Bachelor number two, from Waco, Texas. He was just 23.
Tags: Steve Martin
Made during another era when American exceptionalism was at risk, Michael Ritchie’s 1975 satire, Smile, takes the pulse of a nation plagued by recession and sagging confidence at a regional beauty pageant in Northern California. Ritchie spent the 1970s meditating on a variety of American institutions as contact sport: commerce (Prime Cut), politics (The Candidate) and sports itself (Bad News Bears and Semi-Tough), looking at the ties the bind us, the competition that defines us and the amazing way we keep playing a game that’s clearly rigged.
High school girls (Joan Prather, Annette O’Toole and Melanie Griffith, among others) descend on Santa Rosa, California, to compete to become the Young American Miss representative for the Golden State. They all come from different backgrounds, but each is determined to achieve. Apart from light comedy segments of the girls’ less-than-amazing singing and dancing skills, Ritchie treats their hopes and dreams with seriousness. These aren’t bad or foolish people–they’re just doing the best that they can.
As the three-day competition wears on, you see the strain on the girls’ faces, as they come to realize that winning isn’t really so great and losing is unacceptable. They’re all essentially participating in something they know isn’t true, but since it’s already begun they may as well see it to the end. And they’re encouraged to do so by barely functional adults, like pageant organizer Brenda (Barbara Feldon), a former contestant whose own hopes have been dashed by an unhappy marriage and myriad other disappointments.
Despite all the females on display, the central character is pageant judge Big Bob (Bruce Dern), a used-car salesman and all-around local booster who is a true believer in the American Dream. But Bob has a problem: a close friend of his, grown despondent with the meaninglessness of his life, has become a bitter alcoholic who wants to leave town in search of something better. Big Bob won’t hear of it. He involves his friend in an idiotic local fraternal order, encourages him to cut down on his drinking and bails him out of jail when his emotions finally explode. But as he counsels his buddy, Big Bob comes to acknowledge that he too has settled for less than he hoped for. He’s a good soul, but he’s been bluffing his whole life, and in this moment his faith is shaken. But you can’t keep Big Bob down for long. Come Monday he’ll be back at the used-car lot, twisting his stiff upper lip into a smile.•
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Recent Film Posts:
- Classic Film: Being There (1979)
- Recent Film: Marwencol (2010)
- Classic Film: The Man in the White Suit (1951)
- Classic Film: 8 1/2 (1963)
- Classic Film: Zelig (1983)
- Classic Film: Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
- Recent Film: Waste Land.
- Classic Film: Woman in the Dunes (1964)
- Classic Film: RoboCop (1987)
- Classic Film: King of Comedy (1982)
- Strange, Small & Forgotten Films: Little Murders (1971)
- Classic Film: The Passenger (1975)
- Recent Film: Dogtooth
- Strange, Small & Forgotten Films: Rivers and Tides (2003)
- Classic Film: F for Fake (1974)
- Recent Film: The Art of the Steal
- Classic Film: The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)
- Classic Film: Fast, Cheap & Out of Control(1997)
- Classic Film: Umberto D. (1952)
- Classic Film: The Wicker Man (1973)
- Classic Film: Blow-Up (1966)
- Classic Film: Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (1978)
- Classic Film: The Stepford Wives (1975)
- Classic Film: Rollerball (1975)
- Recent Film: Exit Through the Gift Shop
- Strange, Small & Forgotten Films: Stay Hungry (1976)
- Classic Film: Westworld (1973)
- Classic Film: Slacker (1991)
- Strange, Small & Forgotten Films: Decasia: The State of Decay (2002)
- Classic Film: 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993)
Tags: Annette O'Toole, Barbara Feldon, Bruce Dern, Joan Prather, Melanie Griffith, Michael Ritchie
From the “1985” section of New York magazine’s fun oral history marking the 25th anniversary of the Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill:
“Diamond: Yauch and I got an apartment in Chinatown—apartment might be an overstatement. It was on Chrystie Street when it was still really Chinatown, and it was an entirely sweatshop building. We could play music literally any time of the day or night.
