Monthly Archives: July 2012

Weekly Photo Challenge: Purple

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“I think it pisses God off when you walk by the color purple in a field and don’t notice it.”  Shug.  The Color Purple by Alice Walker.

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This Weekly Photo Challenge took me a while to complete.  It is amazing how much purple you see out there in the world when you have it in the back of your mind that you need to take a photo of something purple.  A lot more people wear purple clothing than I had originally realized, or drive purple cars.  There was even a woman at the Lake Kathryn Village Market who added purple streaks to her silver-white hair.  I finally found this amazing arrangement of purple orchids in the fireplace lobby betwtten the One and Two Union Square buildings.  I took the photo with my phone and the LOMO app.

To this day, the first image I think of when I think about “purple” is Charlie McWhorter, even twenty years after the last time I saw him.  Charlie was a huge benefactor at Interlochen Center For The Arts and also known for his clothing.  If he wore red, it was everything red and all red.  Purple was by far most everyone’s favorite.  Hat, boots, shirt, pants, leather jacket, all purple (only accented with an impressive drenching of torquoise jewelry).  While simotaneously recognizing the abundance of purple out there in the world, I was also realizing that there is absolutely no purple in my life anywhere.  A complete void of all jewel tones, actually.  I guess it is also void of all earth tones, too.  [in the spirit of full-disclosure, I do own a hot pink hoodie, a couple pairs of khakis, and my living room carpet is beet red]  I am completely comfortable and happy in my otherwise black-gray-blue-white life.  I feel a yellow kitchen, red car, or even an orange t-shirt do not match my sensibilities.  I would much rather have  almost monochromatic rooms that I could fill with colorful art and people than orange, red, and green accent walls and feel trapped in a 24/7 clown birthday party.  I have spent most of my life trying not to be noticed, it would seem out of character and a bit desparate for me to drive a red car.

The Wiki:

Purple is a range of hues of color occurring between red and blue.  In additive light combinations it occurs by mixing the primary colors red and blue in varying proportions. It is a secondary color because two colors (blue and red) make up this color.  In subtractive pigments it can be equal to the primary color magenta or be formed by mixing magenta with the colors red or blue, or by mixing just the latter two, in which case a color of low saturation will result.  Low saturation will also be caused by adding a certain quantity of the third primary color (green for light or yellow for pigment).

The actual color of Tyrian purple, the original color purple from which the name purple is derived, is the color of a dye extracted from a mollusk found on the shores of the city of Tyre in ancient Phoenicia (present day Lebanon) that in classical antiquity became a symbol of royalty because only the very wealthy could afford it. Therefore, Tyrian purple was also called imperial purple.

Read some of the other takes on purple:

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Molly Ivins – Style Icon

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NAME: Molly Ivins
OCCUPATION: Comedian, Journalist
BIRTH DATE: August 30, 1944
DEATH DATE: January 31, 2007
PLACE OF BIRTH: Monterey, California
PLACE OF DEATH: Austin, Texas

BEST KNOWN FOR: Molly Ivins was an American political satirist with a widely syndicated column. She wrote several scathing books about the political career of George W. Bush.

American political satirist (born Aug. 30, 1944 , Monterey, Calif.—died Jan. 31, 2007 , Austin, Texas) wrote a newspaper column from a staunchly liberal point of view that mercilessly and humorously skewered politicians in both her home state of Texas and the federal government. Ivins began her career in 1967 as a reporter for the Minneapolis (Minn.) Tribune. In 1970 she became editor of the liberal biweekly magazine the Texas Observer, and it was there that she developed her distinctive style. Ivins worked (1976–82) for the New York Times before spending 10 years with the Dallas Times Herald. She then wrote her column for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.Ivins came to national prominence with the rise to national politics of Texas politician George W. Bush, and her column was widely syndicated. She wrote six books, including, with Lou Dubose, Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush (2000) and Bushwhacked (2003).

In 1999, Ivins was diagnosed with stage III inflammatory breast cancer. The cancer recurred in 2003 and again in late 2005. In January 2006 she reported that she was again undergoing chemotherapy. In December 2006 she took leave from her column to again undergo treatment. She wrote two columns in January 2007, but returned to the hospital on the 26th for further treatment. Ivins died at her Austin, Texas home in hospice care on January 31, 2007, at age 62.

After her death, George W. Bush, a frequent target of her barbs, said in a statement, “I respected her convictions, her passionate belief in the power of words. She fought her illness with that same passion. Her quick wit and commitment will be missed.

