The Best American Poetry

'Tony Towle at 70' at The Poetry Project [by Ken Tucker]

This past Wednesday, The Poetry Project hosted a "Tony Towle at 70" celebration. Towle, to my mind the New York School's most distinctive lyric poet, was well-served by the procession of poets who saluted him, preceding his own reading. One of my heroes, Ron Padgett (a white popsicle-stick of serious whimsy), and the finely meticulous poet Jo Ann Wasserman each read separate selections from Towle's Memoir 1960-1963. Anne Waldman shook a bit more of the flaky plaster loose from the ceiling, while Bob Hershon worked the crowd (and it was indeed a crowd) like a savvy tummler. Nine poets in all read some of their favorite Towle poems or prose.

After them, Towle himself read, his reedy yet surging voice delivering a superb selection of some of his poetry, the dartingly vivid work of a lifetime spent considering the most precise yet offhand way of describing historical figures, the weather, the seasons, the various skylines of New York, and the conversations of friends, rivals, and those who would bring sadness into the world.

He read "On His Name":

Wandering, shipwrecked on a shoal and running into Robert Lowell
I introduced myself: “Tony Towle,”
I said, “we met briefly some years ago at a party in your home;
we have differences in style and sensibility but a general goal,
to distill from the distraction and trouble of life as a whole
what we think of literary interest, before interment in the loam.”
He replied that that was not his role,
that he preferred not to speak, since it was not his poem,
and the conversation broke off near the knoll’s island foam.

Towle told the audience he once tried to get a copy of this poem to Lowell but wasn't successful. Then with typical modesty, he added, "I don't think he would have enjoyed it, anyway."

It was one of many peaks of pleasure in a vibrant evening. Happy birthday, Mr. Towle.

2 TV Haiku

MAD MEN

Betty slaps Sally

Children are playing outside

Don drinks in the pain

EMMY AWARDS THIS WEEKEND

Jane Lynch will win prize

Great glee splurge through cameras

If Conan wins, too

The Mystery of Mom by Ken Tucker

My mother died a few years ago. I’ve discovered what many people already know: that you can’t predict how you’ll remember someone after she or he is gone, what memories will bob to the surface again and again.

I’ve found that I’m frequently reminded of my mother just before or after I read a book. As I was growing up, my mother was the reader in the family. The only books in the house were my mother’s, and they were almost exclusively mysteries: Ellery Queen, Rex Stout,and John Dickson Carr (and Carter Dickson) were favorites. Kids imitate their parents, and so I spent many pre-teen and adolescent years alternating whatever books I was reading for school, before I developed stronger reading preferences of my own, devouring the adventures of Nero Wolfe, Ellery Queen, and Gideon Fell.

My mother had a difficult marriage. What a coincidence: I had a difficult father. For her, I’m sure these books were escapes, and they overlapped with her fondness for puzzles. (She also did the Times crossword puzzle every day of the week.) Sometimes I’ll be in a library or a used bookstore and see the exact edition of a copy of, say, The Roman Hat Mystery or Too Many Cooks that my mother read, and I’ll be so overcome with emotion that I’ll have to hide in the stacks for a moment. I can picture my mother in so many different times and settings, thoroughly absorbed in reading, unaware of my gaze. Or maybe she was.

Wanting to know what my mom was so interested in: That’s as good a reason as any to become a reader and a writer. Thanks, Mom.

"What's the name of this gal? Oh, yeah -- Emily Dickinson... "

Bill Murray reads poetry while wearing a hard-hat:

 

'Breaking Bad' tonight: Walt reads Walt: White on Whitman [by Ken Tucker]

I urge you to watch tonight’s episode of Breaking Bad, which finds Bryan Cranston’s Walter White adjusting to the dissolution of his marriage while declining to abandon one big reason it dissolved: He still wants/needs to make meth to pay the bills. He goes to a new location to ply his chemistry-teacher skills and acquires a new assistant, played by David Costabile (the scruffy villain from last season’s Damages, among many other credits).

