Category Archives: Art/Style/Culture

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (2024)

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Founded in 1982 at San Jose State University in California, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest challenges entrants to compose opening sentences to the worst of all possible novels.

The 2024 Grand Prize went to Lawrence Person of Austin, TX:

“She had a body that reached out and slapped my face like a five-pound ham-hock tossed from a speeding truck.”

Joel Phillips of West Trenton, NJ received one of several Dishonorable Mentions:

“However unlikely an event, Lucy’s flight had made a water landing, and as she clutched her seat cushion, which was useable as a flotation device, she waited patiently for the lifeboats to pick up first the Plutonium-class members, active service personnel, parents traveling with small children, and those passengers with special needs.”

Junk

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I was unable to express why I found these piles of junk so interesting. Fortunately my friend Dave got it immediately.

The video gave me very interesting vibes. I became curious about when each piece had been placed, what the intention was for saving it, and what the area looked like when they placed the first piece. And, which was the last piece added. And what became of the person or people who put it all there. And what will become of it. Will it stay forever? Will it all be taken to a different junkyard? Will archeologists find it all someday? 

Everything placed carefully. I can imagine him saying to someone, “are you needing to keep this McDonald’s I’m Lovin’It sticker? May I have it?” 

Wes Fewell’s Club Juana

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Some guys will put a big screen TV and a couple of BarcaLoungers in their basement mancave and call it a day. Not Wes Fewell. Wes is an athlete and a hunter. And an artist. He designs beautiful furniture and his skills are on full display in his basement.

He didn’t offer much history of the original Club Juana so I went looking online and found this from 2006 (source unknown)

The Club Juana was a landmark in Casselberry, Florida, for 43 years, first as a nightclub, later as a strip club. It attained national notoriety in 2002, when its owners staged regular productions of “Macbeth in the Buff” to circumvent local lewdness laws. The Club finally closed in June 2006 and was demolished on November 2 to make way for a freeway overpass. Its famous “Club Juana: Parking In Rear” neon sign, however, was spared by the Morse Museum of American Art in nearby Winter Park. The Museum, best known for its Tiffany collection, saw the sign as a worthy example of public art and local history. The Club Juana sign will join other neon signs from vanished Orlando-area businesses in the Museum’s collection. All of them are warehoused, and none are on public display.

Why does AI art look like that?

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While I haven’t played with tools like DALL-E much every image I’ve created (Caused to be created?) has the same look. (Man resembling Keith Richards; old man holding a rock; man driving old Jeep; old Hindu man meditating.)

Writing in The Atlantic (paywall), Caroline Mimbs Nyce takes a stab at answering that question.

Two years into the generative-AI boom, these programs’ creations seem more technically advanced […] but they are stuck with a distinct aesthetic. The colors are bright and saturated, the people are beautiful, and the lighting is dramatic. Much of the imagery appears blurred or airbrushed, carefully smoothed like frosting on a wedding cake. At times, the visuals look exaggerated.

Someday computer-generated art may shed its weird, cartoonish look, and start to slip past us unnoticed. Perhaps then we’ll miss the corny style that was once a dead giveaway.

My most embarrassing photo

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There must be plenty of them but nothing comes to mind. The question popped into my head after seeing photos of J. D. Vance in a blond wig and floral print skirt. A halloween photo from his college days. And former U. S. Congressman George Santos wasn’t camera-shy during his drag queen days.

Our annual Halloween parties were the social event of the year and I showed up dressed as a woman at least two of those parties. Once as a nurse, the other time as a nun.

The nun photo is memorable because Barb and both came as nuns (from different orders it would appear). Neither of us aware of the other’s costume.

Once I saw just how good a man could look in a dress and wig, I gave up on that costume idea.

While searching for my most embarrassing photo, it occurred to me that it wouldn’t be in my collection. It would almost certainly be a photo someone else took and that I didn’t know existed. If you have such a photo, I’d very much like to see it. (My embarrassment bar is pretty hight these days.)

