Curbside New Year

These are not homeless people.

By choice, they are spending New Year's Eve by sleeping on a Pasadena sidewalk.
Why?

Tomorrow, they will have "front row seats" for the Rose Bowl Parade

Flour Power

Imagine a war in which the only weapons are flour, eggs and firecrackers.

In the Spanish village of Ibi, that "war" is an annual reality.

The flour fight raises dough money for local charities.

This Is Not A Team Mascot

It is a grasshopper.
Totally oblivious of the ballgame
in the background,
it is eyeballing a piece of popcorn.
Could this be love?
Or is one team's dugout
Another species' salad bar?

Happy Birthday, Nazz

What A hip world this would be
If the Bible were written by Lord Buckley
With jazz and jive, he'd set the record straight
About THE MAN whose birth–today–we celebrate
......

So The Nazz and his buddies...
Run into a little cat with a bent frame.
The Nazz look at this little cat
With the bent frame 
and he say,
"What's the matter wit' you, baby?"
Little cat with the bent frame he said,
"My frame is bent, Nazz.
"It's been bent from in front."
Nazz looks at the little cat with a bent frame
And he put the golden eyes of love
On this here little kittie
And he look right down into the window
Of the little cat's soul 
and he say...
"Straighten!"

ROOM! - BOOM!
Unbent that little cat like an arrow.



Blogger's Note
I would be remiss in my duties if I did not provide a link to lordbuckley.com

A Merry Satchmo Christmas

A Happy Yule to y'all
Is the wish from Paul

But to put it in song
Here's Louis Armstrong

Bone Appetit

In 1962–years before the world feasted on Beatles music–four lads from Liverpool had a different kind of Christmas feast in Germany.

The minister attached to the Mission said, "Would anyone like to say grace?" and George in his wonderful deadpan way said, "Yes, thank Christ for the soup."
The minister said, "Any more of that and you're all out."
We ate steaks and we found out later that they were horse steaks.
We'd eaten a horse for Christmas.

Bewitched Jefferson Students

This Christmas episode of Bewitched
originally aired on December 24, 1970

Elizabeth Montgomery is seen here
consulting with some of the script-
writers who happened to be students 
from Jefferson High School

Stained Glass Alice

Instead of playing croquet in Wonderland, Stained Glass Alice looks like she's ready to play Roulette.

Akili

Six Hundred Pound Baby Jesus

BETHLEHEM- Palestinian officials and members of the clergy follow a cart carrying a wooden carved sculpture of baby Jesus during a march through the West Bank city of Bethlehem on December 20, 2012 ahead of Christmas. The olive wood sculpture weighs about 300 kilos and measures 2,3 metres and is displayed near the Church of the Nativity, believed to be the birthplace of Jesus Christ.
AFP PHOTO/Musa AL Shaer

Six "Theres" & One Deception

WE WILL PUBLISH YOUR STORY!

So read a notice in the Long Beach Community Newsletter.
It was an offer I could not refuse.
My initial reaction was to do nothing more than submit a link to godfatherofmath.blogspot.com. That would have been well within the submission guidelines of "Five hundred words–or less–"
Therefore, I compromised but did include a self-addressed stamped envelope.

There was a large house with a red tile roof and there was a gray stone mill, and from the trees around the big house beyond the river came the flashes of our guns. They were firing straight at us and there were the twin flashes, then the throaty, short bung-bung of the three-inch pieces and Then the rising cry of the shells coming toward us and going over our heads. As always, we were short of artillery. There were only four batteries down there, where there should have been forty, and they were firing only two guns at a time. The attack had failed before we came down.

I got a response within a week. A three word sequence–there, where there–was encircled in red with a huge question mark across the entire text.
There was also a three word comment:Too many pronouns
But I had the last laugh.
The pronouns were not mine.
The paragraph was excerpted from a book entitled "Fifth Column & Four Unpublished Stories From The Spanish Civil War."
The name on the self-addressed envelope–Ernie Hamwing–compromised my deception. The actual author was Ernest Hemingway. The actual name of the "Unpublished Story" was Under The Bridge
I never cease to be amazed at what can be passed under the radar.

