Open locks and hand out virtual keys with your phone and Lockitron. (Thanks Singularity Hub.)
u$ed rubbers (5 boros)
must be from str8 contact
cash paid
Ad for Hunter S. Thompson’s campaign for Sheriff of Aspen in 1970. (Thanks Bibliokept.)
From a 2005 Tahoe Daily Tribune article: “Thompson had been a resident of Pitkin County since the late 1960s. In a 1970 Rolling Stone article titled ‘Freak Power in the Rockies’ (also later published in the Thompson collection The Great Shark Hunt), he documented the rise of a new political generation of hippy activists in Aspen. In 1970, Thompson himself ran unsuccessfully for Pitkin County sheriff.
Thompson’s political legacy in Aspen and the surrounding area is far-reaching, even though his involvement dropped off in recent years. His bid for the sheriff’s post was a direct attack on the traditional, conservative style of policing in place at the time, and set the stage for the more tolerant, community-minded law enforcement that took root in the 1970s under Sheriff Dick Kienast.
Thompson’s activism also extended into the nuts and bolts of county government, and he helped pioneer the anti-development streak in local politics that survives to this day. He backed strict land-use controls and the candidates who were willing to impose them. Many of the land-use regulations still in place in Aspen and Pitkin County can be traced back to Thompson’s work as a growth-control activist.
‘The guy used to call me at 3 a.m. and talk about land use,’ said Pitkin County Commissioner Mick Ireland.'”
Tags: Hunter S. Thompson
"He rereads what you probably haven't heard of, like Anton Chekhov's Sakhalin Island."
A couple of passages about the voracious reading habits of economist, excellent blogger and The Great Stagnation author Tyler Cowen, from a new Businessweek profile of him:
“When Tyler Cowen was 15, he became the New Jersey Open Chess Champion, at the time the youngest ever. At around the same age, he began reading seriously in the social sciences; he preferred philosophy. By 16 he had reached a chess rating of 2350, which today would put him close to the top 100 in the U.S. Shortly thereafter he gave up chess and philosophy for the same reason: little stability and poor benefits.
He’d been reading economics, though. He figured that economists were supposed to publish, and by age 19 he had placed two papers in respected journals. As a PhD candidate at Harvard, he published in the Journal of Political Economy and the American Economic Review. ‘They were weird, strange pieces,’ he says, ‘but still in good journals, top journals. That cemented my view that I could, you know, somehow fit in somewhere.’ I ask him what he was like, what made him doubt he could fit in.
‘I was like I am now.’
‘You’ve always been like that?’
‘Always. Age 3. Whatever.’
‘What did you do at age 3?’
‘Read a lot of books.'”
••••••••••
“Tyler Cowen has read what’s listed in Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon, though not, he concedes, every single last one of the Icelandic sagas. He rereads what you probably haven’t heard of, like Anton Chekhov’s Sakhalin Island. For the Brazil trip, in case he runs out of new books, he has also brought Neal Stephenson’s 1,100-page Cryptonomicon, which he has already read. Fiction slows him down, he says, which makes packing easier. He carries a Kindle but reads paper when he can; he says he’s invested too much time on the rhythm of how the eye tracks the page. Several people have told me the same story about Cowen: They have watched him read, and he scans a page as others might scan a headline.”
••••••••••
Cowen visits Big Think to discuss the free market and morality:
Tags: Tyler Cowen
Pre-fame David Letterman on some sort of local Los Angeles TV show.
Tags: David Letterman
Mission Nuestra Señora Reina de los Angeles, 1869.
Bernard-Henri Lévy’s 2006 book, American Vertigo, received, via Garrison Keillor, one of the most famous and harshest slams ever in the New York Times Book Review. The French writer’s volume grew from a series of articles he penned for the Atlantic, which saw him retrace Tocqueville’s path across America. An excerpt from one of the Atlantic pieces, in which Lévy looked at the unfathomable city known as Los Angeles:
“A legible city has to have a heart, and this heart must be pulsating. It has to have, somewhere, a starting point from which, one feels, the city was produced, and from which its mode of production is still intelligible today. It has to have a historical neighborhood, if you like, but one whose historicity continues to shape, engender, inspire, the rest of the urban space. But this place, too, is nonexistent. In Los Angeles there is nothing like the old neighborhoods from which you feel, almost physically, that the European cities, or even New York, have emerged. They do show me the old neighborhood. Kevin Starr, the excellent California historian, takes me not far from Chinatown, to Olivera Street and Old Plaza, which are supposed to be the nucleus of what was once called El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles. But they are dead places. It’s a neighborhood frozen in time. However much Starr leaps from house to house, with his considerable bulk proving surprisingly agile, with his ink-blue too-warm suit and his bow tie that makes him look like a private eye out of Raymond Chandler, to explain to me how gargantuan Los Angeles was born from this tiny seed; for all this, something isn’t right. You don’t feel any possible common denominator between this stone museum, these relics, and the vital, luxuriant enormousness of the city. And the truth is that with its pedestrian islands and its restored façades, its profusion of typical restaurants and its stands selling authentic Mexican products, its wrought-iron bandstands, its cobblestones, the varnished wood of the Avila Adobe, which is supposed to be the first house in the neighborhood, this street makes me think of all the fake “heritage towns” that I keep running into in America.
