In the 1930’s and 40’s, theater owners ran serials on Saturdays, each episode with a cliff-hanger ending designed to bring the children back the next Saturday to see if the hero and heroine had survived, however improbably, the poison gas, the pit of fire, the plunge from a great height, the sharp claws, the mighty [...]
Archive for December, 2007
I’ll Be Back
Posted in Film on December 30, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Done
Posted in Uncategorized on December 26, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
“No one has the courage to call me at home. It’s never been a rule, but that’s the attitude I give off. When I’m done, I’m done.”
– Renzo Rosso, CEO of the $1.6 billion Diesel jeans empire
All the Trees of the Wood
Posted in Environment, Literature, Religion on December 25, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
“Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth by glad;
let the sea thunder and all that is in it;
let the field be joyful and all that is therein.
Then shall all the trees of the wood shout for joy before the Lord when he comes,
when he comes to judge the earth.”
– Psalm 96: 11-12
Pattern Recognition
Posted in Literature on December 24, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Just finished William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, and I loved it a lot.
Trees
Posted in Environment on December 20, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
To me, one of the tragedies of cutting down old trees is that they are gone forever. Mankind will never again let a tree grow for 100 years, let alone 700 or 1000 years. And when you compare trees to people, trees do relatively little harm in this world. Below, just the latest thoughtless [...]
Cold Mix
Posted in Music on December 19, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
22 songs for cold weather, to fit on one CD, all available on iTunes:
“Winter: Largo” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons
Cold — Annie Lennox
Cold, Cold, Cold — Little Feat
“Siberia” from Cole Porter’s Silk Stockings
“Troika” from Prokofiev’s Lt. Kije
Winter Time — Steve Miller
Cold, Cold Heart — Nora Jones
Frozen Lake — Rachel Portman
The Donner Party — Rasputina
Winter Was Hard [...]
Cooped Up
Posted in sports on December 12, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
While researching the sport of polo on the Web, I stumbled across this illuminating snippet from a biography of professional wrestler Tommy Polo:
“Polo was eliminated by Brimstone with a ‘Chokeslam from Hell’ from the balcony to the floor of the JWA Arena. Polo was hospitalized, then a spell was cast upon him by the dark [...]
On Walking
Posted in Literature, Walking on December 8, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
“I can still walk twenty mile if I am put to it. I’d far better be a walking than a getting numbed and dreary.”
– Betty in Our Mutual Friend (1865) by Charles Dickens
Flash Gordon, Yale and Polo
Posted in Film, Literature, sports on December 5, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Yale graduates who have excelled at polo include J. Watson Webb, Winston Guest, Lewis E. Stoddard (chairman of the United States Polo Association, 1922-1936), Tom Buchanan (of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, 1925), Flash Gordon (of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon comic strip which began in 1934, and subsequent movie serials with Buster Crabbe), William [...]
On Lap Dogs and Lap Cats
Posted in Dogs, Photography, tagged tigers on December 4, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Few things make me happier than to have my little dachshund asleep on my lap. My nephew, Sean, however, prefers the company of cats:
This week he writes, “While in Thailand for a month, I missed having cats around so I went off to Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua, a buddhist temple near the border with [...]
