Patricia Kennealy Morrison profile picture

Patricia Kennealy Morrison

hermajestythelizardqueen

About Me

OTHER BLOGS: www.mojohotel.blogspot.com and http://pkmorrison.livejournal.com
THIS IS THE ABSOLUTE ONE AND ONLY GENUINE ACTIVE MYSPACE PAGE FOR THE ONE AND ONLY GENUINE PATRICIA KENNEALY MORRISON.
ANYTHING ELSE YOU SEE IS A FRAUD, A FORGERY, COPYRIGHT VIOLATION AND OUTRIGHT THEFT.
FRIENDING INSTRUCTIONS FOR MY BLOG. PLEASE READ THEM BEFORE ASKING TO BE FRIENDED...

I KNOW THE FRIENDING POLICY ON MYSPACE IS PRETTY FREE AND EASY---ASK AND YE SHALL BE FRIENDED---AND I'M SORRY, BUT I CAN'T, DON'T AND WON'T DO THINGS THAT WAY. DON'T TAKE IT PERSONALLY (WELL...IN THAT SENSE OF "PERSONAL", ANYWAY) IF YOU'RE NOT FRIENDED AS A MATTER OF COURSE. READ ON AND SEE WHY.

BECAUSE OF HOSTILE IGNORANT SPITEFUL WACKO DOORZOIDS, JIMOHOLICS, JIMITATORS, JIM VAMPIRES (THIS INCLUDES DOORS RIPOFF "TRIBUTE" BANDS, WHICH I HOLD TO BE TALENTLESS AND PARASITICAL MAGGOTS) AND PATHETICALLY DELUSIONAL FLUFFYBUNNY PAMHEADS, I WILL NOT FRIEND ANYONE AUTOMATICALLY, UNVOUCHED-FOR OR UNINVESTIGATED.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE FRIENDED, PLEASE SEND ME AN EMAIL TELLING ME WHY I MIGHT LIKE TO HAVE YOU AS A FRIEND AND A REQUEST FOR FRIENDING. I WILL THEN CHECK OUT YOUR SPACE/BLOG/SITE/PROFILE. BASED ON WHAT I FIND THERE, I WILL THEN DECIDE. IF I DON'T LIKE WHAT I FIND, YOU WILL NOT BE FRIENDED, AND I DON'T HAVE TO EXPLAIN MYSELF TO YOU.

IF YOU ONLY SEND ONE OR THE OTHER, YOU WILL NOT BE FRIENDED. YOU WILL BE DENIED AND YOU WILL BE BLOCKED.

I AM TRULY SORRY TO BE SO HARSH ABOUT THIS, BUT TOO MANY HATEFUL NASTY TOXIC SEPTIC PEOPLE OUT THERE ARE INTENT ON SPOILING IT FOR THE REST OF US, AND OVER THE PAST THIRTY-SIX YEARS I HAVE LEARNED TO BE WARY.

APART FROM THAT, IF YOU CAN'T BE BOTHERED READING THESE RULES AND COURTEOUSLY FOLLOWING THEM, THEN I CAN'T BE BOTHERED FRIENDING YOU.

ALSO, YOU WILL BE CUT IF, ONCE FRIENDED: YOU START ASKING HIGHLY PERSONAL QUESTIONS THAT YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS ASKING ABOUT DEEPLY PRIVATE THINGS YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS KNOWING; IF YOU GET PRESUMPTUOUS OR CRUDE OR GROSS OR STUPID OR JUST ANNOYING; IF YOU MISSPELL THINGS OR USE POOR SYNTAX (YOU GET A PASS IF YOUR NATIVE LANGUAGE IS NOT ENGLISH); IF YOU USE MORONIC INTERNET ABBREVIATIONS LIKE "u r", OR IF YOU SOUND SUBLITERATE; IF YOU BETRAY YOUR TRUE HOSTILE COLORS AS A DOORZOID/PAMHEAD; OR ANY OTHER REASON I THINK YOU NEED TO GO THE HELL AWAY.