New Assistant finds it comforting to quote Walt Whitman’s “When I Heard The Learn’d Astronomer” to justify his illegal, and let’s face it, immoral ways to God and to himself. Cut to our Walt sitting in his new cheap apartment, a copy of Leaves of Grass on his lap, poring over the pages silently.

It’s a terrific moment in a terrific new season of Breaking Bad, which digs deeper, with each succeeding episode into questions of what makes a man or woman “bad,” what needs to be done to protect one’s loved ones, and constantly asks the viewer: “How far would you go? Not here, you say? You’re lying to yourself, then.”

Breaking Bad airs on AMC, home of Mad Men, which returns with a new season in July, it was announced earlier this week. Me, I can easily await MM when there are new hours of Breaking Bad to watch. The two shows could not be more different. If Mad Men is a novel of manners for TV (John O’Hara meets Louis Auchincloss in Updike/Cheeverville), Breaking Bad is working thriller territory mapped out by the likes of Charles Willeford, David Goodis, and Jonathan Latimer.

It’s lean and mean (a cop takes an axe to the back of the head in the opening minutes tonight), but thanks to the inspiration of creator Vince Gilligan to insert a middle-class nebbish into the role usually occupied by the cynical sharpie in most thrillers, it never lets ordinary folks like you or I to step back and say, “Oh, I’d never do that.” Breaking Bad is all about what you’d do if you were desperate enough. “And from time to time,” as Whitman writes, the show makes sure that you have “look’d up in perfect silence at the stars,” contemplating the full measure fate.

--Ken Tucker

'Mad Men' dolls: Barbie and Ken get some competition

Not content to daydream about the scenarios in which you'd like to place your favorite characters from Mad Men? Bored waiting for the new season to begin? Play with dolls. Barbie dolls. Barbie dolls of Don and Betty Draper, Roger Sterling, and Joan Holloway. (That last one isn't really fair, since Christina Hendricks is a living doll, isn't she?)

Mattel is releasing what it calls a "Mad Men Barbie Collector doll collection," and even the redundancy within that phrase cannot prevent it from sounding like an unholy cross between John Fowles and Thomas Harris.  

The limited-edition collection has a "suggested retail price of $74.95." I'd like to think I haven't been contemplating buying them... but then I realized I'd read no fewer than seven different news items about these toys trying to figure out whether Mattel meant 75 bucks for one doll or all four. (I think they mean the set.)

I admire Betty's impeccable housewife finery even as I know the Betty we saw at the end of last season is rebelling against just such stereotyping. (Mattel should be offering an alternate Betty in a horse-riding outfit, complete with crop.) And the more I stare at the men, I think they should switch suits; wouldn't Roger be wearing gray, and Don the black? As for Joan, well, she puts the lie to the old complaint that Barbie's measurements are unrealistic. 

Are you tempted?

Kate McGarrigle: Heartbeat Accelerating [by Ken Tucker]

The death of singer and songwriter Kate McGarrigle, at age 63 on Jan. 18 of clear-cell sarcoma, is an awful loss. As recently as Dec. 9 of the year past, she performed with her sister Anna and her children Rufus and Martha Wainwright -- one of the annual "family Christmas" shows that the McGarrigles and the Wainwrights liked to put on, this one at the Royal Albert Hall in London but more frequently at Carnegie Hall in New York.

Her debut album with her sister, entitled Kate and Anna McGarrigle, was released in 1976. It set the template for every album they recorded: folk music influenced by pop and country, filtered through their French-Canadian Quebec upbringing. The stark, often staggering beauty of their harmonies could not hide the fact that Kate and Anna were always playful misanthropes, capable of sarcasm, bitterness, and a detachment that allowed Kate, in a song on their second album, Dancer With Bruised Knees (1977), to gaze down upon her infant son and sing, "Some of them make it, some of them don't." 

