At the still point… from the film "Absolute Power" :
Photo credit – Graham Kuhn
I’ve heard of affairs that are strictly plutonic,
But diamonds are a girl’s best friend!
Tuesday, July 13, 2021
Last Tango in Cambridge
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Wednesday, April 7, 2021
A Wonderful Model
” Ironically, the bestselling ‘historian’ of time
seems stuck in the past, known throughout his life
to put up posters of Marilyn Monroe in his office,
visit ‘gentlemen’s clubs’ and claim that women were
‘a mystery.’ ” — Philip Ball, March 1, 2021
See related material on a Mystery Woman of Cuernavaca.
See as well the March of Hawking’s death in posts tagged Spring Awakening —
“… a wonderful model of a small church or chapel.”
— Andrew Cusack, March 20, 2018
For another wonderful model in Bavaria, see Straight Line Fever.
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Thursday, August 8, 2013
Heaven’s Gate
Yesterday's post Devil's Gate provided a dark view of life and culture.
A more cheerful view is provided by the late Gail Levin,
a maker of PBS "American Masters" documentaries
that included, notably, Jeff Bridges and Marilyn Monroe.
Levin reportedly died at 67 on July 31, 2013.*
An image from an interview with Levin —
The date in the image, July 19th, 2006, is the broadcast
date of the PBS "American Masters" program on Monroe.
A check for synchronicity shows there was no Log24 post
on that date.
See, however, posts for the day before— "Sacred Order"—
and the day after— "Bead Game."
A related quote from an article linked to in the latter—
"First world culture, which is 'pagan and in the majority
everywhere,' has as its defining characteristic
a 'primacy of possibility,' or pop— a broadly inclusive
concept that covers everything from the Aboriginal
dreamtime to Plato’s Forms."
— Review by Jess Castle of Philip Rieff’s
Sacred Order/Social Order, Vol. 1: My Life among the
Deathworks: Illustrations of the Aesthetics of Authority,
University of Virginia Press, 2006. 256 pages, $34.95.
This quote may serve as the missing July 19, 2006, post.
Related material: Dreamtime, Possibility, and Plato's Forms.
* See that date in this journal for two less famous American
masters, artist Edward Valigursky and writer Robert Silverberg.
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Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Big Rock
From the LA Times online obituaries today:
|
Michael Feran Baigent was born in Nelson, New Zealand,
From 1998 he lectured on and led tours of the temples and Elliott Reid Longtime film, TV actor with a comic touch
Elliott "Ted" Reid, 93, a longtime character actor in films |
From a post last Saturday, June 22, and the earlier
post last Friday, June 21, that preceded it:
|
The Eliade passage was quoted in a 1971 Ph.D. thesis Some context— Stevens's Rock in this journal. Friday, June 21, 2013
Lexicon
|
|
"… a fundamental language
"… the questions raised by R. Lowell |
See also, in this journal, Big Rock.
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Thursday, December 13, 2012
Vibrations
… Or: A Funny Thing Happened
on the Way to the Embedding
This journal on the morning of Saturday, Dec. 8, 2012:
Marilyn Monroe and her music coach in 1954,
from last night's online New York Times :
" 'We were very close to making love; I don’t remember
the stage we were at, but I would say half-dressed,'
Mr. Schaefer recalled. He added: 'And all of a sudden
for some reason, Marilyn got these vibrations, and
we went over to the window….' " more »
"Mr. Schaefer died on Saturday at 87 at his home in
Fort Lauderdale, Fla. ….
He [had] coached Monroe through 'Diamonds Are
a Girl’s Best Friend,' her signature number in the
1953 movie 'Gentlemen Prefer Blondes' (he arranged
the music as well)…."
Perhaps on Saturday she returned the favor.
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Wednesday, April 4, 2012
SPECTRE
Meanwhile, back in June 2004—
The Marilyn Monroe Rose and JFK …
… meet The Crimson Spectre —
(Suggested by this morning's
New York Times obituaries—
"A spectre is haunting…"— Karl Marx)
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Saturday, June 18, 2011
Midnight in the Garden (continued)–
Tracking Shot
Related material—
See also this journal's September 2009 posts.
This post was suggested by today's previous post and by today's NY Lottery.
