Cool treats

 

Wayne Thiebaud was a centenarian who continued to paint pretty much up to the time of his death in 2021. He was no slouch at painting people and places, but probably had his greatest success with things. As a still life artist, that is, often with food as his subject. He was also associated with Pop Art, but it looks like he was doing what he did long before anyone―himself included―had heard of Pop.

The above painting is called "Dark Cones", and in its way it is quite wild. It's not entirely clear what's holding the ice cream cones up, but in the (sun?) light they cast dramatic shadows. They're also engulfed in a fair amount of shadow, so you could hold long debates about the flavor of the ice cream. Their shapes look oddly human. They could be members of a gang, or at least a 60s girl group.

Tantrum

ICJ-rejecting politicians like Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton could be called racist, but the wokies have taken the sting out of that one through overuse. You could call them corrupt, but it's a hard one to make stick without a paper trail. They're certainly callous, but a good part of the electorate may prefer that in their representatives. 

Malcom Kyeyune notes that they're also dangerously nihilistic. That's quite true also. It also might do more to give the greater number of UnHerd readers pause.

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do

 

Steve Allen didn't seem to know quite who or what he was dealing with. Did anyone watching at the time? This was just a couple of years before Zappa joined the Soul Giants and renamed them the Mothers of Invention, but it would be hard to make that leap from his wry yet self-effacing mien here. He's also got one of those faces that just looks incomplete when clean-shaven. Interesting work with the bike, though. He was a fan of Edgar Varese, also a user of unusual instruments.

As for logroller Diane Ellison, I can see why she was one of the other guests.

Ah, memories

I like this personal essay stemming from the way impressionable young minds were/are taught about, well, certain things. It feels like it accounts for a lot. Of course my minds eye wanted to set it in the 60s or early 70s, giving the adult women giant bouffant hairdos. But the author is younger than me, so I'm guessing the Republican President in office when he was six is the first Bush.

In any case, the pseudonymous Bobby Harlots is one of the few people who both gets and can beautifully articulate one thing, which is that identity politics is really just one game even when it looks like more. The people who painted George Floyd's face on every gaw-damn surface of our big cities and those fetishizing 10/7 don't really have opposing values, or even different methods. They just have different clients.

Extremities

When I was a kid I was provincial about a lot of things, as I guess most of us are. To take one example, because as far as I knew it always got warmer as you went further south, I figured that must be a global thing. After all, Africa and Australia and South America seemed to have summer most of the time. I was still a child when I found out about Antarctica, of course. But it was a shock to find out that the South Pole is colder than the North Pole, and by a significant amount too.

That's almost certainly why the world's northernmost town, Longyearbyen, is considerably further to the north than its southern equivalent, Puerto Williams is to the south. To be specific Longyearbyen is in Svalbard, an archipelago belonging to Norway, while Puerto Williams is on Navarino Island, in the Chilean part of Tierra del Fuego. Longyearbyen looks to be a little more picturesque, and almost certainly anticipates more tourism. Puerto Williams appears to be more functional. It's home to a small number of Yaghan natives, and much of its population otherwise is made up of military and scientists. Both seem like interesting places to visit, though. 

If it seems strange to have a town in Chile with "Williams" in its name, there's a story behind that. It's named after John Williams Wilson, an English-born officer in the Chilean navy. A number of Chilean sailors had British backgrounds. Some started out as mercenaries but essentially went native. Or acclimated, if you prefer.

Funny little flowers

There's a flower that grows in Australia, and for various reasons, only in Australia. The Latin name is caleana major, and it's more commonly known as the flying duck orchid. You can see why. The blooms really do look like ducks in flight. 

The flying duck orchid is thought to have evolved to look that way in order to tempt in male sawflies by making them believe that they are female sawflies. Do female sawflies resemble miniature ducks? Not even a little, at least not according to our stereoscopic eyes. Obviously fly vision is a little different.

Another strange thing is that the flower needs to trick these insects into pollinating it. We're used to social insects that will voluntarily do the job.

Godspeed!

Coming home from an errand I was startled when I saw something run across the street. I soon realized it was a cat. Basically a tuxedo, with black back and face, white underneath. And yes, this cat was booking it.

I do hope this cat either returns home or finds a good new one. When I saw it it was running into the grassy elevated area that runs along the interstate. They are smart enough not to try crossing the highway, right?

Hand you're dealt

I was listening to a jazz program on the radio via the Internet and the DJ was telling the life story of British clarinetist Acker Bilk. Yeah, uh, the Wikipedia link doesn't tell the whole story. About how he lost part of his finger, I mean. It was an accident while he was out tobogganing. No, but see, the part that gets me is how a dog ran up and carried it off in its mouth. Unless you're under you must remember any time you lose a body part, but that way would be especially impossible to shake.

