Stiggy, Stiggy
He's our man!
If he can't drive it
No one can!
Stiggy, Stiggy
He's our man!
If he can't drive it
No one can!
... When punk came along, everyone picked up guitars. I wanted to pick something up too, so I picked up a camera and reinvented myself as a film-maker.
The downside of affordable technology is mediocrity. Back in the 70s every three minutes of film cost £20. Now you can get a 90-minute digital tape for a fiver. The price used to weed out people who were just fucking about.
Youth culture in the west is increasingly conservative. Music has become a soundtrack for consumerism. It feels like punk never happened.
Racial problems are more complicated now. I've got mates who moan about Polish people stealing their work. I'm like, "You can't say that. That's what people said about our parents."
I gave a lecture last week and the kids in the audience said, "Don, you sound like an angry old man." I said, "It's because you kids aren't bloody angry enough."
I was never a herd person: I was always a freak. I just refused to be defined by my colour.
The downside of affordable technology is mediocrity. Back in the 70s every three minutes of film cost £20. Now you can get a 90-minute digital tape for a fiver. The price used to weed out people who were just fucking about.
Youth culture in the west is increasingly conservative. Music has become a soundtrack for consumerism. It feels like punk never happened.
Racial problems are more complicated now. I've got mates who moan about Polish people stealing their work. I'm like, "You can't say that. That's what people said about our parents."
I gave a lecture last week and the kids in the audience said, "Don, you sound like an angry old man." I said, "It's because you kids aren't bloody angry enough."
I was never a herd person: I was always a freak. I just refused to be defined by my colour.
Dept. of Merch
Torso
by Rebecca Mead
August 9, 2010
...For his part, Pop wears no underwear, exposed or otherwise. “Things like that give me the creeps,” he said. He feels similarly about socks.
Pop’s venture with Sony Music, which is producing the Pop T-shirts as part of its Archive 1887 line, is only the latest in a recent spate of commercial activity: in the past year, he has appeared (shirtless) in advertisements for a broadband company and an insurance company. “It’s like this: I made some fucking great-sounding music that still sounds fucking great, and—to drop my intellect and just get emotional about it—a bunch of fat fucks and pricks wouldn’t play my music anywhere where anybody could hear it, wouldn’t sell it in a part of the store where it could be bought,” he said. “From the commercials, other people get to know me, and they check out the music.”
Pop conceded that there are occasions that call for a T-shirt, particularly now that he has a free closetful of them. “I wear one when I get cold, like anyone else,” he said. There have been two T-shirts in his sartorial history that he has worn with any enthusiasm: a concert shirt that he bought after seeing T. Rex in London in 1972, and one designed for Tony Hawk, the skateboarder, in the eighties.
He stays in shape with daily Qigong practice. “It’s about increasing your breathing capacity to the point where air becomes food,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what you eat, you won’t gain weight. After forty minutes of it, my troubles seem smaller, and I am more excited and more calm at the same time.” But Pop admitted that there have been times, lately, when his unclad torso has met with disapproval. “You know, from time to time, if I take my shirt off now, it doesn’t look the way it did when I was thirty-two,” he said. “It’s, like, ugh. But look—when I am playing, I’m the shit. As long as that’s true, I can take it off.”
Torso
by Rebecca Mead
August 9, 2010
...For his part, Pop wears no underwear, exposed or otherwise. “Things like that give me the creeps,” he said. He feels similarly about socks.
Pop’s venture with Sony Music, which is producing the Pop T-shirts as part of its Archive 1887 line, is only the latest in a recent spate of commercial activity: in the past year, he has appeared (shirtless) in advertisements for a broadband company and an insurance company. “It’s like this: I made some fucking great-sounding music that still sounds fucking great, and—to drop my intellect and just get emotional about it—a bunch of fat fucks and pricks wouldn’t play my music anywhere where anybody could hear it, wouldn’t sell it in a part of the store where it could be bought,” he said. “From the commercials, other people get to know me, and they check out the music.”
Pop conceded that there are occasions that call for a T-shirt, particularly now that he has a free closetful of them. “I wear one when I get cold, like anyone else,” he said. There have been two T-shirts in his sartorial history that he has worn with any enthusiasm: a concert shirt that he bought after seeing T. Rex in London in 1972, and one designed for Tony Hawk, the skateboarder, in the eighties.
He stays in shape with daily Qigong practice. “It’s about increasing your breathing capacity to the point where air becomes food,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what you eat, you won’t gain weight. After forty minutes of it, my troubles seem smaller, and I am more excited and more calm at the same time.” But Pop admitted that there have been times, lately, when his unclad torso has met with disapproval. “You know, from time to time, if I take my shirt off now, it doesn’t look the way it did when I was thirty-two,” he said. “It’s, like, ugh. But look—when I am playing, I’m the shit. As long as that’s true, I can take it off.”
... Robert Lantos, who produced many of the films Chaykin appeared in including "Whale Music" and "Barney's Version," called the man "an icon" and "one of the greatest character actors in the world."
"He made a gourmet feast of every moment he was on screen, creating unforgettable characters who he pushed far beyond the writing on the page," Lantos said in a statement.
"The refrain that for a great actor 'no part is too small,' must have been coined with him in mind."
Chaykin was born July 27, 1949 in New York to an American father and a Canadian mother before moving to Toronto.
His extensive resume spanned 35 years but mostly consisted of supporting roles. His legacy as one of Canada's most beloved performers was cemented with a starring role as a has-been music star in 1994's "Whale Music," which earned Chaykin a Genie in 1994 for best actor.
He appeared in many of Atom Egoyan's films, including "Exotica," "The Adjuster," "Adoration," and "The Sweet Hereafter," and could be seen in smaller parts on big U.S. features including "The Mask of Zorro," "Devil in a Blue Dress" and "A Life Less Ordinary."
"He always added such a wonderful dimension to the characters that he played," said Piers Handling, director of the Toronto International Film Festival.
"They were always memorable, no matter how small the roles were or medium-size the roles were. Maury was just a consummate professional, just sort of took over the screen."
Memorable roles included his turn as a suicidal Cavalry major in "Dances with Wolves," as the eccentric TV detective Nero Wolfe, and as an acerbic movie studio honcho in "Entourage."
More recently, he could be seen as the cantankerous father Sam Blecher in the HBO Canada sitcom "Less Than Kind."
"He was one of our greatest actors," said story editor Mark McKinney, adding that the cast and crew were "reeling" from the news.
"Maury's an actor of unparalleled gifts, you cannot learn what he had in spades — you could study for 1,000 years. He had an incredible gift, an instant quickness."
McKinney noted Chaykin long battled kidney problems but appeared to rebound earlier this year.
One of the last roles Chaykin filmed was a supporting part on the upcoming Showcase comedy "Drunk and on Drugs Happy Funtime Hour," created by "Trailer Park Boys" Mike Smith, Robb Wells and J.P. Tremblay.
Smith said a spirited Chaykin spent three days on set last month. He played a demented scientist who creates a hallucinogen that wreaks havoc on the cast of a fictional kids show.
"The character was written as this sort of lighthearted sort of scientist but Maury wanted to play him like a true mad man and he did that," Smith said from Halifax, adding that the cast and crew considered it an honour to work with him.
"It was just fascinating to watch this character we wrote, watch Maury just take it to a completely different level than we had ever imagined."
Lewis lauded Chaykin as a surprising actor full of "brilliant ideas," and a ridiculous sense of humour.
"He would make me laugh. He'd make me laugh until my stomach hurt," said Lewis.
"He was a true creative spirit and sometimes way out there and really kind of absurd. He had a very absurdist sense of humour and he liked the shock value of that."
Lewis said the mild-mannered Chaykin was always very humble about his achievements.
"He was a man of integrity. He was a very upstanding fellow who was very loyal to his friends and always told the truth. He was just a very forthcoming fellow, very forthcoming and I'll miss him. I'll miss him dearly." ...
"He made a gourmet feast of every moment he was on screen, creating unforgettable characters who he pushed far beyond the writing on the page," Lantos said in a statement.
"The refrain that for a great actor 'no part is too small,' must have been coined with him in mind."
Chaykin was born July 27, 1949 in New York to an American father and a Canadian mother before moving to Toronto.
His extensive resume spanned 35 years but mostly consisted of supporting roles. His legacy as one of Canada's most beloved performers was cemented with a starring role as a has-been music star in 1994's "Whale Music," which earned Chaykin a Genie in 1994 for best actor.
He appeared in many of Atom Egoyan's films, including "Exotica," "The Adjuster," "Adoration," and "The Sweet Hereafter," and could be seen in smaller parts on big U.S. features including "The Mask of Zorro," "Devil in a Blue Dress" and "A Life Less Ordinary."
"He always added such a wonderful dimension to the characters that he played," said Piers Handling, director of the Toronto International Film Festival.
"They were always memorable, no matter how small the roles were or medium-size the roles were. Maury was just a consummate professional, just sort of took over the screen."
Memorable roles included his turn as a suicidal Cavalry major in "Dances with Wolves," as the eccentric TV detective Nero Wolfe, and as an acerbic movie studio honcho in "Entourage."
More recently, he could be seen as the cantankerous father Sam Blecher in the HBO Canada sitcom "Less Than Kind."
"He was one of our greatest actors," said story editor Mark McKinney, adding that the cast and crew were "reeling" from the news.
"Maury's an actor of unparalleled gifts, you cannot learn what he had in spades — you could study for 1,000 years. He had an incredible gift, an instant quickness."
McKinney noted Chaykin long battled kidney problems but appeared to rebound earlier this year.
One of the last roles Chaykin filmed was a supporting part on the upcoming Showcase comedy "Drunk and on Drugs Happy Funtime Hour," created by "Trailer Park Boys" Mike Smith, Robb Wells and J.P. Tremblay.
Smith said a spirited Chaykin spent three days on set last month. He played a demented scientist who creates a hallucinogen that wreaks havoc on the cast of a fictional kids show.
"The character was written as this sort of lighthearted sort of scientist but Maury wanted to play him like a true mad man and he did that," Smith said from Halifax, adding that the cast and crew considered it an honour to work with him.
"It was just fascinating to watch this character we wrote, watch Maury just take it to a completely different level than we had ever imagined."
Lewis lauded Chaykin as a surprising actor full of "brilliant ideas," and a ridiculous sense of humour.
"He would make me laugh. He'd make me laugh until my stomach hurt," said Lewis.
"He was a true creative spirit and sometimes way out there and really kind of absurd. He had a very absurdist sense of humour and he liked the shock value of that."
Lewis said the mild-mannered Chaykin was always very humble about his achievements.
"He was a man of integrity. He was a very upstanding fellow who was very loyal to his friends and always told the truth. He was just a very forthcoming fellow, very forthcoming and I'll miss him. I'll miss him dearly." ...
Forty years with Nero Wolfe
Percy Blakeney: They seek him here, they seek him there
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven?
Is he in hell?
That damned elusive Pimpernel!
Percy Blakeney: [before reciting his poem to Winterbottom] Slap me, I'm bubbling over with good humor this morning. Would you believe me, I've just written a masterpiece.
Col. Winterbottom: Who, sir? You, sir?
Percy Blakeney: Me, sir
Col. Winterbottom: No, sir.
Percy Blakeney: Yes, sir. All about this mysterious Pimpernel fellow. How it came to me Heaven only knows, because it was the busiest moment of the day. Damn me, I was tying my cravat.
Citizen Chauvelin: [after hearing Percy's poem] Delightful.
Percy Blakeney: What?
Citizen Chauvelin: Especially that line, "Those Frenchies seek him everywhere."
Percy Blakeney: Yes, I like that, too, because you see, I hear that they do and that gives the line a sort of something... sort of gives it... uh... uh... something. Uh... u-uh... if I make myself clear.
Citizen Chauvelin: Clear as crystal.
Percy Blakeney: Open up your sleeves, man. Let your ruffles take the air. Let them flow. Let them ripple. So that when His Highness takes snuff, it will be a swallow's flight!
Col. Winterbottom: Are you being offensive, sir?
Percy Blakeney: Who, sir? Me, sir? No, sir.
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven?
Is he in hell?
That damned elusive Pimpernel!
Percy Blakeney: [before reciting his poem to Winterbottom] Slap me, I'm bubbling over with good humor this morning. Would you believe me, I've just written a masterpiece.
Col. Winterbottom: Who, sir? You, sir?
Percy Blakeney: Me, sir
Col. Winterbottom: No, sir.
Percy Blakeney: Yes, sir. All about this mysterious Pimpernel fellow. How it came to me Heaven only knows, because it was the busiest moment of the day. Damn me, I was tying my cravat.
Citizen Chauvelin: [after hearing Percy's poem] Delightful.
Percy Blakeney: What?
Citizen Chauvelin: Especially that line, "Those Frenchies seek him everywhere."
Percy Blakeney: Yes, I like that, too, because you see, I hear that they do and that gives the line a sort of something... sort of gives it... uh... uh... something. Uh... u-uh... if I make myself clear.
Citizen Chauvelin: Clear as crystal.
Percy Blakeney: Open up your sleeves, man. Let your ruffles take the air. Let them flow. Let them ripple. So that when His Highness takes snuff, it will be a swallow's flight!
Col. Winterbottom: Are you being offensive, sir?
Percy Blakeney: Who, sir? Me, sir? No, sir.
"We seek him here, we seek him there,
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven?--Is he in hell?
That demmed, elusive Pimpernel!"
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven?--Is he in hell?
That demmed, elusive Pimpernel!"
From the circular main hall of the Sackler Library in Oxford, an unassuming corridor leads to a staircase that takes you down below street level. Through a door marked "archive", office ceiling tiles and fluorescent lights stare down on a cheap blue carpet and a row of grey rolling stacks.
The hum of the air-conditioning lets slip that this ordinary-looking room is hiding something special. The temperature is held at 18.5C (65F), several degrees cooler than the sunny July day outside, while a humidifier keeps the moisture level tightly controlled. For those grey stacks contain the forgotten secrets of the most famous find in Egyptology, if not all of archaeological history: the tomb of Tutankhamun.
This is the Griffith Institute – arguably the best Egyptology library in the world. One of its most prized collections incorporates the notes, photographs and diaries of the English archaeologist Howard Carter, who discovered Tutankhamun's resting place in 1922. The only intact pharaoh's tomb ever discovered, it contained such an array of treasures that it took Carter 10 years to catalogue them all. Yet despite the immense significance of the discovery, the majority of Carter's findings have never been published, and many questions surrounding the tomb remain unanswered.
Jaromir Malek is the soft-spoken keeper of the archive whose own Tutankhamun project is nearing completion. By making all of Carter's notes available online, Malek wanted to ensure that the public would have access to the full extent of the discovery – and to spur Egyptologists into finishing the job of studying the tomb's contents. He has ended up creating a model that other researchers hope will transform the field of archaeology.
The effort has taken even longer than Carter's gruelling excavation. It began in 1993, when Malek says he realised that fewer than a third of the artefacts from Tutankhamun's tomb had been properly studied and published, a situation he describes as "unacceptable".
A total of 5,398 objects were found in the tomb, covering every aspect of ancient Egyptian life, from weapons and chariots to musical instruments, clothes, cosmetics and a treasured lock of the royal grandmother's hair. A few, like Tutankhamun's gold burial mask, are instantly recognisable, but many are not well known, even to experts.
Part of the reason is that Carter died in 1939, just seven years after his excavation ended, and before he could fully publish his findings. "He started working on the final publication, but he was physically and mentally exhausted after a very hard 10 years," says Malek. By all accounts a difficult man to work with, Carter had no collaborators left to continue his work when he died. And while the artefacts themselves are held in the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo, Carter's notes were donated to the Griffith Institute, where they have lain largely undisturbed ever since. ...
The hum of the air-conditioning lets slip that this ordinary-looking room is hiding something special. The temperature is held at 18.5C (65F), several degrees cooler than the sunny July day outside, while a humidifier keeps the moisture level tightly controlled. For those grey stacks contain the forgotten secrets of the most famous find in Egyptology, if not all of archaeological history: the tomb of Tutankhamun.
This is the Griffith Institute – arguably the best Egyptology library in the world. One of its most prized collections incorporates the notes, photographs and diaries of the English archaeologist Howard Carter, who discovered Tutankhamun's resting place in 1922. The only intact pharaoh's tomb ever discovered, it contained such an array of treasures that it took Carter 10 years to catalogue them all. Yet despite the immense significance of the discovery, the majority of Carter's findings have never been published, and many questions surrounding the tomb remain unanswered.
Jaromir Malek is the soft-spoken keeper of the archive whose own Tutankhamun project is nearing completion. By making all of Carter's notes available online, Malek wanted to ensure that the public would have access to the full extent of the discovery – and to spur Egyptologists into finishing the job of studying the tomb's contents. He has ended up creating a model that other researchers hope will transform the field of archaeology.
The effort has taken even longer than Carter's gruelling excavation. It began in 1993, when Malek says he realised that fewer than a third of the artefacts from Tutankhamun's tomb had been properly studied and published, a situation he describes as "unacceptable".
A total of 5,398 objects were found in the tomb, covering every aspect of ancient Egyptian life, from weapons and chariots to musical instruments, clothes, cosmetics and a treasured lock of the royal grandmother's hair. A few, like Tutankhamun's gold burial mask, are instantly recognisable, but many are not well known, even to experts.
Part of the reason is that Carter died in 1939, just seven years after his excavation ended, and before he could fully publish his findings. "He started working on the final publication, but he was physically and mentally exhausted after a very hard 10 years," says Malek. By all accounts a difficult man to work with, Carter had no collaborators left to continue his work when he died. And while the artefacts themselves are held in the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo, Carter's notes were donated to the Griffith Institute, where they have lain largely undisturbed ever since. ...
If you enjoyed those Peter Kay one-liners, they were probably written by Emo Philips
Helium-voiced survivor of 1980s alternative comedy boom on internet plagiarism, his 'subconcious' hairstyle, and being the original emo kid
James Kettle
Saturday 10 July 2010
... 'British audiences never laugh at my routine about mowing the lawn. I have no idea why. You can't all be using goats'
His bizarre look is of a piece with an equally peculiar outlook on life. The onstage Philips exists in a state of permanent arrested development, at times displaying childlike innocence, at others showing a sinister enthusiasm for perverted behaviour. Philips explains his freakish stage persona as an extension of some of his real-life quirks. "Everyone, everywhere, and all the time, used to laugh at me when I was growing up. So, when I was around 18, I thought, 'I'll become a comedian, and then if everyone laughs at me, I'll be famous.' So I went on stage one night and, for the first time in my life, everyone stopped laughing at me." Given his off-putting appearance and manner, does he ever get groupies? "There is a fine line between a groupie and a fan that finds you attractive. But in either case, no."
Although Philips is happy to play the outsider as a stand-up, British audiences have always given him a particularly warm reception. Maybe it's because his love not just of puns but all kinds of ludicrously contrived wordplay means that he fits neatly with a tradition of humour that's always been popular over here. Were it not for the lack of Home Counties vowels, you could almost imagine him among the cast of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. ...
Helium-voiced survivor of 1980s alternative comedy boom on internet plagiarism, his 'subconcious' hairstyle, and being the original emo kid
James Kettle
Saturday 10 July 2010
... 'British audiences never laugh at my routine about mowing the lawn. I have no idea why. You can't all be using goats'
His bizarre look is of a piece with an equally peculiar outlook on life. The onstage Philips exists in a state of permanent arrested development, at times displaying childlike innocence, at others showing a sinister enthusiasm for perverted behaviour. Philips explains his freakish stage persona as an extension of some of his real-life quirks. "Everyone, everywhere, and all the time, used to laugh at me when I was growing up. So, when I was around 18, I thought, 'I'll become a comedian, and then if everyone laughs at me, I'll be famous.' So I went on stage one night and, for the first time in my life, everyone stopped laughing at me." Given his off-putting appearance and manner, does he ever get groupies? "There is a fine line between a groupie and a fan that finds you attractive. But in either case, no."
