Rest In Peace, James Earl Jones

Doubtless Dwight will cover this in full presently.  But he was an actor that I enjoyed pretty much throughout his entire career (who can forget him in The Sandlot?) - but one role stands out in my mind: his guest appearance (as himself) on The Big Bang Theory.

And this scene was hilarious (from that same episode) but I had never heard the full story:

May flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest.

Beach Art

We ran across a local artist whose work we quite like, Tim Steller from Stellar Art Works. Here are a couple of examples:

Of course, The Queen Of The World is a mermaid.  He has that, too.

One of the things we really like is how he takes local materials and creates works that look one way during the day and a different way when light up at night.

Recommended.  I have no business relationship with Tim, I just like his work.

Oh, yeah, he does some with gun, too.  Go check his work out.

Jerry Goldsmith - Love Theme from "Chinatown"

Chinatown may be the ne plus ultra of Film Noir.  Scoring 11 Oscar nominations (including for best Score), it has memorable quotes ("Forget it, Jake.  It's Chinatown.") and great acting.  Uan Rasey's haunting trumpet on this piece mostly exceeds our ability to describe it: "lush" and "romantic" are both true but fall far short.

The Band - The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

Divemedic has a must-read post about the coming Civil War, Innocent People Always Die: 

The civil war that both sides seem intent on having will be ugly. War isn’t a game where two sides engage in some football game where the players, rules, and boundaries are clearly defined. Americans think that war is some sort of game, a crucible where masculinity is defined. It isn’t. It’s messy. It won’t just be players getting targeted. The combatants will be targets. So will the people who deliver food. So will their families. Women. Children. The side who refuses to participate in that will lose.

He has a telling Civil War 1.0 example of how civilians were explicit targets, and I've written for a long time about how Billy Sherman was America's first war criminal:

Moving [south] from Yankeeland has made me realize the extent that the history of [The American War of Southern Independence*] as taught today consists of little more than red, white, and blue cardboard.

The events are disconnected in a quite striking manner.  Events just sort of happened, you see?  But since the desired outcome was reached, there's no sense in dwelling on things, and those that do are sore losers.

For example, the charming town where I reside includes a monument:

The concentration camps didn't start in Nazi Germany, or even the Boer War (as is often presented).  They began right here on these shores, started by one William T. Sherman's personal order.  But this is just an isolated event in the colorful cardboard history.

Only 2 of the deported woman returned after the war.  It's unclear whether the rest died or settled down elsewhere.  It seems that record keeping was poor or non-existent, and modern day historians are curiously comfortable with their red, white, and blue cardboard history of that era.

But art can pierce this veil, and allow us to view (if darkly) through the glass to see what civil war does to non-combatants.  I suspect that this song will need no introduction to most readers.  I also suspect it will attract the usual comment trolls saying that the folks living in southwest Virginia "had it coming".  A lot of people are happily ignorant of the true causes of that war and have no intention of doing anything about that ignorance.  That same ignorance is seen in Divemedic's post describing what is propelling us at Flank Speed towards Civil War 2.0.

May God save this Honorable Republic.  At this point it looks like only He can.  I sure hope that Bismark was right that the Lord looks after fools, drunks, and The United States of America.

* It wasn't a "Civil War" because the south didn't want to conquer the north.  "The War Between The States" is unspecific as to motive.  Thus, "The American War of Southern Independence" which tells you everything you need to know about the causes of the conflict.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Captain Blood

In a comment to last week's music selection from the Errol Flynn Robin Hood film, Aesop (who knows something about film) left a comment:

If Errol Flynn is in a movie with an Erich Korngold score, I'll be sitting twelfth row center, waiting for the overture to begin.

Yup.  And so to today's selection.  Captain Blood was the very first film to star Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland.  It essentially founded the genre of swashbuckling adventures.  It began a long collaboration between Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone (later famous as Sherlock Holmes) who appeared together not only in Robin Hood but also in The Dawn Patrol.