This is one of my favorite McGarrigles performances, Kate singing her "I Eat Dinner":

Kate -- sitting behind her piano, exchanging unknowable glances with her sister as they sang -- made music unafraid that its often soft tone would be mistaken for passivity. This sister-team recorded songs with such astringent precision, it's no wonder it took other performers, with more lush voices and arrangements, to make hits of the McGarrigles' songs (Linda Ronstadt, "Heart Like A Wheel"; Maria Muldaur, "Work Song"). 

Kate took long periods off from recording to raise the family she had with the great singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III. They divorced 1976, and Loudon wrote some memorable songs about their relationship, including "Red Guitar," in which he recounts destroying a cherished guitar in a drunken rage. The song peaks with the line, "Kate, she said, 'You are a fool, you've done a foolish thing.'" Wainwright recorded Kate's "Come A Long Way" as a rueful salute to their marriage; when Kate and Anna got around to recording it four years later, the song was transformed into a testament of self-reliance.

I fear I've made Kate McGarrigle sound grave and severe, living a stoic life in cold Canada. In fact, she had a wicked sense of humor and a great playfulness about her. Once when I interviewed her, she reminded me that I'd once described Kate and Anna in print as "the Bronte sisters with mittens." "We laughed and laughed" when they read that, she said.

Firm, funny, realistic, and independent, Kate McGarrigle was certainly a wonderful musician, and she seemed like a wonderful person.

Happy birthday yesterday, Elvis Presley!

Elvis Presley was born 75 years ago yesterday. As the terrific musician Patterson Hood wrote yesterday, his birth is the date the celebrate, not the anniversary of his death, since, among other reasons, "Pat Boone's daughter had the #1 record in the land the day Elvis died with 'You Light Up My Life,' so Rock and Roll wasn't much healthier than Elvis was then."

It's impossible to pick a greatest-Elvis moment, of course, so I'll just give you one of mine, from his brutally great 1968 concert. The poetry occurs about 1:45 into this video, when Elvis cannot bear the beat of the music inside him and rises up from his chair to shake it loose from his soul (and his booty) for a second:

Ken Tucker on David Lehman's 'Yeshiva Boys' and H. L. Hix's 'Incident Light'

We like what Ken Tucker has to say about David Lehman's Yeshiva Boys, just out from Scribner, and H.L. Hix's Incident Light (Etruscan Press):  Hix's Incident Light is a "sustained feat of emotional and intellectual representation" and Lehman's Yeshiva Boys "is always bracing and tough-minded, brimming with a rare generosity."  Read the complete reviews here. 

Congratulations David Lehman and H. L. Hix.  And a reminder:  Roughly one year ago, H. L. Hix's Twenty Questions was one of our most popular features.  

-- sdh

Mad Men: Was This a Great Season? [by Ken Tucker]

Mad Men: Was This a Great Season?

Why are there going to be rave reviews of the season finale of Mad Men festooning the internet today? Because MM creator Matthew Weiner gave his fans what they’ve been dying for all season, even if they strenuously denied wanting it — that is, liveliness, jokes, action, and even the suggestion of a few plot-line resolutions. SPOILER ALERT IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN LAST NIGHT’S MAD MEN SEASON FINALE.

Yes, the marriage of Don and Betty took a turn toward dissolution. Yes, the children clung to the parent who occasionally shows them some semblance of affection. (That would be Don; I know it’s sometimes hard to tell with the Drapers.)

But after all the agonizingly calibrated anguish that began this season with Sal’s love-that-dares-not-speak-its-name-in-1963 hotel scene, and continued on through Betty’s zombie-like attraction to a man who’s more like a safe father-figure than the safe father-figure she started being snippy with when her real father died, Mad Men finally had to get a little madcap in its season finale to keep us primed for its next batch of new episodes.