Ali & Foreman & Norman Mailer

In 1974, Muhammed Ali vs George Foreman was billed as The Rumble in the Jungle
Foreman was the undefeated Heavyweight Champion and Ali was the former champion.
Each man received five million dollars to stage the fight in Zaire, Africa.

Boxing is carnality
Meat against meat.
Ali was master
When it was time to receive.
He got the juice out of it:
The aesthetic juice of the punches
He blocked or slipped.
Plus all the libidinal juice
Out of the man
Banging away at his
Indestructibly pretty face.

≈ Norman Mailer






Mailer goes on to explains why the ropes figure significantly
in the collaged illustration by Leroy Neiman

Genius is balance
On the edge of the impossible...
Ali lay back on the ropes
In the middle of the second round...
From that position
He would work for the rest of the fight
Reclining at an angle
Of ten or twenty degrees
From the vertical...
A cramped near-tortured angle
From which to box


And regain the Heavyweight Championship after knocking out
George Foreman in the eighth round.



The book cover photographer is Jack Baletti

Muhammad Ali, Divisive Centerfold

After beating off a fierce NVA counterattack on Hill 881 North,
the Marines could finally claim victory in what had become
the bloodiest battle of the Vietnam War so far.

The Battle of Hill 881 was fought in April, 1967.
That same month, the undefeated Heavyweight Champion of the World refused to fight in VietNam.
After arrest and conviction for draft evasion, Muhammad Ali was stripped of his title and boxing license.
The anti-war movement had a hero at the same time that Ali became the second most-hated American after "Hanoi Jane" Fonda.

But time changes things.
In the next decade, Jane Fonda won two Best Actress Academy Awards for Klute and Coming Home.
Muhammad Ali won two more Heavyweight Titles by defeating George Foreman and Michael Spinks.
Richard Nixon, however, vacated his title only once but he had been elected President of the United States twice.

You may research Mr. Nixon at your own peril.
The Ali hyperlink connects you to a detailed account of his bout with Mr. Spinks.
As for the Ali-Foreman Rumble In The Jungle, see the next blogpost.
As for this post...
Father Time and Uncle Imagination will now take us back to a November, 1969 centerfold of a "Magazine For Men" with a black Gulliver playing the part of a semi-naked Playboy Bunny.

The 1969 ESQUIRE magazine cover below does not feature Muhammad Ali but that is precisely the point.
For more than two years, he had been a "convicted felon," otherwise known as a conscientious objector.
The boxing ring photograph includes Howard Cosell, Truman Capote, James Earl Jones, Budd Schulberg, Theodore Bikel...
proclaiming "Muhammed Ali Deserves The Right To Defend His Title."
That proclamation is quite readable but as for the text of the cover story, you will have to settle for the Muhammad Ali centerfold.
If you can access the complete text, you are a better googler than me!

However, in what was considered a shocking image in 1968, Muhammad Ali did appear on the cover of ESQUIRE

Click here for more "shocking" ESQUIRE images of that era.

Muhammad Ali Cover Story

June 10, 1963
When Muhammad Ali first appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated, his name was Cassius Clay.

Muhammad Ali probably has had his picture taken more times than anyone in the history of the world -- and probably had his picture taken by more people.

Frank Deford

September 3, 2012
Forty-nine years later, Muhammed Ali is still a cover subject but now it is the back cover of a magazine.
Someone else is wearing boxing gloves and someone else's name is in bigger print.

Modern Marie & The Masses

How long would it take
Her to forsake
That she said
Let them eat cake

Marie Antoinette
Today insists
That she meant
Let them read lists

The Book Of Numbers

Freedom of Religion means that we are entitled to read our Bible of choice.
Because of their intimate connection with Alice In Wonderland, I am partial to the BeatlesBible.com, from whence comes the quote below.
But you can thank our good friends at PLAN 9 MUSIC concept for the link to the song.

