01.02.06
Kooser for President
As the talk about the 2008 race gets started, my vote is for a Kooser/Walken ticket.
01.01.06
The 2005 Mark Twain Prize celebrating Steve Martin
The Kennedy Center Presents: The 2005 Mark Twain Prize celebrating Steve Martin . Home | PBS
In a similar vein, Steve Martin is still funnier than you.
Get used to it.
Worst Job Ever - ad nauseum
Sweet lord that is some good comedy.
Makes you wonder why there is so much drivel on television (i.e. mad tv, snl) when you see something like this. At least Chapelle is coming back.
12.31.05
Remembering those we lost
We lost many artists this year, and I see the press about the biggest names like Richard Pryor, Pat Morita, and Carson. But look, here is one that touched a nerve for me: Jerry Juhl.
The guy created Super Grover, wrote Gonzo out of thin air, and then made up the Fraggles - where would you be without them?
I only wish Avenue Q would spark a new puppetry rennaisance, it’s about time.
2005: Lost lives that touched our own: “Jerry Juhl, 67, who was head writer for ‘The Muppet Show’ before he co-created ‘Fraggle Rock.’ Juhl worked as a puppeteer on Jim Henson’s first television show, ‘Sam and Friends,’ and later spent six years writing for ‘Sesame Street’ after its 1969 premiere. Juhl was head writer for ‘The Muppet Show’ from 1977-81, receiving two Emmys for his work.”
End-of-Year Reflections from Ted Kooser
I am a Ted Kooser fan. Why aren’t you reading his work every day?
I read Delights and Shadows last month, and am ready to buy more of this retired insurance salesman/poet laureate’s work. Please don’t let me try and do justice to describing his work, but I will say it reminds me of Charles Wright - I heard him speak once in NYC, I think he read from Black Zodiac.
Differently, I also enjoyed his Poetry Home Repair Manual, which I am almost done reading, and only started digesting.
And even if you could care less, he has excellent citations/examples, so you are also getting poems that have stuck with Kooser, like this oft-mentioned one from Joseph Hutchinson:
Artichoke
O heart weighed down by so many wings.
To paraphrase Kooser, after you read that, can you ever see, or think about an artichoke the same way?
If all else fails to convince, I like that he writes for those of us without advanced degrees in Ulysses, and most of you will like that too.
Today, while it has a ‘rural elitist’ slant (i.e. urbanites are spoiled, real life is in the country, the nobility of a rugged individual accomplishing of small things, etc.), he provides a bit on the end of the year. It’s a breath of cold air to sweep the year into the dust bin.
NPR : End-of-Year Reflections from Ted Kooser:
december 31
Cold and snowing.
The opening pages forgotten,
then the sadness of my mother’s death
in the cold, wet chapters of spring.
For me, featureless text of summer
burning with illness, a long convalescence,
then a conclusion in which
the first hard frosts are lovingly described.
A bibliography of falling leaves,
an index of bare trees,
and finally, a crow flying like a signature
over the soft white endpapers of the year.