Bicycle sold separately. (Thanks Reddit.)
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The late underground Chicago musician and street artist Wesley Willis is the subject of Carl Hart’s smart ten-minute doc. A towering man and a schizophrenic who liked to greet friends with a gentle head butt, Willis passed away from leukemia in 2003 at age 40. An excerpt from his New York Times obituary:
“At 6 feet 5 inches and more than 300 pounds, Mr. Willis often walked the streets of the Wicker Park neighborhood talking loudly to himself and selling self-produced CD’s.
The record label Alternative Tentacles released three of his albums. A fourth, Greatest Hits Vol. 3, is scheduled for release in October.
Mr. Willis began his career with the guitarist Dale Meiners in the early 1990’s. Their band, Wesley Willis Fiasco, opened for the band Sublime in shows nationwide.
Mr. Willis, who had schizophrenia, at times lived on the streets. But he continued to write songs, perform and create detailed drawings of Chicago street scenes in colored felt-tip markers. He was the subject of at least four documentaries about his career and the voices he heard because of his schizophrenia.” (Thanks to The Documentarian.)
Tags: Carl Hart, Dale Meiners, Wesley Willis
Acchan Miyan, 42, is paid to scare away real monkeys in Lucknow, India.
A short documentary about Scott Schulman, whose fashion blog, The Sartorialist, features his photos of stylish sorts he meets on the street.
Tags: Scott Schulman
This is apparently real. Oy and vey. (Thanks Reddit.)
Bobby Fischer as the smiling, chess-playing child.
Before he became an unstable, ranting anti-Semitic hermit, Bobby Fischer was one of the most revered people on the planet. His legendary chess matches with Russian champion Boris Spassky during the height of the Cold War were televised to a rapt audience of millions. Victory meant the world was at Fischer’s feet, but he punted and disappeared from the game for two decades. He emerged for a big-money rematch against Spassky in 1992 which had none of the gravitas of the original contest–it was merely a cash grab by two players past their prime who were trading on nostalgia. In a new article in the New York Review of Books, Garry Kasparov, an excellent writer as well as a former world chess champion, opines on Fischer’s sad tale of being moved from king to pawn by mental illness. An excerpt about Fischer’s uneasy return to the spotlight in the ’90s:
“It was therefore quite a shock to see the real live Bobby Fischer reappear in 1992, followed by the first Fischer chess game in twenty years, followed by twenty-nine more. Lured out of self-imposed isolation by a chance to face his old rival Spassky on the twentieth anniversary of their world championship match—and by a $5 million prize fund—a heavy and bearded Fischer appeared before the world in a resort in Yugoslavia, a nation in the process of being bloodily torn apart.
The circumstances were bizarre. The sudden return, the backdrop of war, a shady banker and arms dealer as a sponsor. But it was Fischer! One could not believe it. The chess displayed by Fischer and Spassky in Svefi Stefan and Belgrade was predictably sloppy, although there were a few flashes of the old Bobby brilliance. But was this really a return, or would he disappear just as quickly as he had appeared? And what to make of the strange things Fischer was doing at the press conferences? America’s great champion spitting on a cable from the US government? Saying he hadn’t played in twenty years because he had been ‘blacklisted…by world Jewry’? Accusing Karpov and me of prearranging all our games? You had to look away, but you could not.
Even in his prime there were concerns about Fischer’s stability, during a lifetime of outbursts and provocations. Then there were the tales from his two decades away from the board, rumors that made their way around the chess world. That he was impoverished, that he had become a religious fanatic, that he was handing out anti-Semitic literature in the streets of Los Angeles. It all seemed too fantastic, too much in line with all the stories of chess driving people mad—or mad people playing chess—that have found such a good home in literature.”
Dick Cavett interviews Fischer in 1971, before the shocking decline:
Tags: Bobby Fischer, Boris Spassky, Garry Kasparov
Affetto is a robot baby that moves its face like a human. “He” has been created so that researchers can learn about social development by studying people interacting with the bot. Still, pretty creepy. (Thanks IEEE Spectrum.)
A daguerreotype of young Abe Lincoln, from 1846 or 1847.