BUT OF COURSE I'M HAPPY TO WELCOME WORTHY, COURTEOUS, INTELLIGENT, WITTY, WELL-SPOKEN FRIENDS. JUST STEP RIGHT UP! I KNOW YOU'RE OUT THERE...
AND KINDLY DO NOT BOTHER PEOPLE WHO ARE ALREADY ON MY FRIENDS LIST AND ASK THEM TO GET YOU ON. READ THE RULES, SEND THE EMAIL AND FRIEND REQUEST LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE. THEY WILL NOT PUT YOU THROUGH. YOU WILL NEVER GET FRIENDED THAT WAY, AND IT WILL ONLY ANNOY THEM. AND ME. SO KNOCK IT OFF. IF I'VE DENIED YOU, IT'S FOR A REASON. LET'S HOPE YOU'RE SMART ENOUGH TO FIGURE IT OUT. IF NOT, I DON'T WANT YOU HERE ANYWAY.
IF I DON'T RESPOND TO YOUR EMAIL, IT'S BECAUSE I'M EITHER BUSY WRITING, YOU'VE EMAILED TOO FREQUENTLY AND ARE GETTING STALKERISH, OR YOU'VE SAID SOMETHING I DON'T CARE FOR OR FIND UPSETTING. I'M ASSUMING YOU'RE ALL BRIGHT ENOUGH TO KNOW WHICH IT IS. (IF YOU'RE NOT, THAT'S YOUR PROBLEM.) DON'T DISAPPOINT ME.

ALSO, IF YOUR PROFILE/BLOG IS PRIVATE AND I CAN'T ACCESS IT TO CHECK UP ON YOUR BONA FIDES, YOU WILL BE ASSUMED TO BE A BOT, A DROID OR A HOSTILE ENTITY AND YOU WILL NOT BE FRIENDED.

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE IT ANY CLEARER.
THANK YOU.

Okay, then...
Now. About me...

The name's Morrison. Kennealy Morrison.

Actually, the name is Patricia Anne Elizabeth Genevieve Honora Kennealy Morrison. ( Dame Patricia Anne Elizabeth Genevieve Honora Kennealy Morrison, DTJ, actually. But I don't insist.)

Some of you may know me from my Celtic science-fantasy series, The Keltiad. Others from my 1992 memoir of my youth in rock&roll with my beloved consort, Strange Days: My Life With and Without Jim Morrison. Still others from my 40 years of Celtic priestesshood and activism in Witch and Pagan causes, or from my career as a rock critic and editor.

And many of you may know me not at all. Which I hope to remedy here.

I was born in Brooklyn on March 4, 1946 at 7pm (Sun in Pisces, Virgo rising, Moon and Mercury in Aries, Venus in Pisces), grew up on Long Island, went to school in upstate New York (St. Bonaventure University and Harpur College as it then was; it's now calling itself Binghamton University).
When I graduated in June 1967 with a B.A. in English literature (I had been a journalism major at SBU), I came straight back to Manhattan to live, and I have never lived anywhere else. (What would be the point?)

From a very early age I was deeply interested in Celtic myth and legend, and as I pursued this, I soon found that there was something alive and vital and wondrous behind it, something tremendous, something that had survived thousands of years of attempts to kill it off and demonize it, and that was out there on the hills waiting. Waiting for me.
Reader, I became a Pagan. A Celtic Pagan, to be precise, reverting joyously to the ways of my long-ago Irish and Scottish pre-Christian ancestors, Celtic ways that had never died and now never will.

When I was still in college, through various connections I found a group of people who practiced the Old Religion as their daily creed (a covine, as we called it, using the old Scots spelling), and at the age of 21 was initiated among them.
I call myself a Witch because it's the shortest, easiest way to communicate what my religion is, but what I practice isn't the kind of Witchcraft, like Wicca, that is commonly understood today. It had some of those elements, and we did call ourselves Witches, but Celtic Paganism is the preferred term. You can read a lot about our practices in my Kelts books.
Anyway, I became the presiding priestess of the group two years later, shortly after meeting Jim. It is the only faith I have ever held to, and I will never cease to hold to it.
Oh, and I insist on the capitalization: Witch, Pagan. I didn't use to, but I do now. Every other person of faith on the planet gets the respectful cap---Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist---so we should too.

