launch of mobile poetry archive leads to "April madness"

Never a huge fan of April Fool's Day - I think I took it personally as a child because my birthday was not long after, and resented the implication - I have slightly edited this press release from the Academy of American Poets, and am bringing it to you a fashionable two days late.

Gotcha...

April 1, 2008—When the Academy of American Poets announced the launch of a mobile version of their poetry archive in March, no one could have predicted that poetry would become the concern of Fortune 500 companies across the nation. But this is just what is happening, says Rich Richardson, CEO of Tercet, a Duluth-based import-export firm.

"It started in a very benign way with an all-company email," Richardson says. "Our comptroller forwarded 'Birches' by Robert Frost. This poem touched many of our employees, leading several to spend their work hours looking for poems on Poets.org."

Says Richardson: "Once they had a taste for lines like 'They click upon themselves/As the breeze rises,' there was no stopping them."

Richardson says he began using SmartFilter, a tool for blocking websites, to combat his employees' Poets.org usage. "Unfortunately, this did not keep them from getting their poetry fix on their mobile devices," says Richardson.

Tercet's CFO, Abby Abramson, says the widespread internet searches for poems during business hours will not be tolerated beyond National Poetry Month. "Despite the obvious personal benefits of reading poetry, we can't condone something that decreases productivity," Abramson says. Abramson estimates that employee interest in poetry could cost the company $2.2 million in lost revenue by the end of the fiscal year.

"Printing out Elizabeth Bishop's poem 'The Moose' and posting it in the cafeteria is fine. Reciting 'The Moose' to your spouse on the phone during work hours then using Poets.org to find more poems about animals is an abuse of our employee policy," says Abramson.

Tree Swenson, executive director of the Academy of American Poets, sympathizes with the concerns of Tercet's management, but her responsibility is to the poetry readers. "We believe that poetry expands the possibilities of daily life, as imagination alters reality,” says Swenson. "If that possibility is blocked, you may have a revolution on your hands."

That revolution may come during National Poetry Month, when the Academy of Amercian Poets launches the first national celebration of Poem In Your Pocket Day. Poetry readers across the country will be carrying a poem in their pocket and sharing it with co-workers on April 17, says Swenson. "I would hate to hear that Tercet's workers were being penalized for acknowledging those 'unacknowledged legislators of the world,' our poets."

Happy April Fool's Day.


Nice work, eh? They must have had fun writing that. And imagine naming your child Tree - that part's real.

how true, how true

But. Teenager kitteh wd do this no matter what Momcat does. Srsly.

This contribution to The House of Baroque has been brought to you by Dr Francis Sedgemore, PhD, scientist, freelance science writer to the stars and Verry Seeris Pursen.

Kthxbai.

clinging to the future like one of those little clippy koala bears

Well, National Poetry Writing Month has so far got off to a bad start.

I know it's early days yet: my horoscope says that today I will succeed through creativity, so I can cling to that - although last Saturday it said I would meet my deadlines through getting a late start, and that basically sounded a lot better than it was. In practice.

Of course, horoscopes are not supposed to be just about the future, they are about deepening the present, and that is what National Poetry Writing Month is all about. Innit. So we'll cling to that instead.

Edited in: the koalas, or else the spirit of Ted, or else my creativity, or else my Facebook list, are helping me out here. As my kids could tell you - as any fule kno - when playing computer games the thing that makes you good is knowing the cheats. One day maybe I'll tell you what happened when Matty Bradley found the cheat for free will on Sim City. Well, it seems I've found one for this! For my Facebook chum Robert Lee Brewer has got a gig blogging NaPoWriMo prompts on a magazine called Writers' Digest! One a day! That's before the Academy of American Poets poem lands in your inbox, but after you thought you'd run out of ideas. Great stuff. And if I never get a usable poem out of it at least I get to spend the month kidding myself. I might also keep a list of rhyme words open on my desktop...

Meanwhile, here's a picture of Ted Hughes.

just dashing through

A technical issue at work has yielded this bagatelle from good old Wikipedia. I might add that it is possibly the best and most carefully punctuated Wikipedia entry I have ever read.

"Traditionally an em dash—like so—or a spaced em dash — like so — has been used for a dash in running text. The Elements of Typographic Style recommends the more concise spaced en dash – like so – and argues that the length and visual magnitude of an em dash 'belongs to the padded and corseted aesthetic of Victorian typography'."

(I'm crushed. I used to love that aesthetic; I can remember, as a wee child... but never mind. Why, why??)

