Archive for May 2009
Butchering sacred cows…
While for the most part, one tends to act on positive recommendations– to see films with good reviews, to catch acts about which one’s friends are enthusiastic– it can be useful to be warned off as well…
“A programmer named Chris” at Cynical-C has stepped up to oblige. In “You Can’t Please Everyone,” he’s collected one-star reviews of classics, posted on Amazon…
Consider for example, this pithy reaction to Homer’s Odyssey:
This book sucks. I dont care if Homer was blind or not this book is like 900 pages too long. I could tell this story in about 10 pages. Homer taking all long to say stupid stuff. Teens if you are reading this all I have to say is CLIFF NOTES CLIFF NOTES you will pass the test, unless you are in AP classes. The teachers expect kids to read cliff notes trust me my moms a teacher. P.S this book SUCKS.
…Or this reaction to Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer in Robert Wise’s film of Rogers’ and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music:
This movie should be called the Sound of Mucus. The only redeeming quality is that the family has to run from nazis.
For more (much more) of this kind of corrective to the conventional wisdom, see here.
As we reconsider the classics, we might feel compelled to “Whistle a Happy Tune” or ask “Shall We Dance?”, because it was on this date in 1949 that Siam changed it’s name to Thailand (five years after Margaret Landon’s novel, Anna and The King of Siam; three years after John Cromwell’s film adaptation of that book, but two years before Rogers’ and Hammerstein’s musical, The King and I)…
It’s turtles all the way up…
If it can be stacked, piled, or otherwise placed one piece atop another, you’ll find it at MMMMound.
As we work against wobble, we might recall that it was on this date, in 1927 that Luigi Pirandello’s Sei Personaggi in Cerca d’Autore (Six Characters in Search of an Author) premiered… 430 years to the day after his countryman Amerigo Vespucci may have set sail the first time in search of the New World (1497)… historians disagree on whether or not Vespucci actually made that voyage; but they concur that he introduced the European public to the existence of a new land– via widely-circulated letters expressing his belief that the New World was in fact a New World: a new continent (contrary to the beliefs of Columbus and other early sailors West, who believed they were sailing to the far side of the East)… letters that led Martin Waldseemüller to name the new continent “America” on his world map of 1507…
Waldseemüller’s “Universalis Cosmographia,” 1507
the first map to use the name “America”
Audubon 2.0…
Bird of the Week: the Chipping Sparrow
From Cornell, an extraordinary new guide to birds (and birding).
As we smooth our feathers, we might recall that it was on this date in 1754 that the first editorial cartoon– Ben Franklin’s “Join or Die”– appeared in an American (but not yet U.S.) newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette (Philadelphia).
Bling, bling…
Designer Alexander Amosu’s $100,000+ suit
In these days of economic challenge, parsimony is the reigning virtue: cheap is the new black… still, a few carry the torch of acquisitive aspiration. One can find a passel of pointers to opportunities to consume more or less conspicuously at The Most Expensive Journal.
As we read it and weep, we might spare a grateful thought for Bill Gaines and Harvey Kurtzman; aon this date in 1952 they published the first issue of Mad (appropriately called the “October-November” issue :-)… When asked to cite Mad‘s philosophy, Gaines responded, “We must never stop reminding the reader what little value they get for their money!” (or, in Art Spiegelman’s gloss: “The message Mad had in general is ‘The media is lying to you, and we are part of the media.’ It was basically… ‘Think for yourselves, kids.'”)
Indeed.
What ails you?…
As age continues its colonizing of one’s body, one is rarely without a complaint of some sort or another. So perhaps one can take consolation from Listverse’s Top 10 Bizarre Illnesses… at least one doesn’t have, for instance:
Cutlery Craving
The desire to eat metal objects is comparatively common. Occasionally there is an extreme case, such as that of 47 year old Englishman Allison Johnson. An alcoholic burglar with a compulsion to eat silverware, Johnson has had 30 operations to remove strange things from his stomach. In 1992, he had eight forks and the metal sections of a mop head lodged in his body. He has been repeatedly jailed and then released, each time going immediately to a restaurant and ordering lavishly. Unable to pay, he would then tell the owner to call the police, and eat cutlery until they arrived. Johnson’s lawyer said of his client, “He finds it hard to eat and obviously has difficulty going to the lavatory.”
All ten, each with links to further info on each, here.
(And further to the recent post on GiantURL, readers might consider the alternative, DickensURL, via which your correspondent’s modest http://www.LawrenceWilkinson.com becomes:
http://dickensurl.com/90f3/Under_an_accumulation_of_staggerers_no_man_can_be_considered_a_free_agent_No_man_knocks_himself_down_if_his_destiny_knocks_him_down_his_destiny_must_pick_him_up_again
… from The Old Curiosity Shop, as it happens)
As we fend off “medical student syndrome,” we might recall that on this date in 1824 Beethoven’s Ninth (and final) Symphony, Chorale, premiered in Vienna, with “lyrics” by Frederich Schiller (part of his “Ode to Joy”); Beethoven’s chorus concludes:
Be embraced, ye millions!
This kiss for the whole world!
Brothers, beyond the star-canopy
Must a loving Father dwell.
Be embraced,
This kiss for the whole world!
Joy, beautiful spark of the gods,
Daughter of Elysium,
Joy, beautiful spark of the gods!
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