I have been my own sole support ever since college, earning my living all my life by my writing abilities, in one form or another.
At the age of 22, as the editor of Jazz & Pop magazine, a monthly slick publication dedicated to the progressive rock and jazz of the late 60s and early 70s, I was a Founding Mother of rock criticism, one of the very few women writing seriously in that man's-world Golden Age of Rocknroll.

Oh, yeah, that Jim guy... I met my future mate in a private interview at the Plaza Hotel here in New York, after the Madison Square Garden concert in January 1969. Of course I had seen Jim perform with the Doors many times before that, but that afternoon was the first time we'd met, and when our hands touched there was a shower of blue sparks flying (a moment later to be immortalized by him in song).
Jim loved it. "Portent," he said. He was right.

So, instant karma having beautifully and romantically whacked us both, we began calling and writing each other, sending each other books and poems and letters and drawings and gifts; in September 1969 the relationship became one of lovers.
On May 5, 1970, Jim proposed to me in Central Park, ring (big solitaire emerald, the size of his thumbnail, in a white gold antique Art Deco setting) and knee and everything, and on June 24 we were married in a Celtic handfasting ceremony.

I loved him more than any woman has ever loved any man, and I love him and have been faithful to him to this day. And he loved me.

The rest you know...

After Jim died, I didn't have the heart or inclination to write much about the music directly anymore, so I went to RCA Records and CBS Records to write record advertising, earning two Clio nominations (for my work on Billy Joel albums) and doing the first campaigns for David Bowie, Lou Reed and the Kinks, among others.

Leaving CBS in 1980, I began to write my Kelts books; the first, The Copper Crown, appeared in hardcover in 1984, and seven others followed. (Looks as if there will now be more to come...watch this space...)

In 1990, I was asked by director Oliver Stone to participate in his alleged Doors movie, as an advisor, and I accepted, figuring, as did others who had been close to Jim (including John Densmore, the only Door to talk to me during production---he called me twice and sent me his book, and still vetoes all commercial uses of Doors songs, may God set a flower on his head), that it was better to be in a position to shout the truth into Oliver's ear, even if he ignored it (which he did), than to just hold my nose and stand away and snipe later from a rather indefensible moral high ground (as some other people did naming no names Ray Manzarek).

And then Oliver asked me to actually act in the movie. I wrote some dialogue for the scene I was in, supplied Oliver with notes and personal communications between Jim and me, was portrayed in the film by Kathleen Quinlan (who, I am proud and humble to say, did most honorably by me and is a close and very dear friend to this day), and appeared in the film performing my own wedding ceremony.
Which was stranger, and more difficult, and more incredibly painful, and more utterly liberating, than you or I or Oliver could possibly have imagined...

When the movie opened in 1991, I hated and detested and loathed it so very very much that I immediately went to my editor at Penguin and said, "You know that book about Jim and me you've been wanting me to write? Well, you've got it!"

Strange Days was written in less than five months, from diaries, journals, letters and other personal sources. If I couldn't remember, or if it wasn't written down somewhere, then it didn't go in. For what it deals with, and only for that, the book is completely truthful and utterly factual. I was trained as a journalist, in a journalism school; as such, I know how the facts support the truth, and I know how to write both.
And I did.

And I don't tell lies.

In September 1990, I was invested as a Dame Templar at the spectacularly historic and beautiful Rosslyn Chapel, Scotland (the one at the end of The Da Vinci Code), in a modern-day incarnation of the ancient Knights Templar order, to which I was sponsored by friends and fellow fantasy writers Katherine Kurtz and her husband Scott McMillan. It was one of the supreme spiritual moments of my life, right up there with my initiation as a Witch and my wedding to Jim.

