caveat:
it's not "all you want to drink"
it's "all you CAN drink" https://t.co/ZbOYkt17Tl— Dogs Don't Have Thumbs (@MorlockP) February 19, 2019
Obligatory:
Tweet of the day.
February 19th, 2019Obit watch: February 19, 2019.
February 19th, 2019George Mendonsa has passed away at the age of 95.
Mr. Mendonsa was the man in Alfred Eisenstaedt’s famous photo of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square after the Japanese surrender.
At least, maybe he was. Eisenstaedt didn’t record the names of the sailor or nurse, and at least three women and 11 men have claimed they were one or the other.
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Mr. Mendonsa eventually received recognition from most parties after extensive testing. Among other efforts, in 2005, Richard Benson, a photographer and printmaker at Yale, scrutinized the photographs in the early 1980s and determined that Mr. Mendonsa’s specific features, like a cyst on his left arm and a dark patch on his right, matched those of the sailor in the photo.
Mr. Mendonsa’s face was painstakingly 3-D mapped, then reverse-aged, to show that it matched the sailor’s in Eisenstaedt’s picture. Four years later Norman Sauer, a forensic anthropologist at Michigan State University, analyzed the photo and said he could not find a single inconsistency between Mr. Mendonsa’s face and the sailor’s.
Greta Friedman, who may have been the nurse, passed away in 2016.
Obit watch: February 18, 2019.
February 18th, 2019From the Department of Brief Round-Ups, a couple of obits that people mentioned to me over the weekend:
Lee Radziwill, sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
Patrick Caddell, prominent political pollster.
Betty Ballantine, wife of Ian Ballantine. The Ballantines basically pioneered paperbacks in this country:
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They left Penguin in 1945 to start Bantam Books, a reprint house. Having purchased the paperback rights for 20 hardcovers, their first round of titles included Mark Twain’s “Life on the Mississippi,” John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.”
They started Ballantine Books in 1952, publishing reprints as well as original works in paperback.
And:
While Ian Ballantine, who died in 1995, was the better known of the publishing duo, Betty Ballantine, who was British, quietly devoted herself to the editorial side. She nurtured authors, edited manuscripts and helped promote certain genres — Westerns, mysteries, romance novels and, perhaps most significantly, science fiction and fantasy.
Her love for that genre and knowledge of it helped put it on the map.
“She birthed the science fiction novel,” said Tad Wise, a nephew of Ms. Ballantine’s by marriage. With the help of Frederik Pohl, a science fiction writer, editor and agent, Mr. Wise said, “She sought out the pulp writers of science fiction who were writing for magazines and said she wanted them to write novels, and she would publish them.”
In doing so she helped a wave of science fiction and fantasy writers emerge. They included Joanna Russ, author of “The Female Man” (1975), a landmark novel of feminist science fiction, and Samuel R. Delany, whose “Dhalgren” (1975) was one of the best-selling science fiction novels of its time.
The Ballantines also published paperback fiction by Ray Bradbury, whose books include “The Martian Chronicles” and “Fahrenheit 451”; Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote “2001: A Space Odyssey”; and J.R.R. Tolkien, author of “The Hobbit” and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.
Obit watch: February 16, 2019.
February 16th, 2019The late great Bruno Ganz.
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Most of Mr. Ganz’s more than 80 films and television movies were European productions, among them Mr. Wenders’s film noir hommage “The American Friend” (1977), with Dennis Hopper, in which he played a German with a terminal-illness diagnosis who agrees to be a hit man; Volker Schlöndorff’s “Circle of Deceit” (1981), as a war correspondent in Beirut; Werner Herzog’s “Nosferatu” (1979), as the innocent Jonathan Harker; and Barbet Schroeder’s “Amnesia” (2017).
But he did appear in American films, including “The Boys From Brazil” (1978), the drama about Nazi war criminals starring Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier; Jonathan Demme’s all-star 2004 remake of “The Manchurian Candidate”; and “The Reader” (2008), with Ralph Fiennes and Kate Winslet.