Diamond: I did go [to Vassar] for a semester, and it was hard. I had to go [to my mom] and say, ‘It’s a total waste of your money and my time, because all I want to do is be in this band.’ Rick and Russell were like, ‘You’re gonna make a video for She’s On It.’ And in our minds, we were the biggest deal in the entire world. Our friends might not have agreed. But you know what I mean—all of a sudden we were making a video, and it started to get shown. We were big on the local video channel U68.
Ross: They went up to perform at the Apollo, and Beastie Boys shows at this point were a little haphazard at best. But by the second song, Mike D’s doing the Jerry Lewis, and the whole Apollo Theater is going, ‘Go, white boys! Go, white boys!’ In my head I’m like, ‘My friends are gonna be famous!’
Horovitz: And then the Madonna tour happened. We did like three songs, and then I did the electric boogaloo for a minute, and then we fucked with the audience. They hated us. Kids literally in tears, parents wanting to kill us. It was awesome. They wanted to kick us off the tour, and Madonna was like, ‘These guys are staying, these guys are great.’ We got back to New York, and we were really feeling ourselves. We were crushing our old spots.”
••••••••••
Tags: Beastie Boys, Rick Ross
A 1986 commercial for the grand opening of a new location for the Tower Records chain, which is now out of business. Also gone or going: record stores, VHS tapes, audio cassettes, video stores. Some knew they’d be short-lived.
"The Atomic Gardening Society had the lofty goal of furthering scientific research. It was really an early crowd-sourcing, citizen-scientist movement." (Image by Nicosmos.)
American gardening took a turn for the unusual after WWII when some gardeners purposely irradiated plants to produce mutations which they hoped would be beneficial. In the wake of Japan’s nuclear disaster, Pruned interviews scientist and gardening historian Paige Johnson, who guesses at the results of these experiments, which were not well-documented, but may still be having an impact on our food chain. An excerpt from the Q&A:
“Pruned: What were some of the mutations these gardens produced?
Johnson: While the scientific experiments are documented pretty well in the journal literature we actually don’t know what mutations came from the home experiments. The Atomic Gardening Society had the lofty goal of furthering scientific research. It was really an early crowd-sourcing, citizen-scientist movement. Very ahead of its time!
But obviously there are issues around properly controlling experiments in people’s backyards, and there was no avenue to ‘publish’ results. A really interesting part of this investigation is what unknown progeny might be out there.
Pruned: So really there might be an atomic heirloom tomato that’s now growing on somebody’s allotment garden. They’re thinking that it’s strangely misshapen and uniquely pigmented because it’s an heirloom, but in fact it’s a gamma-mutated variety. It’s a kind of amnesia, one that’s actually fairly common when it comes to the foods that we eat. Pick any vegetable or meat at Wal-Mart or the local farmer’s market, and more likely than not, there’s a long history there of genetic manipulation that’s largely forgotten.
Johnson: The atomic plant varieties certainly fit it with your ‘food amnesia’ premise; it would be rare for the consumer to know anything about the genetic history of the food we consume, much less if it came out of the mid-century atomic experiments. But the path from an irradiated seed, or a gamma garden, to the table can be anything but straight.”
"I can also pay you in tattoos if you'd like."
I need general help, you need stuff or cash (Bronx)
I posted this long ago and unfortunately lost access to many of the responses. A few of them were promising and I was disheartened so I gave up for the moment. I’m in the midst of a divorce and have three little boys. I work from home doing tattoos. I am fully licensed in NYS since 2003. I use all disposable equipment and the best materials you can buy. If not for the age of my youngest (2), I would be working in a shop.
I need help organizing my apartment and caring for my boys. Eventually, this would turn into a sitting arrangement where I may actually leave the house on occasion! In the beginning, it would be more like dealing with the kids while I work or helping me around the house. Once I see that everyone is comfortable and that you can handle my little men, I would be more inclined to leave the apartment to handle my errands without all three in tow.
