2010

You are currently browsing the yearly archive for 2010.

Decoder: Congressman John Boehner’s Recent Comments To The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

June 30, 2010 in Humor, Politics | Permalink

John Boehner: Strange orange hue.

John Boehner: The American people have written off the Democrats. They’re willing to look at us again.

Decoder: They’ve forgotten what complete creeps members of the GOP are. Of course, we’ll remind them almost immediately. And they might eventually recall that I’m the sack of shit who handed out campaign checks from the tobacco industry to Representatives on the House floor who were in the process of deciding whether they should cut a tobacco subsidy.

John Boehner: They’re snuffing out the America that I grew up in.

Decoder: An America where untalented boobs like myself could use connections to profit inordinately from my position.

John Boehner: Right now, we’ve got more Americans engaged in their government than at any time in our history.

Decoder: The Tea Party protests were tiny compared to Civil Rights protests and anti-Vietnam protests, but it sounds good when I say that, and it’s unlikely that journalists will call me on my bullshit.

John Boehner: There’s a political rebellion brewing, and I don’t think we’ve seen anything like it since 1776.

Decoder: Again: idiotic hyperbole from someone who’s full of crap.

Boehner from the neck down. (Image by QuinnHK.)

John Boehner: We are going to do everything we can to make sure that this [Health Care Reform] law never really takes effect.

Decoder: I will do everything in my power to ensure that there is never affordable health care for poor and working-class people. Only a lying bag of horsecrap like me who puts lobbyists before citizens deserves health care.

John Boehner: This [Wall Street reform] is killing an ant with a nuclear weapon.

Decoder: An ant that nearly led us into another Great Depression–and still might.

John Boehner: We need to look at the American people and explain to them that we’re broke. If you have substantial non-Social Security income while you’re retired, why are we paying you at a time when we’re broke? We just need to be honest with people.

Decoder: Dismantling Social Security would be almost as great as denying health care coverage. And we need the money for wars I want to support that we don’t necessarily need to wage.

Tags:

Featured Video: Manakin Cures Disease In Southern California In 1978

June 30, 2010 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

We all want to cure disease, sure, but let’s never allow this to happen again. Host Richard Dawson seems somewhat unpersuaded after the performance. (Thanks to Robert Popper for pointing me toward the clip.)

More Featured Videos:

Tags: , ,

Science/Tech: The Curious Case Of Face Blindness

June 29, 2010 in Science/Tech | Permalink

This may be Oliver Sacks' face. I'm not sure. Neither is he. (Image by Erik Charlton.)

I was born with an odd neurological glitch called Face Blindness. It makes it difficult for me to recognize faces, even of people I know well. I don’t have it 100%, so I’m very good at recognizing people in context, but if I’m not expecting to see someone, it’s 50-50 that I can recognize them before I hear their voice. I can see their faces just fine; but the recognition mechanism malfunctions. People who wear hats and sunglasses pose additional problems. And for me, blond people are tougher to recognize than dark-haired people, perhaps because most of the people who I grew up around were ethnic and I have more practice with them. I don’t know.

I’ve had otherwise intelligent people acknowledge to me that they carried on feuds with me (that I knew nothing about) because I had “snubbed them.” When I’ve told others of this condition, they tend to brush it away because people often have rather large and fragile egos and expect you to acknowledge them no matter what. I can only imagine what it’s like for those who have Face Blindness completely–they can’t even recognize themselves in a mirror!

Two people who also have Face Blindness are neuroscientist Oliver Sacks and artist Chuck Close. A big thanks to Marginal Revolution for pointing me in the direction of this NPR show in which the two men discuss coping with Face Blindness. Listen to it here.

Tags: ,

Afflictor Nation: For Some Strange Reason, Russia Reigns Supreme Once Again This Month

June 29, 2010 in Misc. | Permalink

Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov: I will buy you vodka and whores, Lebron. (Image by Андрей Романенко.)

