and taxing the middle class”
—Tim Dickinson in Rolling Stone

A FILM ABOUT Elvis Presley would surely be a winner, but prohibitively expensive royalty fees have so far kept would-be producers at a distance. Some have estimated that licensing just one song might run to a million bucks, probably paid to what the Hollywood Reporter refers to as “the famously tight-fisted CKX” company which in 2005 gave Presley’s daughter $100million for the rights. The late singer brought in $55million last year alone, with more than $5m of it from Graceland during the first quarter of 2011. Now, reports THR, the field is being all shook up with four unauthorized Elvis projects in various stages of development.

Credit: The Hollywood Reporter

One, titled Elvis and Nixon, is based on that famous encounter; another is a traditional biopic and a third centers on an Elvis impersonator. What could be more sensational is Fame & Fortune which, focusing on the relationship between Elvis and his bodyguard Sonny West hints at scandal. “This guy had a window into Elvis’ world” says producer Ricki Landers Friedlander, “the movies, the women, the accelerated weight gain, the prescription medicine”. And how to get around the costly music licenses? THR explains that Fame could use songs sung by Presley that belong to others or are in the public domain.

DEFINING DEPRESSION AS “a disease of affluence”, Dr. Andrew Weil calls it a disorder of modern life in the industrialized world. People living in poorer countries have a lower risk of depression, he writes in his new book Spontaneous Happiness, and the lowest rates of depression are found in countries much less industrialized than our own. Dr Weil suggests that the processed food we eat (“much altered from its natural source”) may be affecting our brain activity and our moods and is “eerily (similar to) “the allure of synthetic entertainment, television and the Internet.”

POETRY AND MONEY are words not often found in the same sentence except in the back pages of Poets&Writers magazine where thousands of dollars are awaiting claimants. The Academy of American Poets, for example, promotes the annual Walt Whitman Award of $5,000 via Louisiana State University Press for a poetry collection by a US citizen; the Cleveland Foundation awards $10,000 for a book of poetry, and Canadian and international poets or translators are eligible for two $65,000 prizes offered by the Oakville, Ont. Griffin Trust. Most of the prizes are a modest one to three thousand dollars for poems, but there are at least a score of them ranging from San Diego’s Cider Press Review which throws in 25 free copies along with its award, to Yale University Press which promises publication but doesn’t mention cash. Some of the awards are regional, such as the one by the Texas Institute of Letters which restricts entrants to Texans or those who have lived there, and almost all require an entry fee along with the work.

PERSONALLY, I’VE NEVER been much of a fan of poetry. Most of it, I feel, is nonsense – strings of words laid out in non-linear form that usually don’t add up to much in terms of common sense or communication. Usually I don’t “get” it and I don’t “understand” it, and quite often it’s because there’s nothing to get or understand. Most poems, if written in prose, would be laughed out of the room.
   Like most editors I wince when it turns out that some professed “writer” means that he or she “writes” only poetry, and as a lifelong journalist I attribute their choice of profession to the fact that they can’t string together an interesting factual sentence. It seems too easy to write so-called poetry.
   This is not to maintain, however, that there is no such thing as good poetry. I would suggest it constitutes about 5% of what is proclaimed as such.
   My childlike preferences are for rhyme, and topping the list of rhyming poems is The Cataract at Lodore, written in 1820 by Robert Southey (1774-1843) about his favorite waterfall in Cumbria, northwest England. Wikipedia calls the poem a “masterpiece of onomatopoeia, employing some of the most clever and evocative language ever used to describe a natural feature”. Lodore has 128 lines altogether. If you want to read the middle part click here.

ALMOST HALF OF the country’s corn is now destined not for food but to make ethanol which is ridiculous—and shameful in a world where so many are near starvation. It’s the fault of greedy farmers and their dumb, corrupt politician partners (who aren’t even aware that corn is only half as efficient at making ethanol as other products, sugar cane for example). Short-sighted and ignorant mandates have turned the whole business into what the weekly Standard describes as “the biofuels fiasco” which sees the US exporting some of this corn-fed ethanol at the same time as importing sugar-fed ethanol from Brazil (with hefty tariffs so that it won’t be competitive). The mag reports that there are proposals in Congress to address the problem. “But even if they are adopted, a mind-numbingly convoluted regulatory regime will be left in place”.

NEW YORK’S BRAINY MAYOR, Michael R. Bloomberg, still has a couple of years to go but what will he do next? ”The possibilities are vast” says Fast Company, “when you’re a self-made billionaire and world renowned figure”, even one who’s been reluctant to talk about himself. Ranked by Forbes as the world’s 30th richest person, he has always been a generous donor, vowing in the past to give away all his money before he dies and aiming—through his foundation—“to fund things nobody else is interested in”. Bloomberg LP produces $7billion a year, most of it via the 300,000 terminals which provide business with financial and other information. This is predicted to increase to $10billion by 2014 and most of it will presumably go into the foundation which funds, among other things, an international coalition of cities. Sierra Club chairman Carl Pope told Inc, that he envisions Bloomberg “helping other mayors succeed by giving them a global voice that can compete with heads of state”.