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Mia Farrow. Penguin. Signing Flossers

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Mia Farrow

“I get it now; I didn’t get it then. That life is about losing and about doing it as gracefully as possible… and enjoying everything in between.” - Mia Farrow

On this day in 1935, the publisher Penguin released its first paperback books, with the goal of making the classics accessible to the general public like never before. Waiting for a train back to London, publisher Allen Lane was frustrated to realize that the only reading available for sale on the platform was magazines or Victorian novel reprints. At the time, publishers thought that if the public wanted high quality literature, they wanted it to be beautifully bound so that they could keep it forever. Lane realized that more people might want to read good books if they were more affordable. He decided to put his savings into Penguin’s first run of paperbacks priced equal to a pack of cigarettes.

The summer of 1935, Penguin released titles by Agatha Christie and Ernest Hemingway. By the following year, the company had set up shop in the basement of a local church, receiving shipments down a playground slide from the street above. Soon they had sold more than 3 million copies and expanded into children’s books, nonfiction, and classics. Today, the publisher keeps some 5,000 titles in print at any one time and has offices in more than 15 countries.

Word of the Day July 30

spoonerism \SPOO-nuh-riz-um\ noun

Definition: a transposition of usually initial sounds of two or more words

Examples:

Children will be delighted by Jon Scieszka‘s use of wordplay in Baloney (Henry P.), including the spoonerism “sighing flossers” for “flying saucers.”

The Best of SPA 2001

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I sifted through my journal from 2001 and pulled out the best of the best, or what I felt was the best. A lot happened in 2001. It appears that I spent quite a while that year with a stiff neck, or at least complaining about a stiff neck.  But first, let’s drop it into history.  I was 31, working at Amazon.com, living on Portage Bay, and driving a VW Golf.

I didn’t write anything interesting until April, so we will start there:

[Apr. 27th, 2001|11:21 am] 

I had a dream last night where my mother was trying to talk me into going to a baseball game with her. We were stopping off to visit a friend of hers that lived in a brick tower. To get up to her friend’s place, we had to walk up a staircase that wrapped around the outside of the tower, passing everyone else’s place along the way up. When we finally got up to the top we were tired and I sat down on a sofa to rest. Then about a minute later, a neighbor from down below came up to check on us, he said “I just wanted to make sure everything was ok, a man in a green turban and robe walked up here and didn’t wave at me.” I thought how strange, I hadn’t seen anyone, then I looked down and wouldn’t you know it, I was wearing a green robe and turban. I said “oh, I guess that was me.” Everyone looked at me and just nodded as to say “yes, we know”. Then I woke up.

[Aug. 14th, 2001|02:05 pm]

Mullet Haikus

My hair is slammin’
like Stone Cold. Can I get a Hell
yeah? Hell yeah. Hell yeah.

This super cool hair
and a bucket of chicken:
What more could I want?

Lynnrd Skynnrd didn’t
win no spelling bees. Who cares?
They rock the trailer.

Short for dad. Long for
the daughter mom always wanted.
Everyone’s happy.

[Aug. 25th, 2001|02:06 pm]

My new hobby is going to weddings. It is really good. I wish I could write a review column for weddings, but the fact that I would be a little harsh about their ‘special day’ has captured my better judgment and has not let go. ah well. Last night’s was totally lovely, except that the bride threw the bouquet over the entire crowd of eager single ladies, directly onto the kiddy table, where I was sitting with all the other misfits. The person who actually caught it was Stevie, a gender-bending girl-boy with red chunky steaks in her short cropped haircut.

[Sep. 1st, 2001|08:42 am]

I had a dream last night that I was lying on a bed with Skeet Ulrich, sort of running my fingers through his hair and casually mentioned that we had the same birthday, he being a year older. well, he thought that was creepy that I knew when his birthday was, got up and left.

[Sep. 14th, 2001|11:13 am]

My dreams of terrorism continued last night, although, it seems that I am starting to take a little more control of the situation and starting to stick up for myself and others. Last night, I drove a luggage cart full of luggage directly into one of the propellers of a plane that was taking off after being hijacked.

[Sep. 22nd, 2001|01:21 pm]

He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.

[Sep. 28th, 2001|10:16 am]

Someone told me today that my hair looks like all the colors that no one wants. He was trying to compliment me, but it just sounded odd.

[Sep. 28th, 2001|11:38 am]

David Rakoff: “The woman reading through her lines right now is walking universal perfection. She is lung collapsingly, jaw achingly, fall down on the sidewalk teeth first, take a bottle of pills, and throw yourself out a window beautiful. The planes and angles of her face are a mathematical equation adding up to a great cosmic YES.”