I’m not made of money, but the more money I am able to make, the more I am able to pay. I also have an inordinate amount of things to list on eBay and it is hard to do while chasing after a 7, 5 and 2 year old. Now, maybe some of the items would be of interest to you and you’d take some as pay. Or maybe I can just pay you from my proceeds. Ideally, I’d like to rid my life of excess, reclaim closet space and live a cleaner and easier life. I’d also like to devote more time to my art, be it my tattooing or the other forms that I like to dabble in.
I can also pay you in tattoos, if you’d like. I realize this ad is a bit all over the place but feel free to reply, tell me more about you and why you think you’d make a good fit as my general helper / baby sitter. I also cook, and would not only be able to teach you, if you wanted, but would also be able to cook for you if that was something you’d like as a barter. I’m just trying to make the most of my skills and my time until I can re-enter the working world in a more day to day fashion.
I would prefer that those responding like children. My boys are extremely intuitive and won’t open up to someone who is fake. I don’t care if you’re male or female but reserve the right to do a background check as you would be in my home and around my babies. I don’t care if you’re gay or straight, black, white or purple. My only real requirement is that you enjoy children, be motivated and ready to tackle whatever strange job I may have set out for the day… and be young enough to handle their demands.
I have a lot of gothic style clothing to list on eBay in various sizes… so this could appeal to those that appreciate that style… brands like Lip Service, Tripp, Morbid Threads, etc. I also have many electronic items to part ways with. I don’t even want to think about the masses of baby boy items and clothing that I have to part with. This could also be good for a mommy-to-be or someone who knows someone who could use that. I’m open to barter…
So, shoot me an email with your information and I will reply to those that I think may be a good fit. Who knows… maybe I could use more than one person for this endeavor. And if you’re not available to help, but are instead interested in a tattoo, feel free to email me too.
Thanks a bunch.
Such steady “hands.”
"On Saturday he got an air gun and shot a bullet through my store window."
Locksmiths did not have an easy time of it in the 19th century, as the following trio of stories from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle demonstrates.
••••••••••
“Objects To Being Shot At” (September 19, 1892): “Frederick Harbold, a locksmith of 741 Flushing avenue, was in the Lee avenue police court to-day to complain of Alexander Betts, 17 years old, of Flushing avenue, whom he says is the bad boy of the neighborhood. ‘This boy,’ said he, ‘takes pleasure in annoying storekeepers. So long as he confined this annoyance to rapping on my windows I did not mind, but on Saturday he got an air gun and shot a bullet through my store window. I heard the bullet whiz past my ear. I thought this was going too far and I want him arrested.’ Harbold was told to apply for a warrant at the Gates avenue police court.”
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"Then he threw the man down, it is alleged, kicked him and pulled his whiskers."
“Fun With A Locksmith” (June 24, 1895): “Patrick McCann, a laborer, 27 years old, had a lot of fun with Joseph Cohn, a poor Hebrew locksmith of 215 Third street, who went to the house at 141 North Ninth street, in which McCann lives last Wednesday. McCann, who is a giant in strength, told the traveling locksmith he wanted a key fitted to his kitchen door and when he got Cohn in the kitchen he locked the door. Then he threw the man down, it is alleged, kicked him and pulled his whiskers and when he tired of this sort of fun he placed the end of a revolver at the unfortunate fellow’s head and demanded 10 cents for beer. As Cohn did not have any money McCann locked him in the room and kept him prisoner for two hours. McCann will pay for his fun, however, as Justice Goetting sent him to jail for five days this morning.”