Although Philips is happy to play the outsider as a stand-up, British audiences have always given him a particularly warm reception. Maybe it's because his love not just of puns but all kinds of ludicrously contrived wordplay means that he fits neatly with a tradition of humour that's always been popular over here. Were it not for the lack of Home Counties vowels, you could almost imagine him among the cast of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. ...
The Bugatti Veyron is, once again, the fastest production car on the planet.
Bugatti says an orange-and-black Veyron 16.4 Super Sport achieved an average top speed of 267.8 mph at the hands of test driver Pierre Henri Raphanel. Stop and think about that for a moment. That’s more than 393 feet per second and almost 4.5 miles per minute. Even Bugatti’s engineers were surprised.
“We took it that we would reach an average value of 425 km/h (264 mph),” chief engineer Wolfgang Schreiber said in a statement. “But the conditions today were perfect and allowed even more.”
Raphanel made his record-setting run at Volkswagen’s test track in Ehra-Lessien, Germany, in the latest version of the greatest automobile ever made. He had one hour to make back-to-back runs in each direction. The speedo hit 427.933 km/h against the wind and 434.211 with it. That came to an average of 431.072, which by our math is 267.8 mph.
And that was more than enough to take the title back from Shelby Super Cars and the Ultimate Aero, which had held the record since peeling off an average of 256 mph in 2007. Raphanel set the record on June 24; Bugatti announced it on July 4. Bugatti says Guinness was on-hand to verify the record, and we imagine the guys at SSC will not take this sitting down.
As the name suggests, the Super Sport is a hot-rodded version of a car that already has too much of everything. The 16-cylinder engine has been tweaked and tuned with bigger turbochargers (four, count ‘em, four) and intercoolers. Bugatti says the engine is good for 1,200 horsepower and a staggering 1,106 pound feet of torque.
The carbon-fiber monocoque is stiffer yet lighter, the suspension has been stiffened and Bugatti says the car is capable of 1.4g of lateral acceleration. The body has been revised, and the engine draws air through a pair of NACA ducts in the roof instead of two big scoops. ...
Bugatti says an orange-and-black Veyron 16.4 Super Sport achieved an average top speed of 267.8 mph at the hands of test driver Pierre Henri Raphanel. Stop and think about that for a moment. That’s more than 393 feet per second and almost 4.5 miles per minute. Even Bugatti’s engineers were surprised.
“We took it that we would reach an average value of 425 km/h (264 mph),” chief engineer Wolfgang Schreiber said in a statement. “But the conditions today were perfect and allowed even more.”
Raphanel made his record-setting run at Volkswagen’s test track in Ehra-Lessien, Germany, in the latest version of the greatest automobile ever made. He had one hour to make back-to-back runs in each direction. The speedo hit 427.933 km/h against the wind and 434.211 with it. That came to an average of 431.072, which by our math is 267.8 mph.
And that was more than enough to take the title back from Shelby Super Cars and the Ultimate Aero, which had held the record since peeling off an average of 256 mph in 2007. Raphanel set the record on June 24; Bugatti announced it on July 4. Bugatti says Guinness was on-hand to verify the record, and we imagine the guys at SSC will not take this sitting down.
As the name suggests, the Super Sport is a hot-rodded version of a car that already has too much of everything. The 16-cylinder engine has been tweaked and tuned with bigger turbochargers (four, count ‘em, four) and intercoolers. Bugatti says the engine is good for 1,200 horsepower and a staggering 1,106 pound feet of torque.
The carbon-fiber monocoque is stiffer yet lighter, the suspension has been stiffened and Bugatti says the car is capable of 1.4g of lateral acceleration. The body has been revised, and the engine draws air through a pair of NACA ducts in the roof instead of two big scoops. ...
Ta much, dear Edosan
Consider saffron
It's hard to produce and more costly than gold, but there's nothing else like it. How do you use saffron in your kitchen?
Oliver Thring
Tuesday 29 June 2010
How would you describe the taste of saffron? It's sweet but bitter. It smells of hay, the ocean, diesel, bonfire embers and well-rotted apples. Its aroma is gentle but overpowering, as delicate as a surgeon and as sharp as a bitch-slap. Although people use turmeric to approximate its colour, it has no substitute flavour, no lemon-to-lime or cod-to-pollock neighbour. It dominates the dishes it appears in but acts as a mere backnote to other ingredients. Nothing in the kitchen is as full of paradox and subtlety as this singularly beautiful, weepingly expensive spice.
It's the stigma of a very pretty crocus native to a strip of west Asia. The modern plant is sterile, the hard-won result of cross-breeding and human-led Darwinism. Every year, people have to dig it up, split the bulb-like corms that form part of its root and replant them. The flowers bloom in October, pushing out two or three fragile, wispy stigmas that you can only harvest by hand, and pickers work through the night to catch these at their coy, alluring best.
It's punishing, fiddly work. So saffron is notoriously the most expensive spice, its retail price, pound for pound, often exceeding that of gold. Harrods, who know about this sort of thing, were kind enough to give me 2g of the finest: a bit of Spanish and some Moroccan. Together, the tiny jars used around 400 flowers, and cost over £25.
For as long as there have been people, people have known about saffron. A dye from its stigmas colours 50,000-year-old cave paintings in what is now Iraq. Ancient frescoes on the Greek island of Santorini depict a goddess watching – or perhaps blessing – a woman picking saffron, presumably for medicine. No one knows how old this painting is: a volcano buried it in around 1500BC, and the work could have been hundreds of years old even then. Ovid wrote that Smilax changed her pursuer Crocos into a flower, leaving the red stigma as a symbol of his passion. Another myth describes Hermes, the messenger to the gods, accidentally wounding his friend Crocos: blood dripping from Crocos's head fell on the ground, where Hermes changed it into the flower. Zeus slept on a bed of saffron. The spice appears in the sybaritic verses of the Song of Solomon and in Chinese writings dating to 1600BC. Cleopatra used it "before encounters with men" – I haven't been able to find out how, but I'm sure you can use your imagination. ...
It's hard to produce and more costly than gold, but there's nothing else like it. How do you use saffron in your kitchen?
Oliver Thring
Tuesday 29 June 2010
How would you describe the taste of saffron? It's sweet but bitter. It smells of hay, the ocean, diesel, bonfire embers and well-rotted apples. Its aroma is gentle but overpowering, as delicate as a surgeon and as sharp as a bitch-slap. Although people use turmeric to approximate its colour, it has no substitute flavour, no lemon-to-lime or cod-to-pollock neighbour. It dominates the dishes it appears in but acts as a mere backnote to other ingredients. Nothing in the kitchen is as full of paradox and subtlety as this singularly beautiful, weepingly expensive spice.
It's the stigma of a very pretty crocus native to a strip of west Asia. The modern plant is sterile, the hard-won result of cross-breeding and human-led Darwinism. Every year, people have to dig it up, split the bulb-like corms that form part of its root and replant them. The flowers bloom in October, pushing out two or three fragile, wispy stigmas that you can only harvest by hand, and pickers work through the night to catch these at their coy, alluring best.
It's punishing, fiddly work. So saffron is notoriously the most expensive spice, its retail price, pound for pound, often exceeding that of gold. Harrods, who know about this sort of thing, were kind enough to give me 2g of the finest: a bit of Spanish and some Moroccan. Together, the tiny jars used around 400 flowers, and cost over £25.
For as long as there have been people, people have known about saffron. A dye from its stigmas colours 50,000-year-old cave paintings in what is now Iraq. Ancient frescoes on the Greek island of Santorini depict a goddess watching – or perhaps blessing – a woman picking saffron, presumably for medicine. No one knows how old this painting is: a volcano buried it in around 1500BC, and the work could have been hundreds of years old even then. Ovid wrote that Smilax changed her pursuer Crocos into a flower, leaving the red stigma as a symbol of his passion. Another myth describes Hermes, the messenger to the gods, accidentally wounding his friend Crocos: blood dripping from Crocos's head fell on the ground, where Hermes changed it into the flower. Zeus slept on a bed of saffron. The spice appears in the sybaritic verses of the Song of Solomon and in Chinese writings dating to 1600BC. Cleopatra used it "before encounters with men" – I haven't been able to find out how, but I'm sure you can use your imagination. ...
Ta much, dear Edosan
... "And do you really ask us to believe," Sir Wilfrid was saying, "that you have discovered a means for instructing animals in the art of human speech, and that dear old Tobermory has proved your first successful pupil?"
"It is a problem at which I have worked for the last seventeen years," said Mr. Appin, "but only during the last eight or nine months have I been rewarded with glimmerings of success. Of course I have experimented with thousands of animals, but latterly only with cats, those wonderful creatures which have assimilated themselves so marvellously with our civilization while retaining all their highly developed feral instincts. Here and there among cats one comes across an outstanding superior intellect, just as one does among the ruck of human beings, and when I made the acquaintance of Tobermory a week ago I saw at once that I was in contact with a 'Beyond-cat' of extraordinary intelligence. I had gone far along the road to success in recent experiments; with Tobermory, as you call him, I have reached the goal."
Mr. Appin concluded his remarkable statement in a voice which he strove to divest of a triumphant inflection. No one said "Rats," though Clovis's lips moved in a monosyllabic contortion which probably invoked those rodents of disbelief.
"And do you mean to say," asked Miss Resker, after a slight pause, "that you have taught Tobermory to say and understand easy sentences of one syllable?"
"My dear Miss Resker," said the wonder-worker patiently, "one teaches little children and savages and backward adults in that piecemeal fashion; when one has once solved the problem of making a beginning with an animal of highly developed intelligence one has no need for those halting methods. Tobermory can speak our language with perfect correctness."
This time Clovis very distinctly said, "Beyond-rats!" Sir Wilfrid was more polite, but equally sceptical. ...
"It is a problem at which I have worked for the last seventeen years," said Mr. Appin, "but only during the last eight or nine months have I been rewarded with glimmerings of success. Of course I have experimented with thousands of animals, but latterly only with cats, those wonderful creatures which have assimilated themselves so marvellously with our civilization while retaining all their highly developed feral instincts. Here and there among cats one comes across an outstanding superior intellect, just as one does among the ruck of human beings, and when I made the acquaintance of Tobermory a week ago I saw at once that I was in contact with a 'Beyond-cat' of extraordinary intelligence. I had gone far along the road to success in recent experiments; with Tobermory, as you call him, I have reached the goal."
Mr. Appin concluded his remarkable statement in a voice which he strove to divest of a triumphant inflection. No one said "Rats," though Clovis's lips moved in a monosyllabic contortion which probably invoked those rodents of disbelief.
"And do you mean to say," asked Miss Resker, after a slight pause, "that you have taught Tobermory to say and understand easy sentences of one syllable?"
"My dear Miss Resker," said the wonder-worker patiently, "one teaches little children and savages and backward adults in that piecemeal fashion; when one has once solved the problem of making a beginning with an animal of highly developed intelligence one has no need for those halting methods. Tobermory can speak our language with perfect correctness."
This time Clovis very distinctly said, "Beyond-rats!" Sir Wilfrid was more polite, but equally sceptical. ...
NYC – Diogenes
LA
Park City, Utah
Camden / Regents Canal
Hadta bump this.
June 3, 2010
The punk prophet of Ing-er-land
How did Mark E. Smith of the Fall get involved in the World Cup song England’s Heartbeat? It’s in his blood, he says
Terry Christian
... England’s Heartbeat, on which Smith sings, rather than using the sloganeering quasi-rap of the Fall records, is an impassioned and witty appeal for a show of pride from England in South Africa. Smith urges the players to “take care of the invention of your nation . . . socks up at last or be a Brazilian breakfast”. Gone, it says, should be the days of England teams wilting in the June sunshine like a bunch of cry babies.
“I can assure you,” Smith says, “it definitely won’t get to No 1.”
I have spent numerous hours over the past three decades drinking with Smith. I have a fascination with the Fall that dates back to the first time I saw them in 1978. Smith was annoying the crowd by dedicating a song to Elvis Presley, anathema to punks at the time and very amusing to witness. As a young radio presenter, I interviewed him about his albums, from Slates and Hex Enduction Hour onwards. He remains one of the most interesting people I’ve met. Given his ranting stage presence and reputation for not suffering fools, the most unexpected thing about him was always how friendly he was, and what a good sense of humour he had.
A strong part of Smith’s working-class credentials is the appreciation and respect he has for the older generation. The first thing he’d say whenever we met was: “How’s your mam?” This time, when I tell him that she died in April, he’s genuinely sad for me. “April is the cruellest month.”
“Where does that come from?”
“T. S. Eliot, I think.”
Smith has a habit of understating his knowledge. Something he’s been doing with his lyrics for the Fall for more than three decades. He was always reading new stuff, listening to new stuff and plugged into the real world.
The Fall were John Peel’s favourite group; he famously described them as “always the same, always different”, which is as good a summary of their uniqueness as any. So, given his long history on the cutting edge, why has Smith done something as seemingly mainstream as a World Cup record?
Well, he has history with the Beautiful Game, he points out: “The Fall were the first band to ever do a song about football when we did Kicker Conspiracy for Rough Trade in 1983. At the time all these hippies at Rough Trade were saying, “You can’t do that; music fans aren’t into football’. We also did Kurious Oranj, which was about football rivalries, and Sparta FC a couple of years ago.”
There’s the urge, too, to improve on a genre that’s not exactly flush with quality. “All the World Cup songs I’ve heard are rubbish,” Smith says, giving amused short shrift to songs such as New Order’s World in Motion and Skinner and Baddiel’s Three Lions. ...
... With warm reviews for their recent album, Your Future Our Clutter, the Fall’s longevity continues. After years of refusing to sign contracts, Smith retains the rights to all his recorded material. “I always knew, even when we were only getting ten quid a week out of the group, that the last thing I wanted to do was sign all my songs over to some hippy. People in other bands used to laugh at us for not signing contracts or think we were mad. But they’d be massive for two years and then disappear.”
He has a wry sideswipe, too, at the current crop of British bands: “They’ve all been to drama school.” Taking that to be a dig at how middle-class they are, I ask him what it was like working with the artschool-educated Damon Albarn on Gorillaz’ Plastic Beach album. He immediately sees what I’m getting at, smiles and brushes it aside: “It was really good, he really knows exactly what he’s doing and works properly.” ...
The punk prophet of Ing-er-land
How did Mark E. Smith of the Fall get involved in the World Cup song England’s Heartbeat? It’s in his blood, he says
Terry Christian
... England’s Heartbeat, on which Smith sings, rather than using the sloganeering quasi-rap of the Fall records, is an impassioned and witty appeal for a show of pride from England in South Africa. Smith urges the players to “take care of the invention of your nation . . . socks up at last or be a Brazilian breakfast”. Gone, it says, should be the days of England teams wilting in the June sunshine like a bunch of cry babies.
“I can assure you,” Smith says, “it definitely won’t get to No 1.”
I have spent numerous hours over the past three decades drinking with Smith. I have a fascination with the Fall that dates back to the first time I saw them in 1978. Smith was annoying the crowd by dedicating a song to Elvis Presley, anathema to punks at the time and very amusing to witness. As a young radio presenter, I interviewed him about his albums, from Slates and Hex Enduction Hour onwards. He remains one of the most interesting people I’ve met. Given his ranting stage presence and reputation for not suffering fools, the most unexpected thing about him was always how friendly he was, and what a good sense of humour he had.
A strong part of Smith’s working-class credentials is the appreciation and respect he has for the older generation. The first thing he’d say whenever we met was: “How’s your mam?” This time, when I tell him that she died in April, he’s genuinely sad for me. “April is the cruellest month.”
“Where does that come from?”
“T. S. Eliot, I think.”
Smith has a habit of understating his knowledge. Something he’s been doing with his lyrics for the Fall for more than three decades. He was always reading new stuff, listening to new stuff and plugged into the real world.
The Fall were John Peel’s favourite group; he famously described them as “always the same, always different”, which is as good a summary of their uniqueness as any. So, given his long history on the cutting edge, why has Smith done something as seemingly mainstream as a World Cup record?
Well, he has history with the Beautiful Game, he points out: “The Fall were the first band to ever do a song about football when we did Kicker Conspiracy for Rough Trade in 1983. At the time all these hippies at Rough Trade were saying, “You can’t do that; music fans aren’t into football’. We also did Kurious Oranj, which was about football rivalries, and Sparta FC a couple of years ago.”
There’s the urge, too, to improve on a genre that’s not exactly flush with quality. “All the World Cup songs I’ve heard are rubbish,” Smith says, giving amused short shrift to songs such as New Order’s World in Motion and Skinner and Baddiel’s Three Lions. ...
... With warm reviews for their recent album, Your Future Our Clutter, the Fall’s longevity continues. After years of refusing to sign contracts, Smith retains the rights to all his recorded material. “I always knew, even when we were only getting ten quid a week out of the group, that the last thing I wanted to do was sign all my songs over to some hippy. People in other bands used to laugh at us for not signing contracts or think we were mad. But they’d be massive for two years and then disappear.”
He has a wry sideswipe, too, at the current crop of British bands: “They’ve all been to drama school.” Taking that to be a dig at how middle-class they are, I ask him what it was like working with the artschool-educated Damon Albarn on Gorillaz’ Plastic Beach album. He immediately sees what I’m getting at, smiles and brushes it aside: “It was really good, he really knows exactly what he’s doing and works properly.” ...
After keeping us waiting for a century, Mark Twain will finally reveal all
The great American writer left instructions not to publish his autobiography until 100 years after his death, which is now
By Guy Adams in Los Angeles
Sunday, 23 May 2010
Exactly a century after rumours of his death turned out to be entirely accurate, one of Mark Twain's dying wishes is at last coming true: an extensive, outspoken and revelatory autobiography which he devoted the last decade of his life to writing is finally going to be published.
The creator of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and some of the most frequently misquoted catchphrases in the English language left behind 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs when he died in 1910, together with handwritten notes saying that he did not want them to hit bookshops for at least a century.
That milestone has now been reached, and in November the University of California, Berkeley, where the manuscript is in a vault, will release the first volume of Mark Twain's autobiography. The eventual trilogy will run to half a million words, and shed new light on the quintessentially American novelist.
Scholars are divided as to why Twain wanted the first-hand account of his life kept under wraps for so long. Some believe it was because he wanted to talk freely about issues such as religion and politics. Others argue that the time lag prevented him from having to worry about offending friends. ...
... Another potential motivation for leaving the book to be posthumously published concerns Twain's legacy as a Great American. Michael Shelden, who this year published Man in White, an account of Twain's final years, says that some of his privately held views could have hurt his public image.
"He had doubts about God, and in the autobiography, he questions the imperial mission of the US in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. He's also critical of [Theodore] Roosevelt, and takes the view that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel. Twain also disliked sending Christian missionaries to Africa. He said they had enough business to be getting on with at home: with lynching going on in the South, he thought they should try to convert the heathens down there." ...
Hallefrickenluja!
