penguin hoomer and the north pole faux pas

you've probably wondered when i'll revert to penguin stuff. here's some my kind of penguin cuteness that i happened on courtesy of b3ta.com, an english based website that operates as an outlet for a bunch of young computer players with creative skills and irreverence. one of those folks calls her[?]self mata and has a website with definitely interesting contents including cartoons, animations and corsets: http://www.matazone.co.uk/theotherside.html. the cartoon above comes from her. she also has a penguin flash animation that's good notwithstanding its inclusion of polar bears and the north pole and a non-upbeat ending:

http://www.matazone.co.uk/animpages/krark-the-penguin-animation.html. i'm trying to figure how to include it here as we speak.

i hope that mata will not be offended by reference to her arctic penguin faux pas. she dealt with it in a neat way in the animation. putting penguins in the arctic is an off repeated mistake and at least she didn't stick in any polar bears. i recently spotted a hundred year old version from france and i've included it above. i found it in an article talking about the equally old dispute over whether either frederick cook or robert peary was the first person to travel to the north pole: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Cook-vs-Peary.html. the article is a good historical tale. and there is no reason to point out that the claim ignored native 'discovery' of the area long before. natives apparently had had no reason to go to this inhospitable spot whose importance was mostly theoretical until being called into service by 'explorers'.

love’s labo[u]r lost - meatloaf for the mind
i saw meatloaf on a closing season monk show a couple of weeks ago. the memory coils sprung back to some 15 years ago when i finally found my way to meatloaf courtesy of the jukebox at a no longer existing bar that treated me well. the loaf was, of course, the musical backstop of the rocky horror pic, the cult movie classic with an oklahoma branch cult assembling for years at the may theatre. the may was the saturday spot of my youth for movies and serials but i didn’t make it there in adult life probably because i didn’t have my big ol bicycle anymore.
meatloaf sang love stories that didn’t require you to be in love at the time. paradise by the dashboard light was one of the best. it was a rock operaesque retelling of love’s first gropes on the dimly lit streets and in the drivein movies. this was the rule in the late 50's of my growing up when all groping was forbidden and secret and the baseball - first base, etc, imagery was seriously understood. the object of my first love and hoped for lust was nancy hill and my attempts were made in just those venues. i came back to visit her from college to see her and be pictured with her and an unknown baby, not realizing that it was already over. the newspaper image is the announcement of her marriage - not to me. [i apologize to you and her, wherever she is, for the quality of the pictures.] meatloaf replayed the agony and ecstasy of the times wonderfully for me. so i take you there courtesy of meatloaf and youtube.

its not too far of a stretch to another meatloaf’s love insight songs which was also on my favorite list - 2 out of 3 ain’t bad. i think i should present it without comment:

finally a little perking up with jack black and meatloaf. i’ve noticed jack black popping up all over with old hair, rock and roll love and happy irreverence. wikipedia gives a good little history talking about his group tenacious d: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenacious_D. he seems a natural ally of, or inheritor from, meatloaf and in my last youtube offering there’s a direct connection. the video is called kickapoo in honor of a town in missouri and has meatloaf playing the straight father of a young rocker jack. the story-telling is as efficient and musical as a meatloaf song. and it will wake you back up after my words.

and now for something mostly different

tired of my too cute penguins, try a website that’s dedicated to disapproving rabbits:

http://www.disapprovingrabbits.com/.

the rabbits there are obviously committed to disturbing their too cute anthropomorphized image. the titles are a little lame and unnecessary - but there’s still giggles there for us undeserving humans in pictures like the one above.
flowers are a less complicated pleasure. hibiscus are one of my favorites. my morning wakeup puzzle today from jigzone, http://www.jigzone.com/, was a hibiscus and here it is for you to play with. [it will route you to jigzone to work, so please come back if you work on it before you read on.]



p.s. the pythons of completely different are out and about again. They’re coming back for a special week on ifc and the times has a good article with current and past news about them:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/arts/television/04mcgr.html

here's a quote that taps into my personal history memory including beyond the fringe. i would apply the terms happily to my oklahoma growing up:

With the exception of Mr. Gilliam, the sole American, the Pythons all grew up in middle-class families in provincial towns and were very much a product of postwar British culture: cautious, decorous, respectable, nice. They wanted to blow it up.
“That culture wasn’t hard enough to be rigid,” [John] Cleese recalled .... “It was more stuffy — it was like wrestling with a sponge. I
remember going to see ‘Beyond the Fringe’ in 1962 and hearing screams of laughter. They were screams of liberation.”