[Oct. 4th, 2001|09:43 am]

My neighbor was evicted yesterday, all of her stuff put out on the sidewalk, stretching down the street. She had a lot of stuff, it was a mess. There was a nativity scene piled upon itself, most of the pieces looked to be there, except the three foot tall Virgin Mary was missing her head! I thought long and hard about slipping it into my house and giving it as a gift sometime, but I figured that a new deeper, darker Hell would be invented just for me. Stealing a headless Virgin Mary from someone that has been evicted?

[Nov. 17th, 2001|08:21 am]

This morning on my way to work, I drove over what I originally thought was a rolled up newspaper in the street, but right before it disappeared under my car, I realized that it was a prosthetic leg! Oh My God! I ran over someone’s fake leg. Can you believe that? How does that happen?

[Dec. 14th, 2001|07:46 am]

I can only find the “Hate” glove of my “Love and Hate” pair of gloves, is that a sign?

Diana Vreeland

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Diana Vreeland by Horst P. Horst.

Image via Wikipedia

“too much good taste can be boring.” – Diana Vreeland

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Marcus

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As filming of Giant came to an end in September of 1955, Elizabeth Taylor gave co-star James Dean a Siamese kitten that he named Marcus. A week later, Dean travelled to Salinas to race his Porsche; en route, he died in a car crash. The night before he left — September 28th — he gave the following list of instructions, and Marcus, to a friend.

Transcript follows. Image courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

Transcript

1 teaspoon white Karo

1 big can evaporated milk

equal part boiled water or

distilled water

1 egg yoke

mix and chill

Don’t feed him meat or formula cold.

1 drop vitamen solution per day

Take Marcus to Dr. Cooper

on Melrose for shots

next week

via Lists of Note.

Joan Crawford – Style Icon

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Through reinvention and resilience, she survived in Hollywood where female actors’ shelf life is brief.  She did so by exaggerating the character of herself, larger than life, meaner than hell, bitch on wheels.  How much of that was always her and how much she exaggerated, we only have stories.  Watch some of her early films, you may fall in love with her a bit.

NAME: Joan Crawford
OCCUPATION: Film Actress, Theater Actress, Dancer, Pin-up
BIRTH DATE: c. May 23, 1905
DEATH DATE: May 10, 1977
PLACE OF BIRTH: San Antonio, Texas
PLACE OF DEATH: New York, New York
ORIGINALLY: Lucille Fay LeSueur

BEST KNOWN FOR: American motion-picture actress Joan Crawford made her initial impact as a vivacious Jazz Age flapper but later matured into a star of psychological melodramas.

Joan Crawford (March 23, 1905 – May 10, 1977), born Lucille Fay LeSueur, was an American actress in film, television and theatre.

Starting as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies before debuting on Broadway, Crawford was signed to a motion picture contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1925. Initially frustrated by the size and quality of her parts, Crawford began a campaign of self-publicity and became nationally known as a flapper by the end of the 1920s. In the 1930s, Crawford’s fame rivaled MGM colleagues Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo. Crawford often played hardworking young women who find romance and financial success. These “rags-to-riches” stories were well-received by Depression-era audiences and were popular with women. Crawford became one of Hollywood’s most prominent movie stars and one of the highest paid women in the United States, but her films began losing money and by the end of the 1930s she was labeled “box office poison”.

After an absence of nearly two years from the screen, Crawford staged a comeback by starring in Mildred Pierce (1945), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. In 1955, she became involved with the Pepsi-Cola Company through her marriage to company Chairman Alfred Steele. After his death in 1959, Crawford was elected to fill his vacancy on the board of directors but was forcibly retired in 1973. She continued acting in film and television regularly through the 1960s, when her performances became fewer; after the release of the British horror film Trog in 1970, Crawford retired from the screen. Following a public appearance in 1974, after which unflattering photographs were published, Crawford withdrew from public life and became more and more reclusive until her death in 1977.

Crawford married four times. Her first three marriages ended in divorce; the last ended with the death of husband Al Steele. She adopted five children, one of whom was reclaimed by his birth mother. Crawford’s relationships with her two older children, Christina and Christopher, were acrimonious. Crawford disinherited the two and, after Crawford’s death, Christina wrote a “tell-all” memoir, Mommie Dearest, in which she alleged a lifelong pattern of physical and emotional abuse perpetrated by Crawford.

Crawford was voted the tenth greatest female star in the history of American cinema by the American Film Institute.

Crawford published her autobiography, A Portrait of Joan – written with Jane Kesner Ardmore – in 1962 through Doubleday. Crawford’s next book, My Way of Life, was published in 1971 by Simon and Schuster. Those expecting a racy tell-all were disappointed, although Crawford’s meticulous ways were revealed in her advice on grooming, wardrobe, exercise, and even food storage.

