Bohumil Kubišta

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Bohumil Kubišta (1884-1918) was a Czech painter. He was first influenced by Expressionism, and later by Cubism. He studied color theory and geometry in artistic layout. He was very influential in the development of Czech modern art. He died young from the Spanish Flu.   

Bohumil Kubišta self-portrait

Some Of These Days

Get ready for a flouting weekend with the Hot Sardines.

 

Mutton curry and cabbage

Somewhere in Africa, the YouTube video doesn't say where, a village woman cooks a meal of mutton curry and cabbage. The meat is steamed with a small amount of water in a pot, and then the spices to make the curry are added. The cabbage is mixed with vegetables. She then mixes some sort of a flour concoction, it isn't bread, rather it is more of a paste.

She cooks it all over an open fire while around her, her kids who are well behaved, and the chickens occupy themselves. They eat it with their hands.

 

Rudolph Belarski

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Rudolph Belarski (1900 - 1983) was an American artist who specialized in pulp magazine art. At a young age he quit school and went to work in coal mines. During that time, he taught himself art via correspondence courses. Eventually he began painting covers for various magazines. He did crime, sci-fi and adventure covers. Late in his life he became an instructor for correspondence schools, completing the circle so to speak.

Rudolph Belarski

Cara Bonita

Get ready for a beauteous weekend with Los Kjarkas.

 

Walking in Rosario

Rosario is a village in the Cavite province of the Philippines. It is a fishing village, which both catches and processes fish. In the past it had the reputation of being a rough area, with a lot of local gang activity. As you can see in the walk, although there is no overt hostility, there are a fair number if hard looking characters keeping a close eye on the camera man.

The village is very basic looking, with shacks mixed in with simple concrete block  buildings. The beach, with the small fishing boats pulled up onto it, is very scenic.

  

Thomas Benjamin Kennington

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Thomas Benjamin Kennington (1856-1916) was a British realist painter. As well as portraits, he is best remembered for his paintings of domestic scenes, with both the well-off and the poor as subjects. He worked in oils and watercolor.

Got My Mojo Workin'

Get ready for a thaumaturgical weekend with the Little Billie Band.

  

Riding to heaven on the backs of turtles

 (Note: this was first posted on November 17, 2009. I'm reposting it today for the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing)

A few years ago I happened to visited Hiroshima on August 7th, one day after the 63rd anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city.

When you get off the streetcar from the train station the first thing you see is the ruin of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall. The atomic bomb detonated almost directly overhead of the building. With its few still standing walls, and its dome stripped and leaving only its framework, it is the iconic ruin of Hiroshima.

When you stand at that building, if you turn in a circle you realize your standing in a bowl surrounded by hills. Most of the rest of the buildings in that bowl were reduced to rubble by the bomb blast and resulting fires.

When they cleared the rubble they set aside several blocks of the old city as the Peace Memorial Park. You walk south along the river to get to the entrance to the monuments. At the entrance card tables are set up where there are petitions for peace that can be signed. You can buy peace t-shirts and listen to folk musicians strumming guitars and singing about peace. It is a fitting sentiment for this place.

The most visited monument is the Children's Monument for Peace. A young girl named Sadako Sasaki contracted leukemia after the bombing. As she sickened in the hospital she remembered an old Japanese saying that if one folds a thousand paper cranes one is granted a wish. She spent the rest of her short life folding paper cranes, but died before she reached one thousand. The Children's Monument for Peace was built in her memory, and in memory of all the children who died from the bombing. It is covered with paper cranes that school children have folded and sent to the park.

As touching as he Children's monument was, I most wanted to see a different monument. The monument pictured with this post. The Monument in Memory of the Korean Victims of the A-bomb.

There were tens of thousands of Koreans in the city when it was bombed. Most were forced laborers who had been brought to the city, housed in barracks and worked in the munitions plants of Hiroshima. Some 40,000 were killed, and a another 30,000 injured in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Most of the Koreans in Hiroshima were from Hapcheon, South Korea, and so sadly two cities ended up bearing the brunt of the attack (Atomic bomb survivors in South Korea still feel the wounds).

The Korean Monument was built in 1970 by South Koreans living in Japan and sited across the river and outside of the Peace Park. The Japanese authorities would not allow it to be placed in the Peace Park. It took until 1999 for permission to be granted to move it onto the Park's grounds.

As I stood in front of that Monument I could not help but reflect that all the paper cranes in the world would not have helped the dead honored by this memorial. That the peace petitions, while a fine sentiment, were no more substantial than Chamberlain's umbrella.