A wonderful team is the Pelicans…
February 15th, 2019Dell Demps out as GM of the New Orleans Pelicans.
I don’t follow the NBA much, so I’m missing a lot of what’s going on here. (Then again, I wouldn’t exactly say I’ve been “missing” it, Bob.) The sources I read say this is fallout from Anthony Davis wanting to be traded, and New Orleans pushing back on offers from the Lakers.
Principles.
February 14th, 2019The anarcho-capitalist side of me thinks Alexandra Occasional Cortex is an idiot.
The less anarcho-capitalist side of me thinks a 100% marginal tax rate sounds like a great idea, as long as it’s applied only to people who purchase $1,475 sterling silver weed grinders and $950 bongs.
Obit watch: February 14, 2019.
February 14th, 2019Lyndon LaRouche, one of the 20th Century’s greatest cranks. LaRouche PAC.
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In Mr. LaRouche’s view, Mr. Johnson continued, “true Platonists believe that industrialization, technology and classical music should be used to bring wealth and enlightenment to the citizens of the world.”
He added: “The Aristotelians are trying to stop them by using not only sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll but also environmentalism and quantum theory. With their bag of brainwashing techniques, they hope to trick civilization into destroying itself, bringing on a new dark ages in which the world’s riches will be firmly in the hands of the oligarchs.”
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He was rather oddly obsessed with the British royal family. From a recent editorial on the LaRouche PAC web site calling for his exoneration:
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They don’t make them like that any more.
Tweet of the day.
February 14th, 2019Technically, from last night:
Trying to think of how my life would be different if all the songs written by the Beatles were forgotten and not really thinking of any major differences.
— Fr. Brendon Laroche (@padrebrendon) February 14, 2019
Flaming hyenas update.
February 13th, 2019Good news: Carlos Uresti has been sentenced to five years in federal prison for bribery.
Bad news: this sentence will run concurrently with his existing 12 year sentence from last year, so he won’t actually be doing any additional time.
Obit watch: February 13, 2019.
February 13th, 2019Rick Schmidt, former owner of Kruez Market in Lockhart.
Kreuz Market first opened in 1900. Rick’s father, Edgar “Smitty” Schmidt, purchased it in 1948, and Rick and his brother Don Schmidt bought the legendary Lockhart barbecue restaurant from their father in 1984. Don retired from the family business in 1997, and in 1999, Austin-native Rick relocated Kreuz Market from its previous location on Main Street to Colorado Street, near Town Branch creek, following a public dispute with his sister, Nina Sells, who inherited the old brick building on Main Street.
Sells converted the original Kreuz Market location into Smitty’s Market, while Schmidt opened his massive, red-brick building about a mile up the road. The family feud made headlines in Austin and landed the family on an episode of the CBS newsmagazine “48 Hours.″
Brief notes on film: February 2019.
February 11th, 2019Over the weekend, Lawrence and I went to see “They Shall Not Grow Old“.
Quick hot take: go see this movie. Take your teenage children.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the movie: Peter Jackson went through about 100 hours of vintage WWI footage at the Imperial War Museum and selected portions which he enhanced (removing scratches and other artifacts of old age, as well as adjusting exposures), adjusted the film speed to contemporary standards, colorized it, and edited it into a narrative of the war.
Almost all of the voices you hear in the film are actual veterans of WWI (taken from 1950s-1960s oral histories recorded by the BBC). There are some places where Jackson actually hired professional lip readers to determine what the people in the film were saying, and then had professional actors dub the lines.
It doesn’t concentrate on one major battle, or the larger scale strategy of the war: it’s more like “this is what the typical experience of a soldier on the Western Front was like”, from the pre-war mobilization through training to trench combat and finally the end of the war.
IMDB lists the movie as 99 minutes long. In the showing we saw, there was also a 30-minute post credit documentary narrated by Jackson explaining some of the technical aspects. (It isn’t clear to me if that’s the case for all showings.)
