Posts Tagged ‘beheading’
“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”*…
The Chapman University Survey of American Fears Wave 3 (2016) offers a look into the fears of average Americans. In April of 2016, a random sample of 1,511 adults from across the United States were asked their level of fear about 79 different potential sources across a huge variety of topics– crime, the government, disasters, personal anxieties, technology, and others.
As readers can see in the highlights chart above, the top anxiety suffered by Americans is “corrupt government officials”; fully 63% of respondents ranked it “Afraid” or “Very Afraid.” That said, as readers will also see when they click through the link that follows, 10.2% percent of Americans are “Afraid” or “Very Afraid” of “zombies.”
Peruse the results at “America’s Top Fears 2016.”
* Plato
###
As we overcome our wistfulness on remembering that this is Oscar Wilde’s birthday, we might recall that it was on this date in 1793, nine months after her husband, the former King Louis XVI of France, was beheaded, that Marie Antoinette followed him to the guillotine. (Readers who are parents– or collectors– can find commemorative dolls here.)
When the posters were better than the films…
In the days before focus groups and digital enhancement, from the late 1940s into the 1970s, movie posters– “one sheets”– were the film business’ barkers, luring viewers into theaters. The creators of these enticements were unsung (as their work was unsigned)– except, of course, within the industry they served. A number of illustrators– Bill Gold, Frank McCarthy, Howard Terpining, and yesterday’s honoree Saul Bass, among others– earned insider prominence. But the undisputed champ, the granddaddy of the poster artists’ Golden Age, was Reynold Brown.
In 1952, Brown, who’d been a commercial illustrator, delivered his first poster…
… thus kicking off a string of some of the most famous movie posters of all time. From the epic…
…through the dramatic…
… and the terrifying…
… to the titillating…
… and the just plain trivial…
… Reynold Brown “put butts in seats.”
See more of Brown’s wonderful work here, here (from whence, images above) and here. And watch this charming documentary on Brown and his work:
###
As we salt our popcorn, we might recall that this is the Feast Day celebrating the Beheading of St. John the Baptist (as observed by the Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Eastern Orthodox, and Byzantine Catholic churches and the Church of England, (including many national provinces of the Anglican Communion).
“Salome and the Apparition of the Baptist’s Head” by Gustave Moreau (the Reynold Brown of the mid-19th Century)
Patently ridiculous…
From Donna Kossy and her Hysterical Patents, a selection of “unusual patents from the collection of a deceased patent attorney”; e.g.,
Inventor: Bernard H. Nichols, Ravenna, Ohio
Date: May 20, 1913
U.S. Patent Number: 1,062,025Description: Hat to prevent premature baldness. The hat is “adapted to fit upon the head in such a manner as not to interfere with the free circulation of blood to the scalp, and at the same time so constructed as to be worn without discomfort, and without causing a temporary unseemly marking on the forehead or scalp of the wearer where it comes in contact therewith, when the hat is removed.”
More human ingenuity at its most unrestrained at Hysterical Patents. (Thanks to reader SS for the lead!)
As we muse on the “intellectual” in “intellectual property,” we might recall that it was on this date in 1661 that the body of Oliver Cromwell– leader of the Roundhead “New Model Army” that defeated Royalist forces in the English Civil War, and subsequently the Lord Protector of the short-lived Commonwealth of England– was exhumed (he’d died of natural causes two years earlier) and ritually beheaded– on the anniversary of the 1649 execution and beheading of the king, Charles I, he’d overthrown.
Cromwell’s death mask (source)
You must be logged in to post a comment.