Weed Patches

Every day I like to go up on top of the GA Tech/Technology Square parking deck in order to gaze at the city skyline and survey the traffic on the interstate below. This gives my eyes a break from long periods spent staring at a computer screen.

Today I found myself gazing down at a GA Tech facilities guy cutting back weeds. These weeds have grown almost as tall as a person, and they have swallowed up the trunks of the ornamental trees planted in a row between the building and the sidewalk.

The guy used a hedge trimmer to carve the weeds back from the sidewalk they had been partially blocking, much as one might carve topiary. His actions resulted in a smooth, five foot high wall of weed by the sidewalk.

This was ridiculous, because the weeds obviously should have been pulled outright long ago. But somehow the opportunity for doing that had slipped by, and one day it was decided to simply trim them back. It struck me as being akin to using a laser to carve a malignant tumor into a beautiful, miniature Venus de Milo while leaving the tumor in place.

Since my mind runs away with itself very easily, the actions of the Facilities guy struck me a metaphor for the way society deals with many problems. Rather than pulling the weeds at the start, it seems to be human nature to let them grow until the problem cannot be ignored--when the sidewalk becomes impassable. By then the effort required to completely solve the problem is too much to contemplate, so we simply cut the weeds back.

Since this is (purportedly) a European-themed blog, in order to justify this musing I'll add a metaphor offered to me by my Slovakian former roommate Luboš to describe how America deals with its problems:

"America began its history like a quilt. But then the quilt got torn. So you sewed patches on the tears. And then the patches get tears. So you sewed patches on patches. And soon the entire quilt became patches on patches on patches..."

Charles Dana Gibson, Rudolf Eickemeyer, Jr., Evelyn Nesbit, and "The Eternal Question"

[September 27, 2010 - Changes made to this blog entry per ADDENDUM below]

This is a "Eurotrash or Eurotreasure?" departure, but since it's become my blog in general, and I've used plenty of Gibson girls to illustrate my Eurodance DJ set flyers, I feel I can indulge myself this one time.

Charles Dana Gibson's "The Eternal Question" [link] has long been believed to be a portrait of Evelyn Nesbit, the chorus girl and model who, a few years after Gibson's drawing was completed, found herself the center of a crime of passion that led to what is generally regarded as the first "Trial of the [20th] Century."

I think I have made a discovery. Last night, while looking through the Corbis website, a 1901/1902 image of Evelyn Nesbit jumped out at me [link]. I believe Gibson used this image as the basis for "The Eternal Question." I present my analysis below. No proportions were altered in any of the photographic images.


The eyelid is the most startling clue; the lighting and fold lines are nearly identical in the two images.


The interior of the ear forms a distinctive key-shape.


The lips and chin are nearly identical.


The two photos above are identically sized and angled. Increasing the size of Nesbit's hairdo along with the changed tilt of her head would have been changes made in order to emphasize Gibson's question mark. Although apparently doubled in size, that amazing sea of hair retains the same proportions and forms throughout.


The photos in the image above are also identically sized and angled. The facial features generally line up; there is a slight waver for the eyebrow and eye in my sizings (perhaps with more care I could align even those), but all else is a perfect match.

I think that the idea of Gibson working from a photo makes him an even better artist. He would have had stunning artistic insight to look at the photo, see that question mark potential there, and then fully realize that vision in his drawing. This is far more interesting to me than if he had sat Nesbit down in front of him and said, "OK, now make your hair into a question mark." :-D

So am I only the latest person to see this, or is this a new piece of insight into "The Eternal Question"?

---

ADDENDUM - September 27 - Paula Uruburu, who literally wrote the book on Evelyn Nesbit (the excellent American Eve [link]), kindly wrote back to me on this issue and offered something I could not bring to the table: real scholarship. :-D

First off, she informed me that the photograph was taken by Rudolf Eickemeyer, Jr. Eickemeyer took most of Nesbit's most famous shots, including "Tired Butterfly." [link]

Second, she agrees that Gibson must have seen this particular Eickemeyer photo, and complimented me on my "brilliant detective work." (I blush. Thank you, Paula!)

Third, there are not many profile shots of Nesbit to (literally) draw from.

But she also noted that Nesbit had also sat for Gibson in the flesh (thus I have deleted the lines in this blog entry where I had expressed doubts about this).

So, at this stage it seems to me that it went down like this: having been acquainted with her already, Nesbit came readily to Gibson's mind as he conceived of "The Eternal Question," and at some point in the creation of that drawing he turned to the Eickemeyer photograph to help fill in the details.