"The en dash (always with spaces, in running text) and the spaced em dash both have a certain technical advantage over the unspaced em dash. In most typesetting and most word processing, the spacing between words is expected to be variable, so there can be full justification. Alone among punctuation that marks pauses or logical relations in text, the unspaced em dash disables this for the words between which it falls."

Something for all of us to think about, I think - I just wish Blogger would keep up!

Seek, as they say, and ye shall find

Long time since I posted up any search terms via which people have reached Baroque Mansions. It is sort of boring. But this one I like:

elegantly dressed girls with pretty, bare feet

See?

I do so love a crystal ball*

Oh la la! Mme Arcati has hit, or should I say delicately tapped, the nail, or is it the earring, on the head. Just what was this French state visit about again? Let's ask her.

The future - it may look orange...

While we're on the subject, of course I remember now the other post I never did last week: the one where I quote the tweed-suited one's hilarious astrological description of Julian Barnes.

"In his new book (a memoir really) Nothing to be Frightened of" - Madame writes - "Julian Barnes reveals as a literary performance, the full extent of his fear of death (or thanatophobia) - why, the poor poppet wakes up at night screaming and chewing his pillow at the prospect of eternal extinction. No more book awards! No more cool reviews from John Walsh in the Indy! Oh woe, cruel world! Fashionably, he is a devout member of the Literary Godless Religion (Christopher Hitchens is its current Archbish; M Amis one of the vicars) - "I don’t believe in God, but I miss him," Barnes writes, largely because the divinely-inspired painted prettier pictures on church windows, so far as I can tell. He tells us he's a melancholic person.

Mr Barnes will be appalled to learn that he is very true to his horoscope..."

Sorry. You know I can't resist this kind of stuff.

And while we're linking: even a quick look at Charles Lambert's blog is enough to show me just how incomplete my reading list of last night was...


* as the actress - oh, never mind.

no Lisa Simpson - or is she?

Wow, as you might say. You guys know I don't really follow American politics until I'm put in a position where I have to - but I've just read a long article in the Washington Post (via the Huffington Post) all about the blog (or "blogette") kept by the Republican candidate John McCain's daughter, Meghan. Now I am practicing stroking my own hair, but it isn't as smooth as Meghan's, so I fear it may not do me any good. And anyway, "blogette"? Yet somehow...

I mean, even her blog has staff! Baroque Mansions only sits five comfortably in one room, so that's a non-starter for this place, you'll be either pleased or dismayed to know.

Anyway, here's a taster:

"Some time back, McCain posted to her Web site a detailed explanation of her campaign trail makeup regimen, including her approach to maximizing lash 'density' by blending two brands of mascara, and her technique for priming lips with concealer before applying Benefit brand lip gloss.

'I just decided to do it 'cause a lot of girls were asking,' she says. 'And then I was dutifully punished on the Internet for writing about makeup.' She starts to giggle. 'But I got a lot of good response and Benefit actually sent me an e-mail being like, "We love that you love Benefit!" Yeah. So, I was like, "Yay"'. "

She's 23. She studied art history at Columbia.

And get this:

"The Web site is not affiliated with or funded by the McCain campaign, according to Meghan and a campaign spokeswoman. McCain says she didn't want to have to cede 'creative control' to her dad's staff.

So how does she pay for it?

'We don't talk about it,' McCain says firmly. ' 'Cause, like, once I answer one question it leads to 50 others.'

But, because she is the candidate's daughter, her press requests are routed through the campaign and, at one point, Brooke Buchanan, the McCain campaign's traveling spokeswoman, comes into the room to keep an eye on the interview.

'Hey, girls,' Buchanan says. She perches on the arm of Bae's chair.

'Did you change your hair?' one of the blogettes asks her."

See? She really is just a normal kinda girl. Srsly. And, blogged up, her family really do start to sound like the Simpsons:

"There's sprightly, 96-year-old Roberta McCain, who not too long ago told C-SPAN that the Republican base was just going to have to hold "their nose" and vote for her son. There's the senator, 71, who famously spent 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. There's Cindy, 53, John McCain's second wife, who was addicted to prescription painkillers for several years when Meghan was a child, and who in 2004 suffered a stroke. There's Meghan's brother, Jack, in the Naval Academy, and her other brother, Jimmy, a Marine who has served in Iraq. There's her little sister, Bridget, whom the McCains adopted from Bangladesh as an infant, and who was, in Dad's 2000 presidential race, the object of a smear campaign insinuating that she was the product of an illicit union."

