Art Pottery, Politics and Food
Friday, August 29, 2003
 
Actual UK Demonstrator


PaintShop Pro


Photo: Reuter's
Thursday, August 28, 2003
 
Arnie in the 70’s

Scene from Arnold Schwartzenegger’s 1970 film,
“Hercules in New York”


From the always fascinating TheSmokingGun.com, Schwartzenegger’s 1977 OUI interview:

AS-And once, a black girl came out naked. Everybody jumped on her and took her upstairs, where we all got together.
OUI-A gang bang?
AS-Yes, but not everybody, just the guys who can f--- in front of other guys. Not everybody can do that. Some think they don’t have a big-enough c---, so they can’t get a hard-on. Having chicks around is the kind of thing that breaks up the intense training. It gives you relief, and then afterward you go back to the serious stuff.

Photo:Reuter's
 
Wartime for Bonzo

I guess the buildings and extras
are bluescreened in?


To me, the above photograph better resembles some guy and a geezer fireman at the town dump more than a dramatic recreation of President Bush's megaphone/photo op with the post 9/11 NYC Firemen and Rescue Workers.
Thanks to the VillageVoice.com, we get a stomach-turning glimpse of Showtime’s chintzy DC9/11: Time of Crisis a fictionalized attempt, it seems, to further thicken the Fog of War from the September 11 terrorist attack while glossing Bush Junior’s electability.
An accompanying set of laughable publicity stills, published with the article, confirms the amateur budget of the White House-assisted production by eponymous Hollywood conservative Lionel Chetwynd:

Scheduled for cablecast on September 7, "DC 9/11" inaugurates Bush's re-election campaign 50 weeks before the 9-11 Memorial Republican National Convention opens in Madison Square Garden. "DC 9/11" also marks a new stage in the American cult of personality: the actual president as fictional protagonist. There are, of course, precedents. "One of the original aspects of Soviet cinema is its daring in depicting contemporary historical personages, even living figures," André Bazin dryly observed in his 1950 essay, "The Myth of Stalin in the Soviet Cinema." It was one of the unique characteristics of Stalin-era Soviet movies that their infallible leader was regularly portrayed, by professional impersonators, as an all-wise demiurge in suitably grandiose historical dramas.

Meanwhile, on the Art Pottery and Feminist Art History front, I’m wetting my pants with excitement over a new book by Cincinnati Art Museum Curator of Decorative Arts Anita J. Ellis.

The book, The Ceramic Career of M. Louise McLaughlin, showcases the first American to develop a technique for under glaze painting.
The book, months tardy from it’s original June publication date, is published by the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Ohio University Press and is available through both organizations as well as Amazon.com. My copy, ordered in March, arrived Monday.
I am savoring my read as though the book were a small tasty chocolate. An enjoyable book, Ms. Ellis has also written an important book with terrific photographs and, what is becoming standard for her publications, an excellent section of records and marks.
A must read for the American Art Pottery fan and anyone interested in American women’s first assaults upon the male social fortress.

Photos: Sean and Ken Woroner/Showtime
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
 
Polluted Marslight

As our Martian cousin graces the evening sky and birds, woozy with West Nile, fall from northern Kentucky trees, the summer, for this blogger, wanes in moist polluted humidity.
The normally black-belching twin smokestacks of my coal-fired Victorian Blog Editor have been dormant since Friday.
Technical difficulties.
As we are paralleling our golf and fundraising-crazed Exerciser-in-Chief with our pre-beach blog wind-down, this technical difficulty hasn’t been particularly troublesome. But, I have missed the luxury of venting.
Venting over dead soldiers, vacationing presidents, historic deficits and rolling Commandments wasn’t possible.

August 24th crowd in Falls Church, Virginia

Venting over a Howard Dean remark heard on CNN about Bush/Cheney’04 employing low-paid 3rd world phone operators in their fundraising operation wasn’t possible.

I wasn’t even able to gloat that my August 8th post regarding Arnold Schwartzenegger’s gigantic cabochon sapphire ring was noticed by big media. Washington Post fashion writer Robin Givhan in a Friday August 27th story headlined Lord of the Rings said:

Schwarzenegger doesn't wear a traditional wedding band; instead he wears a yellow gold and sapphire ring that was given to him by wife Maria Shriver on their wedding day. One might refer to its carat size as "significant" and its style as MGM Grand.

Jewelers I've spoken to agree the gem alone is worth at least $20K! But, Arnie baby, shouldn't the setting for a beautiful blue stone and a fellow like you really be platinum?
Unlike massive bejeweled Arnie, who, in chaos, seems to thrive within his private weightlifter zone, it must be noted that the frenetic pace of golf and million dollar rubber chicken dinners is exacting a terrible toll on our tinny Texan.

Captured by Reuter’s Larry Downing yesterday morning in St. Paul, Mr. Bush gives the impression of having sampled a wide array of the sparkling fruit juices available aboard Air Force One as he stares oddly into space while going through the motions with what appears to be a Tennessee Williams, Kurt Vonnegut or Henri Matisse impersonator.

As more young United States soldiers die on the unforgiving Iraqi landscape, CNN assured us this morning that the President was planning another relaxing vacation day strolling the scenic backdrops of the "ranch" in chinos and an endless array of wrapper-fresh pastel western shirts.

Photos: Lawrence-Berkeley Lab, NASA, Dean for America and Reuter's

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