May 15, 2009 by jerrysmolin
“The items were sometimes delicate, often minimalist and always haunting: a monogrammed silver matchbox; a gold locket with a butterfly design; a letter-opener, its sturdy handle embellished with an eagle and a swastika. Up for auction here on Thursday, the relics fetched record prices and even spurred bidding wars, purely because of their history: They are believed to be among items owned by Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun.
“While the recession may mean that many Americans have been wrestling their overworked credit cards back into their wallets and cutting back on expenses large and small, some collectors have been paying record prices for historic artifacts. At Alexander Autographs, a small auctioneer that expected to generate about $800,000 in sales at its two-day auction, sales reached nearly $600,000 on Wednesday. By Thursday, they were edging toward $1 million. . . .
“The most interest — and higher prices — went to the Nazi-related items once owned by the collector John Lattimer: $4,000 for Braun’s compact; $4,250 for Hitler’s teacup and saucer, with a rose and chestnut print; and $3,000 for his dessert plate.” (more @ NY Times)
Posted in Antiques & Folk Art, Business, Collectors & Collecting, Europe, Jewish Life | 1 Comment »
May 12, 2009 by jerrysmolin
Shameless plug for The Paper Industry‘s “Sine Wave Goodbye” which opens Thursday at Richard Foreman‘s Ontological-Hysteric Theater in Manhattan’s East Village . . . featuring my son (at left).
From the Press Release:
In The Paper Industry’s latest ‘ugly opera’ a man named M escapes the social machine only to lose himself inside his mind, rife with falling walls, forced dancing and maybe just a little bit of truth about Isaac Newton. M finds himself confronted by four oddball strangers in a landscape shaped by his subconscious in Sine Wave Goodbye, and through the use of dance, an original score and original text he hopes to discover what it is exactly that makes us tick. Exploring a fantastic and fatalistic interpretation of the laws of motion M will discover the tragic, glorious freedom of choice and consequence in a larger social context. The Paper Industry aims to exalt the singular experience of being human by distilling the most potent experiences into viscerally digestible moments. They unveil shadows of the human condition in order to illuminate intersection of sentiment between performers and audience members. For each of their pieces original music and text is combined with elements of the space towards one specific, cogent visceral effect.
Tickets can be purchased here.
Posted in Actors & Acting, New York City, Performing Arts, Plays & Playwrights, Theater | 1 Comment »
May 12, 2009 by jerrysmolin
“In a 21st-century version of the age of discovery, teams of computer scientists, conservationists and scholars are fanning out across the globe in a race to digitize crumbling literary treasures.
“In the process, they’re uncovering unexpected troves of new finds, including never-before-seen versios of the Christian Gospels, fragments of Greek poetry and commentaries on Aristotle. Improved technology is allowing researchers to scan ancient texts that were once unreadable — blackened in fires or by chemical erosion, painted over or simply too fragile to unroll. Now, scholars are studying these works with X-ray fluorescence, multispectral imaging used by NASA to photograph Mars and CAT scans used by medical technicians.
“A Benedictine monk from Minnesota is scouring libraries in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and Georgia for rare, ancient Christian manuscripts that are threatened by wars and black-market looters; so far, more than 16,500 of his finds have been digitized. This summer, a professor of computer science at the University of Kentucky plans to test 3-D X-ray scanning on two papyrus scrolls from Pompeii that were charred by volcanic ash in 79 A.D. Scholars have never before been able to read or even open the scrolls, which now sit in the French National Institute in Paris.” (cont’d @ Wall Street Journal)
Posted in Ancient History, Archaeology, Books, Literature, Religion, Science & Technology | Leave a Comment »
May 12, 2009 by jerrysmolin
“MICHAEL Lang and Joel Rosenman were two of the producers of the original Woodstock festival 40 summers ago. Lately, they have been trying to pull together an anniversary concert this year, they really have, but you have to understand, man, it’s complex. . . .
“While the partners’ most promising idea — a one-day mini-Woodstock in Prospect Park in Brooklyn this August — fizzled when they could not find sponsors, that doesn’t mean others haven’t coaxed a few more marketing miles from the creaky Woodstock bus.
“Dozens of projects are planned to commemorate the August 1969 concert, including an Ang Lee movie called ‘Taking Woodstock,’ a Heroes of Woodstock concert tour (with Jefferson Starship and Melanie) and at least 13 books, including one for children co-authored by a second cousin of Max Yasgur, the farmer who lent his land in Bethel, N.Y., for the original event. Target is set to run a ‘Summer of Love’ promotion featuring licensed Woodstock merchandise, like beach towels with the symbolic white dove perched on a guitar neck.
“But Mr. Lang, 64, and Mr. Rosenman, 66, who, with the family of another original partner, control Woodstock Ventures, which owns the trademarks, have so far failed to deliver a solid plan to commemorate their own historic achievement. Time, it would seem, has run out for pulling together the kind of anniversary blowouts the partners were behind in upstate New York in 1994 and 1999 — the former a three-day, mud-slathered event that attracted 300,000 fans, the latter chiefly remembered for a riot.” (more @ NY Times)
Related: Woodstock 1969-2009 (Thanks, Debbi)
Posted in Counter Culture, Popular Culture, Popular Music, Rock 'n' Roll | 5 Comments »
May 8, 2009 by jerrysmolin
“What kind of a man eats his hamburger without ketchup? That was the big question yesterday on talk radio, after President Obama visited an Arlington, Virginia, hamburger place on Tuesday and ordered his burger with spicy mustard.”
Apparently Texans and Republicans also prefer mustard to ketchup as their condiment of choice:
In Texas:
“Texans traditionally eat hamburgers with mustard or with mayonnaise (or with both), but without ketchup. This is simply called a ‘hamburger’ in Texas, but is sometimes called a ‘Cowboy Burger’ or a ‘Texas Burger’ outside of Texas.
“A hamburger with ketchup is sometimes called a ‘Yankee Burger.’ A hamburger with mayonnaise is sometimes called a ‘Sissy Burger.'” . . .
As for the GOP:
“A 2000 survey of members of Congress by the National Hot Dog Council found that 73% of Republican lawmakers preferred mustard to ketchup, as opposed to 47% of Democratic lawmakers.”
(via New Majority.com)
Related: The Ketchup Conundrum
Posted in American West, Congress, Food & Wine, Obama, Politics, Popular Culture | Leave a Comment »
May 8, 2009 by jerrysmolin
“The Amazon Kindle, an electronic reader, has been lavished with praise by hopeful newspaper and book executives who say they believe it has the potential to do for newspapers and books what the iPod did for music.
“But if the Kindle, which not only displays the news but also speaks it with a computerized voice, is ever to be the savior of print media, it needs to bone up on its pronunciation.
“In particular, the voice of the Kindle mispronounces two important words that show up often in the pages of newspapers: ‘Barack’ (the device rhymes it with ‘black’) and ‘Obama’ (sounds like ‘Alabama’).” (more @ NY Times)
Posted in Books, Magazines & Newspapers, Obama, Science & Technology | Leave a Comment »
May 7, 2009 by jerrysmolin
“TOMORROW, the seventh annual show of designs created in Brooklyn — Bklyn Designs — will open in Dumbo, drawing renewed attention to this neighborhood of former factories and warehouses, and its vibrant design scene.
“Over the last six years, the juried show, which features contemporary furnishings, lighting and accessories designed, and in most cases made, in Brooklyn, has grown from a Chamber of Commerce exercise in borough boosterism into a high-profile event and an effective springboard for local designers. This year, it has 45 exhibitors and is attracting attendees from as far away as Milan, the Netherlands and Japan.
“The show in Dumbo offers a good place to begin exploring what Brooklyn offers in the way of home furnishings. Just as the borough has become a center for locally produced, handcrafted food, it has also developed a broad population of independent, often artisanal designers.” (cont’d @ NY Times)
Posted in Arts & Crafts, Brooklyn, Business, Design, DUMBO, Museums & Exhibitions, New York City, Urban Affairs | Leave a Comment »
May 7, 2009 by jerrysmolin
Andrew Sullivan on what we remember most about Bill Clinton and George W. Bush . . . and the consequences:
“It occurs to me that the two most famous statements of the last two presidents will be ‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman,’ and ‘We do not torture.’ And both were lies in plain English, were understood to be lies by the two men involved, and yet both were subject to mental and legal asterisks that could give both men some kind of formal, if absurd, deniability.
“For one statement, we impeached. For another, we kept on walking.