For an illegible city is also a city without a history.
An unintelligible city is a city whose historicity is nothing more than an ageless remorse.
And a post-historical city is, I fear, a city about which one can predict with some certainty that it will die.”
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Bernard-Henri Lévy on the Daily Show in 2006:
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Tags: Bernard-Henri Lévy, Garrison Keillor, Jon Stewart, Kevin Starr
“Incredible Machine” by Bell Labs is a fun, old-school 1968 look the early use of computers in communications research (graphics, film, music).
Bellevue Homeless Shelter, NYC. (Image by Beyond My Ken.)
Longreads pointed me in the direction of an amazing series of articles in Capital about homelessness in NYC during the Bloomberg years, which was written by Steven Boone, a former colleague of mine who was always an excellent writer and person. An excerpt from “Out, But Not Up: Homelessness In The Age Of Bloomberg“:
“Three months later, the last of my small savings ran out, and I went to my landlady in Castle Hill to tell her that I would be leaving at the end of the week, so that she could get a new room renter lined up right away. She asked where I was going. I lied, and told her I would stay with family until I got back on my feet. On Friday, I went to 30th Street Intake Shelter (better known as the Bellevue homeless shelter) for the first time and got assigned to Ready Willing and Able shelter in Brooklyn.
The next morning, I met my father to load his van up with my belongings and store them in an uncle’s garage. He asked me where I was going. I lied again.
This man was 72 years old, living in a small apartment with his wife and supplementing his fixed income by working in a high school cafeteria. All my life, he’d worked seven days a week—six for the U.S. Postal Service, and Sundays cleaning up at a beauty school. (Growing up, I used to be his assistant at the school, paid in movie money and donuts.)
Decades later, I hadn’t managed to do anything to ease his burden. All my adult life in New York, working simply meant paying the rent and keeping the lights on. So, to the extent that I was committed to living, I was committed to making the next transaction between us be a check for some outrageous sum of money, from me to him. If I told him as much, I knew what he would say: ‘Sport, I never cared that you kids would become king of the hill or any kind of bigshot, so long as I raised y’all to be good people in this world. That’s all I ever wanted, and I got what I wanted.’ And in fact that’s how he put it a couple years later, during one of our annual shy, stare-at-the-floor heart-to-hearts.”
Tags: Michael Bloomberg, Steven Boone
"The second shot struck Russell in the groin and the third in the back."
Seemingly everyone in America in the late nineteenth century would behand you with a butcher’s knife for a sawbuck, so you had to be particularly heinous to be identified as a “rough character,” as the following quartet of Brooklyn Daily Eagle articles prove.
••••••••••
“Chopped His Wife’s Head Off” (June 16, 1889): “Philadelphia, Pa.–A most brutal murder was committed in this city this afternoon. George McCann, aged about 30 years, a rough character, killed his wife, Maggie, five years younger, by chopping her head off in a horrible manner with a hatchet. Jealousy was the cause.”
••••••••••
“Not Satisfied With The Play” (January 13, 1887): “Chicago, Ill.–A dramatic company from Kansas City gave an entertainment in the City Hall last night. At the close of the performance a number of rough characters demanded the return of their money, and, not getting it, the manager and the members of the company were shamefully beaten. Adam Gorman pursued one of the men half a square, and a few minutes later was found with his left arm split open and a fearful gash near the breast. The mob then pursued the company to the Marion House, where the officers defended them from the mob. Gorman’s injuries are probably fatal.”
••••••••••
"George McCann...killed his wife, Maggie, five years younger, by chopping her head off in a horrible manner with a hatchet."
