Sacramento area community musical theater (esp. DMTC in Davis, 2000-2020); Liberal politics; Meteorology; "Breaking Bad," "Better Call Saul," and Albuquerque movie filming locations; New Mexico and California arcana, and general weirdness.
Friday night, I saw the 50th anniversary, 70 mm roadshow film version of Stanley Kubrick's “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and I wondered if there might be any 2001 references buried in "Breaking Bad." Possibly. The monolith in 2001 had physical dimensions of 1:4:9 (representing the squares of the first three prime numbers). The tall sign for Albuquerque's Crossroads Motel in "Breaking Bad" also has a 9:4 aspect ratio. The sign lies on its side, like the Star Gate orbiting Jupiter in 2001.
The critic Rob Ager has noted the monolith represents the film screen itself, "a transitionary doorway in and out of the film narrative." At the Crossroads Motel the doorway might be to the past, to its namesake, London's Crystal Palace of 1851.
The doorway motif reappears several times in "Breaking Bad" - for example, in Georgia O'Keeffe's Doorway painting. Several story lines in "Breaking Bad" may be based on Stephen King's "Night Shift," a collection of horror stories, including 'I Am The Doorway.'
It looks cold, dark and empty, but astronomers have revealed that interstellar space is permeated with a fine mist of grease-like molecules.
The study provides the most precise estimate yet of the amount of “space grease” in the Milky Way, by recreating the carbon-based compounds in the laboratory. The Australian-Turkish team discovered more than expected: 10 billion trillion trillion tonnes of gloop, or enough for 40 trillion trillion trillion packs of butter.
...To tackle the question, Schmidt and colleagues recreated in the laboratory the process by which greasy carbon forms in the outflows of carbon stars. The material was collected and analysed using spectroscopy to work out how strongly it absorbed light of certain wavelengths.
“This allowed us to figure out how much greasy carbon is in the line of sight of various stars,” said Schmidt.
They found that there are about 100 greasy carbon atoms for every million hydrogen atoms, accounting for between a quarter and a half of the available carbon in the Milky Way.
“This space grease is not the kind of thing you’d want to spread on a slice of toast,” said Schmidt. “It’s dirty, likely toxic and only forms in the environment of interstellar space – and our laboratory.”
I went to the Tower Theater Friday night to see the 50th anniversary, 70 mm roadshow film version of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” to a surprisingly large audience of about a hundred people. Matias Bombal (a well-known Sacramento cinephile and Gabriel McAuliffe’s childhood friend), gave introductory, purplish remarks, and recalled those golden years before video conquered all.
Bombal was beyond enthusiastic about the color reproduction (“note the blues!!!!”) Since the projectionist would have to adjust the focus several times during the film, Bombal noted that he wasn’t just playing the film, but “rendering” it before our eyes. Bombal went so far overboard with his remarks it would have required the Coast Guard to reel him back in.
And it brought back memories of the first time I saw a porn movie. About 1973. The projector overheated and the sound sporadically cut in and out. The projectionist cursed and banged repeatedly on the projector, making the sound pop - his own way of ‘rendering’ the film. Ah, the majesty of film!
Nevertheless, Bombal was absolutely right. The blues were spectacular. The film was amazing. Touchstones like advertising logos in space, used originally to make the future seem more-familiar, now work for nostalgic purposes.
Bombal also made me laugh. I hesitated to enter the proper theater. I asked him, “Is 2001 being shown here?” and told him the sign above the door (for Misterrogers ‘Won’t You Be My Neighbor?’) was ambiguous. Referring to 2001, he replied “Was it as ambiguous as the show’s conclusion?”
My dad didn’t understand 2001 when we saw it at the drive-in theater, circa 1971 (I think it was a Stanley Kubrick double bill with “A Clockwork Orange”, the first time I saw fluorescent-colored hair portrayed on film and knew instantly that that was the future of youth). I belonged to the Science Fiction Book Club, and I had already read 2001, so I overexplained it to my dad, and made him hate the film even more.
There are still a couple more screenings left at the Tower. See “2001: A Space Odyssey” rendered as it was meant to be seen! All those blues!
Just realized I had taken a photograph of a hillside used in David Bowie's 1976 film, "The Man Who Fell To Earth." Taken just south of Madrid, New Mexico in October, 2012.
Whiling away under the Yolo Causeway and the adjacent causeway for the Capitol Corridor. Forest fire smoke from Northern California loomed above:
What is it like when the bats under the Yolo Causeway emerge at sunset? I wanted to find out.