••••••••••
“Sudden And Very Remarkable Death” (September 4, 1860): “Joseph Yarkhim, a Bohemian and a locksmith, 60 years of age, and unmarried, was, on Sunday evening, found dead in his room. A neighbor entered and saw the old man apparently alive, sitting nearly upright on a chest, slightly bent forward, but in quite a natural position, and having in one hand a piece of twine. The neighbor walked up and extended a hand to Mr. Yarkhim, but was instantly shocked at the discovery that the open eyes that were fixed upon him were fixed in death. The old man had died with singular suddenness, and apparently without a struggle, as no distortion appeared in his features which wore their usual mild though sudden expression. The Coroner was summoned, and found the deceased retaining the same singularly life-like posture and aspect–the eyes apparently staring at the visitors as if in inquiry at the object of their call. The inquest resulted in a verdict of ‘death from debility and privation.’ Deceased was a friendless and penniless old man, whose life has been a series of hardships and vicissitudes that at last exhausted the last remnant of his vital energy. He often omitted eating, and had no near friend to advise or attend to him.”
Tags: Alexander Betts, Frederick Harbold, Joseph Cohn, Joseph Yarkhim, Justice Goetting, Patrick McCann
The first tablet computer was designed all the way back in 1968, but this 1994 Knight Ridder video envisioning tablets is still amazing. (Thanks Gawker.)
Any revolution that lasts longer than five minutes will be televised (with limited commercial interruption) on every screen the size of a pocket or a pin. But I would guess media is as bad as ever at anticipating protest signs going up and walls coming down. (Image by Adam Turner.)
“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” by Gil Scott-Heron
You will not be able to stay home, brother. You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out. You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip out for beer during commercials, because the revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be televised. The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox in 4 parts without commercial interruptions. The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary. The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by the Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia. The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal. The revolution will not get rid of the nubs. The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, brother.
There will be no pictures of you and Willie Mae pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run, or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance. NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32 on reports from 29 districts. The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting downbrothers on the instant replay. There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers on the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young beingrun out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process. There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving for just the proper occasion.
Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and women will not care if Dick finally gets down with Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people will be in the street looking for a brighter day. The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no highlights on the eleven o’clock news and no pictures of hairy armed women liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose. The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb, Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth. The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be right back after a message about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people. You will not have to worry about a dove in your bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl. The revolution will not go better with Coke. The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath. The revolution will put you in the driver’s seat.
The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised, will not be televised, will not be televised. The revolution will be no re-run, brothers. The revolution will be live.
Tags: Gil Scott-Heron
Trumpeter Chet Baker, who had the angels scared from his face by heroin.
Tags: Chet Baker
"She has a strong food drive."
Emmi the bed bug dog – $7000
Emmi the bed bug dog is certified and ready to go to work with you. She has a strong food drive and a high level of energy which makes her the ideal detection dog.
I am selling her because as it turns out, we just don’t have enough of a bed bug problem in my area (Arkansas) to support her as a business. I will ship her to you.
Please contact me with your phone number so we can visit about her and how much she can help you earn.
Thank you,
Tony
Tags: Emmi
Adorable, until someone gets eaten.
"Most of the time, the old electronics end up in the garbage, despite holding plenty of reusable material." (Image by AvWijk.)
As the production of gadgets grows, e-waste only increases. Some people see an opportunity to profit the world and themselves by mining the mess. An excerpt from Scientific American:
“Each year, new electronics hit the market and capture consumers’ attention, giving them reason to throw away the old VCR or standard television and engross themselves in state-of-the-art gadgetry.
Most of the time, the old electronics end up in the garbage, despite holding plenty of reusable material. But a push for recycling them has gained ground in recent years through both new state laws and a developing “e-recycling” industry.
Imagine a fleet of miners flocking to landfills and disassembling the dated electronics for their batteries and power supplies. John Shegerian uses the term ‘urban mining’ to describe this process. Shegerian is chairman and CEO of Electronic Recyclers International, one of the world’s largest electronic waste recyclers. To him, urban mining is a budding global industry that encompasses essentially anything that’s recyclable.
‘Urban mining goes way beyond electronics,’ he said. ‘It’s everything that goes into a landfill that can be taken out.'”
Tags: John Shegerian
"Avoid the 'cloud’ at all cost!" (Image by Saperaud.)
