Rock On.







So the Los Angeles Museum of Art has spent around $10 million to have a 340-ton, 21-foot high boulder dug out of the desert and trucked in the roughly 100 miles to the museum where it's going on display as art.  The big rock arrived in the wee hours of Saturday morning to a waiting crowd of approximately 1,000 people.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/arts/design/340-ton-artwork-arrives-at-los-angeles-county-museum-of-art.html?ref=design

While some saw the early crowd as a predictor of impending popularity, it has been revealed that two groups of dissenters are now making their way to the museum.  One group, called "Big Paper," are walking a massive paper sheath  southward from Seattle; another, called "Big Scissors," are trucking in their contribution, harvested from the roof of a hair salon in Cleveland.

"In this economy, for $10 million we should at least get performance art," a group spokesman said.  "Rock-Paper-Scissors will be cutting edge.  Especially the scissors."

The Coulda Been King's Speech.

In the NY Times Sunday Book Review, Liesl Shillinger reviews a new bio of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, by Anne Sebba, who upends the whole chess board in her depiction of the Woman He Loved (He being Edward VIII).  Shillinger says the account leaves intact traditional notions of Simpson, that she was a "temptress, social climber, tactless boor, gold digger.  But she is granted another that, in light of this substantial new evidence, seems to make her a little more palatable:  helpless pawn."

In this version of Simpson's story, the powers surrounding the throne "regarded Edward VIII as unstable, irresponsible and dangerously well disposed to Nazi Germany," and so conspired to convince him that his marriage to Simpson would make him ineligible for the throne, when in fact "the basis of the constitutional threat was shaky."

Eward's obsession with the married Simpson was distinctly lopsided; Simpson's husband didn't mind the affair as both he and his wife "were eager to profit from the social boost it gave them.   Neither had expected the affair to take a serious turn, Sebba writes, but they were powerless to resist once the king made up his mind." 

Well, Streep already looks a bit like Simpson, but she's too old--unless the movie version will be an extended flashback with the couple doddering around the Continent in their dotage, a la Streep's recent Iron Lady with Dementia....So who should play Wallis Simpson in time for Harvey Weinstein  to rustle up the Coulda Been King (and Queen) Thank You Speeches from the 2014 Oscar podium?

Here's the link to the review:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/books/review/that-woman-by-anne-sebba.html?pagewanted=1&ref=books

And speaking of Parker without Spitzer.....

WaPo conservative columnist Kathleen Parker knows bipartisanship--or at least she knows what it's like to be dumped on by men from both major parties.  Last year, Eliot Spitzer pushed her out as co-host of their CNN talk show, and now, according to her column this week, conservatives are trying to push her around for suggesting Rush Limbaugh apologize to Sandra Fluke.  One respondent seemed to characterize women's natural status as "slightly above goats," and explained menstruation and painful childbirth as punishment "for tempting men to do evil and failing to recognize their roles as 'helpmeets' for men."

All of this is just a long windup to a link Parker includes to a story in the South Carolina newsite, The State, about a "purity" pledge implemented in Laurens County.  Although it contained mostly GOP boilerplate about abortion, gay marriage, etc, the pledge was rejected by the state organization, largely, according to The State article, because the pledge would also require "those who file to run in the June 12 Republican primary to promise they did not have premarital sex, will be faithful to their spouses and will not watch porn while also fighting to protect gun rights."

Will not watch porn while also fighting to protect gun rights.

Okay, this is probably an error in sentence construction rather than semantics, but still, one must ask:

Obviously, had Sanford been
watching porn while also
fighting to protect gun rights,
he would have been impeached--
just as he voted to impeach
Bill Clinton.

Is it acceptable to watch porn so long as you are not simultaneously engaged in the sacred quest to protect gun rights?  You may, for example, watch porn while also telephoning to your aging grandma?  Or you may watch porn while also sitting at your desk at work with your wife's framed photo in front of you?  Of course, this is South Carolina, so it goes without saying that you may watch porn while also hiking the Appalachian Trail...the only question is can you get cell coverage.

Parker's column: http://tinyurl.com/7xfbenc

The State article: http://tinyurl.com/8a4ay98

Cue the disco beat.