The Germans dressed prisoners up in Polish uniforms and shot them to justify their invasion that started the wider war in Europe. The Japanese used bayonets to stage their low-tech version of Hiroshima in Shangai as they spread ever deeper into China. The allies pounded cities with high explosives and incendiaries from the air. All across the globe men died in combat and civilians died behind the fronts. 

A few days after Hiroshima's destruction Nagasaki was bombed. Hirohito then taped his surrender speech. That night a cadre of Japanese officers ransacked the palace seeking to destroy the recording and postpone Japan's surrender. How do paper cranes and petitions solve that sort of madness?

In the end, to me at least, this small place in the Park was less about the bomb and more about Korean farmers taken from their villages and used as forced labor. A life spent at the whim of masters. Another tragedy of the war. 

My family and I were the only people at the monument when we visited it. The insciption on it reads, "Souls of the dead ride to heaven on the backs of turtles." At its base are small stones with Korean characters painted on them (pictured). The guidebook said you should leave a gift for the slain worker's ghosts. All I had were a couple of cigarettes. I supposed the ghosts might like to relax with a smoke and so I left them. It was all that I could do.
 

 

Women with handheld fans

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Summer is upon us, and with it comes heat and the need to cool off. One of the age-old methods to do that is the handheld paper or bamboo fan. They work well and can be either plain or decorated (this post is not about their decorations; a topic for another day). Aside from cooling, wielded in the right young lady's hands they can also be an effective tool for flirtation. Due to the prevalence of AC, they are far more common in the east than the west. 

I'm Into Something Good

Get ready for an unfledged weekend with The Bird And The Bee.

 

Shilin Night Market

The Shilin Night Market is one of the night markets in Taipei, Taiwan. A night market in an area where streets have been closed off and it is full of food stalls, merchant stands, activities for children and young couples. They are very social places where friends and families can gather to talk, eat, browse, and get some night air. 

The markets are very pleasant. I've been to several, including the one pictured above, and always enjoyed myself at them. Then again, aside from my home, Taiwan is probably my favorite spot on the Earth. Many fond memories of the place. Hopefully the CCP will be thwarted from screwing it up like they do everywhere they get their hands on. 

  

Karl Hagemeister's art

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Karl Hagemeister (1848-1933) was a German landscape artist. In the 1880s he spent time in Paris where he absorbed impressionistic influences. The play of light and form became more pronounced in his work, and he developed a richer and vibrant color palette. He was well known and regarded in his day. The German hyper-inflation after WWI financially ruined him and he retreated to a more private and eventually less productive phase before his death. 

Karl Hagemeister

See You On the Other Side

Get ready for an adiós Ozzy weekend with Sterling R Jackson. 

 

China Salesman

This is a review of the 2017 Chinese action/comedy/propaganda film China Salesman. I don't know if you can find it online, I bought the stupid thing for this post (I need to work on my money management skills). There will be spoilers in this review.

It stars Dongxue Li as a salesman for a Chinese telecom company which is bidding for a contract to sell superior Chinese 3G telephone equipment to an African country. Opposing him is an Eeeeevil Western telephone company that's trying to win the bid so they can tank the country's phone network, thereby restarting a civil war so's they can sell arms to both sides. Diabolical Westerners, hiding their illicit arms trade behind a telephone company! 

If battling phone companies seems like an odd premise, bear in mind that this was made around the time that Huawei's reputation was swirling down the drain, so much of the nonsense in this film is just touting the wonders of Chinese 3G technology compared to the junk the Westerners put out. 

The producers of the film also planned an international release and so, to bolster its overseas box office, they cast two huge Hollywood action stars -- Steven Seagal and Mike Tyson. OK, maybe 'huge Hollywood action stars' is an exaggeration, although in Seagal's case, considering his ample girth, huge certainly fits.

 

Ms Ling and the China Salesman,
who can't afford a radio phone to call their headquarters,
whine about not being taken seriously

We are introduced to the China Salesman and his assistant Ruan Ling as they are riding into the capital city on camels. Driving past in a fancy car are Susanna, the blonde woman who is running the bidding, and Michael, the salesman for the Eeeeevil Western phone/weapons dealing company. That seems like a bit of a conflict of interest to me, but what do I know? Susanna and Michael, from the comfort of their air-conditioned car, smirk at the two Chinese yahoos on their camels.  

Later, while the Westerners settle into luxurious accommodations, the China Salesman and his sidekick open up their old regional office in the Capital. It is dusty and pretty run down looking. At one point the China Salesman even complains to Ling that they don't have a radio phone to call their headquarters in China. Wait, this movie is promoting the wonders of Chinese 3G telephony, and these two boobs can't even call their headquarters? 