turn on the tv quick - rabbit proof fence
i spent the late morning watching one of my absolute favorite movies, rabbit-proof fence. i wrote quickly without much decoration to try to catch anyone who might want to see it at 330. now i'm to the after the fact edited edition to which i am adding a worthy youtube video
the movie rabbit-proof fence is a 2002 retelling of a true story of of the 1931 escape of three aboriginal girls from a boarding school and their 1000 mile trek courtesy of the rabbit-proof fence. american indians will make the obvious connection to their boarding schools. nonindians need not fear the underlying truths - the movie is beautiful and exciting and sad and wonderful.
here's some links and the promised video.

ifc on the movie:

http://www.ifc.com/movies/262133/Rabbit-Proof-Fence
imdb on the movie:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0252444/
a good trailer:
http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi144572697/
the schedule for future showings on ifc: monday, oct. 19 at 11:00 am edt; monday, oct. 19 at 4:05 pm edt; wednesday, oct. 28 at 7:35 am edt; wednesday, oct. 28 at 2:35 pm edt.

and last but not ... a beautiful 'tribute video which mixes still from the movie and peter gabriel soundtrack material.

john canny, words can not tell how i miss you

it was a week that began badly and hit bottom when i received a call telling me that my closest, but far away, friend, john canny had died from brain cancer. we often spoke of the perpetual choice between cynicism and optimism in the face of an all too real world. i suspect he would now gently smile watching me struggle to celebrate him with a broken heart.

we met over 40 years ago when we each were law clerks to federal court of appeals judges, his in cheyenne and mine here. he and his wife and son lived in evergreen colorado in a special house just far enough into the mountains to allow peace to him and his and to me and mine every time i came to visit. john began his life of lawyering and following the democratic political road. i bounced around towards being what was called a 'street lawyer'. we usually met at his place and i can easily say that every visit was special. i brought my life to him and his awaited me there. i watched the house grow always better and more comfortable always with the poster of young justin swinging. the many friends and family i brought there were always made to feel welcome and left better for their time there.

anytime i was there we eagerly talked and shared discoveries - and even without him i happily wallowed in his always increasing library. one of those mutual discoveries was kenneth patchen whose poem you see above. we shared personal joys and tragedies of all of our lives in ways that i believe occurred no where else each for either of us. and we experienced the joys of colorado.

in the more recent years there were fewer trips but the internet and the phone provided some measure of repeating those moments and keeping alive the friendship. when last i visited it was only for a short time about a month after the onset of the cancer and his first operations. he had newly imposed restraints of mind and body but i went home believing that my friend was still there and would be until i returned. of course, i was wrong to my eternal regret.

i believe that john and i were initially brought together by a kinship of heart about right and wrong. we both grew up in days when economic and racial discrimination and prejudice were the rule and the rules were enforced - and enjoyed - by conservative white protestant men. but our college age included the beginning of protest against all this and the brief presidential life of john kennedy gave hope that we could live life differently than our past suggested. our friendship remained because we each played out our resultant lives acting on these instincts, tempered with a determination to allow ourselves the joys of reading, listening and thinking. the sad irony that john was felled by an attack on his brain can not dull my belief that he lived a good life following thru on what he believed and had a marriage and family that he could be proud of. i will miss him as a special friend and a very special person.

a p.s. sitting alone late monday night still wrestling with reality after writing. i happen on the documentary channel showing 'the last buffalo' a wonderfully silent 30 minute flick that takes me far away magically until its conclusion. and i am taken back to a special moment flying in from newark to denver 35 years ago and going with john and jeanny to see another movie. it was after a snow and downtown denver was quiet and snow covered. we went directly from my plane to a showing of a movie called 'el topo' by a mexican director jadorowsky which i havent seen since but go back to in memories ever after. the mutual enchantment we felt with it was only accented by seeing something more mundane but popular the next day.

nitebird art

saturday began for me with my usual visit to jen’s place. she offered on the rocks dedicated to her father and also mentioned that she has been ‘reallowed’ to offer her parody nightpenguins. apparently cafepress, through which she sells her penguintoons as posters, etc., had briefly concluded that she was actually selling edward hopper’s nighthawks. this sent me on a day reminding myself about hopper and the work and today you see the results on rosh hashannah which begins the jewish new year 5770.

i first discovered edward hopper during the early 1970's while living in new york and new jersey. i think i most hooked on to the sparse, big city and east cost reality including people who retained the precious anonymity i felt when i was there. neither i, nor they, needed to tell the story - or be judged for it - unless we felt like it. later i learned more officially about about the artist.
the chicago art institute, which houses nighthawks, describes hopper somewhat succinctly:

‘although trained as an illustrator, Edward Hopper spent five years studying painting under Robert Henri, a member of the Ashcan School of painters who focused on the gritty realities of the city. The Ashcan School influenced hopper’s style, though he tended to depict not the chaos of urban living but the sense of urban isolation.‘

and in an introduction to a hopper exhibit

'Edward Hopper (1882–1967), creator of art that novelist John Updike described as "calm, silent, stoic, luminous, and classic," is one of the most enduring and popular American painters of the 20th century. His paintings have been celebrated as a part of the very grain and texture of the American experience.’

nighthawks has been described as iconic and one of the most recognized american art works. it’s the cover art on my most recent american painting survey find. it also appears to be the most ‘covered’ image in art since the mona lisa. check out wikipedia and nighthawks revisiting and revisited.
one way or another nighthawks took over an even more special section in my when i found out something new in the immediate post 9/11 days. hopper painted nighthawks in 1942, the year of my birth and the year after the japanese pearl harbor bombing. apparently hopper began the painting immediately after the attack. it symbolized a generally dazed american public and perhaps the thought of an attack even on new york. i sent out an email to whomever which is now lost so today i’m happy to try the blog way of keeping my discovery around.

p.s. that's van gogh's night cafe trying to take over the art spaces at the top; sorry the real nighthawks is so small.

the law according to parkinson, rodriquez, moore and bwendo
yesterday a newspaper story about filmmaker robert rodriqeuz reminded me of my continuing love for something called ‘parkinson’s law’. rodriquez’s mother had taught her son to get into multiple projects by citing her rule ‘if you want something done, give it to a busy man’. momma rodriquez’s law was a presumably unintentional update of parkinson’s first announced in parkinson’s law, a 1955 tongue in cheek article written in the economist by one c. northcote parkinson.

'it is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and despatching a postcard to her niece at bognor regis. an hour will be spent in finding the postcard, another in hunting for spectacles, half-an-hour in a search for the address, an hour and a quarter in composition, and twenty minutes in deciding whether or not to take an umbrella when going to the pillar-box in the next street. the total effort which would occupy a busy man for three minutes all told may in this fashion leave another person prostrate after a day of doubt, anxiety and toil.’

in 1958 parkinson used the concept and name as the basis of a best-selling book which a wikipedia bio says ‘led him to be also considered as an important scholar within the field of public administration’.* the law itself maintained speed over the years and apparently developed a new following and even opposition in the computer/internet age.* a writer calling himself ‘lazy man’ applied parkinson to space/clutter and personal finance and has informed me the comparable term is ’lifestyle inflation’. are your resources swallowed up by parkinson's law?. he also came up with my lead picture.
a less sanguine author wrote wrote debunking parkinson's law which seems to stem from a belief that parkinson had actually written a law. parkinson himself came up with a couple of logically similar sayings: ‘the man who is denied the opportunity of making decisions of importance begins to regard as important the decisions he is allowed to make.’ and something called the law of triviality.
in 1960 i began securing a liberal arts education in the guise of a freshman year at the wharton school of finance and commerce. in the class room of one of my dearest professors, richard rowan, i was first exposed to parkinson’s law and i repeated it at various times for the next 40+ celebrating both it’s meaning and applicability and the fact that it had been delivered as a ‘law’ with classic british humor.
a few years ago i discovered that i had been regularly misquoting the original law during one of the more interesting interactions i ever had with an oklahoma judge. i was in the blaine county courthouse in watonga, oklahoma, during a no court time. I was visiting with judge mark moore and somehow we got around to talking about parkinson’s law. we ended up doing a kind of google-off looking for the original statement of the law and i found out that i had substituted the word ‘allotted’ for parkinson’s ‘available’. judge moore and i both agreed at the time that there was a corollary of the law - a shorter time available for a task often results in its completion more efficiently. judge moore then incorporated the latter version of the law into a an inspirational judicial directive to lawyers moving a bit slowly - and, for better or worse, let parkinson and me share credit for the concept.
but i meander. i must exit because it seems i have followed bwendo’s blog and other writing law - the work of writing expands so as to exceed the time available for its completion

* parkinson continued a successful career in the area until his death in 1993. a couple of side notes suggesting other aspects of his life: 1] the northcote parkinson fund, now called the train fund, sponsors a civil courage prize honoring very special people. a lyndon larouche backer claims larouche was the victim of a conspiracy involving parkinson, john train, and the fund and paints a politically bizarre picture of all three: john train and the bankers' secret government. 2] on the other hand a fan of his fiction tells us that parkinson wrote both naval historical fiction and his own take on p.g. wodehouse’s jeeves character: happy birthday, c. northcote parkinson