Professor Steffen Schmidt of Iowa State University provides an historical perspective on cloud computing, even though he fails to mention that the cloud has given us endless storage and much better stability than old mainframes ever did. His take:
“When computers started appearing at the university (Iowa State University in my case) they were large mainframes in a big building. We worked in a small ‘computer room’ down the hall. All there was in that room were a bunch of ‘dumb terminals,’ CRT screens and a keyboard that connected to the VAX mainframe computer (see picture). We used FORTRAN as I recall. Nothing was processed or stored in our ‘computer room’ it was just a connection. When the mainframe went “down” everyone at the university was down.
Also, everything was at turtle speed because someone in the mainframe center had to upload ‘your’ data tape (yup just like old school tape recording reel to reel only bigger) onto the computer which was a pain.
We were so glad when desktop computers appeared and later laptops (and now iPads and other devices). FREE from the tyranny of the mainframe!!! Self reliance and rugged individualism (albeit often crashing locally instead of at the center). Celebrate!
Now these fool idiots are selling us ‘back to the future’ mainframes again and calling them ‘The Cloud.’ Thank God for old timers like me who remember what a disaster that was! Avoid the ‘cloud’ at all cost! The end is near! Flee for the hills and take your laptops and iPads!”
Tags: Steffen Schmidt
"We had to stand there and watch it burn." (Image by Magnus Mertens.)
In a new article in Texas Monthly, Pamela Colloff tries to make sense of a recent rash of church burnings in the Lone Star state and the unlikely culprits behind the blazes. An excerpt:
“Two weeks passed uneventfully. Then, in the predawn hours of February 4, Russell Memorial United Methodist Church, in Wills Point, an hour’s drive west of Tyler, went up in flames. The church stood directly across the street from the local volunteer fire department. Four nights later, smoke was seen billowing from Dover Baptist Church, in a rural area northwest of Tyler. Not long after firefighters arrived, word came over the police scanner that another church, five miles down the road, Clear Spring Missionary Baptist, was ablaze. Texas Ranger Brent Davis and ATF special agent Larry Smith, the probe’s two lead investigators, raced from one fire to the next. Davis, a former trooper who had earned his Ranger badge two years earlier, and Smith, a veteran fire investigator who had worked the crash scene at the Pentagon after 9/11, looked on helplessly as Clear Spring’s roof buckled and fell, illuminating the night sky. Firefighters, who were still struggling to suppress the blaze at Dover, had not yet hauled their water and equipment to Clear Spring. ‘We had to stand there and watch it burn,’ Smith said.
The two lawmen finally caught a lucky break on Valentine’s Day, when a customer reported some unusual graffiti in the rest room of Atwoods Ranch and Home, a Tyler hardware and farm supply store. Etched into the metal partition of the handicapped stall was an inverted cross crowned with crudely drawn flames; above it, someone had scratched the words ‘Little Hope was arson.’ Davis and Smith were elated: Because the blaze had been thought to be accidental, Little Hope had never been mentioned in news reports of the church fires. Only someone intimately familiar with the crimes would make such a claim.
On the grainy footage recorded by Atwoods’ security cameras the previous day, one man seen entering the restroom was immediately recognizable to investigators: nineteen-year-old Jason Bourque. ATF agents had visited the chubby, curly-haired teenager just two days earlier, following up on a tip from a friend who believed he was involved in the fires. Bourque had been under surveillance ever since, though his graffiti had escaped the attention of the federal agents who were trailing him. A former honor student, Eagle Scout, and state debate champion, Bourque hardly fit the profile of a church burner—he had, in fact, been a devout Baptist for most of his life. But Davis and Smith were certain they had found who they were looking for.” (Thanks Longform.)
Tags: Brent Davis, Jason Borque, Larry Smith, Pamela Colloff
This week marks the 50th anniversary of Wide World of Sports, ABC’s great anthology program that introduced closed-in Cold War Americans to cities around the world, from Moscow to Monte Carlo, and made Muhammad Ali and Evel Knievel even bigger stars. And where else could you see frog jumping and drag racing and wrist wrestling in the same 90-minute span?
