Ulalume
What
(with apologies to Rudyard Kipling) What can you keep when everyone around you Is hysterical and blaming all on you, “What the dickens,” is the way they sound you Out, and stipulate the new taboo; What the devil is the endless queuing, The waiting by the door we see, surprised, What went down when everyone was booing, When emerged one, no longer disguised: — What you dream you are is often vaster; Than the actual world…
Continue Reading →American Unease
September 2020: With a Presidential election a mere 2 months away, we have thought about the unrest in that country, an admixture of BLM protest, concerted (possibly organized) opposition to Donald Trump, and a spontaneous reaction against the prevailing authority, a left-wing version of the alt/general-right correction of 2016. The disruption and disorder is a weird echo of 1968, where in a different and more difficult period, voters chose order over chaos. In the wake of Martin Luther King‘s assassination in that year, Robert Kennedy’s plea for calm seems apposite now (see below). We fear this November, or next January, might…
Continue Reading →Vale Hong Kong
In 1970 Hunter J. Thompson wrote a piece about the great French downhill skier, Jean-Claude Killy. Trying to make a connection with the rather aloof and private champion, he asked where was the best place he knew. Killy nominated Hong Kong, and when asked why, replied: “Because a friend of mine is head of the police there…and when I go to Hong Kong I can do anything I want.” That is TVC‘s Hong Kong. Having been there at the handover to China in 1997 and visiting again in the early ‘noughties,’ we regret to say we’ve doubts now about ever…
Continue Reading →All things Must Pass
(2017: Holden manufacturing (with wages well above market level) in Australia ceases; 2020: The Holden car (its models no longer competitive at the list price) ceases for good. Certain commentators suggest governments should have ‘done more‘) ‰ We’ve had much hand-wringing of late And cries for intervention by the State, To return us to the good old times Of subsidies and other nursery-rhymes. ⊕ ”Invest” (in losers) interventionists cry, Raise the prices till no one can buy, The Holden car, well ‘she’s a bloody beauty’; When markets fail, we all have a duty. ⊗ (One absorbs the books by Marx,…
Continue Reading →Kirk Douglas
(1916 – 2020) Born Issur Danielovitch Demsky, his new name suited him down to the ground: he was one of the post-war film types who looked like businessmen (like Burt Lancaster). He formed his own production company in the 1950s and was instrumental in bringing works and talents to the fore (he gambled in giving script work to blacklisted Dalton Trumbo; he saw the potential in Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and took it to Broadway in 1963). As an actor, he was a strong presence; at times, he was almost too intense. That drive worked very well…
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