Mon - September 26, 2005

home of the B-52s 

I'm back from Barksdale Air Force Base. I managed to get in and out of Lousiana between hurricanes, Rita hit the Gulf Coast the day after I returned to Seattle. NWAFA members weren't sent to New Orleans to document the relief effort, as originally planned. AFA members from other regions did, however, get assigned there. Some were in Florida, some were in Mississippi.

Where was I? Between 4:30 p.m and 10:15 p.m, September 20th I was with the 93rd Bomb Squadron, in one of a pair of B-52s during a routine training mission, doing simulated bombing runs over Kansas, followed by an in-flight refueling at 18,000 feet. I never thought I'd ever see the inside of a B-52, much less actually fly in one as a a civilian guest. It was an unlikely turn of events, and a fantastic experience.

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The weather, oddly enough, was perfect. (not counting the 100 degree weather, unusually hot for September) The late skies were clear, and the moon was nearly full. Before sunset, in the skies above southern Kansas, the pilots even took some time to maneuver into photogenic positions while I shot video and took snapshots, before turning around and heading back to the base. I'm extremely grateful for the opportunity.
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Some of my photos here and here

info on the 93rd Bomb Squadron

info on the AFA  

Posted at 12:03 AM    

Sun - September 18, 2005

NWAFA members assigned to Gulf Coast 

There is a long tradition in the military of recording for posterity the experiences of soldiers and sailors in peace and at war. Before the advent of the war correspondent and the camera, military artists provided the only source of illustration of battles and countries at war. Since the days of the Roman Empire, artists have traveled with armies, documenting battle scenes to tell the story of war to generations that that followed. American artists have documented every war since the Revolution when Archibald Willard painted "The Spirit of '76" and Emmanuel Leutze captured the heroism of a general and future President when he painted "Washington Crossing the Delaware." Though a relative "newcomer," the United States Air Forces Art Program carries on that fine tradition of documenting the military way of life through the medium of art.
The USAF Art Program and the beginning of its extensive collection of aviation art began in 1950 with the transfer from the U.S. Army of some 800 works of art documenting the early days of the Army Air Corps. In addition, under General Curtis LeMay, a "portrait" program was initiated.
These portraits of senior officers, along with the donated art from the Army Air Corps, the works of noted artists Henri Farre (a French air combat pilot-artist in World War I) and Frank E. Beresford (a British artist and war correspondent in World War II), and captured German art from the Second World War, constituted the nucleus of a collection that serves as a valuable historical record of military aviation through the first half of the twentieth century.

In 1951, the Air Force sponsored a tour of USAF installations for 30 cartoonists, and in 1952 the Air Force sponsored 30 artists from the Society of Illustrators (New York). The concept of an official program, designed to record the Air Force story through the medium of art was born. Responsibility for the growing collection of donated art that would document the history of military aviation and the U.S. Air Force was given to the Secretary of the Air Force, Office of Information Services. It was a natural home at the time because much of the combat art produced in World Wars I and II by the U.S. and allies was done in support of domestic and foreign "propaganda" and public information programs.
Historians belonged to the Information Services career field at that time as well. More importantly, the central purpose behind the program was to document the "Air Force story"--a job that belonged to Information Services. Telling the story through art--with sponsorship of artists trips to Air Force installations to cover activities and events--was a natural extension of the Air Force public relations program's effort to tell the young Service's story through news media representatives, books, magazines, special public exhibits, trips and briefings for important community/opinion leaders. The Art Program became a part of the Civil Liaison Division of the Office of information Services to document the Air Force History.
In a major milestone that was to shape the direction and content of the program for the next fifty years, the Air Force met with the prestigious Society of Illustrators of New York, inviting them formally to participate in the USAF Art Program. They enthusiastically accepted the Air Force's invitation, and the mechanism was established whereby civilian artists, members of the Society of Illustrators, were sent on officially sponsored trips to Air Force installations all over the world. Later, the Societies of Illustrators of Los Angeles, San Francisco, the Midwest Air Force Artists, the Southwest Society of Air Force Artists, and numerous independent artists joined the program.
Artworks produced from officially sponsored trips are "donated" to the U.S. Air Force--usually as outright "gifts to the Government"--accepted on behalf of a grateful nation and Air Force by the Secretary of the Air Force. Societies review works of their members before offering them as gifts. The "formal" presentation of artwork took on all the glamour of a New York society art show, as the Societies (then later the Air Force) hosted a formal "Art Presentation" every even year to unveil and exhibit their works to be donated to the service.
While there have been programmatic changes in the Air Force's Art Program, it has retained the essential characteristics it started with--art in support of Service public relations and Service support of the documentation of art. 