Buggles Sample Ruins Two Songs in One Summer

Orbital were one of the leading electronic music groups of the 1990s. Then they lost their way, and after that they threw in the towel.

In June 2010 they came back from the dead with a new single, called "Don't Stop Me," which featured a sample of a chick from the Buggles' song "Video Killed the Radio Star." It's quite irritating.*



A couple weeks ago, will.i.am rolled out a tune with Nicki Minaj called "Check It Out." It features that same Buggles sample, but this time it's run into the ground, making "Check It Out" one of the most unlistenable pop songs of the last several years. Lyrics consist of performers boasting about their awesomeness and an oft-repeated plea to "check it out."** Orbital's take is not sounding so bad now, is it?



Of course, it's unlikely that the sample's reappearance on "Check It Out" only a couple of months after Orbital's tune came out was a coincidence. But why steal an idea that was bad to begin with and turn it into something so much worse?

The original Buggles song:



* Their "The Gun is Good" is better.
** The reason these sorts of lyrics reappear like roaches is suggested in the verse:

Step up in the party like my name was that bitch
All these haters mad because I'm so established
They know I'm a beast yeah I'm a fucking fab bitch
Haters you can kill yourself

...which suggests that any complaints about the tiresomeness of hearing such clichéd lyrics (which would no doubt come from "haters") will fall on deaf ears.

Life Goes On

In the same way one might worry that no phone call or email for a few weeks from one's elderly father might mean elderly father is lying injured at the bottom of a flight of stairs, his cell phone inches out of reach, perhaps readers sometimes worry that my failure to update this blog means I have met some similarly unhappy fate.

The lack of updates simply comes down to this: this blog focuses on Europe, with an emphasis on my own direct interactions with that continent. Since I haven't been in Europe for many months, updates have been few.

For regular updates on European music, I encourage you to join my lately bouncing "Eurotrash or Eurotreasure?" Facebook group, which I have been posting to several times each week.

For more thoroughly digested music matters, please visit ye olde Kingpigeon.com website, where one will find DJ sets, music reviews, and other fine items.

When I find myself preparing to depart for Europe again, this blog will spring back to life. There's no need to call the paramedics at this time. ;-)

Prison Break Season 2: Sequel

I offer another personal blog entry, since the personal will impact the future, less-personal reportage you'll find here.

My mind is in two places. It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, if anybody really does*, that neither of those places is Atlanta, the city where my body shuffles around while its owner drifts along in a perpetual dream state.

One place I find my mind is in the past--way in the past--researching the 1890-1910 period of American history. I might make some sort of a book out of all that research one day, or maybe not, but I'm smitten by the period and am trying to absorb everything I can about it.

The second place I find my mind is the future, contemplating and laying a tentative foundation for a return to Europe, which may or may not happen (in case anyone from my office is worrying about making a contingency plan). This will, by extension, mean a return to the sorts of blog entries you read here from January to April, which was really what this blog was all about in the first place. As I strove to do on that earlier trip, I hope to keep the "travel blog" tone to a minimum and focus more on reporting specifically on the things I see, particularly as related to the European pop and dance music scenes.

The most appealing plan so far looks to be the Baltic states first, followed by a dive down through Belarus, then Ukraine, then Romania, then Bulgaria, then Turkey, then up and around to Georgia (since the Armenian-Turkish border remains closed), and then down to Armenia. Fortunately, I have contacts in many of these places. But I also want to visit friends in the Balkans, which is the one drawback to this currently Balkanless plan, so it will likely be revised (of course, some revision will occur at the spur of the moment).

As for the present, I'm just a body earning money at his job right now. If I return to Europe I will have to quit the job, which is why earning money now is of paramount importance. Not that I'm quitting my job. Just saying these are all the angles I am looking at right now.

* You don't.

Epically Flawed Analogies

For the benefit of those not living in the United States, I will explain that there is a proposal to build a Muslim cultural center two blocks from the "Ground Zero" site of the 11 September attacks. Those opposed to the center say that it is insensitive to build anything related to Islam near Ground Zero. Others argue that opposition to the construction of the center demonstrates an abandonment of our constitutional values.

It's worth writing about on this blog, since many of the analogies used by opponents to the plan focus on events that transpired in recent European history.

In making their arguments, opponents of the so-called "mosque" (actually, it sounds more like a mall) often talk about the "misappropriating" of a tragic historical event, but then misappropriate other historic tragedies to draw analogies to support their position.

I have noticed that all the analogies brought up by opponents to the plan fail on exactly the same point. Here are some the comparisons that have been made and why they all fail in the same way.

