Monday, 30 December 2013

Valentine Stakeout


                       Valentines night
                       The florist on the corner
                       Has closed for good
                       Cheating men drive past
                       You can feel their fear expand
                       At the darkened window
                       All that absence of neon
                       And guilty salvation

Valentine Stakeout
Steve Smart

image
unknown

Sunday, 29 December 2013

Writer's Code


There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at the typewriter and bleed.

Ernest Hemingway

image
unknown

Saturday, 28 December 2013

They Oughtta Name a Drink After You


Looks like i've had my fill
Guess i better pay my bill
When i started out i only meant to have a few
Someone just said that you left town
I better get a double round
And yes i guess they oughtta name a drink after you

They Oughtta Name a Drink After You
(Prine)
John Prine
1972

image
unknown

Precious Things


                                          All great and precious things are lonely.
John Steinbeck

image 
Douglas Kirkland
1961
reblogged from Sunset Gun

Something on the Air


        Something was wrong. Something on the air, a scent. The shades were down at the windows and the streetlight leaking in at the sides made a dim light in the room. I stood still and listened. The scent on the air was a perfume, a heavy cloying perfume.

The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler
1939

image
Jane Fonda
reblogged from Tomblog

Friday, 27 December 2013

Fatal Romance

Deep Blue Sea

Brief Encounter

In the Mood for Love

End of the Affair (1955)

Another Town


One of these days when i've had enough
Buddy, you ain't gonna see me around
Just as soon as i get my courage up
Gonna take it to another town

I used to walk these streets with my head held high
Now i'm always lookin down at the ground
But i see my feet on the outbound side
Of a road to another town

Another Town
(Earle)
Steve Earle
2000

image
Bern Keating
1954
reblogged from Burned shoes

Bad Company

 
                      If you are lonely when you are alone then you're in bad company.

Jean Paul Sartre

image
unknown

Thursday, 26 December 2013

White Jazz


                                           Tell me anything,
                                           Tell me everything,
                                           Revoke our time apart,
                                           Love me fierce in danger
White Jazz
James Ellroy
1992

image
Allister Ann
reblogged from Midnightmartinis

Wednesday, 25 December 2013

Won't Go Upstairs


      Death is like an old whore in a bar. I'll buy her a drink but i won't go upstairs with her.

To Have and Have Not
Ernest Hemingway
1937

image
Bela Tarr

Got Her Number


She's sweet in slumber
And i got her number
Tupelo Honey
(Morrison)
Van Morrison
1971

image
Albert Watson

A Rainy Night in Memphis


           One rainy evening in September 1948 a mole-colored 1937 Plymouth churns down Main Street in Memphis, heading north toward the cheap rent. Inside are a dark-haired woman with dark circles under her eyes, her shifty-faced handsome blond husband, and in the back seat looking out the window, his eyes hungry like his mothers, their son .................

Rhythm Oil
Stanley Booth
1991

image
Raeburn Flerlage
Jackie Wilson at the Trianon, Chicago
1964

Dirty City


                                                     I love this dirty city.

J.J Hunsecker
Sweet Smell of Success

image
Third Ave 1937
Kertesz
reblogged from Howtoseewithoutacamera

Tuesday, 24 December 2013

Hated Being Close

In the Mood for Love

Hotel Noir

       People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were scared of being alone.

Chuck Palahniuk

Taxi Driver

Memento

Touch of Evil

Chinatown

L.A Confidential

Blue Gardenia

Dark Voyage


              He was used to the heat, the effects of a full day's sun on the ship's steel plate and come to that, used to these ports, hellholes always .............
                                  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
              In the rue Raisuli, Arab music from a dozen radios, and two Spanish Guardia, in their Napoleonic leather hats, strolling along in a way which told the world they owned the street.

Dark Voyage
Alan Furst
2004

What You Say About People


           He was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people.

Marlene Deitrich
Touch of Evil
1958

image & text
reblogged from Endofcinema

Pilgrimage to La Jolla


           At least once a month a devotee knocks on the door and begs Ramos for a tour. But this is no museum. The study where Chandler wrote is now a teenage girl's bedroom. There's no plaque in the bedroom where the author tended to his wife Cissy, dying of heart and respiratory ailments. The bathroom where Chandler, two months after Cissy's death, tried to shoot himself is still in use and the bullet holes in the ceiling are no longer visible.
    ......... He moved often in his last few years. Moving from New York to London and back to La Jolla with frequent stops in clinics to dry out  .................
        Ramos has tried to introduce his kids to the man's work which lifted a maligned genre into the realm of art. 'They're not that interested' he admitted. 'You can only do so much'.

from
Rubbing Out Chandler's Place ?
Peter Rowe  2004
San Diego Union Tribune

                 www.shamustown.com/images/RubbingoutChandler'splace.pdf

Monday, 23 December 2013