With a portfolio to match any one in the industry, creating the iconic movie posters for all sorts of films in the seventies and eighties from Chinatown to Flash Gordon to the documentary of Woodstock, we appreciated the introduction to the graphic designer Richard Amsel (*1947 - †1985) from Reagan Ray and the artist’s distinctive soft, decorative signature style. Prolific and stellar, Amsel’s career was cut short after a diagnosis of AIDS and dying three months later—prompting many tributes and memorials that sustain his indelible legacy. Peruse a whole gallery of Amsel’s work at the link above.
Tuesday 3 August 2021
netscape navigator
We enjoyed contemplating these social media properties featured in Print Magazine reimagined with retro trappings of the late nineties and early noughts (see also) from website builder Zyro. Though nostalgia is not the best impulse to reach for and those Golden Ages are illusory, we liked the subtle indictment of the platforms that ruined the internet and society at large.
catagories: ๐, networking and blogging
aw:
wag the dog
From the always engaging Language Hat, which just turned nineteen years old, we learn that the above phrase has a specific origin (see previously here, here and here) and can in print be sourced to the rather infamous 1858 play by Tom Taylor Our American Cousin (a boorish American comes to England as claimant to an estate—think King Ralph) and a scene with the characters Lord Dundreary and Florence: “Now I’ve got another. Why does a dog waggle his tail?” “Upon my word, I’ve never inquired.” “Because the tail can’t waggle the dog. Ha!” Familiar with the performance and audience reaction, Abraham Lincoln’s assassin timed his gun shot to be muted by laughter when the eponymous cousin Asa Trenchard says to Missus Mountchessington: “Don’t know the manners of good society, eh? Well—I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal, you sockdologizing old man-trap!” More philological investigations at the link up top.
catagories: ๐บ๐ธ, ๐ญ, ๐ฌ, networking and blogging
Monday 2 August 2021
6x6
roll for perception: the official video for the 1987 Rick Astley hit (previously) surpasses one billion views
until proven safe: EURIDICE, the eponym from the mythological Eurydice who Orpheus failed to retrieve from the Underworld, is the acronym for European Underground Research Infrastructure for the Disposal of Nuclear Waste in a Clay Environmenta clokey production: a bot scours Gumbasia for random screen-grabs
pelagic waters: exploring the oceans’ midnight zone beyond the reach of the sun’s rays
portrait of a teenage alcoholic: a 1975 after school special starring The Exorcist’s Linda Blair and Star Wars’ Mark Hamill
an eternal golden braid: some crib-notes and a course on the 1987 classic Gรถdel, Escher, Bach
the manhattan project
The phenomenon of nuclear fission only just discovered and prompting the United States to eventually establish its own research programme, with the endorsement of Albert Einstein Hungarian physicist Szilรกrd Leรณ (*1898 - †1964) dispatched his letter to president Franklin D. Roosevelt on this day in 1939. Immediately comprehending the ramifications for energy production or warfare having conducted experiments with less fissile materials and unable to sustain a chain-reaction, Szilard first in mid-July thought to warn Belgium as their colony in the Congo held the largest known reserves of uranium and was fearful that the Germans could persuade them to part with it handily, not realising what they were trading away and had recruited Einstein to speak on his behalf through consular channels as Einstein was friends with the Belgian royal family. With the closing salutation, “Yours truly,” the letter began:
In the course of the last four months it has been made probable – through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in America – that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future.Specifically citing the suspension of the sales of uranium from occupied Czechoslovakia and on-going research in German universities, Szilard further conjectured that while it probably was not feasible to miniaturise the components necessary for a nuclear reaction for portable bombs and mobile warheads, he did believe it likely that the process could be accommodated on board a ship that could attack a city from the harbour. FDR (his reply pictured) was delivered this executive summary plus a longer, more detailed explanation of the science underpinning his forewarning.
aces & eights
Referenced throughout popular culture including tattooed on McMurphy’s shoulder in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the cards drawn in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and numerous law enforcement emblems—especially in Las Vegas, the Old West Wild Bill Hickok folk hero had just been dealt this allegedly cursed poker hand (with a fifth unrevealed wild card) on this day in 1876 during a heated game at Nuttal & Mann’s Saloon in Deadwood, Dakota when shot in the head by a drunk Jack McCall. A bit of creative retconning fifty years on solidified this narrative, whereas previously the Dead Man’s hand referred to a full-house with three Jacks and a pair of Tens and regarded with suspicion.