Pictures of Berlin

I've been going back through some photos I took in Germany last year. These are some that I kind of like.

Monday's Quote

I fully agree with this statement by Abigail Adams (1744-1818):

"I begin to think, that a calm is not desirable in any situation in life. Every object is beautiful in motion; a ship under sail, trees gently agitated with the wind, and a fine woman dancing, are three instances in point. Man was made for action and for bustle too."

The King

Here's one of my favorite Elvis Presley songs. If I recall correctly, this was his first hit recorded after getting out of the army-- and suggested that he hadn't lost anything during his absence from the studio:

Sunday Funnies

Frank King is rightly famous for his classic autumn Sunday strips of Gasoline Alley. But with the first snow of the season falling here a couple days ago, I thought I'd post some of King's winter strips. As you can see Skeezix and crew were pretty avid skiers, sledders, etc.



These strips are from the mid-1930s. You can find more examples of Gasoline Alley at the I Love Comix Archive.

A Sunday Quote

Some good implied advice in this line from French novelist Andre Malraux (1901-1976):

"Often the difference between a successful
man and a failure is not one's better
abilities or ideas, but the courage that
one has to bet on his ideas, to take
a calculated risk, and to act."

Cool Song

Sandy Denny's voice kind of defined British folk-rock at the end of the sixties, from her work with Fairport Convention, Fotheringay, the Strawbs and solo. Here's her wonderful version of the Byrds classic "Ballad of Easy Rider:"

Happy Birthday Richard!

Today is my brother-in-law Richard's birthday, and I'm sure all my readers join me in wishing him a great day!

Saturday Morning Cartoon

Superheroes were big in mid-sixties cartoons-- probably a result of the Batman fad that followed the TV show. Here's an example one of the better parodies: Batfink:

A Saturday Quote

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was a pretty sharp cookie, as you might gather from the following comment:

"Great revolutions in science have a
common denominator: They knock
human arrogance off one pedestal
after another about our previous
conviction about our own
self-importance."

Funny Stuff

This Is Spinal Tap is, to my mind, one of the funniest movies of all time, and certainly the funniest rock and roll movie. The bits that play under the closing credits are a great capper to what came before, and I offer them here for your entertainment:

Friday Family Blogging Quiz

Simple question: who's the big mouth? Put your guesses in the comments section below.

Last week, I asked who was covering their face with their hand, and Lil Sis somehow recognized Ben. The unaltered version of the picture is below. Good luck to everyone this week!

Five Pictures: Bannack

I was able to get out to Bannack one last time while the weather was still pretty good, and took a bunch of photos (which was kind of the point of the visit). These were some of the ones that turned out pretty good, as I was mostly looking for interesting angles or details to shoot, like the doorway above.

This view from the front door back to the kitchen of one of the old houses was taken with the HDR feature of my camera. This setting actually takes three shots in quick succession, adjusting the exposure for each, then melding them together. This balances the lighting so that no part is too light or too dark. I like the effect of depth in this picture, which I think is accentuated by the balanced lighting.

Lots of old, broken wheels are scattered around the town, making nice subjects for a still-life.

In this shot of the hotel lobby, I liked the interplay of the geometric various shapes.

Bannack is often referred to as a ghost town, so I thought I'd throw in a spectral image from the old bar/barber shop (though I admit the effect would've been stronger if I'd been wearing a cowboy hat or a smock).

More Friday Family Blogging

This is one of our epic kickball games in Gramma's backyard last summer. Dan certainly looks like he's going to score, but Nick may have something to say about that.

Friday Family Blogging

Sister Sally out on a crisp winter day back in 2009. This was taken in the woods above the performance space at Artpark.

Friday Philosophy

Today's quote is from the Spanish born philosopher George Santayana (1863-1952):

"A string of excited, fugitive, miscellaneous
pleasures is not happiness; happiness resides
in imaginative reflection and judgment, when
the picture of one's life, or of human life, as it
truly has been or is, satisfies the will, and
is gladly accepted."

Great Scene from a Great Movie

I'm sure I've posted this before, but it had to be several years ago, so here it is again. Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, and Walter Brennan comprising one of the all-time great ad hoc trios in musical history, from the classic Hollywood western Rio Bravo. How can this not make one smile?

Toonerville Thursday

Let's check in this week with Mickey (Himself) McGuire. Say... maybe he's not so tough after all!

A Thought for Thursday

Samuel Butler (1835-1902) was an English man-of-letters who wrote on art, religion, and various other subjects. I like this line of his:

"A sense of humor keen enough to show a man
his own absurdities, as well as those of other
people, will keep him from the commission
of all sins, or nearly all, save those that
are worth committing."