I could not be more enthusiastic about recommending this movie: if I had the money, I would rent out movie theaters for showings of this, and give out free tickets in schools. (Yes, it is kind of a hard “R”, mostly for realistic depictions of the effects of war. There’s also some brief shots of male butts in a non-sexual context.)
Of course, I do have a couple of minor notes…
- We saw the 2D version. It looks like there’s also a 3D version, but that wasn’t playing in our location.
- Jackson’s grandfather was a WWI vet, and Jackson has been interested in the war for most of his life. Apparently, he has a rather large collection of WWI artifacts…including artillery. As he puts it at one point, “I sort of accumulated some artillery pieces, the way one does.”
- He talks at one point in the documentary about sound design for the artillery: the actual firing and explosions were based on recordings of contemporary 105mm howitzers with the cooperation of the New Zealand military. It’s interesting to me, though, to compare this with “All Quiet on the Western Front”: one of the things that stood out to me in the latter movie was that the bursting shells all sounded different depending on what type of shell they were. It’s not that you could tell a French 75 from a German gun by sight: more, “that shell sounded different than the last one. Oh, there’s another one. Oh, there’s that first one again.” That seems to me to be somehow more realistic. But I don’t know how Jackson could have gotten around that: explosive shells for vintage WWI guns are probably hard to come by, even if you do have all that “Lord of the Rings” money.
- Jackson talks about there being about 100 hours of Imperial War Museum footage that he cut down to about 100 minutes, and how many aspects of the war he had to leave out. I’m wondering: have Jackson and his team made any efforts to process the rest of the footage and make it available to other filmmakers, or to the IWM? I don’t expect him to go back and do a second WWI documentary (unless this is one is massively successful, and I hope it is) but I’d love it if Jackson’s production company worked with another director on a similar film about the air war, or the Navy, or any of the other aspects of the war he had to leave out.
- For that matter, is anyone in the US doing something like this with US WWI footage?
- I haven’t been able to find the soundtrack for this film on Apple Music or Amazon. And I want it. If you search, though, you can find the closing credits on YouTube (at least until there’s a copyright strike.)
Repeating myself: go. See. It’s not “fun”, but it’s an extraordinary piece of work.
Obit watch: February 11, 2019.
February 11th, 2019Great and good friend of the blog Borepatch, who has probably forgotten more about popular music than I know, sent over a couple of obits that I missed.
Bonnie Guitar passed away in January at the age of 95.
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And Sanger D. “Whitey” Shafer also died in January. He was perhaps most famous for writing “All My Ex’s Live in Texas” and “Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind”.
Tribute from “Austin City Limits”. Obit from Saving Country Music. Obit from WFAA.
Obit watch: February 8, 2019.
February 8th, 2019Frank Robinson, who became the first black manager in MLB when he took over the Cleveland Indians:
Robinson made his debut as the majors’ first black manager with the Cleveland Indians on April 8, 1975, 28 years after Jackie Robinson (no relation) first took the field with the Dodgers. Rachel Robinson, Jackie Robinson’s widow, threw out the ceremonial first ball.
Frank Robinson, who was still an active player, punctuated the historic occasion by hitting a home run in his first at-bat, as the designated hitter, leading the Indians to a 5-3 victory over the Yankees.
Pork chop sandwiches!
February 8th, 2019Remember, folks: when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have frozen pork chops.
(Hattip for the submission: Mike the Musicologist. We also would have accepted his suggested title: “Roald Dahl, call your office, please.” even though that’s not quite technically accurate. Hattip for the title.)
Also by way of Mike:
Boston cop on leave after service weapon allegedly stolen by strippers
Strippers. Always the strippers.
Note that the arrest report values the Glock at $5,000. Should we be calling the unnamed police officer “The Man With the Golden Gun” from now on?
Headline of the day.
February 6th, 2019Autopsy: Man died of meth overdose before being eaten by bear at national park
Drugs are bad, kids. Mm’kay?