Ray Davies shot in 2004

By Jack Brummet, Music Ed.

Ray Davies made the news in 2004 when he was shot in the leg while on vacation in New Orleans. Near the French Quarter, two muggers snatched his girlfriend, Suzanne Despies's purse at gunpoint, and Ray went after them.  One of the muggers shot him in the leg, but the injuries weren't serious. The headline, which is from The Sun I think: “You Really Shot Me!”

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Drawing: Ink fight

By Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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POTUS x 4: Four Presidents yuk it up at the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Center, April 2013

click to enlarge

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Painting: Tsunami

By Jack Brummet

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Poem: Li Po in the mountains

By Jack Brummet
painting of Lip Po by Liang K'ai (13th century)

Four hundred and sixty-thousand
Moons ago, Li Po sits
Drinking wine on a bluff.

The sun slides into the blue mountains.
Crickets tune up and the first bats
Sail from roost to roost.

I think about Li Po drunk again.
He holds an inkpot, scroll, and brush.

Between the mountains and stars,

A crow wheels over fogged red pines
Spiring in moonlight.
LiPo shakes wet peach blossoms

From his coat and fills the cup again.
Silver moonlight dances on the golden wine
In green ceramic cup.
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Written 1990, Published in Electrum

revised June, 2014

A quirky but effective gun safety video, using dildos in lieu of guns

By Mona Goldwater and Jack Brummet

Jack: Quite possibly the best gun safety video ever! Not anti-gun, just focused on keeping guns locked up. These guys at Evolve are just great!

Mona: No political/2nd amendment ranting, just a funny and kinky PSA about gun safety. Brilliant.

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A tour of the C.I.A., led by one of their explosive sniffing K9 dogs

By Jack Brummet

The C.I.A. has always had an outward facing element--mainly the CIA World Factbook, which has long been available and is a pretty standard reference work.

Lately, though, they have jumped into the world of Social Networking, with Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook accounts.

This is a short video tour of the CIA, released on YouTube, conducted by one of their bomb-sniffing dogs, and narrated using the voice of a young girl. . .

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Painting: Wired up

by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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Painting: Summertime

By Jack Brummet

Detail:

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Drawing: Faces No. 838 - illuminated first class menu

By Jack Brummet

This is from our trip to Colombia last November, where we were able to upgrade with miles and fly round-trip in first class.  With about 20 hours on my hands, I went to work on the menu (the food and drink, BT Dubs, was fantastic).

click images to enlarge

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Run, Rudolph, Run: a reindeer watches a German bomb strike over Russia

A confused reindeer watches German planes bombing Mourmansk, Russia in 1941.  Photograph by Yevgeny Khaldey.

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Poem: September 13, 1985

By Jack Brummet

It was quiet as a painting 
in Berkeley, 

driving at three a.m. 
on Telegraph Avenue 

toward Oakland, 
to the delivery room. 

I saw a new moon 
hung on our old sky. 

We watched the monitor 
and waited.

Her robber-stockinged face 
came down and one bleat 

to the rafters 
started us all breathing again. 
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Poem: [don't look back]

By Jack Brummet

Don't look back
Means no regrets

Look back on the good times
But leave the rest

Just ask Lot's wife
And the other pillars of salt

Standing outside Gomorrah
Like Easter Island statues

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President William Howard Taft's sleeping porch on the White House roof

By Jack Brummet, Presidents Ed.

William Howard Taft was 27th President (1909–13) and later, tenth Chief Justice of SCOTUS. No one else has ever held both offices.   This is his sleeping porch on the White House roof.

photo courtesy of the Library of Congress

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Drawing: Faces No. 837

By Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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More fun with Google search. . .

By Jack Brummet, Research Ed.

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Drawing: Faces No. 836

By Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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Christian Aerobics a/k/a Praise-r-cise

By Mona Goldwater

Found via tsutpen.blogspot.com a/k/a "If Charlie Parker were a Gunslinger, There'd be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats" (which comes from the title of a Charles Mingus song).

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New York Times, 1924: Hitler no longer to be feared

By Jack Brummet, History Ed.

That didn't really work out, did it?

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Faces No. 835 - Scratchboard drawing

by Jack Brummet

[India Ink scratchboard; second image is the scratchboard image digitally reversed (negative image)]

click images to enlarge

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Faces No. 834 - Ten iPad drawings

By Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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Charlie Parker and Coleman Hawkins play together (with Ray Brown and Buddy Rich)

By Jack Brummet, Jazz Ed.

Two favorites performing together. . .with Ray Brown (whom I got to see just once; Bird died when I was two years old, and Hawkins died just a few years before I got into jazz).  Not quite so sure about Buddy Rich—I'm not a fan of his over the top drum attacks or his notorious treatment of young band members on the road.  Check out his rants here: http://youtu.be/omID1prJHFo).