Over the years, I've popped up in a few other places than Jim bios and my own work:

I'm in The Faces of Fantasy, by photographer Patti Perret, an amazing collection of photos of modern fantasy authors (with comments by them next to their pictures), a followup book to her The Faces of Science Fiction. (When that one came out, I had just been published for the first time, or was about to be, and I remember thinking, Wow, maybe one day she'll do another book like that and I'll be in it...be careful what you wish for, she actually got me out of my clothes for the shoot!)

One of my best columns for Jazz & Pop, a little rant rescued from the dust of rock-critic history called "Rock Around the Cock", about, guess what, sexism in the music biz, is reprinted in Evelyn McDonnell and Ann Powers's great anthology of women rock critics' writings, Rock She Wrote. There's other articles written by people like Patti Smith, Kim Gordon, Pamela des Barres, Susan Brownmiller, Lori Twersky...a fascinating read.

And my first and so far only short story (hey, I'm a marathoner, not a sprinter), "The Last Voyage", concerning the last days of the Knights Templar, the original James Douglas (the one for whom mine was named) and the Kelts, appears in my friend Katherine Kurtz's third Knights Templar anthology, Crusade of Fire.

Plus numerous documentaries (amusingly, one included on the Doors movie DVD special edition), radio shows, magazine articles (including my first mention in the fashionista bible W, regarding my passion for designer James Coviello's gorgeous leather/feather hats for Anna Sui), etc.

And a bunch of letters to the editor published in the New York Times, New York Times Sunday Magazine, New York Daily News, New York Newsday, Vogue, Esquire, places like that. About Jim, rock, Oliver, the movie or some aspect of Paganism, usually. One of the unexpected perks of microcelebrity is that they'll print all your outraged letters that they never would have before. Fun!

At the moment, I have just begun to publish a brand-new Sixties series: The Rock & Roll Murders. Rock murder mysteries set in that distinctly magical time: starring a newspaper reporter named Rennie (who is not me) and an English guitar god named Turk (who is not Jim), whose lives are marked by murder.
Ungrateful Dead: Murder at the Fillmore is available NOW from lulu.com
http://www.lulu.com/content/1164503
There you are, then. I hope you will enjoy this page, and I cordially invite you to share it with me.

So...there it is. Let it be, let it bleed, let it roll, baby, roll. And rock on.

My Interests

60's rock bands; 60's clothes (mostly British designers): Biba, Annabelinda, Alice Pollock, Gina Fratini, Annacat, Ossie Clark, early Betsey Johnson (her stuff for Paraphernalia), Zandra Rhodes's more restrained creations; antique jewelry; King Arthur; Arthurian legends; Asatru; Atlantis; Avalon Ballroom; big-wave surfing (watching, not doing; Laird Hamilton is amazing, and, perhaps, insane); Bruce Abbott (actor and friend); Cathars; Celts; Celtic legends; Celtic music; Celtic mythology; Celtic Paganism; Celtic studies; Celtic languages; Celtic art; Celtic jewelry; England; English history; the god Dionysos; fantasy novels and novelists; the Fillmore Auditorium; the Fillmore West; the Fillmore East; Harpur College; hippies; the Holy Grail; the House of York; the House of Lancaster; Ireland; Irish history; Irish jewelry; Irish wolfhounds; Irish setters; Persian and Himalayan cats; Frisian and Arabian horses;
JIM MORRISON (artist-hero and husband);
John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; Kathleen Quinlan (actress and friend); the Knights Templar; Mary Magdalene; Maxfield Parrish; the New York Mets; Ossie Clark; Paganism; Phyllis Curott (Witch and friend); Margot Adler (Witch and friend); the Picts; the Plantagenets; plate tectonics; Princess Diana; Raimon-Roger de Trencavel; Rennes-le-Chateau; King Richard III; Rosslyn Chapel; Scotland; Scottish history; St. Bonaventure University; Summer of Love; swords (I have seven, I believe, several of them extremely functional) and other edged weaponry; tattoos (seven of those as well, one or two never to be seen by anyone but me, Jim and the tattooist); Thomas Canty (brilliant artist of many of my Keltiad book jackets); Trader Joe's; tsunamis and earthquakes (sometimes I can sense those e-things coming...); the Tudors, and related families like the Boleyns, the Howards and the Seymours; the Vikings (the historical ones, not the football team, and especially the ones who invaded England in the 9th century); Wales; Welsh history; Whisky A Go Go; Wicca; Winterland; witchcraft