Ta much, dear Edosan
The great American writer left instructions not to publish his autobiography until 100 years after his death, which is now
By Guy Adams in Los Angeles
Sunday, 23 May 2010
Exactly a century after rumours of his death turned out to be entirely accurate, one of Mark Twain's dying wishes is at last coming true: an extensive, outspoken and revelatory autobiography which he devoted the last decade of his life to writing is finally going to be published.
The creator of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and some of the most frequently misquoted catchphrases in the English language left behind 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs when he died in 1910, together with handwritten notes saying that he did not want them to hit bookshops for at least a century.
That milestone has now been reached, and in November the University of California, Berkeley, where the manuscript is in a vault, will release the first volume of Mark Twain's autobiography. The eventual trilogy will run to half a million words, and shed new light on the quintessentially American novelist.
Scholars are divided as to why Twain wanted the first-hand account of his life kept under wraps for so long. Some believe it was because he wanted to talk freely about issues such as religion and politics. Others argue that the time lag prevented him from having to worry about offending friends. ...
... Another potential motivation for leaving the book to be posthumously published concerns Twain's legacy as a Great American. Michael Shelden, who this year published Man in White, an account of Twain's final years, says that some of his privately held views could have hurt his public image.
"He had doubts about God, and in the autobiography, he questions the imperial mission of the US in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. He's also critical of [Theodore] Roosevelt, and takes the view that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel. Twain also disliked sending Christian missionaries to Africa. He said they had enough business to be getting on with at home: with lynching going on in the South, he thought they should try to convert the heathens down there." ...
Hallefrickenluja!
Ta much, dear Edosan
Woo hoo!
May 15, 2010
When Picasso came round to play
To the young boy, he was just a friend of his artist father. Finding out that Picasso was a towering figure came later
Antony Penrose
Pablo Picasso’s work still finds unexpected ways of astounding us even if only for the boggling $106.5 million recently realised at auction by his 1932 painting of his mistress Marie Thérèse Walter titled Nude, Green Leaves and Bust. Now Picasso: Peace and Freedom at Tate Liverpool promises a new look at the political dimension ever present in his life but intimately known only to a few. The Picasso I knew did not wear his politics as an emblem. He came to my home, Farley Farm in Chiddingly, Sussex, in November 1950. My earliest memories are of a person of great warmth. He was generous with hugs, cuddles and games on the floor, and he smelt distinctively of cologne and soap. We liked the same things. My teddy, the pets, Gypsy the old draft horse and our handsome Ayrshire bull, named William, with his retinue of cows.
These events return to me as snatches of conversations, hazy images, smells and emotional traces from memories long ago. I was well into my teenage years before I realised that other people saw Picasso, Paul Éluard, Joan Mirò, Max Ernst, Man Ray and others as the leading artists of the 20th century. For me they were habitué friends of my family. They were warm, funny, hugely talented and sometimes flawed people who were bonded by their love of art and their desire to use it as an agency for bringing change to the world. I urge those who jump to the conclusion that Surrealism was a naive and self-indulgent movement to look at the risks run and the ultimate price paid by the Surrealists who proved their principle against the Nazis. Many of them died as a result.
It was discovering the work of my mother, Lee Miller, hidden in the attic of Farley Farm House that prompted me to research her life and that of my father. Neither of them had ever spoken much of the Second World War, of politics and the principles that guided their lives but gradually these things emerged and meshed with my memories of them as parents. In their external lives, they stopped being my parents and became “Penrose” and “Miller”. They still remain as my mother and father in my internal life.
Picasso had met my father, the painter Roland Penrose, in Mougins in 1936, thanks to the poet Éluard who had invited him there for a beach holiday on the Côte d’Azur. Éluard, a close friend of Picasso, had helped Penrose to gather the loans for his First International Surrealist Exhibition in London held in June of that year. Its success established Penrose as the ambassador of Surrealism in Britain, a nation still struggling to come to terms with Post-Impressionism. ...
...Becoming super-rich was important to him only because it allowed him to be private and to quietly help the people and the causes he admired. Naturally his wealth made it impossible for him to enjoy the simple pleasures of the beach he loved or the townspeople around him, but he found secret ways through trusted friends of supporting what mattered to him, and that allowed him to carry on simply being Picasso. ...
When Picasso came round to play
To the young boy, he was just a friend of his artist father. Finding out that Picasso was a towering figure came later
Antony Penrose
Pablo Picasso’s work still finds unexpected ways of astounding us even if only for the boggling $106.5 million recently realised at auction by his 1932 painting of his mistress Marie Thérèse Walter titled Nude, Green Leaves and Bust. Now Picasso: Peace and Freedom at Tate Liverpool promises a new look at the political dimension ever present in his life but intimately known only to a few. The Picasso I knew did not wear his politics as an emblem. He came to my home, Farley Farm in Chiddingly, Sussex, in November 1950. My earliest memories are of a person of great warmth. He was generous with hugs, cuddles and games on the floor, and he smelt distinctively of cologne and soap. We liked the same things. My teddy, the pets, Gypsy the old draft horse and our handsome Ayrshire bull, named William, with his retinue of cows.
These events return to me as snatches of conversations, hazy images, smells and emotional traces from memories long ago. I was well into my teenage years before I realised that other people saw Picasso, Paul Éluard, Joan Mirò, Max Ernst, Man Ray and others as the leading artists of the 20th century. For me they were habitué friends of my family. They were warm, funny, hugely talented and sometimes flawed people who were bonded by their love of art and their desire to use it as an agency for bringing change to the world. I urge those who jump to the conclusion that Surrealism was a naive and self-indulgent movement to look at the risks run and the ultimate price paid by the Surrealists who proved their principle against the Nazis. Many of them died as a result.
It was discovering the work of my mother, Lee Miller, hidden in the attic of Farley Farm House that prompted me to research her life and that of my father. Neither of them had ever spoken much of the Second World War, of politics and the principles that guided their lives but gradually these things emerged and meshed with my memories of them as parents. In their external lives, they stopped being my parents and became “Penrose” and “Miller”. They still remain as my mother and father in my internal life.
Picasso had met my father, the painter Roland Penrose, in Mougins in 1936, thanks to the poet Éluard who had invited him there for a beach holiday on the Côte d’Azur. Éluard, a close friend of Picasso, had helped Penrose to gather the loans for his First International Surrealist Exhibition in London held in June of that year. Its success established Penrose as the ambassador of Surrealism in Britain, a nation still struggling to come to terms with Post-Impressionism. ...
...Becoming super-rich was important to him only because it allowed him to be private and to quietly help the people and the causes he admired. Naturally his wealth made it impossible for him to enjoy the simple pleasures of the beach he loved or the townspeople around him, but he found secret ways through trusted friends of supporting what mattered to him, and that allowed him to carry on simply being Picasso. ...
"I live in Brooklyn. By choice," wrote Truman Capote in 1959. Now anyone with a cool $18m to spare can make that choice too and live in the house where the author penned Breakfast at Tiffany's.
The Brooklyn Heights home where Capote lived in the 1950s and 1960s - a five-storey, 11-bedroom townhouse built in 1839 - went on sale with Sotheby's International Realty yesterday for the first time in 70 years. Capote wrote his 1959 essay about Brooklyn, A House On the Heights, while living in the property, describing the splendour of its "beautiful staircase floating upward in white, swan-simple curves to a skylight of sunny amber-gold glass", its walls "thick as a buffalo, immune to the mightiest cold, the meanest heat" and its "porch canopied, completely submerged, as though under a lake of leaves, by an ancient but admirably vigorous vine weighty with grapelike bunches of wisteria".
Capote rented the Willow Street house from the stage designer Oliver Smith, living in two basement rooms. However, George Plimpton writes in his introduction to A House on the Heights: "when friends came to call, he often took them on a tour of the entire house (when Smith was not at home) and said it was his house, all his, and that he had restored and decorated every room ... One of them (which Truman does not mention) contained Smith's mother's favourite furniture - old beaded lampshades, rocking chairs - indeed, a room whose decor must have given Truman pause to explain to his friends on his tours."
The author describes in A House On the Heights how, after a run of Martinis on the porch of the house with Smith, he eventually convinced his friend to rent him a few rooms in the property. "It got to be quite late, he began to see my point: yes, twenty-eight rooms were rather a lot; and yes, it seems only fair that I should have some of them."
The Brooklyn Heights home where Capote lived in the 1950s and 1960s - a five-storey, 11-bedroom townhouse built in 1839 - went on sale with Sotheby's International Realty yesterday for the first time in 70 years. Capote wrote his 1959 essay about Brooklyn, A House On the Heights, while living in the property, describing the splendour of its "beautiful staircase floating upward in white, swan-simple curves to a skylight of sunny amber-gold glass", its walls "thick as a buffalo, immune to the mightiest cold, the meanest heat" and its "porch canopied, completely submerged, as though under a lake of leaves, by an ancient but admirably vigorous vine weighty with grapelike bunches of wisteria".
Capote rented the Willow Street house from the stage designer Oliver Smith, living in two basement rooms. However, George Plimpton writes in his introduction to A House on the Heights: "when friends came to call, he often took them on a tour of the entire house (when Smith was not at home) and said it was his house, all his, and that he had restored and decorated every room ... One of them (which Truman does not mention) contained Smith's mother's favourite furniture - old beaded lampshades, rocking chairs - indeed, a room whose decor must have given Truman pause to explain to his friends on his tours."
The author describes in A House On the Heights how, after a run of Martinis on the porch of the house with Smith, he eventually convinced his friend to rent him a few rooms in the property. "It got to be quite late, he began to see my point: yes, twenty-eight rooms were rather a lot; and yes, it seems only fair that I should have some of them."
... Mr. Smith has been smart enough to bet against his own past. When the band tours, it plays few songs predating five years ago. It’s been reconstituted over and over again, playing fairly simple songs with different affects. At first the Fall made a kind of scratchy primitive para-punk; after many subtle changes it’s become heavy-featured, trance-inducing garage rock with clear and steady rhythm.
One of the big questions around the Fall is: What’s the way in? I grew up hearing the band on college radio, ignoring it. At first, around the time of “Hex Enduction Hour” (1982), I found it bitter, bossy music, and a pile of noise, even by my low standards. At a certain point I became a music critic, and such people are expected to buckle down and pay attention to the Fall. I had children instead. But not long ago “Perverted by Language,” a record I’d bought when it came out in 1983 and forgotten about, drew me in: first with its title — think about it for a minute — then with its sounds.
It’s got bullish bass lines and two drummers. It’s got inscrutable chants: “Eat Yourself Fitter.” “Smile.” “It was not an unreasonable offer.” From guitars come open chords in strange tunings, scraping against the key; from keyboards come mellow polytonal clusters. It has a decent amount of echo, and an incredible aura.
So that was finally my entryway, and after that I couldn’t stop. The Fall has recorded almost an album a year since 1979, and the 27 live sessions they recorded for the BBC, under the supervision of the disc jockey John Peel, tell another story: different versions, different inflections, different energies. Sorry to say, but in American terms, this is a Grateful Dead situation. I like hearing “Your Future Our Clutter” all the way through: as an album it works as few do anymore. But I’m happy to discard it and move on to the next.
Mr. Smith’s voice — both the vocal instrument and the point of view — is a template. He’s proven that it doesn’t depend on youth and good health, so theoretically it can go on as long as he lives. After a while it’s a voice you want to climb inside and get to know, or even start controlling yourself.
Recently I played a highly repetitive Fall song to a 9-year-old — I think it was “Cruiser’s Creek,” from 1985, to gauge his reaction. He loved it at first, then found it unreasonable. I told him I wasn’t sure why I liked the band so much all of a sudden. “You might be going through a kind of Japanese puberty,” he said. It’s an anime joke, describing boys who think they’ve turned into Pokemon characters. That sounded to me like the makings of a Fall song, along the lines of a few others about metamorphoses or half-man, half-somethings: “I’m a Mummy,” or “Wolf Kidult Man.” My favorite new Fall song is imaginary. It’s no less good for that.
One of the big questions around the Fall is: What’s the way in? I grew up hearing the band on college radio, ignoring it. At first, around the time of “Hex Enduction Hour” (1982), I found it bitter, bossy music, and a pile of noise, even by my low standards. At a certain point I became a music critic, and such people are expected to buckle down and pay attention to the Fall. I had children instead. But not long ago “Perverted by Language,” a record I’d bought when it came out in 1983 and forgotten about, drew me in: first with its title — think about it for a minute — then with its sounds.
It’s got bullish bass lines and two drummers. It’s got inscrutable chants: “Eat Yourself Fitter.” “Smile.” “It was not an unreasonable offer.” From guitars come open chords in strange tunings, scraping against the key; from keyboards come mellow polytonal clusters. It has a decent amount of echo, and an incredible aura.
So that was finally my entryway, and after that I couldn’t stop. The Fall has recorded almost an album a year since 1979, and the 27 live sessions they recorded for the BBC, under the supervision of the disc jockey John Peel, tell another story: different versions, different inflections, different energies. Sorry to say, but in American terms, this is a Grateful Dead situation. I like hearing “Your Future Our Clutter” all the way through: as an album it works as few do anymore. But I’m happy to discard it and move on to the next.
Mr. Smith’s voice — both the vocal instrument and the point of view — is a template. He’s proven that it doesn’t depend on youth and good health, so theoretically it can go on as long as he lives. After a while it’s a voice you want to climb inside and get to know, or even start controlling yourself.
Recently I played a highly repetitive Fall song to a 9-year-old — I think it was “Cruiser’s Creek,” from 1985, to gauge his reaction. He loved it at first, then found it unreasonable. I told him I wasn’t sure why I liked the band so much all of a sudden. “You might be going through a kind of Japanese puberty,” he said. It’s an anime joke, describing boys who think they’ve turned into Pokemon characters. That sounded to me like the makings of a Fall song, along the lines of a few others about metamorphoses or half-man, half-somethings: “I’m a Mummy,” or “Wolf Kidult Man.” My favorite new Fall song is imaginary. It’s no less good for that.
Blackberry 'predicted a century ago' by pioneering physicist Nikola Tesla
The Blackberry was first predicted more than a century ago, by Nikola Tesla, the electrical engineer, it has been claimed.
By Andrew Hough
03 May 2010
Tesla, a pioneering American physicist, made the prediction about the portable messaging service in the Popular Mechanics magazine in 1909.
Tesla, whose name lives on at Tesla Motors, the electric car manufacturer, saw wireless energy as the only way to make electricity thrive.
He wrote in the magazine that one day it would be possible to transmit wireless messages all over the world.
He imagined...a hand-held device would be simple to use and...everyone in the world would communicate to friends using it.
This, he added, would usher in a new era of technology.
The "Crackberry" as it has been dubbed for its addictive qualities, is popular with business executives and US President Barack Obama, but has struggled in Britain to widen its appeal to a younger demographic.
Seth Porges, the magazine’s technology editor, disclosed Tesla’s prediction at a presentation, titled “108 years of futurism”, to industry figures recently in New York.
The magazine, which has nine international editions that is read by millions, has been trying to imagine how the world will look in future years since it was first published in January 1902.
"Nikola Tesla was able to predict technology which is still in its nascent forms a hundred years later,” Mr Porges said. ...
The Blackberry was first predicted more than a century ago, by Nikola Tesla, the electrical engineer, it has been claimed.
By Andrew Hough
03 May 2010
Tesla, a pioneering American physicist, made the prediction about the portable messaging service in the Popular Mechanics magazine in 1909.
Tesla, whose name lives on at Tesla Motors, the electric car manufacturer, saw wireless energy as the only way to make electricity thrive.
He wrote in the magazine that one day it would be possible to transmit wireless messages all over the world.
He imagined...a hand-held device would be simple to use and...everyone in the world would communicate to friends using it.
This, he added, would usher in a new era of technology.
The "Crackberry" as it has been dubbed for its addictive qualities, is popular with business executives and US President Barack Obama, but has struggled in Britain to widen its appeal to a younger demographic.
Seth Porges, the magazine’s technology editor, disclosed Tesla’s prediction at a presentation, titled “108 years of futurism”, to industry figures recently in New York.
The magazine, which has nine international editions that is read by millions, has been trying to imagine how the world will look in future years since it was first published in January 1902.
"Nikola Tesla was able to predict technology which is still in its nascent forms a hundred years later,” Mr Porges said. ...
... Their show at Hammersmith was more car-crash than car insurance — a fast-paced, chaotically-executed exercise in demolition-derby, proto-punk rock’n’roll. They started by performing their third album, Raw Power, released in 1973, albeit with a slight readjustment of the running order. There was mayhem on stage and off from the moment they kicked off with the title track, and Iggy was already stripped to well below the waist by the time they reached Search and Destroy. Diving headlong into the crowd in front of the stage, he somehow managed to scramble back on stage with his trousers now hanging off his bare backside — the first of many, increasingly frantic such sorties.
Restlessly patrolling the stage in his strange, lolloping, broken-doll walk — the result of innumerable falls and bashes — Iggy cut an extraordinary figure for a man of any age, let alone 62. His singing encompassed a deep punk croon together with a lot of yelping and bawling, while Williamson’s razor-edged riffing — which was so far ahead of its time in 1973 — now sounded like classic punk rock of the sort made famous by the Clash, the Pistols and all the other bands who were inspired by the Stooges in the first place.
There was a massive stage invasion, at Iggy’s invitation, and at one point, the band was completely obscured by fans, while the singer was flailing around somewhere in the mosh pit. It took about 40 minutes to get through Raw Power, after which they blasted through a selection of other songs from the same period, including such delicacies as Open Up and Bleed, I Wanna Be Your Dog and a vividly illustrated version of Cock in My Pocket. There was, however, nothing from their recent album, The Weirdness, released to hostile reviews in 2007. Maybe they will be asked to play that one in another 30 years’ time.
Restlessly patrolling the stage in his strange, lolloping, broken-doll walk — the result of innumerable falls and bashes — Iggy cut an extraordinary figure for a man of any age, let alone 62. His singing encompassed a deep punk croon together with a lot of yelping and bawling, while Williamson’s razor-edged riffing — which was so far ahead of its time in 1973 — now sounded like classic punk rock of the sort made famous by the Clash, the Pistols and all the other bands who were inspired by the Stooges in the first place.
There was a massive stage invasion, at Iggy’s invitation, and at one point, the band was completely obscured by fans, while the singer was flailing around somewhere in the mosh pit. It took about 40 minutes to get through Raw Power, after which they blasted through a selection of other songs from the same period, including such delicacies as Open Up and Bleed, I Wanna Be Your Dog and a vividly illustrated version of Cock in My Pocket. There was, however, nothing from their recent album, The Weirdness, released to hostile reviews in 2007. Maybe they will be asked to play that one in another 30 years’ time.
Banksy gives band £200k painting 'in apology for stealing their name'
Banksy, the graffiti artist, gave a £200,000 painting to a band after he accidentally "stole" their name as the title to his new film, Exit Through the Gift Shop.
Banksy, the graffiti artist, gave a £200,000 painting to a band after he accidentally "stole" their name as the title to his new film, Exit Through the Gift Shop.
Surrender. It's Brian Eno
Britain's great cultural chameleon Brian Eno wants us all to slow down, relax, and be swept away by art. And the revolution starts in Brighton this weekend
Stuart Jeffries
Wednesday 28 April 2010
'I know this is all going to sound terrible," says Brian Eno over tea at his Notting Hill studio. "This article is going to come out and people are going to say, 'Another fucking hippie. Why don't they die, these people?'" Eno takes a rueful sip of his Flor de Jamaica hibiscus tea – a choice of beverage that might seem to confirm his point.