The season-ender was directed by Weiner, and it turned out to be an extremely well-choreographed, wacky 1960s sitcom about starting an ad agency, with scenes of slamming-door farce set in the hotel room where the firm of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is taking shape. Instead of going the screw-the-viewers route his old boss David Sopranos Chase regularly travelled, Weiner brought back fan-faves, foremost among them Joan. (You know Sal cannot be far behind.

For the rest of Ken Tucker's EW piece, click here.

Footnoting the pop culture in this week's 'Mad Men'

• Early on, Pete cuts off wife Trudy's questions by snapping, "Trudy, stop it with the Ellery Queen."

Ellery Queen was, of course, the fictional detective and pseudonym of Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, author/star of over 20 novels and at the time of Pete's remark, probably the most well-known American detective character this side of Nero Wolfe. Two Queen mystery titles could serve as alternative-titles for this Mad Men episode: Calamity Town and The Devil To Pay.

• It was nice to see news footage other than the usual Walter Cronkite-voice-breaking moment on CBS in reporting JFK's assassination. Chet Huntley was shown leading NBC's coverage with as assist from Frank McGee and a man caught in the middle: Bill Ryan, a local WNBC news anchor in New York who would have been doing the local news at the time the news broke. Look again and you’ll see McGee on this phone with a "Robert" who’s on the scene in Dallas: That’s Robert MacNeill, who’d later co-host The MacNeill-Lehrer NewsHour on PBS.

 • Finally, the episode’s closing-credits music was Skeeter Davis's shattering 1963 hit "The End of the World." Davis was a Kentucky-born country singer who achieved cross-over pop stardom with this song, produced by Chet Atkins. While the title of the song was appropriate for the plot of this week’s Mad Men – so many characters feeling that the world was ending with the death of a young, inspiring President – the lyrics Davis sings after the music faded out last night, unheard by the TV audience, are particularly apt for stark moment when Betty told Don she didn't love him anymore:

 "Why do the birds go on singing/Why do the stars shine above/Don’t they know it’s the end of the world/It ended when I lost your love." 

--Ken Tucker

 

Congratulations Ken Tucker!

Congratulations to Ken Tucker, whose blog post Pure Country was chosen by guest editor Greil Marcus for The Best Music Writing 2009 (De Capo).  Marcus also picked writing by David Remnick, Jody Rosen, Roseanne Cash, Wendy Lesser, and many others. Scholar and journalist Daphne Carr is series editor. Get your copy here.

-- sdh

'Masterpiece Comics': 'Where classics and cartoons collide!'

There are a lot of first-rate comic-art releases just now (I recommend David Small's Stitches: A Memoir and R. Crumb's imminent, extraordinary, illustrated Book of Genesis).

But let me call your attention to Masterpiece Comics (Drawn & Quarterly), a superb concept masterfully executed by artist-writer R. Sikoryak. He's mashed together classic literature with classic comic-book art (most of the latter, for those who follows comics, with visual impersonation/homages of artists of the so-called "Silver Age"). 

Sikoryak retells Crime and Punishment as a Batman tale as drawn in the manner of Dick Sprang. He summarizes The Scarlet Letter as a Little Lulu comic. Little Nemo In Slumberland becomes the artistic pallette for The Picture of Dorian Gray.

This is not a stunt; Masterpiece Comics matches literature and comic book with careful thought for appropriate comparison, and the dialogue summarizes quite well the texts chosen. Plus, of course, it's a helluva lot of fun.

--Ken Tucker

The Best American Poetry 2009: GALA LAUNCH READING SEPTEMBER 24, 7:00 PM The New School, 66 W. 12th Street FREE

Join series editor David Lehman as he introduces an all-star line up of the following contributors to this year's volume, chosen by guest editor David Wagoner:  John Ashbery, Mark Bibbins, Suzanne Cleary, Billy Collins, Jim Cummins, Mark Doty, Margaret Gibson, Douglas Goetsch, Michael Grabell, Dolores Hayden, Jennifer Michael Hecht readingSarah Hannah's "The Safe House," Richard Howard, Tina Kelley, Philip Levine, Phillis Levin, Susan Blackwell Ramsay, James Richardson, Martha Silano, Mitch Sisskind, Craig Morgan Teicher, and Matthew Zapruder.