Russia is bad at many things, especially spying, but one thing that the former superpower is really great at it is wasting its time by looking at the idiotic site known as Afflictor. For the seventh month running, Russia is the foreign nation with the most visits to our Brooklyn-based website. Great Britain, the Netherlands and Belarus all made gallant challenges in June, but it just wasn’t meant to be. Why do Russians keep coming back for more of our special brand of stupidity? Perhaps it’s because the comrades need to distract themselves from Putin’s claims that his country’s new fighter jets are better than the ones in the U.S., which ensures Mother Russia of a victory in any war that is fought prior to 1940. Or perhaps that trenchant article about Ke$ha in Elle Girl Russia just wasn’t long enough and there’s nothing left to read. Whatever. Congratulation on you great accomplishment, Russia, for once again being crowned champion of Afflictor Nation!

Listeria: Prices Of Health Care Products In NYC In The 1880s

June 29, 2010 in Science/Tech | Permalink

Old Timey Elixirs.

Based on the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

  • Lung Invigorators…$6
  • Body Belts…$5
  • Leg Belts…$4
  • Head Caps…$4
  • Humphrey’s Specific Homeopathic Pills for Women…$4
  • Knee Caps…$3
  • Owens’ Anti Intoxication…$2
  • Madame Yale’s Skin Food…$1.50
  • Madame Yale’s Constipation Fertilizer…$1.50
  • Throat Protectors…$1
  • Madame Yale’s “La Freckla” Freckle Cure…$1
  • Vail’s Restorer Disease Exterminator…$1
  • Warner’s Kidney Cure…80¢
  • Owens’ Dyspepsia Cure…50¢
  • Owens’ Diarrhea Syrup…25¢
  • Owens’ Worm Syrup…25¢
  • Owens’ Magic Cure for Chilblains…25¢
  • Owens’ Toothache Drops…15¢

“Gibbons Interest In Wild Food Suggests But Does Not Actually Approach Madness”

June 29, 2010 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

In his collection A Roomful of Hovings and Other Profiles, the great New Yorker writer John McPhee included an impressive profile he wrote about the outdoorsman and naturalist Euell Gibbons. A very well-known public figure during the ’60s and ’70s, Gibbons guested on the Tonight Show and starred in TV commercials, but he isn’t exactly a household name today. Gibbons, who was at different times in his life a Quaker, a tramp and a communist, wrote several food books and came to prominence for advocating the use the natural foods that grow wild all around us, whether it was weeds in a vacant lot or flowers from a box at Rockefeller Center.

The piece by McPhee was originally written for the April 8, 1968 issue of the New Yorker (paywalled here). In it, the two men spend a week together, living off the land in Pennsylvania. An excerpt:

“Gibbons interest in wild food suggests but does not actually approach madness. He eats acorns because he likes them. He is neither an ascetic nor an obsessed nutritionist. He is not trying to prove that wild food is better than tame food, or that he can survive without the assistance of a grocer. He is apparently not trying to prove anything at all except that there is a marvelous variety of good food in the world and that only a modest part of the whole can be found in even the most super of supermarkets. He is a gourmet with wild predilections. Inadvertently, the knowledge that he has acquired through years of studying edible wild plants has made him an expert on the nourishment aspects of survival in the wilderness, but the subject holds no great interest for him and in some ways he finds it repellent, since survival is usually taught by the military and he is a conscientious objector. Nonetheless, he is given his time to assist, in an unofficial way, at the United States Navy’s survival school in Brunswick, Maine. He has also taught survival techniques at the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School, off the Maine coast. It was in Maine that I first met him–in summer and only briefly–and not long thereafter I wrote to him and asked if he would like to take a week or so and make a late-fall trip to central Pennsylvania living off the land. I apologized that I would not be able to make such a trip sooner than November, and I asked him if he thought we can find enough to eat at that time. His response was that we could stuff ourselves, if we wanted to, right up until the time of the first heavy snowfall.”•

_________________________

Euell Gibbons is mentioned on Match Game in 1975:

Tags: ,

New DVD: The T.A.M.I. Show

June 29, 2010 in Film | Permalink

Years before his creative apex and subsequent personal tailspin, Brian Wilson leads the Beach Boys through a four-song set at T.A.M.I. (Teenage Awards Music International).