Three passages from The Prairie Years, Part 1, the opening section of Carl Sandburg’s lyrical book about Abraham Lincoln’s life up until the Civil War.
••••••••••
“Offut talked big about Lincoln as a wrestler, and Bill Clary, who ran a saloon thirty steps north of the Offut store, bet Offut that Lincoln couldn’t throw Jack Armstrong, the Clary’s Grove champion. Sports from miles around came to a level square next to Offut’s store to see the match; bets of money, knives, trinkets, tobacco, drinks were put up, Armstrong, short and powerful, aimed from the first to get in close to his man and use his thick muscular strength. Lincoln held him off with long arms, wore down his strength, got him out of breath, surprised and ‘rattled.’ They pawed and clutched in many holds and twists till Lincoln threw Armstrong and had both shoulders to the grass.”
••••••••••
“The Clary’s Grove boys called on [Lincoln] sometimes to judge their horse races and cockfights, umpire their matches and settle disputes. One story ran that Lincoln was on hand one day when an old man had agreed, for a gallon jug of whisky, to be rolled down a hill in a barrel. And Lincoln talked and laughed them out of doing it. He wasn’t there on the day, as D.W Burner told it, when the gang took an old man with a wooden leg, built a fire around the wooden leg, and held the man down until the wooden leg was burned off.”
••••••••••
“When a small gambler tricked Bill Greene, Lincoln’s helper at the store, Lincoln told Bill to bet him the best fur hat in the store that he [Lincoln] could lift a barrel of whisky from the floor and hold it while he took a drink from the bunghole. Bill hunted up the gambler and made the bet. Lincoln sat squatting on the floor, lifted the barrel, rolled it on his knees till the bunghole reached his mouth, took a mouthful, let the barrel down–and stood up and spat out the whisky.”
••••••••••
Carl Sandburg on What’s My Line? in 1960:
Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Bill Clary, Bill Greene, Carl Sandburg, D.W Burner, Jack Armstrong
As the current Republican-led Congress takes aim at PBS, let’s recall Mister Rogers going to Washington in 1969. (Thanks Reddit.)
Tags: Fred Rogers, Mister Rogers
Her singing needs work, but yeah, nice sweater. (Thanks Found Footage Fest.)
Not what I was doing as I prepared to turn 20. (Thanks Reddit.)
Let’s call it a glorious stalemate.
Don’t quit your day job, you bucket of bolts. (Thanks Reddit.)
Watch this six-bladed baby take off.
In 1999, preacher Jack Van Impe cheerfully used Y2K to scare the bejeezus out of his flock and raise some funds, with help from his brittle-boned wife, Rexella. They haven’t exactly toned down the rhetoric since. (Thanks Crunchy.TV.)
Tags: Jack Van Impe, Rexella Van Impe
From Geekersmagazine: “Scientists from Cornell, the University of Chicago and iRobot have created human-analogue hands using nothing but coffee grounds, party balloons and a vacuum pump.”
The stylus would be the size of a telephone pole. (Thanks Reddit.)
Baseball pitcher Whitey Ford and timepiece melter Salvador Dali shill for Braniff during the 1970s.
Tags: Salvador Dali, Whitey Ford
Holton Rower uses many paint colors + gravity. (Thanks Open Culture.)
Tags: Holton Rower
This is how I caught the F this morning.
The great Les Blank directed this short doc about a Los Angeles “Love-In” on Easter Sunday in 1967. Longhairs + Hell’s Angels. (Thanks Documentarian.)
Tags: Les Blank
From Aaron Saenz on the Singularity Hub: “Robots have barely learned how to walk, but Vstone is already pushing them to run. The Japanese robot research and manufacturing firm has announced it is putting together the world’s first marathon for our mechanical offspring. The Robot Challenge will have bipedal bots racing around a 100m track for 422 laps either remotely controlled or operating completely autonomously by following a painted line.”
Tags: Aaron Saenz
Don’t ever try a stunt like this while wearing long pants. You’ll pull a groin. (Thanks Crunchy.TV.)
The black turtleneck had yet to be invented. (Thanks Reddit.)
Tags: Steve Jobs