Let’s Explore Ohio
The Standard Oil Company of Ohio published an activity book highlighting the “Odd and Unusual” of Ohio. I’d like to know what year it was produced. I’m old enough to remember the old Sohio stations, but just barely.
I love the pencil drawings. And I love seeing the Blue Hole mentioned.
George Washington owes library $4,577 and two books
On October 5, 1789, George Washington borrowed two volumes from the New York library and never returned them.
The library first learned of the missing books when it discovered a yellowed ledger in its basement.
It listed all the people who had checked out books from the city’s oldest library between July 1789 and April 1792.
Next to the works “Law of Nations” and the 12th volume of “Common Debates” was the name of the person who checked them out: “President.”
On the extinction of paper children’s books
While I would agree that Alice for the iPad looks great, it’s hard to imagine paper books of any kind going the way of the dodo. Jason Kottke doesn’t think so either, and especially not those of the children’s variety.
However, I’d like to assure the childless Rose that if paper books ever go extinct (they won’t), paper children’s books will be the last to go, particularly among the pre-K crowd. E-books are “broken” in several ways that are important to kids, not the least of which is that paper books are super useful as floors in really tall block buildings.
Star Wars Uncut
The editors at the Star Wars Uncut project have divided the first Star Wars movie into 15 second clips, which fans have recreated in a dizzying variety of styles and quality. Stitched together, the final product is a remake of the entire film, made from 473 independently produced pieces.
What follows is a 5 minute preview. The full film will be premiered at the CPH PIX film festival in Denmark.
Time-lapse Music Video
Really beautiful. I love the part where the people suddenly spill into the street and onto the opposite side, before the cars surge through the intersection.
Overpriced HDMI Cables
Tempted to buy the $100 Monster cables to get the best picture from your HD TV? Maybe you should think again:
To understand why you shouldn’t pay extra, you need to understand the difference between analog and digital. With analog cables, the signal degrades, with digital cables such as HDMI, it either works or it doesn’t.
The Thorn in the Side
Trailer for Michel Gondry’s new film, which stars his family.
How to liven up a bored Bulldog
Short answer: tickle his scrotum. With video.
Tron: Legacy Trailer
New trailer for the Tron sequel.
Empty Porn Sets
At the end of the day, when the actors have gone home and she has finished cleaning up after the action, Jo Broughton photographs porn sets.
“As a cleaner I saw the sets in the cold light of day and picking up and cleaning the mess, was a bit like dealing with a crime scene. Dealing with the inevitable bodily fluids made me feel my own humanity and then the vunerability of the models who had performed for the camera that day. In the end, though, I was learning my craft, trying to understand light and how to photograph really well.”
Salinger reviews Raiders of the Lost Ark
Letters of Note has a letter written by J. D. Salinger to a friend in 1981 in which he mentions a certain action-adventure movie out at the time. He doesn’t sound like a fan.
I got hooked into seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark, which might be excused for its unwitty, unfunny awful socko-ness if it had been put together by Harvard Lampoon seniors.
Hummer brand to be wound down after sale fails
GM finally shuts it down:
Hummers were originally built by AM General. GM bought the brand from AM in 1999. They became a status symbol of the road when Schwarzenegger became the first owner of one in 1992 after persuading manufacturers to make a civilian version. Six years later, the actor-turned-governor ditched his $950,000 (£615,000) fleet of Hummers because they hardly conformed to his new image as eco-warrior.
Hummers emit three times more carbon dioxide than a normal car and eke out just 14 miles to the gallon in city driving.
Other Hummer owners have included David Beckham and Paris Hilton, but Schwarzenegger in particular could hardly be seen to own one after the state of California decided to sue Toyota, Nissan, Ford, Honda, Chrysler and GM over emissions.
Nintendo system and five games sell for $13,105
An auction for an original NES bundled with 5 games recently brought in $13, 105 on ebay. It was Family & Fitness Stadium Events, in the original packaging, that drove the price up. Soon after the initial launch the game would be re-branded as World Class Track Meet, but the original incarnation saw only limited release and production in the holiday season of 1987. It is considered one of the rarest licensed NES games you can buy.
Roger Ebert’s Last Words, con’t.
Ebert responds to Chris Jones’ article in Esquire.
Well, we’re all dying in increments. I don’t mind people knowing what I look like, but I don’t want them thinking I’m dying. To be fair, Chris Jones never said I was. If he took a certain elegiac tone, you know what? I might have, too. And if he structured his elements into a story arc, that’s just good writing. He wasn’t precisely an eyewitness the second evening after Chaz had gone off to bed and I was streaming Radio Caroline and writing late into the night. But that’s what I did. It may be, the more interviews you’ve done, the more you appreciate a good one. I knew exactly what he started with, and I could see where he ended, and he can be proud of the piece.
I mentioned that it was sort of a relief to have that full-page photo of my face. Yes, I winced. What I hated most was that my hair was so neatly combed. Running it that big was good journalism. It made you want to read the article.
I studiously avoid looking at myself in a mirror. It would not be productive. If we think we have physical imperfections, obsessing about them is only destructive. Low self-esteem involves imagining the worst that other people can think about you.
Roger Ebert: The Essential Man
Esquire has a great piece on Roger Ebert, the lion in winter.
Ebert is dying in increments, and he is aware of it.
“I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear,” he writes in a journal entry titled ‘Go Gently into That Good Night.’ “I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.”
There has been no death-row conversion. He has not found God. He has been beaten in some ways. But his other senses have picked up since he lost his sense of taste. He has tuned better into life. Some things aren’t as important as they once were; some things are more important than ever. He has built for himself a new kind of universe. Roger Ebert is no mystic, but he knows things we don’t know.
“I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”
I met a character from Dickens
Roger Ebert laments the tearing down of 22 Jermyn Street in London, the hotel he frequented for some 25 years. It’s chock-full of wonderful, vivid descriptions of everything from the neighboring shops to his first visit to the hotel.
I had just settled in my easy chair when a key turned in the lock and a nattily-dressed man in his 60s let himself in. He held a bottle of Teachers’ scotch under his arm. He walked to the sideboard, took a glass, poured a shot, and while filling it with soda from the siphon, asked me, “Fancy a spot?”
“I’m afraid I don’t drink,” I said.
“Oh, my.”
This man sat on my sofa, lit a cigarette, and said, “I’m Henry.”
“Am I…in your room?”
“Oh, no, no, old boy! I’m only the owner. I dropped in to say hello.”
It all sounds beautiful, and irreplaceable, which makes it sadder still that it’s being destroyed and replaced with “some obscene architectural extrusion,” as Ebert calls it.