Good Song

Whatever happened to Joe "King" Carrasco? I mean he never made it really big, but he was a pretty steady presence through the eighties... then he just seemed to disappear. I hope he's still rockin' out there somewhere, cause this kind of music never goes out of style:

The Vegas Strip

Here are a few (unretouched) photos taken on a recent visit to Las Vegas. First is a shot of a crowd gathering to watch the fountain show in front of the Bellagio Hotel.

Second, a shot of traffic heading south on Las Vegas Boulevard taken from the new overpass near the Aria, with some of the other well-known landmarks in the background.

Third, a couple of angels adorning the colonnade that runs in front of Caesar's Palace (don't be fooled by the Bellagio in the background-- that's actually across the street).

Fourth, this picture of the piazza in front of the Venetian Hotel reminds me of an M.C. Escher drawing.

And we'll finish this little mini-tour with a photo of the dolphin statues in the pool adjacent to the Mirage.

Words for Wednesday

Here's a great line from the great and ageless folksinger Pete Seeger:

"Do you know the difference between education
and experience? Education is when you read
the fine print; experience is what you get
when you don't."

Hot Jazz

James Carter is probably my favorite contemporary jazz musician (well, except for Sonny Rollins, who just keeps rolling along). Here is Carter in a great clip from a concert last year with his Organ Trio outdoors at Madison Square Park in New York:

This Week's Top Five List

Again I have to dip into the archives of Dr. John's Record Shelf, as circumstances this week contrived to keep us from unveiling a new Top Five List (I blame the crack staff, which has become all too happy to rest on their laurels, limited though they may be). Anyway, here's a classic edition from four years ago:

Tuesday's Thought

Josh Billings (real name Henry W. Shaw, 1818-1885) was a renowned speaker and writer, famous for his homespun aphorisms. Here's one of them:

"It's not ignorance does so much damage;
it's knowing so darned much that ain't so."

A Favorite Song

Rolling Stone once dubbed Marshall Crenshaw as the next big thing, based on a debut album that included this song. That never came to pass, but not because the guy wasn't good. Anyway, there's a double pleasure in this clip-- the song itself and the fun of trying to identify all the actresses shown in the video. Have a go...

Soup Diary 111107

This past Saturday I was up in Helena and when I was about halfway there (it's a two-hour drive from Dillon) I realized that I'd be able to have lunch at Steve's Cafe. Some readers may recall that a couple months ago I had a stellar cup of soup at said establishment, so naturally I was all lit up with anticipation as I arrived in the capital. I had a couple of errands to run first, but by 11:30, I was ready for some soup and headed over to Steve's. When I arrived, however, I could not find a place to park-- the place was packed. Since it was still kind of early, and I had some other stops to make, I decided to come back. But, about ninety minutes later when I returned, the situation was the same-- in fact I could see several people outside waiting to be seated. Now, at this point I might have considered an alternative to lunch, but the memory of that previous visit (and the chunky tomato soup), not to mention the tacit endorsement of those crowds of Helenites waiting to get in, made me persistent. I decided to kill another half hour and try again. The third time proved to be the charm as I found both a parking spot and got seated right away. The soup of the day was Cream of Broccoli, and while I generally find that variety undeserving of excitement, there are occasional exceptions and I had high hopes for how it would be prepared at Steve's. Sad to say, aside from being particularly chunky with florets, it wasn't anything special. Certainly good, hot and filling, but flavor-wise pretty much what I normally expect from Cream of Broccoli soup. Which means that next time I'm in Helena, I'll go again to Steve's for lunch, but I probably won't make three trips if the place is packed the first time around. But maybe two.

Monday's Quote

These lines are from the novel The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (1866-1946), and strike me as providing an astute analysis:

"It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have a huge variety of needs and dangers."

Timeless Stuff

I'm sure I've mentioned here in the past that I'm not a big fan of Hollywood musicals. But I can watch Top Hat with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers over and over, because of scenes like this one:

Sunday Funnies

I have to admit that when I read this strip this morning, I experienced a good dose of self-recognition in the punchline.

Good Article

Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone seems to be thew only journalist out there who is addressing the corruption rampant in the financial sector on behalf of the victims of that malfeasance (as opposed to those who are reporting the story from one or another ideological angle). Here's a great summary of what he's uncovered, along with some solid reasons why the grass-roots efforts of the Occupy Wall Street movement are necessary.

A Sunday Quote

The following is likely an idea that every historian has come to realize, but few have expressed it as well as Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859):

"Those who compare the age in which their lot
has fallen with a golden age which exists only in
imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay;
but no man who is correctly informed as to the
past, will be disposed to take a morose or
desponding view of the present."

A Favorite Song

Not too surprisingly given all their other accomplishments, the Beatles also had a hand in inventing the modern music video, where the action is something other than the band performing a song. This came about because they had stopped touring, but still wanted to circulate their music to their fans in some sort of visual as well as audio fashion. One of the first of these promotional films was this one, to accompany the song "Rain."

Saturday Morning Cartoon

Top Cat was my favorite cartoon for awhile back in the late sixties. I don't think I realized just how much it was an homage to The Phil Silvers Show (though I'm sure I watched that in reruns at the same time). Anyway, here's an entire episode in two parts for your viewing pleasure:

Today's Quote

William Hazlitt (1778-1830) was an English writer and critic. Here's one of his memorable lines:

"Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps;
for he is the only animal that is struck with the
difference between what things are and what
they might have been."

Rock and Roll

I'm not sure where Mooney Suzuki come from, but this kind of reminds me of Detroit-style rock and roll of the late sixties/early seventies (MC5 mainly, but also a bit of the Stooges and early Bob Segar). Check it out:

Friday Family Blogging Quiz

Someone did not want me to take their picture, and the question is, who? Who is hiding behind that hand (and I admit I blurred the image a bit to make it a little harder to tell)? Put your guesses in the comments section.

Last week, I asked where a picture of Helen, Nik and Ben was taken, and Mom correctly identified Goat Island in Niagara Falls-- which puts her on something of a winning streak. Let's have lots of guesses this week and see if someone can't start a streak of their own.

The Last Book I Read

I don't know if there is anyone working in any branch of the arts right now who is better at evoking such a powerful, yearning nostalgia for the mundane than the cartoonist "Seth." To be clear, I don't mean to imply this is some kind of trick (artistic or otherwise) or that Seth has somehow exaggerated the ordinary to make you forget how insignificant it ultimately is. No, his particular genius is to quietly uncover and unleash the truly sublime nature of all the ephemera that colors our daily existence. In Clyde Fans, it's the routines and architecture of a small-scale industrial/commercial enterprise revolving around a slightly archaic product, tied closely to a mildly tragic family history; in George Sprott it's late-night local TV, and the quaint modernism of the medium's early days. In The Great Northern Brotherhood of Canadian Cartoonists, its the throw away literature of big little books, bubblegum wrappers and Saturday evening newspaper inserts-- along with lapsed rituals and again the singular architecture of half-forgotten spaces. Though it has no obvious similarity, reading this book took me back to the days when I went with my Dad to his work-- a small factory that my brother and I explored while waiting for Dad to complete whatever errand brought us there. The headquarters of the G.N.B. and C.C. hall in fictional Dominion looks nothing like Niagara Straw on the west side of Buffalo, but Seth's exploration of the former's nooks and crannies (mostly visually) strongly reminded me of poking around in the dark corners of the latter. Another off-the-wall connection I couldn't shake was to Jack Kerouac's On the Road, and feeling like Seth has totally embraced the notion that there are greater worlds of wonder in the smallest things we take for granted than in those that seem more consequential at any given moment-- something that I took from the Kerouac novel. Superficially, Seth hardly seems to fit the "beat" stereotype, even as his evident idiosyncrasy, as well as the presumed spontaneity of a work drawn from his sketchbooks, place him squarely in that tradition. What else can I say except that I really liked this book a lot, and look forward to rereading it-- which doesn't happen very often to me any more.

More Friday Family Blogging

Maria and Joseph vamping a bit for the camera. The movie star and the comedian, in a future life perhaps?

Friday Family Blogging

I can't remember if Helen was blowing me a kiss or giving me the raspberry when I took this; but I prefer to think it was the former.

Friday Philosophy

Francois VI, Duc de la Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) was noted as a creator of pithy maxims, of which the following is one:

"Nothing is impossible; there are ways that
lead to everything, and if we had sufficient
will we should always have sufficient means.
It is often merely for an excuse that we say
things are impossible."

Great Song

I was trying to think of a good birthday song for Sally, and I thought this might work. I hope this brings back some good memories...

Toonerville Thursday

Considering the quote I posted awhile ago, I think it's save to say that the older denizens of Toonerville definitely have "different" pleasures.

Happy Birthday Sally!

I wish I could have been there to help my sister Sally celebrate her birthday today. I hope she got some presents as great as that tricycle!

