…and wouldn’t you know it, there’s actual video of the crash:
Weird stuff. As informative as the clip above was, I didn’t get a terribly good sense of what this the Bugatti Veyron, the $2.2 million dollar car itself, looked like. This is it:
Needless to say, a pretty nice looking vehicle, though even if I were a multi-multi-millionaire, I’d have a hard time justifying spending that much cash on what amounts to a…car.
As for the video itself, I think things aren’t looking all that good for the car’s owner. To begin, one has to agree with the report: It doesn’t look like there was any pelican distracting or causing the driver to veer into the water. Further…just what the heck was he doing driving a multi-million dollar car so close to the edge of water in the first place?
Fascinating article about the controversy regarding the “Isleworth Mona Lisa” a painting very similar to what is perhaps the most famous painting in existence, the Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci.
It would appear the people who own the Isleworth Mona Lisa claim that extensive examination of the painting suggest to them that Leonardo Da Vinci did this painting as well, perhaps as an “early draft” of the more famous painting that followed.
For what it’s worth (what am I, an art expert?!) in looking at the two portraits side by side, with the original Mona Lisa on the left and the Isleworth Mona Lisa on the right, it appears to me the Isleworth Mona Lisa, while obviously very similar to Da Vinci’s painting, also appears to me a much simpler piece. That doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that it wasn’t made by Da Vinci, but it does plant a seed of doubt in my mind.
As for the actual experts presented in the CNN article linked to above, it would appear those who may have an interest in the painting being declared a Da Vinci obviously stand to gain a lot of money if such a declaration is valid…which unfortunately further raises suspicion in my mind.
The fact is that the Mona Lisa has been a very famous painting for many, many hundreds of years, and therefore it seems more likely that a painter with some undeniable skills decided to make their own version of the famous painting. Maybe, just maybe, they even did it concurrently with the Da Vinci piece (a student in his studio?). Or maybe a decade or two after the fact. Maybe even a century later.
Still, it is undeniably intriguing to think that Da Vinci might have made another version of what is without a doubt the most famous painting on the face of this planet.
Fascinating article from Time Magazine regarding something I find fascinating: Views on the general direction of technology and retail sales, and how Amazon.com is rapidly becoming something other large technological companies fear:
I’m fascinated by Amazon. Yes, my novels are available through the service, and I will forever appreciate the fact that they allowed people like me to have an avenue for promoting and selling our works.
I also admit to having some trepidation about the company. I’ve always felt that competition in the marketplace results in the best products, and one fears that Amazon.com will eventually become the one-stop be all and end all of purchasing almost all products, from music to books to clothing to electronics.
I suspect the people at Amazon are working on doing just that!
The reality is that Amazon is successful because it is so damn good. I have purchased many items either directly through them or used through a second hand seller operating within Amazon’s structure. To this day and after many purchases, I can honestly say that I’ve never had a bad experience. The closest I came to a “bad experience” was when purchasing a used book via a second hand seller through Amazon and, after waiting two plus weeks without receiving it, I sent an email to said seller asking if the book was on its way. That same day I received a reply email from the seller saying they were sorry but they could not fulfill my order and would immediately refund my purchase charge. This was done right away!
So, yes, I’m a fan of Amazon beyond even my own personal (and modest) for sale items present on the service.
I just hope that Amazon maintains its thus far high level of customer service and broad range of available items.
Absolutely fascinating article from Stylelist about Jack Zyklin, an individual who has taken old, obsolete typewriters and allowed them to “interface” with computers, thus giving writers the old time feel of typing on a typewriter while being able to simultaneously use the latest computer technology.
There is an included video in the article, which I’ve embedded below:
There is a certain whimsy to Mr. Zyklin’s work that appeals to me, as unlike him I can recall the time when typewriters were still the way to write. By the time I reached High School, personal computers were just starting to come out and the concept of a word processor, introduced to me in my sophomore or junior year of High School, portended the demise of the typewriter.
As an author with seven novels and one graphic novel behind me (and more to come!), I’ve thought long and hard about how fortunate I was to be born when I was. As a young child, I was completely fascinated with writing and by the time I was in third or fourth grade knew that I wanted to be an author.
However, I quickly realized I was a perfectionist and whatever I wrote needed to be refined before it was “good enough” to satisfy my taste. Early writing was frustrating because this meant that whatever I wrote needed to be completely re-typed (and re-re-typed and re-re-re-typed) whenever it was revised. Depending on the length of the original story, this could mean many hours of grueling and tedious work. It was hard enough to get the original first draft typed out, but the idea of returning to the draft and re-typing it as many as five to seven times (or more!) made the task all that much more daunting.
Thus, the arrival of computers and the word processor couldn’t have come at a better time for me. I still longed to be a writer and hadn’t yet given up on that dream. The word processor allowed me the freedom to write longer and longer works. After reviewing the printed versions of them, all I had to do was make the necessary revisions without having to completely re-type the entire manuscript.
