the year 2015

What started as a small crawfish boil for 70 people homesick for boiled crawfish in 1989, has turned into Michael Arnone's 16th Annual Crawfish Fest. To be held at the Sussex County Fairgrounds, in Augusta, NJ on Friday June 3rd-thru Sunday June 5th.

"I'm the guy they used to call Deep Throat"Former FBI agent W. Mark Felt says he was the legendary source who leaked secrets about Nixon's Watergate coverup.

lalo schifrin
1966

This is a hard-swinging album in which Schifrin invents or borrows 18th-century classical themes and sets them into big band or small-combo contexts. Such is Schifrin's chameleonic mastery that his own inventions are a match for the themes of the period, and he is tasteful enough not to overload the window dressing and keep the rhythm section loosely swinging nearly all the time. Once, Lalo tries something wacky; on "Beneath a Weeping Window Shade," he has singer Rose Marie Jun intoning a madrigal-like Francis Hopkinson song against some avant-garde multiphonic flute from Jerome Richardson, ministrations from a string quintet, and Schifrin's own comments on harpsichord. There is also a stimulating pastiche "Aria" that sounds like Schifrin arguing with Heitor Villa-Lobos and Henry Purcell in 9/8 time. With the cream of New York's jazz session men of the '60s on board -- including the inimitable Grady Tate on drums, Richardson on flute and tenor, Gene Bertoncini on guitar, and J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding on trombones -- and Creed Taylor's production dictating the distinctive timbres, jazz buffs will have a fine time with this collision of the centuries, which leans heavily to the jazz side.

At PostSecret, confessions are consistently engaging, original and well told. How come? The Web site gives people simple instructions. Mail your secret anonymously on one side of a 4-by-6-inch postcard that you make yourself.

......in one place

amen

Cartography or mapmaking (in Greek chartis = map and graphein = write) is the study and practice of making maps or globes. Maps have traditionally been made using pen and paper, but the advent and spread of computers has revolutionized cartography. Most commercial quality maps are now made with map making software that falls into one of three main types; CAD, GIS, and specialized map illustration software.

look into the true Peters projection of the world

A Sign of Strength: Men line up outside Ramen Jiro in Tokyo, waiting their turn to face the challenge of finishing a whole bowl of noodles.

this is my favorite NPR story of all time....enjoy

"The old tunnel, that used to lie there under ground, a passage of Acheron-like solemnity and darkness, now all closed and filled up, and soon to be utterly forgotten, with all its reminiscences; however, there will, for a few years yet be many dear ones, to not a few Brooklynites, New Yorkers, and promiscuous crowds besides. For it was here you started to go down the island, in summer. For years, it was confidently counted on that this spot, and the railroad of which it was the terminus, were going to prove the permanent seat of business and wealth that belong to such enterprises. But its glory, after enduring in great splendor for a season, has now vanished—at least its Long Island Railroad glory has. The tunnel: dark as the grave, cold, damp, and silent. How beautiful look earth and heaven again, as we emerge from the gloom! It might not be unprofitable, now and then, to send us mortals—the dissatisfied ones, at least, and that's a large proportion—into some tunnel of several days' journey. We'd perhaps grumble less, afterward, at God's handiwork."

The Atlantic Avenue Tunnel or Cobble Hill Tunnel of the Long Island Rail Road is an abandoned railroad tunnel beneath Atlantic Avenue in downtown Brooklyn, New York. When open, it ran for about 2750 feet between Hicks Street and Boerum Place.

does anyone have vol.1?

check out the short story Super-Toys Last All Summer Long by Brian Aldiss. This is the story that inspired the movie AI, which would have been Kubrick's next movie. Spielberg ended up directing it, but we all know how much better it would have been if old Stanley was still around......

Stanley Kubrick was not the first auteur to use classical music, but he was the first to really change how we would look at classical music and on a regular business. . He re-conceptualized the pieces, creating new permanent meanings and associations. You cannot think of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" or "Blue Danube" without picturing the black monolith or the spinning space stations of 2001. Thinking back on Clockwork Orange, Beethoven's 9th merges with Alex sitting in the lobotomy chair, his eyes pulled open. The uses of this music can be profound (Barry Lyndon), ironic (Dr. Strangelove) or haunting (Shining). Any way the music is used , Kubrick has taken possession of these works.

Also Sprach Zarathustra
Requiem for Soprano, Mezzo Soprano, Two Mixed Choirs and Orchestra
Lunar Landscape
The Blue Danube
Gayne Ballet Suite (Adagio)
Atmospheres
The Blue Danube
Also Sprach Zarathustra

Robert Moses was the master builder of 20th century New York City and its suburbs. As the shaper of a modern city, his only peer is Baron Haussmann of Second Empire Paris, and he was easily the most polarizing figure in the history of urban planning. Although he never held elective office, Moses was the most powerful person in New York City government from the 1930s to the 1950s. Moses literally changed shorelines, built roadways in the sky, and transformed vibrant neighborhoods forever. His decisions favoring highways over public transport formed the modern suburbs of Long Island and influenced a generation of engineers, architects, and urban planners who spread his philosophies across the nation. In New York City, Moses displaced hundreds of thousands of people, contributed to the ruin of the South Bronx, the departure of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the decline of public transport, but Moses' projects were also considered by many to be necessary for the region's development. To Moses' critics, however, he will always be remembered for believing that "cities are for traffic," and "if the ends don't justify the means, what does?"

