Saturday, May 10, 2008

Capra Day!

When I awoke this morning, I made the decision to have a loaf day, like I used to occasionally have back when I lived in the States. The basic rules for a loaf day are that I stay in my pajamas all day long, with my hair in the most atrocious mess possible, and either watch films or read all day. Today's loaf day got even better when I decided to make it a Capra day - in other words, I've been watching films directed by Frank Capra all day, in between reading and checking my Facebook. It's a wasted day, but it's a wonderful day (I hope at least one person got the pun I just made).

Incidentally, Frank Capra, aside from being one of my two favorite directors (the other is, of course, Alfred Hitchcock), also shares a birthday with me. Or rather, shared, as he is now deceased. Appropriately, my birthday is also two days prior to that of Jimmy Stewart, Frank Capra's favorite actor (and one of mine). Oddly enough, my birthday is the date of several events in Hollywood history (fitting considering what a classic film history addict I am). It was on May 18, 1927 that Grauman's Chinese Theater, the place where actors have famously left their footprints, first opened. And it was on May 18, 1934 that an Academy Award was first referred to as an Oscar in print. Why do I know all this? Because I'm a complete history nerd, naturally. Stay tuned for my birthday, when I'll bore my readers yet again with even more historical trivia that I know about my day of birth! Ah, it's such fun to be an amateur historian!

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"Passage—immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins! Away, O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!
Cut the hawsers—haul out—shake out every sail!
Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough?
Have we not grovell’d here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes?
Have we not darken’d and dazed ourselves with books long enough?

Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go, And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

O my brave soul!
O farther, farther sail!
O daring joy, but safe! Are they not all the seas of God?
O farther, farther, farther sail!"

~Walt Whitman, "Passage to India"