LOVE: chocolate (dark and with something raspberry going on, and See's dark chocolate Bordeaux, my ultimate choc of choice); dim sum (char siu bao, har gow, anything shrimpy and deep-fried); bacon-wrapped hot dogs; Packham pears; Louis Vuitton (in my youth I thought LV was the mark of the bourgeois beast, and yet I was strangely drawn, especially after Jim gave me my first Vuitton bag; when I found out Louis was a Victorian and had started out in the 19th century, I suddenly understood the attraction); jewelry (preferably antique but not necessarily; I design a lot of my own pieces, and make my own bead necklaces); books (and I have to like the characters' names before I take the books home, and I have to read them cover to cover, usually within hours, before I can shelve them); Jacobean carved black oak furniture (all my furniture is this, and I have to introduce each new piece to the incumbents when I bring it home, and if the other pieces don't get along with it then I get rid of it, yes I know I'm insane...); long-haired men (and men with beards) (and men with long hair AND beards) (hmmm, wonder where THAT comes from...); Crunch gym (two years ago I would have laughed until I choked if you'd told me I'd become a gym rat at my age, or any age, for that matter); peonies (my absolute faves), lilacs (a close second), hyacinths, big shaggy bronze chrysanthemums (white roses are good too, except roses don't smell anymore---I understand they're breeding the scent back in. The stupid stupidhead eejits, why bother breeding it out in the first place, roses are supposed to smell like roses); little boxes (in any material, wood, leather, ceramic, stone, etc.) (it's the Virgo rising...); cool shoulder bags (ditto with the Virgo); luggage (double ditto); fur (I have four coats, three or four big long scarves, a bedspread, collars and headbands and trim and stuff, and I don't care if you hate me for it; if minks tasted good I'd eat minkburgers, and none of the mink is wasted, so ecologically sound---their little dead mink bodies go into pet food, fertilizer, all sorts of places, so I daresay you're all "guilty", unless you're some kind of pure holy vegan freak in which case I say it sure must be nice to be a perfected saint on earth).

HATE: nuts; yogurt (absolutely disgusting); coffee (love the way it smells, esp. being ground, hate the way it tastes); vegetables (except potatoes and corn, which I consider honorary meat; tomatoes only okay as sauce or puree or paste; and I will eat some Chinese veggies like black mushrooms, snow peas, bok choy and water chestnuts; for the most part, vegetables are what my food eats); sun; sand; beaches; summer; Indian food; Thai food; Mexican food; Greek food; Vietnamese food; any kind of Middle Eastern or North African or African food; gum and the bovine low-class people who chew it (in fact, I throw up a little in my mouth at even having to type the g-word, and I will not allow substance or chewers in my presence); jazz; most blues; hip-hop and rap (see Music below); contemporary pop (and the plastic poptarts of both sexes who "sing" it; pretentious modern "lit'ry" authors (who write only for each precious little other, in a kind of giant circle jerk; I'd sooner read an honest "beach book" any day); pre-sliced and individually-plastic-wrapped American "cheese" (though the kind you buy at the deli or the butcher's is dee-lish; I like it sliced so thin you can barely pick it up); rudeness; injustice; pretentiousness; condescension; willful ignorance; tiresome smug adolescents who have absolutely nothing to be smug about; vampires; vampire groupies; vampyre goth teen wannabes oh puh-leeeeze; practical jokes (they're mean and cruel and not in the least bit funny); that's all I can think of at the moment, doubtless more later...