That was a piece of unfinished music that I turned into a comedy record with Paul. I was waiting for him in his house, and I saw the phone book was on the piano with "You know the name, look up the number."
That was like a logo, and I just changed it. It was going to be a Four Tops kind of song - the chord changes are like that - but it never developed and we made a joke of it. Brian Jones is playing saxophone on it.

John Lennon

Kafka's Performance Artists

To crack a nut is truly no feat, so no one would ever dare to collect an audience in order to entertain it with nut-cracking. But if all the same one does do that and succeeds in entertaining the public, then it cannot be a matter of simple nut-cracking.

Franz Kafka
Josephine The Folksinger



Blogger's Notes
If there is a better story about a performance artist in need of an agent than Kafka's The Hunger Artist, please let me know.
Kafka's performance artists is to Kafkaesque performance artists as lightning is to the lightning bug.
(Gregor Samsa nothwithstanding.)

Simon & Garfunkel Revisited

It would be a much better world if this 1966 song had nothing more than nostalgic value.

A Pair of Shoes

Featuring a boy in demand and a modern chicken...

.........SHOE.........
Cassatt&Brookins

...With a Holiday link

Magreetings From The Sky

This is not a Magritte but she is certainly easy on the eye.

Herbert Bayer
The Language of Letters
(1931)









Could she be the Goddess of the Bermuda Triangle?

Calling All Cynics (RF#3)

Love was a consolation.

Like a sideshow panacea for symptomatic ills,
it soothed anxiety, pain, and doubt; eased fear and
insomnia, purged the more accessible demons and
apparently acted as a mild laxative.

Richard Farina

Richard Farina & Blind Boy Grunt (RF#2)

Richard Farina (center) and Eric Von Schmidt (far right) recorded an album featuring "Blind Boy Grunt," the musician standing between them. This 1964 photograph was taken at the Troubadour in New York City.

"Blind Boy Grunt" is Bob Dylan's most infamous alias. It was a tribute to one of his early musical heroes, Blind Boy Fuller. Please feel free to google that name.


Blogger's Notes
This page is a sequel to the previous post.
To read more about "Dick Farina & Eric Von Schmidt" click here but if you want to hear Blind Boy Grunt's contributions to the album, click there
Happy hyperlinking and happier holidays to all who read this.
As for everyone else, I wish them sounds of silence.

H.U.A.C. Humor (RF#1)

The title of this 1966 song is House Un-American Activity Dream Blues

The Kafka-esque sentence below will link you to the complete lyrics which involve
the chemicals of fashion in the Sixties.

In 1966, if you were hip, you could quote Bob Dylan.
But if you could also quote Richard Farina
then you were a certifiable hipster.

Along come a summons in the middle of night
Saying "Buddy, we're about to indict."

Gotta tell the truth in the booth...

I started out with information kind of remote.
A patriotic mother dragged me down by the throat.
If they ask you a question they expect a reply!
Doesn't matter if you're fixin' to die.

I was lying there unconscious feeling kind of exempt.
The judge said that silence was a sign of contempt.
He took out his gavel banged me hard on the head.
Fined me ten years in prison & a whole lot of bread.

It was the red white and blue making war on the poor.
Blind mother justice on a pile of manure.
Richard Farina



Blogger's Notes
Mimi Farina's maiden name is much more famous than her married name.
She is the sister of Joan Baez.

David Hajdu wrote an extraordinary book about Richard Farina,
the Baez sisters and the blurred boy in this photo.

The photo is unblurred in both the next post and Mr. Hajdu's book.

Benton Goes To The Met

City Activities with Dancehall from America Today, 1930–31.

Thomas Hart Benton's mural cycle consists of ten panels. Egg tempera with oil glazing over Permalba on a gesso ground on linen mounted to wood panels with a honeycomb interior.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art received this gift from AXA Equitable...


