Archive | January, 2014

Cat Power (b. Jan 21): “I got more guts than brains, and that’s my problem.”

21 Jan

Portrait 7

“I got more guts than brains, and that’s my problem.”

~ Cat Power, b. 21 January 1972

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Bill Maher (b. Jan 20): “We need more people speaking out…”

20 Jan

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“We need more people speaking out. This country is not overrun with rebels and free thinkers. It’s overrun with sheep and conformists.”

~ Bill Maher, b. 20 January 1956

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William Gibson’s novel, Zero History = Zero Story

19 Jan

zero historyIf either the author or his publisher had subscribed to truth in advertising, this book should have been titled Zero Story.

Once upon a time, after reading Neuromancer a couple of decades ago, I thought William Gibson was a SF genius for the brilliance with which he’d described a wired world of the future.

A couple of years ago I read Spook County and was horribly disappointed with a vaguely-futuristic novel that appeared to have no plot. Since then, Gibson has apparently been pushing the limits of his ability to anesthetize unsuspecting readers with more of the same.

In all fairness, Gibson is a fine craftsman of prose. It was pleasurable and effortless to read Zero History, at least insomuch as I could feign an interest in the latest fashions in clothing, architecture, vehicles and interior design, to which he devoted an inordinate percentage of word count in this tiresome excuse for a novel.

For the life of me, I struggle to recount what Zero History was all about. Essentially, a bunch of characterless nerds trying to determine the identity of a designer of leading edge military clothing. But if I looked for a plot, I was out of luck. I felt like I was downtown on a Saturday night, endlessly circling the block in front of a popular restaurant, looking for a parking spot that never materialized.

I was fed up with this novel in less than 40 pages. I persisted to the end (400 pp) only in the vain hope that perhaps this once-esteemed writer would show some purpose and redeem himself in the next chapter… or maybe the next… or maybe the last. Never happened.

In the acknowledgements section, Gibson went to great pains to thank his wife and daughter, editor and literary agent, and a dozen others who supposedly helped to midwife this bastard. Of those, shame on his agent and editor, who didn’t have the stones to tell him, this is an insubstantial piece of crap and you can do better.

If ever I reach this stage in my writing, I can only pray I have more honest people in my life to counsel me.

~~~

Dolly Parton (b. Jan 19): “I was the first woman to burn my bra…”

19 Jan

 parton

“I was the first woman to burn my bra – it took the fire department four days to put it out.”

~ Dolly Parton, b. 19 January 1946

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Cary Grant (b. Jan 18): “To succeed with the opposite sex, tell her you’re impotent.”

18 Jan

grant

“To succeed with the opposite sex, tell her you’re impotent. She can’t wait to disprove it.”

~ Cary Grant, b. 18 January 1904

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Jim Carrey (b. Jan 17): “Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.”

17 Jan

carrey

“Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.”

~  Jim Carrey, b. 17 January 1962

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Lev Grossman: “A good story is a dirty secret…”

16 Jan

grossman

“A good story is a dirty secret that we all share. It’s what makes guilty pleasures so pleasurable, but it’s also what makes them so guilty. A juicy tale reeks of crass commercialism and cheap thrills. We crave such entertainments, but we despise them. Plot makes perverts of us all.”

~ LEV GROSSMAN

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Kate Moss (b. Jan 16): “If I wasn’t a model I would have wanted to be a rock star…”

16 Jan

moss

“I would have wanted to be a rock star, a lead singer, if I wasn’t a model. I’d go touring in a bus with my band. In my next life, that’s the plan.”

~ Kate Moss, b. 16 January 1974

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/39406565463469841/

 

Ray Bradbury: “Don’t think.”

15 Jan

bradbury2

“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.”

~ RAY BRADBURY

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Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart (b. Jan 15): “I wasn’t neglected enough as a child…”

15 Jan

beefheart

“I needed to purge myself of all the attention my parents had given me – I wasn’t neglected enough as a child.”

~ Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet), b. 15 January 1941

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