And then there's little Lisa, the little PR genius.

The Post again:

"McCain is a political outsider with an insider's access, and on her Web site she notices the things political junkies never would, like the 'really cute' shoes Chelsea Clinton wore when they met. She posts photographs of her own shoes and of the shoes she encounters on the trail, including those belonging to such fashion luminaries as Dick Armey and Henry Kissinger.

'Because I love shoes, and who doesn't want to know what kind of shoes Dr. Kissinger wears?' she writes on her blog.

We didn't know we wanted to know, but now that she mentions it, we kinda do."

Hmm. You couldn't make it up.* She may never even need to fall back on that education, ya think? (Make sure you click on the pic.)

* But if you did, don't forget that foundation!

what a difference a word makes

The banana split boat hasn't sailed, has it? Some reader of mine, somewhere, must have missed the storm in a sundae dish over the anonymous poem found in the House of Commons - or somewhere - nobody has actually said where it was found, or how - was it lying upon the stair? Anyway, somehow everybody got to know of it, and very funny it is too:

"As I was going down the stair, I met a man who wasn't Blair.
He wasn't Blair again today. Oh how I wish he'd go away!"

And no one knows who wrote it! It's a complete mystery - a government scandal! A couple of ministers have completely denied that it's anything to do with them, but then, they would say that, wouldn't they.

Of course we're all jolly glad whenever anyone isn't Blair, and we hope it stays that way, but you have to admit that it's a fine thing for Parliamentarians to be taking to their pens like this. It may be only doggerel but revolutions have been started with less. And it pleases me, partly because the original upon which it is based ("As I was going up the stair/ I met a man who wasn't there./ He wasn't there again today...") was told me many many times by my dear Papa, le duc de Baroque, back when he was about ten times bigger than me.

However, the real genius of the piece comes in when my brand-new favourite-ever politician, Austin Mitchell MP (Great Grimsby - fancy a weekend away, anyone?) posted this delicious, and far superior, bagatelle on his blog: the cherry on top. Poetry truly lives in the corridors of power! Austin's whole site is well worth a read. Take these snippets from his "House Diary":

"These are the times that try men`s socialism. Polls disastrous. Morale low. New chums wondering if ritual suicide might be helpful. Blairites in the ascendant with crazed proposals to force the disabled back to work (assuming the Poles leave any jobs) or proclaiming the virtues of wealth, Mandy announcing that Gordon has forgiven him, and Tony sucking up more jobs in his flibbertigibbet progress to the throne of Charlemagne II.* ...Oldie of the Year lunch. Hockney harangues me for voting for the smoking ban, announcing that it will be the death of reflection."

Even his home page is fun. And did you see the picture above? He has something I want.**


* Flibbertigibbet is one of my all-time favourite words.
** & I don't mean a house - although, yes please... (edited in: on reflection I think I mean a nice big empty room, with a polished floor. You could have a vast abode and not have that! But mainly it's the Friendly's sign, of course.)

Guy Davenport and Harold J Smith: the link

The great Modernist critic and writer Guy Davenport was also an illustrator and even a cartoonist. I knew he could draw pictures, because he illustrated several of his own books of short stories; his line drawings of Vladimir Tatlin and Stalin are memorable. But what I didn't know was that the manifestation of his skills was so much more multifarious than that. Above, his 1958 book jacket for a Western set in the Civil War.

It's lovely, isn't it? Even aside from the brave, manly-looking soldier, I mean. And his wonderful buttons. There's a whole description and explanation of it (except for the buttons) here, in the middle of a highly interesting essay on Davenport's careers - both literary and visual.

This picture reminds me, in its solitary heroism and impeccable fifties look, of an item I read last week on Amy King's blog. Amy informs us - with a link to her source - that Jay Silverheels, the American Indian actor who played Tonto, also wrote poetry! Of course he did. It was based on his childhood on the reservation, and it is apparently lost.

As disappointing as this is, it can't be as disappointing as the fact that Jay Silverheels' real name was Harold J Smith.

Heigh-ho, Silver!

‘the neurosis of innovation’

One of my favourite blogs, The Fate of the Artist: it's from an old post (& v interesting it was) but do go to the new ones too.

"And that is the problem with art today" (he writes): "the artist believes he must find a style (or a schtick really) and defend it with his life. And if all the schticks are already taken, he must pull one out of his ass." (I love that.) "He must find one," he continues, "invent one, fabricate one, for he can be nothing if he cannot be original."