“Bloody Deeds” (September 29, 1884): “Middletown, Ohio–Henry Slopy was murdered here yesterday afternoon at half past four o’clock by Sandy Jackson, a rough character. Jackson was drunk and attempted to stir up a row. Slopy ran away and was struck with a stone, which broke his neck. Jackson was arrested immediately together with a confederate, a young man named John Flaherty. The murder caused much excitement among the citizens and threats of lynching being made, special policemen were called in to guard the jail.”
••••••••••
“Attacked By Roughs” (February 7, 1895): “Stocktown, Mass.–Shortly after the arrival of the 11 o’clock train last night Officer Curtis was quietly walking with a man down the street behind a crowd of rough local characters. One of the company, Christopher Russell, turned and asked the officer why he was following them. The officer replied, ‘I have the right to.’
There was some little talk and Russell sprang at the officer, biting him severely in the cheek. Officer Curtis finally used his revolver, first shooting into the air. The second shot struck Russell in the groin and the third in the back. Although badly used up, Curtis took Russell and one other man in the party, F. Dillon, to the lock up. Russell was taken to the Massachusetts General Hospital on the 5:40 train this morning. His condition is critical. Officer Curtis lies ill at his home.”
From New Zealand. (Thanks Endgadget.)
"I'm a man of my word." (Image by Eugen Nosko.)
Play me for my ping pong table! – $50/150 (Greenpoint/Williamsburg)
I have a perfectly functional, regulation size Sportcraft ping pong table that I need to sell before I move into a smaller place. It folds up so you can store it in a corner.
In order to have a little fun in the process of letting it go, I decided to make a wager: best out of 3 games to 21. If you win, you can buy it for the low price $50, but if I win you buy it for $150 (which is still not a terrible deal). We’ll shake on it up front. I’m a man of my word, and I expect you to be a person of your word as well. I can help you dismantle it for transportation after the game.
I’m not making the bet because I’m sure that I’ll win. In fact, I realize that an ad like this might attract very good players. I just wanted to make the process of letting my table go more exciting than sad.
Let the games begin!
Rob
Tags: Rob
Stewart Brand adapted his 1995 book, How Buildings Learn, into a 1997 BBC TV sepcial.
More Stewart Brand Posts:
Tags: Stewart Brand
Theoretical cosmologist Sean Carroll explains to Steven Colbert the idea of the Multiverse, the theory that multiple universes make up all that exists.
•••••••••
The Mulitverse Theory via Family Guy:
Tags: Sean Carroll, Steven Colbert
I was shopping in a supermarket recently and noticed a mountain of Quisp cereal, an erstwhile dead brand that was originally introduced in 1965. It reminded me of Rob Walker’s excellent 2008 Sunday Times Magazine article about River West Brands, a Chicago outfit that purchases and reivitalizes ghost products, including the sugar-coated flying saucer cereal, hoping to capitalize on nostalgia and brand familiarity. An excerpt from Walker’s article:
“River West’s offices, on the 36th floor of the Chicago Board of Trade Building, are sprinkled with the bric-a-brac of obscure products: a Quisp cereal box, Ipana toothpaste packages, Duz detergent bottles. On a wall of Paul Earle’s office is a framed, five-foot-by-three-foot sheet of uncut ‘Wacky Packages’ stickers — those 1970s trading-card-size brand-parody images that rendered the word Crust in the style of the Crest logo, for example. Earle has a Midwestern everyman quality about him: he’s compact, with a big and friendly let’s-get-along voice and a penchant for deadpan jokes. Only his designer-eyeglass frames deviate from his overall demeanor.
Earle loves brands. They are not mere commercial trademarks to him, but pieces of Americana. He seems not just nostalgic but almost hurt about the fate of the ‘castoff brands’ of the world. ‘If commerce is part of the American fabric, then brands are part of the American fabric,’ he said to me on one occasion. ‘When a brand goes away, a piece of Americana goes away.’
Earle’s professional entanglement with branding began at Saatchi & Saatchi, where he was a cog in a gigantic ad agency working for gigantic clients, like General Mills and Johnson & Johnson. That was in the mid-1990s, and he saw what happened as conglomerates merged: brands that didn’t have the potential for global scale got squeezed to the bottom shelf, or out of existence. He was attracted to the idea of working with ‘noncore’ brands, but when he figured out that big-agency economics made it impractical, he left Saatchi and went to the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and then took a brand-management job at Kraft.