A Thought for Thursday

Something to consider from the pen of the British novelist W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965):

"The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity. The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquility of the evening. Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth."

Possibly the Greatest Cover Band Ever

I don't know what it is about the ukulele, but it lends itself to just about any type of music, and makes any song really fun. Don't believe it? Check this out:

The Last Movie I Saw

To my mind George Clooney has established himself not only as a charismatic leading man but also as one of the most interesting directors working out of Hollywood today. That's why I had such high hopes for his latest effort, The Ides of March. On a number of levels, this is first-rate entertainment, with excellent performances across the board (Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei, Paul Giamatti, Evan Rachel Wood, as well as Clooney in essentially a supporting role), and a tightly told story with a solid moral lesson at its core. Its the story of a presidential primary campaign and the compromises necessary (both personal and professional) to achieve the goal of electoral victory. Unfortunately most of the film's potential oomph (whether artistic or political) is largely deflated by unnecessary telegraphing of virtually every twist that occurs. Even worse than that (and I suspect this has its roots in the story's origin as a play-- where foreshadowing tragedy is practically an imperative), the early scenes define a clear consensus on the dynamics of politics which makes it impossible to imagine that the eventual fall is a surprise-- or of any real consequence-- to the characters in whose fate the audience is expected to invest our sympathies. One gets the feeling that this reflects Clooney's own sense that the battle for ethics in politics was long ago lost. Maybe the famous speech delivered by Ed Murrow (used as a framing device in Clooney's Good Night and Good Luck) represented a last chance to resist the turn towards cynicism; but we know that didn't happen, and the result is that the outcome of a film like The Ides of March sadly elicits little more than a shrug.

Words for Wednesday

Epictetus (55-135) was a Roman slave who turned into a philosopher, and one with some mighty fine insights. This is a point he made that strikes me as immensely relevant to our current political situation in the US:

"Let no wise man estrange himself from
the government of the state; for it is both
wicked to withdraw from being useful to
the needy, and cowardly to give way
to the worthless."

Cool Video

There's a nice sixties kind of vibe to both this song and video, though both came out this past year. It seems like there are a lot of good all-(or most)-girl rock bands going right now (Dum Dum Girls, Wild Flag, Those Darlins, etc.), and I for one am enjoying their efforts.

New Crowther Column

So much of the devolution of the American political debate/process that both ends of the political spectrum bemoan is a consequence of the lack of a responsible fourth estate to provide both comprehensive coverage and thoughtful analysis of the issues. I remember studying journalism in college with working newspapermen who adhered to some pretty lofty values with respect to their responsibility to the public. But sometime over the past thirty or so years, that commitment has eroded, and no where is that more evident than in the media properties of the Murdoch empire. Hal Crowther was of the same generation as my teachers (in fact, was a colleague for awhile of those who worked at the Buffalo News), and not too surprisingly resents the impact of Murdoch's corrosive influence, and explains it all here much more convincingly than I could.

This Week's Top Five

Actually, this is a "classic" Top Five from Dr. John's Record Shelf back in January of 2008. This week's edition kind of laid an egg, so it didn't seem worth sharing. This one has a nice nostalgic edge; plus, it provides a bit of fodder for those who may want to engage in some amateur psychoanalysis of co-host Art Vandalay:

A Thought for Tuesday

I know that the week of music quotes ended a couple days ago, but this was too good not to post right away (instead of waiting for the next themed week). This is from the Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881):

"Every day that is born into the world
comes like a burst of music and rings
the whole day through, and you make
of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march,
as you will."

A Favorite Song

This is one of my favorite songs by the band Rilo Kiley, and the video was shot somewhere in the Mojave Desert (though pretty clearly not at Red Rocks Canyon, which is also in the Mojave). Because of that, it seemed appropriate to put up as a followup to the pictures in my previous post.

Pictures from Red Rocks

On past visits to Red Rocks Canyon outside of Las Vegas, it was hard to force my attention away from the mountains that dominate the landscape. But on a recent visit I decided to also take a look and snap some pictures of the other feature of that landscape-- the desert.

Of course the desert has it's own stark beauty, especially in contrast to the surrounding peaks and colorful rocks. Since I was also testing another new lens, it was fun to play around a bit with depth-of-field, integrating the foreground and background in different ways (as in the top two photos).

The last two pictures were more about capturing detail, contrasting rocks with flora. One thing is for certain: this was a radically different terrain/subject than the pictures I've been taking in recent weeks closer to home in the Pioneer Mountains and Big Hole Valley.