As I'm sure you've noticed by now, I am basically a woman of wrath, endlessly outraged, sustained by an endlessly replenished hot spot of magma-like fury, like the one that built the Hawaiian Islands or fueled H.L. Mencken. I find it helpful, useful, creatively stimulating and oddly serenity-making. Better than yoga! Or drugs!

I'd like to meet:

In no particular order and with no stipulations as to current plane of existence occupied:

Lawrence of Arabia; Laird Hamilton and Gabrielle Reece; James Graham, first Marquess of Montrose; David McCallum; Diana, Princess of Wales; Johnny Depp; Queen Elizabeth I; J.R.R. Tolkien; King Arthur; Guthrum the Dane; Emma Thompson; Percy and Mary Shelley; Mary Magdalene; King Richard III; Peter O'Toole; Terry Pratchett; Anne Boleyn...probably some more later.

Other than those, I've pretty much met most of the people I've ever wanted to meet.

Music:

Duh! The Doors; Jefferson Airplane; Cream; Quicksilver Messenger Service; Crosby Stills & Nash(and Young); Big Brother & The Holding Company (but not most of Janis's later work, I found it too contrived and staged, which it was---after BB&THC she never sang an unplanned note in her life; even when recording, every take was identical, drove her producer crazy); Stones (pre-"Exile on Main Street", because I'm the worst rock snob you ever saw); Ventures; Beau Brummels; Beatles, yeah, okay; earlier Jethro Tull; almost any Sixties group except the Beach Boys, whom I utterly detest (big arguments with Jim about that); Renaissance dance music; Renaissance brass; morris dance music; Celtic stuff; Altan; Alan Stivell; Loreena McKennitt; Steeleye Span (friends of mine since 1972); Bach; Beethoven; some Mahler; early fugues; some opera; nothing after 1975 or so (a few exceptions, but not a lot, as my iPod will attest).

And nobody but Brits and Americans should be allowed to play rock and roll. Legally. There should be penalties and fines, in fact. So everybody else, just back off.

What recent stuff do I like? One-offs, mostly, though I do have some Dead Can Dance, Lisa Gerrard and Loreena McKennitt entire albums: Joshua Radin, "Closer"; couple of Dixie Chicks songs; Joe Purdy, "Wash Away"; Susan Enan, "Bring On the Wonder"; Nickel Creek, "When In Rome"; Pearl Jam, "I Am Mine" (FABULOUS, yet it's the only Pearl Jam song I like); some Tom Petty; that's about it.

Hip-hop and rap are, in my opinion, not music. They may be valid forms of self-expression, but music? No. Music has certain characteristics that are utterly, voidly absent in rap: melody, harmony, counterpoint, structure, lyricness, a sense of separate parts moving harmoniously and exaltingly as a whole, to the joy and edification of both hearer and player.

(Don't take it personally, rappers. I don't consider the work of many modern "classical" composers to be music either. John Cage, Karl-Heinz Stockhausen, Philip Glass can all bite me...)

What rap does have: no instrumental artistry (because no instruments...and no artists either), troglodytic rhythms, no creativity, appalling "lyrics", appalling sentiments, little talent that I would personally consider to be talent, boring format and patterns, mindless monotonous presentation...

I could go on and on, but I won't, since it gives me the pip to even think about it. When I do think about it, I think rap is a detestable, misogynistic, racist travesty of art, and does much to reinforce negative stereotypes in and of both blacks and whites.

Give me the rock of my youth any day. We had brains then, as well as music written and performed by people who also had brains. Plus mighty musicianly gifts, staggering talent, gorgeous and meaningful lyrics, great artistry, highly developed social/political consciences and hotness off the Richter scale. What more could you want?

I feel deeply sorry for today's young people, completely cheated in the music department. Judging from the reader mail I get, they feel cheated too, and they tell me proudly that they have returned to the Sixties for their listening of choice. Wise children.

