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Nero Wolfe

Like any serious reader, when I find an author I really really like, I read everything that author has written. This is sort of like a love affair between author and reader. The author gives you as much as you want; the casual date takes a kiss and moves on, while the serious lover takes it all, sometimes even repeating a book when once isn't enough. This is not casually liking an author, or even loving a particular book. This is absorbing everything until there is nothing left. For most readers, this doesn't happen very often, just as with lovers in real life it doesn't happen very often. Who has the energy? But every now and then...

I've read a lot of mysteries, and enjoy a lot of mystery authors, and have even read the full works of some of them like Hammett or Chandler. But none have been such feverish affairs as the one I have had with Rex Stout and Nero Wolfe. I remember my first Wolfe novel, The Doorbell Rang. It comes in the middle somewhere of Stout's total output (48 Wolfe books altogether), but that doesn't really matter, because the first thing you notice about the series is that you can pretty much start anywhere. Most mystery authors nowadays, if you don't read their books in the order in which they were written, you're lost: they're one giant epic in serial parts, rather than stand-alone installments. This may be fine for committed fans, but it's murder on newbies who may pick up the latest and be immediately lost. You're never lost with Nero Wolfe, though. Still, there are occasional plot developments from novel to novel, and it doesn't hurt when you get serious to read them in order. But to start, pick any one at random. Then go back and do the rest. In other words, a real easy buy-in.

The novels are narrated by Wolfe's amanuensis, Archie Goodwin, and as Annabelle Mortensen points out in The Genius of West 35th Street, he is the perfect foil to his boss. Archie is hardboiled, while Wolfe is drawing room. They are from completely different traditions in mystery writing, yet they blend perfectly, and as some would have it, uniquely. No one else ever pulled off this mix like Stout. What you learn early on in any of the stories is that Wolfe has very specific rules about how he spends his time and where. One of the real joys of the series is seeing if those rules will broken. They often are, but they still remain as rules. Stout pulls this off beautifully.

If you don't know the Nero Wolfe books, I would recommend that, first, you read one. As I said, any one. Then take a look at Mortensen's fine article, to give yourself a sense of where these books fit in the genre. Then read the rest of them. Just to keep in with the spirit of things, I'm immediately going to put Fer-de-Lance on my Kindle. I need to read this book again real soon. It's been a couple of years since my last Wolfe. I need to rejoin the pack.
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Hello. My name is John. I'll be your hitchhiker this evening.

The idea that you would be driving along and would see John Waters with his thumb out on the highway was, shall we say, a little bizarre, except with John Waters, calling something bizarre requires a lot of thought beforehand. But there he was, hitching away, and one of the cars that picked him up was carrying a bunch of indy rock musicians, and the rest is history. And also fodder, apparently, for an upcoming book.

That's the thing. Waters is a writer, and a good one. His Role Models is undownputtable, and rather undescribable aside from saying that it is, indeed, about some of his role models. It was the first book I bought for my iPad: a baptism of trash, you might say, provided that you are the sort of person who values trash.

Waters is also a talker, and in addition to recommending his book, I recommend his film John Waters: This Filthy World. It's just Waters talking, and he's a great raconteur as he talks about his filmmaking roots. And of course, he is a filmmaker, with varying results. You've probably seen Hairspray (not the musical); if not, do so now. Or Cry-Baby, with Johnny Depp. Neither is for adults only, if that's a concern. They're certainly his most accessible works.

You're on your own after that.

BigThink.com has a bunch of Waters videos (and a lot of other people as well). I picked the two below as representative. Watch them, and then ask yourself, if you saw Waters hitchhiking, would you pick him up? I would, in an instant.




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The greatest fashion show ever

In photographs, the Pantheon seems toweringly prepossessing. In fact, it is squeezed into a busy Roman street, or more to the point, a busy Roman street has sprung up around it, and this building that should be on a majestic hill is just plopped down in what is now the middle of the city. I point this out because it was on my way to visit the Pantheon that I first consciously realized that priests have to buy clothes too. And bishops and cardinals and nuns (oh my!). In a small but smartly appointed shop directly behind the Pantheon is a store where, presumably, the church elite does its shopping. There were miters and crosiers and chasubles all bejeweled and shiny in the window, fancier than anything else you might see in this fanciest of dressy cities. It was reading this article that brought it back to me, and then I remembered Fellini's Roma and the scene below, which simply is one of the most amazing pieces of film he ever shot, which is saying a lot. It's also the most amazing fashion show ever imagined, by any measure. Alexander McQueen had nothing on this.


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Today's science videos: Nao

If you were looking for a personal robot, we've got one for you. They're about $15000, but there is a discount if you purchase in bulk.

We were originally intrigued by this first video, where each dancing Nao (pronounced "now") is responding to a central computer. This article explains how; it's something called quorum sensing, which is how many bacteria coordinate. (You learn something every day.)



After watching this, via Mental Floss, I got curious about these little suckers, and went to the Nao website. This is their promotional video:



Apparently it does not come with rocket launchers to get revenge on the dolt who knocked it over without so much as a "Pardonnez-moi." I would suggest such weaponry as a future enhancement.

There are other videos out there on various versions of Nao and the different things it can do. After watching them, all you'll need to do to get one for yourself is to dig up that spare $15000.
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Italian Spiderman

In honor of The Avengers taking over the number 3 slot on the list of all-time money-earners, we present a film, in its entirety, that is not on that list. [Via Dangerous Minds]


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And then there's the Beach Boys

They're in the middle of their 50th anniversary tour. Unlike the Beatles, they didn't change music. Their role in the popular culture was to capture the California sun, surfer girls, and Thunderbirds in a musical simulacrum of adolescent angst that absolutely did that job, turning everyone who listened to it, gender notwithstanding, into a sixteen-year-old boy at the edge of beach almost having a girlfriend. In reality, the girls on the beach only seem to be within reach...

