(no subject)

[everydazejournal]

Last night was pretty quiet. I watched the 1941 film version of "The Grapes of Wrath" and I liked it a lot. The film was based on the John Steinbeck novel about a family from Oklahoma forced from their homes during the Great Depression of the 1930s and trying to make their way to California in order to find work. It is beautifully photographed and well acted, especially from Henry Fonda. The film has a lot of genuine power and is still relevant and troubling even today.

Luckily I remembered to set all my clocks forward an hour last night, including the clock on my central heating. I thought for most of the week, that I'd end up forgetting.

Today was Mother's Day and so when I went to my parent's house, as I do every week, we went out to eat at a nearby hotel. I had haddock in batter with chips, an ice cream and a pint of beer. It was very nice. We got to that hotel quite a bit and it's always really nice, although in September it's being sold to be turned into luxury apartments. One good thing was that my mum really liked the present and card that I got her.

I listened to an interesting program on the radio about Arthur Rimbaud, the French poet who was a big inspiration to people like Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Bob Dylan and Jim Morrison. Although I know the name, I am not familiar with his work. I'll have to check it put sometime.

Comments

[legs-eleven.livejournal.com]

I just had a little freak-out! I forgot you're in the UK. I thought I missed the US Mother's Day. (May 14 for us)

Boy do I feel foolish, looking for a calender. *lol*

[breakon87.livejournal.com]

LOL! Sorry about that!

[sing-dream-love.livejournal.com]

I'm glad that you had a good day today.
I had to watch that film in high school after having to read the novel for a history glass I was taking. I enjoyed it as well.

[breakon87.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It was a very good film. I've got the novel, but I haven't read it yet.

[magic-potion.livejournal.com]

I forgot all about the setting clocks... I wanted to have chinese and ended up wondering why the restaurants are closed before the real closing time, lol!

[breakon87.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of people forget about changing the clocks! It causes chaos for a few days.

[magic-potion.livejournal.com]

It does! And it's really frustrating as it doesn't make any difference here in what time the clocks are in the summer. It's just to keep in same time with other countries.

[ga-the-impaler.livejournal.com]

I used to live in the same town where Jack Kerouac grew up. The joke was that the most famous thing Jack Kerouac did was to move out of Lowell. Lowell, Massachusetts is a depressing place. It's little wonder that Kerouac drank as much as he did. Well, that, and he was self-medicating because he was schizophrenic, but that's a story for another day.

[breakon87.livejournal.com]

I know that Jack Kerouac seemed to romanticise Lowell a lot in his books. I think they've got a Jack Kerouac Festival there in September. I think he was a very interesting guy!

[ga-the-impaler.livejournal.com]

Well, there's nothing romantic about Lowell. There wasn't anything romantic about it when he lived there, either.

Random Lowell facts:
It was a stolen town. It was designed as a mill town on the Merrimac River. (The joke about the Merrimac is that murderers don't bother to dump the bodies of their victims into it, since the bodies will always float, due to river contamination. I'm not sure how much of this is a joke since the river is so polluted by tannery waste.) Apparently, a man with a photographic memory was sent to England to "study" plans of some British mills. Since the man came with no writing equipment and the man was not an engineer, the British assumed he was safe, and let him look. All plans were copied by American Engineers when the man came back. After that, all these mills were put up, young women were "sold" by their parents to have them go work in the mills in exchange for a paycheck to be sent back to their parents. Matrons used to walk the girls to and from work everyday. All housing was mill housing, no girls were allowed to be married, all stores were owned by the mills. When that kind of lifestyle fell out of fashion, Lowell went downhill. It's scary and stark. You wouldn't want to walk downtown by yourself. The buildings are tall and have dark alleyways next to them. About a third of the buildings downtown are uninhabitable and are boarded up. They've been this way for years and years. The river is dingy. The only nice place, the Opera House, was ripped down for some kind of concrete monstrocity that they call "art." Once, it was known as the "Venice of the New World." Now, it's a slum. Houses on top of houses on top of houses. Abandoned mills. Pavement as far as the eye can see. Huge, multi-storey buildings that obstruct the view of the sky. Nothing romantic about it. It's a working-class place, and there's no work there. There hasn't been commerce in Lowell since World War I, really. It's a sad town. It's one of the places H.P. Lovecraft based his writing on, because it's an angry, sad town (and the river is creepy).

[breakon87.livejournal.com]

That's very interesting! I don't think Jack Kerouac ever came back to Lowell after he left, except to visit his family there. He wrote a very good book called "Dr. Sax" about a flood in Lowell he remembered from childhood and imaging that the Merrimac was filled with strange evil creatures (I suppose like HP Lovecraft).

[ga-the-impaler.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that makes sense. If you'd ever seen the place, you'd understand. It's scary and angry. Well, that, and Kerouac was schizophrenic, so he may really have seen some weird stuff in Lowell.

[impdujour.livejournal.com]

whoa I havent seen the grapes of wrath for ages.

[breakon87.livejournal.com]

It's a good film. Well worth watching.

[gp06.livejournal.com]

John Steinbeck is one of my favorite authors... and yet.. I've never seen the film..

[breakon87.livejournal.com]

It is a very good film. I think John Steinbeck was quite heavily involved in it, although he didn't write the script, at least not according to the credits.