Covered this week; End of World War II kiss man dies at 95… Where props are found for retro Hollywood offerings… Jasper Johns, American Legend… Dismantling the USS Enterprise… How I ditched my phone and unbroke my brain… 2019 Oscar Winners…
February 18, 2019
What has always been most interesting to me about this image is that its subject’s names were never recorded… so we don’t know for sure the two people pictured… although due diligence over the years indicate that Greta Friedman and George Mendonsa are the subjects. Sadly, George has died at 95 years of age in Rhode Island over the weekend.
The illustrious Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt took the photograph on Aug. 14, 1945, moments after word reached the public that the Japanese had surrendered. Times Square was thronged with people celebrating the end of the war, and Eisenstaedt’s series of four photos showed a uniformed sailor grabbing a woman in a nurse’s outfit, bending her back and kissing her deeply. These two anonymous people appeared to embody the exuberance of the moment, and the photograph appeared on a full page in Life.
February 19, 2019
Who would have known? But I have thought the question. Figured this sort of stockpile existed in Hollywood somewhere… but on New York’s Lower East side? Never would have guessed it.
Have you ever watched a show like Mad Men and wondered where they found those early Xerox machines? Or where The Americans got their hands on all the Reagan-era IBMs that you thought would be piled in a landfill? Well, there’s a good chance these historically-accurate gadgets came from a massive warehouse in Brooklyn with a specific mission: to preserve some of the world’s oldest, most cherished electronics.
February 20, 2019
Often, we talk of aged legends only after they die. In this case, The New York Times just published this outstanding bio of American artist Jasper Johns while he’s still alive and thriving at a sparse 88. A great read if you’re so inclined.
At 88, Johns remains physically imposing: He is barrel-chested, and his once boyish face has weathered into a craggy atlas. When I visited his home, he showed me the mostly bare walls of his studio before leading me upstairs, into an informal gallery room, with windows that looked out on the surrounding landscape, which felt, with the naked trees on the horizon, vast and lonely in the early December chill. Even his gait as he climbed the stairs had a meaningful vigor, as if he was trying to prove to the steps that he could still conquer them. Johns is a solitary figure, among the final survivors of an era, and for the better part of 60 years, he has declined to offer any easy explanations about his work, or to be a spokesperson for postwar American art, though people would like him to be. He has been one of the primary architects of the contemporary art world, and has also opted out of its social trappings entirely. For decades, he has divided his time between quiet towns along the East Coast and a remote retreat designed by Philip Johnson in St. Martin. Now, he rarely leaves Connecticut. The curator John Elderfield has called him “the hermit of Sharon.”
February 21, 2019
It never occurred to me when watching the Monkees television show as a kid… that I was watching reruns, but it appears I was as this article puts them on-the-air from 66-68. I was an infant and toddler right around then… so there you go. Sad to hear that Peter Tork has passed on to the wild frontier at only 77. Godspeed.
The Monkees were an unabashedly manufactured band, created by Hollywood producers in the 1960s to capitalize on the astounding popularity of the Beatles. The members — Mr. Tork (the oldest, at 24), Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz and Mike Nesmith — were cast as the stars of an NBC sitcom, “The Monkees” (1966-68), in which they performed and dealt with comic situations with a childlike irreverence, much as the Beatles had in their hit films “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Help!”
February 22, 2019
A little bit of an older link here… but I just came across this story and it’s an interesting conundrum that is not really thought about until the time comes to deal with it… and the Navy needs to get it right as there’s a backlog of retiring nuclear powered ships coming up that will need to be disposed of as well… Sad that she’s being taken apart at all, but all good things must one day come to an end.
Six years after decommissioning USS Enterprise, the world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the U.S. Navy is still figuring out how to safely dismantle the ship. The General Accounting Office estimates the cost of taking apart the vessel and sending the reactors to a nuclear waste storage facility at up to $1.5 billion, or about one-eighth the cost of a brand-new aircraft carrier.
February 23, 2019
Sadly, a situation almost ALL of us need to contemplate in 2019. Over time, this is going to become a real problem… best to get a grip, on at least yourself, while the getting is good. This primer experiment from Kevin Roose with the help of Catherine Price is certainly food for thought.
Steve Jobs wasn’t exaggerating when he described the iPhone as a kind of magical object, and it’s truly wild that in the span of a few years, we’ve managed to turn these amazing talismanic tools into stress-inducing albatrosses. It’s as if scientists had invented a pill that gave us the ability to fly, only to find out that it also gave us dementia.
February 24, 2019
Last week was the Grammys… this week the Oscars. The show was host-less this year… I guess that’s a big deal. Didn’t really watch the broadcast so couldn’t tell you much about it… but it’s a Sunday… and the Oscars happened… so here’s the winners.
