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December 2006 Archive 31 December - Encounter of the Uncanny Kind  I had another terrifying encounter with the rare elusive dangerous Gray Dire Cat in the Janus Museum Forest Preserve this afternoon. Curiously, he didn't attack - just sat and stared at me in a sad sort of way. Maybe he had fed recently, or maybe it's part of the uncanny phenomenon described below. What to make of it all I just don't know. link home 31 December - Escape and Evasion  Maybe it's one of those deals where the beasts are restless because of an impending earthquake or volcano, but I'm compiling terrifying evidence that something's up. Yesterday, Truman Rabbit (seen above cowering under the holly) played keepaway with his humans, Tico and Becky, out in Martinsburg, West Virginia - let's go to the video: Meanwhile, back in Washington Grove, Kitten Nutmeg made a break for it from Bittersweet Cottage and evaded capture for several minutes:  She was finally collared by Winthrop P. Very reminiscent of the incident when Museum Cat Maxine legged it and had to be apprehended by our maintenance man Gus. link home 30 December - Remoteness  Our intern Zoe tells me that the Museum's Fellows' Common Room is now on the wifi. I'm not entirely sure that I know what she means by that, but she says that I can now access files from the server, and also send and receive email from the comfort of the Common Room, which is much nicer than my squalid cubicle. So here's my first effort at posting remotely, just like the hipsters at Starbucks do. I feel very up-to-date, now. The picture is from a recent foggy morning in downtown DC - one of the lions at the Grant Memorial on the US Capitol grounds, which I snapped on another foggy day last January. link home 29 December - Ex Voto Pulpo  Ex Voto - Saved by an Octopus, anonymous artist Very pleased to announce a major museum acquisition, Ex Voto Pulpo, a contemporary anonymous painting on a steel sheet. For those not familiar with the term, an ex voto is a thanks offering to the Virgin or to a saint. Many, like our acquisition, commemorate a miraculous intervention. This particular ex voto is personally gratifying because it shows a cephalopod in a very sympathetic light - the octopus is saving the chap in the boat, you see, and not attacking him - its stern expression is a look of steely determination, rather than anger - very nice after our postings on the terrifying giant squid vs. cat postings. Here's the translation of the painting's inscription, thanks to Friend of the Museum Pedro Turina: My husband went fishing and his boat disappeared for two days in a thick mist that formed in the sea and on the third day the Virgin listened to my prayers and an enormous octopus brought the boat pushing it towards the beach with its tentacles, my husband was alive although in a faint, and we give thanks for this marvelous miracle.The painting was acquired through a generous grant made by the Friends of the Janus Museum. Thanks, Friends. link home More Terrifying Squid/Cat Carnage Reported 
Above, Cat Diggity is locked in a titanic duel to the death with a giant squid (Architeuthis dux) - photograph by cephalopodcast via Flickr. Very worrisome, coming so soon after our own report of a giant squid attack on Cats Leroy and Natasha. link home 29 December - Christmas Miracle Update, Book Sales Dept. See, when the Amazon.com sales rank of the Museum's book Animals Aloft began to skyrocket on Christmas Eve, I naturally assumed that word of mouth about the book's excellence had done a viral sort of thing, or that superb reviews had suddenly appeared in the New York Review of Books or the Times Literary Supplement. It took the eagle eyes of my colleague Martha Norbeck-Wallingford to notice the tiny detail that Amazon had lowered the book's price to $4.99. When, after Christmas, Amazon dropped the sale price, the sales rank once again went south. link home 24 December - Christmas Miracle, Bollywood Dept. Me and my museum colleague Martha Norbeck-Wallingford and our maintenance man Gus drove out this afternoon to Little India in nearby Langley Park, Maryland, looking for Bollywood DVDs - and what a haul we brought home! I finally found another copy of the version of Sampoorna Ramayan performed by children. Regular readers, if any, may recall that I bought a defective copy in June '04, and I've been searching for a