In my youth, people didn’t walk around with a camera in their hand (or pocket). And if it was nighttime you’d need a flash. And then the wait for the film to be developed and on and on. It was just too much trouble. So there just weren’t as many photos. And if you had a good one, sharing it meant a trip to the post office. And what is an “embarrassing photo” in an age when teenagers text each other pictures that can only be described a pornographic?

The photos of Vance are only a problem (if it is a problem) because of his homophobic anti-trans comments on the campaign trail. And I’m not sure George Santos minded at all.

I’ll keep looking for my most embarrassing photo and update this post if I come up with something.

Hotel California guitar solo

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Chen is one of the daughters in a “family band” from the Philippines. She —and what I assume are her two sisters and father— perform amazing covers of hit songs. The still to the right is from a 2 1/2 minute video of her playing the guitar solo from The Eagles’ Hotel California. A couple of things about this short video grabbed me. Her obvious proficiency with this guitar solo but even more was the blissed out concentration that you see in the faces of the best guitar players. In the zone?

A couple of questions popped into my head: How long did it take her to master this iconic solo… followed by, Who wrote and first performed it. I went to Perplexity for the following, including reference sources:

According to interviews and accounts from Don Felder and others involved, the iconic guitar solos and dueling guitar parts on “Hotel California” by the Eagles came together in the following way:

  • Don Felder originally composed the music and recorded a demo for “Hotel California” at his home studio in Malibu in 1976. On this demo, he improvised and recorded sample guitar solos and parts that he envisioned for himself and Joe Walsh to play on the final recording.
  • When it came time to record the guitar solos and leads in the studio in Miami, Felder and Walsh initially started improvising new parts together. However, Don Henley stopped them and insisted they learn and play Felder’s original demo solo parts note-for-note.
  • The problem was Felder didn’t have the original demo tape with him in Miami. He had to call his housekeeper back in Malibu, have her find the cassette, play it over the phone, and Felder re-learned and transcribed his own improvised guitar parts from the demo.
  • Felder estimates that over half of the iconic guitar solos and dueling parts on the final “Hotel California” recording came directly from the original demo he recorded at home, with him and Walsh splitting up and learning those parts.
  • Specifically, Felder played the first half of the ending guitar solo, while Walsh played the second half. They then combined for the harmonized finale section.

So in summary, while Felder and Walsh did collaborate and split the guitar solos, a significant portion was actually Felder improvising alone on his original demo, which Henley insisted they recreate faithfully in the studio.

1949 Ferrari 166 MM Barchetta

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Mr. Wolf is no stranger to rare and beautiful automobiles but even he sounds a little impressed by one of his recent jobs.

1949 Ferrari 166 MM Barchetta. 1 of 10 short hood Barchettas, I believe it is roughly the 30th Ferrari built, though I could be off by a large margin – Ferrari information is notoriously cloudy. Serious race history, driven extensively by Biondetti.

The gravity of this thing is incredible, just having it around to appreciate in person, in private… I spent some time each day sitting next to it while having my espresso.

A bit of tinkering, rewiring a few things, fiddling with the exhaust and carburetors, and – the best part – designing and fabricating a battery hold down. The original went missing some time ago.

I asked him what he was doing to a car “now worth something like $10,000,000.”

It’s an odd, push-down-from-above battery hold down, and all of the parts are gone, and no reference photos exist. So I got to spend a couple days thinking, sketching, welding… What would a bunch of scrappy Italians have done in 1949?

Basically, a lot of time and effort to make something simple, unimpressive, and invisible once the battery cover goes on, and I’m thrilled!

He describes the owner as “a very cool old fellow, and a longtime Ferrari historian. Very knowledgeable, really knows his stuff. I once re-jetted the triple Weber carbs with him at 11pm outside a hotel in 45 degree weather, preparing to climb the Sierras the next morning.”