The artist christened Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno in Suffolk 61 years ago is, fingers crossed, wrong. In an age in which we venerate the idea of the lonely artist toiling in a garret before coming down to present the Great Work, Eno wants to suggest alternative visions of how art is made, how it works, and why we need it. Admittedly, if he was an ordinary mortal, you wouldn't give two hoots, but Eno is one of the most consistently diverting creative presences in Britain: godfather of ambient music, visual artist, Prospect magazine columnist, one-time bemulletted techno-whizz at Roxy Music's keyboards, and the record producer who made U2, Talking Heads, David Bowie and even Coldplay sound so compelling.
Eno moves his mug and draws me a diagram. This, it transpires, isn't so much an interview as a gentle lecture by a widely read, reflective gent. Over the course of a couple of hours, he will threaten me with violence, teach me about shipbuilding, chat about surfing, and explain why religion is similar to sex and drugs. I've been in worse situations.
On one side of Eno's scale diagram, he writes "control"; on the other "surrender". "We've tended to dignify the controlling end of the spectrum," he says. "We have Nobel prizes for that end." His idea is that control is what we generally believe the greats – Shakespeare, Picasso, Einstein, Wagner – were about. Such people, the argument goes, controlled their chosen fields, working in isolation, never needing any creative input from others. As for surrender, that idea has become debased: it's come to mean what the rest of us do when confronted by a work of genius. "We've tended to think of the surrender end as a luxury, a nice thing you add to your life when you've done the serious work of getting a job, getting your pension sorted out. I'm saying that's all wrong."
He pauses, then asks: "I don't know if you've ever read much about the history of shipbuilding?" Not a word. "Old wooden ships had to be constantly caulked up because they leaked. When technology improved, and they could make stiffer ships because of a different way of holding boards together, they broke up. So they went back to making ships that didn't fit together properly, ships that had flexion. The best vessels surrendered: they allowed themselves to be moved by the circumstances.
"Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That's what surfers do – take control of the situation, then be carried, then take control. In the last few thousand years, we've become incredibly adept technically. We've treasured the controlling part of ourselves and neglected the surrendering part." Eno considers all his recent art to be a rebuttal to this attitude. "I want to rethink surrender as an active verb," he says. "It's not just you being escapist; it's an active choice. I'm not saying we've got to stop being such controlling beings. I'm not saying we've got to be back-to-the-earth hippies. I'm saying something more complex." ...
Ta much, dear Edosan
Britain's great cultural chameleon Brian Eno wants us all to slow down, relax, and be swept away by art. And the revolution starts in Brighton this weekend
Stuart Jeffries
Wednesday 28 April 2010
'I know this is all going to sound terrible," says Brian Eno over tea at his Notting Hill studio. "This article is going to come out and people are going to say, 'Another fucking hippie. Why don't they die, these people?'" Eno takes a rueful sip of his Flor de Jamaica hibiscus tea – a choice of beverage that might seem to confirm his point.
The artist christened Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno in Suffolk 61 years ago is, fingers crossed, wrong. In an age in which we venerate the idea of the lonely artist toiling in a garret before coming down to present the Great Work, Eno wants to suggest alternative visions of how art is made, how it works, and why we need it. Admittedly, if he was an ordinary mortal, you wouldn't give two hoots, but Eno is one of the most consistently diverting creative presences in Britain: godfather of ambient music, visual artist, Prospect magazine columnist, one-time bemulletted techno-whizz at Roxy Music's keyboards, and the record producer who made U2, Talking Heads, David Bowie and even Coldplay sound so compelling.
Eno moves his mug and draws me a diagram. This, it transpires, isn't so much an interview as a gentle lecture by a widely read, reflective gent. Over the course of a couple of hours, he will threaten me with violence, teach me about shipbuilding, chat about surfing, and explain why religion is similar to sex and drugs. I've been in worse situations.
On one side of Eno's scale diagram, he writes "control"; on the other "surrender". "We've tended to dignify the controlling end of the spectrum," he says. "We have Nobel prizes for that end." His idea is that control is what we generally believe the greats – Shakespeare, Picasso, Einstein, Wagner – were about. Such people, the argument goes, controlled their chosen fields, working in isolation, never needing any creative input from others. As for surrender, that idea has become debased: it's come to mean what the rest of us do when confronted by a work of genius. "We've tended to think of the surrender end as a luxury, a nice thing you add to your life when you've done the serious work of getting a job, getting your pension sorted out. I'm saying that's all wrong."
He pauses, then asks: "I don't know if you've ever read much about the history of shipbuilding?" Not a word. "Old wooden ships had to be constantly caulked up because they leaked. When technology improved, and they could make stiffer ships because of a different way of holding boards together, they broke up. So they went back to making ships that didn't fit together properly, ships that had flexion. The best vessels surrendered: they allowed themselves to be moved by the circumstances.
"Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That's what surfers do – take control of the situation, then be carried, then take control. In the last few thousand years, we've become incredibly adept technically. We've treasured the controlling part of ourselves and neglected the surrendering part." Eno considers all his recent art to be a rebuttal to this attitude. "I want to rethink surrender as an active verb," he says. "It's not just you being escapist; it's an active choice. I'm not saying we've got to stop being such controlling beings. I'm not saying we've got to be back-to-the-earth hippies. I'm saying something more complex." ...
Ta much, dear Edosan
My Favorite Beverly Hills Home
By Elise Thompson
November 17, 2007
I first saw this house in 1986. Whenever I'm in the area, I take a quick detour down a side alley to check it out. It has gradually evolved, with a new mosaic or glass feature appearing each time I drive by. I saw a guy working up on the roof about six months ago, and he seemed too young to have been working on the house for 20 years. Maybe it is a family project. When I parked in the alley to take these pictures, a neighbor asked me if I had ever asked them if I could look inside. I asked whether he ever asked for a tour himself, and he hadn't. I'm always afraid they will call the police on me for loitering or stalking, so the last thing I ever considered was going right up and knocking on their door. Plus, I kind of prefer not knowing. Some things in life should just be left a mystery. It keeps a little hint of magic in the world.
By Elise Thompson
November 17, 2007
I first saw this house in 1986. Whenever I'm in the area, I take a quick detour down a side alley to check it out. It has gradually evolved, with a new mosaic or glass feature appearing each time I drive by. I saw a guy working up on the roof about six months ago, and he seemed too young to have been working on the house for 20 years. Maybe it is a family project. When I parked in the alley to take these pictures, a neighbor asked me if I had ever asked them if I could look inside. I asked whether he ever asked for a tour himself, and he hadn't. I'm always afraid they will call the police on me for loitering or stalking, so the last thing I ever considered was going right up and knocking on their door. Plus, I kind of prefer not knowing. Some things in life should just be left a mystery. It keeps a little hint of magic in the world.
What's in a name? For Simon Duncan's band, a £200,000 Banksy...
The group formerly known as Exit Through the Gift Shop receives an unexpected reward for acceding to graffiti artist's request
Vanessa Thorpe, arts and media correspondent
Sunday 25 April 2010
... "I am a drummer in a band that was called Exit Through the Gift Shop that I started with friends 18 months before I turned 40. It was a kind of midlife crisis, but we are still going, with a different line-up, and it has become a bit more serious," said Duncan, who agreed to change his band's name to Brace Yourself in an arrangement with Banksy.
"We had these hilarious emails from someone saying he was Banksy, but we didn't know if they were genuine," said Duncan. "Then a scruffy white van arrived. The driver had no idea what he was carrying."
The band plan to unveil their new name and backdrop, which shows the grim reaper riding a dodgem car, at a London gig this week.
"When we saw the painting we could not believe it," said Duncan. "It is the size of a double bed, for a start. We had to insure it, so a man from Sotheby's came over to see it in my loft. He said to me, 'This is surreal. I have just been valuing an 18th-century portrait in a stately home, but it is not as valuable as this.'"
The band have put the painting in storage at Sotheby's and will perform in front of a full-size copy.
The group formerly known as Exit Through the Gift Shop receives an unexpected reward for acceding to graffiti artist's request
Vanessa Thorpe, arts and media correspondent
Sunday 25 April 2010
... "I am a drummer in a band that was called Exit Through the Gift Shop that I started with friends 18 months before I turned 40. It was a kind of midlife crisis, but we are still going, with a different line-up, and it has become a bit more serious," said Duncan, who agreed to change his band's name to Brace Yourself in an arrangement with Banksy.
"We had these hilarious emails from someone saying he was Banksy, but we didn't know if they were genuine," said Duncan. "Then a scruffy white van arrived. The driver had no idea what he was carrying."
The band plan to unveil their new name and backdrop, which shows the grim reaper riding a dodgem car, at a London gig this week.
"When we saw the painting we could not believe it," said Duncan. "It is the size of a double bed, for a start. We had to insure it, so a man from Sotheby's came over to see it in my loft. He said to me, 'This is surreal. I have just been valuing an 18th-century portrait in a stately home, but it is not as valuable as this.'"
The band have put the painting in storage at Sotheby's and will perform in front of a full-size copy.
April 17, 2010
Iggy Pop at 62
Robert Crampton meets the rock legend who has conquered drug addiction and his self-destructive streak to emerge a bigger star than ever
Robert Crampton
... Iggy had natural taste, raw talent and considerable brains. But he also had a terrible fondness for drugs. He was on Ecstasy and crack before they were even so named. And when heroin hit LA in the late Sixties and early Seventies, he developed a serious habit. He recalls once writing a song, overdosing, lying in a heap for 14 hours, waking up and finishing the song. In short, he is lucky to be alive.
“I was 37 or 38 before I began to stabilise. I said to myself, ‘I’m gonna die here, I’m going to fail, I’m not well, my talent is weakening, my looks are going, things are not gonna work out.’ Part of what I had to do is find a stable relationship with a woman. So I looked for the right type of woman and I married a Japanese woman, Suchi, my wife for a dozen years, who was very helpful. As is Nina, a beautiful and exotic-looking person, which leads lots of people to fail to find out she’s also very well educated, graduated cum laude from Georgetown University; sharp cookie, a serious person.”
Does he resent those with less talent who made more money than him? “No! I gotta lotta money! And it’s been incredibly interesting. I look at other people my age and I can’t help but suspect they’re not having new experiences, new challenges and new rewards like I am. Is that cool or what? The best I’ve ever done is now. Yeah, ’bout as near as I get to happiness, the least insecure, the most healthy.”
Does he have therapy? “F*** no!” Medication? “F*** no!” He seems a sunny character sitting here; why all the trouble for so long? “I go dark. I was pretty much wrecked in the late Eighties. I was about four or five years into going straight. I hated it.” What does he mean by going straight? Not being on heroin? “Not being on anything.” Anything? “Well, cutting down. By the middle Eighties, it meant that every night I would smoke half a doobie. By 1990, no more doobie; 1985-90 was me trying to be stable, not f*** everybody that I saw, not intoxicate myself, not point out everything to which I objected. Which is just about everything. I decided you gotta pick your shots, buddy. Little by little, I learnt.” ...
"...The devil,” he insists, “is not out of my system, but the particulars are.” ...
... We get up from our chairs and shake hands. Looking forward to tomorrow? “Oh yeah,” he drawls. “Tomorrow’s gonna be better than today.” We both nod meaningfully. “All right,” he says, “I’m gonna piss off now.” And he does.
Iggy Pop at 62
Robert Crampton meets the rock legend who has conquered drug addiction and his self-destructive streak to emerge a bigger star than ever
Robert Crampton
... Iggy had natural taste, raw talent and considerable brains. But he also had a terrible fondness for drugs. He was on Ecstasy and crack before they were even so named. And when heroin hit LA in the late Sixties and early Seventies, he developed a serious habit. He recalls once writing a song, overdosing, lying in a heap for 14 hours, waking up and finishing the song. In short, he is lucky to be alive.
“I was 37 or 38 before I began to stabilise. I said to myself, ‘I’m gonna die here, I’m going to fail, I’m not well, my talent is weakening, my looks are going, things are not gonna work out.’ Part of what I had to do is find a stable relationship with a woman. So I looked for the right type of woman and I married a Japanese woman, Suchi, my wife for a dozen years, who was very helpful. As is Nina, a beautiful and exotic-looking person, which leads lots of people to fail to find out she’s also very well educated, graduated cum laude from Georgetown University; sharp cookie, a serious person.”
Does he resent those with less talent who made more money than him? “No! I gotta lotta money! And it’s been incredibly interesting. I look at other people my age and I can’t help but suspect they’re not having new experiences, new challenges and new rewards like I am. Is that cool or what? The best I’ve ever done is now. Yeah, ’bout as near as I get to happiness, the least insecure, the most healthy.”
Does he have therapy? “F*** no!” Medication? “F*** no!” He seems a sunny character sitting here; why all the trouble for so long? “I go dark. I was pretty much wrecked in the late Eighties. I was about four or five years into going straight. I hated it.” What does he mean by going straight? Not being on heroin? “Not being on anything.” Anything? “Well, cutting down. By the middle Eighties, it meant that every night I would smoke half a doobie. By 1990, no more doobie; 1985-90 was me trying to be stable, not f*** everybody that I saw, not intoxicate myself, not point out everything to which I objected. Which is just about everything. I decided you gotta pick your shots, buddy. Little by little, I learnt.” ...
"...The devil,” he insists, “is not out of my system, but the particulars are.” ...
... We get up from our chairs and shake hands. Looking forward to tomorrow? “Oh yeah,” he drawls. “Tomorrow’s gonna be better than today.” We both nod meaningfully. “All right,” he says, “I’m gonna piss off now.” And he does.
April 10, 2010
Photography: the art of Henri Cartier-Bresson
As a new book and show celebrate Cartier-Bresson, his friend recalls one of the finest photographers of the 20th century
Jinx Rodger
... Henri was fun, too. He was witty and he made us laugh. Ratna was a poet and he once published a book of her work. But they argued a lot. She also had an explosive temper and in the end she just couldn’t settle in Paris. Later he married the photographer Martine Franck, and they lived in the Rue de Rivoli, just overlooking the Louvre. It’s Franck we need to thank for this new book and exhibition. It was she who convinced Henri that he should create a lasting home for his work, what is now the Cartier Bresson Foundation. Henri hated to look back.
He was a very loyal friend. When George died, Henri did a lot to look after me. He had a huge and interesting circle of friends, but he didn’t suffer fools gladly. I remember he once hid at a photography opening because he didn’t want to be interviewed, and I saw at the bottom of the guest list that he’d signed in as “Hank Carter, Paris”.
He could be stubborn, but he had to be to protect himself. By the end of his life he was idolised. When he died, all Paris was in mourning.
Photography: the art of Henri Cartier-Bresson
As a new book and show celebrate Cartier-Bresson, his friend recalls one of the finest photographers of the 20th century
Jinx Rodger
... Henri was fun, too. He was witty and he made us laugh. Ratna was a poet and he once published a book of her work. But they argued a lot. She also had an explosive temper and in the end she just couldn’t settle in Paris. Later he married the photographer Martine Franck, and they lived in the Rue de Rivoli, just overlooking the Louvre. It’s Franck we need to thank for this new book and exhibition. It was she who convinced Henri that he should create a lasting home for his work, what is now the Cartier Bresson Foundation. Henri hated to look back.
He was a very loyal friend. When George died, Henri did a lot to look after me. He had a huge and interesting circle of friends, but he didn’t suffer fools gladly. I remember he once hid at a photography opening because he didn’t want to be interviewed, and I saw at the bottom of the guest list that he’d signed in as “Hank Carter, Paris”.
He could be stubborn, but he had to be to protect himself. By the end of his life he was idolised. When he died, all Paris was in mourning.
...There are some real laughs in it, but "Mr. Hulot's Holiday'' gives us something rarer, an amused affection for human nature--so odd, so valuable, so particular.
The movie was released in 1953, and played for months, even years, in art cinemas. "Mr. Hulot'' was as big a hit in its time as "Like Water for Chocolate,'' "The Gods Must Be Crazy'' and other small films that people recommend to each other. There was a time when any art theater could do a week's good business just by booking "Hulot.'' Jacques Tati (1908-1982) made only four more features in the next 20 years, much labored over, much admired, but this is the film for which he'll be remembered.
The movie tells the story of Mr. Hulot's holiday by the sea, in Brittany. As played by Tati, Hulot is a tall man, all angles, "a creature of silhouettes,'' as Stanley Kauffmann observed: "There is never a closeup of him, and his facial expressions count for little.'' He arrives at the seaside in his improbable little car, which looks like it was made for a Soap Box Derby and rides on bicycle wheels. (I always assumed this vehicle was built for the movie, but no: It is a 1924 Amilcar, and must have given its original owners many perplexing moments.) [Ed. Note: Said 1924 Amilcar also features filmic history's most amusing horn.] ...
... The movie is constructed with the meticulous attention to detail of a Keaton or Chaplin. Sight gags are set up with such patience that they seem to expose hidden functions in the clockwork of the universe. Consider the scene where Hulot is painting his kayak, and the tide carries the paint can out to sea and then floats it in again, perfectly timed, when his brush is ready for it again. How was this scene done? Is it a trick, or did Tati actually experiment with tides and cans until he got it right? Is it "funny''? No, it is miraculous. The sea is indifferent to painters, but nevertheless provides the can when it is needed, and life goes on, and the boat gets painted.
And then consider Tati when he goes out paddling in his tiny kayak, which like his car is the wrong size for him. It capsizes. In another comedy, that would mean the hero gets wet, and we're supposed to laugh. Not here; the boat folds up in just such a way that it looks like a shark, and there is a panic on the beach. Hulot remains oblivious. There is an almost spiritual acceptance in his behavior; nothing goes as planned, but nothing surprises him. ...
The movie was released in 1953, and played for months, even years, in art cinemas. "Mr. Hulot'' was as big a hit in its time as "Like Water for Chocolate,'' "The Gods Must Be Crazy'' and other small films that people recommend to each other. There was a time when any art theater could do a week's good business just by booking "Hulot.'' Jacques Tati (1908-1982) made only four more features in the next 20 years, much labored over, much admired, but this is the film for which he'll be remembered.
The movie tells the story of Mr. Hulot's holiday by the sea, in Brittany. As played by Tati, Hulot is a tall man, all angles, "a creature of silhouettes,'' as Stanley Kauffmann observed: "There is never a closeup of him, and his facial expressions count for little.'' He arrives at the seaside in his improbable little car, which looks like it was made for a Soap Box Derby and rides on bicycle wheels. (I always assumed this vehicle was built for the movie, but no: It is a 1924 Amilcar, and must have given its original owners many perplexing moments.) [Ed. Note: Said 1924 Amilcar also features filmic history's most amusing horn.] ...
... The movie is constructed with the meticulous attention to detail of a Keaton or Chaplin. Sight gags are set up with such patience that they seem to expose hidden functions in the clockwork of the universe. Consider the scene where Hulot is painting his kayak, and the tide carries the paint can out to sea and then floats it in again, perfectly timed, when his brush is ready for it again. How was this scene done? Is it a trick, or did Tati actually experiment with tides and cans until he got it right? Is it "funny''? No, it is miraculous. The sea is indifferent to painters, but nevertheless provides the can when it is needed, and life goes on, and the boat gets painted.
And then consider Tati when he goes out paddling in his tiny kayak, which like his car is the wrong size for him. It capsizes. In another comedy, that would mean the hero gets wet, and we're supposed to laugh. Not here; the boat folds up in just such a way that it looks like a shark, and there is a panic on the beach. Hulot remains oblivious. There is an almost spiritual acceptance in his behavior; nothing goes as planned, but nothing surprises him. ...