ORGANIZATION 

Today, management of the USAF Art Program and collection is the responsibility of the Secretary of the Air Force, Office of the Administrative Assistant. The Air Force Art Program Office handles day-to-day administration of the program. The office is charged with responsibility for the Art Program. 

I'm heading to the Gulf Coast to participate in documenting the relief effort on behalf of the NW chapter of the AFA. The location we're going to first is Barksdale Air Force Base (at the very top of this map) just outside of Shreveport Louisiana, only 60 miles from my hometown in northeast Texas. The location we hope to be going to is at the bottom of the map, to the city of New Orleans, to observe and document Air Force activities in the aftermath of the hurricane.
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I don't know If I'll have a connection while I'm there, but I expect to able to post a few photos when I'm back at my desk, which should be by the end of the week.

The NWAFA is a new brach of the AFA. Most of the artists, myself included, are new members representing this region, the NW website is so new it's only partially online. In the meantime, the link to the main AFA site has a good summary of history of the organization.

In 1951, the Air Force sponsored a tour of USAF installations for 30 cartoonists, and in 1952 the Air Force sponsored 30 artists from the Society of Illustrators (New York). The concept of an official program, designed to record the Air Force story through the medium of art was born. Responsibility for the growing collection of donated art that would document the history of military aviation and the U.S. Air Force... 

Posted at 10:57 PM    

Sun - February 27, 2005

Thu - December 9, 2004

Teens Rule!

The Supreme Court ruled that Dixon's testimony against a friend of her daughter should not have been admitted in court because it was based on the intercepted conversation. The justices unanimously ordered a new trial for Oliver Christensen, who had been convicted of second-degree robbery in part due to the mother's testimony.

The case started with a purse-snatching four years ago that shocked the island town of Friday Harbor, population 2,000. Two young men knocked down an elderly woman, breaking her glasses, and stole her purse. Christensen, then 17, was a suspect.

Sheriff Bill Cumming asked Dixon, whose daughter was friends with Christensen, to be alert for any possible evidence. When Christensen called the Dixon house later, Lacey Dixon, then 14, took the cordless phone into her bedroom and shut the door. The mother hit the "speakerphone" button and took notes on the conversation — in which Christensen said he knew where the purloined purse was.

The ruling will likely not result in parents being prosecuted for snooping, Cumming said. But it forbids courts and law enforcement from using the fruits of such snooping.

Federal wiretap law has been interpreted to allow parents to record their child's conversations. But Washington privacy law is stricter. Washington is one of 11 states that requires consent from all parties involved before a conversation may be intercepted or recorded.

"The Washington statute ... tips the balance in favor of individual privacy at the expense of law enforcement's ability to gather evidence without a warrant," Justice Tom Chambers wrote.

That right to individual privacy holds fast even when the individuals are teenagers, the court ruled.

"I don't think the state should be in the position of encouraging parents to act surreptitiously and eavesdrop on their children," agreed attorney Douglas Klunder, who filed a brief supporting Christensen on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites).

Lacey Dixon, now 18, graduated from high school and is attending a massage therapy school, her mother proudly reported. Christensen's whereabouts are unknown.

Dixon has a 15-year-old son still at home, whose phone conversations she sometimes secretly monitors. She said she'll stop that now.

"If it's illegal, I won't do it," she sighed.

Court: Mom's Eavesdropping Violated Law

SEATTLE - In a victory for rebellious teenagers, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a mother violated Washington's privacy law by eavesdropping on her daughter's phone conversation.



Privacy advocates hailed the ruling, but the mother was unrepentant.

"It's ridiculous! Kids have more rights than parents these days," said mom Carmen Dixon, 47. "My daughter was out of control, and that was the only way I could get information and keep track of her. I did it all the time..."