The music itself is a number of things, but most of all it's Brian Wilson. To call Wilson a genius is easy: he's the one who put all that stuff together, first in his head, then in the studio. But he didn't have an easy go of it. Brian Wilson may be a lot of things, but a quintessential beach boy isn't one of them. His mental sufferings have not made his life a particularly happy one, except, it seems, when he's doing the music. He hears voices, and doesn't want to. Sometimes it's been crippling, but now he's back on stage with the remaining Beach Boys and a big backup ensemble, and they have a new record coming out tomorrow that I have previewed and have no choice but to purchase immediately. Then again, I've bought every Brian solo album over all those years, the good and the bad, and some of them occasionally take off where only Brian can go.

The Beach Boys’ Crazy Summer is the best thing I've read on the reconstituted Beach Boys, and Brian, and the history of the group. At this very moment I'm listening to "Surf's Up" from Brian's solo reconstituted "Smile" album.

I've got to find a video!

poke poke poke

This one will do. Brian is looking awfully good on stage here. Not the Boys, but it does the job.



The Beach Boys are hitting their 70s. No, they're not boys anymore, by any stretch of the imagination. But music is still music, and we can only hope that there's more good music to come.
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Hating the Beatles

In 2012, the Beatles are a given. The Baby Boomers were their first fans, and kids today eventually discover them (not by virtue of having to dig particularly deep) and they become fans too. I've had arguments with teenagers over what album a Beatles or Stones song was on, which is a fruitless exercise on their part, as I've been listening to that album for nigh on 50 years, and they bought some compilation or a couple of downloads and read something on Wikipedia and think they're experts. No, you're not. I also had this exchange once with a high school student, when a Beatles song came up on my iPod mix over the car stereo. "I like the Beatles," he said. "What albums do you have?" I was taken aback by this. "All of them," I responded. Like, which one wouldn't I have? I mean, they broke up in 1969; by now I've been able to scrimp and save to get them all. Sometimes you forget what it's like to be a working stiff.

When the Beatles first arrived, they were not a given. Rock and roll had been around, of course, and was regarded by the establishment as a necessary evil. It was for kids, it made money, and if you wanted to, you could ignore it. Rock was an offshoot of 50s culture; The Wild One and Rebel Without a Cause predated the debut of Elvis on network television. Mainstream culture could sneer at rock if it wanted, but it wasn't the main threat: it was teenagers, period, that were an upsetting phenomenon. It was the other way around in the 60s, where the popular culture became an offshoot of rock, and that all began with the Beatles. Their breakthrough marked a new music, an invigoration of rock via that music, a new look and style, and worse, it came from another country. Popular music was threatened by rock in the 50s; in the 60s, rock became popular music. And that was that.

The Beatles weren't alone in making this happen, but they were at the forefront. Their popularity was ridiculous, and the idea of Beatlemania, and teenaged girls going hysterical at concerts, must have been a little scary to the popular performers of the time, who had no one of any age going even mildly hysterical. In their days, folks like Sinatra had their hysterical followers, but at least they shut up during the performances of what it was they were hysterical about. Not the Beatle maniacs. They just never shut up until the Beatles finally gave up performing live. Who could blame them?

As the Beatles led their cultural upheaval, there was reaction. And if you think I'm exaggerating the extent of their upheaval, measure it by the extent of the reaction. From the mainstream to the depths, from Dean Martin to Homer & Jethro, the threat was clear, and the return fire fairly immediate.



I have nothing against Homer & Jethro, but please, guys, can't we just coexist?

The A.V. Club has put together The Beatles Just Got To Go?: 18 anti-Beatles songs, a roundup of reactionist music, mostly from the time, but a few a little later. I disagree with their interpretation of the Barbarians, but then again, Moulty, the one-handed drummer, was another story altogether. The collection just shows that the Beatles really meant change for a lot of people who didn't want that particular change.
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Riding off into the weekend with Mr. Toad

An opening day attraction in both Disneyland and Walt Disney World, only the smaller California version still exists. But, thanks to the interwebs, where people have time on their hands, you can still ride it, not via somebody's shaky handheld VHS video, but via...some software or other.

As far as we know at Grinwout's, this is the only Disney attraction ever to send its guests to hell. Except, perhaps, for "it's a small world," but we refuse to have that discussion.


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Gilbert & Sullivan

During a trivia night, I asked a group of teenagers to fill in the blank: "For I am the very model of a [blank]."

Blank indeed: blank stares all around.



Gilbert wrote the words, Sullivan wrote the music, and they were a big hit in their day. Patter songs, like that of the Major-General, were a feature in their operettas. So was patent silliness, like the encores in this trio. John Reed was a legendary G&S performer, and one imagines that his work with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company is representative of how the shows were performed when they were originally produced.



I can't resist Todd Rundgren and Taj Mahal having their go at it, but John Reed was better.



We could go on. The movie of The Pirates of Penzance is a perfectly good starting point for G&S noobs, although fans of the Marx Brothers might prefer the 1920ish The Mikado with Eric Idle. It doesn't matter. Either way, don't think of these as dead old examples of an art form that is long dead. Today's musical theater is nothing more than G&S in modern dress: singing, dancing and joking around at a high level. And the music is wonderful, and the lyrics, for the most part, timeless.

"Ring the merry bells on board-ship, wend the air with warbling wild."
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Star Wars recast

What we've got here is the radio play of Star Wars, performed by voice actors doing pretty much every voice you can think of from George Takei to Stimpy, changing roles after every scene. It takes a minute or two to go through the introductions and get started, but be patient. You will be rewarded.