Had I been born even five years earlier, I suspect none of my works might have ever come to light and I might have drifted into a different career. My latest novel, Nox, required seven full revisions and a whopping eleven revisions of Chapter 50 (the BIG chapter, storywise) before I was satisfied enough with the manuscript to go ahead with publication. Needless to say, I’m happy with my computer and its keyboard, though the thought of getting one of those USB typewriters does seem attractive…in a retro kind of way!
The subject matter is intriguing and opens the door to what may lie in the future regarding the next generation of the internet, an internet that will be considerably faster and far more secure.
One of the more intriguing things to be found on Sirius/XM satellite radio is the RadioClassics channel. This particular channel is devoted to replaying the radio dramas, mysteries, horror, and comedy of the past before television essentially took over the medium.
Nonetheless, in listening to the radio classics station I’ve found that much of episodic television originated here. Gunsmoke, for example, was a popular radio mainstay for many years before reaching television and making its mark there. Likewise, if you ever find Lucille Ball’sMy Favorite Husband playing on radio classics, you quickly discover that this show was very obviously the genesis/basis for I Love Lucy, perhaps the most groundbreaking -and arguably still one of the most popular- of all sitcoms.
While some of the shows on the radio classics channel haven’t aged all that well, particularly some of the many comedies (though I can’t get enough of the wonderful Jack Benny Show), there is one show among them all that intrigues me the most: Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.
This detective series starred many different actors in the title role of Johnny Dollar, an insurance investigator who managed to get himself into plenty of hard-boiled (and action packed!) mysteries. Of those various actors who played the title role for the series 12 year run, the most intriguing of the lot is easily Bob Bailey, and the best of the best of the series are the 5 part episodes that allowed for greater character depth and mystery. The series, alas, ran In this particular format for just a little over a year, but I can’t get enough of the stuff.
I sniffed around Amazon and found the following link for a 2 DVD set of some 732 (!) episodes.
I suspect the 732 episodes presented here are what remains of the 811 total episodes of the show recorded, which means that a little less than one hundred of them may be lost forever.
Still, this set, priced at a very reasonable $10, gives you more than enough Johnny Dollar to last you many, many hours of drive time (indeed my iTunes lists the total run time of these two DVD discs at a whopping 10.9 days worth of listening!).
So, if you’re in the mood for something truly unique and entertaining -and, no, I don’t receive any royalties from the sales of these discs- you might want to give Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar a look.
Of all the famous and talented movie stars out there, Clint Eastwood has to be, if not my favorite, certainly way up there on my favorite all time actor’s list.
Sure, some of his films were controversial in their time (the original Dirty Harry, in particular, was viewed by some as a fascist screed) and there is an argument to be made that he tended to play the same character over and over again…though he certainly did try to vary his output and branch out into other genres…including, believe it or not, musicals!
Yesterday, Mr. Eastwood tried his hand at something else…delivering one of the concluding speeches before Mitt Romney delivered his acceptance speech during the finale of the Republican Convention in Tampa.
His performance was…bewildering.
I didn’t see it live…My wife did and what she told me about it, immediately after it occurred, sounded like it just couldn’t be. “He was talking to a chair!” she said. Come on…you’re joking, right? “He didn’t make any sense!” she said. No sense? Though I may not agree with all of Mr. Eastwood’s politics, in the interviews I’ve seen him in he’s usually well spoken and intelligent. Indeed, whenever he strayed into political talk during interviews (he was the Mayor of Carmel-By-The-Sea, California, after all) he always seemed to be well reasoned.
And then, after the fact, I saw it.
…wow…
I suppose it’s easy to shrug Mr. Eastwood’s convention speech as the work of someone who’s clearly showing his age. He is, after all, 82 years old and…nah. That’s just too easy. Maybe Mr. Eastwood simply got caught up in the moment. Maybe he (mistakenly) thought he could just “wing it” with his speech and didn’t need to have much preparation.
Regardless, Mr. Romney’s handlers must be pretty livid. After all, following a (hopefully) successful convention one would like to think that the candidate for the party has been given a push toward election.
Instead, it appears what’s on most people’s lips, for better or worse, is Mr. Eastwood’s very strange performance.
Basically, in Norway a man by the name of Johan Nygard left a package for the mayor of his town with the written instructions on the front to not open it until today, August 24th 2012. He claimed that the contents of the package would “benefit and delight future generations.”
Will they? Or will they find assorted junk?
If you’re curious, you can check it out for yourself:
Perhaps the most surprising thing is that it wasn’t actually wrapped up in 1912 as originally thought. It appears items were added to the package before it was turned in around 1920. Regardless, though the contents might not be “earth-shattering”, they are nonetheless interesting and do give a window on events occurring in that corner of the world roughly one hundred years ago.
The Olympics ended yesterday with a very, very big show that lovingly displayed the things that make Britain Britain. There were fashion models, theater, and psychedelic floats. There was much music, even a performance of “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” by Eric Idle. This song, which appeared at the very end of The Life of Brian, my favorite Monty Python film, was aired complete, though the single profanity uttered in the song was heavily (and loudly) bleeped for American viewing.
