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January 2008 Archive 29 January - In the Woods  A catwalk moment from last week - Natasha looks severe; Nutmeg looks on in adoration - or maybe she's just thinking about dinner. link home 27 January - Whiskey Rebellion Update  Barry Bostwick as George Washington in George Washington II: The Forging of a Nation (1986) I dug up this superb photograph of Barry Bostwick - I took it during a break in the filming of the Washington movie mentioned below. I also have, somewhere, a shot of us together - he was very affable to us extras, I recall - a nice guy.  Friend of the Museum Bob Lyon, he of the charmingly pathetic death scene, pointed out this splendid performance by one of our pals, John Steinle, in the twin roles of Whiskey Rebel and as the sergeant of the platoon that the rebels attack - that's him on the left of the second photo. John attacks himself, and then drives himself off in a swirl of gunsmoke - very dramatic. It is, in effect, a tiny sub-plot - the tragic story of identical brothers, possibly stolen from gipsies, divided by politics. link home 27 January - Portrait of a Gentleman in Gray; a Generous Contribution  Recently acquired by the Museum's Director of Planned Giving Martha Norbeck-Wallingford for her private collection is this superb portrait in oil of Cat Booper, a frequent visitor to the Historic Cottage. It was executed by the noted artist and illustrator Katherine Janus Kahn. Kathy - painter, sculptor, print-maker - is a splendid artist and is a long-time Friend of the Museum; we're pleased and honored that she accepted the commission. I wonder if she'd be willing to paint portraits of all of the Circle Cats? How fine they'd look, hanging in the Fellows' Common Room. I had the honor of providing the photographic portrait on which the oil is based:  Booper has a cameo in this video of Gus test firing the Museum's musket: And he has a larger, meatier role in the taut, edgy Porch Drama. A very fine fellow, Booper. I'd also like to thank our Twin Cities Friend of the Museum for her very generous additional contribution to the Museum's Rare Book Room Bookcase, Data Recovery & Furnace Fund - how very, very kind! link home 26 January - My Brilliant Career - The Sequel  Whiskey Rebels, George Washington II: The Forging of a Nation (1986) I've mentioned my brief movie career a couple of times - my fleeting appearances in a movie made for the Park Service's visitor center in Yorktown, and in a George Washington miniseries starring Barry Bostwick. I recently found my old videotape of the Washington flick, George Washington II: The Forging of a Nation (1986). The years have not been kind to this film, though any attempt to present the most Olympian of our Founding Fathers as a real human type person instead of a waxwork ought to get an A for effort, and Barry Bostwick is as engaging as the wooden script allows. I've digitized the bits that I appear in - it's the segment dealing with the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. My reenacment group, the 1st Maryland Regiment had been hired, along with a slew of other groups, to be extras in the whiskey scenes, which were shot in a park west of Philadelphia. For the first couple of days of shooting, we were Whiskey Rebels and were paid $100. per day; then we were soldiers in the Whiskey Army raised to put down the rebels, and were paid $75 - dunno why the pay differential. Also appearing with me and Barry Bostwick were Friends of the Museum Bob Lyon and Keith West (both seen here more recently). Our Whiskey Rebel scenes were shot in cold, rainy weather. Making a movie requires a lot of just standing around - we stood around in the mud, and my cheap Chinese-made 18th century shoes let a lot of it in. The first scene we shot involved a confrontation with a revenue agent. See, we are hard-working frontier farmers, and the only way we can send our grain to market profitably is to distill it into whiskey. The gummint wants to tax our whiskey - we don't want to pay no damn taxes. So that's our motivation for the scene. The revenuer shows up on horseback - there is a spirited discussion - the revenuer is pulled off his horse - something nasty with a red-hot poker occurs. I make a promising first appearance dashing from the right of the screen to the left of the screen: 25 January - A Lonely Guy's Ex Voto  Here's an ex voto for troubled loners and dateless wonders everywhere: A crocodile on the river ran away to the Mendoza sisters, they where taking a bath on the river, and I thanks to San Isidro becausr he gave me the portunity of seen when the three graces came out of the river runing all naked and this is is a warm memory that will accompany me in my solitary nights and in my long road in life...Down, boy (hubba hubba...). Currently available through the 31st on eBay. link home 25 January - Heading West  Our colleagues over at the