Very nice short film by Patrick Boivin with the AT-AT as household pet. Well done.
Happy Bloomsday
In addition to the Joyce and Becket video in the previous post, here’s a couple more things in celebration of Bloomsday.
I once heard that James Joyce wrote to his wife Nora that he could pick out her farts in a room full of farting women. Today I finally got to read the entire thing, as well as others of his dirty letters. Filthy, filthy stuff.
Also, check out Eve Arnold’s photo of Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses.
Pitch ‘n’ Putt with Joyce ‘n’ Beckett
Hilarious.
Touchdown Jesus Destroyed by Lightning
A giant statue of Jesus in Monroe, Ohio, nicknamed the Touchdown Jesus, was struck by lightning Monday night and burned to the ground. The 62 foot statue was on the grounds of the Solid Rock Church near Cincinnati.
With news video.
I will be stopping Calvin and Hobbes
Letters of Note has a copy of the letter Bill Watterson sent to newspaper editors in 1995 announcing that he was no longer going to be drawing the cherished Calvin and Hobbes comic strip.
This was not a recent or an easy decision, and I leave with some sadness. My interests have shifted however, and I believe I’ve done what I can do within the constraints of daily deadlines and small panels. I am eager to work at a more thoughtful pace, with fewer artistic compromises.
That last strip still gets me.
Eri Yoshida secures a place among baseball’s greats
Eri Yoshida is still waiting to start her second game in the US, but has already earned her place in baseball’s Hall of Fame.
It’s unlikely she’ll consider retiring any time soon, but the 18-year-old Japanese pitcher has already secured a place in the Cooperstown, N.Y., museum that documents baseball’s history. The bat and specially cut-down jersey that 5’1″ Ms. Yoshida used when she became the first woman to play professional baseball in two countries — in her May 29 debut for the Golden Baseball League’s Chico Outlaws — will go on display in the museum.
Yoshida, a knuckleballer dubbed the “Knuckle Princess,” is the first woman to appear in an American professional baseball game since Ila Borders in 2000.
Mark Twain’s Autobiography
For the last decade of his life, Mark Twain was at work on his personal memoirs, but he left handwritten notes expressing his wish that they not be published until a century after his death. There is some debate as to why the author wanted to let so much time pass.
“He had doubts about God, and in the autobiography, he questions the imperial mission of the US in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. He’s also critical of [Theodore] Roosevelt, and takes the view that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel. Twain also disliked sending Christian missionaries to Africa. He said they had enough business to be getting on with at home: with lynching going on in the South, he thought they should try to convert the heathens down there.”
In other sections of the autobiography, Twain makes cruel observations about his supposed friends, acquaintances and one of his landladies.
Twain died in 1910, so whatever the reason Twain had for the delay, his complete autobiography is finally going to be published. The University of California, Berkeley, will publish the work in three volumes, the first of which will be released in November.