replacement ever since. I also bought a copy of Tarzan ki Beti - in this version, the Ape Man is a very nice-looking Ape Damsel - as the DVD blurb describes: A naturalist who visits the jungles on an expedition falls in love with the abominal jungle man Tarzen. She decides to marry him and stay back in the jungle. However circumstances forces her to leave behind one of her daughters and return back to civilization....A perfect film for Christmas Eve, I think, and a fine companion piece to the classic Tarzan mentioned here previously. We also bought a bag of samosas, and Gus bought a new hat:  ...Gus likes hats. All in all, a nice, though expensive day. link home 24 December - Christmas Miracle, Book Sales Dept.  Illustration from Round the Moon by Jules Verne, reproduced in Animals Aloft Not that I check it very often, but I did notice this morning that Animals Aloft's Amazon.com sales rank rocketed up to 5,119 - way up from its usual position way down in the 700,000 range. At this moment, it's down to 10,405 - still pretty good compared to usual humiliating rank. Could it be that the rumors I started about it being optioned for a major Pixar feature are finally bearing fruit? Or is it only an Amazon software glitch? Oh! I know! If everyone who reads this buys a copy or two, we can sit back tonight and watch the salesrank climb! What fun! Much more fun than carols and It's a Wonderful Life, which, as everyone knows, is Communist propaganda. link home 23 December - Cats and Contre-Jour  Very warm and sunny hereabouts, and although the woods of the Janus Museum Forest Preserve were pretty muddy after yesterday's rain, we joined Leroy, Natasha and Peake in a brisk catwalk. Above, Natasha thinks about jumping Leroy. It turns out that my new widescreen photographic apparatus can be used on non-cat subjects, after all:  Not too shabby, I think; nice use of contre-jour, though the small file posted here doesn't truly represent the heart-breakingly beautiful qualities of the original. It reminds me a bit of the small panorama photographs that Allan Janus made back when. link home 23 December - Giant Squid in the News  Architeuthis dux menaces Felis domesticus Frankly, I fail to understand why the story of a giant squid captured on tape off Japan is such a big deal - but thanks anyway to the 28 Friends of the Museum who emailed the story to me, anyway. After all, the Janus Museum Video Unit presented its own thrilling giant squid video (a cephalopodcast) back in November. And our squid didn't die in the making of the video, as the Japanese squid did. Curiously, though, our squid video enjoyed a bounce from all the publicity, and was viewed 758 times yesterday. I take such miserable crumbs that fall my way... This just in - the giant squid issues a statement. link home 22 December - The Lost Music of the Rocket Rangers  Just helping out our sister institution, the National Air and Space Museum - curator and rocketry historian Frank Winter found this extremely rare treasure, a 78 rpm recording of The Rocket Ranger March from the 1953 TV series Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers, at a local yard sale. The recording features both the version with lyrics sung by the Rocket Rangers Tabernacle Choir and also the instrumental version performed by I Solisti del Rocket Rangers, conducted by Herbert von Karajan. Frank lacks a turntable with 78 playback capabilities, and he requested that the Janus Museum, with its well-known technical expertise, might be able to help out his much more generously-endowed institution. So here are, I believe, the first internet performances of Das Lied von der Rocket Rangers and the Rocket Ranger Concerto Grosso (streaming Real Audio format). I hope, one day, for a recording of both pieces by Jordi Savall. That would really really swell. link home 22 December - The Impending Holiday  Cat Tucker waiting for Santa Claws, Christmas 2004 We've finally gotten the last shipment of our famous Janus Museum Fruitcakes out the door, and we're not going to worry about the relatively miniscule number of reports of fruitcake-related E. coli O157:H7 contamination until after New Year's. Meanwhile, here's my favorite Christmas Carol - Spike Milligan's I'm Walking Backwards for Christmas, performed by the composer (streaming Real Audio). link home 19 December - Enforced Festivities  The good cheer was mandatory at today's holiday party