A love song to rock and roll and Los Angeles at a time when both seemed infinite with possibility, The T.A.M.I. Show was a filmed 1964 showcase for soul greats, British Invasion bands, girl groups, Motown stars and surf rockers during that brief window when all those artists coexisted peacefully on the pop charts.

After a romantic montage of sunny Los Angeles exteriors, surf rock duo Jan & Dean make their way to the stage at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium with the help of skateboards. Over the course of two hours, they host the likes of the Supremes, the Rolling Stones, James Brown, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Chuck Berry, the Beach Boys and more. The show-stopper was, unsurprisingly, Brown, who put on a mind-blowing performance for junior high schoolers who had never seen anything like it in their young lives. The kids were awed but never out of control; in one scene, a single police officer can be witnessed walking up and down the aisle with little to do. A forerunner to Altamont, it was definitely not.

Instead, it was innocent good vibrations all around, except for the Rolling Stones, who didn’t look too happy. The young Brits followed Brown and the still-green group seemed defeated by his astounding energy and superior showmanship before they could deliver even a single guitar lick. But that was okay. The Stones had years to go before they would do their finest work. In that sense, the T.A.M.I. show  wasn’t only great but also prelude to even greater things. (Available from Netflix and other outlets.)

More Film posts:

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

“I Want To Touch People…I Want Them To Touch Me!”

June 28, 2010 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Thanks (I suppose) to the Found Footage Festival for pointing me in the direction of this excruciating and apparently real self-help video, which was filmed in the Bay Area god knows when. After watching it, I am sure I’m definitely not in touch with my feelings, and I’m grateful for that. Also: I now believe that people need to be suppressed, perhaps by fascism. Enjoy.

Sally Field Is Still Having Problems With Her Bones

June 28, 2010 in Fake, Humor | Permalink

Sally Field: Limping around like Barbaro. (Image by Kristin Dos Santos.)

I know you’re busy with your own lives, but it’s important that you be aware that Sally Field is still having really bad problems with her bones. Boniva, a fine product with the active ingredient, Ibandronic acid, is helping somewhat, but her bones are still all fucked up and hurt her like a bastard most of the time. It isn’t really surprising since for most of her life Field lived on a remote island where calcium was unavailable. Now she’s got shit-bone disease. Her bones don’t have any density and she recently had to give up riding a moped. Her ankles are like potato chips.

Field is even suffering from bone loss. The other day her femur fell out of her left pant leg. It just popped the fuck out and now her ass is lopsided. If you come across Sally Field’s femur lying on the sidewalk, could you do me a big favor and pick it up? Make sure you don’t step on it or use it to play fetch with your dog. It’s really brittle and you’ll crack the motherfucker into tiny pieces. Just throw it in a bag and mail it to California. Those dipshits will get it back to her. Otherwise, she’ll have to continue to cope with slanted-ass syndrome.

Femur: Remember to slap a stamp on it.

Tags:

Urban Studies: Wanted–White Guys To Pretend To Be Businessmen In China. Pays Well.

June 28, 2010 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

I'm Donnie from Quality Control.

If you’re a white American guy who cleans up well, China may have a well-paying, bogus job for you. An excerpt from Mitch Moxley’s eye-opening article, “Rent a White Guy,” in the Atlantic:

“Not long ago I was offered work as a quality-control expert with an American company in China I’d never heard of. No experience necessary—which was good, because I had none. I’d be paid $1,000 for a week, put up in a fancy hotel, and wined and dined in Dongying, an industrial city in Shandong province I’d also never heard of. The only requirements were a fair complexion and a suit.

‘I call these things White Guy in a Tie events,’ a Canadian friend of a friend named Jake told me during the recruitment pitch he gave me in Beijing, where I live. ‘Basically, you put on a suit, shake some hands, and make some money. We’ll be in ‘quality control,’ but nobody’s gonna be doing any quality control. You in?’

I was.