Posted at 11:31 PM    

Mon - November 22, 2004

Pietro Perugino's "Madonna and Child" a forgery

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,65794,00.html

03:00 PM Nov. 22, 2004 PT

Scholars have had their suspicions that the painting of Madonna and child credited to the Italian Renaissance master Pietro Perugino wasn't really done by him alone. But they could never be sure.

Now, a new set of software tools, developed by a Dartmouth College team, seems to confirm the art historians' doubts, showing evidence of at least four different painters working on the canvas. The programs' makers hope this will be the first in a long line of art authentication mysteries they can help put to rest, with code that can sort out real from fake.


"There are properties in an artist's pen and brush strokes that aren't visible to the human eye, but that are there nonetheless. And we can find them, through mathematical, statistical analysis," said Dartmouth computer science professor Hany Farid, who developed the algorithms, along with math professor Daniel Rockmore and graduate student Siwei Lyu.

Museum curators and statisticians caution that the Dartmouth group's techniques have only begun to be tested. Using algorithms to back up scholars' suspicions is one thing; uncovering a fraud with just a computer, that's completely different. And in the art world, no scientific method is considered as sure as the eye of a seasoned connoisseur.

"This is very unusual," said Nadine Orenstein, the curator of the drawings and prints department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. "We're all a bit skeptical."

But Farid is, in many ways, the natural person to tackle the job. He has worked to digitize the works of the Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco, and stitched the paintings into a single, three-dimensional image. With his father, a chemist and an amateur Egyptologist, he's done the same with tombs from the age of the Pharaohs.

Farid also developed an international reputation for uncovering what lies beneath the visible image. The Justice Department has funded his research into steganography -- the art of hiding messages within digital pictures. And he has developed a set of computer programs that can automatically spot tampering in high-resolution digital photographs. Prosecutors around the country have enlisted the professor to help them authenticate their pixelated evidence.

Farid and Rockmore used similar techniques to examine the painting by Perugino, the artist perhaps best known for his frescoes along the walls of the Sistine Chapel. First, they had an enormous photograph taken of the work, which hangs in Dartmouth's Hood Museum. The negative alone was 8 inches by 10 inches, as big as a standard print sitting on a desk or hanging on a wall. Then the photograph was digitized into 16,852 by 18,204 pixels. The six faces in it were broken down into several hundred sections, 256 by 256 pixels big. And each of these areas was then run through a series of nine filters. Some removed the image's higher frequencies, others took out the lower ones, still others kept only the vertical or horizontal lines.

The filtered images were then run through a series of algorithms, the results of which produced a set of numbers. The more similar the painting style, the closer together those numbers were. Once those numbers were plotted on a graph, the Dartmouth team found that points representing the faces on Madonna and two of the saints were crowded together tightly. Baby Jesus and the two other saints -- those three were far, far apart. So the researchers believe that one artist painted Madonna and one canonized pair, while three other artists composed the remaining faces.

"It's provocative work; it's important for scientists to follow up on this," said Stanford University statistics professor David Donoho. In a paper being published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Dartmouth group also confirmed art historians' theories that five drawings attributed to the Flemish master Pieter Bruegel were imitations, while eight others were authentic.

However, Donoho notes, in the long run, "reproducing expert judgment" won't be enough for Rockmore, Farid and Lyu. "This will be much more persuasive," he said, "when they can make a prediction of fraudulence."

That's something that other efforts to authenticate art digitally -- at the University of Maastricht and the University of Bremen -- haven't been able to do yet. But even if the Dartmouth trio can succeed where these others have not, their tools aren't about to replace the art world's flesh-and-blood authorities.

On the other hand, "the connoisseurs, they've trained their whole life looking at art. They know their artists so well," said Katherine Hart, the Hood Museum's interim director. "Along with forensic conservation and connoisseurship, these analytic tools could become another piece of the puzzle, another possible tool to look at this kind of problem."

That's almost exactly how Farid sees his software's role. But the professor does believe his algorithms could find a special niche, in the "many hands" problem. That's the question -- like in the Perugino painting -- of how many people contributed to a single work. While chemical and DNA analysis can pick out a painting's age, "there's no real quantitative science to help in answering those (many hands) questions," Farid noted.