for the staff and fellows at the Janus Museum. Above, Friend of the Museum Brian Nicklas performs a thrilling tableau of Santa being strafed by a Curtiss P-40 Warhawk. Here's a widescreen video fly-through of the party: There's a brief stop for a fortifying snack when I get to the welsh rarebit tureen. Unfortunately, I wasn't around to document a brief unfortunate scene when Gus, our maintenance man, was apprehended while attempting to purloin the rum intended for the eggnog. link home 17 December - Continuing Widescreen Experimentation  I'm still getting familiar with the new widescreen photographic apparatus which premiered here this morning. Above, Leroy poses in the Forest Preserve. The wide format captures the essential catly theme of the image, while also including more detail of the landscape for a greatly enhanced virtual simulacrum of the original view. Which is good.  Meanwhile in the Circle, hideous carnage ensues as the rare elusive dangerous Gray Dire Cat leaps at poor Natasha...  The result is a terrifyingly fluffy death struggle.  Meanwhile, Kitten Nutmeg enviously watches the fun from the safety of Bittersweet Cottage. I assume that the new widescreen photographic apparatus can be used with other, non-cat subjects. Will have to give it a try, sometime. link home 17 December - Lighter Than Air, But Not Propane  Every blogger in the solar system is staying indoors this weekend, mining treasures from Google Patent Search. Please see my entry, above - a barbecue grill shaped like a blimp, the invention of one Brandon Cragg, who has also given us barbecue grills in the shape of a bottle cap, a soccer ball and a football, a race car, and thousands of other novelty barbecues - obviously he's a man of vision and tireless imagination. But for myself, I don't know that I'd really want the airship bbq. Every time I grilled a mess of sausages or smoked a pork butt, the flames and smoke would tend to remind me of the Hindenburg, Roma, ZR-2, R.101, and Dixmude disasters. For some of us, it's still just too soon. link home 17 December - Catwalks now Widescreen  Catwalks - both still and video catwalks - can now be documented in this thrilling expansive widescreen format. Above - Natasha and Leroy in the historic Circle, Washington Grove. Below - our first widescreen video Catwalk featurette: Maybe it's me, but I think that the scampering is even more exciting on a widescreen. link home 15 December - Amar Akbar Anthony  With the holidays almost upon us, we're watching a lot of our old favorite movies - last night we watched the fabulous Amar Akbar Anthony (1977), Amitabh Bachchan's big breakout hit - this is one of our favorite films of all time, and not only because of the fascinatingly regrettable '70s Bollywood costuming. Above and below, Amitabh as Anthony emerges from his egg during the truly bizarre "Easter Gymkhana" scene:  OMG - here's the Easter Gymkhana scene on Youtube! Here is the synopsis from the DVD case, which is kind of wonderful in its own right (But I've added a few essential plot points): Kishanlal (Pran), the father of three sons and leading a happy family life, is a driver for Robert (Jeevan). Suddenly one day Robert kills a person in car accident. He asks Kishanlal to take the blame and assure him that he would take care of his family and support them financially. Kishanlal agrees and goes to jail, but Robert forget his promise. Eventually, Kishanlal's family splits, and the three sons are sepearted from each other and their mother [Mother gets TB, then gets hit on head and is blind - T.S.-L.].  In disguise, the boys sing the theme song Anahoni ko Honi during the thrilling climax. From the top, Amitabh Bachchan as Anthony, Vinod Khanna as Amar, and Rishi Kapoor (in fez) as Akbar. Oh well - one more shot, since it is such a great scene:  Oh! Here's a video of the thrilling climax, courtesy again of Youtube.  