Dec 29, 2006

Daffy Yum -Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

There's a Jewish tradition (I'm no scholar so I might be getting it all wrong) called Daf Yomi, which sounds like a TR term, in which a person studies one page of the Talmud each day for 7.5 years.

We started a similar tradition here at the Aftrlife last year (or was it two years ago?) but using the novels of Tom Robbins as our soure book. Several of us made it through Another Roadside Attraction in a ragtag fashion reading one page a day or some variation on that purpose. Now it's on to Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.

On January 2, 2007 at 3 pm. (I have to work 23 in there somehow) I am going to resume reading one page of Tom Robbins' work chronologically each day for the 8 to 10 years that it will take to go through the one's he has written and the ones he will hopefully write during that time. I wouldn't say I'm going to study them, but rather read them mindfully with an open heart. I will call this ritual Daffy Yum.
I'll comment here at the blog or on the discussion list whenever something strikes me. Anyone want to join me?

If you would like to be a part of this effort please leave a comment here on the blog as you read along when you have something to say. This is not formal so feel free to comment at will. (You can also comment on the aftrlife discussion group if you'd rather. Joining is easy. Details on that to come soon.

Dale, who probably will drift from this ritual at some point.

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Dec 26, 2006

Found it in translation

You might notice I've added flags under each post. Clicking on a flag opens up the post in the language associated with that flag. I realize that Google translations are sometimes a joke, but in the spirit of international love this is one thing I can do.

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Dec 20, 2006

Blog Adminstruative Details

I've added a blog roll and a commentor's roll with links to blogs that might interest y'all. They're on the left over there and that's not a political statement although if were it would probably be true.

Up in the righthand corner you'll see random TR quotes. If you want your favorite quote added to that just leave a comment with the quote and I'll stick it in there.

I hope y'all are enjoying this blog. We'll have the rest of the team online soon.

Thanks.

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Dec 18, 2006

Seriously Humorous


I'm still mad at Gus Van Sant, the guy who directed the Even Cowgirls Get the Blues movie. He slavishly stuck to the book, which I can understand because it is such a great book, but the book was not a movie. After seeing Van Sant copy scene for scene the original in his remake of Psycho, now I understand. The guy really doesn't know how to adapt and add movie-isms to a book or film. He doesn't bring anything to the table.

They're always trying to classify Robbins as quirky and arty. His work is those things, but it is also "serious". I think if a mainstream talented director made a Tom Robbins novel into a film and added his "movie magic" to it, there would be great potential for a great film. Maybe Spielberg? What do you think?

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Dec 16, 2006

Blogs of the Sierra Madre

IntroductionBy awesomeart(awesomeart) I met him when he was teaching drama at a modeling school, he introduced me to vegetarian cooking, instant 10 minute naps, Richard Bach and Tom Robbins books...he watched my kids grow into teens, attended our wedding and became ...Passion for Art - http://awesomeart.livejournal.com/

Comment on a Genre TrendBy Quinn(Quinn) I’ma fan of Robert Heinlein, although I never finished “Stranger in a Strange Land” because, I even as I started it, I was discovering the likes of Tom Robbins, Ernest Hemingway, and Philip Roth. I was a big fan of the War World series ...The Project for a New Mythology - http://projectforanewmythology.blogspot.com/index.html


30 November 2006 - quotes on LOVE By Kim --Tom Robbins If you judge people, you have no time to love them. --Mother Teresa He who has never experienced hurt, cannot experience true love. --Tristan J. Loo Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable ...Kim - http://drkimchiew.blogspot.com

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Dec 12, 2006

Lords of Blogtown

Entry #1086By Mark H I’ve finally figured out why I like this guy’s essays so much; he writes like Tom Robbins. Today’s slide show is about the 2000 year-old Antikythera Mechanism, whose purpose has just been discovered (hint: it’s an ancient calculator). ...Biomes Blog - http://biomesblog.typepad.com/the_biomes_blog/



Immortal Folly I: Review of Jitterbug Perfume by Tom RobbinsBy Keifus(Keifus) Grade: B+ I didn't realize when I picked up Jitterbug Perfume that I was getting a contemporary fantasy (I grabbed it on the basis of author recognition, from a recommendation of sorts), although it certainly made it easier to generate ...Keifus Writes! - http://keifuswrites.blogspot.com/index.html

http://sagefemme11.livejournal.com/151413.htmlBy Windi(Windi) I feel a major book store visit coming over me, especially in light of the woeful absence of Tom Robbins quotes around here of late. Riding this fine chocolate and green tea stoner-head at work right now, I hear ice showers are ...Stormy Eyes - http://sagefemme11.livejournal.com/


