Quote For the Day

"Not to say that there can't be true stories in pulps, but most true stories don't have good endings. Pulps need great endings. Mr. Gibson's tale doesn't have a good ending. In fact, it has no ending. The problem with the Tale of the Sweet Flower War is that Mr. Gibson ends it just when it's about to turn into pulp."

Gibson felt his blood rising. "I can't believe you're going to lecture me on what makes great pulp. I am pulp."

"You're not pulp. The Shadow is pulp. Doc Savage is pulp. In fact, I will tell you what makes pulp. Of course there's blood, cruelty, fear, mystery, vengeance, heroes and villains. That's just a good foundation. To make true pulp, really great stomach-churning, white-knuckle, turn-your-hair-white pulp, you have to fill it with a pack of outright lies. Secret identities and disguises." Dent began ticking off the items on his fingers to emphasize the point he was making. "The Yellow Peril. Super-weapons. Global schemes. Hideous deaths. Cliff-hanging escapes. These are the packs of lies you won't find in any slick or glossy or literary hard-cover bestseller. Horrors from the grave. Lost lands. Overwhelming odds. Impossible heroics. Unflagging courage."

---

From The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont, wherein the authors of The Shadow and Doc Savage have to solve the mysterious murder of H.P. Lovecraft while L. Ron Hubbard tags along and annoys them. So yeah, I'm already in the tank for this book.

Quote For the Day

"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly."

Woody Allen
My Speech to the Graduates

Quote For the Day

"But I could never see Brian running around like the Beatles in [A Hard Day's Night]. I didn't read the fanzines - Tiger Beat and that stuff. Rolling Stone was years away, so were Crawdaddy and Creem magazines. But I read the liner notes on the Beach Boys' albums and Brian always sounded very serious. Dennis had a hot rod and a motorcycle and even then I knew he was the one the girls went weak over. Carl was a pudgy guy, too gentle. Al looked like an extra on Route 66. Mike reminded me of a guy who could stand in for Eddie Haskell on Leave It to Beaver. And Brian - Brian was off somewhere writing songs, carrying the load."

- Jim Fusilli
Pet Sounds
33 1/3 Series.

Quote For the Day

"A while ago, I was looking for a definition of art’s purpose. I came across one that I liked ... It’s from Horace, the Roman philosopher and critic, who wrote, “The purpose of art is to inform and delight.” I’ve been thinking about the purpose of art all my life, and Horace helped me to arrive at an understanding. Art is a survival mechanism for the human species. Otherwise, it never would have lasted so long.

"But how does it work? How does it affect us? Primarily, it makes us attentive to the reality of our own life. The first cave paintings made its viewers attentive to the spirit and character of the animals their lives depended on. Sixteen thousand years later, Guernica made us conscious of how cruel the death of the innocent could be. Picasso and Cezanne help us understand that things can be looked at from several points of view at the same time. When we pass a landscape and think of how much it resembles a Cezanne painting, we become aware that Cezanne has made us attentive to how we see a landscape. Picasso and Seurat anticipated and illuminated the science of the 19th century, demonstrating that a landscape is an accumulation of color fragments and spaces. Art may be the only truth we can ever know.

"The experience of art can be considered a form of meditation. By suppressing the debris of everyday life and the illusion that desire creates, meditation enables us to observe without judging. In this way, what is real to us becomes visible."

- Milton Glaser
From a February 15th, 2008 keynote address,
a full transcript of which can be accessed here.

Quote For the Day

"I arrived in Tokyo at 3:34 P.M. and already felt like I was coming back to life.

"Tokyo, my beloved Tokyo.

"My love for Tokyo is one of those boozy, bare-knuckled kind of loves that makes normal people uneasy. A gritty love like a kung-fu noir written by Tennessee Williams. The city and I had done a lot of damage to each other over the years, but I always came back, and she always accepted me. Dysfunctional, yeah - but with a place like Tokyo and a guy like me, how could it be anything else?"

Isaac Adamson,
Hokkaido Popsicle

Quote For the Day

"There is no such thing as nonfiction. ... People who really know what happened aren't talking. And the people who don't have a clue, you can't shut them up. It's the same with your own stories, the ones that circulate around with your family and your friends. We're all part of the same hypocrisy."

Tom Waits
Interviewed at Pitchfork

Quote For the Day

"If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something"

Kurt Vonnegut
A Man Without A Country

Quote For the Day

"You may think I look sad
But I am just sleeping
It's my facial expression
I'm probably dreaming."

David Byrne
"Sad Song"

Quote For the Day

"I was tired of working in the lumber industry," Phil said. "I was sure I could find a better job, and look at me now - cook on a dilapidated submarine. Life keeps on getting better and better."

Lemony Snicket
A Series Of Unfortunate Events
Book the Eleventh: The Grim Grotto
p. 43

Quote For the Day

"No blinding insights emerged from these months of conversation. If anything, what struck me was just how modest people's hopes were, and how much of what they believed seemed to hold constant across race, region, religion and class. Most of them thought that anybody willing to work should be able to find a job that paid a living wage. They figured that people shouldn't have to file for bankruptcy because they got sick. They believed that every child should have a genuinely good education - that it shouldn't be a bunch of talk - and that those same children should be able to go to college even if their parents weren't rich. They wanted to be safe, from criminals and from terrorists; they wanted clean air, clean water and time with their kids. And when they got old, they wanted to be able to retire with some dignity and respect.

"That was about it. It wasn't much. And although they understood that how they did in life depended mostly on their own efforts - although they didn't expect government to solve all their problems, and certainly didn't like seeing all their tax dollars wasted - they figured that government should help.

I told them that they were right: government couldn't solve all their problems. But with a slight change in priorities we could make sure every child had a decent shot at life and meet the challenges we faced as a nation. More often than not, folks would nod in agreement and ask how they could get involved. And by the time I was back on the road, with a map on the passenger's seat, on my way to my next stop, I knew once again just why I'd gone into politics.

"I felt like working harder that I'd ever worked in my life."

Barack Obama
The Audacity of Hope
Prologue, p.7

Quote Of the Day

"Taking one's chances is like taking a bath, because sometimes you end up feeling comfortable and warm, and sometimes there is something terrible lurking around that you cannot see until it is too late and you can do nothing else but scream and cling to a plastic duck."

Lemony Snicket
A Series Of Unfortunate Events
Book the Tenth: The Slippery Slope