For some background to the ioncinema.com post numbered 4210 above,
see, in conjunction with the page headed "Azazel" linked to here earlier today,
the ioncinema.com post numbered 5601.
|
“Stranger, dreams verily are baffling and unclear of meaning, For two are the gates of shadowy dreams, But in my case it was not from thence, methinks, Translation by A.T. Murray, in two volumes. Quoted in a press release for the film "Two Gates of Sleep." |
From the post numbered 460 in this journal—
At the still point… from the film "Absolute Power" :
Photo credit – Graham Kuhn
I’ve heard of affairs that are strictly plutonic,
But diamonds are a girl’s best friend!
Comments Off on Midnight in the Garden (continued)–
Monday, June 13, 2011
Broadway Cinderella
Ben Brantley in The New York Times on May 26—
While you theatergoing butterflies out there keep nattering on about the Tonys— who will win, who should win, and so on— I have been focused on an issue of far greater momentousness and urgency. That’s the shameful squandering on Broadway of what our country would seem to believe is our most valued (and infinitely exploitable) natural resource: our celebrities….
Lindsay Lohan: This undeniably talented (and for all intents and purposes, former) film actress poses a special challenge. Her only recent work appears to have been as a paparazzi model and professional partygoer, and a big, line-laden dramatic part like Blanche DuBois might be too onerous to start with. So why not put her in the Broadway premiere of “Finishing the Picture,” a late-career Arthur Miller play inspired by the travails of making a movie (“The Misfits”) with his wife Marilyn Monroe? Having seen a production of this play in Chicago, I can testify that the Marilyn part requires only that the actress playing her be willing to appear asleep and stupefied and, briefly, to walk across the stage naked. For Ms. Lohan, who credibly impersonated Marilyn for a New York magazine photo shoot, this ought to be a cinch. Should an eight-performance week prove too taxing, I suggest Paris Hilton for matinees.
This midnight post was suggested by Sunday's midday 4-digit NY Lottery number, 7286, and by the following web pages:
7286 Style by Lindsay Lohan and 7286 Prisoner Transport.
Some background from a third 7286 web page—
Starlet Lindsay Lohan is bringing her signature Hollywood style to the masses with her new 7286 line. The starlet's stylish stamp is on every aspect of the line, from the name (7-2-86 is her birthday) to the brand's tag line : "Give a girl the right handbag, and she can conquer the world!"
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Friday, March 4, 2011
Infinite Jest
Two items from the August 5, 2005, anniversary
of the day Marilyn Monroe was found dead—
2. Literary Symbol —
See also related material on Hollywood.
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Sunday, May 25, 2008
Sunday May 25, 2008
Hall of Mirrors
Epigraph to
“Deploying the Glass Bead Game, Part II,”
by Robert de Marrais:
“For a complete logical argument,”
Arthur began
with admirable solemnity,
“we need two prim Misses –”
“Of course!” she interrupted.
“I remember that word now.
And they produce — ?”
“A Delusion,” said Arthur.
— Lewis Carroll,
Sylvie and Bruno
Prim Miss 1:
Erin O’Connor’s weblog “Critical Mass” on May 24:
Erin O’Connor’s weblog “Critical Mass” on May 24:
Roger Rosenblatt’s Beet [Ecco hardcover, Jan. 29, 2008] is the latest addition to the noble sub-genre of campus fiction….
Curricular questions and the behavior of committees are at once dry as dust subjects and areas ripe for sarcastic send-up– not least because, as dull as they are, they are really both quite vital to the credibility and viability of higher education.
Here’s an excerpt from the first meeting, in which committee members propose their personal plans for a new, improved curriculum:
“… Once the students really got into playing with toy soldiers, they would understand history with hands-on excitement.”
To demonstrate his idea, he’d brought along a shoe box full of toy doughboys and grenadiers, and was about to reenact the Battle of Verdun on the committee table when Heilbrun stayed his hand. “We get it,” he said.
“That’s quite interesting, Molton,” said Booth [a chemist]. “But is it rigorous enough?”
At the mention of the word, everyone, save Peace, sat up straight.
“Rigor is so important,” said Kettlegorf.
“We must have rigor,” said Booth.
“You may be sure,” said the offended Kramer. “I never would propose anything lacking rigor.”
