look for the helpers—you will always find people who are helping

Our peripatetic ally Messy Nessy Chic brings us a nice vignette remembering Patrol Officer François Scarborough Clemmons, who was a part of Mister Roger’s Neighborhood for over a quarter of a century, becoming one of the first reoccurring African-American characters on US television.
The two were acquaintances from church (a choir member who would go on to become a Grammy-winning singer) and the show’s creator approached him in 1968 about having a role as a policeman, which Clemmons initially rejected because of his bad experiences with cops growing up but eventually embraced the idea.  Fred Rogers, in a 1969 episode, had invited Clemmons to cool his feet and take a break from his regular beat and the two reprised the scene for their last appearance together in 1993.

možnosti dialogu

Courtesy of Weird Universe, we are introduced to the portfolio of retired Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer through his surreal 1982 stop-motion Dimensions of Dialogue.
Lauded by those who claim Švankmajer as their influence and inspiration including Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam, the award-winning short features first ornately articulated Arcimboldo-like visages that engage in eternal conversation, hybridising and then wearing down the ornamentation and reducing one another to constituencies of efficiency and economy. The second and final segments explore other avenues of interlocution and have equally consumptive, bluntingly transformative outcomes. Other works include re-animating lost and everyday objects to tell stories from Edgar Allen Poe, Lewis Carroll and others.

nachteil

The potential move to reduce US troop presence stationed in Germany by ten thousand by September is rooted in pettiness and really speaks to how far the relationship of the NATO alliance has degraded, especially in comparison to the last draw-down (of comparable reduction-in-force and rebasing which saw the closure of Heidelberg and several other posts but was done with coordination and planning that took nearly a decade to execute.   Reducing their footprint to a toehold is one thing and is a slight to an ally and does not foster a sense of partnership, and perhaps most significantly, the plan includes a cap that limits the number of servicemembers to twenty-five thousand and would severely curtail future large-scale exercises.

logline

Via Super Punch, we discover an archivist has collected and is in the process of curating choice samples of around one thousand unproduced properties acquired by a major film studio, yet for reasons have gone unproduced, dating from the fifteen-year period from 1983 to 1997, a broad span of time to condemn cinematically but we are—possibly just by being confronted with some of these elevator pitches—having difficulty summoning up any actual or good movies from that time at the moment.
Projects are neatly indexed with a card catalogue, a logline being an industry term for a brief synopsis with the plot, stakes and audience hook. Which ones of these spec scripts would you like to see made? We were intrigued by Airport Summer, a 1986 high-concept comedy about a high school graduate who has to work at an airport in order to earn tuition money to pursue his degree in aeronautical engineering.

röhrensound

Via TYWKIWDBI, we are treated to the musical stylings of talented saxophonist Armin Küpper as he performs duets with natural gas pipeline being laid outside of Mönchengladbach. The reverberating effect is being called “pipeline funk.”

xx. prairial

Corresponding with the above date on the Republican Revolutionary calendar—the equivalent of today on the Gregorian—lawyer and statesman, Maximillen François Marie Isidore de Robespierre aghast at the idea of complete rejection of the role of god and religion, sought to achieve a happy medium between Roman Catholicism and the agnostic Cult of Reason, proclaimed in Year II (1794) of the Republic the Festival of the Supreme Being, Féte de l’Être suprême.
Meticulously planned and with holidays scheduled in advance every tenth day—the equivalent of fortnightly celebrations, many saw the courtly and bureaucratic nature of the event as a substitution and surrogate for the old ways that the movement had sought to overturn, especially the paternal nature of this civic, state religion that believed that reflection and threat of retribution were necessary for a democratic society. The Thermidorian Counter Revolt (so called for taking place not long afterwards on IX. Thermidor II—27 July 1794) was in response to this re-imposition and precipitated Robespierre’s downfall and his guillotining—the agenda of observances falling away immediately thereafter, with Napoleon restoring Catholicism by Year X.

/ˈmæŋki/

From a concerned citizen, we learn a new bit of slang with the intensifier derived ultimately from the Latin mancus, which also lends us maimed, mutilated and mangled that signals something unpleasant, dirty or disgusting.
The bigger story of course behind this errant graffiti tag in a park in Edinburgh besides the etymology is that the swan is somehow taking it as a personal affront and wants to shield his cygnets (the article goes on to identify the father, a cob—the name of an adult male from the Middle English word cobbe for group leader, whereas an adult female is called a pen, as their plumage made the best quills and hence the writing implement) from such language. Across the Atlantic, the similar-sounding janky refers to poor quality or unreliable objects and has an unknown origin—perhaps from junky.

an absurd and immature antic

With an albeit split but precedent-setting decision issued on this day in 1971, the Supreme Court of the United States of America overturned the charges of lower jurisdictions and absolved the defendant of the crime of disturbing the peace by his choice of attire while in the corridors of the Los Angeles Courthouse.   Three years prior, the then nineteen year old defendant, Paul Robert Cohen, was arrested for wearing a jacket that bore the words F*ck the Draft (see also here and here) when called to a hearing—Cohen removed the offending article when entering the courtroom and taking the stand, however.
The bailiff communicated this to the judge, whom had Cohen taken into custody after his testimony and arraigned. Arguing that his behaviour was provocative and calculated to shock by announcing his views on the war in Vietnam, the county court ruled that his wardrobe choice was below the minimum threshold of civility and not suitable for public view. The case was elevated and the California Supreme Court concluded that neither itself or the lower courts were competent to determine what language was suitable for public consumption without overstepping their powers and trouncing on rights of free speech and referred the matter to the national high court to decide. Despite the chief justice instructing his associates that it would not be necessary to “dwell on the facts”—in effect, an order to censor the wording on the jacket, which was immediately ignored, and the dissenting argument characterising the provocation as the above and thus not a form of protected speech, the case was ruled in favour of Cohen, enshrining the right to express such sentiments and to not have them silenced and suppressed prima facie.