Six years ago today I came to Memphis for the first time. It was warm and humid in contrast to the stark cold of British March, and immediately upon landing, collecting my bags, and barely assembling myself after the flight, I was gathered up in a battered early 90s Toyota Camry, handed a swiftly opened Corona, and driven into the sunset heading west into Arkansas. A vast bleeding melting sunset toward which every road appeared to lead, and for which the bridge crossing the Mississippi River seemed designed solely to make a spectacle of. There was no stereo in the car, it had been stolen at some earlier misadventure, but if there was to have been, it would no doubt have been playing Thin Lizzy, or REO Speedwagon, something of that nature.

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Hello! After years and years and years of putting it off, here is the new rorydale.com. It’s very basic for now, and I will put more stuff on it, so if you care, keep an eye on it.

Be seeing you,

Rory

That’s a bold statement to make isn’t it? Well let me explain. No, I don’t know what you’re thinking, that would suggest I had the sort of powers Nicolas Cage often appears to have in some of his terrible, predictable, and yet unfortunately unmissable movies. Their appeal is like movie-crack. The trailers tantalise you and promise a pleasure that is near-impossible to resist, and for such a small amount of money. Go on, one hit won’t hurt you. Add to that the ability to witness these films in a cinema with digital projection and exceptional surround sound, and there I already am, eating popcorn that I don’t really want and finding myself watching another terrible film. (continue reading…)

Greetings. I’m writing from the men’s dressing room backstage at Playhouse on the Square, and I am dead. Not physically, or emotionally, but theatrically. Alas, as the Prince of Cats I manage, every Thursday to Sunday until April 19th, to massively redirect the lives of history’s most famous young lovers. Nasty piece of work me, and for that, I get to be dead for, what is in our production, all of Act 2.

I spend this time in a number of different ways. Today I read several pages of Slash’s “autobiography.” The first 51 pages have been monstrously boring. Slash’s ghost writer embellishing rather uninteresting stories of his childhood and his early-age epiphanies that turned him into the Slash that we all know. Boring. Get to the tours and whores. I don’t care that you rode a BMX and stole a lot of shit.

The second thing I attempted was to watch Toy Soldiers. I love this movie, but I don’t have time to watch all of it, so I stopped.

The third thing I did today was create this blog. And now I must put on my pants and go and bow a dead man’s bow.

Be seeing you,

Rory