Blogger's Notes
The paraphrased text is from artdaily.com but egg with oil and honey has never looked so enticing.
Thomas Hart Benton was a man of many murals, and then some.

This Is Neither Paul Nor George

LONDON.- Harry Woodlock, an auction house employee poses for the photographers wearing a Cavern Club and Hamburg era leather jacket that used to belong to George Harrison, and holding a guitar used by Paul McCartney during the 1950s, during a photo-op ahead of the upcoming auction of Bonhams house Entertainment Memorabilia Sale in central London.
Photographer = Lefteris Pitarakis

Close Enough

If I never get closer to paradise than this sweet bird outside my window, I will still be a happy camper.

Avoidable Exercise??

If the aisles of your favorite drug store have greater medicinal value than this aloe vera plant, then your credit cards are getting more exercise than mine.

Title The Untitled

Shadows, pencils & parallels–
They have some
But actual titles–
They have none
Until I hear from you...

________________

________________

________________








Address your responses to:
Lewis Carroll School of Logic
Mad Hatter Boulevard
Piscataway, NJ
paulmath77@gmail.com

Fill In The Blanks

The Crown of Jesus

&

The ______________










Address your responses to:
Lewis Carroll School of Logic
Mad Hatter Boulevard
Piscataway, NJ
paulmath77@gmail.com

This Is Not Graffiti

It is the genesis of art.

Kathryn Beaumont modeled for Disney animators and then provided the immortalized voice of Alice in Wonderland.

She was ten years old when Walt Disney selected her for the part.

Had he chosen someone else, this blog site might never have existed.

Thank you, Walt.
Thank you, Kathryn.

La Cuna Is The Cradle...

In Spanish, but in English,
"Lacuna" means the empty space between things.

Every feeling exists only in the long chain
of other feelings, each supporting the next.
All that matters is that one instant of life
should link up with the next
without any lacuna.
There are hundreds of ways
in which it can do so.

-Robert Musil
The Perfecting Of A Love



At the Lewis Carroll School of Logic, MUSIL MATHEMATICS postulates that
Between any two rational statements, there is another rational statement.
I think that is the postulate but I may have to think again...

A Free-form Freeway?

Or is it


A Rorschach Roadway?

Andreas Gursky
Bahrain I, 2005

December, 12, 2012 =

Digitally speaking

This is

Today Today Today

But Paul & Michael

Have something to

Say Say Say



Blogger's Note
Digitally speaking, such a day as this will not exist until the first day of the next century, zeroes notwithstanding.
Every century begins on 1-1-1

Intelligent Designer

Wiley
Non Sequitir

A Song For Expectant Parents

We're wondering when you will arrive
We're wondering what you'll be
We're wondering if you'll be a her
Or if you'll be a he

Maybe you'll arrive today
Perhaps tomorrow night
We're hoping you won't hurt too much
And that you'll be all right

Life has a few unpleasantries
We may as well confess
We suppose you'll cry a lot
And that you'll be a mess

There is one thing you should know well
Of this there is no doubt
You cannot get inside again
Once you have come out

Even though there's trouble
Even though there's fuss
We really think you'll like it here
We hope that you like us

-Loudon Wainwright III
Dilated To Meet You

Uncle Scott & Aunt Zelda (R L Jr #5)

The 1936 Princeton Yearbook featured a photograph of an unofficial student organization with a mystery title: L.O.L.A.
It stood for the "Loyal Order of Lardner Admirers."
Ring Lardner Jr., that is.
But it wasn't his father's name that led him to Princeton. It was his father's neighbor.

The idea of going to Princeton originated with Scott Fitzgerald who described its virtues to me when I was eight...He told us stories and performed card tricks for us. But it was Zelda who made the greater impression on me at that age. I have never seen a photograph that conveyed the beauty I saw in her or known another adult who said whatever came into her head without any discernible exercise of judgment.

-Ring Lardner Jr.

The author of I'd Hate Myself In The Morning was not the first Ring Lardner to have a special affection for Zelda Fitzgerald.