At Kraft he observed the same mergers-and-consolidation process from a different angle, and he seems to have found it equally frustrating. ‘These are American icons with loyal consumers,’ he says. ‘It’s not their fault a $40 billion company doesn’t like them anymore. Consumers like them.’ He sees reviving brands as ‘a civic mission’ of sorts. ‘If it weren’t my job,’ he said, ‘it would be my hobby.’ He says this in a way that sounds not just plausible but hard to doubt.
Even so, he has set out to make this particular civic mission turn a profit. While he recognizes that a given brand might not be able to survive in the portfolio of a multinational, different sorts of business models might work to sustain it. As surely as the ownership of brands has consolidated through one megamerger after another, the consumer market seems to be moving in the opposite direction, with an individualism-fueled demand for almost unlimited variety.”
______________________
The cereal from Planet Q:
Tags: Paul Earle, Rob Walker
There was a ridiculous and popular 1968 book by Erich Von Daniken, called Chariots of the Gods?, that was turned into a 1970 film by Harald Reinl. It proposed that extraterrestrial astronauts visited Earth and influenced history. This video, a TV reedit of the film, is narrated by Rod Serling.
Tags: Erich Von Daniken, Harald Reinl, Rod Serling
Newly opened at the University of Chicago. (Thanks Singularity Hub.)
Prevents spotting on Mets’ uniforms. (Image by Shattonbury.)
Many people were surprised when embattled New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon mocked and ridiculed the star players on his self-described “shitty team” in a recent New Yorker article, but the formerly wealthy idiot is just getting started. In order to send an even sterner message to his loser club, Fred Wilpon has decided to install a tampon machine in the Mets clubhouse, letting his players know that he doesn’t believe that they truly are men and that, perhaps, they are able to menstruate. This is poor behavior for two reasons. First of all, it is sexist as many women are great athletes and being compared to a woman is not an insult. Secondly, cash-strapped Fred Wilpon is charging $3,000 per tampon in order to raise money for his Madoff legal defense fund.
Fred Wilpon, a rich, dumb man who is no longer so rich but is as dumb as ever, is filled with rage for his ballplayers. Of course, he should be angry with himself for horribly mismanaging his baseball team and investing heavily in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. But that’s not Fred Wilpon’s way.
To show his disdain, Fred Wilpon has taken to using outfielder Carlos Beltran’s locker as a urinal. The well-dressed dummy sits in the owner’s box at games, pointing at his players and laughing derisively. When Mets players are about to catch the ball, Fred Wilpon blows a vuvuzela and calls their mothers “whores,” hoping to distract them so that they will make an error. When he sees players’ wives in the stands, Fred Wilpon gestures putting his index finger down his throat, suggesting that they are homely and make him want to vomit.
Fred Wilpon decided to make an example of beloved team mascot, Mr. Met. Calling the bulbous-headed figure a “disgusting bag of shit,” Fred Wilpon took away Mr. Met’s uniform and underwear, forcing him to parade around in the parking lot with his genitals exposed. Mr. Met has been ordered to squeegee for change and turn tricks in cars. He has developed Hep-C and a serious drinking problem.
In a recent Sports Illustrated article, Fred Wilpon said the Mets may lose $70 million this year, that they are bleeding money. And there is no tampon big enough to stop that.
Mr. Met: Will use his mouth on you. (Image by Richiek.)
••••••••••
More Fake Stuff:
- Charlie Sheen attending medical school, aims to become pussy doctor.
- Donald Trump burns down the White House.
- Larry King talking into a breadstick at the Olive Garden.
- Sarah Palin murders, effs a caribou.
- That Dick Cheney sex tape finally surfaces.
- New ESPN program: Lebron James Discusses His Pecker Variety Hour.
- The Pope getting all crunk and nasty.
- Snooki sentenced to death by drowning.
- Why Christmas was cancelled this year.
- Huge changes ahead at American Idol.
- Lady Gaga urinates on home plate at Yankee Stadium.
- Michael Scott to be murdered on The Office.
- Exclusive: Snooki running for Mayor of Wasilla.
- NFL amends rules, football becomes even more reprehensible.
- Environmental disaster worsens as…oh wait, Snooki just crapped her pants!
- Lindsay thinks she’s in a really lousy airport.
- Mr. Trump classes up the Miss Universe pageant.
- Larry King interviews Lady Gaga.
Tags: Fred Wilpon, Mr. Met
"It can be done in a day if you focus on it." (Image by Bjørn som tegner.)
I need someone to do my college paper – $9999999 (bronx)
I have a paper that needs to get done, it is 17 paragraphs and all the sources are included. The paper has very specific instructions eg.what is included in each parapgrah etc… There is less than 30 pages total of reading. It can be done in a day if you focus on it.