And this film established the reputation of Erich Korngold, not as a great composer (he had already established his chops) but as a great film composer.  Shockingly he was not nominated for the Academy Award for this film; he got more write-in votes than almost any of the actual nominees.

He almost didn't take the gig, feeling that pirate adventures wasn't very interesting.  But the producers invited him to watch some of the filming.  Impressed, he signed on.  The problem was that the entire score had to be finished in three weeks.  To get the entire score complete he had to include a number of symphonic poems from Franz Lizst (remember, he was the first Rock Star).

Both Flynn and Rathbone were accomplished fencers, and justly famous for the well choreographed fight scenes.  Certainly Rathbone's fencing was more convincing than his french accent:

And the music is quite dramatic:

Next week we will close out our exploration of swashbuckling film music.

Bootnote on the actors:

Basil Rathbone was decorated for heroism on the Western Front in The Great War.  He was also the British Army's fencing champion (twice) and taught Errol Flynn much of what he knew.

Olympia de Havilland was cousin to Geoffrey de Havilland of aircraft manufacturing fame.  She only dies two years ago at the age of 104, the oldest winner of an Academy Award.  She is probably most famous for her role as Melanie in Gone With The Wind.

Errol Flynn got in a fist fight with his director during filming of Charge Of The Light Brigade.  A horse lover, he was infuriated by the intentional crippling of dozens of horses during filming.  He was a notorious womanizer and it is said that the expression "in like Flynn" originally referred to a successful seduction.

Donald Trump's manifesto for America

Holy crap!  This is breaking news from Donald Trump:

For years, the same feeling has swept you along, oppressed you, shamed you: a strange and penetrating feeling of dispossession. You walk down the streets in your towns, and you don’t recognize them.  You look at your computer screens and they speak to you in a language that is strange, and in the end foreign. You turn your eyes and ears to advertisements, TV series, football games, films, live performances, songs, and the schoolbooks of your children.

You take the subways and trains. You go to train stations and airports. You wait for your sons and your daughters outside their school. You take your mother to the emergency room. You stand in line at the post office or the employment agency. You wait at a police station or a courthouse. 

And you have the impression that you are no longer in a country that you know.  You remember the country of your childhood. You remember the country that your parents told you about. You remember the country found in films and books. 

This country— at the same time light-hearted and industrious. This country— at the same time literary and scientific. This country— intelligent and one-of-a-kind. The country of the moon landing and nuclear power. The country that created cinema and the automobile.This country— that you search for everywhere with dismay. No, your children are homesick, without even having known this country that you cherish. It is disappearing.

You haven’t left, and yet you have the feeling of no longer being at home. You have not left your country. Your country left you.

You feel like foreigners in your own country. You are internal exiles. For a long time, you believed you were the only one to see, to hear, to think, to doubt. You were afraid to say it. You were ashamed of your feelings. For a long time, you dared not say what you are seeing, and above all you dared not see what you were seeing.

And then you said it to your wife. To your husband. To your children. To your father. To your mother. To your friends. To your coworkers. To your neighbors. And then to strangers. And you understood that your feeling of dispossession was shared by everyone.

France is no longer France, and everyone sees it.

OK, I admit it - this wasn't Donald Trump.  This is a speech by Eric Zemmour who is running for President in France.  I took out a couple lines and changed a couple more to hide the fact that M. Zemmour is speaking not in french, and not to the French, but to all of us.  Here's the rest of his outstanding speech, unedited and in full:

Of course, they despised you: the powerful, the élites, the conformists, the journalists, the politicians, the professors, the sociologists, the union bosses, the religious authorities.They told you it’s all a ploy, it’s all fake, it’s all wrong. But you understood in time that it was them who were a ploy, them who had it all wrong, them who did you wrong.