"There's no right or wrong here. There's just people arguing," he continued. "And if I'm going to buy a painting for $25 million, and the master only painted 10 percent of it, I probably want to know that beforehand."

Forgery and authenticity is a subject I'm interested in, especially when it relates to technology and modern analytical tools. This article in Wired suggests to me that a lot of questionable antiquities could be examined and forgeries overturned in the next few years.

Scholars have had their suspicions that the painting of Madonna and child credited to the Italian Renaissance master Pietro Perugino wasn't really done by him alone. But they could never be sure.



Now, a new set of software tools, developed by a Dartmouth College team, seems to confirm the art historians' doubts, showing evidence of at least four different painters working on the canvas. The programs' makers hope this will be the first in a long line of art authentication mysteries they can help put to rest, with code that can sort out real from fake.

"There are properties in an artist's pen and brush strokes that aren't visible to the human eye, but that are there nonetheless. And we can find them, through mathematical, statistical analysis," said Dartmouth computer science professor Hany Farid, who developed the algorithms, along with math professor Daniel Rockmore and graduate student Siwei Lyu...

Posted at 08:37 PM    

Wed - October 20, 2004

Mon - September 27, 2004

In praise of compact urban environments

Sure, it may cost more to live in Seattle, but we don't age as fast because we don't have to drive everywhere.




Study: Sprawl Linked to Chronic Ailments

LOS ANGELES - Warning: Suburban sprawl may be hazardous to your health. A report released Monday found that people who live in sprawling metropolitan areas are more likely to report chronic health problems such as high blood pressure, arthritis, headaches and breathing difficulties than residents of more compact cities.

The difference — which remained even when researchers accounted for factors such as age, economic status and race — may have something to do with the way people get around in more spread-out cities.

"People drive more in these areas; they walk less," said Roland Sturm, co-author of the report by Rand Corp., a nonprofit research group.

The report suggests that an adult who lives in a sprawling city such as Atlanta will have health characteristics similar to someone four years older, but otherwise similar, who lives in a more compact city like Seattle.

The report is not the first to suggest that sprawl cramps a healthy lifestyle. Last year, major studies found that residents of such areas weighed more than their counterparts in walkable cities like New York.

Regions considered to have the worst suburban sprawl included Atlanta; Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif.; Winston-Salem, N.C.; West Palm Beach, Fla.; and Bridgeport-Danbury-Stamford, Conn., the report said. Regions with the least amount of sprawl included New York City, San Francisco, Boston and Portland, Ore.

The findings appear in the October edition of the journal Public Health.

Posted at 12:56 PM    

Tue - August 3, 2004

John J. Miller Interviews Robert Ferrigno on NRO

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August 03, 2004, 8:39 a.m.
Your Wake-Up Call
Read Ferrigno.

Q&A by John J. Miller

When crime novelist Robert Ferrigno's Horse Latitudes was published in 1990, Time hailed it as "the fiction debut of the season." That's certainly a nice way to start a career as a book writer, though, as Ferrigno deadpans, "it was only April."

The author is now in the summer of his content; his brand-new eighth book, The Wake-Up, is one of his best. "Sharp, fast, and slick," says Kirkus Reviews. "Ferrigno can read like Raymond Chandler on speed, with pages turning and adrenaline pretty high throughout."

Thankfully, The Wake-Up is not about an alarm clock going off at some godforsaken hour, but the unintended consequences of a good deed performed by a burned-out special-ops man. A "wake-up," writes Ferrigno, is "what they called it in the shop when you wanted to send a message, a love tap to prod a source, to remind a restless contact of his vulnerability. A hotel receipt placed under a married man's pillow or an 'insufficient funds' hold placed on a Cayman Islands bank account worked wonders. Thorpe just wanted to get the hard charger's attention, to show him how quickly the storm clouds could roll in on his sunny world. Just a little wake-up."

Ferrigno lives in the Seattle area and runs a website dedicated to his fiction. He recently took a few questions from NRO's John J. Miller.

National Review Online: In The Wake-Up, the plot turns on a hard-charging businessman who is cruel to a boy and a bystander's belief that a wrong must be made right. Like your other novels, it feature loads of bad guys and no cops, yet there's a moral sensibility as well. How do you work that in when even the good guys live outside the system?