THE WILCOCK WEB: Do any of the 99% conceivably believe that, with or without the presidency, the Party of the Rich would so much as raise a finger to help them?....As the authorities gradually and meticulously close down the Occupy movements, a disgruntled hardcore will inevitably turn to violence…. Too many anonymous quotes are popping up in the papers, says the Media Watch Group’s bulletin Extra which charges that it lets officials off the hook for their views. “That works out swell for powerful people who’d prefer to avoid accountability for what they say, and terribly for citizens for whom accountability is crucial”…....It's Ron Paul's turn!....When they can’t fill those back-breaking “jobs that Americans won’t do”, wouldn’t visas be more attractive than money?.... When they pull the troops out of Iraq next month there’ll still be 16,000 Americans crowding the billion dollar embassy….. Did you ever wonder what happened to that idiot Peter Bremer, who screwed up Iraq beyond repair?.... Insensitive stupidity, declared Aldous Huxley, is the root of all the other vices… If the Feds can print money whenever we need it, why are we ever short of funds?....Not content with the $106 billion it has reaped from Lipitor, Pfizer is now trying to bribe or bully pharmacists to block the cheaper generics which can finally be allowed…. A sycophantic piece in National Review about Justice Clarence Thomas by one of his former clerks, describes him, as “a beacon for conservative jurists”….Former Mexico City mayor Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador who caused chaos after claiming he was robbed of the presidency by Felipe Calderòn, will again represent the leftwing PRD party at next year’s election….Dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish….. Acupuncture is a jab well done….. New York magazine devoted a cover story to Gloria Steinem whose initial issue of Ms magazine began as an insert in its pages 40 years ago… Variety reports that an (un-named) actress is suing the showbiz credits site IMDb for revealing her age, because “if one is perceived to be ‘over—the-hill’, i.e. approaching 40, it is nearly impossible for an up-and-coming actress”….If Saudi women really seek the right to drive they must sooner or later summon the courage for mass protests… “He who asks fearfully” chastened Seneca, “invites denial”…“(Bosses) tend to overplay their strengths and downplay their weaknesses” writes April Joyner in Inc, “so by hiring people like themselves, business leaders may inadvertently populate their companies with CEO-level egos”….... The decline of Newsweek under editor Tina Brown has shown that the onetime golden girl is not as smart as she thinks she is….“The capacity of human beings to bore one another” quipped H.L. Mencken, “seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal”…. …. The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered….Before the post office becomes bankrupt, writes Robert Verbruggen in National Review, “Congress should sell (it) to the highest bidder and eliminate its monopoly on mail delivery”…. When you answer the phone and there’s a one-second silence before anybody says something, hang up immediately on this robotcall……. “All is ephemeral—fame and the famous as well”-- Marcus Aurelius (121-180AD)

11/19/11

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Wednesday, October 27, 2010

A Budget Travel Pioneer on a Time When $5 a Day Was Real (Frugal) Money
nytimes.com: Frugal Traveler
by Seth Kugel

It was the first handwritten letter I’d received in 5 years. Or maybe 10. Signed by John Wilcock, a man I’d never heard of, and postmarked Ojai, Calif., it was waiting for me when I returned from my São Paulo-to-New York summer trip. Mr. Wilcock wrote that he had been an assistant editor at The Times Travel section back in the 1950s, and had written the first editions of “Mexico on $5 a Day,” “Greece on $5 a Day” and “Japan on $5 a Day” for Arthur Frommer in the 1960s.

By George, I thought. This man was the original Frugal Traveler.

(read more)

"A GOOD WAY to describe John Wilcock is to say that he is a talented bohemian counter-culture journalist who once played a major role in the emergence of America’s underground press. Born 1927 in Sheffield, England, he left school aged 16 to work on various newspapers in England, and on Toronto periodicals before moving to New York City. There in 1955 he became one of the five founders of the Village Voice in which he and co-founder Norman Mailer wrote weekly columns. Wilcock called his column “The Village Square”, an intended pun. He and young Mailer were not quite friends, although Wilcock was at times annoyed, but always amused, by Mailer’s monstrous ego."

-From the preface of Manhattan Memories, by Martin Gardner

The Autobiography and Sex Life of Andy Warhol
by John Wilcock
Edited by Christopher Trela
Photographs by Shunk-Kender

Village Voice and Interview cofounder John Wilcock was first drawn into the milieu of Andy Warhol through film-maker Jonas Mekas, assisting on some of Warhol’s early films, hanging out at his parties and quickly becoming a regular at the Factory. “About six months after I started hanging out at the old, silvery Factory on West 47th Street,” he recalls, “[Gerard] Malanga came up to me and asked, ‘When are you going to write something about us?’” Already fascinated by Warhol’s persona, Wilcock went to work, interviewing the artist’s closest associates, supporters and superstars. Among these were Malanga, Naomi Levine, Taylor Mead and Ultra Violet, all of whom had been in the earliest films; scriptwriter Ronnie Tavel, and photographer Gretchen Berg; art dealers Sam Green, Ivan Karp, Eleanor Ward and Leo Castelli, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Henry Geldzahler; the poets Charles Henri Ford and Taylor Mead, and the artist Marisol; and the musicians Lou Reed and Nico. Paul Morrisey supplied the title: The Autobiography and Sex Life of Andy Warhol was the first oral biography of the artist. First published in 1971, and pitched against the colorful backdrop of the 1960s, it assembles a prismatic portrait of one of modern art’s least knowable artists during the early years of his fame. The Autobiography and Sex Life is likely the most revealing portrait of Warhol, being composite instead of singular; each of its interviewees offers a piece of the puzzle that was Andy Warhol. This new edition corrects the many errors of the first, and is beautifully designed in a bright, Warholian palette with numerous illustrations. The British-born writer John Wilcock co-founded The Village Voice in 1955, and went on to edit seminal publications such as The East Village Other, Los Angeles Free Press, Other Scenes and (in 1970) Interview, with Andy Warhol.