The quoted discussion, before anyone objects to the picture above, is in support of Lichtenstein's use of a generic style to produce art. Regular readers may be aware of my great love for the pixelated pop artist...

an Easter postcard from Texas

An email from my funniest auntie: I think it's still only 11.30am in Texas, so this is hot off the press! I feel sure she won't mind, especially after all she's been through.

"Whew!" (she writes.) "While it's fresh, I must tell you about my church experience with friends today. I love them dearly, BUT... First off there was a Starbucks in the church lobby. What the heck, I had a latte.

In the sanctuary there was nary a bloom in sight. No flowers. I guess that's because they didn't want to trip over them on the way to the guitars, keyboards, drums - you get the picture.

My pet peeve is those ---- screens on the wall instead of hymn books. And didn't recognize but one song (they're not hymns).

The pastor's a real nice guy. But please - he was wearing an argyle sweater, not even a tie. Never again! I came right home and poured a mimosa!"

modernism: what is it?

I got involved in a long conversation this morning about England's perceived failure to produce convincing Modernist works - a perception I tried to counter, first with the statement that, although Pound and Eliot were American, England was the place where they were able to do their work. But the argument persisted - not a new argument either, as it happens - that England is prone to "mimsiness" and tininess, and that its Modernism - lacking conviction in its own identity - attempts to blend with a pastoral sensibility that it simply can't fit. Further countering this with reflections on Ben Nicholson, Stanley Spencer (though I forgot his name, of course; this is the kind of thing that can happen when arguing a point over bourgeois coffee and sausages) et al, it seemed I had hit a wall, a wall of formalism. That is, a tendency of English modernist artists to become preoccupied with form over intellectual substance, which of course is in keeping with a kind of pastoral anti-intellectualism for which England remains so well-known even now.

I know: this all sounds very silly. (nb. Do, please, scroll all the way down that link... it's all a bit post-modernist & intertextual, though I can't promise any lines from "Oh My Darling Clementine".)

But the more we went into the topic, the more European Modernism looked like an extreme position people were forced into by circumstances of world war, genocide, revolution - a degree of hardness only arrived at through extremes of heat and pressure - a dependence on intellect, perhaps, when all else has failed - or desperation for a plan in the face of catastrophe - or possibly simply the need to look forward when the past has been destroyed, which the mind will compensate for by rejecting the past.

The discussion ranged to America, which I said had benefited culturally, along with England, through its ability to take in refugees from Europe, who then continued their activities here, enriching the native soil incalculably. I posited that if Europe's intellectual and artistic life had contracted during the War, those of England and America had correspondingly expanded, and that this was arguably the best thing that could have happened to America's cultural life.

In the end the position we were arrived at was that it was largely the modernists, pace Eliot and Pound, who were the right-wingers, and that one reason Modernism as a movement could never really take off here was the inbuilt English dread of any kind of orthodoxy of thought: the contrariness of a nation of eccentrics whose motto is "A man's home is his castle," and who feel inclined to laugh at anything that takes itself too seriously. Which basically, both the Modernists and the fascists did.

(Cue image of a load of toffs in the thirties, laughing uproariously at Oswald Mosley's funny little ways and lack of a proper dinner jacket, or somesuch. And I know: in Cable Street they weren't laughing. But ultimately, did this laughter help to prevent I Was the Son of a Cable Street?)

Of course, this was morning-coffee talk and exploratory to boot: so I don't really want anyone telling me I'm anti-Modernist or whatever: I've read my Hugh Kenner and Guy Davenport with the rest. Remarking on how strange the turns this conversation had taken, we were content to leave it there in favour of more coffee and the day itself. But imagine my interest later this evening on reading a comment by the "New Formalist" poet Mark Jarman, in reply to a post about the use of the term "New Formalism" on Alfred Corn's weblog, that "the dirty secret of Modernism... was and is fascism."

Now, it is clear to me that this post of Alfred's raised some old Poetry War hackles and that - given the commenters and the disjointed nature of some of the rejoinders - there are possibly some personality issues at play here. However, as surprised as I was by the turn of my morning ruminations I was more surprised to see them said outright, like that, right there.