And so I became a fake businessman in China, an often lucrative gig for underworked expatriates here. One friend, an American who works in film, was paid to represent a Canadian company and give a speech espousing a low-carbon future. Another was flown to Shanghai to act as a seasonal-gifts buyer. Recruiting fake businessmen is one way to create the image—particularly, the image of connection—that Chinese companies crave. My Chinese-language tutor, at first aghast about how much we were getting paid, put it this way: ‘Having foreigners in nice suits gives the company face.'”

Tags:

Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

June 28, 2010 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

"You know who you are." (Image by Hedwig Storch.)

STOP THIEF (Brentwood)

You stole my barbeque last year, my grandkids toys this year when the fence blew down, now you have stolen my little white fences for my garden. Do you think you could stop. We work hard for what we have and cannot afford to replace items because of your disregard for others and your disgusting behavior. Please stop. I live in Southeast Brentwood off Second Ave, and you know who you are.

More Craigslist ads:

Old Print Article: “Jack The Kisser In Jail,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1892)

June 28, 2010 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

"...the man who, about three months ago, entered at night the Convent of Our Sorrowful Mother at Morgan avenue and Garden street and kissed and offered other indignities to the nuns."

Before the phrase “Jack the Ripper” became synonymous with urban horror, “Jack the Kisser” was often used in newspapers to describe kissing bandits. (There were also many a “Jack the Hugger.”) Quite a number of men seem to have behaved this way in the late nineteenth century.

One such lip-locking louse was Peter Demuth, a Flushing man who favored young girls and nuns. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle had an account of his unwanted advances in its January 18, 1892 edition. An excerpt:

“Peter Demuth, 32 years of age, who was arrested on Tuesday last as the fellow who has become known as ‘Jack the Kisser,’ was sentenced to the penitentiary for eighteen months on three charges. The complainants were Annie Zeibig of 1,035 Flushing avenue; Carrie Leys of 120 Moore street amd Frederika Cassel of 1,011 Flushing avenue.

These young girls had been chased, caught and kissed by the prisoner. The police have had a great deal of trouble in arresting the fellow. He usually escaped the officers by running into one of the Johnson avenue slaughter houses and disappearing. In court to-day he was identified as the man who, about three months ago, entered at night the Convent of Our Sorrowful Mother at Morgan avenue and Garden street and kissed and offered other indignities to the nuns. The sisters, however, refused to prefer charges against him.”

More Old Print Articles:

Tags: , , ,

Decoder: Thomas Sowell’s Recent Column Comparing President Obama To Adolf Hitler

June 28, 2010 in Humor, Politics | Permalink

David Soul. No public-domain images of Thomas Sowell are available.

Thomas Sowell: A democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive, or ultimately even survive.

Decoder: Of course, informed people will be able to see through my bullshit, so scratch that idea.

Thomas Sowell: In our times, American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington, and few people seem to be concerned about it.

Decoder: Few people seem concerned by things going on in my head and not in reality.

Thomas Sowell: Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a President has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere.

Decoder: Just where in the in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a President doesn’t have the authority to talk sternly to a multinational corporation that behaved irresponsibly? Nowhere. BP could have said “no,” but they figured it would be easier this way.

Thomas Sowell: And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by their oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Decoder: Um, not precisely. “Precisely” means “exactly.”

Thomas Sowell: Our government is supposed to be “a government of laws and not of men.”

Decoder: And people from my party made sure that there were fewer and fewer laws that regulated the oil industry.

Paul Michael Glaser: I played Starsky, the dark-haired one.

Thomas Sowell: But the Constitution says that private property is not to be confiscated by the government without “due process of law.”

Decoder: The private property wasn’t confiscated. If BP had said “no” and the government had taken the $20 billion without consent, that would have been confiscation. That didn’t happen.

Thomas Sowell: Technically, it has not been confiscated by Barack Obama, but that is a distinction without a difference.

Decoder: It’s actually a big difference, but I’ll try to gloss over that with a cliche.

Thomas Sowell: When Franklin D. Roosevelt arbitrarily took the United States off the gold standard, he cited a law passed during the First World War to prevent trading with the country’s wartime enemies. But there was no war when FDR ended the gold standard’s restrictions on the printing of money.