National Air and Space Museum are saying goodbye today to Dan Hagedorn, their longtime head of reference services in the Museum's archives - he's moving west to take over as chief curator at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. Dan is a walking encyclopedia on aviation history - a noted author himself, he was a tremendous help to me when I was working on the book. He is also one of the nicest guys around. Here's a little video I made of Dan supervising the delivery and set-up of a charming replica Santos-Dumont Demoiselle for an exhibit he curated on that great Brazilian pioneer of flight: Memo to Dan's new staff in Seattle - he really really likes donuts, especially donuts with pink frosting. Good luck, Dan. UPDATE - I'm told that there is absolutely nothing to the rumors flying about that NASM's reference desk will be converted into another museum shop, or possibly a Starbucks, when Dan leaves - very good news. link home 21 January - Bloody Battle at Bedtime  There I was, sleeping soundly last night, Cat Maxine sleeping soundly on top of me. Max, feeling lonely, decides to join us. He greets Maxine with a friendly lick. Maxine wakes up and she is all like, "WTF? I'm sleeping here" - she screeches and gives him a vicious swipe across the chops. Max, who for god's sake was just being friendly and maybe a little amorous, like - Max is outraged and responds with claw and fang and is damned noisy about it. Remember, all this is going on on top of my supine form. I wake up to very noisy hand-to-hand combat, like a reenactment of Rorke's Drift, with myself as the battleground. This is not a nice way to wake up. Somehow, I brush off the combatants, who continue the discussion elsewhere. As I try to get back to god-damn sleep, Flaxman's illustration of the battle for the body of Patroclus from the Iliad (above) comes to mind, with myself as Patroclus, though not as buff. Also the thought, "Where can I buy a set of Kevlar jammies?" link home 21 January - The Thompson Interview  There's a fine interview with Richard Thompson, the superb cartoonist and illustrator who also happens to be a Friend of the Museum, over at the Comics Reporter. Richard draws the syndicated daily strip Cul de Sac and the weekly Richard's Poor Almanac for the Washington Post - also available in book form. His work appears regularly in Smithsonian magazine, the New Yorker, and Atlantic. He is also a very nice guy. Here, from the interview, is the moving story of how Richard's work got into the Metropolitan Museum of Art: The most obscure [Almanac entry] I ever did was probably a guide to pronouncing the name of the painter Ingres, which I always have trouble with (it's "Annggh" I think). I drew it when the National Gallery had a big show of his work and it had six panels showing various tourists, each in front of various portraits by Ingres, mispronouncing his name, Injures, Angers, Egress, etc, and each portrait reacting with disgust. In the final panel the tourist says "Anal!" and the portrait bellows "Imbecile!" I turned it in and my editor said, "Is this guy real? Okay, good." And I figured the other three people in DC who knew who Ingres was but couldn't pronounce it would laugh at this cartoon 'cause, boy, they've been waiting for somebody to address this issue. Then about a month later I got a call from a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the Ingres show was to travel next, saying how they'd been passing the cartoon around and it was a hoot, and could they put it on a t-shirt to sell in the Ingres-theme shop? I said sure, of course, though it was not much money but you know, the glamor was overwhelming. And they did, they sold t-shirts in the shop with a cartoon on it calling Ingres Egress and Anal and stuff, and there was a column in the Wall Street Journal about it, how the Met was lowering itself by vending such trash, which was satisfying to me professionally of course. And the Met never sent back the original cartoon and I didn't complain because now I can say I'm in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, if only inadvertently.Oh, and don't forget Richard's blog. link home 19 January - The Miracle of the Big Rig, with Goat  Truly, the works of the saints are wonderful to behold. This ex voto, available for bidding on eBay through tomorrow, shows that, while God may concern Himself with falling sparrows, if you need a really big bad truck, you have to talk to Saint Clare. Here's the translation of the inscription: I thank Santa Clara for helping me find a pal with a truck beautiful and large enough to accommodate my sister, my wife, my eight kids and even my goat in the parade of my town, Villa Escalante.Sure enough, there's the goat, looking pleased. I don't see any mention of trucks on this profile of St. Clare, but I note that she's the patron of television writers, among other trades - the striking writers ought to ask for her