Movies:

"Lawrence of Arabia" (the best movie ever made); "The Lord of the Rings" (yes, I'm a book purist, and some of it infuriated me, but it's still a gorgeous achievement and had many, many lovely moments); "Conan the Barbarian" (Oliver Stone's finest hour; it was all downhill for him after that); "El Cid"; "The Seventh Seal"; "Charade" (Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant, both gorgeous); "The Ten Commandments" (for the cheese factor); "Ben-Hur" (ditto); "Pirates of the Caribbean" (first is best, but all three); "Anne of the Thousand Days"; "Billy Liar"; "The Princess Bride"; "Laurel Canyon"; "The Ninth Gate" (truly weird and unaccountable, but hey, it's got Johnny Depp); all the Harry Potter movies ("Azkaban" best, "Chamber of Secrets" worst); any and all movies made from Jane Austen novels (except the pathetic "updated modern" attempts) but especially the ones starring Emma Thompson and/or Alan Rickman; any and all Kenneth Branagh Shakespeare movies (in my opinion he is the ONLY person who should be allowed to film Shakespeare, because he treats the language as just plain everyday dialogue and doesn't pretentiously declaim it looking at YOU Larry Olivier and Rich Burton); almost any historical costume epic...

I detest just about all French, German and otherwise outland cinema (except for some Bergman. SOME). Pretentious and boring. (Yes, I know, I'm a total philistine. Don't care.)
You will note that Jim's parvum opus, "HWY", is not included here. We'll discuss that little piece of cinematic self-indulgence at a future date...

Television:

"Babylon 5" (the greatest TV series of all time, not just the greatest sf TV series of all time); "Stargate: SG-1" (a close and brilliant competitor, and vastly underrated for its writing, its funniness and its superb actors); "Lost" (oh SawyerMySawyer, I love you so, but of late the charming and fatal Desmond is gaining ground, looking astoundingly like the young Eric Clapton); "McMillan & Wife" (soooo twee, but a guilty pleasure); "The Amazing Race"; "Hell's Kitchen" (you DONKEYS!!!); "Battlestar Galactica" (the original 70s one, not the bleak, boring remake: Richard Hatch and Dirk Benedict were the cutest guys on TV or in outer space---all that shiny pretty 70's hair---and Lorne Greene's noble silver-haired Adama totally trumps the weird, sullen and ragingly unattractive Edward James Olmos); "House" (Hugh Laurie is a god); "Dark Justice" (my friend Bruce Abbott's show, gone before its time: longhaired vigilante judge with a posse avenges society on creeps the law made him cut loose! Terrific); "Oliver's Travels" (starring the sublime Alan Bates and the equally sublime Sinead Cusack, an intelligent middle-age romance, with scenery from the Black Mountains of Wales to the Orkneys; one of my favorite TV things ever); the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes oeuvre (his Holmes towers above all others forever, and his Watsons were excellent, not stupidly dithering which Watson was not); "I Claudius" (Derek Jacobi, Brian Blessed, Sian Phillips, John Hurt, Patrick Stewart with hair); "Elizabeth R" (Glenda Jackson, simply the best); "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" (Keith Michell and the actresses who played his queens, all superb and all looking incredibly like their originals, NOT like this stupid new PoMo "The Tudors" oh please); "Poldark" (hugely superior 18th-century Cornish soap opera); "The First Churchills" (first Masterpiece Theatre series, and brilliant); in fact, most PBS Masterpiece Theatre series...

Books:

The Lord of the Rings (my desert-island book of choice, if I can have only one); The Fates of the Princes of Dyfed, Kenneth Morris; The Worm Ouroboros, E.R. Eddison; Islandia, Austin Tappan Wright; The Charwoman's Shadow, Lord Dunsany (and all his other fantasy works: I had Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley with me in Paris, when I was there after Jim died); Kim, Rudyard Kipling (and most of his other writings as well, especially the comic stuff); C.S. Lewis's Narnia books, and also his space trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength); Terry Pratchett's Discworld books (he knows a lot more than he's saying about Witchy stuff...and I love the magic "turn" he gives the reader just before the end); Alan Garner (The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath, though they're a bit of a mythological mishmosh; Margaret Maron's Judge Deborah Knott series; Melisa Michaels's elf/detective books, Cold Iron and Sister to the Rain, funny and nasty; Elizabeth Goudge, The Little White Horse (a favorite of J.K. Rowling's too); Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist, a lost fantasy gem; Simon Winchester's amazing book on the apocalyptic 1883 explosion of the volcano Krakatoa; so many, many more...

