a single burst of glorious criminality

"... her career ended in a single burst of glorious criminality. You can't keep a lady waiting forever, and there came an afternoon when she decided that she'd waited long enough."

  - Orson Welles

Not the first but certainly the most notorious of matadoras, renowned bullfighter Conchita Cintron passed away a few weeks ago.

Women were forbidden to fight on foot in Spain (lest they be gored and exposed in some unseemly and immodest fashion) and in Europe Cintron fought primarily as a rejoneadora from horseback. 

In one of her final fights on Spanish soil, Cintron ignored the order to leave the arena and let a male fighter dispatch the bull. She dismounted, drew her sword and muleta cape, and faced the bull.

The bull charged. Cintron swept her cape aside, let her sword fall to the ground, and reached out with her bare fingers to caress the shoulder of the charging bull. 

She left the arena amidst a shower of thunderous applause and red carnations and was promptly arrested. 

Know Your Disco

Meet Giorgio Moroder.
He's looking for limits with his special kind of imagination as he creates musical magic from thin air.

Great Couches in History

Sigmund Freud's sofa. So fucking DECADENT. I would say terrible things on this couch.

My own personal sofa. I've taken many noteworthy naps here.

____ Is Dead

BBC Rocks

Mild disappointment with the latest Indiana Jones film left me nostalgic for the theological mysteries and Christian iconography of Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade and today I felt compelled to re-watch my favorite clips from those films.

As always, I found myself fascinated by the mysterious contents of Sean Connery's grail notebook and curiosity led me to research the origins of the grail story. I found that bbc.co.uk/history provides an excellent overview of the grail myth, complete with a gallery of artistic interpretations ranging from 14th century French illuminations through modern films.


Further exploration of the BBC history site led me to the amazing, interactive Timeline of British History. Anyone who was entertained enough to stay awake during a hypnotically narrated Simon Schama documentary will appreciate the BBC's efforts.

Incredibly comprehensive and browsable, the flash timeline loads up in only a few seconds and spans from the Neolithic Age to the present, providing expandable links and summaries of every major event in British history. A variety of filters allow you to focus your timeline by subject, region, and period.

Great Men in History: Edward Lorenz, PhD

Today, Edward Lorenz, the father of chaos theory and the man who popularized the "butterfly effect", died in Cambridge, MA at the age of 90. Click here to access his obituary.

Not surprisingly, literature and film have embraced the underlying ideas of chaos theory. My favorite post-modern play, Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, focuses on the mathematics behind fractals during the 1800s and contemporary times. Chaos theory also plays a large role in the movie "Pi".

While searching the wikipedia page for chaos theory, it also mentions that chaos theory is mentioned in the films "The Butterfly Effect," "Chaos", and "The Science of Sleep." I haven't seen the other two, but I don't remember any mention of chaos theory in "The Science of Sleep" - does anyone else remember it?

Here's a cool webpage on fractals. The image above is also generated by fractals.

Great Women in History: Thelma Schoonmaker

Thelma Schoonmaker met Martin Scorsese when she was taking a brief six-week course at New York University's Tisch School. She was instantly charmed by the fledgling film student and decided to help edit a short he had just made entitled "What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?". A previous editor had massacred young Marty's film and so she thought it was a nice gesture. By 1970 the two edited Woodstock together but it would be another 10 years before they would meet again. Since 1980 the two have remained best friends and Schoonmaker has edited every Scorsese film since Raging Bull. Thelma Schoonmker has been nominated for six Academy Awards in the field of editing and has won three for the following films: Raging Bull, The Aviator and The Departed. Schoonmaker is set to edit Scorsese's highly anticipated Shutter Island.

An interview with Thelma Schoonmaker

Great Women in History: Ellie Greenwich

Ellie Greenwich began writing songs as a teenager and by the time this How to Write a Hit Song article appeared in Disco Scene magazine in 1968 she had penned some of the most enduring pop songs of the '60s. Greenwich got her start at New York's Brill Building in 1962 and immediately began producing memorable tunes. Working with husband Jeff Barry, as well as other notable collaborators like Phil Spector and Shadow Morton, Ellie was responsible for "Leader of the Pack," "Chapel of Love," "Be My Baby," River Deep, Mountain High," and a plethora of stellar B-sides and demos.

Examples of some of her finest songs:

He's Got the Power: The Exciters


Be My Baby: The Ronettes


Ellie's music also appears in numerous films and has been used to great effect by Martin Scorsese, who has chosen her songs as the soundtrack to some of his most memorable shots, such as the Goodfellas tracking shot and the opening credits of Mean Streets

After the mid-sixties girl group boom, Ellie Greenwich remained in the music business, working as a composer and arranger and even reluctantly trying her hand as a solo artist. She is still involved in music and I recommend the following articles to learn more about her impressive career and refreshingly honest perspective on one of the most exciting periods in music history:

Cha Cha Charming Magazine

Spectro-Pop

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today is the 40th anniversary of his death and this is his final speech.

