The Tender Bar

 

The Tender Bar (2021, directed by George Clooney, starring Ben Affleck, Daniel Ranieri, Tye Sheridan, Lily Rabe, Christopher Lloyd)

Whatever rode George Clooney - whom I generally respect both as a director and an actor - to direct and produce this seemingly endless bore of a movie?

Nothing about it feels original or genuine - it comes off as a refurbished parts store. When you enter, you know you've seen all the parts (people, situations, locations) somewhere before, many times, in a variety of places and constellations from Hollywood or TV.

A collection of stereotypes and a waste of acting talent (it's not like Affleck etc. don't perform well).

I did not last through to the end. Maybe I've seen too many movies. But go ahead and see for yourself.

The corona haiku

 

Life dictated by 

fever and saturation 

readings – sheer terror.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2022)

Note
Some reality from my battle with the virus. A bloody oxygen reading of less than 90%, so the doctors say, means you should be hospitalized.

I’m doing nearly nothing

Ab Har Ho Bhola Nahin Bane - Pandit Mallikarjun Mansur

Fourth day of dreamily

listening to Mallikarjun Mansur -

always the same songs.

Nothing much is happening – 

I’m not listening attentively.

The music is flowing into me.

It feels like a conspicuous momentary

constellation – Mallikarjun Mansur singing

and me doing the equivalent of happy nothing.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2022)

Labordeta - Aragón

José Antonio Labordeta

Aragón

   

Polvo, niebla, viento y sol,

Donde hay agua una huerta.

Al Norte los Pirineos:

Esta tierra es Aragón.

Al Norte los Pirineos

Al Sur la tierra callada.

Pasa el Ebro por el centro

Con su soledad a la espalda.

Dicen que hay tierras al Este

Donde se trabaja y pagan.

Hacia el Oeste el Moncayo

Como un Dios que ya no ampara.

Desde tiempos a esta parte

Vamos camino de nada.

Vamos a ver cómo el Ebro

Con su soledad se marcha.

Y con él van en compaña

Las gentes de estas vaguadas,

De estos valles, de esta sierra,

De estas huertas arruinadas.

Polvo, niebla, viento y sol,

Donde hay agua una huerta.

Al Norte los Pirineos:

Esta tierra es Aragón.

**********

Aragon

   

Dust, fog, wind and sun,

Where there is water an orchard.

To the North the Pyrenees:

This land is Aragon.

To the North the Pyrenees

To the South the quiet land.

The Ebro flows through the center

With its solitude at its back.

They say there are lands to the East

Where there’s work and they pay.

To the West the Moncayo

Like a God that no longer protects.

Since time immemorial

We are on our way to nothing.

Watching the Ebro

Carry away its loneliness.

And with it go in company

The people of these meadows,

Of these valleys, these mountains,

These ruined orchards.

Dust, fog, wind and sun,

Where there is water an orchard.

To the North the Pyrenees:

This land is Aragon.

English translation by Johannes Beilharz.

Rainy December Day

It’s
as
if a
chasse d’eau were
continually 
being pulled today, and all grey.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2021)

Note
So I’ve come back to a form (fibonacci) I used to practice a lot for a while and then didn’t for a long time. Nothing but the truth in this one – the waters of the sky are coming down on Rome in varying degrees of mercilessness, and it’s so dark you can hardly call it day.

Current trends in spam

 

An excerpt from my gmail spam inbox

Brand new: funeral plan offers! Wow, can't wait to get one of those plans from a surely entirely trustworthy source.

Old faithfuls for the last year or so: Bitcoin! As you can see from all the mails I've received, I'm filthy Bitcoin rich by now. Bitcoin spammers - such benefactors to mankind. And not just in English - I've also been identified as a Spanish-speaking Bitcoin aficionado. ¡Ay, caramba!

Apply and receive funds today (Just remember to include the asterisk next to 'today') - That one day was the one that went by me, so did not receive the funds. Ouch!

I also failed to track that package from Royal Mail I never ordered. Ouch again.

Now off they go - there's that handy Delete forever button.

Upon which Google Mail proudly crows "Hooray, no spam here!" like a rooster on a missing pile of manure.

The umbrella flight haiku

 

Rain, umbrella and
wind conspire to lift me up
like Flying Robert.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2021)

Note
Pretty much that kind of weather here in Rome this morning of October 11, 2021. Inspired by a poem in Der Struwwelpeter (1876) by Heinrich Hoffmann, a book of more or less moral tales everyone in Germany knows. The illustration is by the author (Hoffmann) himself.

The perils of having a pet haiku

Can’t tie my shoes – 
cat’s playing with the strings.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2021)

Note
A seriously underfilled specimen of the form, but based on nothing but real events.

The sad truth haiku

Can’t bring myself to
read poems that are longer
than ten lines or so.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2021)

Notes
First of all – why should this truth be sad? Only for myself, I must admit. Others may concur, disagree or simply don’t give a flying fog. It’s a free world, peotry included. (Think I just created a word! Peotry ... like poetry mixed with peyote.) Anyway, all rubbish. What brought about this rubbish? I was looking for enjoyable poetry in the famous Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (famous because – at least in my days at the university – it was a standard book to carry around for English and Creative Writing courses). I started at the back of the hefty volume, thinking those poems had to be by the most modern and least stuffy poets. I believe in brevity in general, so I was really looking for something short, but nothing doing! Even James Tate’s “The Blue Booby”, which starts at the bottom of page 1387 with 3 promising ultra-short lines but rolls on for most of the next page, ending with “like the eyes of a mild savior” – a line I actually like. It really packs a punch. If only there weren’t so much in between. Well, pardon me, it’s the old grouch speaking again, having accrued more than 10 lines of negatively ranty prose by now. I know for a fact that long poems exist. I even know one person personally who wrote a long poem (thankfully it was still in the making when I knew her) and said she loved long poems! The sad truth actually is that people who like poems (period!) are a very, very tiny minority.

Desperate heroine

 

Film still from the Tamil thriller Aadai (2019), which can be streamed on Amazon Prime.

Despite the trite synopsis (something like "A young woman finds herself naked in an empty building after a night of hard partying"), this gripping film starring Amala Paul has some surprising depth, twists and turns and even a message.