Is there something everyone else has figured out ages ago, except Ms Baroque? Or is this whole train of thought completely spurious? And is it really true that, as arrived at over the cafétiere this morning, we should be celebrating this particular pigheaded local obtuseness that insists on taking people down a peg or two instead of humouring all their intellectual conceits?

the red earth of Tara: a competition

I couldn't get the image I wanted; indeed, any of the images I wanted. But while we're on the subject, here's a competition for you! There will be a fabulous [sic] prize for the first person who can tell me where the phrase "gone with the wind" comes from.

(Note: All members of the Spaniel family and its tenants and employees are ineligible for this competition.)

Thinking about it, I can offer a bonus if you guess correctly the image I wanted. Note that I will ideally want you to know what's happening in the scene and what the music is doing. (Spaniels may have a go at the bonus question.)

All answers should be emailed to me, at the email address in the sidebar. I will award the prize to the first correct answer, and the bonus to the first correct guess as to the image I was looking for.

In case you don't feel like helping me celebrate my brief "Red Earth of Tara" moment, here is a nice piece of Hollywood trivia from the obituary of Gone With the Wind producer David O. Selznick in the New York Times, June 23, 1965:

"Nothing in Hollywood is permanent," Mr. Selznick said in 1959 on a Hollywood set, as Tara, the mansion built for "Gone With The Wind," was being dismembered and shipped to Atlanta, Ga. "Once photographed, life here is ended. It is almost symbolic of Hollywood. Tara has no rooms inside..."

Click on the image below for more of this kind of thing.

you mean the book had a sad ending?!?!?

Now they tell me.

But here's a book review to warm the cockles of your heart. The headline caught my eye on My Yahoo: "Not Another Captain Corelli's Mandolin' - I thought, how clever! Does it mean, "this is not another Captain Corelli's Mandolin?" Or, "Oh my God! Not another goddamn Captain Corelli's Mandolin!" I had to find out.

Of course, being the almost purely prejudice-driven creature that I am, I've spent years inveighing against the good Captain and his stringed instrument, to say nothing of his sentiment-infused relationship with Penelope Cruz, purely on the basis of Nicolas Cage's bad Italian accent, the novel's sales figures, bad prose, plucky villagers, and a certain grim predictability... though John Hurt was a boon, I have to say, and so tragic - and of course I liked the idea of the opera company - oh, but where were we.

So, this headline! It turns out to mean - but no - you can read it for yourself. Meanwhile, a picture of Louis de Bernières playing a mandolin. Now there's edifying.

ministers of the inferior interior

Bryan Appleyard can't get too worked up about MPs' expenses. He says their pay is poor, and of course I can see what he means. The fact that it's nearly double (say) mine is meaningless in the wider scheme of things, and the fact that it's more than three times the national average means - well, what does it mean? How many times over the average must one earn for it to seem like a good salary? Probably about ten. I know if I were on £62K I'd probably only be complaining that I was broke.

But Bryan hits the nail on the head with his response to the Second Homes Scandal, with an observation that did hover ghostily over the margins of my own imagination, but failed to materialise into the following:

..."one stares at the list of second home allowances with sickly fascination. The sideboard and the rugs, the food mixer and the coffee maker, the nest of tables. It is simply outrageous they haven't included a hostess trolley and hardboard panelling to conceal any remaining period features. For this is a home circa 1962 when Barry Bucknell and Fanny Craddock were on TV, prawn cocktail and goulash were on the menu, people set fire to their liqueurs and Ikea was just a distant dream. Happy days."

He's so right.

And now maybe we'll drop it, shall we... I have my readers to think of, after all.

Sunday at the Betsey

I did a Google image search on "Lumsden & Stammers." This is not them.

A one-off poetry event featuring John Stammers, Roddy Lumsden and US poet Dave Lucas, with Amy Key and Ahren Warner and quality floorspots from Katy Evans-Bush, Inua Ellams, Tamsin Kendrick and Simon Barraclough and more.

The main bar is open 6.30-11 just for the event - readings will be from 7.15pm sharp - 10pm, with plenty of breaks for chat and drinks.

The pub is opening just for this event, so it should be a blast! (I mean, not really. You know what I mean. I'm so limited by my lingo... I mean it will be better than when you have to push past hordes of drunken City types.) Come along if you can. Yay!

This Sunday, 16 March
at the Betsey Trotwood pub
56 Farringdon Road

View Map

no time to post...

the elegantly dressed, thinking of Dr Johnson

Job can haz cheezburger?

Oh, hai. Has happend. Thx to da alwayz-araldite David Wheatley Ms B fownded out - the Bible is being translated into lolcat!