Here's what Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker has to say: Lehman’s particular theme this year is the state of poetry criticism, and he doesn’t hold back: “Poetry criticism at its worst today,” Lehman asserts, “is mean in spirit and spiteful in intent,” and he goes on from there to apply an especially vigorous flogging to the critic William Logan . . . Read all of Tucker's review here.

This from Publishers Weekly (starred review):  * From the moment series editor David Lehman invokes the myth of Jacob wrestling the Angel in his introduction, the gloves are off in this year's installment of this popular annual anthology. Lehman devotes much of his introduction to throwing jabs at longtime sparring partner and professional poetry grump William Logan,whom Lehman calls “wounded” and “thin skinned.” Guest editor Wagoner chooses to abstain from the scuffle, but there's no denying the

Nicholson Baker writes a novel about a poet compiling an anthology

It won't be published for another week or so, but may I enthusiastically recommend Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist, a new novel about a poet who has writer's block composing the introduction to a poetry anthology.

There are marvelous Bakerite meditations on W.H. Auden, the state of poetry reviewing, and the flaw of iambic pentameter in English. I think it may be his best novel since The Mezzanine, which is really saying something.

Order yours, as they say, today.

--Ken Tucker

'Mad Men' and sex: The season premiere [by Ken Tucker]

Full confession: This is, essentially, the blog post I put up this morning on Entertainment Weekly's website, where I write a daily blog. But knowing how many BAP readers are Mad Men fans, I wanted to share it and hope it sparks some discussion. Best, Ken Tucker:

Mad Men has come back with a third-season premiere chock-full of fresh details and revelations about familiar characters. I'm interested to know what you thought of the episode. I want to write here about just one subplot, though.

I’m referring to the sex scene between Sal Romano (the superb Bryan Batt) and the bellhop. I’m not saying this was the most important subplot in the premiere – certainly seeing Don Draper in his bare feet in this night’s opening shot, a symbol of the naked soul within, was the hour’s crucial hint of what’s to come in season three.

But for Sal’s repressed sexuality, something we’ve known about since the first Mad Men season, to be brought to the fore on premiere night suggests how important this element is to series creator Matthew Weiner. On one level, leaving Sal in the closet for so long (and he remains so even after last night, to everyone except Don) was merely a necessary period detail for Mad Men. Given the era, there was probably no way an out gay man could have risen to the position Sal has within the ad agency. And marrying him off to a woman who doesn’t demand much beyond his smile, his kindness, and his paycheck is also in keeping with the times.

Choosing to have Sal cruised by a horny bellhop, and to have Sal enjoy his romp while on a business trip, is one of those neat (sometimes too-neat) symmetries that Weiner regularly employs. In this case, it made dramatic sense for Sal to engage in illicit sex as much as it did (and has) for Don Draper to do so on previous business jaunts. These away-from-the-office excursions are Mad Men excuses for men to behave madly – more freely and more true to themselves than they are at work or at home. And certainly the scene was staged beautifully: We could share the anguished joy and release Sal felt. By the time this episode occurred in 1963, Allen Ginsberg may have “Howl”'ed and Frank O’Hara (the poet whose work Don read last season) had enjoyed trysts and steady relationships with a variety of male companions, but these were bohemian artists, not the buttoned-up businessmen of Mad Men.

Weiner wrote this episode, and I treasured his usual small-but-significent period details. In these scenes I'm talking about, for instance, it was great to be reminded that, once upon a time, a fire escape was actually something people used to escape from a possible fire, as we saw here. (Does anyone in a big city hotel ever think about using these rickety, rusty things in case of an emergency anymore?)