The name "Acker Bilk" sounded familiar to me because I'd heard my grandfather talking about him. My grandfather was also missing part of a finger, which you could call a connection between them, but he probably just liked the guy's music.

Tricky bird

There's a very brief but good-looking page here on Kutkh, the raven spirit revered in "far east Russia." Siberia, really. And there's a resemblance in the art between this and the art created by Inuit and far north Amerindian peoples. The native peoples of Alaska, Northern Canada, and Greenland have ties to Siberia if you go back far enough. 

Trickster gods are interesting. They represent what a people doesn't quite trust but thinks they may need. They're never entirely benign or entirely hostile. 

No deposit, no return

Here's an annoying trend. My bank is locking ATM kiosks when the bank branch is closed. According to the sign this is for the safety of customers. So if the bank location has a drive-thru, you can use that―on foot, if you don't have a car―but if they don't, you're SOL. And I'm finding out that other banks are doing this too.

There's apparently a precedent for this, but that's symptomatic too. In cities like New York and San Francisco, maybe it makes sense. The locals there might not like the rule either, but there are at least news stories backing you up there. It's not like Providence is free of crime and homelessness, but it doesn't have them to the level that would justify this paranoid change in policy. That's the thing, though. These places are owned by corporations based in bigger cities, and that's where they take their cues from.

Because the whole thing about ATMs is that they allow you to do banking when the bank is officially closed. They lose some of their raison d'etre when you can only use them during normal business hours.

Little green

There's a while bus line that's now, as far as I can tell, fleeted with electric buses. The 11/R Line to be exact. They look light. Feel kind of like children's wind-up toys. Whenever they stop at a red light there's no sound at all and you wonder if they'll be able to start up again. So far they always have, but it's not winter yet.

How things are

Four years ago the culture appeared to be united in the belief that only two things mattered: demonstrating for justice, and having elastic bands pulling on your ears. When you hear the words "good trouble" you can be sure that protest kitsch is in the air, and that was the best and most sacred kind of kitsch.

Either something has changed or, more likely, something has been revealed. Students protesting on behalf of Gaza have been subjected to violent retribution both official and otherwise. On top of this has been an over-the-to smear campaign in the media. 

There's something educational in this. You can see and learn when they bend the rules and when they don't, and for whom. The establishment isn't your friend, kids. It never was.

Lady lawyer land

The whole elusive business of  "prestige" in television has gone to the largest streamers (Netflix/Hulu/Amazon) and maybe HBO. With it awards. The Emmys don't even really acknowledge the broadcast networks anymore. So the only hope for those networks now is to reinvest in light entertainment, in the hopes that someone will say, "That looks fun."

Elsbeth may be a sign that someone is learning the lesson. It's an inverted mystery (i.e. the audience sees who commits the murder and how before it gets solved) about a Chicago lawyer who goes to New York to preside over the NYPD's criminal investigations in the wake of some wrongful prosecution lawsuits. In truth, though, the title character―played by Carrie Preston―is able to sniff out murderers herself and wears them down with passive aggressive niceness.

There's a logical flaw here, which you may have already noticed. A police-associated lawyer pestering persons of interest based on gut feeling is more likely to provoke more lawsuits than prevent them. In the real world, anyway. So a good deal of suspension of disbelief is needed.

Meaning that in emulating one of the best things that the medium has ever had to offer―Peter Falk starring in Columbo―they've fallen well short of the mark. It's still an improvement on most of what broadcast TV has been doing in recent years, and gives some reasons to come back.

Who, me?

 

They say that Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did backwards and in high heels. What if a woman painted as well as the great Dutch masters while wearing an absurdly large lace collar. Like, something you'd put on an injured dog. That's Judith Leyster.

Leyster did a lot of paintings, and this self-portrait isn't necessarily the best of them. But it's very good, brimming with life, threatening to break out of its two dimensions. Leyster's self-confidence is palpable, not least in the fact that she's giving a sneak preview of her next painting. She was only in her early twenties when she did this, which must have driven some rivals crazy.

"Struggle with a sudden, fast-spreading infection." Huh.

I haven't blogged about this before, but two Boeing whistleblowers have died in as many months. I don't know about you, but that seems like a bad trend. Another case of things that civics and business textbooks tell you will never happen in this country happening pretty openly.

But at least we know Boeing hasn't been taken over by the Mafia. Mob-owned businesses are run better.