... Now, not only did Tati fail to exploit the character that he had created and whose popularity was a gold mine, but he also took four years to give us another film, which, far from suffering by comparison, relegated Jour de fête to the status of an elementary first draft. Only the second of Tati's feature films, Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot nonetheless cannot be overestimated. It is not only the most important cinematic comedy since the Marx Brothers and W. C. Fields, it is also a signal event in the history of sound film. Like all great comedians, before making us laugh, Tati creates a universe on screen. From the beginning, a world organizes itself around his character and then crystallizes, like an oversaturated solution, around the grain of salt that has been thrown in. Certainly, the character Tati creates is funny, but in an almost accessory fashion, and in any case always relative to the universe he inhabits. Mr. Hulot himself could personally be absent from the most comical of his gags, because he is nothing but the metaphysical incarnation of a disorder that continues long after his departure.
Nevertheless, if one wants to begin with the character, one sees immediately that his originality, in contrast with the tradition of commedia dell'arte, resides in a sort of incompleteness. The typical figure from the commedia dell'arte represents a comic essence whose function is clear and always the same. Contrarily, the peculiarity of Mr. Hulot lies in his not daring to exist completely. He is an ambling, indeterminate man, an unassuming being, who elevates timidity to the level of an ontological principle. But, of course, the lightness of touch Mr. Hulot uses on the world will be the precise cause of a number of catastrophes, because he never acts according to the rules of moral propriety and social efficiency. Mr. Hulot has a genius for the inopportune, let us call it.
This is not to say that he is awkward and clumsy. On the contrary, Mr. Hulot is full of grace; he is a kind of angel, and the disorder that he brings is one filled with freedom and exuberance as well as compassion. Indeed, it is significant that the only characters in Les Vacances who are similarly both gracious and amicable are children. Yet they by themselves cannot embody the spirit of vacation. That is left to Mr. Hulot, who doesn't surprise or scare them, for he is their brother: always available and, like children, ever ignoring the shams of life's game and its elevation of duty over devotion, of work over pleasure. If there is just one dancer at a masked ball, that will be Mr. Hulot, blithely indifferent to the vacuum that has been created around him. And if someone has a storage room filled with old fireworks, it will be Mr. Hulot's match that lights all the fuses. ...
Jacques Tati, choreographer of the human (comic) condition: part I
... What I do know is that I found Les vacances to be equally stellar in its arrangement and choreography of bodies, objects, space/spatial relations to draw out the sometimes bizarre but always sympathetic and wondrous characteristics of people. Tati brings together such lovely characters that draw in the spectator as would a bear hug. The elderly couple that strolls throughout the film, the caricature of a young French intellectual, the hotel resort staff, such characters are just that: characters, and not just background scenery.
It should come as no surprise, then, when I say that Tati was no less than an acute observer. He skillfully and effortlessly draws out the comedy and affection embedded in the everyday social relations in which people engage and more or less take for granted because it’s so everyday. Such is the power of his observation infused with wit that my theory is he injects the very act of observing, watching, surveying, looking as an integral part of his sense and material of his comedy. And there are always shots of people in the act of looking or watching. ...
... Through a play with visual perception, there’s a lot to be discovered, knowledge that can be obtained. At the same time, there are errors, optical illusions, misperceptions and misinterpretations to be had in this same play with visual perception. With Tati’s films and comedy, as a spectator you get both and in his films you see both. I find that this understanding of and play with perception in Tati – and what a way to go about it, too, with the biggest toy to play with visual perception that is cinema – makes up part of his greatness.
In Les vacances in particular, you get a play with difference in scale that’s perhaps not necessarily just for comedy’s sake. Across the film are shots where Tati plays with the difference in scale of body size, composed of one body/object looming in the foreground on one side of the frame against another body/object in the distance. The degree of frequency of this kind of shot composition makes it seem dear to Tati’s heart. ...
... What I do know is that I found Les vacances to be equally stellar in its arrangement and choreography of bodies, objects, space/spatial relations to draw out the sometimes bizarre but always sympathetic and wondrous characteristics of people. Tati brings together such lovely characters that draw in the spectator as would a bear hug. The elderly couple that strolls throughout the film, the caricature of a young French intellectual, the hotel resort staff, such characters are just that: characters, and not just background scenery.
It should come as no surprise, then, when I say that Tati was no less than an acute observer. He skillfully and effortlessly draws out the comedy and affection embedded in the everyday social relations in which people engage and more or less take for granted because it’s so everyday. Such is the power of his observation infused with wit that my theory is he injects the very act of observing, watching, surveying, looking as an integral part of his sense and material of his comedy. And there are always shots of people in the act of looking or watching. ...
... Through a play with visual perception, there’s a lot to be discovered, knowledge that can be obtained. At the same time, there are errors, optical illusions, misperceptions and misinterpretations to be had in this same play with visual perception. With Tati’s films and comedy, as a spectator you get both and in his films you see both. I find that this understanding of and play with perception in Tati – and what a way to go about it, too, with the biggest toy to play with visual perception that is cinema – makes up part of his greatness.
In Les vacances in particular, you get a play with difference in scale that’s perhaps not necessarily just for comedy’s sake. Across the film are shots where Tati plays with the difference in scale of body size, composed of one body/object looming in the foreground on one side of the frame against another body/object in the distance. The degree of frequency of this kind of shot composition makes it seem dear to Tati’s heart. ...
Jacques Tati, choreographer of the human (comic) condition: part II
In the process of prepping for these postings on Tati’s films, I went through the films to get some DVD captures that I felt were emblematic or enticing to make people check them out. When I went through Mon oncle and Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot, I found myself bursting into laughter – the knee-slapping kind of laughter, too.
When I watched Playtime, I did experience moments of knee-slapping laughter. And in retrospect, I think it’s a great film. But I have to admit that just right after watching it I felt disappointment. Out of all the film criticism I’ve heard/read about Tati’s films, Playtime was written about most often. I must’ve built up such an expectation, which then quadrupled after watching the other two films mentioned above and falling in love with them.
Or maybe I was just initially overwhelmed by the bigger scale of the Hulot world. In this film Hulot enters the big city: no more suburbs, beach resort or small town village. Hulot’s jaunt into the big city is for a day of play. And it just so happens that he ventures out to this big, anonymous city on the same day groups of tourists (mostly female) arrive in the same vicinity. The film picks out one particular group of American tourists and it crosses paths with Hulot several times throughout the film. The film proceeds to follow Hulot traipsing across various sectors of the big city, from daytime (window) shopping and showrooms, evening visits to an acquaintance’s apartment, to restaurant/bar nightlife. Hulot’s day of play culminates in an increasingly raucous, rocking elegant restaurant that slowly falls apart. It’s an impressive study of the “slow burn” leading towards chaos. As a spectator, all I could do was look in wonder and soak up all the visuals, like Hulot below.
...
In the process of prepping for these postings on Tati’s films, I went through the films to get some DVD captures that I felt were emblematic or enticing to make people check them out. When I went through Mon oncle and Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot, I found myself bursting into laughter – the knee-slapping kind of laughter, too.
When I watched Playtime, I did experience moments of knee-slapping laughter. And in retrospect, I think it’s a great film. But I have to admit that just right after watching it I felt disappointment. Out of all the film criticism I’ve heard/read about Tati’s films, Playtime was written about most often. I must’ve built up such an expectation, which then quadrupled after watching the other two films mentioned above and falling in love with them.
Or maybe I was just initially overwhelmed by the bigger scale of the Hulot world. In this film Hulot enters the big city: no more suburbs, beach resort or small town village. Hulot’s jaunt into the big city is for a day of play. And it just so happens that he ventures out to this big, anonymous city on the same day groups of tourists (mostly female) arrive in the same vicinity. The film picks out one particular group of American tourists and it crosses paths with Hulot several times throughout the film. The film proceeds to follow Hulot traipsing across various sectors of the big city, from daytime (window) shopping and showrooms, evening visits to an acquaintance’s apartment, to restaurant/bar nightlife. Hulot’s day of play culminates in an increasingly raucous, rocking elegant restaurant that slowly falls apart. It’s an impressive study of the “slow burn” leading towards chaos. As a spectator, all I could do was look in wonder and soak up all the visuals, like Hulot below.
...
... The implausibly slanting walk and jutting pipe of Jacques Tati will also be seen in a completely new film later this year – albeit in animated form. A cartoon movie, based on an old, unused Tati screenplay, with a Hulot-type character in the lead role, will appear in the autumn.
Other Hulot events include the re-creation of the set of another classic Tati movie, Mon Oncle, which won the Oscar for best foreign film 50 years ago. The futuristic, but maddeningly inefficient, house and garden which are the centrepiece of the film have been rebuilt in life size and can be visited in Paris until November.
A permanent Tati museum is also about to open in Saint-Sévère-sur-Indre, the village where the mime comedian, actor and film director made his first full-length movie, Jour de Fête, in 1947.
Why the sudden Hulot revival? The curators of an excellent Tati exhibition at the Cinémathèque in Paris joke that it is 102 years since the film-maker's birth: the imperfect, perfect moment to celebrate the centenary of a character who specialised in making clumsy, abrupt entr-ances in his own movies.
"In truth, several things have come together," said one of the exhibition's curators, the cinema critic, writer and Tati expert, Stéphane Goudet. "There is the forthcoming cartoon movie, based on a Jacques Tati screenplay (The Man with the White Rabbit, due out in the autumn). There is the half-century since Tati's Oscar for Mon Oncle. But there is also the growing interest in Tati as a very modern film director, someone who is studied and admired by cutting-edge directors like Wes Anderson and David Lynch."
In a short essay for the catalogue to the Paris exhibition on Tati's life and career, Anderson (The Darjeeling Limited; The Royal Tenenbaums) says that Tati, as actor and comedian, stands comparison with Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. "He has a silhouette that you can make into a cartoon; just his walk is a great creation," he says. ...
A relentless tinkerer, Tati re-edited his 1953 original twice: in the early 60s, he cut out some shots and extended others, while re-mixing the sound, recording a new, re-orchestrated version of Alain Romans’ score, and adding the final color shot of the stamp. In 1978 he shot and cut in new footage on the beach. This brand new restoration, working from the much-spliced camera negative and final track, now allows viewing of Tati’s definitive vision.
Summer release for 'Scratch' '70s hits
Published: Tuesday | April 6, 2010
Howard Campbell, Gleaner Writer
British record company Trojan Records is to release a double compact disc of seven-inch singles by legendary producer Lee 'Scratch' Perry this summer.
The collection is part of a massive reissue programme by the London-based label.
The songs are drawn from the mid to late 1970s when Perry was arguably the most prolific music producer in reggae and Jamaica.
During that period, he released numerous songs that not only influenced a new generation of reggae musicians, but caught on with the British punk movement.
A statement from Trojan said the multi-song set would include extended versions of some of the biggest hits from Perry's Upsetter label. They include Curly Locks by Junior Byles, War Ina Babylon by Max Romeo and Police And Thieves, a massive hit in Britain for singer Junior Murvin in the summer of 1976.
The Trojan Perry set is the latest in a series that also includes similar projects by Desmond Dekker, Millie Small, Dave and Ansell Collins, and Bob Andy and Marcia Griffiths. Each of those artistes struck it big in Britain with rock steady and reggae songs during the 1960s and early 1970s. ...
Published: Tuesday | April 6, 2010
Howard Campbell, Gleaner Writer
British record company Trojan Records is to release a double compact disc of seven-inch singles by legendary producer Lee 'Scratch' Perry this summer.
The collection is part of a massive reissue programme by the London-based label.
The songs are drawn from the mid to late 1970s when Perry was arguably the most prolific music producer in reggae and Jamaica.
During that period, he released numerous songs that not only influenced a new generation of reggae musicians, but caught on with the British punk movement.
A statement from Trojan said the multi-song set would include extended versions of some of the biggest hits from Perry's Upsetter label. They include Curly Locks by Junior Byles, War Ina Babylon by Max Romeo and Police And Thieves, a massive hit in Britain for singer Junior Murvin in the summer of 1976.
The Trojan Perry set is the latest in a series that also includes similar projects by Desmond Dekker, Millie Small, Dave and Ansell Collins, and Bob Andy and Marcia Griffiths. Each of those artistes struck it big in Britain with rock steady and reggae songs during the 1960s and early 1970s. ...
The Eleven Doctors
HELLO AGAIN, TERRY GILLIAM
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Terry Gilliam is a perpetual imagination machine spewing out enchanting grotesqueries for the very major studios baffled by him. This week The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus, another film no one with money wanted him to make, came out on DVD. So I called him for a catch up.
VICE: I heard you had problems getting financing for the film because people didn’t get the idea, is that right?
Terry: Yeah, we went out to America and asked for money, $25 million, for Heath Ledger’s next movie after The Dark Knight, and we couldn’t get any money.
What was it they didn’t get?
Nothing! They couldn’t even get their heads around the idea that the following summer the biggest star on the planet would be Heath Ledger because The Dark Knight was coming out. They couldn’t even understand that simple concept, so how could they even begin to understand the film? I mean, I’ve always had these problems. I go to these meetings and they say, “Oh god, we love everything you’ve done Terry, but this new one we’re not sure about.” And it’s always been like that, so I don’t see why it’s ever going to change. The guys in that position, the guardians of the cash, they tend to be conservative people with very little imagination who really just want Time Bandits 2.
Do you think it had anything to do with the fact that it’s not a high-concept idea that can summed up in a pithy little “boy loses girl” one-liner?
Well, yeah, but that’s been the case for a long time. My stuff has never been high concept in that sense: It’s too layered, it’s got too many things. And what people tend to do, they immediately show it to the marketing people, because if they don’t know how to sell it, it doesn’t get made. The business is not run by people who get impassioned by an idea and want to make it happen, the business is run by people who want to say no so they can survive in their bureaucratic high-paid jobs as long as they can. It’s been like that for a long time and it’s gotten worse over the years because it’s become more and more bureaucratic. The reason my films really get made is because I can get big stars, that’s my power.
Talking about the layers and ideas you have, this seems like quite a moralistic film, in terms of being careful what you wish for, and harnessing fears and desires.
Yeah, well, it has to be about something. There are already enough other people doing stories about things turning into other things and blowing up. All my films start from an idea or a thought that I want to consider, and then I try to cram in as much as I can. I like the idea of layering films, and ever since the beginning I find that kids get my films quicker than adults do. Kids are more open to anything that’s entertaining them and keeping their attention–adults, as they get older, want things to be more straightforward, or put in tiny boxes to be more easily understood. These are ridiculous generalizations, but I’ve seen it time and time again. For this film people have come out after watching it and found it confusing, they didn’t know what it was about, and a seven-year-old kid came out and got all of it. ...
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Terry Gilliam is a perpetual imagination machine spewing out enchanting grotesqueries for the very major studios baffled by him. This week The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus, another film no one with money wanted him to make, came out on DVD. So I called him for a catch up.
VICE: I heard you had problems getting financing for the film because people didn’t get the idea, is that right?
Terry: Yeah, we went out to America and asked for money, $25 million, for Heath Ledger’s next movie after The Dark Knight, and we couldn’t get any money.
What was it they didn’t get?
Nothing! They couldn’t even get their heads around the idea that the following summer the biggest star on the planet would be Heath Ledger because The Dark Knight was coming out. They couldn’t even understand that simple concept, so how could they even begin to understand the film? I mean, I’ve always had these problems. I go to these meetings and they say, “Oh god, we love everything you’ve done Terry, but this new one we’re not sure about.” And it’s always been like that, so I don’t see why it’s ever going to change. The guys in that position, the guardians of the cash, they tend to be conservative people with very little imagination who really just want Time Bandits 2.
Do you think it had anything to do with the fact that it’s not a high-concept idea that can summed up in a pithy little “boy loses girl” one-liner?
Well, yeah, but that’s been the case for a long time. My stuff has never been high concept in that sense: It’s too layered, it’s got too many things. And what people tend to do, they immediately show it to the marketing people, because if they don’t know how to sell it, it doesn’t get made. The business is not run by people who get impassioned by an idea and want to make it happen, the business is run by people who want to say no so they can survive in their bureaucratic high-paid jobs as long as they can. It’s been like that for a long time and it’s gotten worse over the years because it’s become more and more bureaucratic. The reason my films really get made is because I can get big stars, that’s my power.
Talking about the layers and ideas you have, this seems like quite a moralistic film, in terms of being careful what you wish for, and harnessing fears and desires.
Yeah, well, it has to be about something. There are already enough other people doing stories about things turning into other things and blowing up. All my films start from an idea or a thought that I want to consider, and then I try to cram in as much as I can. I like the idea of layering films, and ever since the beginning I find that kids get my films quicker than adults do. Kids are more open to anything that’s entertaining them and keeping their attention–adults, as they get older, want things to be more straightforward, or put in tiny boxes to be more easily understood. These are ridiculous generalizations, but I’ve seen it time and time again. For this film people have come out after watching it and found it confusing, they didn’t know what it was about, and a seven-year-old kid came out and got all of it. ...
... Bolt's words sounded ridiculously laid-back until he said he had not ever really tried as hard as he could in the 100 metres: "The best is still to come. I've never run just straight and focused on getting to the finish line. I'm always looking over at the other guys to see where they are. So one day, if I can stay focused and run really fast right through, then I could do it."
How fast might Bolt run the 100m when, finally, he puts his mind fully to the task? "I think the record is going to end up at 9.4 something and then it's going to be stuck there a long time. It will be hard to break. But you never really know. Anything is possible."
Such conviction underlined Bolt's psychological hold over his rivals: "I definitely think so. When I was coming up, and watching Asafa break record after record, I used to say, 'Oh no, I don't want to be racing him.' So now, for me, I think it's a definite psychological advantage going into a race against these guys." ...
How fast might Bolt run the 100m when, finally, he puts his mind fully to the task? "I think the record is going to end up at 9.4 something and then it's going to be stuck there a long time. It will be hard to break. But you never really know. Anything is possible."
Such conviction underlined Bolt's psychological hold over his rivals: "I definitely think so. When I was coming up, and watching Asafa break record after record, I used to say, 'Oh no, I don't want to be racing him.' So now, for me, I think it's a definite psychological advantage going into a race against these guys." ...
There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge. ...
... The kid poured him another straight rye and I think he doctored it with water down behind the bar because when he came up with it he looked as guilty as if he'd kicked his grandmother. The drunk paid no attention. He lifted coins off his pile with the exact care of a crack surgeon operating on a brain tumor.
The kid came back and put more beer in my glass. Outside the wind howled. Every once in a while it blew the stained glass door open a few inches. It was a heavy door.
The kid said: "I don't like drunks in the first place and in the second place I don't like them getting drunk in here, and in the third place I don't like them in the first place."
"Warner Brothers could use that," I said.
"They did." ...
... The kid poured him another straight rye and I think he doctored it with water down behind the bar because when he came up with it he looked as guilty as if he'd kicked his grandmother. The drunk paid no attention. He lifted coins off his pile with the exact care of a crack surgeon operating on a brain tumor.
The kid came back and put more beer in my glass. Outside the wind howled. Every once in a while it blew the stained glass door open a few inches. It was a heavy door.
The kid said: "I don't like drunks in the first place and in the second place I don't like them getting drunk in here, and in the third place I don't like them in the first place."
"Warner Brothers could use that," I said.
"They did." ...
It's hot stuff, yeah, an' it's everywhere I go.
... Charles Ryder: How's Sebastian?
Julia Flyte: He's fine.
Charles: Fine?
Julia: Did he tell you he was dying?
Charles: Well, I thought... His message said...
Julia: I expect he thought you wouldn't come if you knew.