ROBERT FERRIGNO: I think the highest morality is by definition, personal, and outside any system. As a character in one of my previous books says, "if you need a rule book to tell you the difference between right and wrong, you're f*** ed forever." Consequently, none of my protagonists are cops, and there is little official police presence. This began instinctively and has since become quite deliberate, as a reflection of the moral imperative of my fictional universe. I don't like characters who are required to do the right thing as part of their job descriptions — so no cops, no firefighters, no crusading attorneys. I prefer the individual who is confronted with a moral choice and, out of his own free will, does the right thing. The fact that the consequences of such action are that things are frequently made worse is part of the moral conundrum. (The Wake-Up revolves around an innocent good deed that has terrible consequences, and the "hero" of my last book, Scavenger Hunt, investigates an old crime, a supposedly solved case, and in so doing sets the real killer back killing to cover his tracks) My protagonists, even knowing the risks of moral involvement, always choose to take that risk. The good man is compelled to do good, no matter the consequences. It is the blowback, and how the good man deals with the blowback, that I am most interested in. The hero cleans up his own mess. I take my work very seriously — the dangers of an undergraduate degree in philosophy — but while Nietzsche said he philosophized with a hammer, I prefer a more deft approach, and a funnier one. I spend most of my time at the keyboard laughing at the things my characters say. If the writer isn't having fun, the reader isn't going to get a satisfying ride, and that's my true intention.

NRO: Al Qaeda makes an appearance in The Wake-Up. Could this book have been written before 9/11?

FERRIGNO: The initial notes for the book did precede 9/11, but I'm not psychic, I'm just a writer that reads a lot and has a vivid, and uncensored imagination. If you remember, shortly after 9/11 the government called in a lot of Hollywood honchos and asked them to brainstorm about where a dramatically inclined terrorist group might strike next. The instinct was correct. Creative types really can see the future more clearly than bureaucracies, but of course the government went to the wrong place looking for creativity. It's like hoping to find a racehorse to enter in the Kentucky Derby by walking into a French butcher shop.

NRO: When I your books, I often feel like I'm watching a movie. I understand that you studied filmmaking in school. How does this affect your writing?

FERRIGNO: I think and write very visually, which is one of the reasons I studied filmmaking. Thinking cinematically, thinking in terms of dialogue and movement, is an advantage. It allows me to lie in bed with my eyes closed and "play" different chapters in my head as scenes, reshooting them from different angles and points of view until I get it right. Then I can get up and go to the keyboard with certain problems solved. It's mental storyboarding and keeps things fast and true. If it doesn't look right, it's not going to read right. An extra advantage is that I can reassure my wife that I am still working, even when horizontal.

NRO: Will we ever see The Wake-Up, or one of your other books, on the big screen?

FERRIGNO: Most of my books have been optioned, some more than once, but none have been made. The Wake-Up is currently being considered by a major Hollywood studio.

NRO: You were also a professional gambler. How does someone make a living doing that?

FERRIGNO: It's really a natural job for a writer. To excel at poker you need discipline, a keen eye for observation, an ability to evaluate risk/reward ratios, and the killer instinct. I worked my way through college beating frat boys with a poor grasp of numbers theory, and then played in a variety of pickup games around the country for a few years. It was a great way to get in touch with the wonderful world of little criminals, but the downside was that you sometimes get held up afterwards, particularly if you were a big winner. You have to consider it a tax on earned income and move on.

NRO: And your website says you were a professor, too. Why don't you set one of your novels on a college campus? Imagine the characters!

FERRIGNO: I was a professor for a year and a half. I didn't meet any characters.

NRO: What's the best review you've ever received? What's the worst?

FERRIGNO: I have a letter from Elmore Leonard framed on the wall of my office. It says that I've written "an awfully good book. Wonderful characters and dialogue and sense of place." To me, that's the best review possible. The worst review I ever got was from the Los Angeles Times in which the reviewer attacked the jacket copy which called my fiction "noir," a term which he didn't think it merited, and then he devoted the whole review to explicating the history of the word and what a fraud I was for allowing my publisher to use it to hawk my book. My favorite review was the Washington Post's take on Flinch: "Many writers have presented Southern California as a freak show but perhaps none more convincingly than Robert Ferrigno. His lurid cast of crazed killers, zonked-out porn stars, bottom-dwelling journalists, and connoisseurs of aberrant art ('Gas-chamber photos are a splendid investment') boggles the imagination." This is a fine review, but I love the fact that the Post was amazed at my imagination, while I still think of myself as a reporter. Most of the things the reviewer thought were so bizarre were just my slightly tilted version of the people and places that make up daily life in the Golden State.

