Log24

or, Deja Vu All Over Again

Top two obituaries in this morning's NY Times list–

Simons reportedly died on April 5,
Aubrey on April 6.

This journal on those dates–

April 5 —

April 6 —

A recent New York Times  piece on novelist Jonathan Franzen concludes
with a reference to the Rodney Crowell song "I Don’t Care Anymore.”

Two lines near the end of that song —

"If indeed I do get lonesome in my mansion on the hill
There's this neighbor's wife I covet for her beauty and her skill"

Related material —

Publicity still for "Lost in Space" —

More recently …

Log24 on the release date of "Sin City" — April First, 2005 —

Or: Chinny-Chin-Chin .

This post will be meaningless unless you
have seen the recent film "R.I.P.D.," starring
James Hong and Jeff Bridges.

(In that film, two deceased lawmen appear to 
the living in disguised form— as Hong, and 
as Bridges in the guise of a major babe.)

From the AP Today in History  page
for October 29, 2013 —

On this date in:
1967 The musical "Hair" opened off-Broadway.

This, together with the Halloween season and
"R.I.P.D.," suggests a bizarre show:

"And there we were all in one place,
A generation lost in space…"
– Don McLean, "American Pie" 

The show would star Cybill Shepherd and Jeff Bridges
as, respectively, Jackie Chan and Nicole Kidman in…

V.I.P.D.

See also some related posts with Jeff Bridges.

Backstory: Sermon (Nov. 18,  2012) and
Eternal Recreation (Dec. 24, 2012).

"We've lost the plot!" — "Slipstream."  Small wonder.

Dick Tufeld, Robot Voice in TV’s ‘Lost in Space,’ Dies at 85
    Wed Jan 25, 2012 23:42 from NYT Obituaries  By Bruce Weber

   "Mr. Tufeld possessed one of Hollywood’s most often-heard
   disembodied voices, especially from the 1950s through the 1970s."

In memoriam— A link from the date of Tufeld's death

Where Entertainment is God (continued)

On the re-editing of a news story by The New York Times—

"…in the original versions of a Times report by Jeremy W. Peters, [the new executive editor, Jill Abramson] flatly declared: 'In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion.'" —The Daily Beast

The Times this afternoon—

See also a follow-up from last June
to this morning's "lost in space" quote—

NYT quote removal sparks web buzz

"It's obvious that an editorial decision was made to 'rectify' a quote that made the Times look foolish."

Not so, Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy told POLITICO. “Space was clearly a consideration.”

The Space Case

"A generation lost in space"

— Don McLean, "American Pie"

Last night's post discussed Jim Dodge's fictional vision of a "spherical diamond" related to physics.

For some background, see Poetry and Physics (April 25, 2011).

That post quotes a July 2008 New Yorker  article —

By Benjamin Wallace-Wells, contributing editor at Rolling Stone
and sometime writer on space—

“There’s a dream that underlying the physical universe is some beautiful mathematical structure, and that the job of physics is to discover that,” Smolin told me later. “The dream is in bad shape,” he added. “And it’s a dream that most of us are like recovering alcoholics from.” Lisi’s talk, he said, “was like being offered a drink.”

Or a toke.

"Now John at the bar is a friend of mine
He gets me my drinks for free
And he's quick with a joke or to light up your smoke
But there's someplace that he'd rather be"

— Billy Joel, "Piano Man"

Good News and Bad News

If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.

— T. S. Eliot, beginning of
    Four Quartets

And there we were all in one place 
A generation lost in space

— American Pie, by Don McLean

“It’s not a space shuttle
launch… it’s sex.”