For everyone who picked the Dallas Mavericks in the “next to file for Chapter 11” pool, you were…half right.
You may be asking yourself, “Gee, I wonder who the Texas Rangers owe money to?”
(Hattip: Lawrence.)
Archive for the ‘Clippings’ Category
Chapter 11 watch.
Monday, May 24th, 2010Cavalier disregard.
Monday, May 24th, 2010The Cleveland Cavaliers have fired head coach Mike Brown, the 2009 NBA coach of the year, after five seasons.
Brown’s regular season record was 272-138, a .663 winning percentage that was the best in team history. Brown also set a team record for playoff wins, finishing 42-29.
One of the last of the good guys.
Monday, May 24th, 2010This has been covered elsewhere, but I would be remiss if I did not note the passing of Martin Gardner: author, polymath, long-time “Mathematical Games” columnist for Scientific American, and founding member of CSICOP.
I regret that Gardner died before I got a chance to shake his hand and say “Thank you.” But 95 years is a pretty good run, and his mind stayed sharp until the end (he has a new article in the latest Skeptical Inquirer).
I hope, wherever he is, he’s found a solution to all the mysteries he ever wondered about, and that he’s hoisting a pint with Lewis Carroll
Edited to add: CSICOP tribute, which was not up this morning. A nice tribute from Derek Lowe, and from the comments we learn of this item
Obit watch.
Friday, May 21st, 2010I wanted to call out this LAT obit for comedian Carla Zilbersmith because:
- It made me laugh.
- I hate baseball, too.
- It includes a “Citizen Kane” reference.
“Man, how exciting!”
Friday, May 21st, 2010That sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
There’s something about an art theft…
Thursday, May 20th, 2010…that I find simply irresistible. Call it the hopeless romantic in me. Or perhaps it is the youthful memories of all those movies and TV shows where the “bad” guys engaged in incredibly complicated high-tech schemes to steal diamonds or art or priceless artifacts from heavily guarded museums. (Of course, these days, art thefts involve less high-tech electronics and rappelling from the ceiling, and more brute force and ignorance. But that’s another rant.)
I’ve been tempted from time to time to purchase a bunch of prints of stolen artworks, put them in frames, and decorate my home with them.
Anyway:
In the interest of being a good citizen (think of this as sort of a “Crimewatch” thing), here’s links to images of the stolen works. Links open in a new window.
“Le pigeon aux petits-pois”, by Pablo Picasso.
“La Pastorale”, Henri Matisse.
”L’olivier pres de l’Estaque”, by Georges Braque.
“La femme a l’eventail”, by Amedeo Modigliani.
I believe this is “Nature-mort aux chandeliers”, by Fernand Leger. But I’m not 100% sure; the articles I’ve seen refer to the painting as “Still Life with Chandeliers” (plural), while this is “Still Life with a Chandelier.”
While I was working on this post, I see that the LAT put up a similar slide show; the Leger is missing from theirs.
Obit watch.
Thursday, May 20th, 2010Arakawa, of the team Arakawa and Gins, passed away on Tuesday at the age of 73.
I’ve previously linked to discussions and commentary about Arakawa and Gins. Briefly, they were conceptual artists who became obsessed with the idea that they could use architecture to stop or reverse the aging process.
Their most recent work, a house on Long Island, had a steeply sloped floor that threatened to send visitors hurtling into its kitchen. Called Bioscleave House (Lifespan Extending Villa), it featured more than three dozen paint colors; level changes meant to induce the sensation of being in two places at once; windows that seemed too high or too low; oddly angled light switches and outlets; and an absence of doors that would have permitted occupants even a modicum of privacy.
All of it was meant, the couple explained, to lead its users into a perpetually “tentative” relationship with their surroundings, and thereby keep them young.
Question for the masses.
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010By way of the FARK Showbiz tab:
How does an obscure Vegas magician get 54 MILLION dollars in debt?
I can sort of understand the $6+ million he owns to the Miracle Mile Shops; it sounds like he may have been four-walling the venue, but I wonder why they would have let him get that deep in the hole.
Harder for me to understand are the mobile home dealer he owes $5 million, and “businessman Steven Tebo in Boulder, Colo., and a company he is associated with, owed $30 million.” I’m guessing this is the Tebo in question, though he appears to spell his first name Stephen.
On the whole…
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010Art, damn it, art! watch (#9 in a series).
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010This is also the Torment Lawrence Watch.
LAT architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne reviews the new Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, located in Las Vegas and designed by Frank Gehry.
I was going to complain about the lack of photos in the article. Looking online, though, it doesn’t look like there are that many photos of the building itself elsewhere, either; I suspect there may be photography limits imposed by Gehry, the Clinic, or both.
Obit watch: May 18, 2010.
Tuesday, May 18th, 2010“Bud Mahurin was the only Air Force pilot to shoot down enemy aircraft in the European theater of operations and the Pacific and in Korea,” [Doug] Lantry [a historian at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Ohio] told the Los Angeles Times. “He was known as a very courageous, skilled and tenacious fighter pilot.”
…
His knowledge of the resistance made his potential capture in Europe too dangerous and he was grounded, but would fly again in the Phillipines and finished the war with over 20 aerial victories. His later service in the Korean War brought the number to 24.
I have not been able to find an obit online yet, but a reliable source emailed me that noted aviation writer Robert J. Serling has passed away. This seems to be confirmed by his memorial site and Wikipedia. I’m planning to update this post as I find out more information.
Edited to add: NYT obit here. Comments forthcoming later today or tonight.
Random notes: May 17, 2010.
Monday, May 17th, 2010So when Gourmet folded, lots of other magazines apparently thought, “Great! We’ll pick up their subscribers and advertisers!” Yeah, about that: not so much.
Half a year after Gourmet’s final issue, in November, the Gourmet readership and ad base seem to have largely vanished.
I didn’t get a chance to blog this on Friday, as I was distracted by other things, but: the City of Austin released the full, unredacted report on the Quintana shooting incident, blogged here previously. Link goes to a PDF version of the report on the Statesman website.
Edited to add: Also forgot to give the Houston Astros update on Friday, so let’s take care of that now: 13-24, .351 winning percentage, projected 56.862 wins over the 162 game season.
Catastrophe theory.
Sunday, May 16th, 2010LAT subhead: “Pulling off the climax of Richard Wagner’s ‘Götterdämmerung’ will be a technical feat at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.”
Apparently, they don’t mean it will be a technical feat if they manage to avoid killing the singers who play Siegfried and Brünnhilde, as you might have expected. Instead, the LAT piece concentrates on the mechanics involved in staging the climax of “Götterdämmerung”.
Is it just me, or does someone seem to have a Brecht obsession? And lightsabers? WTF?
Note to self: next time I put together a DVD order, I need to make sure to add Sing Faster – The Stagehands’ Ring Cycle
Götterdämmerung.
Thursday, May 13th, 2010I’ve been following the L.A. Opera’s staging of the Ring Cycle, and the associated “Ring Festival L.A.”, avidly. I’m excited by the idea of someone other than the usual suspects doing complete stagings of the operas, and I love the various events that have been arranged to go along with the staging.
But I wasn’t expecting Siegfried and Brunnhilde to openly revolt.
…
As the LAT notes, this kind of public criticism during a production is rare. I’ve never heard of any performer claiming that a staging is actually physically dangerous, as Watson and Treleaven are. This makes me wish I had money and time to fly out to L.A.
Watson currently is the reigning Brunnhilde at the Bayreuth Festival
That must be a fun fact to drop at parties. “What do you do for a living, dear?” “Oh, I’m the reigning Brunnhilde at Bayreuth.”