Saturday, September 25, 2010
Friday, September 24, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
As A Marxist
Salvador Dalí sketching Harpo Marx (1937, via).
Dalí, a huge Marx Brothers fan with a particular admiration for Harpo, whom he viewed as “the most surrealist figure in Hollywood”, sent him a harp with barbed wire for strings & forks and spoons for tuning knobs as a Christmas present in 1936. Delighted, Harpo wrote Dalí that he would be “happy to be smeared by you” if the artist ever found himself in Hollywood. The next month Dalí arrived, brushes and easel in hand. The resultant painting is lost, but a monochrome pencil-and-ink study survived (here)
Dalí wrote an entertaining, if rather implausible, account of this meeting in a 1937 Harper’s Bazaar article:
“I met Harpo for the first time in his garden. He was naked, crowned with roses, and in the center of a veritable forest of harps (he was surrounded by at least five hundred harps). He was caressing, like a new Leda, a dazzling white swan, and feeding it a statue of the Venus de Milo made of cheese, which he grated against the strings of the nearest harp. An almost springlike breeze drew a curious murmur from the harp forest. In Harpo’s pupils glows the same spectral light to be observed in Picasso’s.”
Dalí later wrote a script for a Marx Brothers movie, Giraffes on Horseback Salad, which included, among other things, burning giraffes wearing gas masks & Harpo catching dwarves with a butterfly net. The film was never made. Groucho, that killjoy, claimed to have scuttled the project: “It wouldn’t play.”
Just a delicious story. Beats talking about current politics.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Figures
Today is world "car-free" day. So, of course, today is the one day that I'm obligated to drive. My neighbor is having surgery, and I agreed to pick him up from the hospital.
I'm not going to feel guilty. I lived car free for fourteen years, and only returned to car ownership this past spring. I inherited this car when my brother-in-law passed away, but I rarely drive it. Flagstaff is a very walking/biking friendly town.
Sometimes ya' gotta do what ya' gotta do.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Why Aliens Avoid Us
Take a look at the TV we send out to them: