John - ProfilesArchive

About Me

Writer, flak (and proud of it) and amateur historian and toy soldier enthusiast. Also a lousy C-melody man...

My Interests

Music (If it sounds good, it is good); Writing; History; Eating a weakness; Movies; Music Hall, Vaudeville & Burlesque. Suits, jackets and ties. Being on the ocean, reading about it, and watching whales. A good strong cup of Typhoo or a nice Earl Grey.

I'd like to meet:

All a youse, and...... and toy soldier generals worldwide.

Music:

Bix Beiderbecke, The Cramps, The Foundations, Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti, all Phil Spector's girl groups, Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks, Helen Shapiro, Robert Gordon, *all* the Mersey beat bands, Fanfare Ciorcarlia, The Kinks, Fats Waller, Portishead, Orbital, Django Reinhardt and Stephan Grapelli, the Beau Hunks, Gracie Fields, Taraf de Haidouks, Fletcher Henderson, Istanbul Ensemble, Neil Innes, Virginia O'Brien, and too many others to list.

Movies:

Movie-obsessed. I love all of them, good and bad.Black Narcissus, Withnail and I, The Enemy Below, the Red Shoes, Enter the Dragon, and the old Pride and Prejudice (Jennifer Ehle, *not* Keira Knightly).Tops - Powell and Pressbuger, John Ford, Jules Dassin, Martin Scorcese, Nicole Holofcener, Derek Jarman, Mary Harron, Buster Keaton, Alexander MacKendrick, Ealing, Boulting, old Warners, and anything Tilda Swinton puts her mind to.

Television:

As long as there are movies on television - otherwise, the Office, 30 Rock and PBS...

Books:

Just now on the nightstand: "Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson and "The Sicilian Vespers" by Runciman; up next, "The New Life" by Orhan Pamuk. Favorites are Dickens, Melville, Wodehouse, Waugh, Pamuk, Jane Austen, George Orwell, Stephen Fry, "In the Heart of the Sea" by Nathaniel Philbrick, and "Parliament of Fowles" by Chaucer - really.

Heroes:

All of the above and Mehmet il Fatih.

My Blog

The Stripper Made Me Cry....

Have you ever heard a song, maybe a new one or one that you remember from years ago, and just had such a strong emotional reaction that your eyes began to well-up, or you even wept openly?That's the r...
Posted by John on Mon, 13 Oct 2008 03:22:00 PST

Old proverb..."We mock the thing we are to be."

Its an old Yiddish proverb - "We mock the thing we are to be." I first heard this one during childhood from my mother; I learned all my Yiddish from my Roman Catholic mother, for some reas...
Posted by John on Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:02:00 PST

HOT DOGS FOR BREAKFAST

Ok - If you're like me, and I know that some of you are in this respect, you're a sensualist. I feel lucky to be one, because if you're not as rich as you want to be, you'll always have access t...
Posted by John on Wed, 10 Sep 2008 05:08:00 PST

Virginia O'Brien - - Salome

Virginia O'Brien is largely forgotten today - those who've seen her appear for 10 minutes in MGM movies will remember her, though, as a swing-singing contralto of prodigious talent. I'll grant you, h...
Posted by John on Mon, 11 Aug 2008 08:46:00 PST

On an Archers overload

I get on these tears where I have to see several of a directors movies, all in a row. I've done this before with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, but there is so much to mine in the Archers' wor...
Posted by John on Mon, 11 Aug 2008 08:35:00 PST