You can tell by the way I use my walk I'm a woman's man. 
No time to talk.  Music loud, women warm, I've been kicked around since I was born. 
And now it's all right, it's okay.  You can look the other way.  We can try to understand the New York Times effect on man.  Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother, you're stayin' alive, stayin' alive.  Ah, ha, ha, stayin' alive.  Ah, ha, ha, stayin' alive.*

On this day in 2008, the New York Times first broke the story of Client Number 9 (known to the rest of us as N.Y. Gov. Eliot Spitzer), and the legend of the black socks was born.  (Supposedly he never removed his black socks during "congress" with the prostitutes.)  Since that time Spitzer's marital situation has inspired one hit tv show (CBS's drama The Good Wife), he has participated in one tv flop (CNN's ill-starred yak show, Parker-Spitzer) and he still appears regularly in the media, on websites and radio.  But despite the fact that as NY attorney general he went after prostitution rings aggressively and without mercy, the law-and-order luv guv has yet to appear in this:

* Lyrics by the Bee Gees, and it should be noted that on this day on 1988, Andy Gibb, younger brother of the Bee Gees passed away from myocarditis.  He deserves a better post than being lumped in with the Spitz, and I promise to make amends.

Iconography, Part II.

As long as we are on the subject of cultural icons with German roots, I would be remiss not to note that yesterday was the 62nd birthday of the Volkswagen bus.  It first rolled off the assembly line in 1950 as the Volkswagen Type 2 or the Transporter--a name, given the company's history, that seems a bit unfortunate.  The Volkswagen Type 1, what is now called the Beetle, was the only car the company made when it was conceived with Adolph Hitler's enthusiastic support as a state-funded venture dedicated to creating an affordable, mass-produced "People's Car."  The Volkswagen prototype was called the KdF Wagen, KdF standing for Krafte durch Freude, or "Strength through Joy."   But by the time the car finally made it into full-scale production, Hitler had set off World War II, and the plant, now manned by slave labor, was given over to manufacturing military vehicles.  After the war, the big car companies of the former Allied countries all turned up their noses, allowing the Germans to take control again.  Then in the 60s Madison Avenue taught Americans to "Think Small" and helped make Volkswagen cool to a younger crowd. Thus, in three short decades, Hitler's People Car made the journey to Power to the People van.  Groovy?  You decide.

"And there will be Jews who will sell the
Strength through Joy Wagon
 at a place called Madison Avenue?
Ha! Ha!  You are such a joker, you."

She began her life as plaything for men.  Really.  Her name was Bild Lilly and she was introduced in 1950 primarily as a gag gift for German men, inspired by a curvacious blonde cartoon character who appeared in the tabloid Bild-Zeitung.  The cartoon character Lilly had an office job and an active social life, and, at least according to Wikipedia, said things like The sunrise is so beautiful I always stay late at the nightclub so I can see it and I could do without balding old men but my budget couldn't.  Eventually little girls noticed and fell in love with the Lilly doll, and when Ruth Handler visited Germany with her children Barbara and Ken, she bought three dolls, one for each child and one to take back to Mattel, the company she had co-founded with her husband only a few years earlier.  Though legend has it the reception by Handler's husband and the Mattel board was tepid, Ruth Handler prevailed, and on this day in 1959, Barbie made her debut at the American Toy Fair in New York City.

La Dolce Vita.

Stop and smell the roses, preferably white roses, in honor of Vita Sackville-West, writer and lover of men, women and gardens, who was born on this day in 1892.  Though Sackville-West, who was married and had two sons, was a novelist and poet of note, she may be best known today as the lover of Virginia Woolfe and the inspiration for the gender-bending, time-traveling hero of Woolfe's novel Orlando.  Sackville-West was also an avid, self-taught gardener (with a large gardening staff, one suspects), and her one-color gardens, in particular her White Garden, are still admired at Sissinghurst Castle, purchased by Sackville-West and her husband, journalist and diplomat Harold Nicolson in 1930.   Here's a link to more history about the gardens:  http://www.greatbritishgardens.co.uk/Vita_Sackville_West.htm

And here's a link to a bio:  http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jsackville.htm

The 1992 movie version of Woolfe's novel starred Tilda Swinton as Orlando, a character who changes sexes and time periods willy nilly, and the (probably) male actor Quentin Crisp as Queen Elizabeth I.  Despite the Orlando tie-in and its obvious potential, the film did not inspire a new ride at Disneyworld.  If only Bruckheimer had produced it.  Pirates of the Gender Frontiers, anyone?  Today, let us also consider those possibilities.