From ABC’s anniversary program in 1978:
“Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport… the thrill of victory… and the agony of defeat… the human drama of athletic competition… This is ABC’s Wide World of Sports!”
Tags: Evel Knievel, Muhammad Ali
From the color newsreel, “A Street of Memory.”
‘
Tags: Thom Anderson
My Life Story (Brooklyn)
The first 10 chapters of my life story.
A very unique tale about a depressed male obsessed with atheism and black women.
Send for more details.
Some search-engine keyphrases bringing traffic to Afflictor this week:
Afflictor: Not mentioning that Willie Nelson looks like crap, since 2009. (Image by Joel Telling.)
- Classic Film: Being There (1979).
- Recent Film: Marwencol (2010).
- Old Print Articles: Stowaways are caught (1888-1902) + Window cleaners get hurt (1859-1902).
- Classic Photographs: Buying cakes and pies at the Automat (1936) + Italian woman carrying dry-goods box (1912).
- Featured Videos: California woman gets hand transplant + Klaus Kinski’s homage to Jesus Christ + Marshall McLuhan and Tom Wolfe talk literature (1971) + Phil Donahue squares off with Jerry Rubin (1970) + Millie Brown’s art makes her want to vomit + Autonomous DogBot climbs rocks + Timothy Leary and Art Linkletter speak by phone (1977) + Historic Haight-Ashbury home with hidden garage + Satirical commercial for human augmentations + Frank Serpico’s many faces + Short humanoid robot talks and listens + Rolling Stones Rice Krispies jingle (1965) + Sexploitation flick with Chuck Norris and an evil clown (1973) + Trying to make Domino’s Pizza look edible + Looking back at the world’s first computer + Autonomous automobiles explained + Robots dispensing medicine in California + Google Map Maker recruits crowdsourcers + First low-cost persoanl robot.
- Recently posted on NYC’s Craigslist: After a great career, I’m retiring from collecting celebrity hair + Buy a snow globe with my urine in it + I think someone will pay me five million dollars for a camel skeleton + Guy who believes his own bullshit thinks he can make you a billionaire + For some reason we want to put the name of your business on a missile + Looking to get back into the wig business.
- Barack Obama’s mother was many things, including a blacksmith.
- Robert Earl Hughes was the heaviest man in the world.
- Before ESPN and the Internet, there was Sports Phone.
- Philip K. Dick remembers the first story he ever wrote.
- Recalling the cult of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.
- David Owen points out the environmentally sound nature of NYC.
- British investor tries to revive the Cosmos soccer brand.
- David Grann goes on a great squid hunt.
- Dr. Franckinstein was a quack and bootlegger in 1880s Kansas.
- Figuring out how to get people to click Internet ads is a waste of genius.
- The Ethiopian newspaper-rental business.
- A brief history of communications hacking.
- Buckminster Fuller is reborn in Beijing.
- Hotels using new technology to prevent towel theft.
- Brazil’s national library has few book, many massage chairs.
- The Handsome Family explore childhood’s end.
- This week’s Afflictor keyphrase searches.
The opening of “The Squid Hunter,” David Grann’s exciting 2004 New Yorker account about the search for that inscrutable underwater creature, the giant squid:
“On a moonless January night in 2003, Olivier de Kersauson, the French yachtsman, was racing across the Atlantic Ocean, trying to break the record for the fastest sailing voyage around the world, when his boat mysteriously came to a halt. There was no land for hundreds of miles, yet the mast rattled and the hull shuddered, as if the vessel had run aground. Kersauson turned the wheel one way, then the other; still, the gunwales shook inexplicably in the darkness. Kersauson ordered his crew, all of whom were now running up and down the deck, to investigate. Some of the crew took out spotlights and shone them on the water, as the massive trimaran—a three-hulled, hundred-and-ten-foot boat that was the largest racing machine of its kind, and was named Geronimo, for the Apache warrior—pitched in the waves.
Meanwhile, the first mate, Didier Ragot, descended from the deck into the cabin, opened a trapdoor in the floor, and peered through a porthole into the ocean, using a flashlight. He glimpsed something by the rudder. ‘It was bigger than a human leg,’ Ragot recently told me. ‘It was a tentacle.’ He looked again. ‘It was starting to move,’ he recalled.
He beckoned Kersauson, who came down and crouched over the opening. ‘I think it’s some sort of animal,’ Ragot said.
Kersauson took the flashlight, and inspected for himself. ‘I had never seen anything like it,’ he told me. ‘There were two giant tentacles right beneath us, lashing at the rudder.’
The creature seemed to be wrapping itself around the boat, which rocked violently.” (Thanks to The Electric Typewriter.)
Tags: David Grann, Olivier de Kersauson
Robonova-1 at your service. (Thanks Singularity Hub.)
Not so long ago in America, when privacy was still an option and TV was the dominant medium, we feared that maybe this box could prove us idiots, that it could be used to dupe us at the highest levels, that Trilateral Commissions could fool us with Manchurian Candidates, that we could elect a President who was a propped-up simpleton or even an enemy among us. Now, of course, with the Internet’s constant flow of information and crowdsourcing vetting each candidate, all of those fears should be banished. But, of course, they’ve just been heightened. Hal Ashby’s picture-perfect realization of Jerzy Kosinski’s rich 1971 novella, Being There, written during the era when television was considered the problem with us, provides some clues to this phenomenon, though probably not the ones it intended.
Chance (Peter Sellers) is a mentally-challenged gardener who’s worked his entire life at the Washington D.C. home of man who has just passed away. Chance, who’s never left the grounds or learned to read or write, has learned all his life lessons from watching television. (“I like to watch,” he tells all he meets, often having has mantra to passivity misunderstood.) Since he’s not mentioned in the old man’s will, he’s evicted by lawyers. Forced into a spinning world he’s previously encountered only on the static tube, the bewildered man has unlikely good luck when he is hit by a limo carrying the wife of a political power broker. His injury is slight, but Eve (Shirley MacLaine) takes Chance in, and she and her sickly kingmaker husband (Melvyn Douglas) are enchanted by him, mistaking his opacity for wisdom, believing through a series of misunderstandings that he is a financial hotshot named “Chauncey Gardner.” Soon, Chance has met with the President (Jack Warden) and been quoted on TV by the beleaguered Commander in Chief. A lonely nation turns its eyes to Chance, and in addition to advising the President, he is soon being considered a potential candidate himself for the nation’s highest office.
George W. Bush was essentially the final TV candidate, so why have conspiracy theories been trumped up in an age when so little can be hidden? Perhaps if there is no unknown to fear we create it. Perhaps, like Chance, we like to watch, but what we really love is to see what we want to see.•
Tags: Hal Ashby, Jack Warden, Jerzy Kosinski, Melvyn Douglas, Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine
This classic photo by the great Berenice Abbott was taken in 1936 at the 977 Eighth Avenue Automat, a cafeteria-like restaurant which sold food and drink from coin-operated machines. From a 1991 New York Times article:
“Automats were a home away from home for New Yorkers who did not have money to burn — songwriters waiting for a break on Tin Pan Alley, actors dreaming of Broadway. ‘The Automat! The Maxim’s of the disenfranchised,’ the playwright Neil Simon wrote in 1987. But people who did have money to burn ate there too: Walter Winchell, Irving Berlin’s socialites, celebrities.
‘You used to have movie stars who were poor there, making it their home base,’ said Michael Sherman, an executive vice president of Horn & Hardart, the company that owned the Automat. ‘But then things changed. It was more successful for its catering and its parties. It was losing money as an Automat.'”
••••••••••
Adam buys his own meal at the Automat, during the eatery’s obsolescence: