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Showing results for tags '1942'.
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Too awesome not to share (play this for someone blind sometime - they'll *never* guess who it is). This is actually from 1959, not 1962: -
Last night, I watched "In Cold Blood" (1967), the magnificent, black-and-white, artsy, non-fiction masterpiece for the second time, and was positively riveted by the performance of Robert Blake, just as I was before - maybe even more so: Blake was nearly perfect in this role. But this is a two-man film, and the "other" co-star, Scott Wilson, was just as effective in his own swaggering, Elvis-like, cold-blooded role as sociopath Dick Hickock, and I began to wonder what, exactly, happened to this fine actor. Where has he been for the past fifty years? So I looked him up, and I can honestly say that, in thirty-five years of being an amateur film scholar, and certainly in the past several years of being a very serious amateur film scholar, I have never experienced such a jaw-dropping moment in my life. Well, there was one other time that came close - when I found out that Merle in "The Walking Dead" was Henry in "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer." Seriously, I about peed my pants when I found that one out, and that's what inspired me to re-watch "Henry" after not having seen it since it was released in 1986. When I did re-watch it, I could see that, yes, Michael Rooker was both Henry and Merle, even though it took me a couple of days to recover from that shock. But never, *ever* have I been so shocked as when I discovered that Scott Wilson, the man who portrayed Dick Hickock in "In Cold Blood," pictured here with co-star Robert Blake: was the very same person who played, well, see for yourself ... but be forewarned: If you've seen "In Cold Blood" before, and if you're a fan of "The Walking Dead," prepare to have a heart attack.
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Aretha Franklin is an incredible American institution: the Queen of Soul. Her music blended soul and gospel with a powerful emotive voice. I believe she had over 100 top hits. Her voice was dominant in the 1960's and 70's. She literally helped create an incredibly popular music genre. Her voice was beautiful and powerful. She transcended Soul. Currently she is terribly ill and in hospice care. Bless you Aretha. So many examples of her music: I'm often grabbed by scenes from film. Here are a couple of examples: From the Blues Brothers, 1980. Aretha puts the Song Think, from 1968, into a wonderful scene: Chain of Fools Came out in 1967. Below is a rendition from the mid '90's movie Michael in a dance scene I found mesmerizing: And from 2015, not soul, not a film, but Aretha magnificently performing You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman
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Jim Vance spoke at my elementary school.
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The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was formed during WWII in 1942, was dissolved in 1945, and is the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), formed in 1947. During the war, it was essential for espionage, propaganda, subversion, and post-war planning. Wikipedia, while not being "the last word" on this important department, certainly has enough to get you going. One day, I hope to have a conversation about the Office on this thread, but we'll need to get some interested parties first. This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim.
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One point of clarification. We (don't know why I say "we" as I'm not a pharmacist) are actually the American Society of Health-Systems Pharmacists (ASHP). The American pharmacists Association (APhA) is downtown renting space in a State Department Building. We're very different associations (some may say friendly rivals). ASHP has been a fixture in Bethesda for decades - even before we bought the building at 7272 we had rented space on Montgomery, I think. Food Wine & Co was the default restaurant for ASHP to hold business lunches at. I suspect Q will be the same. -
Muhammad Ali is in the hospital now with a respiratory ailment (he's going to be released soon), but that reminds me that we don't have a thread for the person who just might be the most famous athlete who ever lived. I've always felt badly for Joe Frazier, because he didn't get the accolades that Ali did, but most of Ali's extra accolades came from what he did outside of the ring - he, himself, said that "Frazier was the greatest fighter of all times, next to me." Ali may not be immortal, but in a sense, he is - people will be talking about him 500 years from now, and that's as close to immortality as you can come. "Muhummad Ali vs. Sonny Liston (1965) - A Look Back 50 Years Later" And for a taste of what it must have been like to fight Ali in his prime, scroll down to the bottom of the first post in "Requiem for a Heavyweight (1956)" and click on the scene from the 1962 film.
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Stefan Zweig would be on my short-short list of "Greatest Writers Ever." The two novellas I have read by him, "The Royal Game" (1941, "Schachnovelle" in German) and "Amok" (1922, Der Amokläufe in German), are as good as any short stories I've ever read, and if someone held a gun to my head, and forced me to pick the single greatest short story I've ever read, it would be "The Royal Game" (and, quite frankly, I don't have any idea what the runner-up would be). It is, in my eyes, an almost-perfect novella, especially its structure in A-B-AB form - it's like reading a Beethoven Sonata. To put the admittedly hyperbolic statements above in perspective, Fyodor Dostoyevsky would also be on that list, which you could count with the fingers of one hand. Structure and architecture are two extremely important things to me, and Zweig's structure cannot be improved upon - it's like reading a Bach Fugue. There's one potentially ruinous thing about "The Royal Game," and that is the translation. Zweig was personal friends with Sigmund Freud, and human psychology is an integral part of his writing - for this reason alone, it is imperative to find a well-translated version of his works. The book that DIShGo read (which I own, "The Royal Game & Other Stories") is translated in the fashion of "stuffy British English," and I cannot even find the name of the translator, though I've only spent about fifteen minutes looking online. The first time I read "The Royal Game" was nearly twenty years ago, and it was the subject being discussed in a book that was called something like, "What Is Art?" I lent it to a friend, and never got it back. , so I remember neither the exact name of the book, nor the name of the translator, but *that* version was what reeled me in like a fish; this four-story anthology is a crime against humanity for what it did to Zweig's masterpiece. Oh, the story is still there, and you'll see how wonderful it is, but that extra 10% of magic is gone due to the formality of the language used - Zweig desperately needs to be translated in an almost conversational style since his works deal with such intense human emotion; the compendium available on Amazon makes you feel like you're reading a news article instead of reading Zweig's own words. I feel helpless, not being able to recommend a good translation to you, because it is absolutely imperative. Anyway, I leafed through this translation (the compendium on Amazon), and was aghast at the writing style. Phrases and words that you'll simply never hear spoken in your entire life are used with regularity, and it actually made me *sad* that people are reading this, thinking they're reading Zweig. Regardless, I decided to bite my lip, and read the second story in the compendium, "Amok," and even with this stiff language, it is abundantly clear that I was reading a masterpiece - a work that could have only been written by an author so profound that even a stuffy translator couldn't ruin it. "Amok" was an unbelievably great novella, the kind of story that you *hate* putting down because you have to be somewhere - it's only forty pages long, so can be easily read - savored - in a couple hours of focused attention. I will not ruin the story for you, at least not in this post, but perhaps if anyone wishes to discuss it, I'll include a prominent *** SPOILERS *** section so as not to ruin it for the uninitiated - but not yet. "Amok' was a story so engaging that I might come out and say it's the second-greatest novella I've ever read; yet, according to DIShGo, it may not even be the second-best novella in this one compendium! There is very little chance at this point of me finding out the name of the original book I had, much less the translator, but I can say with confidence to avoid this edition on Amazon. "The Royal Game" is clearly divided into three sections, and was labeled as such; *this* compendium doesn't even have the decency to label the "sections" 1, 2, and 3 - it just crams everything together. Never have I read a story that is so clearly demarcated - a child could have put in the section numbers without even knowing anything about the novella. "The Royal Game" was published just before Zweig committed suicide. I wonder if he knew, deep down inside, that he had produced a work of such profundity that it could never again be matched. Almost surely not - Zweig had some personal problems, but they came out in full Technicolor in his writing - writing that can only be described with one word in the English language: genius. Never have I raved about an author like this, and once you read Zweig's works, you'll understand why. You'll *hate* it when they end. I must add that I have read precisely two novellas by Zweig, hardly making me an expert, so this essay must be tempered with the appropriate grain of salt. That said, I'm so confident in this man's genius, that I could commit to reading *only him* for the rest of my life, and if the body of work was large enough, it would be a life well-spent. --- This is important, so keep reading! PS - There is hope! My friend answered my desperate text message with a response - the book is called "Understanding the Arts," (*) and it was written by John Hospers. I don't understand how book sellers can sell books on Amazon for one cent, but it seems to be available in some fashion on Amazon.com (can anyone explain this to me? They charge $3.99 for shipping, but that hardly makes them any money). Anyway, my friend couldn't find the translator, but he told me to research "the 1972 Viking Penguin reprint," because that's the one they use in this book. I asked him to type out the first sentence of the translation, and it is this: "The big liner, due to sail from New York to Buenos Aires at midnight, was filled with the activity and bustle incident to the last hour...." - that is the edition that you want. Interestingly, my friend and I are also chatting, and he said the only reason he found the book was because he's insisting that his friend read "Schachnovelle," adding, "It is the greatest short story I know," and this guy is a hyper-genius. Get this edition and read it! (*) OMFG - the entire edition is online! It's not the most enjoyable way to read a book, but you can at least *read the book* if you don't mind scrolling through the pages (I personally *hate* doing this - it's like listening to a great piece of music through a pair of earbuds, and in my opinion, ruins the experience).
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For much of his time with the Beatles, Paul McCartney didn't seem much interested in rock-n-roll, devoting himself instead to the sort of Tin-Pan-Alley stuff that remains his rather dismal legacy, like "When I'm 64". But when he sang rock-n-roll, he was one of the greatest rock-n-roll singers of all time, as here in "I'm Down" (1965): Or here in "She's a Woman" (1964): -
Probably about the same number of people who realize that Jimi Hendrix was born in Seattle and used to play in Little Richard's backing band.
