For the time being, the detective story ‘The Case Of The Five Ties’ will be discontinued. Writing crime fiction isn’t at my core, it seems.
As large organizations must ‘strategically realign and re-position‘ themselves due to ‘changing market conditions’, I, too, must ‘implement departmental changes‘ within Navincorp. Wiley, Harry and Oliveira are now free to find meaningful work in different stories, with different character arcs. Many plots are doing quite well right now. Handsomely, in fact.
To those saying my brisk and sudden beeline towards the tall grasses, where a man may find quiet repose, lacks certain qualities of leadership. Cowards, all of you.
Thanks for the email suggestions. A few of you should CLEARLY be writing your own stories. Keep at it.
If you were a kid at the right time, you caught snatches of detective shows on T.V; maybe without having ever watched a full episode.
Columbo seemed rumpled but classy, deceptively ensnaring his prey. Magnum P.I. drove a Ferrari and had a friend with a helicopter. Matlock was clearly for the Olds.
One night, we caught an episode of Stacy Keach as Mike Hammer. The intro screen advertised ‘Mickey Spillane’s’ Mike Hammer.‘
Intrigued by a rumor filtered down from the adults, my brother grabbed a phone book. Mickey Spillane’s listed. He lives nearby.
‘It’s ringing.‘ He says.
‘Mr Spillane? I just wanted to say we’re here watching Mike Hammer and we’re nearby and we really like it.’
‘Yes.‘ my brother says. ‘Sure.’
‘Thank you Mr. Spillane.‘
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The photo below reminds me of a poster for a knock-off T.V. detective.
I’m strolling by and see a single shaft of weak light falling though a Pioneer square bar. It’s falling right on this gentleman on the corner seat. He sees me seeing him.
Should I take the shot?
I raise my camera and start snapping away as I walk towards the entrance (me and God/the Gods are working this behavior out).
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There’s absolutely nothing funny about Telly Savalas playing Kojak as reported by Norm MacDonald to Jerry Seinfeld, shattering naive fictions in solving a T.V. crime-drama:
Even funnier (generic tattoo, but for eggheads….the kinds of people visiting France for a week in college expecting to run America someday): Yes, that’s a Chinese brothel.
Forget LLMs, and neural modeling. ‘You can do anything‘ at Zombo.com
Down stucco sidestreets, Where light is pewter And afternoon mist Brings lights on in shops Above race-guides and rosaries, A funeral passes.
The hearse is ahead, But after there follows A troop of streetwalkers In wide flowered hats, Leg-of-mutton sleeves, And ankle-length dresses.
There is an air of great friendliness, As if they were honouring One they were fond of; Some caper a few steps, Skirts held skilfully (Someone claps time),
And of great sadness also. As they wend away A voice is heard singing Of Kitty, or Katy, As if the name meant once All love, all beauty.
One evening, my family found ourselves around a communal table (for lack of space) in a small-town Irish pub. With two red-faced British couples, also on vacation, in their fifties or so, we made conversation. Surrounded by locals, one of the Brits began to wax philosophic: ‘What do we think of the Irish?’ ‘Well…let’s say the Irish are really just British who’ve wandered off a bit’, gesturing to everyone around.
I remember…being quite shocked. I looked towards the face of the older tweed-coated gentleman, elbow to elbow next to me.
No reaction?
His eyes were blank, slightly downcast.
I then remember thinking: ‘Them’s fightin’ words, yessiree bob, or enough to get yourself into a real pickle back home.’ (my inner narrator is an old hobo/prospector).
Some say ‘Delicatessen’, with its 156 minute run-time, is a slog. Three hours of film cut down from eight, taking place entirely within a midday Parisian deli, can be a bit much. Half-heard conversations. A 13 minute single-shot discussion of death, children and cheese.
Others say no modern work illuminates as many centuries of French history, family tensions and socio-economic struggles as does this modern French classic.
***Auteur theory: New Wave theory holds that the two female protagonists are simply puppets for Clement Barreau’s own failed marriages, disgraced career as a pop-signer, and his desire to ‘burn down the Sorbonne and stand like Napoleon within’.
After Clement Barreau’s infamous 1967 Dakar rally accident, his body was returned to Paris from the colonial deserts.
C’est la vie, mon ami…
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***Easily manipulable images and standardized, formalized text are happening right now. Keep your bullshit detectors finely-tuned.
Art, money, marketing and fame. It’s worth thinking about Western culture and the travels of the individual artist through romanticism, modernism and post-modernism and to wherever it is that artist is headed now. As for Hirst, it was probably inevitable that someone who couldn’t draw all that well, and didn’t have many of the basics down, would rocket in and out of the spotlight, capturing the moment.
‘Damien Hirst’s output between 2005 and 2008 – the period of his greatest success – has subsequently resold at an average of thirty per cent less than its original purchase price. Moreover, a third of the almost 1700 Hirst pieces that have gone to auction since 2009 have failed to sell at all. Most recently, in November, his gloss-and-butterfly collage Sanctimony failed to reach its lowest pre-sale estimate at a Sotheby’s auction’
If you bought it, perhaps you deserve it, and even Hirst seems to be in on that game.
