Arts & Letters

Art in Motion

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A&L links to Kseniya Simonova – Sand Animation (Україна має талант / Ukraine’s Got Talent). A&L’s tag is “WWII as experienced in the Soviet Ukraine.” This is moving – even to someone like me, who doesn’t understand the words.

Perhaps I should rethink my satire of my friend who is addicted to American Idol. It’s an open market – and it has, like all open markets, found some real winners. Besides, there’s something flyover about its egalitarian approach. And something even nicer – national identity rah rah along with a kind of generousity of spirit that gives the whole world art.

I’m looking forward to learning from the many on this blog who are not monolingual.

Book Review: The Bloody White Baron

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The Bloody White Baron: The Extraordinary Story of the Russian Nobleman Who Became the Last Khan of Mongolia by James Palmer

Special note: It was Lexington Green who brought this book to my attention.

The 20th Century was remarkable for its voluminous bloodshed and civilizational upheaval yet for inhuman cruelty and sheer weirdness, Baron Roman Nikolai Maximilian Ungern von Sternberg manages to stand out in a historical field crowded with dictators, terrorists, guerrillas, revolutionaries, fascists and warlords of the worst description. Biographer James Palmer has brought to life in The Bloody White Baron an enigmatic, elusive, monster of the Russian Civil War who is more easily compared to great villains of fiction than real life war criminals. Palmer’s bloodthirsty Mad Baron comes across like a militaristic version of Judge Holden from Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian or perhaps more like Hannibal Lecter with a Mongol Horde.

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Leszek Kołakowski (October 23, 1927 – July 17, 2009)

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A bit of a Chicago Boy, as it turns out. Thanks to Pejman for the tip. Requiescat in pace.

Benji Saves the Universe Bad

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My spouse and I used to read the  Bloom County comic strip religiously. Reading the comics sitting together side by side was one of the rituals of our courtship. We read in specific order, snaking our way up the page and back down again until we ended up at Bloom County. We bought all the Bloom County books.  

As a  consequence, our speech is laced with allusions to the comic strip. I keep finding myself wanting to use these allusions in my writings but I can’t because most people won’t know what I’m talking about. One allusion I like in particular is saying something is, “Benji saves the universe bad,” so I’ve decided to post the strip so I can link to it in the future.  

benji-saves-the-universe

(Click the image to view in at full size.)

Transcript:

Panel 1: “George Phglat’s new film “Benji saves the Universe” has brought the word ‘Bad” to new levels of badness.”

Panel 2: “Bad acting. Bad effects. Bad everything. This bad film just oozed rottenness from every bad scene… simply bad beyond  beyond  all  infinite  dimensions of possible badness.”

Panel 3: [Opus pauses for a moment of contemplation.]

Panel 4: “Well, maybe not that bad, but lord, it wasn’t good.”

A lot of things are Benji-saves-the-universe bad. The Iraqi Mortality Survey springs to mind.

The Farrah Fawcett – Ayn Rand Connection

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No, really.

Ayn Rand reached out to Farrah, and wanted her to play Dagny Taggart in a TV miniseries version of Atlas Shrugged, sounds like circa 1980.

I can see it. Done in retro-40s costume, maybe? Or hypermoderne science fiction style?

Either way would have been cool. A big budget, big-name miniseries would have been the best way to film the (very long) novel.

Farrah would have been a very interesting casting choice, though not looking anything like the Dagny in the book.

(I don’t think Angelina Jolie, does either, but she is going to play Dagny in the upcoming movie, apparently, if that ever actually happens. Now is the time for the movie, though. At the beginning of the Reagan Era, we did not need it as badly as we need it now.)

Who would have played Hank Reardon, Francisco D’Anconia, John Galt, Midas Morgan and Ragnar Danneskjöld, circa 1980? Who should play them now?

Those are just the names I remember without looking them up. And I last opened the book in High School. The book does have a way of sticking with you.

I benefitted from exposure to Ayn Rand, but I never became a Randian. So it all worked out OK.

Link via Dr. Frank