Given all the Britannia on display, I was curious if David Bowie might make an appearance at the event. After all, his song “Heroes” was played in a very prominent spot at the very beginning of the Olympics while the British athletes made their very first appearance/entrance into the stadium.
While the closing ceremonies were going on, and the show focused on the British fashion industry, they of course played Mr. Bowie’s song “Fashion” and, I suspect, that might well be where the show’s makers might well have loved to have him appear and sing…
But he didn’t.
Mr. Bowie wasn’t the only musician whose songs were played during the Olympics and didn’t show. Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here,” for example, was sung live, but neither Roger Waters or David Gilmour showed up to perform the song. I believe Nick Mason, the band’s drummer, was the only Pink Floyd member present.
Yet Mr. Bowie’s absence felt to me like something more. There have been articles written here and there hinting if not outright saying that Mr. Bowie has effectively, though quietly, retired, and not seeing him at the Olympics seemed to further that notion. After all, this is a man who tended to release a new album almost every year and was constantly touring or making appearances in movies or TV shows. His last album, 2003’s Reality, is rapidly approaching a decade since release. While he toured in support of the album, he was diagnosed with an acute arterial blockage and had emergency angioplasty in 2004. From that point on, his appearances have been sparse. His last stage appearance was in 2006, his last recorded song was a collaboration with Scarlett Johansson in 2008.
So when his songs were presented in such prominent places during the opening and closing of the Olympics, I couldn’t help but think the event organizers were hoping to lure him out to do a live performance. And given how long it had been since he did such a thing, one might have thought that Mr. Bowie would enjoy the opportunity to do just that.
The fact that he didn’t, as I said before, suggests to me that perhaps the whispers were right. No, I’m not privy to Mr. Bowie’s personal life. For all I know, he might be furiously working on a new album or acting in some film or doing something that deprives him of the time to head over to the Olympics and perform.
On the other hand, and given the fact that we’ve seen so little of Mr. Bowie since 2008, I can’t help but wonder if, indeed, those whispers of his retirement are indeed accurate.
If they are, I take that news as bittersweet. After several decades of hard work, the release of many classic albums, and what must have been a very frightening health emergency, it would not surprise me if Mr. Bowie has decided he’s done enough. I will continue to hope for new songs/albums from Mr. Bowie, but if Reality represents his last major work, I will cherish it along with his other albums, which never seem to grow old.
Some of what Jon Swartz, the author of that piece, notes has been on my mind for a while.
I’m not a huge mall rat, though there was a time I enjoyed heading to the mall and looking in on the bookstores and record/music stores. When MP3s appeared, the record/music stores effectively were done. I still love to purchase music, but I do so over the internet and find this the most effective way of getting my hands on what I want.
Bookstores, similarly, appear to be going the way of music stores. Nowadays, you can purchase almost any book you want (including mine!) via Amazon or Barnes and Noble online. Movies and TV shows, likewise, are appearing more and more online as well, either through pay per view services or instant viewing via Netflix or (again) Amazon.
Purchasing books, music, or movies/TV shows via the internet is incredibly convenient. You don’t have to physically go anywhere and risk not finding what you’re looking for. You also know right away whether something you’re seeking is available and can be purchased. Downloading the material is almost instantaneous. But purchasing a physical copy of said material (ie a CD or an actual book or a DVD/BluRay), isn’t all that hard either. While you have to wait for it to be mailed to you, to me this wait is not a huge inconvenience. In a matter of a couple of days or, at most, a week I have the material in hand.
Which brings us to what else is sold out there. Most electronics are available online and I’m certain many people try them out in stores and may search online for the best price for items (there’s even a term for that: showrooming). Clothing, I suspect, will take a little bit longer to enter the internet purchasing sphere. You can buy items, but part of purchasing clothing is seeing how it looks on you. And how can you sample clothing via the internet? The article does provide a glimpse into that process, and chances are that this too will soon be something people search for on the internet. The same goes with jewelry, although in that case and because of the cost one often wants to see the actual piece they intend to buy.
Food stores I suspect will survive the digital age. We all make our trips to supermarkets for the week’s food, and while online services will offer this for some, I suspect many shoppers want to see the food they eventually pay for. Bruised bananas are not an option! As for restaurants, there will be more and more online ordering, especially for chains that specialize in “to go” foods like pizza. However, I suspect people will never lose the urge to go out of the house now and again and spend a couple of hours in a restaurant eating a good meal.
Another store that will probably continue to exist is the hardware store. Not only will people always head to such stores for home improvement products, but there will continue to exist moments when such products have to be bought right away and cannot wait for the mail to deliver them (from emergencies involving plumbing, electrical, or roofing problems to simple things like needing new lightbulbs or air conditioner filters).
What all this means, in the end, is what the above article notes. The days of the shopping malls and strips malls may be coming to an end. There may come a time when small “satellite” stores are the norm, where people go into those shops to see the individual items they want to purchase and examine them but do the actual purchasing over the net and get the items delivered to their house.
Needless to say, a pretty nice looking vehicle, though even if I were a multi-multi-millionaire, I’d have a hard time justifying spending that much cash on what amounts to a…car.