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Neil Young performs Needle Of Death in Jack White's Third Man phono-recording booth

By Jack Brummet, Americana and Roots Music Ed.

Neil Young playing Bert Jansch's Needle of Death in Jack White's vintage phonograph recording booth, from his new album Letters From Home. This song is maybe my favorite (Del's too) from the album.

"I was especially taken by Needle Of Death, such a beautiful and angry song. That guy was so good… And years later, on On The Beach, I wrote the melody of Ambulance Blues by styling the guitar part completely on Needle Of Death. I wasn’t even aware of it, and someone else drew my attention to it."

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Painting/Drawing: Heatmap

By Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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47 years ago today: The Monterey Pop Festival

By Jack Brummet, American Music Ed.

On June 16, 1967, the three day Monterey Pop Festival in California began.  The performers played for free and all proceeds went to charity.  This was the birth of "the summer of love."  

The festival included the first major appearances of many bands that would come to dominate music over the next few years, . .and decades,   Among the bands and performers:  The Who, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, The Byrds, Grateful Dead, Otis Redding, Simon & Garfunkel, The Steve Miller Band, Canned Heat, The Mamas And The Papas, Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield, and The Electric Flag, 

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Drawings: Faces No. 833

By Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

Thee details from the drawing:

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Drawing: Faces No. 832: Camouflage

By Jack Brummet

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Van Gogh's Ear

By Jack Brummet, Painting Ed.

December 30, 1888: "'Last Sunday night at half past eleven a painter named Vincent Van Gogh, appeared at the maison de tolérance No 1, asked for a girl called Rachel, and handed her ... his ear with these words: 'Keep this object like a treasure.' Then he disappeared. The police, informed of these events, which could only be the work of an unfortunate madman, looked the next morning for this individual, whom they found in bed with scarcely a sign of life. The poor man was taken to hospital without delay."

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Throwback Thursday - My grandparent's tavern in Carnation, Wash., and teething on my Grandpa's hook arm

By Jack Brummet

Throwback Thursday: photographs of my grandparents' tavern in Carnation (the weird lines are due to the photo being trashed), in the early 50's, and one of me teething on my Grandpa Dell's hook arm in 1954.  Interestingly, I also had another uncle with a wooden leg.  You don't really see either hook arms, or wooden legs anymore. . .but growing up I thought it was perfectly normal.

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Painting: Faces No. 831 - Dreamfall

By Jack Brummet

[From an original acrylic painting, digitized and processed)

click to enlarge

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Painting: Panic Attack

By Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

Mono version

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President Lyndon Johnson: LBJ as a boy, circa 1915

By Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Ed.

This is a fascinating photo of LBJ as a youth.  As a wise man once said, "the child is the father to man. . ."

click to enlarge

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LBJ gives The Johnson Treatment to Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, in 1968.

By Jack Brummet, 60's Ed.

LBJ gives the Johnson Treatment to Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, in 1968.

Previous ATIT articles and photographs of The Johnson Treatment:

The Johnson Treatment

LBJ and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King meet up

LBJ howls like a dog

Another good LBJ photo

And another. . .

One of the heroes and villains paintings

LBJ In A Characteristic Pose

Running Mates: Senators Lyndon Johnson And JFK

The Johnson Treatment, Part 6: The Hump and Senator Russell get the treatment

The Johnson Treatment, Part 5: Senator Richard Russell (Dem., Georgia) Undergoes The Treatment

The Johnson Treatment, Part 4: President Johnson Gives The Treatment To Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas

The Johnson Treatment, Part 3: LBJ Gives Eartha Kitt The Treatment

The Johnson Treatment, Part 2: Richard M. Nixon, Republican Presidential Front-runner Gets The Treatment

He's Not Close Enough To Give Him The Johnson Treatment, But LBJ Appears To Be Answering A Pointed Question From Dan Rather

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Shakespeare quote of the day - Lord Berowne in Love's Labour's Lost

"Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,

Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation,

Figures pedantical; these summer flies

Have blown me full of maggot ostentation:

I do forswear them."

--Lord Berowne from "Love's Labour's Lost" (Act V, sc. 2)

A Georgia O'Keefe style cave or fissure - Life imitates art

Context & photographer unknown.

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Spatter painting

By Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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Neil Young's album "A Letter Home," recorded in a voice-a-graph recording booth

By Jack Brummet, Music Ed.

Neil Young recently recorded a collection of covers with Jack White on a refurbished 1947 Voice-O-Graph recording booth at Jack White's Third Man's Nashville headquarters.  Yeah, the same kind of machine my dad recorded a voice letter home for his mom at some port in World War II.  These were still around when I was a kid.