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Towards a theme:
Salvador Dali had some training and native talent but was also an idea man.
He was part of the surrealist movement, perhaps best represented by Luis Bunuel’s (Un Chien Andalou) statement:
“Our only rule was very simple: no idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted. We had to open all doors to the irrational and keep only those images that surprised us, without trying to explain why.“
I suspect Spanish culture helped along the way by placing a lot of emphasis on the arts as it does, tilting the culture in that direction. It’s produced El Greco, Velazquez, Goya, and Picasso among others. Spanish genius tends to flourish in the visual arts.
Here’s a quote from Goya. that first modern, I keep putting up:
“Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters: united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of their marvels.”
Here’s Dali having become something of a caricature of himself:
Did you know Hawthorne had a son who wrote for Hearst and rubbed shoulders with Twain?:
‘Over the course of his long life, Julian Hawthorne seems to have met every major literary and public figure of his time. As a child, he sometimes listened in as his father conversed with Emerson, Thoreau and Melville. At birthday parties, he played games with little Louisa May Alcott.’
‘We stayed for the afternoon talk-in which Richard Schrader revealed how slanted and inaccurate Mencken’s account of the Scopes evolution trial had been…’
The business of monkeys…
I’m often returned to the simple pleasures of bookishness while reading Dirda.
“As a student of his native literature, Mencken favours writers with the authentic American yawp – Walt Whitman and Mark Twain, the humorists George Ade and Ring Lardner. Huckleberry Finn is the novel he loves most (followed, somewhat surprisingly, by Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim). He judges Emerson to be overrated – “an importer of stale German elixirs, sometimes direct and sometimes through the Carlylean branch house”. He can’t bear the circumlocutions of Henry James and the gentility of William Dean Howells”
Menand wonders in his new book, why it often can take 9 years for a humanities PhD to get their doctorate. He suggests part of the answer lies in the numbers: fewer opportunities and fewer university programs since 1970. Overtrained and underpaid.
I give you now Professor Twist,
A conscientious scientist,
Trustees exclaimed, “He never bungles!”
And sent him off to distant jungles.
Camped on a tropic riverside,
One day he missed his loving bride.
She had, the guide informed him later,
Been eaten by an alligator.
Professor Twist could not but smile.
“You mean,” he said, “a crocodile.”
Perhaps you’re thinking that’s a standard 1978 ‘Custom Star Trek ‘boogie’ van: The kind you might see parked at a ‘Bad Company‘ concert, or maybe pulling next to you at a stoplight, blasting Journey’s ‘Wheel In The Sky‘ or Heart’s ‘Barracuda.’
Move-in a little closer, however, and that sweet exterior paint-job begins to reveal mysterious depths of the human condition.
No, I’d say someone involved here has the soul of a poet.
Is Spock in possession of that bare-chested space Amazonian?
Have we, the observers, already stumbled unawares into a supreme space drama unfolding in real time? Some potential new danger calling-up our best selves to triumph as we too gaze to the horizon along with them…to the heavens…to Dairy Queen or the gas station…to that final frontier?
‘If you’re ever wondering what the War Room of “Dr. Strangelove” would look like if the movie had been directed by Prince, here you go.’
After taking the photo tour, I remain convinced that ‘The Gobbler’ exists in its own realm of awesome badness. Such a shag-covered, abandoned love-child of the late 60’s and early 70’s is challenging just what I thought I knew about American culture.
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Gaze long and hard into the heart of the 80’s, dear reader, and perhaps you’ll live to tell the tale:
From a reader:
‘Think Foreigner’s ‘Eye Of The Tiger’ meets a standard Journey/Eddie Money-esque power rock ballad, chock full of all the standard cliches: ‘highest fever’ ‘roll the dice’ ”new horizon’ brand new start’ ‘hit the right spot‘
All of this tacked onto the end of Schwarzenegger’s pure uncut 80’s sci-fi action thriller…
What if an Olympic gymnast, sporting a wicked mullet, went through a rigorous training montage, then on to a top-secret mission to secure the national defense in a distant, fictitious land?
‘Think Foreigner’s ‘Eye Of The Tiger’ meets a standard Journey/Eddie Money-esque power rock ballad, chock full of all the standard cliches: ‘highest fever’ ‘roll the dice’ ”new horizon’ brand new start’ ‘hit the right spot‘
All of this tacked onto the end of Schwarzenegger’s pure uncut 80’s sci-fi action thriller…
Almost too much to bear.
Thanks, readers:
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***Before you mock, the movie’s theme was composed by Harold Faltermeyer, of Axel F fame, and is nothing to shake a stick at. It takes real talent to put songs into your head and keep them there. The vocalist and performer John Parr, of St. Elmo’s Fire fame was more than a one-hit wonder as well.
What if an Olympic gymnast, sporting a wicked mullet, went through a rigorous training montage, then on to a top-secret mission to secure the national defense in a distant, fictitious land?
They play for keeps in Karabal:
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Still looking for awesome badness on this blog. If you think you’ve got some awesome badness, preferably 80’s awesome badness, send it my way.
What if an Olympic gymnast, sporting a wicked mullet, went through a rigorous training montage, then on to a top-secret mission to secure the national defense in a distant, fictitious land?
They play for keeps in Karabal:
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Still looking for awesome badness on this blog. If you think you’ve got some awesome badness, preferably 80’s awesome badness, send it my way.
‘If you’re ever wondering what the War Room of “Dr. Strangelove” would look like if the movie had been directed by Prince, here you go.’
After taking the photo tour, I remain convinced that ‘The Gobbler’ exists in its own realm of awesome badness. Such a shag-covered, abandoned love-child of the late 60’s and early 70’s is challenging just what I thought I knew about American culture.
And while I can lounge in the bathos of this Wisconsin motor court/supper club’s global ambitions, and walk through the valley of the shadow of its modernist, U.N. international style, I still can’t fathom the intentions of its authors.
Why, Gobbler, why?
–Want to lose an afternoon? Visit Lileks.com. A fine humorist with a sharp pen and a keen eye. This is what the internet is for.
Additionally: Donald Pittenger, at Art Contrarian, and formerly of 2 Blowhards, has been looking at modernism. From the banner of his blog:
‘The point-of-view is that modernism in art is an idea that has, after a century or more, been thoroughly tested and found wanting. Not to say that it should be abolished — just put in its proper, diminished place’
Here’s Australian art critic Robert Hughes discussing the Albany plaza, and almost hyperbolically criticizing the aims of modernist architecture.
***Fun fact, he pronounces the “Boogie Woogie” the “Boo-gie Woo-gie.”
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Related On This Site: They designed a city in the heart of Brazil that really doesn’t work for people: Brasilia: A Planned City
Perhaps you haven’t heard about the Levitated Mass at the Los Angeles County Art Museum:
‘…an artwork by Michael Heizer comprised of a 456-foot-long concrete-lined slot constructed on LACMA’s campus, upon and at the center of which is placed a 340-ton granite megalith. As visitors walk along the slot, it gradually descends to fifteen feet deep, running underneath the megalith before ascending back up.’
This is L.A., but…still. Our author at the American Interest wonders:
‘It would be interesting to know whose idea was to move the 340-ton rock from a quarry (at a distance of almost a hundred miles) to the Los Angeles County Museum—an operation costing millions, necessitating extra police forces to deal with the traffic problems caused by the slow progress (five miles per hour) of a gigantic truck (“196-wheel transporter”) specially made for this project.’
Wonder no further:
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Well, at least it was paid for by private donations. Even so, a great nation deserves great art. This piece fills a spiritual and cultural void at the heart of the Angelino multicultural experience, creating a communal space (absence) in which the public can find meaning through public Art by incorporating Nature itself (a large rock…prescence) into their rootless, isolated, traffic-weary daily lives. It is a mass for the masses!
While passing under the megalith, it may slowly dawn on some Californians that what seemed like levitation or another mildly interesting new art installation actually has a terrible weight to it, and could potentially crush them to death. This may even inspire fear or resignation (like the California debt burden), or perhaps like the Hajj it will become a pilgrimage destination, even uniting people in a state of passive reverence for something so mildly holy (as only good, secular, public Art projects can do).
There was also a gala opening for the rock as though it were Oscar night. From the American Interest:
“In the final analysis, moving this rock to a museum may be seen as an apt symbol of the cultural/aesthetic relativism that has of late engulfed much of our society. Admiration of the rock also illustrates a rare agreement between elite groups (such as curators and benefactors of museums) and ordinary people about what should be regarded as an object of art. Perhaps most importantly it reflects a growing incapacity of many Americans to distinguish between events which are appropriate occasions for reaffirming social bonds and experiencing exhilaration and those which are meaningless and wasteful spectacles.”
Indeed, but I suppose that’s up to the people of Los Angeles to decide. They may like it. The L.A. Times blog writes more here (comments are worth a read).
See also: Tergvinder’s Stone, a poem by W.S. Merwin. Maybe you could see this coming.
Addition: Apparently not everyone recognizes an attempt at postmodern public art blurb satire when they see it.
The map itself isn’t so impressive, but it’s an interesting thought. Someone made a cartogram of many different languages’ point of reference to other languages as ones that seem unintelligible.
“Mutual incomprehension results from the right mixture of inter-lingual proximity and unintelligibility. In the Middle Ages, for example, when the monks’ knowledge of Greek was waning, they would write in the margin of texts they could not translate, in Latin: “Graecum est, non legitur” (”This is Greek to me, I can’t read it”).”