NRO: A lot of writers have strange habits. One novelist I know says he eats cereal all day long when he's writing. Do you exhibit any bizarre behavior when you're putting a story on the page?

FERRIGNO: It takes me a year or so to finish a book and I always listen to music when I work. The last three or four months, when I am hitting it 12-14 hours a day, I load the CD-player with five CDs, and that's all I listen to. The Wake-Up was completed listening exclusively to a black gospel compilation from Rhino records, Puccini Highlights by Leontyne Price (for when I write the violent scenes), My Life in the Bush Of Ghosts (Eno/Byrne), Portishead, and Tammy Wynette's Greatest Hits. I'm not sure if that's strange.

NRO: Who are your favorite fellow novelists? In other words, what books would you recommend to NROniks who like crime thrillers?

FERRIGNO: Anything by Elmore Leonard, the master of invisibility. Dennis Lehane has great heart, as does James Lee Burke.

NRO: The epigraph to The Wake-Up is from Jim Thompson: "There is only one basic plot: things aren't what they seem." Is that a good motto for your work? Why?

FERRIGNO: It's an apt motto for several reasons. On the literal level my stories are rife with duplicity and false assumptions, but on the larger level it speaks to the limited viewpoint we all have, just by nature of our egos and experience. In my books this plays out with the various bad guys doing terrible things while being utterly convinced that what they are doing is perfectly justified. The self always trumps reality. Vlad, a Rumanian hit men in The Wake-Up, is the product of some genetic tinkering by Ceausescu's scientists. (This is actually true, like the East Germans, the Rumanians wanted to improve the basic human design.) Having never had a childhood, Vlad suddenly interrupts his torture of an in-debt carnival worker to inquire about the cost of buying a small roller coaster for his personal use. Vlad is quite serious, without a trace of irony. The characters in my books fool themselves as often as they fool other people, and to even more comic and devastating effect.

http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/miller200408030839.asp
 
 
 

Even more good ink for Ferrigno's new book, on sale August 3rd. Ferrigno has a book signing at Seattle's Downtown Barnes & Noble

Posted at 06:06 PM    

Sun - June 27, 2004

Blogger Bill

#1 item in the Blogdex 100 today, from our Seattle Times:

Yes, the world's richest man may start his own blog...



Bill's blog won't be all business, either. He's expected to share personal details such as tidbits from recent vacations, according to tech pundit Mary Jo Foley's Microsoft Watch newsletter. Citing unnamed sources, she reported yesterday that Gates is about to start blogging "real soon now."

Microsoft spokesman Mark Murray would not confirm the story, but left open the possibility, saying, "Bill would love to do his own blog at some point in the future, time permitting."

Murray noted that Gates talked up blogging at gathering of executives in Redmond last month.

Posted at 09:57 AM    

Tue - May 11, 2004

Thu - March 18, 2004

The downward spiral continues

Looks like our bad girl is at it again. Two events in one day. Flashing her boobs on Letterman, then sending a guy to the hospital later that night. The saga continues...

This was reported in multiple places, obviously, but for novelty's sake, I included this one from Xinhuanet. They're reading about Courtney Love's behavior problems in China



Courtney Love arrested on assault charges

LOS ANGELES, March 18 (Xinhuanet) -- US singer-actress Courtney Love was arrested in New York on Thursday after throwing a microphone stand into a nightclub audience and hitting a man on the head, US media reported. A New York police spokesman said Love was charged with assault and reckless endangerment after the early morning incident at an East Village nightclub. A court date for Love was not immediately set. A 24-year-old man was injured in the head in the incident, police said. The name of the man was not released. Love, 39, known for her disruptive behavior, bared her breasts on the CBS "Late Show with David Letterman" hours before the arrest. She jumped on the desk used by Letterman for the late-night talk show and pulled up her shirt. She was not wearing a bra.