The Voice-O-Graph is about the size of a phone booth, with a fairly crude microphone, and directly cuts grooves onto a 6" vinyl record.  You can only record 111 seconds on a disc, so obviously some of these tunes are spliced. I love the fuzzy warmth of these tunes, the scratching sound of the needle in the grooves, and hearing what old songs Neil decided to record (Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Tim Hardin, Willie Nelson, etc.). The sound is roughly equivalent to that on Harry Smith's amazing Anthology of American Folk Music. Neil describes it as "an unheard collection of rediscovered songs from the past recorded on ancient electro-mechanical technology that captures and unleashes the essence of something that could have been gone forever."

The funny thing about Young releasing a low-fi, mono (and no overdub) album like this is that he has spent the last few years developing the highest fidelity system yet for music reproduction—Pono—that delivers music at up to 30 times the resolution of an MP3.  His autobiography from last year goes into great detail on the Pono sound system, and he mentions over and over that even the modern CD only captures a fraction of the actual music recorded.


This is almost all Neil, but Jack White does vocals and piano on On The Road Again and vocals and guitar on  I Wonder If I Care As Much.

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Drawings:signs and faces

By Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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Drawing: Faces #821

By Jack Brummet

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Four poems

By Jack Brummet

A touch of evil

Darkness, after having been eliminated,
furtively obtrudes again.

Does the wind blow over the earth
or does it blow under heaven?
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Mission Statement

You don't need to see
A discounted cash flow analysis.

You only need to know
If the right people are in your pocket,

And, if not, whom should be bought off,
Scared off, or bumped off?
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"I contain multitudes"

We all have a platoon
Of partly-contained

Spooky and multiple personalities
Ready to burst

From the confines
Of our clown car.
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We need to put our fingers in the dike

I mostly believe otherwise,
But on a bad news day,

It's like we're not all in this together,

That we are just the latest revision

Of a complex species
Drawn together in a social order 

That masks our genetic disposition
And puts the lie to any notion

Of compassion, altruism, and love.
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Fidel Castro lays a wreath at the Lincoln Memorial (with footnote on Guerrillero Heroico)

By Jack Brummet, Latin America Ed.

In April 1959, Alfredo Korda [1]  shot this photograph of Fidel Castro, the new leader of Cuba, laying a wreath at the Lincoln Memorial.

This image is copyrighted. The copyright holder allows anyone to use it, provided it is not used to denigrate the Cuban revolution

Castro admired Abraham Lincoln and kept a bust of him in his office.  He once wrote about Lincoln's devotion “to the just idea that all citizens are born free and equal."

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[1] Korda also shot one of the most famous images of all time—Guerrillero Heroico—the shot of Ernesto Che Guevara at a memorial.  According to the Wikipedia page about this photo, "To take the photo, Korda used a Leica M2 with a 90 mm lens, loaded with Kodak Plus-X pan film. In speaking about the method, Korda humbly remarked that  'this photograph is not the product of knowledge or technique. It was really coincidence, pure luck.' "

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An air kiss from Mayor Rob Ford

By Mona Goldwater, Gestures Ed.

It's Friday! Blow someone a kiss. Hey, if Mayor Ford can do it. . . 

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ATIT Reheated (from 2008): The Roman stadium at Aphrodisias, a/k/a Ἀφροδισιάς a/k/a Afrodesia, Turkey

By Jack Brummet, Eur-Asia Travel Ed.



Afrodite in all her glory, but minus her cabeza,
in the museum at Afrodesia - click to enlarge


Del runs out from the gladiator's entrance to the stadium - click to enlarge


another section of seats - click to enlarge

Aphrodisias, a/k/a Ἀφροδισιάς a/k/a Afrodesia, is in Asia Minor, about 230 km from İzmir.

Aphrodisias was named after Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of Love (and if you've seen her sculptures, you'd believe it), and at this site there once existed her cult image, Aphrodite of Aphrodisias. The city was built near a marble deposit that that was heavily quarried during the Roman period, and the marble sculptors from Aphrodisias became famous in Rome. See Keelin Curran's post about Turkey in Ruins for more information and Afrodesia photos.


A long shot of the stadium - click to enlarge

The Temple of Aphrodite is a focus of the ruins, and restoration is ongoing. However, what really knocked me out most about Aphrodesias was the stadium. But so did the temple, the statuary, the fantastic relief friezes, The absolutely amazing Bouleuterion (Council House) is on the north side of the North Agora, and is fantastically reconstructed, and on a more human scale. But it was the stadium that enchanted us most--partly because it was used for gladiatorial and wild beast exhibitions (e.g., slaughters), but mostly because of the grand scale. You could feel those 30,000 citizens filling the marble seats.

Can you imagine charging out here to fight your fellow

gladiator with a trident? Click to enlarge


another long shot of the stadium - click to enlarge

The stadium is thought to be the best preserved of its kind except for the Sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi (which we didn't get to see...yes, we did miss a few ruins!). I would love to see a rock show there one day.

A section of seats at the top of the stadium - click to enlarge

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