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Marilyn

We've reached the point where Marilyn Monroe doesn't exist anymore. Instead, the girl born Norma Jeane Mortensen on June 1, 1926, has morphed into whatever the beholder wishes her to be. Needless to say, this arises to a great extent from the way she looked. Keep in mind that she died at the age of 36, which means that throughout her entire career she was pretty much always young (to varying degrees) and always sexy (ditto). She was referred to as a sex symbol during her lifetime, but worked hard to become a good actress. The pressure to be Marilyn Monroe was rough on her, as it would be on anyone. We don't have to look far nowadays to see people who can't handle the pressures of fame and publicity, but she was one of the first to suffer those pressures in a very public fashion (her stardom began as the studios were losing control of their publicity machines, not to mention the fact that her marriages to the world's greatest baseball player and the world's greatest playwright were noteworthy in and of themselves). Apparently she died as a result of those pressures.

One wonders what she would have been like if she had not died. Would she have matured into a great actress? Would she have faded away as her sexy image was passed along to younger actresses?

I'm betting that young people today don't know much about MM's work. They certainly know her name and her fame, but have they seen any of her pictures? Some Like it Hot is still one of the funniest movies ever made. It should be on everyone's must-see list. Bus Stop is corny fifties drama, but it's good corny fifties drama and MM is perfect in it. Watch The Misfits if you want to judge where her acting was headed. And if you want to see her shine at her best, check out How to Marry a Millionaire or one of her other signature roles, Lorelei Lee, in this one, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes:



Whatever you do, do watch the movies. The Marilyn Monroe that the movies created was the one on the screen. See that one, and let it go at that.
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More Eurovision

Hairpin entertains (?) us with songs that didn't make it to the finals this year.

I can't imagine why. Especially the popo guys.

Five Songs That Should Have Made It to the Eurovision Song Contest Finals

And here's our original link, if you missed it.
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The depths of ventriloquism

Automatonophobes of the world, unite! You are not alone. Coulrophobia gets all the press these days, but let's face it: clowns aren't half as scary as ventriloquists' dummies. It's due to the old uncanny valley: the more something that isn't human approaches humanness, the weirder it gets. And what approaches humanness without actually getting there as well as a good old-fashioned dummy, especially one that's been through the mill of time and would be weird looking even if it weren't a dummy?

io9 starts the ball rolling with their Vintage ventriloquism portraits were incredibly unnerving, but then there's the link back to Flickr with more gems than the average person can bear: the one with the woman and the soldier will be keeping me up nights, I'll tell you that.

A little research into ventriloquism uncovers what you would expect, that it goes back to the ancient Greeks and had all sorts of ups and downs and connections with witches and whatnot up until the birth of popular culture, where it found its metier on the stage, and ventriloquists learned to drink water and throw their voices at the same time (except for Albert Brooks, whose dummy used to drink water while Brooks himself talked, but that's postmodernism for you). The greatest popularizer of modern ventriloquism was Edgar Bergen, who gained his popularity on the radio. Which is a poser. Think about it. A ventriloquist. On the radio. No wonder his lips moved so much when he finally made it to television.

Ventriloquism isn't seen much anymore, but automatonophobes can get their fix at places like Walt Disney World, where the automatons are animated and in many cases are even more uncanny. My vote for the one to avoid?



When the Mouse starts talking, I'm out of there.
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Queen Victoria's diaries

The youngest child of Victoria was, of course, Princess Henry of Battenberg. Which immediately raises the question, where exactly is Battenberg? That's the great thing about looking this stuff up. You learn all sorts of things that you didn't need to know. Battenberg, in addition to being a sponge cake, is located somewhere in Germany. Once upon a time on the continent semi-autonomous states were all the rage, and European royalty was rather, uh, common, so to speak. You couldn't swing a cat without hitting the odd duke, but that was then, and nowadays they're all on the Euro and things ain't what they used to be.

Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom, the aforementioned princess of Battenberg, was designated by her mother to always be by her side as her unofficial secretary, a chore to which she resigned herself apparently quite gracefully. Her Majesty intended for Beatrice to remain single unto the grave, but Bea managed to find the rather dashing Prince Henry of Battenberg, and convinced her mother to allow the marriage. Unfortunately Hank died young; Beatrice on the other hand carried on admirably, the last child of Victoria and Albert to pass away, in 1944. She also acted as the literary executor for her late mother. Most notably, she transcribed Victoria's diaries which, thanks to QEII (the woman, not the boat), we can now read online.

Let me put it this way: once you start diving into this material, you will surprise yourself with how long you will stay there. I guess you can't be Queen of England for, well, ever and not leave behind a thing or two of interest. Nice sketches. Interesting writing. Check this site out; if you have any interest in history, you'll really enjoy it.
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Tommy Emmanuel

Or, the best guitarist you've probably never heard of. He was born on May 31, 1955.




Emmanuel is Australian, but in one video I watched (and let me tell you, it was absolute torture to pick the videos for this post—life can be awfully nice sometimes) he claimed to now live in the US. I've only seen him live once, because he doesn't come around often, but in concert he is dynamite.



It wasn't until I was doing the research for this post that I discovered he has a brother, who also plays guitar! Talk about your sibling rivalries!



Not much video out there on Tommy playing with his hero. They have recorded together, though.



My favorite of his pieces tend to be the lightest. What a touch!



Happy birthday, Tommy. And please come back to the neighborhood. I need another concert.

A song adventure - Dream a Little Dream of Me

I see something and begin to track down versions of a song, and before I know it, I'm lost.

I started with this article on The Mamas and the Papas, which was pretty interesting, because I've always liked the group, mostly because I'm a big fan of close harmony. But let's face it. This group was all about one thing, Cass Elliot's voice. The others are fine, but she was a treasure. Even Tommy Smothers hamming it up can't ruin it.



The Ms & Ps recorded the song, but it wasn't new. It was written in 1931 and first performed by Ozzie Nelson's band.



Pretty rinky dink, but cute in its way. So let's take the greatest duet team ever paired and hear what they did with it.