But I do think Weiner took one easy way out: In the scene near the end, on the plane ride home, Don made it clear by implication that Sal's secret is safe with him, and that he's not upset with Sal. I would hazard, however, that a guy like Don, all steely self-discipline, furtive secrets himself, and raging straight hormones, would have been (in the realism of this series) more hypocritical, and thus repelled by what he glimpsed in Sal's room. It would have freaked out Don's very (straight) soul. He may read poetry out of curiosity and despair, but Don is ultimately a social and artistic conservative: He wants Betty home waiting for him with a home-cooked meal, and remember, he dismissed the famous DDB Volkswagen "Lemon" ad campaign by saying, "I don't know what I hate about it the most."

But even for a daring drama like Mad Men, accommodations must be made: Don must remain our sympathetic hero, and a homophobe -- the "-phobe" here meaning someone frightened, not hating -- cannot be a hero.

'Mad Men' second-season now out on DVD: 'Lunch Poems' vs. 'Meditations In An Emergency'

The second season of Mad Men is released on DVD today. I'm assuming that if you read this blog and you own a TV, you watch this show, to judge from the enthusiasm BAP has shown the 1960s ad-agency series. The DVD set offers a lot of episode commentaries, the most interesting emanating from series creator Matthew Weiner, who's such a stickler for detail (kind phrase for: so obviously a control-freak), you get used to him pointing out a shot in a scene and saying things like, "I won't let the directors [of other episodes] do that, but I was directing this one, so... " (I wouldn't be surprised if Weiner not only told the actors how to say their lines, but also wiped down the water-stains left by the martini glasses on Roger Sterling's desk.

Of note to readers of this blog is Weiner's commentary remarks about the use of Frank O'Hara's Meditations In An Emergency, which Don Draper reads in the season premiere and which serves as the title for the season finale. Weiner reveals he really wanted to use Lunch Poems in the first scene (Don was, after all, drinking his lunch in a bar, as you'll recall), but, meticulous researcher that he is, Weiner learned that Lunch Poems hadn't yet been published at the time that particular episode was set.

The new season of Mad Men starts Aug. 16. 

'Hung' and the gluten-free Neruda cranberry-walnut bread

Tonight, HBO will premiere Hung, its latest attempt at a half-hour sitcom since it forgot Eastbound & Down was as good as Sex and the City. Hung is about Ray, a high-school athletics coach, a middle-aged divorced dad, most of whose house has recently burned down. He's strapped for cash, his kids and ex-wife more or less hate him. Desperate, Ray attends a make-your-dreams-come-true motivational speech in which he's urged to find his essential talent to achieve success. Or in the words of the speaker, to "identify your own tool." If you take that phrase and the show's title, are you surprised when I say the show is about Ray and his gigantic penis?

Yes, this is the essentially one-joke premise of Hung. Ray becomes, in the words of one character, a "man-whore," servicing women for money. But that character is more interesting than Ray. She's Tanya, a poet. A poet who's also in the identify-your-tool class, and whose own get-rich-tediously idea is something she calls "lyric bread": "a croissant folded around Maya Angelou's 'Phenomenal Woman', or a raisin loaf with Robert Frost's 'The Road Not Taken' swirled in." She also suggests a "gluten-free Neruda cranberry walnut bread." Says the motivational leader: "Food for the body, food for the soul: I like it!" Ray, who is dubious, advises her to "laminate the poems" so they don't melt in the bread. 

Tanya and Ray unite because Tanya, who had a one-night fling with Ray some time ago, knows his "tool" truly is something special, and says she's "hoping to give women more than they've been seeing for centuries." In other words, says Ray, you "want to be my pimp." Correct, says Tanya.

Tanya is played by the wonderful Jane Adams, whom you may recall as one of Niles' girlfriends on Frasier. Adams has huge eyes and a low voice and redeems a lot of the lousy penis jokes. Looking at advance reviews of Hung, I find my Entertainment Weekly review leaves me in the minority. Other reveiwers are more impressed with the show, and find in it metaphors for and comparisons to a deflated economy.