The disappearance of our civilization is not the only question that harasses us, although it towers over everything. Immigration is not the cause of all our problems, although it aggravates everything. The third-worlding of our country and our people impoverishes as much as it disintegrates, ruins as much as it torments.

It’s why you often have a hard time making ends meet. It’s why we must re-industrialize France. It’s why we must equalize the balance of trade. It’s why we must reduce our growing debt, bring back to France our companies that left, give jobs to our unemployed.

It’s why we must protect our technological marvels and stop selling them to foreigners. It’s why we must allow our small businesses to live, and to grow, and to pass from generation to generation.It’s why we must preserve our architectural, cultural, and natural heritage. It’s why we must restore our republican education, its excellence and its belief in merit, and stop surrendering our children to the experiments of egalitarians and pedagogists and the Doctor Strangeloves of gender theory and Islamo-leftism.

It’s why we must take back our sovereignty, abandoned to European technocrats and judges, who rob the French people of the ability to control their destiny in the name of a fantasy – a Europe that will never be a nation. Yes, we must give power to the people, take it back from the minority that unceasingly tyrannizes the majority and from judges who substitute their judicial rulings for government of the people, for the people, by the people.

For decades, our elected officials of the right and the left have led us down this dire path of decline and decadence. Right and left have lied and concealed the gravity of our diminishment. They have hidden from you the reality of our replacement.

You have known me for many years. You know what I say, what I diagnose, what I proclaim. I have long been content with the role of journalist, writer, Cassandra, whistleblower. Back then, I believed that a politician would take up the flame that I had lit. I said to myself, to each his own job, to each his own role, to each his own fight.

I have lost this illusion. Like you, I have lost confidence. Like you, I have decided to take our destiny in hand.

I saw that no politician had the courage to save our country from the tragic fate that awaits it. I saw that all these supposed professionals were, above all, impotent.That President Macron, who had presented himself as an outsider, was in fact the synthesis of his two predecessors, or worse. That all the parties were contenting themselves with reforms, while time passes them by.

There is no more time to reform France – but there is time to save her. That is why I have decided to run for President.

I have decided to ask your votes to become your President of the Republic, so that our children and grandchildren do not know barbarism. So that our daughters are not veiled and our sons are not forced to submit. So that we can bequeath to them the France we have known and that we received from our ancestors. So that we can still preserve our way of life, our traditions, our language, our conversations, our debates about history and fashion, our taste for literature and food.

So that the French remain French, proud of their past and confident in their future. So that the French once again feel at home. So that the newest arrivals assimilate their culture, adapt their history, and are remade as French in France – not foreigners in an unknown land.

We, the French, are a great nation. A great people. Our glorious past pleads for our future. Our soldiers have conquered Europe and the world. Our writers and artists have aroused universal admiration. Our scientific discoveries and industrial production have stamped their epochs. The charm of our art de vivre excites longing and joy in all who taste it.

We have known great victories, and we have overcome cruel defeats. For a thousand years, we have been one of the powers who have written the history of the world. We are worthy of our ancestors. We will not allow ourselves to be mastered, vassalized, conquered, colonized. We will not allow ourselves to be replaced.

In front of us, a cold and determined monster rises up, who seeks to dishonor us. They will say that you are racist. They will say that you are motivated by contemptible passions, when in fact it is the most lovely passion that animates you – passion for France.

They will say the worst about me. But I will keep going amidst the jeers, and I don’t care if they spit on me. I will never bend the head. For we have a mission to accomplish.

The French people have been intimidated, crippled, indoctrinated, blamed— but they lift up their heads, they drop the masks, they clear the air of lies, they hunt down these evil perjuries.

We are going to carry France on. We are going to pursue the beautiful and noble French adventure. We are going to pass the flame to the coming generations. Join with me. Rise up. We, the French, have always triumphed over all.

Long live the Republic, and above all, long live France!

Vive la République, vive la France, et vive le (futur) Président Zemmour.  If the (US) Republican Party - the Stupid Party - and Donald Trump are paying attention, he's someone in Europe - in France for crying out loud - who's  singing from the same hymnal.