I can give $20 cash, $45 chilli’s gift card (3x $15 chili gift cards) or you can feel free to offer what you would want to do this assignment.
I need this done asap, someone please help!
One of the first machines to convert solar power to electricty. If you’re going to do nothing, do it like this.
Tags: Charles Eames, Ray Eames
"He was literally and figuratively behind the wheel of our bus, driving it the way Charlie Parker worked the saxophone." (Image by Joe Mabel.)
In a 1994 Paris Review Q&A, Ken Kesey explains how Beat muse Neal Cassady wound up driving Furthur, the Merry Pranksters’ bus:
“Cassady was around us often. There was one incident in particular when he truly impressed me not only as a madman, genius, and poet but also as an avatar—someone in contact with other powers. He took me to a racetrack near San Francisco. He was driving and talking very fast, checking his watch frantically, hoping we would get to the track on time. If we got to the track just before the last three races, we’d get in free. We made it just in time and we bet on the last two races. Cassady had a theory about betting he’d learned in jail from someone named Knee-Walking Jackson. His theory was that the third favorite at post time is often the horse most likely to upset the winner and make big money. Cassady’s strategy was to step up to the tellers at the ticket booths just at post time. He’d glance up to see who was third favorite and put money on that horse. He didn’t look at the horses, the jockeys, or the racing sheets. He said to me, This is going to be the one, I can feel it. He asked me for ten bucks and I gave it to him. He put three dollars down with my ten. Given the odds we would have made some good money. We went right down to the line to watch, and it was a close race, neck and neck. I’m no horse fan, but I was getting into it because it looked like the third favorite could win. There was a photo finish and Cassady suddenly tore up his tickets and left. I followed him back to the car and could hear the announcement: We have a photo finish and the winner is . . . It turned out to be the favorite. Neal was so confident of his vision that if he lost, he never waited around or looked back.
Cassady was a hustler, a wheeler-dealer, a conniver. He was a scuffler. He never had new clothes but was always clean, and so were his clothes. He always had a toothbrush and was always trying to sell us little things and trying to find a place where he could wash up. Cassady was an elder to me and the other Pranksters, and we knew it. He was literally and figuratively behind the wheel of our bus, driving it the way Charlie Parker worked the saxophone. When he was driving he was improvising an endless monologue about what he was seeing and thinking, what we were seeing and thinking, and what we had seen, thought, and remembered. Proust was his literary hero and he would quote long passages from Proust and Melville from memory, lacing his revelations with passages from the Bible. He was a great teacher and we all knew it and were affected by him.”
••••••••••
Cassady in conversation with Allen Ginsberg, 1965:
Tags: Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, Neal Cassady
"They have been pestered almost to death by a gang of young ruffians." (Image by Lewis Hine.)
In a December 24, 1890 article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a New York candy store owner has lots of problems with neighborhood toughs, and for some strange reason, the shakedowns, beatdowns, arson and explosions were treated as laughing matters by the police. An excerpt:
“Charles Bauer’s candy store at 35 Second Avenue, New York, was entered by burglars at 1 o’clock this morning. After ransacking the store they fired the place and tried to blow it up with the use of powder and gas. A package of powder was placed by the fire and the plug in the gas pipe was removed, causing the gas to escape.
An explosion occurred but fortunately did little damage. Two policemen who had discovered the burglary and fire narrowly escaped being blinded. The store is on the ground floor of a four story tenement. Bauer, a young German, who with his wife, had saved a little money, and four months ago they bought the place from the former owner. They sell newspapers, tobacco, stationery and candy. Ever since they have had the store they have been pestered almost to death by a gang of young ruffians who hang around the corner on Second Avenue and Second Street. They have made life miserable for Bauer and his wife. He has been robbed a number of times and some of the loafers on one or two occasions have beaten him when he protested against their outrages. He says that they have been in the habit of running into his place when the police drove them from the corners. He got himself a club and when they came into the store again he attempted to put them out. They defied him and beat him.
Bauer says he appealed to the police, but he got no protection. His tormentors would come boldly into the store, steal cigars and cigarettes and get out again. A week after they took that kind of possession of the place it was broken into and robbed. Last night Bauer closed up about 11 o’clock and he and his wife went home. They live across the way.
At 1:20 o’clock the police found the door of the candy store open. There was a fire burning in the back part of the place. Around the store at the end of the counter had been piled a lot of papers, in the center of which was a pile of rags and a package of powder.