Also appearing is another of our favorite actors, the Great Pran, as Kishenlal, seen above in a shocking bad hat. And Jeevan, as the sinister and badly dressed gangster Robert, was in another of our favorites, The Mahabharat. link home 15 December - Out of Wisconsin  I scored a nice present from my brother, Granville Szégy-Légy - a really big hunk of Pleasant Ridge Reserve cheese from the Uplands Cheese Company, of Dodgeville, Wisconsin. It's a Gruyère type, made from unpasturized milk from Uplands own contented cows. It's really excellent - rich, buttery and nutty tasting. So far, we're just eating big slices of the stuff, but I'm thinking that it could make a superior macaroni and cheese. link home 11 December - The Historic Cottage en Plein Air  Once again, the mellow ruins of the Janus Museum's Historic Cottage inspire great art. Yesterday's fine morning light revealed landscape artist Edward Cooper hard at work, not far from the vantage point used by Glenn Perry last summer for his excellent view. Here is the artist at work:  I suspect that the Historic Cottage may be one of the most painted buildings in the entire upper eastern central region of Montgomery County, Maryland. The Cottage itself could use a coat of paint, actually. link home 10 December - A Dire Walk in the Woods The final batch of famous Janus Museum fruitcakes came out of the oven earlier this morning, so I went for a stroll in the Forest Preserve while they cooled - they have to be cool before they can be steeped in their slivovitz bath, you see. I was standing on the Old Footbridge, minding my own business, when I looked down:  Aiee! It's the rare elusive dangerous Gray Dire Cat, preparing to strike - I backed off, more by instinct than conscious thought, and narrowly missed having my foot taken off. I took off down the path, and happened to look back:  Lordy, my life passed before my eyes, except that it turned out to be scenes from Citizen Kane. I suggest that you buy a signed copy of Animals Aloft right away, while you can, before the brute does for me at last. link home 9 December - Again with the Cobra Dancing  I like to tell myself that it's the informed commentary, or possibly the glimpses of the Janus Museum's superb artwork and artifacts that bring people to these pages, but in reality, most visitors come here looking for this picture of Debra Paget's incredible cobra dance from Fritz Lang's 1959 The Indian Tomb (Das Indische Grabmal). In fact, my advice to bloggers is to post a screencap of the cobra dance from time to time - then sit back and watch your traffic skyrocket. So as a public service to Pagetophiles everywhere, here is the complete sequence, courtesy of one Turbanhead and Youtube. Children, please look away. link home 9 December - Perfect Gift Update  The perfect gift for all of your holiday giving needs has become more perfect and even more unique. Through the kind cooperation of Amazon, one may now purchase signed copies of Animals Aloft, that superb co-production of the Janus Museum and the National Air and Space Museum. Just click this link for a pain-free shopping experience. Want a personalized signature? I'm easy - just drop me a note. In other news, Kyle Lerfald of the Gunroom suggests that our terrifying Squid vs. Cat video could be termed a cephalopodcast. I wish I'd said that. link home 8 December - Demonic = Dire?  Probably not appearing in a multiplex near you this holiday season is Demonic Cat, a Ghanaian feature film on the African cousin of our own rare elusive dangerous Gray Dire Cat - would love to score a DVD of it, though. From a fascinating post on Dazed Digital on hand-painted movie posters, via Neatorama. link home 3 December - Welcome, Shipmates  Saturday Night at Sea by George Cruikshank (1792-1878) Welcome to visitors, especially my old friends, from the Gunroom, a lively discussion list devoted to the works of Patrick O'Brian. Lissuns* may be interested in this heretofore unpublished yarn of Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, and also this accidental illustration of a scene from Post Captain. Have a tot of rum on me, and think about buying a book for old time's sake. *Unique to the Gunroom, subscribers are called lissuns, in the same way that boatswains are called bosuns. link home 2 December - Pickelhaubes Around the Globe  Friend of the Museum Pedro Turina saw the posting on the Museum's acquisition of an historic pickelhaube - the old German spiked helmet - and he sent us these snaps of Chilean army cadets of the Escuela Militar in a parade rehearsal in Santiago last September:  Pedro told me that the Prussians organized the Chilean army during the 19th century, which accounts for their taste in military haberdashery. Always excepting the Swiss Guard of the Vatican, the Chileans must be the most nostalgic armed force in the world. Oh! Here are some more photographs of Escuela Militar pickelhaubes and kugelhelms.  link home |