A simple click on this photo will enlarge
The love poem sufficiently






THIS IS A HYPERLINK-FREE POST DUE TO AN ABUNDANCE OF HYPERLINKING
IN THE (R L Jr #_) SEQUENCE

Almost Gone With The Whim (R L Jr #4)

Because of his literary background, the son of Ring Lardner was chosen to read books for their potential as movie material.
But you do not have to play baseball to make a rookie mistake.
That was as true in 1937 as it is today.

In my debut as an appraiser of movie material,
I cast a no-vote on Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind mostly because I objected on political grounds to the glorification of slave-owners and the Ku Klux Klan. [A second appraiser] found it poorly written and not worth the money it would cost to produce...The third appraiser, Sylvia Schulman, was so enthusiastic and so persistent David Selznick began to consider it seriously.

-Ring Lardner Jr.
I'd Hate Myself In The Morning




Not only do rookies make mistakes, they also hit home runs.
Ring Lardner Jr. married Sylvia Schulman.

Bellini, Yale, Abrams & Carol

The text was imported from New Haven

Colin T. Eisler
Yale 1952
Ph.D. Harvard

Colin is the Robert Lehman Professor of Fine Arts at the Institute of Fine Arts in New York City. Sterling Library contains seventeen of his books. Four of these are in this exhibit.

The Genius of Jacopo Bellini (Harry Abrams Inc. 1989) is my favorite book. Unavailable since their splendid, costly two volume facsimile, a lavish labor of love by Prince Victor Goloubew (Brussels and Paris 1902), this was given to me by my wife shortly after we were married in 1960. I had long hoped to issue an affordable one volume edition of all the drawings by Jacopo Bellini along with his other drawings and paintings. Most of the drawings are in two great notebooks in the British Library and the Louvre.

By using infra-red reflectography for the British Museum drawings, that recent device led to many important discoveries, first published in my book. Instead of reproducing the Venetian's hundreds of pages once again as they appear in the Notebooks, which is what Goloubew had done with such care, I made narratives of their contents in word and image, integrating the Paris and London books' contents, organizing these 'filmed chapters' into such subjects as the Old and New Testaments, lives of saints, knightly life, genre, and 'Venice observed'.

Graduate students at the Institute of Fine Arts (where I have taught since 1958), helped with the research, and it is the first book I did using a computer, with Cindy Deith's assistance. Paul Gottlieb, director of Harry Abrams Inc, was a most sympathetic, patient publisher, and Patricia Egan (editor) and Barbara Lyons (picture editor) were as generous as they were expert. That the result is a very beautiful book is of course due to its artist and to the truly superb designer, Carol Ann Robson.

I remain very happy with this publication whose preparation was a pleasure I shall never forget. It was also a privilege to dedicate the book to my dearest friend, M. Roy Fisher, who died all too soon thereafter. Suddenly spying the Italian edition of the The Genius of Jacopo Bellini for sale in a Venetian bookshop window near the Piazza di Marco- the artist's favorite space- left me 'surprised by joy'.

Blogger's Notes
New Haven is separated from Rocky Point by the Long Island Sound. New Haven is in Connecticut–the Nutmeg State–and Rocky Point is in New York–my birth state.
The italics in the book review are mine.
The Lapidary Letter of the previous post inspired (mandated?) this post.

Letter From LCSoL w/ Lapidary Response

Mr. Oliverio (a/k/a G. FatMat
A publisher formerly known as ABRAMS recently approached the Lewis Carroll School of Logic.
In the holiday spirit, they want us to promote their books.
The rest is up to you.
Happy Hooligans and happier everything else.

Etta Seamster Jr.
Daniel DiMaria Jr.
LCSoL Executive Office

🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄

Is your holiday stocking
As wide as a coffee table?
Are your pockets just as deep?
Then you are able
And these stocking stuffers
Are something you must keep...

Blogger's Curiosity
Formerly known as Abrams???