By Mark | February 5, 2020
One of my favorite actors, the great Kirk Douglas, died today at the age of 103. If you’re stuck at home tomorrow, due to the snow, do yourself a favor and watch him in Billy Wilder’s brilliant film Ace in the Hole. It’s really an amazing piece of work, and more timely now than ever. […]
By Mark | January 25, 2020
With everyone talking about the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, my mind went, as it often does when thinking about the Nazi extermination camps, to my friend, the Atlanta folk artist Ned Cartledge. Cartledge, as I may have mentioned here before, saw the horrors of the Nazis firsthand toward the end of the […]
Also posted in History, Mark's Life, Uncategorized | Tagged 1945, 82nd Airborne, 89th Chemical Mortar Battalion, Atlanta, Auschwitz, cesspool, concentration camps, Dwight D. Eisenhower, folk art, Gardelegen, Gardelegen massacre, genocide, Germany, holocaust, holocaust denial, KKK, Ku Klux Klan, Kurt Vonnegut, Lorrie Mell, Ludwigslust, Nazi, Ned Cartledge, Neuengamme, never forget, propaganda, racism, scapegoats, starvation, torture, Unitarian, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, war, war crimes, Wöbbelin, World War II |
By Mark | December 8, 2019
[above: We were staying right on a trolley line, and the buzzing of the overhead power lines was incessant. I doubt that it’ll make a record, as we had better songs this time out, but this fact gave rise to our loudest endeavor of the session, a number called Stray Voltage.] The weekend of November […]
Also posted in Mark's Life, Monkey Power Trio | Tagged alcohol, alcoholism, All My Life, Andrew Huang, Andy Calder, Anne Shapiro, Atlanta, Baby Wolf, Bacchanal, Balls Deep in the Gumbo, baseball, binge drinking, biscuits, bullying, cancer, cemeteries, cigar box guitar, Cochon, colon cancer, colonoscopy, Crazy Rich Asians, crumhorn, dashing older men, Donald Trump, Eddie Rispone, film production, First of October, FOX News, Frico Chicho, grits, gumbo, Harry Shum Jr., health scare, hoes for sale, Jacques Imo's, James Brown, Jazz, John Bel Edwards, Live Oak Cafe, Louisiana, lung cancer, Mark's bad back, Melba’s, Mike Bell, Miss Linda “The Ya-Ka-Mein Lady” Green, Monkey Power Trio, Museum of Death, necks, New Orleans, Nigel Witherbottom, polyps, PSA, Rebirth Brass Band, Remus, Rob Scallon, Rome, Romulus, saliva, shrimp and crab meat dressing, Stray Voltage, talk box, Tremé Creole Gumbo Festival, Tulane, Universal Studios, Vasco Spermo, WTUL, YouTubers |
By Mark | November 6, 2019
A few years back, I regaled you with stories about my one-day-a-year band’s 22nd session, which took place in the soulless exurbs of Atlanta. Well, it took a hell of a long time, but the vinyl recording of that historic session is now available from Pochahontas Swamp Machine Records. It’s called “You Can Do Anything… […]
By Mark | October 30, 2019
I was going to write something really great tonight on Twitter’s newly announced ban on political ads and Obama’s recent comments on progressives who spend their time trying to out-woke one another. I really was. But then I realized that the brilliant, dark and absolutely beautiful 1935 Peter Lorre horror film Mad Love (also known […]
Also posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 1935, Colin Clive, Dr. Gogol, execution, Frances Drake, Grand Guignol, guillotine, hand transplant, head transplant, horror movies, knife throwing, Mad Love, madness, metal hands, neck brace, Paris, Peter Lorre, Rollo, Stephen Orlac, Ted Healy, The Black Cat, The Hands of Orlac, Wallace Beery, wax figure |
