Consortium of Seven: Year 4

In July 1998, the design for a new Scottish Parliament building was chosen. Construction began the following June. Scotland hadn’t previously had its own parliament for almost 300 years. Many new modern buildings are controversial & over time those buildings tend to become iconic…or at least instantly recognisable. One of the most identifiable aspects of the Scottish Parliament building is the set of windows. The design of these is said to be inspired by “The Skating Minister” by Henry Raeburn, a painting which has appeared in a previous blog. Sadly, architect Enric Miralles (1955-2000) died before work on the building was completed (2004). The building was criticised, not only for the cost (it was completed for ten times the original estimate), the location & some two thousand design changes, but also for its overall complexity or “piling on the motifs & ideas…”  Whatever we think of the original design, twenty-five years after its selection it’s difficult to imagine ...

        C ruising into an extended July 4th weekend. One with still far too many thunderstorms predicted, but I'll take that over being trapped inside the heat dome a growing part of the country's been dealing with.       Here we are, on the very last day of June 2023, teetering on the edge of July. A busy week, one with its own stresses that will be following me into the new month. However, I have the the illusion of safety in the extended holiday weekend, and I'm anxious to get to it.       One, quick, streaming media development note: Subscribers to Paramount+ received word this week that the service has suddenly been expanded, and now also includes all of Showtimes' series, specials, and movies. The price has gone up, too, btw. Those with the ad-supported version will see it go from $4.99 to $5.99 with the new month. The monthly premium package (commercial-free) is going from $9.99 to $11.99. So, if you ha...

 Happy Thursday, everyone!  Sorry about the lateness on this one but work caught up with me.  As we continue on our adapttaions of The Invisible Man , this week is the second Japanese adaptation in a row, The Invisible Avenger .   The movie literally opens up with an invisible man being struck by a car and appearing as he dies and surprise , he's part of a group of Japanese commandos who were turned invisible by a ray so they could be better soldiers.  How do we know this?  Oh, because the government immediately tells everyone about it and says hey, there's one more invisible guy out there so...keep a look out for him?  Which is such a weird thing to happen in any government that I actually rewound to make sure I had heard correctly.  Nanjo, the remaining invisible man, has been disguising himself as a clown because no one questions them wearing greasepaint all the time (a touch I really appreciated) and working the streets while he also befr...

  Over at Internet Archive , one can find an ultra-are paperback romance by actor-turned-author George Nader. The book is called Chrome and the story of the romance between a man and his male robot. You won't be surprised to hear that the Jove paperback was published in 1978. George Nader was a handsome fellow, a gay man who was "discreet" with his partner Mark. He did a handful of movies and some TV work.     As you see from this poster for the steamy jungle flick "Congo Crossing," George was considered leading man material. There's one film role George Nader is remembered for, whether he wanted it to be that way or not. Yes, George got top billing in 1953's incredible-for-all-the-wrong-reasons motion ;picture Robot Monster."  That's the movie where the bad guy has a gorilla suit and a space helmet.  George Nader seems to have led a relatively happy life, especially by Hollywood standards. And in the 21st century, George's novel Chrome ...

The Kay Kemble Project , being history-based, tends to lead me down rabbit holes. Most of the time this is positive or at least neutral and interesting, but once in a while I find myself in a toxic radioactive mine, research-wise. This happened to me recently while looking stuff up about the 1933 film "Herioes for Sale."  The pre-Code movie has Loretta Young and other Hollywood stars in it, the but story about a veteran with drug problems was based on the work of German author Hans Hellmut Kirst.      To find out more about Kirst, I did what I always do when looking up 20th century history: I borrowed some old books from the public library. Our local library has mostly murder mysteries and reference books students used to use for school papers, but our statewide system has a lot of college libraries and they have shelf room for the dustier old tomes.       Hans Hellmut Kirst, I soon discovered, had a whole series of books about an Everyman character, a...