The rags were burning. One policeman was badly burned while putting the fire out. Police Captain McCollagh said he was investigating the matter. He didn’t believe there was a gang in his precinct. There are only little boys, 9 or 10 years old, he said. He apparently regarded the burglary and attempt to blow up the building as a joke. However, he said he would look into it.”
"American troops wrote 'Kilroy was here' on the walls of Europe in World War II in order to prove that somebody had been there." (Image by Luis Rubio.)
Matthew Hahn interviewed Hunter S. Thompson for The Atlantic in 1997, discussing the impact of the Internet on journalism and culture, among other matters. Thompson was particularly prescient about the ego-feeding nature of the Net. An excerpt:
“Matthew Hahn: The Internet has been touted as a new mode of journalism — some even go so far as to say it might democratize journalism. Do you see a future for the Internet as a journalistic medium?
Hunter S. Thompson: Well, I don’t know. There is a line somewhere between democratizing journalism and every man a journalist. You can’t really believe what you read in the papers anyway, but there is at least some spectrum of reliability. Maybe it’s becoming like the TV talk shows or the tabloids where anything’s acceptable as long as it’s interesting.
I believe that the major operating ethic in American society right now, the most universal want and need is to be on TV. I’ve been on TV. I could be on TV all the time if I wanted to. But most people will never get on TV. It has to be a real breakthrough for them. And trouble is, people will do almost anything to get on it. You know, confess to crimes they haven’t committed. You don’t exist unless you’re on TV. Yeah, it’s a validation process. Faulkner said that American troops wrote ‘Kilroy was here’ on the walls of Europe in World War II in order to prove that somebody had been there — ‘I was here’ — and that the whole history of man is just an effort by people, writers, to just write your name on the great wall.
You can get on [the Internet] and all of a sudden you can write a story about me, or you can put it on top of my name. You can have your picture on there too. I don’t know the percentage of the Internet that’s valid, do you? Jesus, it’s scary. I don’t surf the Internet. I did for a while. I thought I’d have a little fun and learn something. I have an e-mail address. No one knows it. But I wouldn’t check it anyway, because it’s just too fucking much. You know, it’s the volume. The Internet is probably the first wave of people who have figured out a different way to catch up with TV — if you can’t be on TV, well at least you can reach 45 million people [on the Internet].”
Tags: Hunter S. Thompson, Matthew Hahn
We’re so annoying even machines don’t want to talk to us. According to a BBC article, scientists are encouraging robots to develop their own words. An excerpt:
“The Lingodroid research project lets robots generate random sounds for the places they visit in both simulations and a real office.
The ‘words’ are shared and the robots play games to establish which sound represents which location.
The lexicon has proved so sophisticated that it can be used to help robots find places other robots direct them to.
The machines are being allowed to generate their own words because human language is so loaded with information that robots found it hard to understand, said project leader Dr Ruth Schulz from the University of Queensland.
‘Robot-robot languages take the human out of the loop,’ she said. ‘This is important because the robots demonstrate that they understand the meaning of the words they invent independent of humans.'”
Charles Mingus, Manhattan, July 4, 1976.
This classic 1976 photograph shows the tempestuous musical genius Charles Mingus playing in Manhattan as part of the celebration for the two hundredth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Mingus would live just three more years, passing away from ALS in 1979. From a 1971 Ebony article about the musician’s memoir:
“In his offbeat autobiography, Beneath the Underdog: His World as Composed by Mingus, the noted composer, bassist and general enigma of that name contends that he is really three people. One man stands at dead center, cooly surveying his domain and expressing what he sees to the other two, one of whom is prone to strike out like a frightened animal while the other is gentle and painfully vulnerable. While it is not quite clear as to which self wrote this “Sex Machine” of a book (possibly it was the middle man since he speaks of himself in the third person), it is interesting to note that one might find elements of all these selves in this man’s music. Mingus composes and plays like a beleaguered genius challenging some nameless deity to account for the inequities imposed on the man by fate and other men–and to do so in no uncertain terms. He is a music of storm and constant questioning, beauty, brilliance and embracing tenderness, all of it molded on a framework of logical musical order. It is difficult to think of any ‘jazz’ artists, aside from Mingus’ idol, Duke Ellington, who is capable of creating such impressionistic tapestries of shimmering sound. In other words, Charles Mingus is one of the truly great ones, beneath the layer of legends surrounding his sexual exploits and eccentricities. His genius must be acknowledged.”
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Silent super-8 footage of Battery Park celebration on July 4, 1976:
Tags: Charles Mingus