Great Women in History: Setsuko Hara

Renowned actress Setsuko Hara was born Masae Aida on June 17, 1920. Coming of age during World War II, she found herself much in demand as an actress in the suddenly vital post-war Japanese film industry. Critically lauded both at home and abroad, Hara emerged as the iconic face of Japanese art cinema, working with directors such as Akira Kurosawa and Mikio Naruse; however, her most fruitful collaboration came with director Yasujiro Ozu, who utilized her beauty and talent to perfect effect in his somber meditations on the state of the post-war Japanese family (Late Spring, Tokyo Story). Like the quietly defiant young woman she played in Late Spring, Hara defied cultural expectations and chose never to marry or have children. Despite this controversial decision, Hara remained wildly popular in Japan, where she became known as the “Eternal Virgin.” She continued to act throughout the 1950s, playing nuanced variations on the modern Japanese woman and saving her best performances for Ozu’s films. Shortly after Ozu’s death in 1963, Hara blindsided the cinema world with the announcement that she was retiring. Rumors swirled that she had never enjoyed acting and did so only to support her large extended family, that Ozu’s death had left her too distraught to work, and - more quietly - scandalous allegations of lesbianism or some other secret. To this day - despite the best efforts of the Japanese press - her reasons remain unknown, as she has refused any and all interview or photo requests. She has reclaimed her given name, Masae Aida, and lives quietly in a small town, refusing to acknowledge her previous life as one of cinema's brightest stars.

Great Men in History: Ted Williams (A Eulogy)

The day the Slpendid Splinter went away and never came back was the saddest day in the history of baseball. His last hit was a towering 500 foot home run. He went out in a style that seems quite ironic to his final bow. Because he would turn in his proverbial grave if he ever found out that his son believed chryogenically freezing his celebrity father was a proper way to turn a profit, more important than letting him die a dignified death. A soldiers death. A Hall-of-Famers death. A man who was rail thin and believed that physics and finesse were the answers to hitting the ball over the fence, not large muscles and brute force. The day Ted Williams died....those who loved him wept tears of sorrow and loss, the Splendid Splinter is gone but he is not forgotten. For those who said no to "The Babe" and laughed in the face of Mickey Mantle moving his way up the organ transplant list just so he could get one last swig out of a bottle. We salute the real father of the long-ball. If Ted wanted people to remember him for all the right reasons he wouldn't want the legions of adoring fans to forget his tours of duty in both World War II and Korea. We know the truth. Ted's statistics would have been even more impressive if he hadn't been part of the Greatest Generation and lose nearly 6 seasons in his hitting prime just so he could be one more American Hero. Mr. Williams flew fighter jets just as well as he could swing a baseball bat. Sport and Baseball enthusiasts, fans of the game, find me a better man than the one spoken of here! For Teddy Williams will forever be that little boy standing in the middle of some San Diego train track swinging a pillow as if it were a Louisville Slugger, driving some poor high heater into the grand stands of eternal greatness.

Great Men in History: John Cazale

His film career spanned only six years and five films, but during this all too brief span John Cazale established himself as one of cinema's all-time great supporting actors. A childhood friend of Al Pacino, Cazale was a celebrated stage actor before getting his first film role as Fredo in The Godfather. His forlorn appearance and timid demeanor made him perfect for roles that required sensitivity and balance and he would appear opposite Pacino again in The Godfather Part II and Sydney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon. In The Deer Hunter he played a weak-willed friend to Robert De Niro's alpha male, but few people outside the film industry realized that Cazale was married to the film's talented and stunning lead actress, Meryl Streep. The two met while working on a play, and it was at Streep's insistence that the studio kept him on the picture despite knowing that he had been diagnosed with terminal bone cancer; he died before the film's release. Pacino referred to him as "my acting partner," and it's difficult to imagine some of cinema's most enduring moments without him there.

Great Men in History: Harry Smith

One of the truly great representatives of the 20th century spirit of modernism and experimentation, Harry Everett Smith made his mark as an experimental filmmaker, anthropologist, shaman, artist, and collector. Smith drew little distinction between spheres of knowledge that he found interesting, and much of his work reflects this inclusive, non-discriminatory mindset. His early film work was comprised of abstract animations that he painstakingly painted frame by frame directly onto film stock, and some examples of paintings that survived his scattered lifestyle are note by note interpretations of his favorite jazz pieces. He was a voracious collector of both art and music, amassing a huge collection of Ukrainian Easter eggs and the world's largest collection of paper airplanes. In 1952 he released the Anthology of American Folk Music, a comprehensive, meticulously notated collection of rare folk recordings culled from his private collection. One of Smith's last public appearances was at the 1991 Grammy Awards where he received a Chairman's Merit Award for his incredible contribution to the world of folk music. Smith accepted the award graciously, stating that "I'm glad to say my dreams came true. I saw America changed by music." Harry Everett Smith died on November 27, 1991, in the arms of Italian poet Paola Igliori at New York's Chelsea Hotel. He is purported to have spent his last breaths singing.

Great men in history: James Coburn

Academy Award winning actor (Affliction) and all around bad-ass, James Coburn appeared in hundreds of films and television series over his nearly five decade long career. Starting in television westerns, Coburn established himself as one of the preeminent actors in the genre and would go on to work with western masters Sergio Leone (Duck, You Sucker) and Sam Peckinpah (Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid, aka the saddest, most beautiful western ever made). Over the years, Coburn - who was close friends with Bruce Lee - proved himself to be a versatile and charismatic actor who could move easily between genres. While he's best remembered for his iconic western roles, discerning viewers might recognize him as the voice of eco-villain Looten Plunder (You'll pay for this, Planet!!) on the cartoon series Captain Planet or in his role as El Sleezo Cafe Owner in The Muppet Movie. Felled by a heart attack in 2002, Coburn lives on in his impressive body of work.