Smythe inhaled and looked at the ceiling. “I think I may have something of interest,” he said, as if he were at a poker game and was about to disclose a royal flush. “My proposal is called ‘Icons of Taste.’ It would consist of a galaxy of courses affixed to several departments consisting of lectures on examples of music, art, architecture, literature, and other cultural areas a student needed to indicate that he or she was sophisticated.”
“Why would a student want to do that?” asked Booth.
“Perhaps sophistication is not a problem for chemists,” said Smythe. Lipman tittered.
“What’s the subject matter?” asked Heilbrun. “Would it have rigor?”
“Of course it would have rigor. Yet it would also attract those additional students Bollovate is talking about.” Smythe inhaled again. “The material would be carefully selected,” he said. “One would need to pick out cultural icons the students were likely to bring up in conversation for the rest of their lives, so that when they spoke, others would recognize their taste as being exquisite yet eclectic and unpredictable.”
“You mean Rembrandt?” said Kramer.
Smythe smiled with weary contempt. “No, I do not mean Rembrandt. I don’t mean Beethoven or Shakespeare, either, unless something iconic has emerged about them to justify their more general appeal.”
“You mean, if they appeared on posters,” said Lipman.
“That’s it, precisely.”
Lipman blushed with pride.
“The subject matter would be fairly easy to amass,” Smythe said. “We could all make up a list off the top of our heads. Einstein–who does have a poster.” He nodded to the ecstatic Lipman. “Auden, for the same reason. Students would need to be able to quote ‘September 1939[ or at least the last lines. And it would be good to teach ‘Musee des Beaux Arts’ as well, which is off the beaten path, but not garishly. Mahler certainly. But Cole Porter too. And Sondheim, I think. Goya. Warhol, it goes without saying, Stephen Hawking, Kurosawa, Bergman, Bette Davis. They’d have to come up with some lines from Dark Victory, or better still, Jezebel. La Dolce Vita. Casablanca. King of Hearts. And Orson, naturally. Citizen Kane, I suppose, though personally I prefer F for Fake.”
“Judy!” cried Heilbrun.
“Yes, Judy too. But not ‘Over the Rainbow.’ It would be more impressive for them to do ‘The Trolley Song,’ don’t you think?” Kettlegorf hummed the intro.
“Guernica,” said Kramer. “Robert
Capa.” “Edward R. Murrow,” said Lipman.
“No! Don’t be ridiculous!” said Smythe, ending Lipman’s brief foray into the world of respectable thought.
“Marilyn Monroe!” said Kettlegorf.
“Absolutely!” said Smythe, clapping to indicate his approval.
“And the Brooklyn Bridge,” said Booth, catching on. “And the Chrysler Building.”
“Maybe,” said Smythe. “But I wonder if the Chrysler Building isn’t becoming something of a cliche.”
Peace had had enough. “And you want students to nail this stuff so they’ll do well at cocktail parties?”
Smythe sniffed criticism, always a tetchy moment for him. “You make it sound so superficial,” he said.
Prim Miss 2:
Siri Hustvedt speaks at Adelaide Writers’ Week– a story dated March 24,
“I have come to think of my books as echo chambers or halls of mirrors in which themes, ideas, associations continually reflect and reverberate inside a text. There is always point and counterpoint, to use a musical illustration. There is always repetition with difference.”
A Delusion:
Exercise — Identify in the following article the sentence that one might (by unfairly taking it out of context) argue is a delusion.
(Hint: See Reflection Groups in Finite Geometry.)
Why Borovik’s Figure 4
is included above:
Euclid, Peirce, L’Engle:
No Royal Roads.
And now, perhaps, his brother Cornell Capa, who died Friday.
† Related material: Log24 on March 24– Death and the Apple Tree— with an excerpt from George MacDonald, and an essay by David L. Neuhouser mentioning the influence of MacDonald on Lewis Carroll– Lewis Carroll: Author, Mathematician, and Christian (pdf).
No Royal Roads.
For more on Prim Miss 2
and deploying
the Glass Bead Game,
see the previous entry.
And now, perhaps, his brother Cornell Capa, who died Friday.† Related material: Log24 on March 24– Death and the Apple Tree— with an excerpt from George MacDonald, and an essay by David L. Neuhouser mentioning the influence of MacDonald on Lewis Carroll– Lewis Carroll: Author, Mathematician, and Christian (pdf).
