Smart Art (Ringing In the New Year Edition)

 

New Year's Eve couldn't come sooner! After all, it's been 365 days of rising prices, heightened international tensions, increasing inequality, burgeoning racism, growing sexism, skyrocketing attacks on the LGBTQ community, and fascism in the ascendency. Any downward trends? Yeah, myself, because all of it has left me down in the dumps. Funny how that works. Not that I've entirely given up hope. I mean, 2026 just gotta be better! There's no place to go but up (assuming prices, international tensions, inequality, racism, sexism, attacks on the LGBTQ community, and fascism all go down.) So what's the best way to celebrate the deep-sixing of 2025 and the welcome arrival (and hopeful course correction) of 2026? To best answer that question I went to a seance and asked the medium to contact birthday boy Henri Matisse (above), who suggested that at the stroke of midnight, we all start...

...dancing!

Happy New Year

from Shadow of a Doubt

Off to See the Blizzard

 

 "Can't all the good little boys and girls in the world wait just this once? The Jack Frosts are throwing a party and I want to go!"

Actually, that's model Dorian Leigh and actor/singer/dancer Ray Bolger on this 1946 magazine cover. Bolger makes a rather scrawny St. Nick, don't you think? He could use a pillow under that outfit, or maybe just some...

...straw. Hey, it's worked in the past.

704 Hauser Street Pride

 

Rob Reiner's violent death is shocking, but no more--in fact, it arguably should be a bit less--shocking than the violent deaths at Brown University and Australia's Bondi Beach, both of which had a higher body count. Interestingly, the All in the Family star and This Is Spinal Tap director did share one characteristic with the Bondi victims. He was Jewish and they were Jewish, but in Reiner's case anti-semitism does not appear to be a motive in his killing (instead, as of this writing, mental illness and the accompanying family strife it so often causes seem to be contributing factors.) Still, Reiner's life is worth your attention not for how it ended but for its contributions to acting and cinema. Eventually it went beyond those art forms. Reiner was every bit as progressive as Mike Stivic, the character he played on AITF. That progressiveness was spun-off not into its own TV show but the real-world body politic. Reiner supported many causes, but I'm going to focus on just one right now. In 2008, Reiner co-found The American Foundation for Equal Rights to help fight California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in the state. "We don't believe in separate but equal in any other legal position except this," he said in explaining how same-sex marriage at the time was outside the Constitution. Thanks to a court battle that Reiner's organization pursued, the Ninth Court of Appeals eventually overturned the proposition. Not bad for a "meathead."

1947-2025

 

 

Gilded by Association

 Hot off the Epstein files:

 Steve Bannon, left, and Epstein.

Epstein, left, and Alan Dershowitz

 

 

Left to right: Epstein, unidentified (duh!) woman, and Woody Allen.

Left to right: Segway inventor Dean Kamen, Epstein, and Richard Branson.

   

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Epstein's not in this one, but it's among the photos released by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. 

Larry Summers, Epstein, and Bill Gates in a previously released photo. Summers and Gates do appear in separate photos released by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, but, oddly enough, without Epstein, so I opted to go with this one instead. 

The Andrew Formally Known as Prince, and Epstein, in another previously released photo.

  

Epstein and supermodel (so where's her cape?) Ingrid Seynhaeve. 

Left to right: Jimmy Buffett, Buffett's wife Jane Slagsvol, Bill Clinton (as the signature indicates), Ghislaine Maxwell, and Epstein.

In the center--what the hell, I'll let you figure that one out yourself.

 

 

My takeaway?

Whether one is a Democrat or a Republican, a liberal or a conservative, an intellectual, artist, or businessman, it may not mean as much as whether one belongs to the clique, a clique variously referred to as the Jet Set, Cafe Society, the Beautiful People, the Rich and Famous, the Glitterati, and the A-List. In his unfinished novel Answered Prayers, Truman Capote refers to it as the "Center of the Earth". Now, not necessarily all of the members of whatever you choose to call it did anything wrong (FULL DISCLOSURE: I've complimented one or two of these people on this blog in the past) but my, oh my, for a bunch some have also referred to as "elitists", they weren't always careful about who they hung around with, were they?  As for Jeffrey Epstein, I suspect he preyed not only on underage girls, but in a different sort of way, this clique as well. There's something to be said for exclusion.

Take it away, Annie:

Sterling Structures (Deconstruction Function Edition)

 

Peter S. Lewis Building, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio

I am obsessed with architecture. It is true, I am restless, trying to find myself as an architect, and how best to contribute in this world filled with contradiction, disparity, and inequality, even passion and opportunity.

--Frank Gehry

 

1929-2025

 

Under the Radar: Dick Shawn

 

Shawn was born on this day in 1923. However, it's his death in 1987 that remains noteworthy (albeit in a morbid sort of way):

Apparently, no thought it all that unusual when the Shawn fell face first onto the stage right in the middle of his act. After all, he had a very physical, manic comedy style noted for its utter unpredictability. As far as the audience was concerned, it was a supreme act of slapstick that put Dick Van Dyke's trip over the ottoman to shame. Except in Shawn's case, Mary Tyler Moore and Morey Amsterdam didn't run out and help him to his feet. Shawn just laid there for a few minutes until a stagehand (who at first also thought it was part of the act) came out to check on him. Someone in the audience, thinking the stagehand was part of the act, yelled out, "Take his wallet!" Soon a doctor showed up, and then paramedics. The audience was asked to leave, though a few in the theatre stuck around a little while longer, maybe thinking there that, sooner or later, there must be a punchline.

At this point you may be thinking, "Well, if I were in that audience, I would have known something was wrong right away." Well, you know what they say, hindsight is a TV newsmagazine. Meanwhile, here's Dick Shawn sometime in the 1950s. And don't worry. He survives this one:

  

Watching that, it's hard for me to know if he was parodying old-time show biz or in fact embodying it. One person reportedly influenced by Shawn was Andy Kaufman (whose own death from cancer was thought by some to be a put-on.) After viewing this clip, I can believe it.

Their paths crossed?! I luv it!

Growing up I was unaware of Dick Shawn's stage act. Instead, I knew him as someone who kept popping up in 1960s comedies. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World was one. What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? was another. And then there this much more briefly titled 1967 film:

If you squint at the row of pictures at the bottom, you'll see Shawn, third from the right.

Years later, in this interview conducted by Eight is Enough star Dick Van Patten (?), Shawn was asked about Brooks first directorial effort: 

The character of Lorenzo St. DuBois (LSD) was jettisoned from the 1990s Broadway adaptation. I don't know why, but it's just as well. Shawn was gone by then, and I think he may have been the only one who could have done the role justice. Watch:

 

Funny, sure, but how will it play in Nuremburg?

Graphic Grandeur (Supply and Demented Edition)

 

It's a truism in American politics that people vote with their pocketbook.

Sometimes to confusing effect:

Cartoon by Drew Sheneman.