Favorite BooksBy Katie(Katie) Indian Creek Chronicles by Pete Fromm; Coming Home to Eat by Gary Nabhan; The Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver; Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas by Tom Robbins; The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran; Winter by Rick Bass; The Complete Stories of ...Simple Katie - http://simplekatie.blogspot.com/index.html


books lately.By The Hipster Book Club(The Hipster Book Club) tom robbins's wild ducks flying backwards: i had gotten into robbins after reading fierce invalids home from hot climates, and also thoroughly enjoyed skinny legs and all. my enjoyment of his work depleted after that, ending in complete ...The Hipster Book Club - http://community.livejournal.com/hipsterbookclub/

love/hateso i have reached a troubling place in liturature. I have been reading a book by Tom Robbins, i've read a few of his essays too. I absolutely love the way he writes. I like the style and the language ...the littlest birds sing the pretties... - http://blog.myspace.com/ava628

How To Make Love StayBy naturalhigh This is the Tom Robbins quote from my previous post, Love is the Ultimate Outlaw. These are responses to in2l’s questions. We all have these questions. How do you make love stay? Ahhhh…. how to aid and abet love! ...Living Life Fully - http://naturalhigh.wordpress.com

BearKatMeat: What the Eff is a BearKatBy Pat Neffistopheles Oh yeah, the Bears won 117-50 against the Bearkats and set a new school record for most points scored. Rumor is that "Mulkey" is the mythical spelling for Jezebel...
Sic 'em Lady Bears.BearMeat: Dispatches from the... - http://bearmeat.blogspot.com



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Dec 7, 2006

Blogmata

Desert Island Books revision 102By AnonymousThe Quran; The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy ("a trilogy in five parts") - Douglas Adams; Still Life with Woodpecker - Tom Robbins; The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown; All the King's Men; Lord of the Rings(the trilogy) ...Book Lust with Nancy Pearl -... - http://booklust.wetpaint.com/pageSearch/updated

wicked eastern reading clubBy julieskinny legs and all. not finished with this one yet. i liked jitterbug perfume so so much better in the magical realism tom robbins vein. but there is something dreamy about a dirty sock, can o’ beans, shell, and a stick traveling ...spatial analysis 06' - http://orderofr.net/land


PublicWhen I lived in Portland, I read books by authors such as Chuck Palaniuk. Since moving to Seattle, I have read a few books by Tom Robbins. Something can be said for reading lines written a...Sally - MySpace Blog - http://blog.myspace.com/84850568


A Couple of DaysBy Jae... government conspiracies, and the impact of language on society. If you like Tom Robbins, Christopher Moore, or Matt Ruff, you would probably like this book. My recommendation: Read this book while dancing at the edge of apocalypse.The Unofficial Book Club Blotter - http://booksandbarley.blogspot.com/

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Dec 5, 2006

Blogs of the Bougainville

Does Anyone Still Read Richard Brautigan?By RW Like Vonnegut, he affected a sort of laid-back, dry, deadpan charm, along with the easily digestible whimsy of a harmless pothead -- kind of a forerunner to Tom Robbins. His books had titles like Trout Fishing in America, ...Rodney Welch: The Blog - http://rodneywelch.blogspot.com


Does Anyone Still Read Richard Brautigan?By RW Like Vonnegut, he affected a sort of laid-back, dry, deadpan charm, along with the easily digestible whimsy of a harmless pothead -- kind of a forerunner to Tom Robbins. His books had titles like Trout Fishing in America, ...

Rodney Welch: The Blog - http://rodneywelch.blogspot.com

of the genius waitress, tom robbins now sings...Of the genius waitress, I now sing. Of hidden knowledge, buried ambition, and secretsonnets scribbled on cocktail napkins; of achingarches, ranting cooks, condescending patrons, and eyesdiverted from ...miss tara - MySpace Blog - http://blog.myspace.com/20101404

What I’ve Been Reading - November 2006
A few days later, Kerrie and I went to the First Lutheran Church Bazaar, leaving with a handful of books by authors I revered (Ian McEwan, Tom Robbins) and additions to The Essentials collection (Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. ...

Parsimonious NothingsBy Ben Myers(Ben Myers) I, like the good Tom Robbins, prefer awe over swagger. And that is why the memories of Slick Vixen pass quietly through conciousness while the body amuses itself with saying her name. HONEYEDMOUTH TM.THE HONEYED MOUTH - http://honeyedmouth.blogspot.com/index.html

IS THERE HOPE FOR THOSE SOULS HELD CAPTIVE BY THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT ...By keninny I have always liked Tom Robbins' book Another Roadside Attraction. He addresses the economic and state benefits from religion. If you have not read that book, it is about a guy who finds the body of Jesus Christ in the catacombs of Rome ...


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Dec 3, 2006

Ciao Baby


An Italian review of Another Roadside Attraction

Here is the Google translation into English. Italian AND English readers are free to guffaw or cringe as they see fit. I see a certain poetry in a bad translation though.