It occurs to me that the ideal reviewer for Hung may be Nin Andrews, who would bring her own special talent to bear on Hung. It would also be interesting to hear how other poets react to Tanya and her poetry bread. Let me know if you watch. And if you'd buy "lyric bread." 

--Ken Tucker

Paradise Lost at the cineplex

The Hollywood Reporter has a story saying not one, but two, films of Paradise Lost are in, as they say, development. The first adaptation of John Milton was done by the writer John Collier (yes, the late author of "His Monkey Wife" and other fine short stories). What's that, you say? Collier died in 1980? Ah, the magic of Hollywood: producer Martin Poll has maintained the option on that script lo these many years, and has now found financial backing from a group of Philadelphia-based investors who usually make Bollywood extravaganzas. ("I tell ya, Marty, we keep the poetry but re-title it Slumdog Satan!")

The second Paradise Lost (not to be confused with Paradise Regained) is being planned by an even bigger outfit: Warner Bros. Yes, the studio that brought you the Batman movies. Personally, I'm hoping Tim Burton is tapped to direct. Few living souls can "justify the ways of God to men" than the fellow who directed both the first Batman film, Beetle Juice, Mars Attacks!, and Pee-wee's Big Adventure.

Casting suggestions are now open to the floor.

Do you hulu?

Been meaning to ask: Do you use Hulu.com, the online TV website? It's terrific for a couple of reasons. You can catch up on recent episodes of shows you missed/forgot to DVR (Friday Night Lights, Family Guy, Fringe, name-your-poison and those are just under "F"). It also has delightfully random store of old TV shows. Currently I am on an Alfred Hitchcock Presents jag; it's exhilarating to watch crisply acted, tightly-plotted half-hours that remain clever and suspenseful (I highly recommend "Arthur," starring Laurence Harvey as a chicken farmer [!] who murders his girlfriend.)

Hulu offers movies, too, but I find its television library to be far more diverse and enticing. It is the place to go to remind yourself how funny the puns were on Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends, how simultaneously cool and un-cool James Garner was in The Rockford Files, how luminous Elizabeth Montgomery was on Bewitched. You can decide whether you have fond memories of St. Elsewhere or Square Pegs because of lingering nostalgia, or because they were actually good. It's also a site to experience the unknown, and by the unknown, I mean Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot, which truly must be seen to be (dis)believed. And may I recommend The Tick? (The live-action version, not the cartoon.)

Hulu has Arrested Development. Even if you're pleased as punch that you don't own a TV, you owe it to yourself to watch that.
--Ken Tucker

Russell Crowe, poet

Word (in every sense) comes from The Guardian that Russell Crowe composed a poem to read at Sunday night's Empire Film Awards ceremony. After receiving an "actor of our lifetime" award (!) (wouldn't that describe any actor during our, ah, lifetime?), Crowe whipped out this bit of verse:

I am celebrating my love for you with a pint of beer and a new tattoo.

Imagine there's no heaven.

I don't know if you're loving somebody. To be a poet and not know the trade, to be a lover and repel all women. Twin ironies by which great saints are made, the agonising pincer-jaws of heaven.

If you can walk with crowds and keep your virtue, walk with kings but not lose the common touch, if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much;

yours is the earth and everything that's in it and what's more, you'll be a man.

It's only words, and words are all I have, to take your breath away.

Hmm... (This is me back again, not Russell Crowe.) John Lennon, Kipling, and the Bee Gees as quotations; the you/tattoo rhyme, those "pincer-jaws" of heaven... It's only words, and The Guardian wasn't letting on whether they took the audience's collective breath away.

Colleague Viggo Mortensen made reference to Crowe's "unfathomable literay aspirations." But hey, if Michael Madsen can publish a book of poetry, who's going to tell Ye Bearded Phone-Thrower he can't write verse?