We then cut to a bar ran by Steven Seagal. It's kind of like Rick's bar in Casablanca, but instead of Humphrey Bogart you get Seagal waddling around. He's tasting some hootch from a barrel, declares it to be good and hands over crates of guns he's trading for the booze. Now, I'm not an international arms dealer, but it strikes me that Seagal got the short end of the stick trading of all those automatic weapons for only a few gallons of whiskey. 

Then, who should happen to walk in but Mike Tyson. His backstory is that he is a fearsome African Chieftan. However, unfortunately for him his entire tribe was massacred and exterminated. His big ambition is to reconstitute his tribe. How he plans on doing that when they're all dead is a mystery - I guess he's just an optimist. 

Tyson, Seagal, and Seagal's stunt double duke it out
(image from Film Threat) 

Since there are two high alpha action stars in the same bar a fight is inevitable. One problem is Seagal is in his 'beached whale' phase so all he can do is sit and wave his arms around as he does some fearsome chair-fu. Meanwhile, Tyson wants nothing to do with that, he just wants to run around punching people. To solve the problem of providing a mobile Seagal for the fight they hired the world's skinniest stunt double to do the duty. The three of them bust up the place, crashing through walls and demolishing all props in sight. 

When the required amount of promotional video has been filmed, the fight ends with a Tyson victory. Seagal, his contract completed, thankfully largely disappears from the show. Tyson continues as a minor character with an amusingly absurd faux-African accent that changes from scene to scene. 

The movie's plot is pretty much of a mess. It stitches together over-the-top action sequences while pumping the superiority of Huawei telephones, whining about the lack of respect for China, blathering about the incomprehensible civil war, displaying supposed African culture, and revealing devious Westerners. My favorite Tyson appearance was at one of the innumerable, technobabble infused telephony negotiation sessions. Tyson crashes through the front door in an armored personnel carrier and touches off a massive gunfight. Way to negotiate Mike.

Who needs guns when you have a Chinese flag?

Another ridiculous scene is when the China Salesman needs to get to the south to repair a vital telephone relay tower. However, there is only one mountain pass they can use to get there, and currently that pass is being blocked by the two warring rebel factions who are engaged in a massive firefight. Trying to solve this conundrum, the China Salesman thinks for a bit and then gets a brainstorm. He breaks out a gigantic Chinese flag, mounts it on the back of his truck and starts to drive through the pass. Hilariously the rebels all stop fighting and instead stand up and start shouting "Its China!", "China good!", "Yea for China!" so the China Salesman can make it through the pass. Yea, that sounds plausible.   

Would I recommend you watch it? If you can get it for free the plot is preposterous, and it is stuffed full of ludicrously transparent propaganda. Still, it is a hoot and entertaining in a crappy B-movie sort of a way. 

        

Mighty prognostication

La Clairvoyance by René Magritte

It had to happen. It should happen soon.
― Nicola Griffith ―

The mystery around prophecy is intelligent prediction,
chance, and those which fulfill themselves
― Monaristw ― 

Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.
― George Eliot ―

Prophecy is slippery, dangerous, open to fatal misinterpretation.
― Patrick Ness ―

  

Via Con Me

Get ready for a flirtatious weekend with Paolo Conte.

 

A ferry in Bangladesh

This is a video of the daily operations of a ferry boat in Bangladesh. It is newer than most ferries in the region, but it is still rather Spartan looking. The river traffic looks insane, 

 

Léon Lhermitte

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These some of the works of Léon Lhermitte (18844-1925) a French artist who worked in pastels. He primarily created rural scenes. He was well known in his day and Vincent van Gogh was an admirer of his artwork.

Léon Lhermitte

Samba de Toriko!!!

Get ready for a gormandizing weekend with Hyadain.

 

A firetruck

This video shows a pumper truck commonly used by firefighters. It explains the layout of its pumps, water tank, equipment, hoses, ladders and the cab. From the comments to the video a lot of firefighters seemed impressed by how well he described the truck and its loadout.

 

Paintings of the Statue of Liberty

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On this 4th of July weekend, we have a small sampling of paintings of the Statue of Liberty. It was a gift from the people of France and is a monument to freedom and democracy. It is also a symbol of the promise of American opportunity to the immigrants entering via New York harbor.

My grandparents all immigrated to the U.S. at the beginning of the 20th century. They must have seen it, and I'm sure it moved them, but they never mentioned it. They did mention Ellis Island, but to them it was all just a transition from the Old World they had left behind for their new home in the States. The future called.