The first book of Tom Robbins, my preferred writer for its fluid, ironica writing, and for its irriverenti and sweet, anticonventional and only personages, whose reading has given me an other series of surprise and detections. Draft of the history of Amanda one passionate girl of butterflies, with one philosophy of particular life one via of means between beat and the buddismo. The girl alive from zingara, with Thor its figlioletto, than she it says not to know if he is son of the man with which it had been coupled or of the thunderstorm who took place themselves in that same moment, and nobody risks to take it for matta if it can observe the eyes of the child exceptionally similar to saette.

The extraordinary ability to have perception of the future, to interpret the tarocchi concurs them to join to a circus where it foretells the future for the modica figure of 4 dollars and 98. Travelling with the circus John Paul Ziller, a species of wizard meets, sciamano, become famous like percussionista drummer, that it goes in turn dressed like always accompanied Tarzan from a noble baboon of name Mon Cul. The lightning blow is unavoidable and after it are married are settled down in a species of “roadside cafe” on the freeway, in which they install one zoo, composed from a pair of snakes, one Moscow tse-tse and a circus of pulci. And the particular place of ristoro called “Capt. Kendrik Memorial Hot Dog Wildlife Preserve”, becomes the fulcrum of the vicissitude, where under an enormous standard to shape of salsicciotto (even if Amanda is vegetarian convinced) to our protagonists joins, the former champion of football Plucky Purcell who has infiltrated in a species of schism of nazistoidi Friars and Marx Marvelous, scenziato sedicente and writer whom it has made of all in order meeting the strange brace of the zoo along the road. Entirety will have the possibility and the responsibility to decide if to render the ritrovamento of the emains of Jesus famous Christ, a species of new Advent, than but it would demonstrate that Jesus is not never revived, opening goodness knows which perspectives to the Humanity. There were scarabei everywhere, and also siamesi coleopters from long the iridescenti armors five centimeters. And, naturally, butterflies: such butterflies and falene of and many kinds that a correspondent would want to us very more patient than me in order to try to list them all, we figure ourselves then in order to describe the sweet colors of which the their wings they were incipriate. You allow me to emphasize that Amanda had not never killed a butterfly, and did not encourage the others to make it. But it was not therefore pure to refuse the tropical collections that the father carried them from its travels in order to acquire orchidee, or the exemplary that sent them To from Suez and the numerous admirers of the National Institute Flying Creatures, Lepidotteri Department. Right in the middle that crowd of flora and fauna (I will not be not to name cofanetti and the boxes them inlaid overflows of sassolini, seeds, teeth and pollens), Amanda had been withheld daily: meditating, cantilenando, caress, observing rituals and on the whole tracing the primiti to you values that a time had allowed the man to consider the world and its experience in it like tutt' one sacred. Them, its eyes greens fixed in the same heart of the nature. And it saw its I to fix it in its turn. Yesterday evening was accoccolata on the carpet, completely knot, its opened wide femminilità. Evidently, as soon as thorn had been made one of its showers to the grape juice, the pubici hairs that, viscidi and humid, levavano in a foam peak bordered similar to a stilizzata wave of the ocean of an recorded Japanese press on wood. I thought next to Hokusai and Hiroshige. Its labbra, rose-colored and madreperlacee like the inside of a shell, called to me because you approached to me. I made without to hesitate, but I arrested myself of blow as soon as I was enough close in order to see what it was making. Two black small letters puntolini were muovendosi on its body, just to of under of the skillful breast. They were Rock and Natalie, its pulci preferred! To mine insaputa, it had held with himself that brace, in order to save them the rigors of the exile. The visitors of the zoo along the freeway will remember Rock like the pulce with the moustaches from pasha who refused to learn the dances of ruotine of the circus, being preferred to make of the satira or to improvise on the executions of its connects. Natalie, be', she had the bump of the pattinatrice and was little one vamp. Onlooker, but in all my months to the zoo, I had not never seen the pulci pranzare neither I had inquired on theirs practical gastronomiche. I had made the idea that they came fed with some particular formula and that perhaps, in the festivity days, was allowed they to banquet from the veins of Moncul. Yesterday evening, but, I have uncovered that the pulci that s' they fatten of human blood are only lively and vegete how much is necessary in order to work in a circus. To supper, the ZiIler had regularly had the pleasure of the company of the pulci. (Grattavano never. But, it is known, the relationships between employers and dependent being what they are, did not dare to make it.) “Marx”, said Amanda, “have fallen in seeds-trance, little ago, and have received one telepathic communication from Normal Jimmy Quasi. It projects the triumph of every Tarzan evening for the Chinese civil employees and is caress the plan to open one chain of cinematografi to Lhasa. It wants that one sends it copy of Yellow Submarine with the Beatles. It says that it will bring back the things to normality, in Tibet. You what of tasks? Which thing I could never think some? I waited for until that the pulci they were sazie. Then, my turn came.

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