I saw very few bats actually emerge, and the ones that did seemed to drop like stones from their cracks. They came in waves, and circled about under the bed of the freeway, their wings making a crackling sound. A wind tunnel of thousands of bats.
The Red Cross is denied access to Trump's Baby Jails. Remember, due to the Geneva Conventions, which the Nazis honored, the Red Cross was able to visit Nazi camps for American POWs in World War II, and that was the only way some Americans were able to make it out alive:
This is eerily reminiscent of Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. The Red Cross was repeatedly forbidden from touring concentration camps during World War II. Finally, in 1944, they were allowed to inspect the hoax camp, Theresienstadt.
I saw "American Animals" last Friday evening, a true story about four average college students who decided to make a daring art heist. The actual thieves weave in and out of the story too, generally watching sadly from the sidelines as their younger selves pass by on their mission.
The film made me wonder if I could have conspired to steal rare art in college and still maintained my studies. I think the distraction would have been just terrible. How can you focus on calculus when you urgently need to obtain disguises?
In the blizzard of spam I get, I'm tempted by one academic come-on: "3 papers mention Marc Valdez, including one by a highly followed author with 377 followers." Of course, you have to sign up for the premium service to discover who this ethereal person might happen to be.
One of their testimonials announced that their service "was better than Google Scholar." I had never heard of Google Scholar. I haven't looked at a citation index in thirty years. At least Google Scholar is free.
I was amazed when I looked. My Atmospheric Sciences Master's Degree paper has 89 citations, and my three Ph.D. papers have 59, 58, and 45 citations, respectively. I've apparently had more impact than I realized. I'll have to read some of these papers.
Now, if I can get some traction with my "Breaking Bad" books.
The President says he’s signing an executive order to end family separations. ... the President will sign an executive order allowing children to be detained indefinitely with their parents. The problem is that that violates a 1997 consent decree saying that you can’t detain/imprison children for more than 20 days ... It straight up violates that order. ... a court will step in, say you can’t do that and then Trump will announce that the judge is forcing him to keep separating families.
Donald Trump didn’t bring about the end of “family values” conservatism. It was already on the way out. But now that overdramatic political metaphor exists as a very real policy. And it’s hard to imagine that “family values” talking points can survive much longer while those who long ranted that the federal government was seeking to “destroy the family” sit silently as it literally rips families apart.
For Melania to emerge from her customary position on the sidelines to play a critical role in reversing a major policy initiative might seem a perplexing event. But for a historian of the Middle Ages, it is part of an instantly recognizable pattern.
A near-constant in late medieval kingship was the use of the queen as intercessor. Women were conventionally ascribed softer hearts, and subjects were encouraged to appeal to the queen for mercy. The template for this role was the Virgin Mary—the paragon of intercession among medieval Christians—who was believed to sit, enthroned in heaven, at the side of her son Christ, able and willing to make appeals to him on behalf of suffering or desperate devotees. Medieval art and medieval texts customarily liken queens to the Virgin Mary, especially in the role of intercessor.
Immigrant Children Terrified At Ghastly Visage Of La Llorona In Detention Center (link)
Rupert Murdoch, the executive chairman of Fox News, said in a statement at the time, "Charles has been a profound source of personal and intellectual inspiration for all of us at Fox News. His always principled stand on the most important issues of our time has been a guiding star in an often turbulent world, a world that has too many superficial thinkers vulnerable to the ebb and flow of fashion, and a world that, unfortunately, has only one Charles Krauthammer. His words, his ideas, his dignity and his integrity will resonate within our society and within me for many, many years to come."
Trying to dispose of broken plate glass, I learned that no one recycles it: too cheap to make. So, I tried to break the plate glass into smaller, more-manageable pieces by gently tapping it. That went about as well as expected: 10 trillion pieces of glass everywhere. Into the garbage can and off to the landfill tomorrow, provided the scavenging homeless don’t slice themselves into ribbons tonight.
Friday night, I saw the 50th anniversary, 70 mm roadshow film version of Stanley Kubrick's “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and I wondered if there might be any 2001 references buried in "Breaking Bad." Possibly. The monolith in 2001 had physical dimensions of 1:4:9 (representing the squares of the first three prime numbers). The tall sign for Albuquerque's Crossroads Motel in "Breaking Bad" also has a 9:4 aspect ratio. The sign lies on its side, like the Star Gate orbiting Jupiter in 2001.