“Sometimes history is not tragedy repeated as farce; it’s farce repeated as tragedy.” (via The Daily Dish)
Posted in American West, Bush, Crimes & Misdemeanors, Current Events, Politics, Sex & Gender | Leave a Comment »
May 7, 2009 by jerrysmolin
“Visual explorations of how the human body works have had us riveted since before Leonardo da Vinci sketched the famous Vitruvian man sometime around 1487. That fascination is the focus of what may be one of the most gruesome coffee table books ever.
“Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930 contains hundreds of pictures of medical students posing with the cadavers they were learning to dissect.
“These photos were something of an underground genre, says author John Warner, a professor of medical history at Yale. You wouldn’t see one in a doctor’s waiting room, but they were taken and treasured, and sometimes even passed around as Christmas cards.” (more @ NPR) [Click image to enlarge]
Meanwhile, in Berlin:
“A controversial German anatomy artist is facing protests over his latest plastination exhibition after unveiling a work showing two corpses having sexual intercourse.
“Gunther von Hagens, whose latest exhibition, Cycle of Life, opens in Berlin tomorrow, has defended the exhibit saying that it combines the two greatest taboos of sex and death and is a lesson in biology, but is ‘not meant to be sexually stimulating’.
“The exhibition has drawn angry protests from a cross-party group of politicians as well as church representatives. They have called for the work to be withdrawn, saying it is pornographic and an insult to the dead. . . .
“Von Hagens developed the plastination method several years ago after discovering a method for preserving bodies by replacing their fat and water deposits with injections of silicon, which then harden.
“His popular exhibitions, which have travelled the world, have included corpses playing chess, high jumping, and horse riding. Others have shown a dead pregnant woman and foetuses at various stages of development.” (more @ Guardian.UK)
Related: Prof In Corpse Sex Plan
Posted in Art & Artists, Books, Education, Europe, Health & Medicine, Human Behavior, Museums & Exhibitions, Performing Arts, Photography, Science & Technology, Sex & Gender | Leave a Comment »
May 6, 2009 by jerrysmolin
Posting will be spotty between now and the first week in June. I’ll be in DUMBO next week to see my son in “Sine Wave Goodbye” at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater and to attend my daughter’s commencement at Fordham University where she’s receiving her M.S. in TESOL Education. On the 17th my wife and I are off to Italy for two-plus weeks: Venice, Naples (Pompeii, Herculaneum), Sorrento & the Amalfi Coast, Rome. While in Italy I’ll post my impressions — especially of the food — on Twitter (you can follow my feedings either through the Twitter widget on the NSRG home page or directly on my Twitter page). Arrivederci!
Posted in Actors & Acting, Education, Europe, Foreign Travel, Performing Arts, Photography, Plays & Playwrights, Theater | Leave a Comment »
May 5, 2009 by jerrysmolin
CONGRATULATIONS to Marin Ireland for her 2009 TONY nomination for “Best Performance By A Featured Actress In A Play” for her performance as Steph in Neil LaBute’s reasons to be pretty.
reasons marks Marin’s Broadway debut after many successful roles both Off-Broadway and in regional theaters. My wife costumed Marin during her formative summer stock days and my son appeared opposite Marin in a summer stock children’s theater adaptation of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” (Marin was Goldilocks, my son Baby Bear). We have been BIG Marin fans since those long ago summer days and have attended as many of her New York performances as possible. Finally, long overdue recognition for a fine, fine actor.
Posted in Actors & Acting, Performing Arts, Plays & Playwrights, Theater | Leave a Comment »
May 1, 2009 by jerrysmolin
“Queen Elizabeth II was at home at Windsor Castle, the sentries who guard her were on duty, and the large park surrounding the magnificent building was full of tourists on a Sunday afternoon.
“So it didn’t take long for people to realize that something was out of order when a couple enjoying a picnic on the lawn had too much to drink, stripped naked and began having sex on their blanket. . . .
“Thames Valley Police said the man and woman were arrested and cautioned for outraging public decency.
“The queen was in the castle at the time, but her office declined Friday to comment on what had happened.” (more @ NY Times)
Posted in Crimes & Misdemeanors, Europe, Sex & Gender | Leave a Comment »
April 30, 2009 by jerrysmolin
“Ernie Barnes, whose drawings and paintings of athletes, dancers and other figures in motion reflected his first career as a professional football player, died on Monday in Los Angeles. He was 70. . . .