Charles: He's not badly hurt, then?
Julia: He cracked a bone in his foot so small it hasn't even got a name.
Charles: How did it happen?
Julia: Playing croquet....
Julia Flyte: He's fine.
Charles: Fine?
Julia: Did he tell you he was dying?
Charles: Well, I thought... His message said...
Julia: I expect he thought you wouldn't come if you knew.
Charles: He's not badly hurt, then?
Julia: He cracked a bone in his foot so small it hasn't even got a name.
Charles: How did it happen?
Julia: Playing croquet....
... "During the thirties, Man Ray made a large number of drawings while in Paris or travelling in the south of France. Man Ray had shown these drawings to Eluard, who had asked him to leave them with him. On Man Ray’s return, some weeks later, he found to his delight that his friend had 'illustrated' each drawing with a poem. This new and unexpected proof of Eluard's esteem resulted in the publication of Les Mains Libres, a book in which more than sixty pen-and-ink drawings are reproduced, fifty-four of them opposite Eluard's poem." ...
Marcel Duchamp's Secret Masterpiece
by Rachel Wolff
For two decades, Marcel Duchamp fooled the world into thinking he had retired, while quietly creating his last great work. Rachel Wolff on the multiple love affairs that inspired it.
... Working in secret for 20 years, Duchamp constructed much of Étant donnés in his diminutive studio on West 14th Street in New York, confiding only in three women (two lovers, one wife, to be exact) and, in the work’s later stages, artist/collector William Nelson Copley. By the 1940s, Duchamp had gone “underground” with his art, claiming to have given it up entirely for chess. “Nobody had any interest in what he was doing because nobody, including myself, knew he was doing anything,” Copley once said. “This gave him all the freedom in the world.”
Duchamp decided in the 1950s to will his pièce de résistance to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to join the largest collection of the artist’s work. Étant donnés was permanently installed at the museum in 1969, one year after Duchamp’s death. It has since beguiled artists, critics, and art historians alike with its uncharacteristic look and perceivably lewd message. Jasper Johns called it “the strangest work of art any museum has ever had in it”; visitors feigned shock, bemoaning the piece to the director and even, at times, to guards and staffers in the galleries; and in his New York Times review, John Canaday wrote: “For the first time, this cleverest of 20th-century masters looks a bit retardataire.” It became sort of an art world in-joke and there’s little existing scholarship on the piece. It seemed, for the longest time, that no one quite got it.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art hopes to change that with Marcel Duchamp: Étant donnés, a[n]...exhibition...The show gathers a fascinating array of photographs, documents, objects, and artworks related to Étant donnés and its conception....
by Rachel Wolff
For two decades, Marcel Duchamp fooled the world into thinking he had retired, while quietly creating his last great work. Rachel Wolff on the multiple love affairs that inspired it.
... Working in secret for 20 years, Duchamp constructed much of Étant donnés in his diminutive studio on West 14th Street in New York, confiding only in three women (two lovers, one wife, to be exact) and, in the work’s later stages, artist/collector William Nelson Copley. By the 1940s, Duchamp had gone “underground” with his art, claiming to have given it up entirely for chess. “Nobody had any interest in what he was doing because nobody, including myself, knew he was doing anything,” Copley once said. “This gave him all the freedom in the world.”
Duchamp decided in the 1950s to will his pièce de résistance to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to join the largest collection of the artist’s work. Étant donnés was permanently installed at the museum in 1969, one year after Duchamp’s death. It has since beguiled artists, critics, and art historians alike with its uncharacteristic look and perceivably lewd message. Jasper Johns called it “the strangest work of art any museum has ever had in it”; visitors feigned shock, bemoaning the piece to the director and even, at times, to guards and staffers in the galleries; and in his New York Times review, John Canaday wrote: “For the first time, this cleverest of 20th-century masters looks a bit retardataire.” It became sort of an art world in-joke and there’s little existing scholarship on the piece. It seemed, for the longest time, that no one quite got it.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art hopes to change that with Marcel Duchamp: Étant donnés, a[n]...exhibition...The show gathers a fascinating array of photographs, documents, objects, and artworks related to Étant donnés and its conception....
In 1913 I had the happy idea to fasten a bicycle wheel to a kitchen stool and watch it turn.
A few months later I bought a cheap reproduction of a winter evening landscape, which I called "Pharmacy" after adding two small dots, one red and one yellow, in the horizon.
In New York in 1915 I bought at a hardware store a snow shovel on which I wrote "In advance of the broken arm."
It was around that time that the word "Readymade" came to my mind to designate this form of manifestation.
A point that I want very much to establish is that the choice of these "Readymades" was never dictated by aesthetic delectation.
The choice was based on a reaction of visual indifference with at the same time a total absence of good or bad taste ... in fact a complete anaesthesia.
One important characteristic was the short sentence which I occasionally inscribed on the "Readymade."
That sentence instead of describing the object like a title was meant to carry the mind of the spectator towards other regions more verbal. ...
A few months later I bought a cheap reproduction of a winter evening landscape, which I called "Pharmacy" after adding two small dots, one red and one yellow, in the horizon.
In New York in 1915 I bought at a hardware store a snow shovel on which I wrote "In advance of the broken arm."
It was around that time that the word "Readymade" came to my mind to designate this form of manifestation.
A point that I want very much to establish is that the choice of these "Readymades" was never dictated by aesthetic delectation.
The choice was based on a reaction of visual indifference with at the same time a total absence of good or bad taste ... in fact a complete anaesthesia.
One important characteristic was the short sentence which I occasionally inscribed on the "Readymade."
That sentence instead of describing the object like a title was meant to carry the mind of the spectator towards other regions more verbal. ...
I've tripped out on and adored these since childhood.
I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.
- Marcel Duchamp
- Marcel Duchamp
Everything important that I have done can be put into a little suitcase.
—Marcel Duchamp
New York, March 1952
—Marcel Duchamp
New York, March 1952
Duck Billed Platypus USB Drive
by Ally - on February 19th, 2010
[The] duck billed platypus is such an under loved creature. Thankfully one seller is finally having mercy on the animal. Now you can show your platypus loving side with this handy USB drive. Sure, some people might think it’s silly to carry around a platypus USB drive, but they clearly just don’t know what they’re missing. This happy creature is perfectly content holding onto even the most dull documents that you need.
Of course it’s only half of a platypus instead of the whole thing. Instead of having back legs he just has a USB port. Which is tragic for him, but handy for you. The drive holds 4GB of the necessary items you need to store within it....
Ta much, dear Anneliese
by Ally - on February 19th, 2010
[The] duck billed platypus is such an under loved creature. Thankfully one seller is finally having mercy on the animal. Now you can show your platypus loving side with this handy USB drive. Sure, some people might think it’s silly to carry around a platypus USB drive, but they clearly just don’t know what they’re missing. This happy creature is perfectly content holding onto even the most dull documents that you need.
Of course it’s only half of a platypus instead of the whole thing. Instead of having back legs he just has a USB port. Which is tragic for him, but handy for you. The drive holds 4GB of the necessary items you need to store within it....
Ta much, dear Anneliese
Day of the Dead papercut made in San Salvador Huixcolotla, Mexico (1980s) on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
Day of the Dead papercut made in San Salvador Huixcolotla, Mexico (1980s)
My pal Dogs came over tonight, and we watched Luis Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (orig. title, Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie). He'd never seen it before, but Your Humble Narrator has seen it at least four times and is a big fan. We discussed the surrealism of the film many times as we watched it, and how well Buñuel's dream sequences use elements of actual dreams. The washed-out colors (Bar one or two, I've always dreamed in color, but it rarely looks like Kodachrome©), curious perspectives, disappearing people, strange and sudden changes, etc are all trés a propos.
I looked around in the guide to see what else was on, and was delighted when I found TCM was showing Fellini's 8½! We went straight from one surreal film to another; and Dogs'd never seen 8½ either, and I'd only seen bits and pieces. It's not the pleasantest film in places, but for the most part it shifts into silliness when needed.
I looked around in the guide to see what else was on, and was delighted when I found TCM was showing Fellini's 8½! We went straight from one surreal film to another; and Dogs'd never seen 8½ either, and I'd only seen bits and pieces. It's not the pleasantest film in places, but for the most part it shifts into silliness when needed.
LOVE AND ROCKERS
Ted Bafaloukos Taught Us Everything We Know About Jamaica
INTERVIEW BY TASSOS BREKOULAKIS, PORTRAIT BY FREDDIE F.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF THEODOROS BAFALOUKOS
Theodoros Bafaloukos wrote and directed Rockers, the film that single-handedly made Jamaica and reggae interesting to couch-cozy white folks, their stoner kids, and a bunch of famous English punks with guitars. Today, Ted is not so reclusive as he is remote, spending his time at his childhood home on the secluded Greek island of Andros. Over 30 years after the film's initial release, we made the long journey for this, his first-ever print interview. ...
Vice: How did you first find yourself in Jamaica?
Theodoros Bafaloukos: I went there in 1975 as a freelance photographer for Island Records with a friend, a young guy in the reggae scene. We took photos of faces on the island. It was interesting and exciting. It was also funny because they arrested me as a CIA spy.
Uh-oh. What happened?
I’d gone to a radio station to speak to someone from the community. I wanted to ask him for equipment and for help shooting a documentary—which is what I wanted to do originally. I was in the car with my friend, who was driving, when suddenly, out of nowhere, a man sticks his hand through the window, grabs a small notebook from my chest pocket, and runs into the building shouting “CIA, CIA!” I got out and tried to run after him, but when I got back, my friend and the car had vanished. I was scared. I found myself completely stranded, surrounded by strangers. The friends who had left told me later that they were terrified. We’re talking about a time when fear reigned and everyone was scared.
When did the police arrive?
Two jeeps appeared out of nowhere, full of cops—some in uniform, others looking like bouncers. The tougher ones with Uzis pounced out of the vehicle and arrested me. They put me in the jeep and paraded me through the streets at low speed so all could see that they had arrested a CIA agent! They took me to the police station, where it became obvious that they had no idea what to do with me. So they took me to another guy, who interviewed me.
An interview?
An interrogation. When I entered the room, the interrogator was seated behind a desk with my notebook next to him. I went over, picked up the notebook from the desk, and put it into my pocket.
Gutsy. What was in the notebook?
The addresses of all the people I had met on the island, mostly musicians. I had promised to send them photographs upon my return to America, which I did.
So did they let you go immediately?
After I put the notebook in my pocket the guy said nothing, didn’t even budge. I answered his questions but he didn’t even know what to ask me. He had probably made a few phone calls and realized that this was all a mistake.
Looking at pictures of you from this period, you looked more like the lead in a Zapatista porn than a CIA agent.
Why, what does a CIA agent look like? [laughs] I had a Greek passport, which made me look even more suspicious. They took it away and kept me there for what seemed like an eternity. Another guy came to interrogate me, but that again led nowhere. It was 10 or 11 at night when suddenly this white guy appears and says, “Come with me,” leads me out of the room, puts me in a cab, and says, “Go, just go.” I said, “What about my passport?” And he said, “Get out of here, man.” So I left. I went to the house I was sharing and found them all there: my friend, Augustus Pablo, the whole gang. They were all younger than me. They were all scared and staring at me as if I had come back from the dead. They basically said, “Sorry, they’ll come to kill you tonight and we don’t want to stick around.”
Were they teasing you?
No, they weren’t. Stuff like that happened all the time.
This is a completely different picture of Jamaica than the one you present in Rockers.
There was this idea that everything was going swell, because of Bob Marley’s success. Even for reggae, the reality was different—much harsher. And harsher still for a white guy in the middle of it. I lived there for a couple years before we started shooting. Those Jamaicans living in the ghettoes of Kingston were innocent people in their everyday lives and this is exactly what I wanted to capture in the film—a more realistic picture of who they were, or who they really wanted to be. Something like Robin Hood. Jamaica was a fantasy world where reality as we knew it could not exist. ...
Dirty Harry!
"Hustlin' like raindrops!"
Ted Bafaloukos Taught Us Everything We Know About Jamaica
INTERVIEW BY TASSOS BREKOULAKIS, PORTRAIT BY FREDDIE F.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF THEODOROS BAFALOUKOS
Theodoros Bafaloukos wrote and directed Rockers, the film that single-handedly made Jamaica and reggae interesting to couch-cozy white folks, their stoner kids, and a bunch of famous English punks with guitars. Today, Ted is not so reclusive as he is remote, spending his time at his childhood home on the secluded Greek island of Andros. Over 30 years after the film's initial release, we made the long journey for this, his first-ever print interview. ...
Vice: How did you first find yourself in Jamaica?
Theodoros Bafaloukos: I went there in 1975 as a freelance photographer for Island Records with a friend, a young guy in the reggae scene. We took photos of faces on the island. It was interesting and exciting. It was also funny because they arrested me as a CIA spy.
Uh-oh. What happened?
I’d gone to a radio station to speak to someone from the community. I wanted to ask him for equipment and for help shooting a documentary—which is what I wanted to do originally. I was in the car with my friend, who was driving, when suddenly, out of nowhere, a man sticks his hand through the window, grabs a small notebook from my chest pocket, and runs into the building shouting “CIA, CIA!” I got out and tried to run after him, but when I got back, my friend and the car had vanished. I was scared. I found myself completely stranded, surrounded by strangers. The friends who had left told me later that they were terrified. We’re talking about a time when fear reigned and everyone was scared.
When did the police arrive?
Two jeeps appeared out of nowhere, full of cops—some in uniform, others looking like bouncers. The tougher ones with Uzis pounced out of the vehicle and arrested me. They put me in the jeep and paraded me through the streets at low speed so all could see that they had arrested a CIA agent! They took me to the police station, where it became obvious that they had no idea what to do with me. So they took me to another guy, who interviewed me.
An interview?
An interrogation. When I entered the room, the interrogator was seated behind a desk with my notebook next to him. I went over, picked up the notebook from the desk, and put it into my pocket.
Gutsy. What was in the notebook?
The addresses of all the people I had met on the island, mostly musicians. I had promised to send them photographs upon my return to America, which I did.
So did they let you go immediately?
After I put the notebook in my pocket the guy said nothing, didn’t even budge. I answered his questions but he didn’t even know what to ask me. He had probably made a few phone calls and realized that this was all a mistake.
Looking at pictures of you from this period, you looked more like the lead in a Zapatista porn than a CIA agent.
Why, what does a CIA agent look like? [laughs] I had a Greek passport, which made me look even more suspicious. They took it away and kept me there for what seemed like an eternity. Another guy came to interrogate me, but that again led nowhere. It was 10 or 11 at night when suddenly this white guy appears and says, “Come with me,” leads me out of the room, puts me in a cab, and says, “Go, just go.” I said, “What about my passport?” And he said, “Get out of here, man.” So I left. I went to the house I was sharing and found them all there: my friend, Augustus Pablo, the whole gang. They were all younger than me. They were all scared and staring at me as if I had come back from the dead. They basically said, “Sorry, they’ll come to kill you tonight and we don’t want to stick around.”
Were they teasing you?
No, they weren’t. Stuff like that happened all the time.
This is a completely different picture of Jamaica than the one you present in Rockers.
There was this idea that everything was going swell, because of Bob Marley’s success. Even for reggae, the reality was different—much harsher. And harsher still for a white guy in the middle of it. I lived there for a couple years before we started shooting. Those Jamaicans living in the ghettoes of Kingston were innocent people in their everyday lives and this is exactly what I wanted to capture in the film—a more realistic picture of who they were, or who they really wanted to be. Something like Robin Hood. Jamaica was a fantasy world where reality as we knew it could not exist. ...
Dirty Harry!
"Hustlin' like raindrops!"
Hello there! Your friendly defender of truth and justice here to provide you with a short primer designed to crush mercilessly beneath my bootheels a number of misconceptions surrounding the life and works of H.P. Lovecraft, a mindblowingly scrumptiously amazing author. With no further ado, I present...
Lovecraft Myths and Misconceptions Dispelled Vigorously!
The man was a total recluse. Never left New England!
Yeah, yeah, you know the drill. Lovecraft is constantly portrayed as an introspective hermit who maintained his friendships through voluminous correspondence and ne'er dared venture from the seclusion of his home.
In reality, Lovecraft traveled widely (frequently to visit friends) and wrote about his voyages in often lengthy travelogues. He trekked as far north as Quebec and as far south as De Land, Florida. To me, that implies he was anything but reclusive. His travelogues include what is Lovecraft's most sprawling work at 75 000 words: A Description of the Town of Quebeck, in New France, Lately Added to His Britannick Majesty's Dominions. Whew, what a title! ...
Lovecraft Myths and Misconceptions Dispelled Vigorously!
The man was a total recluse. Never left New England!
Yeah, yeah, you know the drill. Lovecraft is constantly portrayed as an introspective hermit who maintained his friendships through voluminous correspondence and ne'er dared venture from the seclusion of his home.
In reality, Lovecraft traveled widely (frequently to visit friends) and wrote about his voyages in often lengthy travelogues. He trekked as far north as Quebec and as far south as De Land, Florida. To me, that implies he was anything but reclusive. His travelogues include what is Lovecraft's most sprawling work at 75 000 words: A Description of the Town of Quebeck, in New France, Lately Added to His Britannick Majesty's Dominions. Whew, what a title! ...
I kept getting a FORBIDDEN error msg when I visited the site. This is rather amusingly ironic, but also very frustrating: thank God for the Wayback Machine.
HP Lovecraft
The Mound by HP Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop
It is only within the last few years that most people have stopped thinking of the West as a new land. I suppose the idea gained ground because our own especial civilisation happens to be new there; but nowadays explorers are digging beneath the surface and bringing up whole chapters of life that rose and fell among these plains and mountains before recorded history began. We think nothing of a Pueblo village 2500 years old, and it hardly jolts us when archaeologists put the sub-pedregal culture of Mexico back to 17,000 or 18,000 B. C. We hear rumours of still older things, too—of primitive man contemporaneous with extinct animals and known today only through a few fragmentary bones and artifacts—so that the idea of newness is fading out pretty rapidly. Europeans usually catch the sense of immemorial ancientness and deep deposits from successive life-streams better than we do. Only a couple of years ago a British author spoke of Arizona as a “moon-dim region, very lovely in its way, and stark and old—an ancient, lonely land”.
Yet I believe I have a deeper sense of the stupefying—almost horrible—ancientness of the West than any European. It all comes from an incident that happened in 1928; an incident which I’d greatly like to dismiss as three-quarters hallucination, but which has left such a frightfully firm impression on my memory that I can’t put it off very easily. It was in Oklahoma, where my work as an American Indian ethnologist constantly takes me and where I had come upon some devilishly strange and disconcerting matters before. Make no mistake—Oklahoma is a lot more than a mere pioneers’ and promoters’ frontier. There are old, old tribes with old, old memories there; and when the tom-toms beat ceaselessly over brooding plains in the autumn the spirits of men are brought dangerously close to primal, whispered things. I am white and Eastern enough myself, but anybody is welcome to know that the rites of Yig, Father of Snakes, can get a real shudder out of me any day. I have heard and seen too much to be “sophisticated” in such matters. And so it is with this incident of 1928. I’d like to laugh it off—but I can’t. ...