(the horror!)

Love, frontwoman for the defunct rock band Hole, appeared in court in Beverly Hills, California, on Tuesday for a hearing to determine if she will be tried on drug charges. The hearing was postponed after she disrupted proceedings and was admonished by the judge to keep quiet...

Posted at 07:26 PM    

Thu - March 11, 2004

Exit, stage left...

Gray, who laid bare his life and mingled performance art with comedy in acclaimed monologues like "Swimming to Cambodia" and "It's a Slippery Slope," was identified Monday through dental records and X-rays.

The cause of his death was still under investigation, said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner. But Gray was known to have been deeply troubled and had attempted suicide before.

His family told police he was last seen Saturday Jan. 10. Throughout his disappearance, his wife, Kathleen Russo, had held out scant hope that he might still be alive.

"Everyone that looks like him from behind, I go up and check to make sure it's not him," Russo said in a phone interview with The Associated Press about a week ago. "If someone calls and hangs up, I always do star-69. You're always thinking, 'maybe."'

Gray's riveting live performances generally featured only a desk and a glass of water as props. Usually wearing his trademark plaid flannel shirt, the performer would never move from the desk as he read in a soft, New England-flecked accent.

In more than a dozen monologues starting in 1979, Gray told audiences about his childhood, "Sex and Death to the Age 14"; his adventures as a young man, "Booze, Cars and College Girls"; and his struggles as an actor, "A Personal History of the American Theater." Many were published in book form and several were made into films.

"The man may be the ultimate WASP neurotic, analyzing his actions with an intensity that would be unpleasantly egomaniacal if it weren't so self-deprecatingly funny," Associated Press Drama Critic Michael Kuchwara wrote in 1996. "He questions everything and ends up more exhausted than satisfied."

Gray's greatest success was his Obie-winning monologue "Swimming to Cambodia," which recounted in part his movie role opposite Sam Waterston in "The Killing Fields." The monologue, developed over two years of performance, became a film directed by Jonathan Demme.

His book "Gray's Anatomy," about his struggles with a serious eye problem, was also made into a film.

Gray turned a midlife crisis into "It's a Slippery Slope," a 1997 monologue that mingled ski stories with tales of his new role as a father.

He also had an active career in Hollywood, with roles in films including David Byrne's "True Stories," "Beaches" and "The Paper" — 38 film appearances in all. In the 1993 Steven Soderbergh film "King of the Hill," he played an eccentric bachelor who kills himself.

On Broadway, he starred as the stage manager in the 1989 revival of "Our Town," a production that won a Tony Award for best revival. In 2000, he was in the less-acclaimed revival of Gore Vidal's 1960 political drama, "The Best Man."

But Gray's life in recent years was marred by tragedy and depression.

A horrific head-on car crash during a 2001 vacation in Ireland left him disheartened and in poor health, and he tried jumping from a bridge near his Long Island home in October 2002.

He was twice hospitalized for depression after the crash, and his suicide attempt canceled the run of a new solo piece, "Black Spot."

Gray, whose mother committed suicide when she was 52, spoke openly about considering the same fate. In a 1997 interview, he even provided an epitaph for his tombstone: "An American Original: Troubled, Inner-Directed and Cannot Type."

Gray was born on June 5, 1941, one of three sons of a WASP couple in Barrington, R.I. His mother suffered a pair of nervous breakdowns, committing suicide in 1967 after the second one.

Prior to her death, Gray began pursuing an acting career at Emerson College in Boston. His first efforts at one-man storytelling began with a select audience: his co-workers when he was a dishwasher. The compulsively self-obsessed Gray would regale the other employees with a blow-by-blow account of his day's events.

He landed his first stage role, playing a psychotic in a summer stock production of "The Curious Savage," when a combination of his dyslexia and nerves produced an all too real audition.

His mother's suicide sent Gray into a lengthy period of depression that ended with his own nervous breakdown. He worked in underground theater in Manhattan, eventually co-founding the Wooster Group in 1979. There, he wrote an autobiographical trilogy of plays about life in Rhode Island.

His first monologue was "Sex and Death to the Age 14," mingling events like the bombing of Hiroshima with the death of childhood pets. Gray was hailed as a new brand of performance artist, working alone on a minimalist set.