Wow.  

But yannow, La Belle France has come back from worse (as have we).  I have proof (with apologies to a Frau Merkel that thought she had ultimately won World War II, and who are no doubt shocked - shocked - to find that they are perhaps being closed down for gambling after they thought they had won it all ...):

Eighty years later, art still has its say.  And just to show that the Cool Kids didn't all live in the 1940s, here's another that says the same thing:

Yeah, yeah, I know - don't play in the street.  But know that you are not alone.

Randoms

Yargb has a bunch of paintings of battles.  I expect a bunch of all y'all will appreciate them.  I'd add the famous mosaic of Alexander the Great at Pompeii to it.

T-Bolt explains why we don't have passenger trains in this country, and why we have the world's best freight rail system.

Robert Graham on how not to get caught in the Fed's Geofence requests to the courts.  This is good info on how to reduce your susceptibility to cell phone tracking by the Fed.Gov.

It seems that the FBI had the decryption key to some pretty nasty ransomeware that hit a lot of companies, but kept it secret because they had some sort of "operation" going on.  Thanks a million, guys.

Charlie Chaplin - Theme from Limelight

Charlie Chaplin is one of the most famous of the 20th Century actors.  Yes, he was a commie bastard (back when that was said seriously, rather than as an insult), but he was groundbreaking as an actor and as a director.  What's interesting is that he was also a composer, writing the music for all of his films.  He won the 1973 Oscar for best original composition for this piece.

Classical music in cartoons

I post frequently about how classical music has fled the wasteland that is the concert hall and taken up residence in Hollywood.  For a brief, glorious period it also showed up in children's cartoons.  I grew up n these, and dare say that some of our readers did as well.

Most famous were the Bugs Bunny cartoons like "The Rabbit of Seville".  But this adaptation of Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody is very entertaining.

I posted a couple years back about how Franz Liszt was bigger than The Beatles, back in the 1840s.  Big enough to get into cartoons.

Administrivia

ASM826 put a new quote up on this blog's header:

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. 

- Alfred Lord Tennyson

This is from Tennyson's poem "Ulysses" and is one of his three most famous pieces.  Here is Sir John Gielgud reciting the prose that graces our header:

This was a great series of commercials by UBS, back in the late 1990s.  I very much doubt that anything like it would be funded by any current Marketing department, which explains the wretched state of modern marketing.

The poem is about the character Ulysses, from Homer's The Odyssey.  There's much to be said about this piece but I'll just leave it at if you like Kipling, this is a more refined Kipling.  Not for nothing was Tennyson Queen Victoria's favorite poet and the first writer ever to be raised to the peerage.

Interestingly, Tennyson was one of the first to have his voice recorded.  In the 1880s, Thomas Edison sent a crew to Europe to record the voices of the Great and the Good, (Tennyson among them) on wax cylinders.  I have a recording of the author reading his poem below.

One of his other two most famous works is "The Charge of the Light Brigade" which was brilliantly used in the film "The Blind Side":

I imagine that some of our readers could quote much of this from memory.  And here is Tennyson on Edison's wax cylinder reading the poem:

The third of his three most famous works is from an obscurely named poem, "In Memoriam A.H.H." which Tennyson wrote on the death of his best friend.  It became The Widow Of Windsor's favorite poem on the death of her beloved Prince Albert.  And while the name of the poem is obscure, I expect many of our readers could recite this verse from heart:

I hold it true, whate'er befall;

I feel it when I sorrow most;

'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.

It also popularized the phrase "Nature, red in tooth and claw".  It is an extraordinary poem, and I say that as one who doesn't much care for poetry.  You don't get to be Poet Laureate for 40 years without writing some good stuff.

Turn, turn, turn

I have a neighbor who has a lathe, and who is teaching me to turn wood.  Here's my first effort - a candlestick:

Today I'm going to try to make a bowl.  It's an interesting process, and makes a HUGE amount of sawduct and wood shavings.