For all the information you will ever need about Moses, and the building of the tri-state metropolitan area, read The Power Broker.

Walters Hot Dogs
since 1919

Amedeo Modigliani
1884-1920

Amedeo Modigliani was the bohemian artist par excellence - his posthumous legend is almost as famous as Van Gough's. In stylistic terms he was an oddity: contemporary with the Cubists, but not part of their movement, he forms a bridge between the generation of Toulouse-Lautrec and the Art Deco painters of the 1920s.

simon curtis
"EVEN now, four years later, people who know Simon Curtis still can't believe the odd series of events that led him to spend the last year in jail. And although Mr. Curtis readily admits that he was living recklessly, drinking too much, taking drugs and spraying graffiti on the Lower East Side, he didn't exactly see a state prison in his future when he went to an art opening on the night of July 14, 2001."

not really a genius per say....but a most entertaining story from the new york times deserves a read

Pants Designed Especially For Sport Fans

Powerball lottery officials suspected fraud: how could 110 players in the March 30 drawing get five of the six numbers right? That made them all second-prize winners, and considering the number of tickets sold in the 29 states where the game is played, there should have been only four or five.
But from state after state they kept coming in, the one-in-three-million combination of 22, 28, 32, 33, 39.
It took some time before they had their answer: the players got their numbers inside fortune cookies, and all the cookies came from the same factory in Long Island City, Queens.
Chuck Strutt, executive director of the Multi-State Lottery Association, which runs Powerball, said on Monday that the panic began at 11:30 p.m. March 30 when he got a call from a worried staff member.
The second-place winners were due $100,000 to $500,000 each, depending on how much they had bet, so paying all 110 meant almost $19 million in unexpected payouts, Mr. Strutt said. (The lottery keeps a $25 million reserve for odd situations.)
Of course, it could have been worse. The 110 had picked the wrong sixth number - 40, not 42 - and would have been first-place winners if they did.
"We didn't sleep a lot that night," Mr. Strutt said. "Is there someone trying to cheat the system?" He added: "We had to look at everything to do with humans: television shows, pattern plays, lottery columns."
Earlier that month, an ABC television show, "Lost," included a sequence of winning lottery numbers. The combination didn't match the Powerball numbers, though hundreds of people had played it: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42. Numbers on a Powerball ticket in a recent episode of a soap opera, "The Young and the Restless," didn't match, either. Nor did the winning numbers form a pattern on the lottery grid, like a cross or a diagonal. Then the winners started arriving at lottery offices.
"Our first winner came in and said it was a fortune cookie," said Rebecca Paul, chief executive of the Tennessee Lottery. "The second winner came in and said it was a fortune cookie. The third winner came in and said it was a fortune cookie."
Investigators visited dozens of Chinese restaurants, takeouts and buffets. Then they called fortune cookie distributors and learned that many different brands of fortune cookies come from the same Long Island City factory, which is owned by Wonton Food and churns out four million a day.
"That's ours," said Derrick Wong, of Wonton Food, when shown a picture of a winner's cookie slip. "That's very nice, 110 people won the lottery from the numbers."
The same number combinations go out in thousands of cookies a day. The workers put numbers in a bowl and pick them. "We are not going to do the bowl anymore; we are going to have a computer," Mr. Wong said. "It's more efficient."

(from the New York Times 5.11.05)

thanks to mr. hollywood, and his single handed control of the entire entertainment business, i shall be enjoying an advanced screening of the much anticipated Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. i will momentarily suspend my longing for the original quality of the movies, and be transported back to my strong geek days of 1983.........

"jam on it"
Newcleus 1983

Although they recorded only two albums, Newcleus contributed one true electro classic in "Jam on Revenge (The Wikki-Wikki Song)," which has been immortalized on hundreds of hip-hop mixtapes and often included in even techno DJs' sets. The origins of Newcleus lay in a 1977 Brooklyn DJ collective known as Jam-On Productions, including Ben "Cozmo D" Cenac, his cousin Monique Angevin, and her brother Pete (all teenagers and still in high school). Many members - MCs as well as DJs - came and went as the group played block parties all over the borough, and by 1979, the group centered around Cenac, his future wife Yvette "Lady E" Cook, Monique Angevin, and her future husband, Bob "Chilly B" Crafton. (The foursome named their group Newcleus as a result of the coming together of their families).

Isamu Noguchi

How does one sculpt space? How do objects give form to the surrounding emptiness? This puzzle, posed both by Europeans like Giacometti and Brancusi and the Zen artists of Japan, creates a theme that runs through the work of Isamu Noguchi. It is not one he attempted to solve, but like the Zen master, posed the question in different ways.

One of the great sculptors of the 20th century, Noguchi created "lived spaces" for the theater, interiors gardens and playgrounds. He also sought to bring sculptural qualities to the many objects he designed for common use. As a young man, Noguchi studied medicine at Columbia University, but abandoned medicine to pursue painting and sculpture and in 1927, a Guggenheim fellowship took him to Europe. In Paris, he had the great good fortune to be apprenticed in the studio of Constantin Brancusi, whose investigations of form and space recalled the art and architecture Noguchi knew from childhood years spent in Japan.

check out Buddy Rich battle Animal on the skins.........link via the nonist