Decoder: I’m awake at night worrying about the gold standard like a nudnik.

(Image by Stephen Foskett.)

Thomas Sowell: At about the same time, during the worldwide Great Depression, the German Reichstag passed a law “for the relief of the German people.” That law gave Hitler dictatorial powers that were used for things going far beyond the relief of the German people–indeed, powers that ultimately brought a rain of destruction down on the German people and on others.

Decoder: Obama talking tough to an incredibly irresponsible oil company will lead to Nazism in America. Or maybe I just see everything in ridiculous extremes like a child.

Thomas Sowell: Those who cannot see beyond the immediate events to the issues of arbitrary power–vs. the rule of law and the preservation of freedom–are the “useful idiots” of our time.

Decoder: By labeling those who disagree with me as “idiots,” I am attempting to peremptorily avoid any debate of my very dubious opinions.

More Decoders:

Tags:

Featured Video: “Beat School” (1961)

June 28, 2010 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

I'm late for Social Studies. Has anyone seen my cigarettes?

In 1961, the Burgess Hill School in Hertfordshire, England, was something of an alternative educational institution for bongo-playing beatniks. Teachers and students alike wore leather jackets and dark glasses, smoked cigarettes during class, rode motorcycles, listened to jazz and twisted to Chubby Checker records. If a kid didn’t understand an algebra problem, the teachers just talked to them calmly about it. Nobody freaked out, man. Thankfully, this time warp was captured by newsreel producers. Watch the five-minute video here.

More Featured Videos:

Miscellaneous Media: John Hummer NBA Card

June 27, 2010 in Misc., Sports | Permalink

John Hummer: Today I sit on the board of Baynote, Birst and Elastra.

I briefly got my long, elegant fingers on a 1972 John Hummer basketball card. Hummer was a forward who was playing with the NBA’s Buffalo Braves at that point. Averaging a pedestrian 6.9 points per game in his career, Hummer was no great cager on the pro level, but he was an exceptionally bright person.

Hummer graduated from Princeton in 1970 and was selected by the new Buffalo franchise. He played for a handful of teams for a half-dozen years, being coached for a while by Hall of Famer Bill Russell in Seattle, before heading to Stanford to earn an MBA. In 1980, he co-founded a venture capital firm that invests in software companies. An excerpt from the back of his card:

“The Braves’ first draft choice in 1970, John was a starting forward throughout most of the year and was an honorable mention for the NBA All-Rookie team. He has shown great promise on defense. He was All-Ivy League for two years at Princeton. John likes to read in his spare time.”

More Miscellaneous Media:

  • Carolina Cougars ABA Yearbook. (1970)
  • The Washington Senators MLB Yearbook. (1968)
  • Ugandan currency with Idi Amin’s picture. (1973)
  • Tom Van Arsdale basketball card. (1970)
  • “Okie from Muskogee” sheet music. (1969)
  • California Golden Seals hockey magazine. (1972)
  • Beatles Film Festival Magazine (1978)
  • ABA Pictorial (1968-69)
  • Tom Seaver’s Baseball Is My Life. (1973)
  • Hockey Digest (1973)
  • World’s Fair Guide (1964)
  • World’s Fair Guide (1939)
  • Buffalo Braves Yearbook (1972-73)
  • New York Nets Yearbook (1976-77)
  • “Tom Dooley” sheet music.

    • Tags:

    Listeria: Prices Of Toilet Articles In NYC In 1900

    June 27, 2010 in Urban Studies | Permalink

    This soap is so delicious.