“Mr. Barnes was an offensive lineman in the old American Football League, playing four seasons in the 1960s for the New York Titans, the San Diego Chargers and the Denver Broncos. He would often say later that even during his playing days, his heart was more in the painting and sketching he had been doing since he was a child.
“But the athletic experience clearly influenced his painterly vision. His work, which mostly depicts black people — Mr. Barnes was black — is kinetic and often vividly bright, though even in his black-and-white pencil drawings the strain of competing bodies is evident in the curves, stretches and muscular exertions of the figures.
“While his most famous painting, ‘Sugar Shack,’ a jubilant dancing scene that appeared on the cover of Marvin Gaye’s album ‘I Want You’ and was shown during the closing credits of the television situation comedy ‘Good Times,’ is not literally sports-related, it is nonetheless a characteristic work, with its vibrant tumble of bodies.” (more @ NY Times)
Posted in Art & Artists, Obituaries, Popular Culture, Race, Sports | Leave a Comment »
April 28, 2009 by jerrysmolin
“Few positions in public life, apart, perhaps, from Pope or manager of the England football team, have proved quite so unattainable to women over the years as that of Britain’s Poet Laureate. For centuries, from Ben Jonson onwards, the prestigious honour with its peppercorn salary and liquid remuneration of a ‘butt of sack’ has been a masculine stronghold, handed down from man to man.
“But that dominance could well be set to come to an end this week after it was let slip that the name of Carol Ann Duffy has been put forward for the Queen’s approval to assume the role from the outgoing Laureate Andrew Motion. If all goes as planned, the Glasgow-born poet will become not only the first woman to hold the post but the first openly gay one.” (more @ The Independent)
Update: (5/1/09) After 341 Years, a Woman Is British Poet Laureate
Posted in Europe, Literature, Poets & Poetry, Sex & Gender, Writers & Writing | Leave a Comment »
April 28, 2009 by jerrysmolin
“A hormone released during the digestion of certain fats triggers long-term memory formation in rats, a new study says.
“Researchers found that administering a compound produced in the small intestine called oleoylethanolamide (OEA) to rats improved memory retention during two different tasks.
“When cell receptors activated by OEA were blocked, the animals’ performance decreased.
“Though the study involved rats, OEA’s effects should be similar in other animals, including humans, said study team member Daniele Piomelli, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Irvine.” (more @ National Geographic)
Posted in Food & Wine, Health & Medicine, Science & Technology | Leave a Comment »
April 27, 2009 by jerrysmolin
“The 23rd of April is a bad, bad day to be a poet. It’s the cruellest day in the cruellest month, as TS Eliot almost said.
“Lots of people know that today is the day William Shakespeare, the greatest poet in the language, was born in 1564 and that it’s the day he died in 1616. I don’t want to sound like a local radio DJ doing a less than cheery ‘on this day’ feature for dark times, but for poets in particular, and for creative literary people in general, this day really is hard to ignore: William Wordsworth wandered his last lonely walk on this day, as did the great Spanish author Cervantes. Henry Vaughan, the Welsh metaphysical poet, breathed his last lungful of gorgeous Welsh air on this day. Rupert Brooke died today in 1915, and Harold Arlen – whose songs such as Stormy Weather and Let’s Fall in Love (mind you, he didn’t write the lyrics) approach the status of poetry – passed to the far side of the rainbow on 23 April 1986.” (more @ Guardian UK)
Posted in Books, Literature, Poets & Poetry, Writers & Writing | Leave a Comment »
April 24, 2009 by jerrysmolin
“Good writers show us new places. Great writers give us new ways of looking at the old one. Just as Ruskin enabled a generation of Europeans to see the landscape that was actually in front of them rather than the conventionalized approximations they carried around in their heads, so is Gaitskill one of those rare artists who can endow us with braver, more vigilant senses. You step out of her books and into a whole new world.”
So says William Deresiewicz in his fine review of Mary Gaitskill‘s novels and early short fiction.