intercession, if she's not preoccupied with badass truck requests. link home 19 January - The Dean of Monkey Painters  Following on the monkey painting portfolio I posted last week, Friend of the Museum Keith West has alerted me to the sublime work of Lawson Wood (1878-1957), who must be considered the dean of monkey painters. His story, and more pictures, are here on the excellent ASIFA - Hollywood Animation Archive site. Here's another page of pictures, and more information on Wood. Sorry to announce that once again we've received the dread notice from our hosting service that the Janus Museum site, including Panabasis, may go off the air 'til the end of the month due to having exceeded our measly bandwidth allowance. It is too sad. link home 17 January - Winter Storm Event  If you were considering a visit to the the Janus Museum this afternoon, stop considering. We're closed 'cos of the season's first winter storm event, as the television weatherpersons now call them, of the year. The Museum's feckless maintenance man was nowhere to be found, of course, so it fell to me, a museum professional of over twenty years seniority, and with a gamy foot, to do the damn shoveling. Winter Wonderland, my foot - my gamy foot. I'll have my revenge. At least Natasha, above, enjoys the snow. We think that she may be a Norwegian forest cat. link home 13 January - Another Speculative Movie Llama  Yesterday, while posting the rare cinematic sighting of a llama in the otherwise undistinguished miniseries Byron, I mused that more movies could be improved by added llama content. Jai Ganesh Deva is a splendid movie, but a llama peeking over Mount Kailash wouldn't hurt, would it? link home 13 January - The Bonny, Bonny Banks of Lake Baikal  Yet another odd ex voto currently offered on eBay. The inscription betrays a certain cultural uncertainty. Here's the seller's translation: I dedicate this retablo to San Pancracio because thanks to his help I could find a costume that I think is from Russia in which I won the first price at the festivities honoring the patroness of Queretaro.I hope that St. Andrew, patron saint of both Scotland and Russia, will have a quiet word with San Pancracio, AKA St. Pancras. By the way, this is the second ex voto I've posted that's dedicated to Pancras and mentions the Mexican state of Querétaro. link home 13 January - In a Darkling Wood, with Cats  Cold, gray but clear; a good day for a moderately brisk catwalk in the Janus Museum Forest Preserve. Moderately brisk means, in the context of catwalking, that scampering, ambushing and wallowing are punctuated by periods of just sitting around and meditating. Above, Cat Leroy, in the glory of his winter fluff, meditates on a favorite fallen tree.  Natasha and Nutmeg are, briefly, also lost in thought. Myself, I was meditating on the roast in the oven. We roused ourselves - Leroy made a dashing run through the briars, Natasha ambushed Nutmeg, and so to home for a brisk nap. Catwalk reportage is made possible by a generous grant from the Society for the Encouragement of Brisk Catwalks. link home 12 January - A Collection of Monkey Paintings; Tragic Accident Update And now, for your viewing pleasure, a portfolio of superb monkey paintings. I started noticing these on eBay a couple of years ago - no idea what the background to their appearance was, but I was (briefly) fascinated by them, especially the crowned monkeys with pugs, and the crowned pugs with monkeys. They're still to be found on eBay, though I think that the golden age of monkey paintings has passed. Here's a very strange monkey-related song, Oh, My Pretty Monkey (streaming MP3), by Kelly Harrell. It's available as a download from Amazon. Tragic Accident Update It's been two very long months since my tragic accident. Yesterday was the day that my cast was to come off - was looking forward to it extremely - wanted to see my foot again, missed it a lot. The cast came off - x-rays were made - and the doctor said it wasn't quite healed, and I would need a cast for another three weeks. I took the news in a fairly stoic way, until the doctor reconsidered and said that, on balance, maybe I should have the cast for four more weeks. That's when the whining began. He re-reconsidered and said that three weeks would probably be all right. Two weeks, I countered. We settled, finally, on two weeks and four days. I'd like to thank everyone for the flowers, candy, fruit baskets and sausage samplers that you've sent - very kind of everybody. link home 12 January - Rare Byronic Llama Sighting  I truly did not expect another cinematic llama sighting while watching Byron (2003), a miniseries on the life of the famous Romantic poet of the same name. Byron, played by Jonny Lee Miller, is holed up in a Venetian palazzo - his pal Shelley (Oliver Dimsdale), another famous Romantic poet, shows up and Byron give him a tour of his digs. Byron's digs include a menagerie, and the menagerie includes a llama. My interest finally engaged, I watched the program to the end for further llama sightings - perhaps Byron would ride his llama into the sunset to a glorious death at Missolonghi. He doesn't, but one llama sighting in a movie about a famous Romantic poet is still pretty good. Mad, bad, dangerous to know - and now he's got a llama!  