Illustration for Good Housekeeping, 1947 — with thanks to Guida Pinhão . . .
Category Archives: Main Page
POKER GOD
Jae has been playing excellent poker on this trip. Before today he’d entered three tournaments and cashed in two of them, coming in third both times. He sallied forth on his last day here to try one final tournament — and won the whole thing, earning much crisp cash.
He leaves town a winner.
Click on the image to enlarge.
A NAUGHTY CHRISTMAS PICTURE FOR TODAY
BOXING DAY
. . . is traditionally a time to chill out and regroup for the ten days of Christmas still to come.
With thanks to Ira Gallen . . .
Click on the image to enlarge.
AN LP COVER FOR TODAY
Click on the image to enlarge.
A COMIC BOOK COVER FOR TODAY
SAVING MR. DISNEY
There’s been a lot of criticism of Saving Mr. Banks as constituting a glorification of Walt Disney by the company he founded. The implication is that Disney doesn’t deserve glorification, and only gets it here through corporate puffery.
This is nonsense. Disney was one of the greatest artists, or artistic impresarios, of the 20th Century. He supervised the creation of some of the most sublime passages of cinema in the medium’s history. Here’s James Agee on some of the early Disney cartoons:
Do you ever happen to see any of the Silly Symphonies by Walt Disney? On the whole they are very beautiful. A sort of combination of Mozart, super-ballet, and La Fontaine . . .
The comparison with Mozart, with whom Agee associated Disney in other writings, is not farfetched.
Disney also revived Victorian spectacle theater, which had indirectly given birth to the movies, in his theme parks, creating, or recreating, one of the most vital if under-appreciated art forms of our time.
And Disney had balls bigger than those of any studio executive of his time. He was willing to take creative and financial risks that would have turned his peers to jelly. He certainly had balls bigger than anyone running a studio in Hollywood today, or ever likely to again.
Did Disney have a kind of middlebrow sentimentality? Sure. It was the middlebrow sentimentality of the audience that he, and most artists in Hollywood, sought to please. He still manged to create magnificent art within that limitation, as Dickens had before him.
Think what you will about Saving Mr. Banks — I found it fairly entertaining and occasionally moving — but don’t use it a pretext to patronize the genius of Walt Disney. One person of such genius in Hollywood today could redeem American popular movies.
Click on the images to enlarge.
MERRY CHRISTMAS
NATIVITY
Come down to the manger, see the little stranger . . .
OÙ SONT-ELLES, VIERGE SOUVERAINE
. . . mais où sont les neiges d’antan?
With thanks to Cassiano Camarano . . .
Click on the image to enlarge.
VIEW THROUGH THE PANOPTICON
My Amazon customer review of Paul Zahl’s new (and extraordinary) book on world religions:
CHRISTMAS MESSAGE
Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.
And so, in God’s mercy, a happy Christmas to you all.
— Winston Churchill, Christmas Eve, 1941
GOD BLESS IT
“I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round — apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that — as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore . . . though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, ‘God bless it!'”
Click on the image to enlarge.
RAMBLINGS
Yesterday Jae and I discovered a great Korean restaurant, or “barstaurant” as it styles itself, called Soyo — really good food and exceptionally pretty waitresses.
We also checked out the Fantastic Swap Meet, which used to proclaim itself “the world’s largest indoor swap meet” but for some reason no longer does. It’s very large, however, and filled to bursting with stuff, of every description. Jae managed to resist buying a stun gun, even though they were heavily discounted.
Tonight we dined at Ricardo’s Mexican restaurant, a Las Vegas fixture for many years and very close to my home. I had eaten there once about six years ago and found the food mediocre. It was the same tonight. I’ll try it again six years from now and let you know if anything has changed. They had some good Mexican beer on draft, however, and served vast margaritas. Jae ordered one and somehow finished it. Then he dashed off to a poker tournament at the Luxor.
He’s been making about $50 a day gambling.
[Update: Jae busted out of the tournament before the final table. He made a call he probably shouldn’t have made because he was “feeling lucky”. In retrospect he blames this feeling on the margarita.]
Click on the images to enlarge.
A CHRISTMAS TREE FOR TODAY
Click on the image to enlarge.