On May 8, 1977, Crawford gave away her beloved Shih Tzu “Princess Lotus Blossom”, which she was too weak to care for properly. Crawford died two days later at her New York apartment from a heart attack, while also ill with pancreatic cancer.[2] A funeral was held at Campbell Funeral Home, New York, on May 13, 1977. In her will, which was signed October 28, 1976, Crawford bequeathed to her two youngest children, Cindy and Cathy, $77,500 each from her $2,000,000 estate. She explicitly disinherited the two eldest, Christina and Christopher, writing “It is my intention to make no provision herein for my son Christopher or my daughter Christina for reasons which are well known to them.”

Crawford’s hand and footprints are immortalized in the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. She also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1750 Vine Street. In 1999, Playboy listed Crawford as one of the “100 Sexiest Women of the 20th century”, ranking her #84.

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Happy Birthday Zelda Fitzgerald

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Today is the birthday of writer and socialite Zelda Fitzgerald, born Zelda Sayre in Montgomery, Alabama (1900). She was named after the fictional gypsy heroine in Zelda’s Fortune (1874), one of her mother’s favorite books. She was the youngest of five children, and she rebelled against the strict discipline of her father, an Alabama Supreme Court judge. She snuck out of her window at night, smoked cigarettes, bobbed her hair, and wore a flesh-colored swimsuit so that people would think she was swimming nude. She spent her evenings at dances and parties with the officers stationed at nearby Camp Sheridan, and they competed for her attention. One officer performed the full manual of arms drill outside her door, and others took turns trying to outdo each other with fancy airplane stunts in the sky above the Sayre household.

 

It was at Camp Sheridan that Zelda met a young officer named Scott Fitzgerald. He was beautiful, like Zelda — they were both petite, with blond hair and light eyes. Years later, in her autobiographical novelSave Me the Waltz (1932), she wrote: “He smelled like new goods. Being close to him with her face in the space between his ear and his stiff army collar was like being initiated into the subterranean reserves of a fine fabric store exuding the delicacy of cambrics and linen and luxury bound in bales.” Scott and Zelda spent a lot of time together, but she didn’t want to commit to him; even though he was confident that he was going to be rich and famous, Zelda was hesitant, and her parents were unconvinced. She wrote to him: “Mamma knows that we are going to be married some day — But she keeps leaving stories of young authors, turned out on a dark and stormy night, on my pillow — I wonder if you hadn’t better write to my Daddy — just before I leave — I wish I were detached — sorter without relatives. I’m not exactlyscared of ‘em, but they could be so unpleasant about what I’m going to do.”

 

After the publication of Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise(1920), Zelda agreed to marry Scott. They became the most famous couple of the Jazz Age. They were the center of attention at parties, where their drunken exploits became the stuff of legend.

 

Zelda was a writer in her own right, and Scott borrowed from her ideas and sometimes copied writing from her verbatim. When they were dating in Montgomery, Zelda showed Scott her diary, and he used that and her letters in This Side of Paradise. He had modeled the main character, Rosalind, after a woman he had been in love with at Princeton, named Ginevra King; but after meeting Zelda, he reworked the character of Rosalind until she was a combination of both women.

 

When Zelda was hired to write a review of The Beautiful and the Damned for the New York Herald Tribune, she wrote: “It seems to me that on one page I recognized a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage, and also scraps of letters which, though considerably edited, sound to me vaguely familiar. In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald — I believe that is how he spells his name — seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.” She also encouraged readers to buy the book so that Scott could buy her a new dress and a platinum ring.

 

She said, “I don’t want to live — I want to love first, and live incidentally.”

 

 

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Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce

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Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce | Video on TED.com.

Malcolm Gladwell searches for the counterintuitive in what we all take to be the mundane: cookies, sneakers, pasta sauce. A New Yorker staff writer since 1996, he visits obscure laboratories and infomercial set kitchens as often as the hangouts of freelance cool-hunters — a sort of pop-R&D gumshoe — and for that has become a star lecturer and bestselling author.

Sparkling with curiosity, undaunted by difficult research (yet an eloquent, accessible writer), his work uncovers truths hidden in strange data. His always-delightful blog tackles topics from serial killers to steroids in sports, while provocative recent work in the New Yorker sheds new light on the Flynn effect — the decades-spanning rise in I.Q. scores.

Gladwell has written four books. The Tipping Point, which began as a New Yorker piece, applies the principles of epidemiology to crime (and sneaker sales), while Blink examines the unconscious processes that allow the mind to “thin slice” reality — and make decisions in the blink of an eye. His third book, Outliers, questions the inevitabilities of success and identifies the relation of success to nature versus nurture. The newest work, What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures, is an anthology of his New Yorker contributions.

He says: “There is more going on beneath the surface than we think, and more going on in little, finite moments of time than we would guess.”

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