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(Part 2)


I feel deeply sorry for today's young people, completely cheated in the music department. Judging from the reader mail I get, they feel cheated too, and they tell me proudly that they have returned to the Sixties for their listening of choice. Wise children.highlightInterests("ProfileMusic");Films"Lawrence of Arabia" (the best movie ever made); "The Lord of the Rings" (yes, I'm a book purist, and some of it infuriated me, but it's still a gorgeous achievement and had many, many lovely moments); "Conan the Barbarian" (Oliver Stone's finest hour; it was all downhill for him after that); "El Cid"; "The Seventh Seal"; "Charade" (Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant, both gorgeous); "The Ten Commandments" (for the cheese factor); "Ben-Hur" (ditto); "Pirates of the Caribbean" (first is best, but all three); "Anne of the Thousand Days"; "Billy Liar"; "The Princess Bride"; "Laurel Canyon"; "The Ninth Gate" (truly weird and unaccountable, but hey, it's got Johnny Depp); all the Harry Potter movies ("Azkaban" best, "Chamber of Secrets" worst); any and all movies made from Jane Austen novels (except the pathetic "updated modern" attempts) but especially the ones starring Emma Thompson and/or Alan Rickman; any and all Kenneth Branagh Shakespeare movies (in my opinion he is the ONLY person who should be allowed to film Shakespeare, because he treats the language as just plain everyday dialogue and doesn't pretentiously declaim it looking at YOU Larry Olivier and Rich Burton); almost any historical costume epic...

I detest just about all French, German and otherwise outland cinema (except for some Bergman. SOME). Pretentious and boring. (Yes, I know, I'm a total philistine. Don't care.)

You will note that Jim's parvum opus, "HWY", is not included here. We'll discuss that little piece of cinematic self-indulgence at a future date...highlightInterests("ProfileFilms");Television"Babylon 5" (the greatest TV series of all time, not just the greatest sf TV series of all time); "Stargate: SG-1" (a close and brilliant competitor, and vastly underrated for its writing, its funniness and its superb actors); "Lost" (oh SawyerMySawyer, I love you so, but of late the charming and fatal Desmond is gaining ground, looking astoundingly like the young Eric Clapton); "McMillan & Wife" (soooo twee, but a guilty pleasure); "The Amazing Race"; "Hell's Kitchen" (you DONKEYS!!!); "Battlestar Galactica" (the original 70s one, not the bleak, boring remake: Richard Hatch and Dirk Benedict were the cutest guys on TV or in outer space---all that shiny pretty 70's hair---and Lorne Greene's noble silver-haired Adama totally trumps the weird, sullen and ragingly unattractive Edward James Olmos); "House" (Hugh Laurie is a god, and also the thinking woman's bit of crumpet); "Dark Justice" (my friend Bruce Abbott's show, gone before its time: longhaired vigilante judge with a posse avenges society on creeps the law made him cut loose! Terrific); "Oliver's Travels" (starring the sublime Alan Bates and the equally sublime Sinead Cusack, an intelligent middle-age romance, with scenery from the Black Mountains of Wales to the Orkneys; one of my favorite TV things ever); the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes oeuvre (his Holmes towers above all others forever, and his Watsons were excellent, not stupidly dithering which Watson was not); "I Claudius" (Derek Jacobi, Brian Blessed, Sian Phillips, John Hurt, Patrick Stewart with hair); "Elizabeth R" (Glenda Jackson, simply the best); "The Six Wives of Henry VIII" (Keith Michell and the actresses who played his queens, all superb and all looking incredibly like their originals, NOT like this stupid new PoMo "The Tudors" oh please); "Poldark" (hugely superior 18th-century Cornish soap opera); "The First Churchills" (first Masterpiece Theatre series, and brilliant); in fact, most PBS Masterpiece Theatre series...highlightInterests("ProfileTelevision");BooksThe Lord of the Rings (my desert-island book of choice, if I can have only one); The Fates of the Princes of Dyfed, Kenneth Morris; The Worm Ouroboros, E.R. Eddison; Islandia, Austin Tappan Wright; The Charwoman's Shadow, Lord Dunsany (and all his other fantasy works: I had Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley with me in Paris, when I was there after Jim died); Kim, Rudyard Kipling (and most of his other writings as well, especially the comic stuff); C.S. Lewis's Narnia books, and also his space trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength); Terry Pratchett's Discworld books (he knows a lot more than he's saying about Witchy stuff...and I love the magic "turn" he gives the reader just before the end); Alan Garner (The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath, though they're a bit of a mythological mishmosh; Margaret Maron's Judge Deborah Knott series; Melisa Michaels's elf/detective books, Cold Iron and Sister to the Rain, funny and nasty; Elizabeth Goudge, The Little White Horse (a favorite of J.K. Rowling's too); Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist, a lost fantasy gem; Simon Winchester's amazing book on the apocalyptic 1883 explosion of the volcano Krakatoa; so many, many more...

Including my own, of course, The Keltiad and Strange Days. None of which I reread anywhere near as often as people might think, or expect. Years between readings, sometimes many years. There doesn't seem any point, unless it's to fact-check something...all I can see is seams, and it makes me want to revise everything, which I can't do, and then I get upset and angsty, so I try to avoid looking in the first place.
But, just sometimes, I feel the need to revisit certain passages, for whatever reasons, and then I often find myself reading rather more than I meant to. Sometimes this is good, other times not so much.highlightInterests("ProfileBooks");HeroesMontrose; T.E. Lawrence; my Jim, who endured a LOT with patience, with humor and with heartbreaking courage...and my best friend Mary Herczog, who is perhaps the bravest person I have ever met.highlightInterests("ProfileHeroes");
Patricia Kennealy Morrison's Details Status:MarriedHometown:New York NYZodiac Sign:PiscesSmoke / Drink:No / NoEducation:College graduateOccupation:Author/retired rock critic/priestess/Lizard Queen</SPAN>




And when she indicates that she's married, that refers to Jim. According to Kennealy, they were joined on 'cosmic and karmic planes' that cannot be put asunder, even by death.