Everybody Up For Volleyball!
¶ Religion in New Jersey: Rev. Mark Giordani blesses the motorcycles (including his own Harley) after Mass; A megachurch in Montclair that seeks a move to an office campus 21 miles away runs into local opposition grounded partly in traffic concerns and partly in racism.
¶ Glitch or Dress-Rehearsal? The yuan, China's currency, floated for twenty minutes on Friday, 29 April. Also, if you can get your hands on it, The Economist's leader this week is about oil, and the importance to turning to alternative sources of energy right now. Interestingly, the piece sees bad times ahead for everybody in the energy game: not just consumers, but producers and refiners as well.
¶ The vintage ads, mostly from the Fifties, collected at Ephemera Now, reflect a society that was at the same time less sophisticated and more artificial than our own. It was forthright, and even somewhat ingenuous, about expressing its desires, but these desires were not quite genuine. They were confounded by the longing for an innocence that would guarantee conformity. "If I did not know what I know," you can almost overhear the bygone magazine readers whispering to themselves, "I would be just like everybody else, and that would be great." There seems also to be the notion that innocence breeds success. To look at these drawings is to begin to understand why the Fifties spawned so many remarkable zombie films.
Pop Quiz
1. Has a book, a film, or any work of art at all ever made you feel that experiencing it changed your life? Expatiate.
2. If you were obliged, for professional or security reasons, to choose a new name, what would it be? First names only, please.
3. (With thanks to JR at L'homme qui marche): Which three (3) of your favorite authors would you follow if they started keeping Web logs?
Comments
Wow, a lot of the Ephemera Now illustrations could pass for Bruce McCall parodies.
Posted by: Max N![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.portifex.com/DailyBlague/nav-commenters.gif)
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May 2, 2005 12:19 PM
The Economist piece is very interesting. If I had said to anyone a couple of years ago that we would be paying over $50 per barrel and the economy would not tank, you'd have said I was crazy. But here we are. And in Europe, it can easily cost, as I know too well, $100 to almost fill a tank. There are alot of contradictory movements in the market right now and it will be interesting to see what wiggle room the Fed makes for itself tomorrow when it issues its comments.
Posted by: PPOQ | May 2, 2005 12:49 PM
1. When I was 17 I saw the movie version of Peter Shaffer, which starred Richard Burton. Yes, Burton does go over the top at times, but that movie, for me, was so powerful, had so many fascinating ideas, that a little over-acting did not distract me. After that I bought the play and read it over and over again. So many ideas in that play held my interest: faith, psychology and its moral limitations, living one's life to the fullest; I could go on and on. I still have yet to see the play.
2. I'm rather partial to 'Roxanne'.
3. Oh, definitely Jonathan Franzen's blog. Can you imagine the posts? Other than that.... hmmm.... Barbara Hodgson, because she is an artist as well as a writer, so I would hope she would post images, and for the third choice.... Art Speigelman, because he is so delightfully neurotic.
Posted by: patricia | May 2, 2005 03:27 PM
Nuts. In my haste, I forgot to mention the name of the movie! 'Equus'.
Posted by: patricia | May 2, 2005 03:30 PM
Max: Of course you're quite right about McCall's inspiration, but notice how McCall has travestied the originals, mostly with out-of-scale (as in "too small") human figures, all of whom look at least a little bit crazy.
Patricia: Don't worry about movie titles; that's why there's IMDb! But thanks for filling in. My own choices are: Jane Smiley, Ian McEwan, and David Foster Wallace, but I would forsake one of these for a Franzblog illustrated by you!
Posted by: R J Keefe![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.portifex.com/DailyBlague/nav-commenters.gif)
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May 2, 2005 03:37 PM
1) Casablanca. The "Fidelio" of movies. All about sacrifice, the triumph of good over evil. It is still comforting to me, especially with the evil and mendacious government we now have.
2) Schindler's List. No one can be the same after that movie. Its view into the heart of darkness is unbelieveable.
3) Animal House. Sorry, RJ, but you gotta laugh.
Name: Victorino, for my beloved Grandfather.
Posted by: PPOQ | May 2, 2005 04:48 PM
(1) I don't know if this qualifies as a work of art--although it does to me--but seeing the Acropolis (or is it Acropylis?) was something of a religious experience, a reminder of how insignificant our western culture is in the grand scheme of things.
(2) Elizabeth.
(3) Assuming I have to choose living authors, they would be Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro and Umberto Eco (if he blogged in English); but if I could choose from all of my favorite authors, my three top choices would be Proust, Anthony Powell and Virginia Woolf.
Posted by: jkm | May 3, 2005 09:02 PM