I mean, OMG wut waz I tawkin, dat kittehs uv tehday not haz touch wif cultural hertilage, no srsly, wtf!!

Here's a sample:

Prowlog

1 In teh land of Uz wuz a man calded Job. Teh man wuz goodz, wif respeck fur teh Ceiling Cat and hated evilz.2 Teh man hadz seven sunz and tree doters,3 And lots of sheepz and camlez and rinoceruseses and servnts, srsly.4 His sunz tok turns mading cookies, and they all eated them.5 And Job wuz liek "Oh noes! Wut if cookies were sin? Gota prey, just in cased."

Furst Tess

6 Teh ayngles wented to seez Ceiling Cat, and Saitin wented two.7 Ceiling Cat axt Saitin, "Wher wuz u?" Saitin saied "Oh, hai. I'z wuz in ur earth, wawking up and down uponz it."8 Teh Ceiling Cat sayd "Has u seen mai servnt Job? He can has cheezburger cuz he laiks me."

9 "No wai!" sed Saitin.10 "U just plyin favrits.11 If u take his cheezburgers, oar his bukkit, he no laiks u no moar."

12 Then teh Ceiling Cat sed "Okai, u can take his bukkit, but no hurtzing Job hissef." And then Saitin went awai.

13 Wun day Jobes' sunz and doters were eateding cookies at teh oldest wuns hoose,14 And a mans cam to told Job a mesege. "Ur donkzeys and moo cows was eateding grass"15 And thens teh servnts was atacked by some dudez and ur naminals was stoldz by them and only i got wai."

16 And then anotter mans cam to told Job a diffrant mesege. He sed "Teh Ceiling Cat maids fyr fall from teh skys and it burnded ur sheepz and more servnts and only i got awai."

17 And thens a more diffranter mans cam to told Job a mesege. "Sum Chaldean dudez took ur rinoceroseseses and killd moar servnts and only i got wai."

18 And then 1 moar mans cam to told Job a mesege.19 "Ur sunz howse feld over and skwishded evryones. Sry."

20 Then Job got upt and shaved and was liek "Gota prey now."

21 "Teh Ceiling Cat giv me cheezburger, teh Ceiling Cat takded mah cheezburger awai. I stil laiks teh Ceiling Cat."

22 And teh Ceiling Cat sed "I winz!!"

An laik, Ms B now lates fur werk, awl cuz uv she be seens menny menny lolcat pitchurs an cannot stopz lookin. She be thinkin in lolcatz naow which not guds fer da meetinz. She iz bad kitteh. Kthxbai.

coming soon, on a dark and rainy night near you...

What happens when you go out looking for something? What happens if you find it - or it finds you? And how can you tell?

Tune in to Propeller TV, or Sky Channel 195, to find out, this Saturday night at 11.05. That's tomorrow. And depending where you are it might not be 11.05 - but you knew that.

Ghost Club is described as "a short film in which the three members of the South London Paranormal Investigation Society keep a night-time vigil at a 400-year-old mansion in the hope of seeing 'Possible Incorporeal Entities'..."

Written by: David Secombe and Andrew Martin
Produced by: David Secombe and Andrew Martin
Directed by David Secombe

John: Geoffrey Freshwater
Ian: Kieran Hill
Peter: Miles Richardson
Hoody: Gordon Ridout

© Scout Hut Films 2007

there will be bloodsucking

Just to reprise: At the end of the previous post I wrote, "But where Les Enfants evokes dream life, the underground in There Will be Blood does the opposite - because Plainview is literally, as he himself says, draining it."

I wrote that, and then almost immediately happened upon this sentence on IMDb: "The main character Daniel Plainview was modeled loosely after famous oil man Edward Doheny and his characteristics were based on Count Dracula."

See?? My theory about this mysterious strangulated silence at the heart of the film, which is developing only as I type, is beginning to be substantiated! (if not transubstantiated.)

I was also amazed, having just made my leaping, not to say chasm-gulfing, comparison between this movie and The Godfather, to see that a message board had been set up on the subject of "Day-Lewis vs Pacino." Was someone going to talk about the qualities of silence in the Godfather? Pacino's brand of solitary power-hunger vs Day-Lewis' extrovert misanthropy? I clicked into it. (nb. you have to be registered.) And what did I see?

"Pacino had his time but he is no longer the gret actor he was Daniel Day Lewis is by far a better actor than Pacino who I agree was amazing in Heat, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Godfather."

That's not all. Someone else wrote "pachino". What did I expect.