And All That Stuff

Hercules First Labor: wrestling the Lion of Nemea
Athenian red figure stamnos, ca. 490 B.C.

Smart review of Hollywood's latest take on the HERCULES myth from writer Spencer Klavan at a cool new blog, The Forum. He concludes:

"We’ve forgotten how to tell these stories — we drain the life out of them. We did it when we erased the gods out of the Iliad in Troy, and we’re even doing it to Superman, who now fights for “truth, justice, and all that stuff” because the American Way is too bourgeois. And that’s at the heart of it all: we’re afraid of valor, patriotism, heroism, because they feel unsophisticated and gauche. They’re not “realistic.” But obviously hero myths were never about what really happened, not to the Greeks. They’re metaphors for what it feels like, when the glory of fighting evil becomes so much larger than life that it’s as if you could fly, or see through walls, or wrestle a lion. If you don’t believe in that story, why tell it? Why not just talk about some big strong guy — why tell the legend of Hercules at all?"

Read the whole piece HERE. 

Happy Birthday Mr. Chandler

Raymond Chandler
July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959

"I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room." (from Farewell, My Lovely)

Magic Squiggles

The Tentacles of Consciousness

"Tentacles" by Steve Ball

"In a sense, all poetry is positional: to try to express one's position in regard to the universe embraced by consciousness, is an immemorial urge. The arms of consciousness reach out and grope, and the longer they are the better. Tentacles, not wings, are Apollo's natural members."  ~Vladimir Nabokov, Speak Memory

Ah Wilderness!

Following 4-hour flight from LA, 16 hour drive north from Chicago, flew into Latreille Lake from Red Lake, Ontario for a week of fishing. Some pix (click to enlarge):

The puddle-jumper -  built in 1946.

My Native American guide - no sense of humor. And nasty habit of chewing tobacco and spitting it out--constantly.

The Lodge -- hell on earth.

Glad I had the guide.

Two of these Americans claimed to be doctors, another a dentist, the fourth a lawyer. Yeah, and I'm Ernest Hemingway. No doubt they're all on the dole.

The guide's evil children tormenting a desperate moose.

Guide snags a big Northern--would've been lost without his expert net man.

Fishing in Canada: Hours of boredom interrupted by moments of sheer sublimity--