Other films would be vastly improved by adding a llama or two. Above, Wallace Beery and Tom Drake pilot a K Type blimp while a llama watches intently in This Man's Navy (1945). Other Cinematic Llama Sightings: The Golden Coach Berserk! link home 11 January - Warm Weather  The unseasonable warm weather a couple of days ago reminds me of the unseasonable warm weather we enjoyed this time last year, and also the year before. I guess it's not unreasonable to expect some unseasonable weather; whether or not I can call it "unseasonable" if it happens every year is something else to think about; possibly it's just the saison d'être. Above, visiting cats on the porch of the Historic Cottage - our old buddy Booper on the left, Nutmeg on the right, in the shade under the chair...  ... While Leroy enjoys a power nap on the other side of the porch. Later, a catwalk:  ... With a bit of tree climbing thrown in by Nutmeg and Natasha.  While catwalking, I found this curious votive chicken at the edge of the Forest Preserve. Curious. Now we're back to seasonable cold rain and grayness. Fun while it lasted, though. link home 6 January - The Holistic Sausage District of Rockville, Maryland  Is there a happier phrase in English than "Kielbasa Factory Grand Opening"? The only phrases that come close, in my opinion, are "Chinese Buffet" and maybe "ALL U CAN EAT". Come to think of it, though, I also love to whisper "spaghetti carbonara" to myself during times of stress - its mellifluous sound is oddly comforting. At any rate, I was in a festive mood when I visited the Kielbasa Factory in nearby Rockville, Maryland this afternoon. Even though this Washington Post article had tipped me off that the store's kielbasi aren't actually made on the premises - are shipped in from Chicago, though the proprietor hopes to eventually make it locally. Of course, there is still Ostrowski's in Baltimore. But the Kielbasa Factory's a nice little deli - I picked up a fine garlicky sausage - brought it home (the auto will reek for weeks, probably), and used it to make a pretty fair choucroute garnie along with hunks of pork loin, a couple of smoked neck bones, and just a touch of hog jowl. Here's another view of the Kielbasa Factory:  It's conveniently located next door to a yoga studio, the Dahn Holistic Center - come for the Atha yoganushasanam; stay for the charcuterie. link home 5 January - Another Cinematic Janus Sighting  Eagle-eyed Friend of the Museum Gibbons Burke spotted an excellent Janus reference in the Pixar short One Man Band (contained on a DVD of Pixar short films). The coins that Tippy, the little peasant girl, offers to the busker bear the head of the great god himself. According to Bessie Rebecca Burchett in her magisterial Janus in Roman Life and Cult, some early sources say that it was Janus himself who invented coinage; others say that Saturn taught the arts of civilization, including coining, to Janus when he was a king in the distant Golden Age. Burchett also says that the image of Janus with two faces appeared no where except on coins - the one or two putative statues of Janus known in Roman times where actually Greek statues of other gods - possibly Hermes - later incorrectly identified as Janus. And the Roman Janus coins may have been based on earlier Greek coins using the image of Hermes with two faces and then associated with Janus. So does the God Janus actually have two faces, or only one? I'll report any revelations that He sends me. By the way, January 7 is Janus Games Day. See you all at the Colosseum. Previous Janus Film Appearances: Pride and Prejudice Rome link home 1 January, 2008 - The Year in Catwalks  Natasha in the snow, February 25, 2007 2007 was, on balance, a pretty good year for catwalks - scampering levels increased by 27.8%, and ambushes rose sharply, mainly due to Cat Nutmeg's joining the walks. Wallowing held fairly steady. There was a decreased level of catwalking in the fall due to my tragic accident, but they rebounded well towards the end of the year as my manly constitution revived, and the powerful painkillers kicked in. Here's a slideshow of highlights from the year's catwalks: ... Or view it here - bigger pictures; almost like you're on the catwalk, too. Today marks this site's 5th anniversary - if blog years are anything like dog years, then we must be getting pretty gray around the muzzle. Thanks for visiting. My one New Year's observation - one argument against the spread of high definition television is the sight of Dick Clark in HD - very, very scary. link home |