So why didn't Michelangelo paint The Last Supper?

There's very little argument to the proposition that Michelangelo was the greatest Renaissance artist of all time (and not much argument that he was the greatest artist who ever lived, period).  Not only did he set the standard for sculpture (Pieta, David, etc), but he painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

So how come he didn't get the job to paint The Last Supper, which is Leonardo Da Vinci's most famous painting (along with the Mona Lisa)?  Monty Python explains it all for you.

Ten years ago, but this time funny

This always made me laugh.  You probably want to click through to the Czar of Muscovy's old post to see what kicked this off.  Oh, and it may be that in the picture my Lautrec is Toulouse ...

Originally posted 16 February 2011

Gettin' my Wookie Seurat on

The Czar of Muscovy describes me as a "non-boulevardier", which is true.  But it wasn't always.  These days, I'm more comfortable hanging out at the shooting range, but Back In The Day, I used to haunt the First Arrondissement, hanging out with Georgie Seurat and the crowd.  L'hotel La Sanguine was just down the street from the church of La Madeleine, which was cheek-by-jowl to the Place de la Concorde.

As you can imagine, the difficulty was my Wookie Suit.  Even though this was a particularly classy one - made of Carmague musk rat fur - some of the crowd thought it was too over the top.  Gaugain in particular, although he didn't like anything except for naked Polynesian girls.

But Georgie thought it was tres magnifique, and even snuck me into one of his paintings.  See if you can spot me - although I always thought he made my butt look too big.

Photoshop courtesy of #1 Son.  Did himself proud on this one. 

Amazing origami

What's even more amazing is that the artist is from Finland.  Check them out.

Johnny Rivers - Secret Agent Man

Sean Connery is dead at 90.  He defined movie cool in the 1960s, and made the James Bond franchise into a huge success.  That franchise inspired a million copy cats including a British TV spy series called Danger Man.  CBS bought the US rights to the show which they were going to air as Secret Agent.  The opening riff is one of the most recognizable in music, and the lyrics included a salute to Connery as Bond: they're giving you a number and taking away you name.

"Iconic" doesn't begin to cover this.

Secret Agent Man (Songwriters: P.F. Sloan, Steve Barri)

There's a man who lives a life of danger
To everyone he meets, he stays a stranger
With every move he makes another chance he takes
Odds are he won't live to see tomorrow

Secret agent man, secret agent man
They've given you a number and taken away your name

Beware of pretty faces that you find
A pretty face can hide an evil mind
Oh, be careful what you say or you'll give yourself away
Odds are you won't live to see tomorrow

Secret agent man, secret agent man
They've given you a number and taken away your name

Secret agent man, secret agent man
They've given you a number and taken away your name

Swinging on the Riviera one day
And then layin' in the Bombay alley next day
Oh, no you let the wrong word slip while kissing persuasive lips
The odds are you won't live to see tomorrow

Secret agent man, secret agent man
They've given you a number and taken away your name
Secret agent man

But Connery was much more than just James Bond, and went on to many outstanding performances.  I particularly liked him in The Wind And The Lion:

I find it charming that, while married twice, he is survived by his wife of 45 years.  I wonder what she thought in 1999 (at their 24th anniversary) when People Magazine designated him the Sexiest Man of the Century.

Rest in Peace, Sir Sean (knighted in 2000).  Thanks for the grace, and style.  They broke the mold when you were born.

The Fighting Temeraire

ASM826 has been posting about the fate of old ships, which reminded me of one of the most famous nautical portraits of all time.

It's "The Fighting Temeraire". painted in 1839 by J M W Turner.  You can see it in London at the National Gallery.  The complete title gives a better sense of what's going on: The Fighting Temeraire, tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838.  It was the last voyage of a renowned ship,

She came by her fame honestly.  She was in line of battle immediately behind Admiral Nelson's flagship HMS Victory at Trafalgar, and saved the day when Victory was in hard fighting.  She not only saved the flagship but captured two french ships as well.