Yet I believe I have a deeper sense of the stupefying—almost horrible—ancientness of the West than any European. It all comes from an incident that happened in 1928; an incident which I’d greatly like to dismiss as three-quarters hallucination, but which has left such a frightfully firm impression on my memory that I can’t put it off very easily. It was in Oklahoma, where my work as an American Indian ethnologist constantly takes me and where I had come upon some devilishly strange and disconcerting matters before. Make no mistake—Oklahoma is a lot more than a mere pioneers’ and promoters’ frontier. There are old, old tribes with old, old memories there; and when the tom-toms beat ceaselessly over brooding plains in the autumn the spirits of men are brought dangerously close to primal, whispered things. I am white and Eastern enough myself, but anybody is welcome to know that the rites of Yig, Father of Snakes, can get a real shudder out of me any day. I have heard and seen too much to be “sophisticated” in such matters. And so it is with this incident of 1928. I’d like to laugh it off—but I can’t. ...
Common Kestrel [AKA Chicken Hawk] pursuing a Barn Owl
PUFFING!!!!
Pheasant
Reed Warbler drinking
Ta much, dear Anneliese, who sent this gallery Puffin-first.
... The definitive images, of course, demonstrating the heroic role played by tea in the second world war were those photographs of the air-raid wardens and firemen during the Blitz drinking tea from mugs in the aftermath of bombing raids. Buildings lay in ruins, rubble filled the streets – but the spirit of the Londoners was above all that, and they drank tea to show that they were not going to be cowed by the bombers. Indeed, there were people whose job it was to make tea for the firefighters and the wardens; these tea ladies were brave people, heroines really, and the tea usually got through, no matter what was happening.
It is interesting to read the memoirs of people caught up in those events. They frequently mention how important their mug of tea was, how it calmed and reassured them. Tea represented normality; it represented the continuity of ordinary life in the face of appalling and frightening odds. Even today, the response of many people to a difficult situation is to make tea. To say "I'll put the kettle on" is not necessarily going to solve any problems, but is a comforting thing to say. And if there's nothing else one can say or do, to make tea is at least to do something. Indeed, making tea is vaguely therapeutic; the mind is taken off the crisis and it gives one time to think about things and set them in perspective.
There is also a sense in which making tea for another is a communicative business. If I make a cup of tea for you, I am doing something that we both see as bringing us together. Making tea is a social act. That sounds like pretentious theorising, but it really is true. There surely cannot be a culture in the world where the act of sitting down to eat with another does not mean something in relationship terms. The same can be said for giving somebody something to drink, whether it is buying another a drink in the pub or making him or her a cup of tea. By drinking tea together, particularly where there is at least some level of ritual involved, we share something between us and become closer, even if only for that short time. ...
...At first, unsweetened tea tasted uncomfortably bitter. Then it started to taste more palatable, and finally it tasted of tea rather than sugar. After that there was no going back, and within a very short time I had the zeal of the convert. "How can you possibly put sugar in your tea?" is a wonderfully superior question to ask of others. That one did the same thing oneself for 20 years or so is beside the point. ...
It is interesting to read the memoirs of people caught up in those events. They frequently mention how important their mug of tea was, how it calmed and reassured them. Tea represented normality; it represented the continuity of ordinary life in the face of appalling and frightening odds. Even today, the response of many people to a difficult situation is to make tea. To say "I'll put the kettle on" is not necessarily going to solve any problems, but is a comforting thing to say. And if there's nothing else one can say or do, to make tea is at least to do something. Indeed, making tea is vaguely therapeutic; the mind is taken off the crisis and it gives one time to think about things and set them in perspective.
There is also a sense in which making tea for another is a communicative business. If I make a cup of tea for you, I am doing something that we both see as bringing us together. Making tea is a social act. That sounds like pretentious theorising, but it really is true. There surely cannot be a culture in the world where the act of sitting down to eat with another does not mean something in relationship terms. The same can be said for giving somebody something to drink, whether it is buying another a drink in the pub or making him or her a cup of tea. By drinking tea together, particularly where there is at least some level of ritual involved, we share something between us and become closer, even if only for that short time. ...
...At first, unsweetened tea tasted uncomfortably bitter. Then it started to taste more palatable, and finally it tasted of tea rather than sugar. After that there was no going back, and within a very short time I had the zeal of the convert. "How can you possibly put sugar in your tea?" is a wonderfully superior question to ask of others. That one did the same thing oneself for 20 years or so is beside the point. ...
The site design is profoundly bad, but...it's The Stig FFS!
On gospel, Abba and the death of the record: an audience with Brian Eno
He's been a Roxy original, the inventor of 'ambient', Bowie's muse, the brain in Talking Heads and U2's 'fifth man'. Now Eno tells us where he's heading next
Paul Morley
Sunday 17 January 2010
... On the end of an era
"I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time. I always knew it would run out sooner or later. It couldn't last, and now it's running out. I don't particularly care that it is and like the way things are going. The record age was just a blip. It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you'd be stuck with your whale blubber. Sorry mate – history's moving along. Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it."
He's been a Roxy original, the inventor of 'ambient', Bowie's muse, the brain in Talking Heads and U2's 'fifth man'. Now Eno tells us where he's heading next
Paul Morley
Sunday 17 January 2010
... On the end of an era
"I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time. I always knew it would run out sooner or later. It couldn't last, and now it's running out. I don't particularly care that it is and like the way things are going. The record age was just a blip. It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you'd be stuck with your whale blubber. Sorry mate – history's moving along. Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it."
Rust Heinz, heir to the Heinz 57 ketchup fortune, was a young designer who had the means to put into reality his car of tomorrow, better known as the Phantom Corsair. Based on a 1936 Cord Westchester Sedan with a Granatelli modified 192 horsepower supercharged Cord motor, the body was constructed by Maurice Schwartz of Bohman & Schwartz Body Company. Designed in a wind tunnel, the radical fastback body incorporates modern items such as a climate control system and crash padded dash. It starred in the 1938 movie The Young at Heart where it was called the 'Flying Wombat.' Originally intended to be produced in limited numbers for $12,500, the project ended with Heinz' untimely death in 1939. ...
The 1938 Phantom Corsair
THE MAN
The time: 1938. America was emerging from the Great Depression, war was looming on the horizon, and the promise of a bright tomorrow seemed a long way off. Popular design of the time was the "Streamline" look. Architecture, furniture, appliances and cars carried this smooth, flowing design philosophy. The Chrysler Airflow and Pierce Silver Arrow are two of the more familiar examples of this idea. But even these automobiles compromised somewhere in their design. Fenders may have been faired into bodies; noses rounded off. No car from this era carried a truly organic body design. Until the Phantom Corsair. No badges, extra trim, or frills. Rounded contours flow undisturbed from nose to tail, with only headlight and bumper protrusions as a necessity.
It's creator, Rust Heinz, the second son of H.J. Heinz of Pittsburgh, PA, owner of the Heinz condiment empire, knew well how to enjoy financial freedom. He designed and raced motorboats, knew the right people, and attended Choate, Andover, and Yale, majoring in naval architecture. In Pasadena, CA, Heinz collaborated with Christian Bohman and Maurice Schwartz, proprietors of a successful custom body shop. With their help, he began designing his dream car. Though his family in PA was reluctant to finance his vision, Heinz's aunt, a Pasadena resident,was willing to pay the bills. In less than a year, the vision became a reality in the Corsair. After touting the Corsair in brochures for a year, and shortly after showing it at the New York World's Fair in 1939, Heinz died from injuries sustained in a road accident. ...
THE MAN
The time: 1938. America was emerging from the Great Depression, war was looming on the horizon, and the promise of a bright tomorrow seemed a long way off. Popular design of the time was the "Streamline" look. Architecture, furniture, appliances and cars carried this smooth, flowing design philosophy. The Chrysler Airflow and Pierce Silver Arrow are two of the more familiar examples of this idea. But even these automobiles compromised somewhere in their design. Fenders may have been faired into bodies; noses rounded off. No car from this era carried a truly organic body design. Until the Phantom Corsair. No badges, extra trim, or frills. Rounded contours flow undisturbed from nose to tail, with only headlight and bumper protrusions as a necessity.
It's creator, Rust Heinz, the second son of H.J. Heinz of Pittsburgh, PA, owner of the Heinz condiment empire, knew well how to enjoy financial freedom. He designed and raced motorboats, knew the right people, and attended Choate, Andover, and Yale, majoring in naval architecture. In Pasadena, CA, Heinz collaborated with Christian Bohman and Maurice Schwartz, proprietors of a successful custom body shop. With their help, he began designing his dream car. Though his family in PA was reluctant to finance his vision, Heinz's aunt, a Pasadena resident,was willing to pay the bills. In less than a year, the vision became a reality in the Corsair. After touting the Corsair in brochures for a year, and shortly after showing it at the New York World's Fair in 1939, Heinz died from injuries sustained in a road accident. ...
I worship at its Lotus wheels.
Banksy film set for Sundance premiere
Banksy describes his first film Exit Through the Gift Shop as 'the story of how one man set out to film the unfilmable - and failed'
Esther Addley
Thursday 21 January 2010
He is better known for his work on brick, plasterwork, portable toilets and even, on one memorable occasion, an elephant. But until now the artist known as Banksy, in creating his satirical artworks, has largely stuck to the old-fashioned mediums of painting and sculpture.
Today, however, it emerged that the graffiti artist and cultural bête noire has branched into filmmaking, with the release of what is described as "the worlds first street art disaster movie".
Exit Through the Gift Shop, which will have its international premiere on Sunday at the Sundance film festival, is described by its creator as "the story of how one man set out to film the unfilmable - and failed", and by the festival's organisers as "an amazing ride, a cautionary modern fairy tale ... with bolt cutters".
Banksy's spokeswoman, Jo Brooks, declined to elaborate much further on the plot of the 89-minute feature film, though the festival's website helpfully provides some details, describing it as the account of what happened when a French filmmaker, Terry Guetta, set out to record the "secretive world" of street art, only to meet Banksy, at which point "things took a bizarre turn".
Pressed for more detail, the artist himself offered the following, hardly illuminating, elaboration through his publicist: "It's a film about a man who tried to make a film about me. Everything in it is true, especially the bits where we all lie." ...
Banksy describes his first film Exit Through the Gift Shop as 'the story of how one man set out to film the unfilmable - and failed'
Esther Addley
Thursday 21 January 2010
He is better known for his work on brick, plasterwork, portable toilets and even, on one memorable occasion, an elephant. But until now the artist known as Banksy, in creating his satirical artworks, has largely stuck to the old-fashioned mediums of painting and sculpture.
Today, however, it emerged that the graffiti artist and cultural bête noire has branched into filmmaking, with the release of what is described as "the worlds first street art disaster movie".
Exit Through the Gift Shop, which will have its international premiere on Sunday at the Sundance film festival, is described by its creator as "the story of how one man set out to film the unfilmable - and failed", and by the festival's organisers as "an amazing ride, a cautionary modern fairy tale ... with bolt cutters".
Banksy's spokeswoman, Jo Brooks, declined to elaborate much further on the plot of the 89-minute feature film, though the festival's website helpfully provides some details, describing it as the account of what happened when a French filmmaker, Terry Guetta, set out to record the "secretive world" of street art, only to meet Banksy, at which point "things took a bizarre turn".
Pressed for more detail, the artist himself offered the following, hardly illuminating, elaboration through his publicist: "It's a film about a man who tried to make a film about me. Everything in it is true, especially the bits where we all lie." ...
... On its release in 1998, The Big Lebowski was not one of the Coens' more successful films. The convoluted film noir pastiche was built around the amiably flaky Venice Beach dropout – and singularly ill-equipped ad-hoc private eye – known as the Dude (Jeff Bridges). A deadbeat and a loser to the square community, he nevertheless maintains a certain baked poise, consistently eschewing conflict and self-advancement to cultivate recreation and friendship. "I won't say [he's] a hero," hedges the Stranger, the film's bumbling cowboy narrator, at its opening, "because what's a hero? But sometimes there's a man who, well, he's the man for his time and place."
In the decade since its underwhelming debut, The Big Lebowski has become the scripture of the new century's most devout movie cult and the Dude its godhead, his words respectfully cited by the movie's fans, or Achievers. Such quotation is, of course, is a hallmark of movie cultdom but even by such reverent standards, appreciation of Lebowski has been conspicuously religiose.
It perhaps helps that matters of religious observance are attended to, grotesquely, in the film itself. Walter (John Goodman), the Dude's apoplectic bowling partner, cleaves fiercely to the tenets of his adopted Judaism, resulting in a dogmatic contretemps when a game is scheduled for a Saturday. "I don't roll on Shabbas!" Walter barks, to the snorting derision of his oleaginous competitor Jesus Quintana (John Turturro), who offers a foul-mouthed recapitulation of Christ's rejection of orthodoxy: "What's this 'day of rest' shit? What's this bullshit? I don't fucking care! It don't matter to Jesus!"
The bowling lane is not, it seems, as debased a site for such theological debate as one might suppose. In "Fuck It, Let's Go Bowling": The Cultural Connotations of Bowling in The Big Lebowski – one of the 21 scholarly articles about the movie collected in The Year's Work in Lebowski Studies, recently published by Indiana University Press – Bradley D Clissold points out the sport's origins in Kegelspiel, the German game in which pins stood for heathens, the ball righteousness. Clissold reports that Luther had a lane at home and has photographed a statue in Newfoundland that looks distinctly like Christ holding a bowling ball.
Lanes are now congregation sites for members of the Lebowski Fest movement, a circuit of events grounded in the Dude-approved sacraments of bowling, smoking pot and drinking White Russians. Soon after its establishment in 2002, photographs began to appear of Achievers holding chapter-and-verse signs referring to fest dates – for instance, "Lebowski 6:19". It's also not unusual to find festgoers dressed as Moses or the Pope – neither appears on screen but both are mentioned in dialogue. Many fest costumes are exegetical like that. ...
In the decade since its underwhelming debut, The Big Lebowski has become the scripture of the new century's most devout movie cult and the Dude its godhead, his words respectfully cited by the movie's fans, or Achievers. Such quotation is, of course, is a hallmark of movie cultdom but even by such reverent standards, appreciation of Lebowski has been conspicuously religiose.
It perhaps helps that matters of religious observance are attended to, grotesquely, in the film itself. Walter (John Goodman), the Dude's apoplectic bowling partner, cleaves fiercely to the tenets of his adopted Judaism, resulting in a dogmatic contretemps when a game is scheduled for a Saturday. "I don't roll on Shabbas!" Walter barks, to the snorting derision of his oleaginous competitor Jesus Quintana (John Turturro), who offers a foul-mouthed recapitulation of Christ's rejection of orthodoxy: "What's this 'day of rest' shit? What's this bullshit? I don't fucking care! It don't matter to Jesus!"
The bowling lane is not, it seems, as debased a site for such theological debate as one might suppose. In "Fuck It, Let's Go Bowling": The Cultural Connotations of Bowling in The Big Lebowski – one of the 21 scholarly articles about the movie collected in The Year's Work in Lebowski Studies, recently published by Indiana University Press – Bradley D Clissold points out the sport's origins in Kegelspiel, the German game in which pins stood for heathens, the ball righteousness. Clissold reports that Luther had a lane at home and has photographed a statue in Newfoundland that looks distinctly like Christ holding a bowling ball.
Lanes are now congregation sites for members of the Lebowski Fest movement, a circuit of events grounded in the Dude-approved sacraments of bowling, smoking pot and drinking White Russians. Soon after its establishment in 2002, photographs began to appear of Achievers holding chapter-and-verse signs referring to fest dates – for instance, "Lebowski 6:19". It's also not unusual to find festgoers dressed as Moses or the Pope – neither appears on screen but both are mentioned in dialogue. Many fest costumes are exegetical like that. ...
... "Quentin provided an impetus for us to be ourselves, living without apology. He ran away from what was bad and became the talk of the town." ...
One of the planet's best roads.
In the world of global warming very important to save all animals that live on Earth. Some companies even donate money to this target and more one way to pay attention of the peoples - to create USB drives in shape as animals. For example Panda USB drive, Elephant USB drive or USB Zoo series. Today we join new “friend“ – fun Lizard USB drive. Verily, lizard it’s not whale or other rare animal, but we must to save every bug in order to leave the beautiful World to the descendants.
... "Had it in my head for long?" said Raffles, as we strolled through the streets towards dawn, for all the world as though we were returning from a dance. "No, Bunny, I never thought of it till I saw that upper part empty about a month ago, and bought a few things in the shop to get the lie of the land. That reminds me that I never paid for them; but, by Jove, I will tomorrow, and if that isn't poetic justice, what is? One visit showed me the possibilities of the place, but a second convinced me of its impossibilities without a pal. So I had practically given up the idea, when you came along on the very night and in the very plight for it! But here we are at the Albany, and I hope there's some fire left; for I don't know how you feel, Bunny, but for my part I'm as cold as Keats's owl."
He could think of Keats on his way from a felony! He could hanker for his fireside like another! Floodgates were loosed within me, and the plain English of our adventure rushed over me as cold as ice. Raffles was a burglar. I had helped him to commit one burglary, therefore I was a burglar, too. Yet I could stand and warm myself by his fire, and watch him empty his pockets, as though we had done nothing wonderful or wicked!
My blood froze. My heart sickened. My brain whirled. How I had liked this villain! How I had admired him! Now my liking and admiration must turn to loathing and disgust. I waited for the change. I longed to feel it in my heart. But — I longed and I waited in vain!
I saw that he was emptying his pockets; the table sparkled with their hoard. Rings by the dozen, diamonds by the score; bracelets, pendants, aigrettes, necklaces, pearls, rubies, amethysts, sapphires; and diamonds always, diamonds in everything, flashing bayonets of light, dazzling me — blinding me — making me disbelieve because I could no longer forget. Last of all came no gem, indeed, but my own revolver from an inner pocket. And that struck a chord. I suppose I said something — my hand flew out. I can see Raffles now, as he looked at me once more with a high arch over each clear eye. I can see him pick out the cartridges with his quiet, cynical smile, before he would give me my pistol back again.
"You mayn't believe it, Bunny," said he, "but I never carried a loaded one before. On the whole I think it gives one confidence. Yet it would be very awkward if anything went wrong; one might use it, and that's not the game at all, though I have often thought that the murderer who has just done the trick must have great sensations before things get too hot for him. Don't look so distressed, my dear chap. I've never had those sensations, and I don't suppose I ever shall."
"But this much you have done before?" said I hoarsely.
"Before? My dear Bunny, you offend me! Did it look like a first attempt? Of course I have done it before."
"Often?"
"Well — no! Not often enough to destroy the charm, at all events; never, as a matter of fact, unless I'm cursedly hard up. Did you hear about the Thimbleby diamonds? Well, that was the last time — and a poor lot of paste they were. Then there was the little business of the Dormer house-boat at Henley last year. That was mine also — such as it was. I've never brought off a really big coup yet; when I do I shall chuck it up."
Yes, I remembered both cases very well. To think that he was their author! It was incredible, outrageous, inconceivable. Then my eyes would fall upon the table, twinkling and glittering in a hundred places, and incredulity was at an end.
"How came you to begin?" I asked, as curiosity overcame mere wonder, and a fascination for his career gradually wove itself into my fascination for the man.
"Ah! that's a long story," said Raffles. "It was in the Colonies, when I was out there playing cricket. It's too long a story to tell you now, but I was in much the same fix that you were in tonight, and it was my only way out. I never meant it for anything more; but I'd tasted blood, and it was all over with me. Why should I work when I could steal? Why settle down to some humdrum uncongenial billet, when excitement, romance, danger and a decent living were all going begging together? Of course it's very wrong, but we can't all be moralists, and the distribution of wealth is very wrong to begin with. Besides, you're not at it all the time. I'm sick of quoting Gilbert's lines to myself, but they're profoundly true. I only wonder if you'll like the life as much as I do!"