Lots of other people have at this sucker, with varying results. Diana Krall jazzes and smokes it up, for instance, but as much as I like her, I wasn't taken with the video I found of her doing it live. On the other hand, since this is 2012, and the ukulele has for all practical purposes replaced all other instruments as the ax of choice, I did feel it best to close with Sophie Madeleine, one of my new favorite people, to add to all these other favorite people. (She has a bunch of videos worth exploring, and watching enough of them will sooner or later convince you to start buying her music.)


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Getting the book invented properly

Douglas Adams, of Hitchhiker's Guide fame, recorded this little piece in 1983. The Literary Platform made a competition out of it, just in time for Towel Day last week. Entrants were asked to make an animation to accompany the audio (which they could play around with). I've posted the winner here, and it's pretty cute. What's nice is that they've posted all the other entries as well, so you get to see a sort of visual theme and variation on the piece. Everyone's got a unique approach. What would you do?


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Believe the obvious

I learned three things last week. That there is only one restaurant specializing in fried anchovies in Brooklyn. That people who work in cubicles bemoan their loss of privacy. And a movie based on the game Battleship is unlikely to break box office records.

I was shocked, shocked to hear it. All of it.

This video has been making the rounds, but if you haven't seen it, well. it does Battleship one better. (Maybe they'll sell anchovies at the concession stand.)


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Heavy breathing

The best breathing in film? 2001: A Space Odyssey. Second best: Darth Vader. They're more connected than you think.

The thing about sound in a movie is that, if it's any good, for the most part, you don't notice it. It's just right. But in some movies, the sound is so integral—not the music, but the literal sound of what is happening—that it becomes part and parcel of what we most remember about the movie. Hence the breathing in 2001, for instance. There are times on the screen when that is literally the only sound. Sound man Ben Burtt refers to that when he discusses his own work on Star Wars in Ben Burtt on Star Wars, Forbidden Planet and the Sound of Sci-Fi. Kubrick's most influential of science fiction films, which made "Thus Spake Zarathustra" into a top ten hit and Elvis Presley's intro music, has an awful lot of silence in it.

When it came time for Burtt to create the sounds of Star Wars, it wasn't about silence, it was about making it real. On seeing the original film when it was released, one of the first things everyone noticed was how lived-in it looked. This wasn't some ooo-OOO-ooo science fictiony universe, this was the real universe. Ditto the sound. Although Burtt does get the credit for the two most science fictiony ooo-OOO-ooo sounds ever, the lightsaber and R2D2.

The interwebs have been all over themselves these last few days celebrating the release of Star Wars 35 years ago, with everything from song sets to plot-only videos to stamp collections. True fans of the film, and of SF films in general, should check in with this interview with Burtt in Wired for some solid reading.

Oh, and here's a little solid listening:


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Walk on the Wild Side

For no reason whatsoever, three live versions of Lou Reed, 1973, 1986 and 1997. Reed is the coolest guy in the room, the year notwithstanding (except maybe for that sax player in '97, which is the best version musically, while the '73 version is best iconically).






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How to write a book that will last forever

One thing that readers can't ignore is the bestseller list, even if they patently avoid reading anything on it. After all, it seems to take up about half the New York Times Book Review these days. How can you miss it?

The first thing we learn about popularity is that it is no particular indicator of quality. (Anyone who doubts this can learn a quick lesson by consulting the Billboard 100 and trying to find the good music.) Nevertheless, the bestseller list looms as a weekly reminder that new books are always being written, mostly by the same people over and over again, and that someone is buying them in prodigious numbers, and, probably, we are not among them.

Then again, there is a game to be played by those in a Grinwoutian position of working in the publishing trade. Since we are in charge of a series of popular novels, often drawn from the bestseller lists, and because we read an inordinate amount of popular fiction, there is always the challenge of tallying how many bestseller notches one can actually carve into the one's Kindle. There are times when I've read virtually all of the books on the list, and as often, times when I've read virtually none. Usually this is a factor of series-dom, where all the books on the list are the 27th in some series of aliens versus Jane Austen or some such that wouldn't normally fall into my purview. Still, when I see I've read a whole bunch, if not the whole bunch, I find myself gloating a bit. I feel like I have my finger on the proverbial pulse. (I also feel like my brain is melting into nothingness, but we're not here to talk about the negative side effects of keeping up.)

Another game to play, in addition to "How Many Have I Read?" is "Where are They Now?" You do this by going back to a bestseller list some many years ago, and looking at the books and their authors, and asking yourself not if you've read any of them, but if any of them are even around anymore. How many bestsellers of the past have been tossed on the dustheaps of momentary popularity? Two million people read it the day it came out, and another ten million were champing at the bit waiting for the paperback, and today you can't even find it at Amazon.

Fame is fleeting.

But not all the books on the bestseller list are mere potboilers, that you'd expect to fade away with the passing of time. Some of them, in their day, were touted as literary art. Some were by people who won the Nobel prize. Some of them were even by (shudder) Ayn Rand. So the question arises, why do some books last and others not? Assuming an inherent quality—so much for Ayn Rand—what is it about that quality that lasts, or doesn't? Why is literary fame so unpredictable is a good essay on the subject from the New Yorker Page-Turner blog. If you're interested in this subject, check it out.
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Stunts

There are some classic film stunts, like Buster Keaton's house fall in Steamboat Bill, Jr, that never get old. The idea that someone is really doing something, something that seems extremely dangerous, is what makes the great action scenes work. Come to think of it, a lot of it really is extremely dangerous, and it is not unknown for stunt people to get injured, and more than a few have even gotten killed when something went wrong, especially in the early days. Nowadays there are still plenty of stunts, but as often as not there's also CGI. Not that I want anybody to get killed or anything, but it just isn't the same.

The granddaddy of the stuntmen is probably Yakima Canutt. His greatest gag was the the old "fall off the lead horse and go under the stagecoach," but he was not averse to jumping off the top of the coach and working his way up to riding the lead horse in the first place. He's also the guy who directed the Ben-Hur chariot race.