But time and tide wait for no man, and for no ship.  A 98 gun ship of the line was not only expensive (it took a small forest of oak to build her) but the advent of steam power made her obsolete.  Wikipedia tells the sad tale of her fate:

Temeraire was hauled up onto the mud, where she lay as she was slowly broken up.^[62] The final voyage was announced in a number of papers, and thousands of spectators came to see her towed up the Thames or laid up at Beatson's yard.^[72] The shipbreakers undertook a thorough dismantling, removing all the copper sheathing, rudder pintles and gudgeons, copper bolts, nails and other fastenings to be sold back to the Admiralty. The timber was mostly sold to house builders and shipyard owners, though some was retained for working into specialist commemorative furniture.^[62]

A lot of famous furniture seemingly was made from her.

The painting also has an interesting history.  It made Turner famous.  It was also the favorite of all his many paintings (at least one of which has graced the pages of this blog).  He only loaned it once, and regretted it.  He refused to sell it, and on his death bequeathed it to the Realm.  If you find yourself in London, you can see his painting in the National Gallery and his grave in St. Paul's, and muse on how tempus fugits.

Maurice Jarre - The music for Dr. Zhivago

Dr. Zhivago is a fascinating film on a whole number of levels.  It was written in the Soviet Union, and banned as anti-Soviet propaganda.  Everyone who was anyone there refused to read it: I did not read Pasternak but I condemn him.  Boris Pasternak's novel won the Nobel Prize for Literature but he was not allowed to accept the money.  Bill Maulden (of "Willie and Joe" fame) won a Pullitzer Prize for this cartoon about Pasternak's plight:

I won the Nobel Prize for Literature,  What was your crime?

And so to the film.  It is very long - over 3 hours.  Despite this, it sold a quarter billion movie theater tickets, in the 1960s when populations were much less.  Adjusted for inflation in ticket prices, it is #8 of the list of top grossing films of all time.  This despite historians' panning the film for misrepresenting the history of the period.

The recently deceased Max von Sydow turned down the lead role, as did Peter O'Toole and Paul Newman.  Omar Sharif gave the performance of his career as Zhivago.

But things get stranger.  It was released in 1965, the same year as The Sound Of Music.  Unexpectedly, The Sound Of Music won the Best Picture Oscar.  Also unexpectedly, Dr. Zhivago won the best musical score Oscar.  That's maybe not much of a surprise since it was written by Maurice Jarre, who won that Oscar 3 times and was nominated another 6.

The music, obviously, is sublime.  Enjoy.

When culture collapses

This is perhaps 2300 years old:

ambisinistral describes it well:

The Boxer at Rest is a bronze Hellenistic sculpture dating from somewhere between 330 - 50 B.C. Rather than showing a heroic figure, it shows a battered boxer. His nose is broken, his lip is split and he has cauliflower ears as well as numerous cuts. The statue also has copper inlaid to represent splattered blood.

There are more photos at his place, and I strongly encourage you to go look.  The anonymous artist knew well how to represent a timeless subject, these two millennia ago.

We've lost this.  The so-called "art community" not only lacks the talent to produce a work as timeless this, it doesn't have any interest in doing so.  Here are a few examples of the wasteland that is modern sculpture.

Alberto Giacometti, Cat

Henry Moore, Double Oval

David Smith, CUBI VI 

Lest you think that I'm being unfair to the "art community", these are all from the Wikipedia page on Modern Sculpture.  These are the sculptures highlighted by people who are jazzed by the subject, and this is the best they can come up with.