"Like it?" I cried out. "Not I! It's no life for me. Once is enough!"
"You wouldn't give me a hand another time?"
"Don't ask me, Raffles. Don't ask me, for God's sake!"
"Yet you said you would do anything for me! You asked me to name my crime! But I knew at the time you didn't mean it; you didn't go back on me tonight, and that ought to satisfy me, goodness knows! I suppose I'm ungrateful, and unreasonable, and all that. I ought to let it end at this. But you're the very man for me, Bunny, the — very — man! Just think how we got through tonight. Not a scratch — not a hitch! There's nothing very terrible in it, you see; there never would be, while we worked together."
He was standing in front of me with a hand on either shoulder; he was smiling as he knew so well how to smile. I turned on my heel, planted my elbows on the chimney-piece, and my burning head between my hands. Next instant a still heartier hand had fallen on my back.
"All right, my boy! You are quite right and I'm worse than wrong. I'll never ask it again. Go, if you want to, and come again about mid-day for the cash. There was no bargain; but, of course, I'll get you out of your scrape — especially after the way you've stood by me tonight."
I was round again with my blood on fire.
"I'll do it again," I said, through my teeth.
He shook his head. "Not you," he said, smiling quite good-humoredly on my insane enthusiasm.
"I will," I cried with an oath. "I'll lend you a hand as often as you like! What does it matter now? I've been in it once. I'll be in it again. I've gone to the devil anyhow. I can't go back, and wouldn't if I could. Nothing matters another rap! When you want me, I'm your man!"
And that is how Raffles and I joined felonious forces on the Ides of March.
He could think of Keats on his way from a felony! He could hanker for his fireside like another! Floodgates were loosed within me, and the plain English of our adventure rushed over me as cold as ice. Raffles was a burglar. I had helped him to commit one burglary, therefore I was a burglar, too. Yet I could stand and warm myself by his fire, and watch him empty his pockets, as though we had done nothing wonderful or wicked!
My blood froze. My heart sickened. My brain whirled. How I had liked this villain! How I had admired him! Now my liking and admiration must turn to loathing and disgust. I waited for the change. I longed to feel it in my heart. But — I longed and I waited in vain!
I saw that he was emptying his pockets; the table sparkled with their hoard. Rings by the dozen, diamonds by the score; bracelets, pendants, aigrettes, necklaces, pearls, rubies, amethysts, sapphires; and diamonds always, diamonds in everything, flashing bayonets of light, dazzling me — blinding me — making me disbelieve because I could no longer forget. Last of all came no gem, indeed, but my own revolver from an inner pocket. And that struck a chord. I suppose I said something — my hand flew out. I can see Raffles now, as he looked at me once more with a high arch over each clear eye. I can see him pick out the cartridges with his quiet, cynical smile, before he would give me my pistol back again.
"You mayn't believe it, Bunny," said he, "but I never carried a loaded one before. On the whole I think it gives one confidence. Yet it would be very awkward if anything went wrong; one might use it, and that's not the game at all, though I have often thought that the murderer who has just done the trick must have great sensations before things get too hot for him. Don't look so distressed, my dear chap. I've never had those sensations, and I don't suppose I ever shall."
"But this much you have done before?" said I hoarsely.
"Before? My dear Bunny, you offend me! Did it look like a first attempt? Of course I have done it before."
"Often?"
"Well — no! Not often enough to destroy the charm, at all events; never, as a matter of fact, unless I'm cursedly hard up. Did you hear about the Thimbleby diamonds? Well, that was the last time — and a poor lot of paste they were. Then there was the little business of the Dormer house-boat at Henley last year. That was mine also — such as it was. I've never brought off a really big coup yet; when I do I shall chuck it up."
Yes, I remembered both cases very well. To think that he was their author! It was incredible, outrageous, inconceivable. Then my eyes would fall upon the table, twinkling and glittering in a hundred places, and incredulity was at an end.
"How came you to begin?" I asked, as curiosity overcame mere wonder, and a fascination for his career gradually wove itself into my fascination for the man.
"Ah! that's a long story," said Raffles. "It was in the Colonies, when I was out there playing cricket. It's too long a story to tell you now, but I was in much the same fix that you were in tonight, and it was my only way out. I never meant it for anything more; but I'd tasted blood, and it was all over with me. Why should I work when I could steal? Why settle down to some humdrum uncongenial billet, when excitement, romance, danger and a decent living were all going begging together? Of course it's very wrong, but we can't all be moralists, and the distribution of wealth is very wrong to begin with. Besides, you're not at it all the time. I'm sick of quoting Gilbert's lines to myself, but they're profoundly true. I only wonder if you'll like the life as much as I do!"
"Like it?" I cried out. "Not I! It's no life for me. Once is enough!"
"You wouldn't give me a hand another time?"
"Don't ask me, Raffles. Don't ask me, for God's sake!"
"Yet you said you would do anything for me! You asked me to name my crime! But I knew at the time you didn't mean it; you didn't go back on me tonight, and that ought to satisfy me, goodness knows! I suppose I'm ungrateful, and unreasonable, and all that. I ought to let it end at this. But you're the very man for me, Bunny, the — very — man! Just think how we got through tonight. Not a scratch — not a hitch! There's nothing very terrible in it, you see; there never would be, while we worked together."
He was standing in front of me with a hand on either shoulder; he was smiling as he knew so well how to smile. I turned on my heel, planted my elbows on the chimney-piece, and my burning head between my hands. Next instant a still heartier hand had fallen on my back.
"All right, my boy! You are quite right and I'm worse than wrong. I'll never ask it again. Go, if you want to, and come again about mid-day for the cash. There was no bargain; but, of course, I'll get you out of your scrape — especially after the way you've stood by me tonight."
I was round again with my blood on fire.
"I'll do it again," I said, through my teeth.
He shook his head. "Not you," he said, smiling quite good-humoredly on my insane enthusiasm.
"I will," I cried with an oath. "I'll lend you a hand as often as you like! What does it matter now? I've been in it once. I'll be in it again. I've gone to the devil anyhow. I can't go back, and wouldn't if I could. Nothing matters another rap! When you want me, I'm your man!"
And that is how Raffles and I joined felonious forces on the Ides of March.
We’re four rows from the front of the MEN Arena, Manchester. With 13,000 people sitting behind us, these are pretty much the best seats in the house — yet, still: we can’t see Eddie Izzard’s eyes.
Well, more specifically, there’s no time to look at Eddie Izzard’s eyes while he’s humming and buzzing across the stage, like some super-bright sunshine kid in full-on “delight” mode. You have time only to register his grin — like a predatory Cheshire cat — as the characters fall out of his one-man phantasmagorical ensemble pieces.
Here comes a traumatised squirrel from Brooklyn; a raptor in a pork-pie hat being pulled over for speeding; a Persian soldier very slowly impaling himself on Spartan spears at Thermopylae. Caring sharks. An entire swarm of bees.
You simply presume that Izzard’s eyes are twinkly, warm, Father Christmas-style eyes. You know what I mean. Tom Hanksy. Like the dog you loved the most from your childhood.
So the jolt when you meet him in the flesh is all the more intense.
“Hello,” he says, at the aftershow, appearing at your shoulder — and, up close, the eyes are glittery, hard; like a silver clockwork owl. The thumb-smeared kohl and eyeliner — sigils of glamour and possibly decadence — merely underline how ferociously present he is. He has eyes like guns. ...
Well, more specifically, there’s no time to look at Eddie Izzard’s eyes while he’s humming and buzzing across the stage, like some super-bright sunshine kid in full-on “delight” mode. You have time only to register his grin — like a predatory Cheshire cat — as the characters fall out of his one-man phantasmagorical ensemble pieces.
Here comes a traumatised squirrel from Brooklyn; a raptor in a pork-pie hat being pulled over for speeding; a Persian soldier very slowly impaling himself on Spartan spears at Thermopylae. Caring sharks. An entire swarm of bees.
You simply presume that Izzard’s eyes are twinkly, warm, Father Christmas-style eyes. You know what I mean. Tom Hanksy. Like the dog you loved the most from your childhood.
So the jolt when you meet him in the flesh is all the more intense.
“Hello,” he says, at the aftershow, appearing at your shoulder — and, up close, the eyes are glittery, hard; like a silver clockwork owl. The thumb-smeared kohl and eyeliner — sigils of glamour and possibly decadence — merely underline how ferociously present he is. He has eyes like guns. ...
... But there was a record called Raw Power. And, yes, Ron played on the record and he played magnificently. He would tell me many, many times — he would call me in his last few years, late at night, at 3 or 4 in the morning, just to let me know, "You know, Jim, I really am my own favorite bass player." [laughs] He loved to play the bass. He loved his own bass playing. And anyone who knows music well or even people who don't but who have a good ear can immediately pick out what his bass playing on that record did for James' guitar playing. Because James does not sound as good without those parts. And Ron wrote every damn bass part on that record. You know, once rock 'n' roll put on cowboy boots, the bass player got this quote-unquote "demoted" position. Which is completely bullshit. Complete bullshit. But you do get a lot of these guys, they put one finger on the thing and string along on the riff — dum, dum, dum — and that's it. But that's not what Ron did. The patterns and the nimbleness, the way he played it, the way his tonality complements the tonality of the guitar and the brutality of the drums. It's an incredible achievement. It's in a direct line from Bill Wyman and Dick Taylor, people like that. Also Paul Samwell-Smith from the Yardbirds. And before them, from the great blues and early rock guitar players — all those licks, like Bo Diddley licks or Jerome Arnold from Billy Boy Arnold. Billy Boy was the drummer; Jerome Arnold was the bass player in the Butterfield Band. So, no, I don't buy that. Raw Power is a particular thing that came out of the Stooges. If somebody doesn't like us, it's a free world, and they can tell the world. But I'll play whatever damn gig I think is good and I want to and I'll answer you right back with some music, you know? ...
Sexy, vast, eggy popover sort of thing.
C'est magnifique.
C'est magnifique.
October 23. 2009 2:47AM
Comedy's pie-faced Soupy Sales dies
Staff and wire reports
Detroit -- Soupy Sales, the rubber-faced comedian whose anything-for-a-chuckle career was built on 20,000 pies to the face and 5,000 live TV appearances across a half-century of laughs, died Thursday. He was 83.
Sales died at Calvary Hospice in Bronx, New York, said his ex-manager and longtime friend, Dave Usher. Sales had many health problems and entered the hospice last week, he said.
At the peak of his fame in the 1950s and '60s, Sales was one of the best-known faces in the nation, Usher said.
"President Eisenhower wouldn't have been noticed before him. He became that popular," Usher said, adding they sometimes had difficulty finding places where he wasn't recognized. "He could never eat a meal because people just slipped over to him ... for autographs. He had a magnetism that was unbelievable."
Many Metro Detroiters fondly recall his "Lunch with Soupy Sales" on WXYZ-TV, where the former radio disc jockey began his TV career in the 1950s.
Entertaining with White Fang, Black Tooth, Pookie the Lion and other characters that endeared him both to adults and children, Sales became an icon.
"He had his little world of characters and lived in that during lunchtime," Usher said. "People remembered if they did the Soupy Shuffle, a dance he made up... He was well known for it."
The Detroit Historical Museum featured Sales and others in its recent "Detroit's Classic TV Personalities" exhibit, which ran through Labor Day.
"It was a popular exhibit," said Bob Sadler, the museum's director of public and external relations, "and certainly people remember fondly their memories of Soupy Sales. He had a special place in people's minds and hearts. People grew up with Soupy. They went home and had lunch with Soupy." Sadler said in a previous job, he even had an assistant who showed him the "Soupy Shuffle."
He added noted that local television "is not the same as it was in that era."
"That was an era when local stations produced hours and hours of local programming. They don't do that anymore," Sadler said.
Sales' pie-throwing schtick became his trademark, and celebrities queued up to take one on the chin alongside the comic. During the early 1960s, stars like Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis and Shirley MacLaine got their just desserts side-by-side with the comedian on his television show.
"I'll probably be remembered for the pies, and that's all right," he said in a 1985 interview. "That's fine and dandy." ...
May you have great and fortunate rebirths, Soupy. We love you.
Comedy's pie-faced Soupy Sales dies
Staff and wire reports
Detroit -- Soupy Sales, the rubber-faced comedian whose anything-for-a-chuckle career was built on 20,000 pies to the face and 5,000 live TV appearances across a half-century of laughs, died Thursday. He was 83.
Sales died at Calvary Hospice in Bronx, New York, said his ex-manager and longtime friend, Dave Usher. Sales had many health problems and entered the hospice last week, he said.
At the peak of his fame in the 1950s and '60s, Sales was one of the best-known faces in the nation, Usher said.
"President Eisenhower wouldn't have been noticed before him. He became that popular," Usher said, adding they sometimes had difficulty finding places where he wasn't recognized. "He could never eat a meal because people just slipped over to him ... for autographs. He had a magnetism that was unbelievable."
Many Metro Detroiters fondly recall his "Lunch with Soupy Sales" on WXYZ-TV, where the former radio disc jockey began his TV career in the 1950s.
Entertaining with White Fang, Black Tooth, Pookie the Lion and other characters that endeared him both to adults and children, Sales became an icon.
"He had his little world of characters and lived in that during lunchtime," Usher said. "People remembered if they did the Soupy Shuffle, a dance he made up... He was well known for it."
The Detroit Historical Museum featured Sales and others in its recent "Detroit's Classic TV Personalities" exhibit, which ran through Labor Day.
"It was a popular exhibit," said Bob Sadler, the museum's director of public and external relations, "and certainly people remember fondly their memories of Soupy Sales. He had a special place in people's minds and hearts. People grew up with Soupy. They went home and had lunch with Soupy." Sadler said in a previous job, he even had an assistant who showed him the "Soupy Shuffle."
He added noted that local television "is not the same as it was in that era."
"That was an era when local stations produced hours and hours of local programming. They don't do that anymore," Sadler said.
Sales' pie-throwing schtick became his trademark, and celebrities queued up to take one on the chin alongside the comic. During the early 1960s, stars like Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis and Shirley MacLaine got their just desserts side-by-side with the comedian on his television show.
"I'll probably be remembered for the pies, and that's all right," he said in a 1985 interview. "That's fine and dandy." ...
May you have great and fortunate rebirths, Soupy. We love you.
... A testy Duke of Bedford asked him why he insisted on making his wife look like a lesbian, but Vidal didn’t think that his clients looked like lesbians. He thought they looked modern, liberated — which they were: liberated from the rollers, the perming, the setting, the back-combing, the huge dryers and the humungous output of aerosol particles that constituted a trip to the salon throughout the Fifties. Vidal, despite having trained with “Mr Teasy Weasy” himself, the great Raymond of Mayfair, had sensed, as a new decade dawned, that the days of teasing and weasing were numbered. The signs could be divined everywhere, even in architecture: “You had only to look at Mies’s [van der Rohe] Seagram [a 1957 New York skyscraper] or Breuer’s Whitney [the 1966 art museum, also in New York] to know.” Or, indeed, at those geometric Sixties clothes. He clipped 4ft from Nancy Kwan’s hair....
Free your head, free your mind, take half the time you once did getting ready, buy shampoo only once a year: cut off your hair.
Yes, I am disgusted that this page also features a link to a "Six steps to the beehive: this season's must-have hair" article. Fuck that teasy-weasy shit. Why be a slave, or look like one?
Free your head, free your mind, take half the time you once did getting ready, buy shampoo only once a year: cut off your hair.
Yes, I am disgusted that this page also features a link to a "Six steps to the beehive: this season's must-have hair" article. Fuck that teasy-weasy shit. Why be a slave, or look like one?
Cuzco Newsboy, 1948. The picture of a Mexican boy was one of the earliest photographs by Irving Penn, who started out in the art department at US Vogue. It is one of the lots being auctioned at Christie's New York on October 8. (All photographs courtesy of Christie's)
October 4, 2009
Top Gear in America's redneck country
Of all the hair-raising escapades in the show, being chased by murderous Alabamans was the scariest says presenter in new book
Richard Hammond
... “They’re comin’ up past here. We’re at the crossroads.” And: “I can see them here, too.” They were using their CB radios to track us. And I was suddenly very aware that television cameras and business cards would not protect us from guns.
I didn’t want to wake up tied to a tree, being invited to squeal like a little piggy for the entertainment of a 20-year-old psychopath in giant dungarees, with three teeth in his head and a bitter hatred of anyone who wasn’t also a 30-stone homophobic racist who shot at things he didn’t understand. ...
Top Gear in America's redneck country
Of all the hair-raising escapades in the show, being chased by murderous Alabamans was the scariest says presenter in new book
Richard Hammond
... “They’re comin’ up past here. We’re at the crossroads.” And: “I can see them here, too.” They were using their CB radios to track us. And I was suddenly very aware that television cameras and business cards would not protect us from guns.
I didn’t want to wake up tied to a tree, being invited to squeal like a little piggy for the entertainment of a 20-year-old psychopath in giant dungarees, with three teeth in his head and a bitter hatred of anyone who wasn’t also a 30-stone homophobic racist who shot at things he didn’t understand. ...
September 30, 2009
Gore Vidal: ‘We’ll have a dictatorship soon in the US’
The grand old man of letters Gore Vidal claims America is ‘rotting away’ — and don’t expect Barack Obama to save it
... His voice strengthens. “One thing I have hated all my life are LIARS [he says that with bristling anger] and I live in a nation of them. It was not always the case. I don’t demand honour, that can be lies too. I don’t say there was a golden age, but there was an age of general intelligence. We had a watchdog, the media.” The media is too supine? “Would that it was. They’re busy preparing us for an Iranian war.” He retains some optimism about Obama “because he doesn’t lie. We know the fool from Arizona [as he calls John McCain] is a liar. We never got the real story of how McCain crashed his plane [in 1967 near Hanoi, North Vietnam] and was held captive.”
Vidal originally became pro-Obama because he grew up in “a black city” (meaning Washington), as well as being impressed by Obama’s intelligence. “But he believes the generals. Even Bush knew the way to win a general was to give him another star. Obama believes the Republican Party is a party when in fact it’s a mindset, like Hitler Youth, based on hatred — religious hatred, racial hatred. When you foreigners hear the word ‘conservative’ you think of kindly old men hunting foxes. They’re not, they’re fascists.” ...
Gore Vidal: ‘We’ll have a dictatorship soon in the US’
The grand old man of letters Gore Vidal claims America is ‘rotting away’ — and don’t expect Barack Obama to save it
... His voice strengthens. “One thing I have hated all my life are LIARS [he says that with bristling anger] and I live in a nation of them. It was not always the case. I don’t demand honour, that can be lies too. I don’t say there was a golden age, but there was an age of general intelligence. We had a watchdog, the media.” The media is too supine? “Would that it was. They’re busy preparing us for an Iranian war.” He retains some optimism about Obama “because he doesn’t lie. We know the fool from Arizona [as he calls John McCain] is a liar. We never got the real story of how McCain crashed his plane [in 1967 near Hanoi, North Vietnam] and was held captive.”
Vidal originally became pro-Obama because he grew up in “a black city” (meaning Washington), as well as being impressed by Obama’s intelligence. “But he believes the generals. Even Bush knew the way to win a general was to give him another star. Obama believes the Republican Party is a party when in fact it’s a mindset, like Hitler Youth, based on hatred — religious hatred, racial hatred. When you foreigners hear the word ‘conservative’ you think of kindly old men hunting foxes. They’re not, they’re fascists.” ...
It's not a leopard, it's a cheetah.