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Saturday, December 2, 2006
Saturday December 2, 2006
Venus at
St. Anne's,
continued
In honor of
the film "Bobby,"
now playing.
("Venus at St. Anne's"
is the title of the final
chapter of
the C. S. Lewis classic
That Hideous Strength.)
Symbol of Venus
and
Symbol of Plato
Related symbols:
Click on pictures
for details related tp
the Feast of St. Anne
(July 26).
"The best theology today,
in its repudiation of a
rhetorical religious idealism,
finds itself in agreement
with a recurrent note
in contemporary poetry….
We keep coming back
and coming back/
To the real: to the hotel
instead of the hymns/
That fall upon it
out of the wind. We seek/
… Nothing beyond reality.
Within it/
Everything,
the spirit’s alchemicana….
(From 'An Ordinary Evening
in New Haven,'
in The Collected Poems
of Wallace Stevens….)
… Not grim/
Reality, but reality grimly seen….
(Ibid.)"
— "The Church's
New Concern with the Arts,"
by Amos N. Wilder,
Hollis Professor
of Divinity, Emeritus,
at Harvard Divinity School,
in Christianity and Crisis,
February 18, 1957.
 |
"All the truth in the world
adds up to one big lie."
— Dylan, "Things Have Changed"
Friday, June 4, 2004
Friday June 4, 2004
Feel lucky?
Well, do you?
This entry was inspired by the following…
1. A British blogger’s comment today. This man, feeling like a miserable failure himself, was cheered up by the following practical joke: “If really fed up you could try putting in, miserable failure, (no quote marks) into Google and pressing the ‘I’m feeling lucky’ button.”
2. The page, excerpts from which are shown above, that you get if you put lucky (no quote marks) into Google and press the “I’m feeling lucky” button.
3. My own entries of May 31 on Language Games and of June 1 on language and history, Seize the Day and One Brief Shining Moment.
4. The related June 1 entry of Loren Webster, Carpe Diem, on the Marilyn Monroe rose. Images from Carpe and Shining are combined below:
5. The fact that the “day” to be seized in Language Games is numbered 22, and that on day 22 of November 1963, the following died:
C. S. Lewis
John F. Kennedy
Aldous Huxley.
John F. Kennedy
Aldous Huxley.
6. The fact that November 22 is the feast of Cecilia, patron saint of music.
7. Yesterday’s entry about the alignment of stars, combined with the alignment of Venus with Apollo (i. e., the sun) scheduled for June 8.
All of the above suggest the following readings from unholy scripture:
A. The “long twilight struggle” speech of JFK
B. “The Platters were singing ‘Each day I pray for evening just to be with you,’ and then it started to happen. The pump turns on in ecstasy. I closed my eyes, I held her with my eyes closed and went into her that way, that way you do, shaking all over, hearing the heel of my shoe drumming against the driver’s-side door in a spastic tattoo, thinking that I could do this even if I was dying, even if I was dying, even if I was dying; thinking also that it was information. The pump turns on in ecstasy, the cards fall where they fall, the world never misses a beat, the queen hides, the queen is found, and it was all information.”
— Stephen King, Hearts in Atlantis, August 2000 Pocket Books paperback, page 437
C. “I will show you, he thought, the war for us to die in, lady. Sully your kind suffering child’s eyes with it. Live burials beside slow rivers. A pile of ears for a pile of arms. The crisps of North Vietnamese drivers chained to their burned trucks…. Why, he wondered, is she smiling at me?”
— Robert Stone, A Flag for Sunrise, Knopf hardcover, 1981, page 299
Monday, March 15, 2004
Monday March 15, 2004
The Spaniard
|
Madrid Bombs MADRID, March 15 — The hand-lettered sign at the sidewalk memorial for the 200 victims of last week’s deadly train bombings starkly summed up a sentiment of many who came to pay respects Monday afternoon. It read: “They Died to Support Bush.” Sunday’s stunning electoral defeat for the ruling party of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, one of President Bush’s closest European allies, reflected a late surge of public anger over the government’s support for the U.S.-led war in Iraq triggered both by the attacks and by the sense the government had sought to exploit the bombings for political gain, according to political analysts and voters. Several added that it also reflected a sense of alarm and despair that seems to cut across the political spectrum over the way the United States is wielding power in the world. “We love America — Faulkner, Hemingway, Coca-Cola and Marilyn Monroe — but we have something against your government,” said Luis Gonzales, 56, a high school Spanish literature teacher, as he stopped to view the rows of candles, flowers and makeshift signs at the central Puerta del Sol. “Aznar took us into a war that wasn’t our war but only for the benefit of the extreme right and the American companies.” |
On Opus Dei in Spain:
“Two of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar‘s children went to Opus-run schools.
