For various reasons, I haven’t been able to work up a lot of excitement about “Everyone Draw Mohammed Day.” If that’s your cup of tea, let me point you over to Lawrence’s coverage at the Battleswarm blog.
I did want to link back to this thread over at Alan’s blog. Not so much because I posted in it, but because:
…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.
In order by “Squeee!” factor:
(Hattip to The Rap Sheet.)
Arakawa, 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.
By 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.
The good folks over at The Rap Sheet are running a contest asking folks to name their four favorite private eye novels. It seems like a fun idea, so I’m sending in my entry. But while I was working on that, it occurred to me that I could get a blog post out of it as well; especially if I didn’t limit it to just four.
So here’s a list, in no particular order, of my ten favorite private eye novels, with some comments. The ones I included in my list for The Rap Sheet are marked with a (*). If nothing else, I hope this stimulates some discussion.
, Don Winslow. (*)
, Robert Crais. What I love most about this book is that the heart of the plot is a love story about two people who wind up walking through the fire. They don’t come out without scars, but Crais leaves you with the feeling they came out stronger for the experience.
, Dennis Lehane.
, Robert B. Parker. Here’s what I’ve said about this novel previously.
, Lawrence Block. (*) A sad, beautiful, elegiac private eye novel. I’m glad the series didn’t end with this one, but if it had, it couldn’t have ended any better.
, John D. MacDonald. (*) More than just a stand-in for all of the Travis McGee novels, this is my favorite because:
, Dashiell Hammett Of course I know this was a Raymond Chandler novel; that was a copy and paste error. I know this is kind of a conventional choice, but there’s just something about Moose Malloy, and especially the last line of the novel, that gets to me.
, Dashiell Hammett. (*) Another kind of conventional choice. There are people who would say that I picked this because of my romantic attachment to Bogart and the movie. There may be some truth to that. But the book existed before the movie did, and I picked this one (rather than Red Harvest
) because, I think, this is the Hammett book most concerned with honor; what it means, and how to live with honor in a world without honor.
, Rex Stout. Some other folks have cited books as stand-ins for entire series. This is my stand-in for all the Wolfe books. I have fond memories of some of the other books (Too Many Cooks
and The Black Mountain
in particular), but those are atypical books. The Red Box is the most typical of the Wolfe books; all the routine is there, but it comes late enough in the series that it feels more polished than the early books.
, Ross Macdonald. I’m not as well read in the Archer books as I would like to be, but I felt like he belonged on the list. Of the Archer books I’ve read, this is the one that made the strongest impression on me.Honorable mention: I considered putting The Fools in Town Are on Our Side
The subject line is a hattip to Lawrence, who complained last time I quoted Mr. Costello’s song that I didn’t use that line.
This 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.
For the record: the lawsuit against Variety by the producers of “Iron Cross”, previously noted in this space, has been dismissed.
(Hattip: Jimbo.)
“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.
So 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.
LAT 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
Obit watch: “Law and Order”: Original Recipe, aka “The Full Employment for Aspiring Actors and Actresses In New York City Program”.
I’ve watched various incarnations of the series and spinoffs, but I could never get into the original after Michael Moriarty left; Sam Waterston, to me, has all the charisma of a bowl of oatmeal. I’d still tune in from time to time and watch the first half just to see the late Jerry Orbach work, but after he died, so did my last tie to the show.
Still, the show deserves some kind of tribute, and this gives me an excuse to present some of my favorite L&O related art.
Brandon Bird’s painting, “A Night Away” (hotlinked):
(Larger, better quality version.) Supposedly, this was a private commission; if Bird would make prints available, I’d snap one up. In the meantime, here’s a link to Bird’s “Law & Order: Artistic Intent” and some related L&O art. I’m also kind of fond of “Lennie Grabs a Dog” and “A Tough Day at the Office“.
Stolen from FARK threads:
And the single biggest “WTF?” moment in the history of “Law and Order”:
Edited to add: Now that I’m back home and not behind a filter, here’s Sam Waterston at his best:
I’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.”