In honor of summer, when there seems to be the most stunts in the movies, here's A Stuntman's Guide to the Most Exciting Stunts in Film History.
I'm especially taken by Jackie Chan in the department store. I got bruised just watching it.
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Eurovision 2012

Those of you who were in Baku recently are up on their Eurovision winners. Go Sweden! Except that winner Loreen (pronounced Lore - E - en) looks about as Swedish as Kermit the Frog. I saw some video where Swedish fans were over the moon because of their victory. Judge for yourself. The song sounds like every other song on pop radio, but she does dance a version of the Curly Shuffle that's sort of interesting.



I would describe Eurovision, but it's one of those things that you can easily figure out for yourself if you just watch a couple of entries. The Russian Grannies came in second, despite the fact that they've now incorporated an oven into their act, so they can bake and sing at the same time. Understandably, their contract insists that they be put up in digs with indoor plumbing (and I'm not making that up).



The competition has a big gay following, and the NY Times reported that Iran was on the alert for mobs of invading LGBTers from neighboring Azerbaijan. When the Iranians are not worried about their nuclear program, apparently they get their knickers in a twist over their total lack of homosexuals. And this despite that fact that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the most gay looking head of state on the planet.

Anyhow, here's your what they call a preview video, from Romania. I offer it because it has the best footage of a band not playing its instruments, plus nice shots of traffic down the main road of Bucharest. There's one video of this group that opens with a bunch of people photographing ATVs splashing around on a road presumably outside of Bucharest. (I don't know my Bucharest all that well.) Driving seems to be big with the Romanians.



Here's a look at the competition from the newsy side. If you were questioning my assertion about the gay following for the event, they do mention former winner Dana International, a transsexual who took the prize in 1998, much to the dismay of many of her fellow Israelis, who were back in Jerusalem wondering how she got to be the official entry. (Ahmadinejad probably still gets a kick out of that one.)




You could spend the rest of your life watching Eurovision videos, provided you've got YouTube fired up. When you're done, your assignment is to write a 1000 word essay comparing everything you've seen to what we formerly used to think of as music.

No easy task, that.
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Riding off into the weekend

To celebrate the long weekend, and a break for Grinwout's, we'll ride the New Texas Giant at Six Flags over Texas. It has two claims to fame, the steepest drop (79 degrees) of any wooden coaster, and the steepest bank (95 degrees). It's the bank that intrigues me; there's something scientifically impossible about it to my physics-deprived mind. I guess if you go fast enough, you don't fall out, so there's nothing to worry about. Sounds like a plan.

We much prefer wooden coasters over steel here at Grinwout's HQ. Look how long this ride is! And shaky.

Happy Memorial Day. And don't try this at home: it's almost impossible to film on a roller coaster without killing yourself. Worse, the video will suck, meaning that you'll both die and leave behind a crappy video as your legacy. You deserve better than that.


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Nightmare on Main Street

I have to admit that I've always found the old Disney character costumes extremely creepy.

Granted, the characters went through various phases on the screen, and the earliest Mickey Mouse looks a lot more mousey than the present one. But from the very beginning, when Disney began merchandising, the Mickey that wasn't on the screen looked pretty much like a Dantesque rat rather than a Disneyesque hero. Something about the translation from screen to three dimensions, I guess. Donald Duck, in his earliest screen incarnations, was a lot more weaselly than he became over time, but still, the merchandise was always even more weaselly. Weasel seems to be the coin of the realm in real-life character design.

Disney costumed characters go back to the 30s, long before the parks were invented. Disneyland opened in 1955, and by then, the screen characters were all the round, classic, big-eyed folks we immediately think of. But walking around the park, it was weasels, weasels, weasels. Nowadays, the latest characters are on the verge of adding yet another dimension, with articulated faces and full speaking voices, which if you ask me starts edging close to the uncanny valley, which is a whole different kind of weaselly.

io9 has a great gallery of some of these old costumes at Vintage Disneyland character costumes were the fabric of nightmares, with some links to other pages of similarly bizarre images. The whole Nightmare on Main Street aspect will definitely haunt you for a while, and make you think twice about your next trip to the creepiest happiest place on earth.
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Lego art

This video gets serious about a subject that we constantly toss around lightly. Every time you turn around on the interwebs, there's some new, often amazing, occasionally ridiculous new Lego creation. We are obviously obsessed with these little blocks and their versatility. In this short, three artists who are very much artists absent Legos, talk about Legos as art. And they show some amazing creations.



They keep raising the bar on us!

Via
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Yes, Goofy is a dog

Dippy Dawg apparently wore glasses back in the day, that day being May 25, 1932, which marked his first appearance. Aside from his laugh, which remain unchanged, he went through a number of on-screen variations before becoming Goofy in 1934.

The Goof's greatest claim to fame has to be his instructional vehicles. But he was also the typical suburban husband (named George Geef), and later had a son, Max. The identity of Max's mother would appear to be a closely held Disney secret. Nowadays the Goof is one of what are referred to as the Fab Five, the chief Disney ambassadors seen throughout the Disney empire.

Given that the Olympics are coming soon, it seems fitting as a birthday tribute to allow the Goof to bring us up to speed on them.


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Today's science video

We will now demonstrate and explain the Meissner effect:



And now for the explanation:

WTF?

Okay, we looked this up, and we really tried to understand it. It has something to do with superconductors starting to superconduct, but come to think of it, we really don't understand superconductors either, aside from a basic belief that they're more super than normalconductors. As a rule, people coming to Grinwout's for science training are going to go away about as trained as when they arrived.

Cool stuff, though. [Via Web Urbanist.]
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Museum viewing

As a museum goer, I wouldn't necessarily say that I have a set pattern of approach. Much depends on the museum itself. Is it big or small? New to me or an old standby? Is there something I particularly want to see or am I just browsing through? These factors all must be taken into consideration. Still, I think I do have some repeated characteristics.