    According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

    • Lettuce Soap…5¢ (per cake)
    • Peachblow Soap…6¢ (per cake)
    • Ball Glycerine Soap…3¢ (per cake)
    • Toilet Soap…3¢ (per cake)
    • Dairy Queen Toilet Soap…6¢ (per box)
    • Toilet Paper…2¢ (per roll)
    • Tooth Brush…3¢
    • French Tooth Brush…4¢
    • Tooth Powder…12¢
    • Shaving Brush…3¢
    • Sachet Powder…3¢
    • Perfumed Talcum Powder…3¢
    • Imported Violet Toilet Powder…6¢
    • Almond Meal For Softening and Whitening the Skin…14¢
    • Unbreakable Dressing Comb…7¢
    • Children’s Back Comb…5¢
    • Imported Bath Gloves…19¢
    • Face powder…5¢ (per box)
    • Complexion Brush…10¢
    • Florida Water…8¢ (per bottle)
    • Kill Corn…5¢

    “Highlights” From Another Particularly Disappointing Week Of Crappy Afflictor

    June 25, 2010 in Misc. | Permalink

    Afflictor: Making DNA researchers yawn since 2009. (Image by Rox.)

    Strange, Small & Forgotten Films: Bad Company (1972)

    June 25, 2010 in Film | Permalink

    Jeff Bridges, only 23 when this movie was released, would somehow not win his first Oscar for 38 more years.

    An under-the-radar 1972 Western bursting at the seams with young talent, Robert Benton’s Civil War picaresque, Bad Company, never got the attention it richly deserved. Considering the year it was made and the fact that it revolved around a group of draft dodgers, you would think it would have had a natural entree into the youth market. But Benton’s film is no thinly disguised Vietnam parable; it loyally sets out to tell a story of the miseducation of a young man in a specific time and place and does so wonderfully well.

    Drew Dixon (Barry Brown) is a well-raised Methodist boy from Ohio whose older brother has already perished fighting for the Union Army. His parents can’t bear another loss, so they hide him until he can head out for Virginia City, which is beyond the reach of the Union. On the road, Drew is coldcocked and rolled almost immediately by a rogue named Jake Rumsey (Jeff Bridges). While trying to get back his money, Drew falls in with Jake’s rough-edged crew and they traverse miles and miles of the untamed land, alternately playing the role of prey and predator.

    Co-star Barry Brown (right) committed suicide in his Los Angeles home in 1978.

    Drew fights with all his might to maintain his morals in a world that cares little for such niceties, but he comes to realize that there may be something deep inside of him that is just as wild as the West. Benton investigates this tendency in his young protagonist with relentless energy, right down to the film’s perfectly calibrated and fluid ending. (Available from Netflix and other outlets.)

    More Film posts:

    Tags: , ,

    Featured Video: “A 10 Stone Baby!” (1935)

    June 25, 2010 in Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

    Well, at least Leslie wasn't a smoker. (Image by Anthony Liekens.)

    I recently found a brief 1935 British Pathé newsreel of a ginormous 3-year-old boy named Leslie Bowles, who weighed 10 stone (or 140 pounds). Leslie couldn’t walk because his legs weren’t capable of supporting his body weight. And the guy who dangles a chocolate bar above the boy’s head is not helping matters. Watch it here and prepare for your mouth to be agape for 90 seconds.

    More Featured Videos:

    Tags:

    “The Jitters Were Setting In”

    June 25, 2010 in Books, Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

    I presented an excerpt some time back from Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion’s great collection of reportage about life in California during the 1960s and 1970s. Now I offer a passage from The White Album, her other incisive non-fiction book about that place and time. From the title piece, this excerpt concerns the Tate-LaBianca murders perpetrated by the Manson Family in 1969, which caused the L.A.’s open minds and open doors to be locked shut. To read Didion tell it, those horrific killings were an almost inevitable shattering of a city of glass. An excerpt:

    “We play ‘Lay Lady Lay’ on the record player, and ‘Suzanne.’ We went down to Melrose Avenue to see the Flying Burritos. There was a jasmine vine grown over the verandah of the big house in Franklin Avenue, and in the evenings the smell of jasmine came in through all the open doors and windows. I made a bouillabaisse for people who did not eat meat. I imagined that my own life was simple and sweet, and sometimes it was, but there were odd things going around town. There were rumors. There were stories. Everything was unmentionable but nothing was unimaginable. The mystical flirtation with the idea of  ‘sin’–this sense that it was possible to go ‘too far,’ and that many people were doing it–was very much with us in Los Angeles in 1968 and 1969. A demented and seductive vortical tension was building in the community. The jitters were setting in. I recall a time when the dogs barked every night and the moon was always full. On August 9, 1969, I was sitting in the shallow end of my sister-in-law’s swimming pool in Beverly Hills when she received a telephone call from a friend who had just heard about the murders at Sharon Tate Polanski’s house on Cielo Drive. The phone rang many times during the next hour. These early reports were garbled and contradictory. One caller would say hoods, the next would say chains. There were twenty dead, no, twelve, ten, eighteen. Black masses were imagined, and bad trips were blamed. I remember all of the day’s misinformation very clearly, and I also remember this, and wish I did not: I remember that no one was surprised.”