But not so, concludes Deresiewicz, with her new short story collection, Don’t Cry:
“A young writer pours her agonies of soul into work of uncompromising honesty. She stares into an abyss of pain so that we may see the truth. But few have the energy to sustain such effort indefinitely. Eventually, the spirit seeks rest–seeks comfort, seeks consolation, seeks peace. It happened to Wordsworth and Conrad, and now it seems to be happening to Mary Gaitskill. The hunger has gone out of her work. Gaitskill was a great poet of youthful suffering. Whether she can reinvent herself as a chronicler of maturity remains to be seen.”
I am among the many fans of Gaitskill’s fiction disappointed by the largely unfavorable reviews for Don’t Cry. Readers new to Gaitskill’s work — and she deserves a wide audience — are best to begin at the beginning, with her first short story collection, Bad Behavior.
Posted in Book Reviews, Books, Literature, Sex & Gender, Writers & Writing | Leave a Comment »
April 23, 2009 by jerrysmolin
Baptized on April 26, 1564, William Shakespeare‘s actual birthday is unknown but is traditionally observed on April 23rd, St. George’s Day. But how likely is it that today is the Bard of Avon’s real birthday?
“There is no evidence, alas, to support the popular belief that William Shakespeare was born — as fifty-two years later he was to die — on 23 April, the date celebrated in England since 1222 as the feast day of dragon-slaying St George. As the poet’s posthumous fame grew, securing a unique niche for his country in the cultural history of the world, it was a natural enough temptation for posterity to unite the birthday of England’s national poet with that of its patron saint. But the tradition is based on a false assumption, that Elizabethan baptisms invariably took place three days after the birth.” (more @ English History)
Related
Posted in Birthdays, Books, Europe, Literature, Plays & Playwrights, Poets & Poetry, Writers & Writing | Leave a Comment »
April 23, 2009 by jerrysmolin
“While it is regarded in most countries as a ‘Nazi Bible’, in India it is considered a management guide . . .
“Sales of [Mein Kampf] over the last six months topped 10,000 in New Delhi alone, according to leading stores, who said it appeared to be becoming more popular with every year.
“‘Students are increasingly coming in asking for it and we’re happy to sell it to them,’ said Sohin Lakhani, owner of Mumbai-based Embassy books who reprints Mein Kampf every quarter and shrugs off any moral issues in publishing the book.
“‘They see it as a kind of success story where one man can have a vision, work out a plan on how to implement it and then successfully complete it.'” (more @ Daily Telegraph)
[Ach mein Gott!]
Related: ‘Turn Left at Gestapo Headquarters’
Posted in Asia, Books, Business, Crimes & Misdemeanors, Jewish Life, Sign of the Apocalypse | Leave a Comment »
April 22, 2009 by jerrysmolin
“The City Planning Commission voted overwhelmingly to support a controversial tower next to the Brooklyn Bridge — though the building’s 18-story wing will be shaved by one story.
“In addition, Jed Walentas’s 325-unit Dock Street proposal — which features a ‘green’ design, plus 65 below-market-rate rentals and a public middle school — would lose two to three stories from the part [sic] its 10-story wing closest to the bridge.
“The vote to rezone Walentas’s lot from manufacturing to residential was 11-2, but despite the landslide, Planning Commission Chairwoman Amanda Burden described the proposal as ‘the most difficult to come before the commission in many years.’ . . .
“In ordering a height reduction and the cut-out section from the mid-rise portion of the building, the Commission seemed to at least be partially swayed by a late push by Brooklyn Bridge historian David McCullough, who visited the fabled span this month to call for the Walentas proposal to not only be halted, but for other buildings around the bridge to be demolished for a national park.” (more @ The Brooklyn Paper)
Even so, celebrity opposition to the project continues to grow. Dumbo NYC reports:
“We received word from [Dumbo Neighborhood Alliance (DNA)] that in addition to David McCullough, several celebrities will be starring in supporting roles in their grass roots campaign. Gabriel Byrne of The Usual Suspects and HBO’s In Treatment, Helen Hunt of As Good as It Gets and Mad About You, Gary Sinise of The Green Mile and Forrest Gump, Ana Gasteyer of Saturday Night Live and Mean Girls, Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker Ken Burns of Brooklyn Bridge and The Civil War fame and Skipp Sudduth of Third Watch and Law & Order have all added their support to the opposition of the proposed 18-story building.” (more @ Dumbo NYC)
Update
Posted in Architecture, Brooklyn, DUMBO, New York City, Urban Affairs | Leave a Comment »
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The 'Not-So-Rough' Guide 