You know how a song gets stuck in your head?  Well, since sometime late last evening, I’ve had the Beatles’ “Your Mother Should Know” whirling through my brain. It was there when I was munching on some chips and dip before I went to bed last night, and it’s still there this morning. It’s as if something wants me to write about it this morning. So, okay.  As I would guess many know, the song first showed up as part of the soundtrack for the Beatles’ poorly received television film Magical Mystery Tour in December 1967 and was included on the six-track EP released in Britain at the time. Here in the U.S., those six tracks made up one side of the LP Magical Mystery Tour , with Side Two of the album made up of five singles and B-sides that had been already released on 45s here in the States but that had not yet shown up on any albums.  Releasing singles or EPs and then not putting them on any albums was standard practice for EMI in Britain; it was not in the U.S., whic...

Photoblog, odds and ends … The sign says Hippity Hoppity Get off my Property. And don’t park. Cute little house.  A repeat, but it came up when I was searching for something else. The pool house/recreation building.  Juvenile gator. We saw him eating a snake earlier.  Rainy season. This beautiful blue gray every day.  Sometimes the trees look like…something that might chase you.  Mike and Sandy getting exercise. Grounding and getting vitamin D.  I’m so glad when rainy season comes back because the creek and it’s inhabitants suffer toward the end of spring.  Our neighbor’s philodendron is so gorgeous on that palm. He has a green hand.  I always love to see how they’ve arranged the tiki cups at Chartreuse.  Nice place for a not dog and a beer.  A pontoon boat on the Imperial River, a lush, twisty, winding river near by.  SW Florida in summer. 

No is one of the most important words in the English language. Very useful & I use it a lot. But without the N, it would just be O. Other words I like beginning with N are nuisance, never, nosy & numbskull. The art world has other ideas… N 1. An Artist (Nantembō): The Stick of Nantenbo by Nakahara Nantenbō (1839-1925) A Zen Buddhist monk, Nakahara Natenbō is said to have beaten his students with a nanten tree stick that he’d cut himself. This 1901 painting includes a message reading how many whacks of said stick you’d receive should you speak. It goes on to inform you how many wallops you’d get if you don’t speak. I’m no Zen Master, so make of this what you will. 2. An Artwork (Night Watch): The Night Watch by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) This, one of Rembrandt’s most famous & celebrated paintings also goes by the name of “Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq” or “The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq & Willem va...

     Wednesday, or so we were told, was the official start of summer. Save for this past Monday, and a couple of brief patches of direct sunlight since, here in Eastern PA we've been under clouds, and we're told to expect clouds and frequent thunderstorms through next Wednesday. Gah. That this gives me another extended "out" for desperately overdue yard work is the bright side of that, and I'll take it.         For this week's post, it's a small scatter of items.  As ever, I invite you to look back through previous Friday posts for an array of streaming material options, as there are many items even I haven't gotten around to doing more than preview, and I watch far more video than anyone should.        Despite the much-derided (and deservedly-so, even just at the conceptual and aesthetic levels) move to use AI to generate images for the title sequence for the new MCU series Secret Invasion , I otherwise enjoyed...

 Happy Thursday everyone!  It's been raining most of the week here in Richmond but we're off to Virginia Beach for the weekend so hopefully it'll be a little nicer (I've never been to Virginia Beach and I'm looking forward to it).  But in the meanwhile, let's look at what I've found lately at the stores! _______________________________________________ About a year and a half ago, podcasters John Hodgman and Elliot Kalan did a limited series recapping the 1976 BBC adaption of Robert Graves' 1934 novel about the Roman emperor Claudius and his rise to power, I, Claudius .  I'm a fan of both of their usual comedy podcasts ( Judge John Hodgman  and The Flop House , respectively) so gave it a listen but realized about 10 minutes into the first episode that I've somehow never actually watched I, Claudius !  My interest in Romans is mostly about the Republic, so I think I just never got around to it (and god knows how available it was after the initial P...