    Tags: ,

    Old Print Article: “A Maniac Gymnast,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1877)

    June 24, 2010 in Old Print Articles, Urban Studies | Permalink

    Doing this hurts my crazy, crazy lungs so much.

    There were plenty of maniacs in New York City in 1877, but how many of them were gymnasts with lung diseases who could climb down the side of a building? An example of one such maniac is at the heart of an article in the February 27, 1887 issue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. An excerpt:

    “A Spanish gentleman came to the New York Central office this morning and reported a wonderful feat which had been performed by his son Senor Mirande, who is a famous gymnast, as he made his escape from his house No. 340 East Fifty-sixth street, where he had been confined for some times past. It seems that some time ago he caught cold after one of his daring trapeze performances and the cold settled on his lungs.

    All efforts to remove the trouble failed, and finally lung disease supervened. He has suffered much of late, being confined to his house, and for the past few days has become delirious so that he had to be watched. Last night he was worse than usual and had to be bound with ropes in his room, which was on the third floor of the house. About 1 o’clock this morning he broke the bands that held him and with a shriek that awoke all other occupants of the house made a dash for the window.

    "Go away! I'll climb to the moon!" (Image by Karonen.)

    In a twinkling he had gone through it, turning a somersault as he sprang, and hung to the cement by his hands, his body swinging to and fro forty feet above the sidewalk. His friends sprang to his assistance, but he shouted, ‘Go away! I’ll climb to the moon!’ Then he swayed his body with increasing rapidity and let go. A cry of horror escaped from the lips of the relatives, but he grasped the metal leader of the house, went up it hand over hand with the agility of a monkey, and suddenly plunged forward, landing upon the top of a shutter on the top floor.

    Then he swung up on a fragile blind, which it was feared would be forced from its hinges by his weight, and suddenly leaping in the air grasped the gutter of the house. He ran along the edge with seeming indifference at the height at which he was performing, and then started to descend headlong the shutter of the adjoining house. Away he went, leaping from shutter to window sill, until the top of the stoop was reached. Then he slid down one of the posts to the street, along which he ran bareheaded until out of sight. His father is in the greatest distress regarding what has become of him, and a general alarm has been sent out to all stations.”

    More Old Print Articles:

    Tags:

    One Of The Many Reasons Why The Huffington Post Should Never Be Taken Too Seriously

    June 24, 2010 in Misc., Politics | Permalink

    Arianna Huffington: I hope this story about my friend Al Gore and the masseuse has a happy ending.

    The left-leaning Huffington Post spent the past day burying the story that liberal icon Al Gore allegedly sexually abused a massage therapist. At first there was a link to the AP piece about it at the very bottom of the Politics page, but that was gone by the next day and the story was never moved to the Front Page. You could say that the site didn’t want to give coverage to unproven allegations, but it does so all the time with other public figures. An example occurred just yesterday when similarly unproven charges of sexual abuse against baseball player Johan Santana were placed midway on the Front Page and still had a link at bottom of that page today. And does anyone believe that the Gore story wouldn’t have been a screaming headline if a right-wing political figure had been linked to similar wrongdoings?

    Tags: , ,

    New DVD: The Maid

    June 24, 2010 in Film | Permalink

    Catalina Saavedra, who's worked in film, soaps and sitcoms in Chile, is perfect in the lead role.