1) "Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington." -- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich
Analogy: Muslims = Nazis, NYC = Holocaust Museum.
Fail: Nazis as a political entity planned and orchestrated the slaughter of Jews, whereas Muslims as a whole did not plan and orchestrate the 9/11 attacks.

2) "We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor." -- Newt Gingrich, again
Analogy: Muslims = Japan, NYC = Pearl Harbor.
Fail: Japan as a political entity planned and orchestrated the attack on Pearl Harbor, whereas Muslims as a whole did not plan and orchestrate the 9/11 attacks.

3) "The Atlantic's Michael Kinsley was typical in arguing that the only possible grounds for opposing the Ground Zero mosque are bigotry or demagoguery. Well then, what about Pope John Paul II's ordering the closing of the Carmelite convent just outside Auschwitz? (Surely there can be no one more innocent of that crime than those devout nuns.)" -- Charles Krauthammer, conservative columnist
Analogy: Muslims = The Catholic Church, NYC = Auschwitz.
Fail: The Catholic Church (a religious and, effectively, a political entity [both in method of operation and in the Vatican's sovereignty]), was complicit in the destruction of the Jews during World War II, whereas Muslims as a whole did not plan and orchestrate the 9/11 attacks.

4) “9/11 mosque=act of fitna, “equivalent to bldg Serbian Orthodox church@Srebrenica killing fields where Muslims were slaughtered” -- Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor and former Republican vice presidential candidate
Analogy: Muslims = Serbian Orthodox Church, NYC = Srebrenica.
Fail: The Serbian Orthodox church as a religious entity prominently and directly supported the Serbian government's actions during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, whereas Muslims as a whole did not plan and orchestrate the 9/11 attacks.

To me, reasonable hatred (e.g., our feelings toward the 9/11 plotters and executors) evolves into unforgivable racism when one impresses one's negative impressions about a few individuals upon a much larger number of people (I suppose this is a wordy way of describing negative stereotyping). The analogies above all attempt to pull off this trick, attempting in each instance to equate 1.5 billion Muslim people to various political and religious entities who, either generally or, in the cases of the specific injustices cited, are worthy of censure. This is why the Atlantic writer Mr. Krauthammer attempts to refute was right all along: "the only possible grounds for opposing the Ground Zero mosque are bigotry or demagoguery."

Europe and America

Began writing this five months ago somewhere between visiting Croatia and Slovenia. Tweaked it a few times since. It probably isn't going to get any better, so I am giving up, posting it, and walking away! :-D

Europe, a continent the size of the United States, boasts myriad languages, faiths, and cultures. Some countries there were fighting wars with one another as recently as the 1990s, and other forms of cultural wars continue to divide Europeans today. Thus, it would be silly to generalize about Europeans as a whole. But I'm silly, so let's do it!

Europeans seem to be more pragmatic and susceptible to logic than Americans, perhaps to a fault, as pragmatism sometimes leads to pessimism, and pessimism leads to inaction ("The odds are I will fail, so I will not attempt"). But I can relate better to this form of logic than to American optimism, and the longer this economy drags the more American realists I think there will be.

Europe contends with a Babel effect; even with English as a fallback business language there is a large, disenfranchised portion of the population that cannot so easily participate in the international market. America is fortunate in that its citizens by and large speak the same language.

The Muslim issue seems to be roiling Europe, whereas America's analogous Mexican immigrant issue is not so big a deal (the U.S. immigration debate does not represent an all-out "culture war" on a par with Europe's Muslim one; and regarding our own recent Muslim issue, the "Ground Zero" "Mosque" [both terms need to be scare-quoted], this appears to be a trifle compared to the all-out European cultural battle).

Europe has a deserved reputation for paying more attention to detail, and generally is known to produce a higher quality of product (from clothes to furniture to cars to women*) than Americans, though sometimes at unreasonable cost.

Even if we are to trust the gloomy international standardized test scores, the United States' 300 million-strong population guarantees that a large number of smart and clever people will continue to drive the markets and innovation. Lack of hyper-pragmatism means greater ingenuity and innovation--the best entrepreneurs expect to fail sometimes and are not easily dissuaded by failure. That means we sometimes fail epically, but we also enjoy epic success (McDonald's, Microsoft, etc.).

All that said, I often think I would rather live in Europe. I identify more with its culture and lifestyle. America can become great, but if my life isn't, then why stick around cheerleading the richest 1%? There are plenty of European democracies I could choose to live in. And did I mention the girls?

* ;-D