In 1983, Gray won the role of an American ambassador's aide in "The Killing Fields," the story of the bond between a New York Times reporter and a Cambodian photographer.

The resulting monologue, "Swimming to Cambodia," was widely hailed, with Washington Post reviewer David Richards observing, "Talking about himself — with candor, humor, imagination and the unfailingly bizarre image — he ends up talking about all of us."

In addition to his writing, Gray enjoyed skiing and drinking; he once told an interviewer that a 6 p.m. bloody Mary was a staple of his routine. But Gray plunged back into despondency following his car accident, a crash during a vacation to mark his 60th birthday.

Gray, who was not wearing a seat belt, suffered head trauma and a broken hip.

Gray is survived by Russo; three children; and a brother, Rockwell Gray, an English professor in St. Louis.

Writer Spalding Gray's Body Found

NEW YORK, March 8, 2004



The body of actor-writer Spalding Gray was pulled from the East River over the weekend, two months after he walked out of his Manhattan apartment and disappeared. He was 62...

Posted at 04:05 AM    

Wed - March 3, 2004

Turner's vision

Turner’s vision has been debated before, but McGill’s diagnosis is a specific one: The painter suffered some color blindness, affecting his reds and blues, and saw the world through cataracts. The latter would have resulted in his perceiving "exactly that effect of dazzling shimmering light we see in the paintings.

When we study impressionist art with insights gained through contemporary science and research, some interesting speculations can surface. A few years ago a theory about Vincent Van Gogh raised questions about a possible visual impairment that may have influenced his painting style. A medical treatment common at the time, derived from the foxglove plant, caused its patients to experience perceptual distortions. What it suggested was that Vincent painted the world as his eyes saw it, rather than voluntarily distorting what he saw. A similar theory has emerged about British impressionist J.M.W. Turner...

From Reason magazine:

Turner’s vision has been debated before, but McGill’s diagnosis is a specific one: The painter suffered some color blindness, affecting his reds and blues, and saw the world through cataracts. The latter would have resulted in his perceiving "exactly that effect of dazzling shimmering light we see in the paintings.

Posted at 11:56 PM    

Sat - February 14, 2004

Barbie, Ken splitsville

Breaking news from the Arizona Republic:

Feb. 14, 2004 12:00 AM

There is no joy in Malibu. After 43 years of dating, Ken and Barbie are going their separate ways.

This is the word from toymaker Mattel, which announced the split this week, on the eve of the 101st annual American International Toy Fair, at which U.S. retailers try to identify toy trends and place orders for the Christmas season.

Rumor at the Manhattan fair has it that Barbie's next boy toy is an Australian surfer dude. Either that or Ashton Kutcher. And Ken? Perhaps he's finally going public with his relationship with Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell G.I. Joe.

By all accounts, the split is amicable, but no doubt dividing their stuff turned out to be the hardest part of saying goodbye.

Dividing the dollhouse

A spy in Ken's palimony lawyer's office tells us the goods will be divided thusly:

Barbie gets:

• Cruisin' in My Ride Convertible Car.

• Bake Shop and Cafe Playset (Ken will get a share of the proceeds).

• Furniture, including Musical Canopy Dream Bed and Throne.

• Dallas the horse, various show ponies and pink-plastic stables.

Ken keeps:

• Ballerina Slumber Bag and Winnebago.

• Volkswagen Microbus.

• Fabulous Fountain Pool Playset.

• Jet and matching Bob Mackie-designed flight-attendant uniform.

The former couple will sell the Dreamhouse and Happy Family Nursery Dream Set and split the proceeds. They will share custody of Skipper. Barbie will, of course, keep her Swan Lake Princess and Ski Queen titles, and Ken will go back to the career he had before becoming professional arm candy: Las Vegas magician.

Posted at 12:40 AM    

Sun - February 1, 2004

I fought the law

Twins Separated at Birth?

Though it looks like they were partying together, facing the same head wind, these two guys were actually arrested separately. James Brown was busted in January 2004, Nick Nolte in September 2002. Do they have the same colorist and hair stylist?



Or were they just on the same exact combination of drugs and alcohol when they got arrested?

Posted at 03:51 PM