First, I try to figure out how a gallery is designed. Should I start on the left or right side? Since someone gave some thought to hanging those pictures (for argument's sake we'll assume we're looking at paintings, but a museum is a museum is a museum), I want to follow that thought. Probably things will be arranged chronologically. That makes sense, and I'll want to follow that chronology. Then there's the reading of the overall gallery tag, if any, the big set of text that our gallery has written to explain this particular room. I don't want to guess what the room is about. And I want whatever information is being given out beforehand. I could easily see someone wanting it the other way around. Look first to get a sense of the work, then read the explanation.

Next comes the hard part. Look at the damned picture. At the individual picture level, look at the thing first before reading the tag. I find that I can easily walk up to a picture and read the tag to find out what the picture is about, then I glance at the picture and go on to the next tag, and repeat the process, hardly spending any time at all considering the art. My problem is, I tend to be word-oriented. Although I came to the museum to see the pictures, not to read the tags, I could easily spend 90% of my time reading and only 10% looking. Obviously this is something to avoid, and I make a conscious effort to do so.

I've got a two-hour span of art attention. Doesn't matter what the art is, two hours later and I'm in the gift shop. Some museums are two-hour museums. Others are two-year museums that I approach two hours at a time. I have on occasion taken a lunch break after my two hours and been able to go back for more, stretching beyond my two hours, but as time goes by my brain fills up and I'm not really looking anymore. I'm not even reading the tags!

The last step is to discuss. I will compare notes with my wife on what we saw, especially if it was something new to us. Actually, sometimes this is the penultimate step, because I'll go on to do some back reading and maybe even write something up after the fact. The thing is, I consider art to be of paramount importance, so I don't just drop in on it once in a while and that's the end of it. But still, I have my two-hour limit. If I were being paid to look at art, in other words, at best I would be a part-timer.

There are numerous studies on how exhibitors should most effectively ply their trade. Anyone who goes to museums over a space of time will see fashions in how things are presented. We are in a period now where interactivity is considered very valuable, and where exhibits and sometimes entire museums are, as some would put it, Disneyfied. The idea that works can stand alone in their presentation to the general public has long gone. Compare the old galleries of the 19th century (like in Morse's famous painting above) to present galleries. In the old galleries, painting was piled on painting and the eye went where the eye went. Now the eye probably goes where the curator wants it to go.

What a Physics Student Can Teach Us About How Visitors Walk Through a Museum is an article from the Smithsonian that covers some of this. Apparently no one has scientifically looked at how people approach museums, and while this article isn't definitive by any means, it is thoughtful.
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Elmo and Ricky Gervais

[Via Boing Boing]
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Bento

I will admit that my sad little lunch that I brought to the office today was a chicken salad sandwich over which I spent literally no time on aesthetics. Chopped up the ingredients, mixed them together and slapped them between two slices of bread. Wrap it in plastic and toss it into a brown bag. End of story.

Bento is the Japanese equivalent of the brown bag. A little rice, a little protein, a little veggie, all in a little box. Simple enough. But then we get into character bento, where just making the food edible isn't enough. It has to look like something. This is sort of Martha Stewart gone insane in a sushi factory, if you ask me, but it makes for entertaining looking food. If, that is, you want your food to be entertaining looking.

Check out Bountiful Bento! 25 Not-So Traditional Lunches for more like the picture here.
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A Child's Introduction to Jazz

They don't make kids records like this anymore, do they?



[Via Open Culture.]
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Comic book movies

When you think about it, the success of the recent batch of comic book movies is sort of unexpected, given how poorly this sort of movie usually turned out in the past. One would expect the match of comics to movies would be a natural, given the cinematic nature of comics in the first place. Cross-cutting, close-up, long-shot, you name it, they're common to both, although originally these all came from the movies. To make the static drawn page move, comics artists picked up the language of film. Of course, they could do some things movies couldn't do, at least believably, at least until CGI came along. I think good classic comics appealed the way good classic movies did, to some need for creative fantastical narrative within the little kid inside all of us. Different media, working the same brain muscles.

Nowadays there's nothing a comic can do that a movie can't do. As a result, we get movies like Battleship, an improbable concoction of CGI and commerce that audiences indicate with authority that they're simple not buying it. (One has to hope that numerous heads roll in the producers' offices for this one. What were they thinking? I can't get past the fact that somebody took a game we used to play with pencils and paper and made a plastic game out of it, much less making a movie out of that plastic game. I mean, seriously now.) On the other hand, we get comics that have completely moved away from the slam-bang cinematic into the literary, like Are You My Mother? Movies and comics, the latter spawned out of the former, have moved in whatever direction they wanted. Comics don't need the lexicon of movies anymore, and movies don't need the mythology of comics. Good is good and bad is bad, and that's all you need to know.

But when movies have directed adapted superhero comics, they've taken on a particular burden. These movies need to be slam-bang, which makes them expensive, and to earn back their costs, they have to appeal both to fans of the original comics and the general public. This is no easy feat, but lately Hollywood has been pulling it off, with the latest batch of Marvel films being almost completely successful at it. Shoshana Kessock comes up with what look to me like good reasons for this in Graphic Alchemy: The Evolution of the Comic Book Movie. If, like me, you've been enjoying these films, this article does a good job of explaining why they've been successful, and why some others haven't. (I used the Ghost Rider poster ironically, needless to say. I do sort of want to see that movie, I have to admit, but then again, I'm a fan of Nic Cage going over the top. Isn't everyone?)
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Rosemary Clooney

The early career of Rosemary Clooney was fine. The late career was brilliant. Born May 23, 1928, she did movies, TV and concerts, had ups and downs (as discussed in the interview below), but mostly she sang. And somehow, the older she got, the better she got. The voice mellowed so well. Watch this:



There's a whole bunch of small-group records with Scott Hamilton. You should buy them immediately.