It reminds me of this:

The Golden Madonna, ca. 980 AD

This was made after the "Carolingian Renaissance" of Charlemagne, an age where the civilization of the post-Roman barbarian kingdoms had recovered enough to explicitly model itself on the Roman Empire.  It has been said that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor and empire, but it was marketed that way at the time.  And this was the best that they could do, 1300 years after The Boxer At Rest.  It wasn't nearly as technically proficient, but they were trying.

The Holy Roman Emperors at least wanted to restore art to its former glory, but it would be another 500 years before Michelangelo actually pulled that off.

Today's "art community" doesn't even want to do this.  The people who preen as a "cultural elite" are not even up to the level of Dark Ages barbarians.  At least the barbarians aspired to standards.

The decline and revival of portrait painting

The Roman Empire fell hard when it fell.  Populations suffered big declines and art pretty much disappeared in the west for centuries.  Portrait painting was basically lost for a thousand years.  What's interesting is that portrait painting was a big, big deal in ancient Rome.  We don't know much of it because all but a handful of Roman portraits were lost.  I mean, two thousand years is a long time for a perishable object to survive, especially when waves of barbarians come through on periodic sacking raids.

YARGB points to a remarkable collection of Roman portraits, the Fayum Mummy portraits:

These are examples of Fayuum Mummy portraits. They're paintings, from the Hellenistic era Egypt, that were attached to mummies and are meant to depict the deceased. However, from the above link:

On first inspection the Fayum mummy portrait paintings look like true-life depictions of actual individuals, but closer analysis reveals that the 'individual' features are sometimes no more than repetitive, formulaic renderings. In other words, quite a few of the portraits appear to have been created from a small number of facial templates, disguised by the use of different fashions, hairstyles and beards.

Regardless, they are still the only extent collection of portraits we have of more common people of antiquity, rather than the kings and generals we usually see in ancient art. That said, it was still only the very upper crust of society that could afford them.

He has a collection of these that you can go look at, dating roughly the first century AD to the third century.  Egypt's dry climate preserved them in a way that wasn't there in rainier climes.  The level of expertise ranges from so-so to excellent, and it entirely disappeared with the Empire.

Here's another one that YARGB does not have.  My opinion is that this was the greatest portrait (that we know of) for 1500 years, faded by 1900 years.  It dates from around the reign of Emperor Claudius, or possibly Nero.

Clearly she was from a wealthy family.  She died young, a fate shared by the great and the common.  You have to fast forward to the Renaissance for similar workmanship.  Here's one by Robert Campin in the Netherlands around 1430:

I find the Roman one more realistic - less formalized, or formalized in a less obvious way.  That may just be because Roman formalization techniques have been lost over time, while early Flemish formalization techniques are (relatively) fresh.  Interestingly, there are very few portrait examples much before 1430, and an explosion soon after.  The Renaissance really did come about all of a sudden.

Ironically, when Campin painted this portrait the Roman Empire still existed, although as a vastly shrunken ghost of its former self.  By 1430 the Empire was pretty much limited to Constantinople and areas around that.  It would be gone in another two decades.  Roman aristocrats fleeing the Turks would settle in Italy, taking their books with them.  Those books - of the ancient masters like Virgil, Horace, and Cicero - will further ignite the Renaissance and lead to today's modern world.

Well, at least I'm consistent

Ten years ago I posted this.  In the ten years since I've posted regularly on the Blues, and the great bluesmen.  This may have been the one that started it all.  It's not deep, but it sure is fun.

Saturday Night Guitar

Bob posted a very cool video of Junior Brown, which got me thinking about other amazing guitar players.

Eric Johnson.  The part you'll recognize starts about 2 minutes in.

Chet Atkins and Les Paul.  The first two and a half minutes are them goofing on each other but then it's, well - it's Chet Atkins and Les Paul.


Andres Segovia.


B.B. King and Eric Clapton.

Same instrument, different interpretations.

OK, Junior Brown, too, on his own design guitar:


I'd put in some Stevie Ray Vaughn and Otis Rush, too, but that much awesome compressed into a single blog post might rupture the fabric of Space-Time.