GODZILLA: The Man Inside The Monster [Spoiler Alert]

Tea time during Mothra v. Godzilla

Maybe one of the best "suit actors" of all time, Haruo Nakajima embodied Godzilla for 23 years.  Nakajima played in 12 Godzilla movies, beginning with the original 1954 Godzilla. The post war monster movie captured the terror of the atomic age, from a culture which sorrowfully experienced the devastation of nuclear weapons.  "Godzilla is a creature of the Americans. Godzilla's breath is nuclear radiation. He showed our audiences that atomic bombs are frightening," said Nakajima.

In the same year of the first Godzilla, the Gutai art group formed in Japan: founded by Jiro Yoshihara.  The movement sought to uncover beauty from destruction and decay.  Through damage and destruction the inner beauty of life is exposed. What a haunting theme for art in a country that experienced the new age of atomic destruction.
But there is also a sense of hope and optimism in the art of Gutai.  In the Gutai Menefesto, published in 1956, Yoshihara wrote:

The fact that the ruins receive us warmly and kindly after all, 

and that they attract us with their cracks and flaking surfaces, 

could this not really be a sign of the material taking revenge, 

having recaptured its original life?...

Jiro Yoshihara

Enigma of Religious Presence on Columbus' First Voyage

Did a priest or friar accompany Christopher Columbus on his First Voyage?  Peter Sloterdijk parenthetically notes that Columbus traversed the Atlantic unaccompanied by a representative of religious authorities in his book In the World Interior of Capital. Out of academic honesty, he acknowledges a single counterexample to his thesis that the living space of the ship incorporates the structure of the homeland. Considering the inhospitable space of the ocean and the trajectory into the unknown, the absence of a cleric seems strange.
An account of early forays to Terra Incognito by Franciscans suggests that Father Juan Perez de Marchena, and a companion, may have accompanied Columbus on the 1492 voyage.  The source is a text by Father Antonio Deza which chronicles the deeds of priests planting the seeds of Christianity in the New World.  (see History of Religious Orders, by Charles Warren Currier, 1898). But there is the dispute over the translation of "secunda." Does "secunda" mean "safe/prosperous" or "second?"
"ad eas partes secunda navigatione trajecere."
Why is this dispute important? The various Catholic orders wanted to claim the title of being the first to say mass in the new world.

Inversion of the Panopticon: I see you looking at me looking at you

As we flounder in the chaos of this nascent age of digital documentaries, the occasion has come to reevaluate two truism of bygone times.  First, Surveillance stimulates rehabilitation.  Second, The omniscient eye of Sauron, Big Brother, squelches freedom.  The tragedy/atrocity in Ferguson, and the government reaction, reveals the overlooked obverse of Bentham and Orwell.  Stepping back, it is interesting to observe that the proposal for the panopticon was born from optimism and trust in human nature. Public accountability and sufficient time to contemplate the Good News mends a broken, twisted soul. Conversely, Orwell sketched a dystopian Britain born of distrust of hominid's natural tendency to seek mischief and cause harm.  Left on his own, the life of an East End boy is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.  We continue to ignore the East End hominid's penchant for cave painting, ritual burial, and crafting jewelry (for now let's ignore the pregnant revelation that homo neanderthalensis made and wore make-up).

Turn the panopticon inside out.  The persistent surveillance of the jailer promotes justice, nay, liberty. No space evades the eye of the captive criminal so no abuse of authority goes unobserved.  Equilibrium.  Without hominids digitally recording the actions of the police in Ferguson, the death of Micheal Brown would be a mere twinkle of a star, ominous and quickly forgotten in a field of black.

In response, police departments across the country have invested in digitizing every moment of the work of police ("Nobody wants to be that cop from Ferguson").  Orwell forgotten, the justification cited is that complaints of abuse by police dramatically drop when they are accountable for each word and action.

Record Warhol Auction: Eight Figures for Triple Elvis

You ain't nothin' but a millin'aire...

The Triple Elvis, black and white, sold yesterday at auction for $82 million. Only half as much is Pollock's No 5 (adjusted for 2014 dollars).

A Toast to Dwiggins

Dwiggins, 1905 Toast

I only recently discovered the illustrator Clare Victor Dwiggins, better know as "Dwig."  At the Friends of the Waco Library Book Sale, one of the largest such book sales in the South, my mother-in-law purchased a 1905 book of toasts by Dwiggins.  Being a collector of vintage barware and old cocktail books, books of toasts intrigue me. Quips, quotes, and trite toasts seem to be relics of the past... at least at the parties I attend.

"Here is to love, the only fire against which there is no insurance." 

 Great toast, but no longer true.  You and your love of your life can buy "marriage insurance." (try the divorce probability calculator)  

But better than the bons mots are the illustrations.  The postcards by Dwig capture an age of innocent romanticism, with decked out dames blowing kisses and riding bratwursts.  The illustrations often include timeless words of wisdom, for example, "Never do anybody unless you do 'em good."

Hotel Graffiti Art: Tilt = "Yes"; Qandeel "No"

Abdullah Qandeel's The Enemy Within, sold for $209k

Although Abdullah Qandeel's paintings sell for over $200,000 at auction, his graffiti remains unappreciated.  October 31, 2014, Qandeel and his "studio" engaged in graffiti performance art in the penthouse of the 6 Columbus Hotel in NYC.  The management did not appreciate his contribution to the hotel's art collection.  Seeing the paint covered artist and his "scantily clad" apprentices, the staff promptly called the police and had him arrested.

There is a precedent for "hanging" your art and tagging hotel rooms.  Banksy famously installed his own painting (with plaque) in the Brooklyn Museum of art.  The Au Vieux Panie hotel in Marseille commissioned graffiti artist Tilt (see prior entry) and they were tickled pink/yellow/blue when he only painted half of the room.

6 Columbus cannot unwind the rushed arrest of Qandeel, but they have a great opportunity to make amends by hiring him and his studio to decorate a matching room.  Embrace art, live art!

Abdullah Qandeel

The Devil, Herman's Hermits, and Herman the Recluse

What do Herman's Hermits have in common with Herman the Recluse?  Jezebel and the devil.

Herman's Hermits singing Jezebel (1966)

"If ever a devil was born

Without a pair of horns

It was you, Jezebel, it was you!

If ever a pair of eyes

Promised paradise

It was you, Jezebel, it was you!

If ever a devil's plan

Was made to torment man

Decieving me

Grieving me

Leaving me blue

Jezebel, it was you!"

Gigas Codex, 13th Century

Herman the Recluse, an apocryphal Benedictine monk at the 13th century monastery of Podlažice, is the putative author of the Gigas Codex.  The giant tome, hand crafted from 160 baby cows (or maybe donkeys), contains the Vulgate, the Chronicle of Prague, and a large drawing of the devil.  Thus, the manuscript is lovingly known as "The Devil's Bible," leading many a wayward soul to study this book in search of necromancy, only to find another dusty transcription of the Bible in latin.

  

Jezebel of course makes her appearance in the Third Book of Kings, 16:31.  

Frankie Laine, the composer of Jezebel, often wrote of the devilish femme fatal: Swamp Girl, Satan Wears a Satin Gown.  Although Frankie Laine's Satan wore a satin dress, Herman the Recluse's Satan wore polka-dot undies, more akin to Paul Vance and Lee Pockriss' "Yellow Polka Dot Bikini."