Of course, with a big band, her roots, she also shines. She worked with big bands practically up to her passing in 2002.



She seems so down in this interview, but her comeback was miraculous.



And, yes, George is her nephew.

I love Rosemary Clooney's voice so much. This is what singing standards is all about. Every word is felt, every note is right, and she can swing them or croon them. Thanks, Rosie.
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I just watch it for the commercials

Substitute some big broadcast for "it" in the headline above. That's about the only times I ever watch commercials on television. Still, some of them are rather creative, and there is a set of awards, the Clios, to acknowledge the best. Here's 2012's big winner:



I originally saw this on Slate, where the point was made that, cute pigs in a machine versus cute pigs in the open air, they're still making burritos out of them...

For the full sense of the awards, of which there are many, check out the Clio website. It's like watching the Superbowl without all that pesky football to distract you from the main business.
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A song is born

"Sympathy for the Devil," to be precise.

This is apparently the Jean-Luc Godard film of the same name (AKA "One Plus One") stripped of all the political stuff. I haven't seen this since it was originally released in 1968. What's missing is the step between the dull organ approach and the funky beat approach, but still, it's amazing to watch. For all practical purposes, they go in with an idea or two, including the lyrics, and beat it up until it comes out right. Keith on bass? Readers of his Life know that this was one of the rockiest times for the group, with Jones on the way out.

This is classic. I couldn't stop watching it.



[Via Biblioklept]
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How are things on Rapa Nui?

Apparently, all those famous statues are actually guys standing in holes. Who says you don't learn something new every day?

Check out the slide show: Easter Island statues have full bodies and contain ancient petroglyphs.
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Laurence Olivier

Every Brit with a speaking part gets to be Sir somebody or other sooner or later, but Lords like Baron Olivier are few and far between. There are a few touch points in the career of Lord Larry, and if you care anything about acting you should see them. He seethes with wonderful melodramatic male beauty in Wuthering Heights. He's got that great white hair as what many say is the best Hamlet of the century. He looks like the forgotten Ramone brother in Richard III where, like any actor, he has his moments when he is too...too, but rather deliciously so. And then there's this. Don't watch it if you want to relax in your easy chair, because by the end of this little touch of Harry in the night, I promise you you're going to want to storm Agincourt.




Olivier was born on this date in 1907, played every part there was to play, won every award there was to win, and thanks to the beauty of film, will be available to history for evaluation and enjoyment as long as anyone cares about the art of acting.
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Quick take - Lego gender

I've written about this in the past, in regard to Lego's latest attempt to bring in girls. Now Boing Boing points to a new site with some descriptive facts.
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How One Drove Across the Country

Imagine a turquoise 1956 Chevy Bel Air hardtop with the proud new owners up front, their adorable son in the back, heading from the suburbs of New York across the country to Salt Lake City (and thence to Las Vegas and Anaheim). The trip, if you don't kill yourself but it you do get up every morning at the crack of dawn (I can remember my parents pulling me out of the motel cot before the sun had risen—yes, dear reader, I was that adorable son), takes about five days. So you load up the back seat with just about every portable entertainment that you can dig up to keep the adorable son entertained, and you're successful for at least a few hours on the first day, but let me tell you, even now my eyes tear over with boredom just reminiscing about it. The prairie, which in 1955 stretched roughly from Hoboken to Hollywood and Vine, was one damned nothing after another. Occasionally you would catch sight of Laura Ingalls Wilder collecting cow pies to cook the family dinner, but that was about it. The most memorable part of the trip was getting stung by a bee, since we drove with the windows open (no air conditioning back then) and the wildlife was free to visit at will. As you drove along you prayed for something interesting to look at, which is why roadside attractions sprung up in the first place. It wasn't that you really wanted to visit the Living Dinosaur Museum or the Home of the Giant Corn Cob or Great Big Hole in the Ground, because you knew that it wasn't worth a stop and it would just slow you down, but at least you got to look at the signs telling you "Only 50 Miles to the Great Big Hole in the Ground," or "Only 20 Miles to the Great Big Hole in the Ground," or "Turn back! You missed the Great Big Hole in the Ground."

And then there were the Burma-Shave signs.

Jimmie said a naughty word
Jimmie's mother overheard
Soapsuds? No!
He preferred
Burma-Shave

Some of the signs were actually about Burma-Shave (a brushless shaving cream).

All these years
Your skin has dried
Why not moisten
Up your hide
Burma-Shave

Some were advisory in a general sense.

You can beat
A mile a minute
But there ain't
No future in it
Burma-Shave

What kind is this?

The midnight ride
Of Paul for beer
Led to a warmer
Hemisphere
Burma-Shave

As the adorable son in the back seat, it took me a while to realize that the Burma-Shave part wasn't supposed to rhyme. I couldn't figure out why it was there at all, but then again, I was a kid. The signs were taken down (except for some recreations) in 1963 when the company was bought by Philip Morris, whose lawyers advised them to discontinue. Those same lawyers didn't advise them to discontinue selling cigarettes?

Get all the signs and a little backstory at The Motion-Graphic Ads Of Burma-Shave: 1927-1963.

[Via Salon]
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A pair of Bonds

I've been reading the James Bond novels lately, having been curious after seeing Casino Royale, which the critics claimed was much like the book. It was, but at that point Fleming's writing was sort of clunky. He got better though, and soon enough the Bond stories became what they should be, the perfect thing to pass the time on an airplane or equivalent. Considering what the movies became, by comparison they're not particularly complicated; you get the feeling that if someone had mentioned the idea of subplots to the author, he would have passed out from exhaustion just thinking about it. For instance, in From Russia With Love, half the book is the Russians talking about setting up a trap for Bond, then Bond sort of stumbles into the trap because the Brits are curious what kind of trap it is, and then an assassin almost kills him and it's sheer luck that Bond gets away, and there you are (until he gets killed at the end, that is). A straight line, completely. Come to think of it though, the movie was roughly the same. It wasn't until Goldfinger that the stunts and effects started outweighing the plots. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I wanted to see how they'd outdo themselves this time as much as the next fan. That's what the Bond movies were all about.