    Some people don’t get enough of the things they need to live well and respond by clinging to the things that are driving them into the ground. After all, without their misery they’d have nothing. Such a person is Raquel (Catalina Saavedra), a blank-faced and bitter Chilean maid at the heart of Sebastian Silva’s uncommonly generous blend of dark comedy and soulful drama.

    Raquel has served the same family for 23 years. Moodily towing around vacuum cleaners and laundry bags, she has the body language of someone waiting for the worst news possible. It’s not that she resents the work; in fact she loves it. Nor is the family unkind to her. She’s treated well and is almost one of the family. It’s that “almost” that’s eating at her.

    Raquel is so insecure about her place in the home that she sabotages one attempt after another by her bosses to hire some additional help, even though the housework in the large home is driving her to nervous exhaustion. They see a second maid as someone who can ease the burden; Raquel sees a potential replacement. Things continue apace until Raquel has no choice but to accept a helper named Lucy (Mariana Loyola) into the fold, and the arrangement has a surprising effect on Raquel and the film’s direction.

    Silva’s movie has no heavy-handed concern for the politics of class. He’s not making a movie about symbols but about people. The result is a rich work that realizes that each loss in life is laced with riches if we only have the will and wisdom to seek them out. (Available from Netflix and other outlets.)

    More Film posts:

    Tags: , ,

    Decoder: Eliot Spitzer And Kathleen Parker Discuss Their New CNN Show With The Huffington Post

    June 24, 2010 in Humor, Misc., Politics | Permalink

    The show's working title: "Governor Sexy Socks and the Right Wing Lady Earn a Paycheck for a Little While."

    Kathleen Parker: We’re going to be an organic talk show where we sit around the kitchen table.

    Decoder: The kitchen is the furthest room from the bedroom, right? I don’t want to be with Spitzer near a bedroom.

    Eliot Spitzer: We all agree: BP is bad. That’s the easy part. Then you say OK, so what do you do? How do you actually solve the problem? How do you plug the hole?

    Decoder: I shouldn’t have used that “plug the hole” phrase, right? But I’m not known for prudence. Except for that hooker named Prudence.

    Eliot Spitzer: There’s still a lot of people who are not watching either [Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann]. So somehow we’re figuring there’s still a little reservoir there, we’ll put our fishing rods in.

    Decoder: That also sounded suggestive, didn’t it? Because of the stuff I did with all the whores.

    Kathleen Parker: Actually, I think that we complement each other very well, and bring completely different perspectives and life experiences.

    Decoder: Most of Spitzer’s experiences involve paying and humping.

    And don't forget to watch "Heidi Fleiss 360°" at 10pm. She's no dumber than Greta. (Image by Daniel Dacumos,)

    Eliot Spitzer: You put my name [on the show] and people will watch one night. I’m expendable.

    Decoder: Just like I was when I was Governor of New York.

    Kathleen Parker: I don’t really care if a Democrat or a Republican comes up with the right answer, I just want the one that works. And I think Eliot comes from that same place.

    Decoder: He actually just came from a place called Madame Vanessa’s.

    Eliot Spitzer: The way I look at it, if you want to be validated in your underlying world view, you go to [O’Reilly and Olbermann] and you feel good and they’re great shows. If you want to see something different, be challenged, be pushed…

    Decoder: Or be choked–like a call girl for instance.

    Kathleen Parker: [We’ll book people] that we’ve interacted with in our personal lives and our work.

    Decoder: Spitzer has already booked Ashley, Summer, Montana, Destiny, Jade, Angel and Candy. Oh, and Kandy.

    More Decoders:

    Tags: ,

    Recently Posted On NYC’s Craigslist

    June 23, 2010 in Misc., Urban Studies | Permalink

    He sounds like a charmer, but she ran out the door so fast she forgot her panties.

    MY WIFES PANTIES – $20 (TriBeCa)

    My wife cleaned me out after the divorce and she left behind all of her bras and panties and old clothes. I need to get rid of this crap. She was Japanese 5’4 115 lbs. I dont know the size and Im not washing them, I dont have time, I just want to get rid of em..

    More Craigslist ads:

    « Older entries § Newer entries »