Notable Opus members include Defense Minister Federico Trillio, Justice Minister Jose Maria Michavila, Attorney General Jesus Cardenal and former National Police Chief Juan Cotino.”
— AP report, Oct. 3, 2002, according to a web page at rickross.com
Those who prefer their religion in fictional form may enjoy the following related reading:
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Friday, February 21, 2003
Friday February 21, 2003
ART WARS:
All About Lilith
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|
|
Sam Peckinpah (Feb. 21, 1925)
The New Yorker Magazine (Feb. 21, 1925)
Alan Rickman, 57
Kelsey Grammer, 48
Mary Chapin Carpenter, 45
Jennifer Love Hewitt, 24
Charlotte Church, 17
This list suggests that in an ideal future life Sam Peckinpah would direct, and The New Yorker review, a prequel to “All About Eve.”
Casting would be as follows:
Mary Chapin Carpenter as Margo Channing
(originally, Bette Davis)
Charlotte Church as Lilith, sister of Eve Harrington
(originally, Anne Baxter)
Jennifer Love Hewitt as Claudia Casswell
(originally, Marilyn Monroe)
Alan Rickman as Bill Sampson
(originally, Gary Merrill)
Kelsey Grammer as Addison DeWitt
(originally, George Sanders).
Since today is also the anniversary, according to Tom’s Book of Days, of Schultes’s identification of teonanacatl in 1939, the following classic painting, “ Caterpillar’s Mushroom,” by Brian Froud, might be adapted for a poster for our heavenly production*, to be titled, in accordance with celestial fairness doctrines,
* A footnote in memory of publicist/producer Jack Brodsky (“Romancing the Stone,” etc.), who died on Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2003 — See the website Eight is a Gate for the mystical significance of the number “78” in Judaism. The New Yorker and Sam Peckinpah were born 78 years ago today.
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Monday, November 25, 2002
Monday November 25, 2002
Swashbucklers and Misfits
There are two theories of truth, according to a a book on the history of geometry —
The “Story Theory” and the “Diamond Theory.”
For those who prefer the story theory…
From a review by Brian Hayes of A Beautiful Mind:
“Mathematical genius is rare enough. Cloaked in madness, or wrapped in serious eccentricity, it’s the stuff legends are made of.
There are brilliant and productive mathematicians who go to the office from nine to five, play tennis on the weekend, and worry about fixing the gearbox in the Volvo. Not many of them become the subjects of popular biographies. Instead we read about the great swashbucklers and misfits of mathematics, whose stories combine genius with high romance or eccentricity.”
|
Russell Crowe, |
Marilyn |
Hollywood has recently given us a mathematical Russell Crowe. For a somewhat tougher sell, Marilyn Monroe as a mathematician, see “Insignificance,” 1985: “Marilyn Monroe on her hands and knees explains the theory of relativity to Albert Einstein.”
For a combination of misfit and swashbuckler in one Holy Name, see today’s earlier note, “The Artist’s Signature.”
See also my note of October 4, 2002, on Michelangelo, and the description of “the face of God” in this review.
Monday, August 5, 2002
Monday August 5, 2002
After the Fall
“We’re in a war of words.”
— Andy Rooney, undated column
Photo credit – Graham Kuhn
I’ve heard of affairs that are strictly plutonic,
But diamonds are a girl’s best friend!
— Marilyn Monroe, modeling a Freudian slip
You may have noticed at Strike Force Centre or at StrikeForce.dk that “After the Fall” will be released as a Team Deathmatch map for Strike Force.
Today’s birthday: Fiddler Mark O’Connor.
Q – What was that “haunting” melody and where does it come from?
A – The piece used as the theme music for The Civil War is called “Ashokan Farewell.”
Q – How do you get to Ashokan?
A – Take a left at Beaverkill Road.
Recommended listening:
“The Devil Comes Back to Georgia,”
“House of the Rising Sun,” and
“Ashokan Farewell,” on
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