In the early films, the part of Bond fitted Sean Connery to perfection, or vice versa. But as would be expected, he got tired of the role and bowed out, to be replaced by the unfortunate George Lazenby. It's not easy replacing the perfect actor for the part, and, well, as time has demonstrated, George Lazenby was no Sean Connery. Still, there are Bond film fans who claim that On Her Majesty's Secret Service is one of the best of the lot, Lazenby or no Lazenby. This interview [via Dangerous Minds], overflowing with grainy black-and-white clips that make you think that the movie must be good to look this bad, is of great value for any Bond film fan, as a very hippy looking (and cleft-chinless) Lazenby explains what happened.



Flash forward. The next movie in the series, starring Daniel Craig, will be the Bondly titled Skyfall. This is just a teaser clip [via Esquire], unlike the extended take above, but you've got to admit, they put their money where the money ought to go. This will not be what you would call a catch-as-catch-can low-budgeter.



Over time some things change, some things remain the same. And if you don't like this particular Bond, just wait a while. A new one will be coming down the pike sooner or later. But I have to say, if that teaser is any indication, this one's got the stuff.
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Going backwards in photography

Digital cameras are wonderful, don't get me wrong. I like having a nice way to take pictures in my pocket at all times (especially since that picture-taking device also makes phone calls and plays games), and with my SLR, I like knowing that I can take pictures all day and all night and never think once about running out of film, or even worse, paying to develop all that film. But still, I remember back to my first days of photography, when I had my own little darkroom, and I developed my Tri-X film in a plastic container and then hung up the negatives to dry, and then made contact sheets and finally prints, and the whole place smelled like chemicals and the end result was something I had created from start to finish.

Now imagine that with tintypes, where as with digital there's no film, but instead of having the picture in electrons, you have in on a plate. These pictures are great, and watching the process is intriguing.




[Via Coudal] [And the Cool Hunting site isn't too shabby, either.]
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Iz

Normally we don't publish on Sundays, but for Israel Kamakawiwoʻole, we'll make an exception. Born May 20, 1969, he died way too young on June 26, 1997. Iz was a great supporter of Hawaiian rights and independence, and, of course, had one of the most wonderful singing voices of all time. When I went to find videos, it was very satisfying to see that he was getting hits of, for instance, 68 million for just one of them.

Well deserved. I wish there were more Kamakawiwoʻole music, but I am thankful for what we do have.

The Bug Man

If you can't break into movies (or painting) any other way, try entomology.



[Via Underwire]
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A portable Rube Goldberg machine

[Via Web Urbanist]
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Fantasmic

Fantasmic is a live show that first played at Disneyland before cloning out to other Disney parks. There was no theater. You stood across from Tom Sawyer island and watched this amazing thing unfold, with all sorts of pyrotechnics and images projected on screens of mist and boatloads of Disney characters and, of course, a fire-breathing dragon. The story is something about Mickey Mouse having a dream and the power of good winning out over the power of evil, and what better representative of the power of evil than Malificent, the witch in Sleeping Beauty who transforms herself into said dragon?

Kevin Kidney was an imagineer who worked on the original Fantasmic and the creation of the original dragon (which ultimately ended up being a dragon head on a stick, lately replaced by a full-blooded [?] audioanimatron). One of the things he did back in the day was create a home-brew stop-motion of the potential show-stopper, using an original model that had been designed for the show. If you're a Fantasmic fan or Disney historian, you have to see this. It's Designing a Fantasmic Dragon. And it's fascinating.
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Animatronics

Creepy and/or clever. You decide.



I've kept in the suggested videos if you want to travel further down this line. This is amazing stuff.

[Via Coudal]
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Retronaut

I've lately become quite a follower of the site Retronaut. It's collections of old materials about random things that bring you up short because, without a lot of explanation, you can see exactly how things were, and more often than not, how people expected them to be.

For instance, Tips for Single Women, 1938 includes such important dicta as "Don't sit in awkward positions" and "Don't be familiar with the headwaiter talking about the fun you had with someone else another time." Absolutely. These are definitely things I personally look for single women not to do, at least not regularly. The Invisible Mother is just... weird. Back in the 19th century, before iPhones had a built-in flash, you had to sit still for the photographer. If you wanted a baby picture, mother would cover herself up in a rug or something to hold the baby still. I guess a picture of mother and child would have been just too normal or something.

One recent post I liked was on Pepsi Ads, 1950s. It all looks like Mad Men dressed to the nines, except they're all grasping their bottles of Pepsi. You have to think that, at least in some of these cases, a nice glass of champagne might be more appropriate, or a martini or a Manhattan or whatever people drank back then when they were wearing evening gowns, but no, it's a bottle of Pepsi, as often as not without even a glass to drink it from. Some of them are less formal, though, as you scroll through, and they still look like creatures from Mars. The 1950s? How'd they ever make it to the 1960s? And no wonder everybody started wearing jeans and letting their hair grow: they just couldn't keep up all the work to look so damned formal all the time. But then again, there's probably similarly bizarre Pepsi ads for the 1960s somewhere.

This is a fun site, worth checking out.
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Woz

There's something charming about Steve Wozniak. He's so aggressively interested in technology and engineering, and seems as proud about solving the problem of cheap color on the Apple II as he does about starting the process that put a computer in virtually every home in the world. (That's Woz and his wife Janet on the left.) He's interviewed here by Australian reporter Chris Uhlmann (ABC is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation), who asks him pretty much every question you would ask him if you had the chance. Honestly, I wish there was more depth, but as a starter conversation, it's a winner.

[Via Apple Insider]
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