Posts Tagged ‘Fox’
Watching paint dry!…
Artist Phyllis Toburen announces that she has “conceptualized a new genre of abstract art”; she calls her work Sculptural Enamel Paintings, delighting in the how her paints “lift off the canvas in planes, simulating how the Earth formed during its various geologic eras”…
Readers can draw their own conclusions as to the tectonic metaphor. In any case, the photos fascinate.
[TotH to Flavorwire]
UPDATE: from reader DH:
Candidate for LA Country district attorney Trutanich posted YouTube videos that his campaign noted had 700,000+ viewers. LA Times reporters wondered what those numbers really meant, and how easy it is to buy viwers, so posted their own videos of paint drying to see…
As we find the Divine in the details, we might recall that it was on this date in 1989 that the fledgeling Fox Network debuted COPS. Desperate for new programming, but strapped for cash and in the midst of the WGA strike (which had frozen all scripted drama and comedy), Fox had picked up the reality series (which was cheap and “writer-free”) after all of the (then) major networks had passed.
COPS has gone on to become one of the longest-running series on television, and (after the cancellation of America’s Most Wanted) the longest-running show on Fox.
Click here to hear Inner Circle perform “Bad Boys,” the show’s theme.
Now you see ’em…
… Now you don’t.
Consider Wikipedia’s (incomplete* but fascinating) “List of People Who Disappeared Mysteriously“: from Spartacus and Edward V of England to Ambrose Bierce and D.B. Cooper, there’s still no trace…
[TotH to Parijata D. Mackey]
* There are about 900,000 missing persons cases per year– almost 2,500 per day– in the U.S. alone; in countries where politically-motivated “disappearances” occur and/or where human trafficking is an even more regular practice, the rates can run proportionately higher… And then, there are those who vanish while sailing or exploring or otherwise adventuring…
The rate of disappearance in the U.S. has risen six-fold since 1980; but as the Wikipedia list illustrates, vanishing certainly isn’t a recent phenomenon.
As we check the clasps on our ID bracelets, we might wish a hilarious Happy Birthday to writer-director Preston Sturges; he was born (Edmund Preston Biden) on this date in 1898. After a brief career as a Broadway playwright, Sturges sold a screenplay (The Power and the Glory, produced by Fox, starring Spencer Tracy) in 1933; the film did relatively well at the box office, but had a huge impact in Hollywood (e.g., its use of flashbacks and flashforwards was an acknowledged source of inspiration to the screenwriters of Citizen Kane). For the balance of that decade Sturges worked as a studio screenwriter, until, in 1939, he agreed to sell the script for The Great McGinty to Paramount for $1 in return for the chance to direct. The screenplay earned him an Academy Award, the first “Original Screenplay” Oscar; the success of the film assured his chance to continue in the Director’s chair.
Sturges worked in Hollywood for almost 30 years; but his legacy was built in the five years from 1939 through 1943, when he wrote and directed The Great McGinty, Christmas in July, The Lady Eve, Sullivan’s Travels, The Palm Beach Story, The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, and Hail the Conquering Hero. Four of those films– The Lady Eve, Sullivan’s Travels, The Palm Beach Story, and The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek— are on the American Film Institute’s list of 100 Funniest American Films. Arguably they should all be– along with such later gems as The Sins of Harold Diddlebock and Unfaithfully Yours.
Freudian Slips…
From Fox News, announcing the big news story of May 1:
BREAKING NEWS
Obama Bin Laden Dead
Still, Happy World Press Freedom Day!
As we remember that, to paraphrase Craig Newmark, a free press is the immune system of a democracy, we might wish a crafty Happy Birthday to Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli; he was born on this date in 1469. Machiavelli wrote comedies, poetry, and some of the best-known personal correspondence in Italian; but he is best remembered as a Man of Affairs, first as a servant of the Florentine Republic in a time during which Medici influence was on the wane. His most famous work, The Prince— first published as a pamphlet in 1513– was written mid-career to gain favor with the Medici, who were at that point regaining dominance in Florence. The essay on the exercise of power (inspired by Cesare Borgia) not only failed to win over the Medici, it alienated Machiavelli from the Florentine public; he never again played an important role in government. Indeed, when the Florentine Republic was established in 1527, Machiavelli was effectively ostracized.
But published in book form posthumously (in 1532), The Prince began its steady growth in influence. And indeed today, Machiavelli is considered one of the fathers of modern political theory.
Niccolò Machiavelli by Santi di Tito (source)
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