Including my own, of course, The Keltiad and Strange Days. None of which I reread anywhere near as often as people might think, or expect. Years between readings, sometimes many years. There doesn't seem any point, unless it's to fact-check something...all I can see is seams, and it makes me want to revise everything, which I can't do, and then I get upset and angsty, so I try to avoid looking in the first place.
But, just sometimes, I feel the need to revisit certain passages, for whatever reasons, and then I often find myself reading rather more than I meant to. Sometimes this is good, other times not so much.

Heroes:

Montrose; T.E. Lawrence; my Jim, who endured a LOT with patience, with humor and with heartbreaking courage...and my best friend Mary Herczog, who is perhaps the bravest person I have ever met.

My Blog

Happy Solstice!

One of the many great things about New York is that the street grid does not run true east and west, even though the street names say so. Instead, because Manhattan Island is tilted northeast and sout...
Posted by Patricia Kennealy Morrison on Sat, 21 Jun 2008 07:34:00 PST

For Whom the Troll Bells...

This arrived in my emailbox today. The perpetrator has deleted her account, natch; but what a good thing I saved this, right?   Dear Mrs. Morrison,I'm not sure where to begin this letter, but I k...
Posted by Patricia Kennealy Morrison on Fri, 20 Jun 2008 06:17:00 PST

Elvish Is In The Building...

Your result for The What Middle Earth race do you belong to Test...    You're an Elf!  You scored low in size, high in morality, high in aggression and high in intelligence to get...
Posted by Patricia Kennealy Morrison on Thu, 19 Jun 2008 06:14:00 PST

Like A Virgin...NOT

I see where it has become a big and lucrative business in Europe, apparently, to reconstruct the hymens of stupid Muslim women who are about to marry stupid Muslim men to whom physical proof of virgin...
Posted by Patricia Kennealy Morrison on Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:12:00 PST

A Horse; And A Horses Ass

Well, I see where Big Brown didn't make the Triple Crown coronation everybody was predicting and declaring he would. Not I! I said he was a goat on steroids from the start, and no matter his Derby and...
Posted by Patricia Kennealy Morrison on Sun, 08 Jun 2008 08:57:00 PST

Oh, I Run from Hillabama With My Banjo on My Knee...

There's an interesting piece in the NYTimes by Judith Warner, about how Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was, basically, kicked in the slats during the course of this disgraceful campaign just for being...
Posted by Patricia Kennealy Morrison on Sat, 07 Jun 2008 06:57:00 PST

Lost Is Found!

Okay, if you don't watch Lost, don't read this, 'cause I'm not doing exposition or backstory. If you haven't watched the two-hour season closer, don't read this, 'cause there's spoilers all OVER the p...
Posted by Patricia Kennealy Morrison on Sat, 31 May 2008 11:29:00 PST

Stupid Is As Stupid Does...

People, you're at it again. Once more, with weary, bored, resigned feeling: PRIVATE PROFILES DO NOT GET FRIENDED. So don't even bother asking. There's been at least three dozen of you in the last 24 h...
Posted by Patricia Kennealy Morrison on Thu, 29 May 2008 12:22:00 PST

A Salute...

and a moment of silence to honor those who wore the uniform: My father, Joseph Kennely (POW, Nazis); my grandfather James McDonald; various great-grandfathers and great-uncles; my uncles James Mc...
Posted by Patricia Kennealy Morrison on Mon, 26 May 2008 09:15:00 PST

Obama-lama-dingdongs...

I am sick and tired and disgusted beyond the point of barfdom by the pseudo-outrage generated by Barack Obama and his flying devil monkey squad of campaign advisors. First, he gets jealously pissed of...
Posted by Patricia Kennealy Morrison on Sat, 24 May 2008 01:32:00 PST