Mouth of the Gun

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On 10-1-17 a killer shot dead 58 people in a Las Vegas concert venue and injured 500. An ammo dealer sold the killer hundreds of incendiary tracer rounds which he didn’t use in the spree.

The dealer’s lawyer says the casualty toll would have been lower if the killer had used the tracer rounds “because victims would have seen the trajectory of the gunfire in the dark and been able to take cover more easily.”

(Steve Gorman, “Seller of bullets to Las Vegas gunman pleads guilty to ammo licensing offense,” Reuters, 11-19-19)

The arguments put forth in favor of the hardware available for mass murder come from a bottomless fudge tub. But the grubby lawyer has a point: It’s easier to duck at a concert when you can see where you’re being ambushed from.

I made the same argument once against the greater availability of silencers advocated by lobbyists to protect the hearing of gun sport enthusiasts: It’s easier to locate the sniper at a concert and take cover if you can hear the report of his weapon.

Neither flash nor report guarantee sniper event survival at a concert or elsewhere, but they increase the odds of it slightly.

(c) 2019 JMN

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Hoodie Apocalypse

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Drake performs live at AccorHotels Arena Drake in concert, Paris, France, in 2017. Photograph: Edmond Sadaka/SIPA/REX/Shutterstock.

Tyler, the Creator, 28, started the Camp Flog Gnaw Festival eight years ago in the parking lot of LA’s Nokia Theater. Music is performed, but I found the fashion statements “culturally interesting.”

Overall, Camp Flog Gnaw found a way to bring indie and niche to the big stage… This year, over 45,000 concertgoers came out dressed in Golf Wang hoodies and Golf Wang x Converse sneakers… Tyler’s power to draw out the culturally interesting teens and artists of today represents his rarified ability to recognize and exploit trends… Camp Flog Gnaw has grown into a large-scale, two-day, neon-lit carnival-meets-concert-meets-immersive shopping experience held at Dodger Stadium… HER paid respect to Prince by wearing a bedazzled jacket depicting the Purple Rain cover… During his explosive concert on Saturday, Tyler donned a Warholian blond wig and gyrated in awkward but strangely alluring ways.

(Andre Wheeler, “Drake heckling risks overshadowing Tyler, the Creator’s thriving festival,” theguardian.com, 11-11-19)

Tyler was irked at fans’ rejection of Drake, as he tweeted loudly the next day:

“I THOUGHT BRINGING ONE OF THE BIGGEST ARTIST ON THE FUCKING PLANET TO A MUSIC FESTIVAL WAS FIRE! BUT
FLIPSIDE, A LIL TONE DEAF KNOWING THE SPECIFIC CROWD IT DREW. SOME CREATED A NARRATIVE IN THEIR HEAD AND ACTED OUT LIKE ASSHOLES WHEN IT DIDNT COME TRUE AND I DONT FUCK WITH THAT.”

(c) 2019 JMN

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Elderly Rubbish

auden 1969 The Independent

Auden 1969. The Independent.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;

(W. H. Auden, “September 1, 1939”)

Do dictators skew elderly?

In 1939: Stalin 61; Mussolini 56; Hitler 50; Franco 47.

In 2019: Duterte 74; Trump 73; Kaczynski 70; Netanyahu 70; Putin 67; Erdogan 65; Bolsonaro 64; Maduro 56; Orban 56; Farage 55; Johnson 55.

Tentative affirmative.

(c) 2019 JMN

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“Military Common Sense Rules”

Adverbs Ahead

Chuckle Ahead

“Aim towards the Enemy.”

(Instruction printed on US M79 Rocket Launcher)

Salute to GP Cox, Pacific Paratrooper.

(c) 2019 JMN

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Magamobile

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1910 Ford Model T, 20 horsepower, top speed 40 mph — in any color, as long as it’s white.

Henry Ford famously said “black”; however, things are rarely black-and-white except in Magaville. A Wiki-dip discloses the following:

In his autobiography, Ford reports that in 1909 he told his management team, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” However, in the first years of production from 1908 to 1913, the Model T was not available in black but rather only gray, green, blue, and red.

(“Ford Model T” – Wikipedia)

(c) 2019 JMN

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De Niro Sr., Artist

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Robert De Niro Sr at work in his studio in New York, circa 1980. Photograph: Sonia Moskowitz/Images Press/Getty Images.

I did not know, until encountering this article in The Guardian, that actor Robert De Niro’s father was a professional painter.

Born in Syracuse, New York, into an Irish-Italian household, De Niro Sr was a child prodigy. In 1933, aged 11, he started taking classes at the Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts, which even gave him his own room in which to work. Later, his admirers included the art patron Peggy Guggenheim. His debut solo exhibition, when he was 23, inspired leading critic Clement Greenberg to write: “Guggenheim has discovered another important young abstract painter.”

(Dalya Alberge, “Robert De Niro on his father’s journals: ‘It was sad for me to read. He had his demons,’” theguardian.com, 9-29-19)

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Still Life, circa 1946, and Anna Christie Entering the Bar, 1976, by Robert De Niro Sr. Photograph: © The Estate of Robert De Niro, Sr. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

The hook for this article is the famous son’s discomfort at his father’s struggles over sexual orientation as expressed in journals. More interesting will be a straight-ahead appreciation of a good painter’s art that one hopes will come.

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Robert De Niro Sr. Paintings, Drawings and Writings: 1942-1993, will be published in October. Photograph: book jacket.

(c) 2019 JMN

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Still Apparently Mum’s Lad

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On Friday, the Queen was spotted horse riding with Prince Andrew in the grounds of Windsor in what one royal expert said was an apparent show of support to her second son. Ingrid Seward, the editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine, said: “He’s been through the wringer, he’s thoroughly humiliated, he’s had to step down, but that doesn’t mean his mother doesn’t care about him any more. It’s probably giving a message that whatever he’s done, he’s still my son, he’s still a member of the royal family.”

(“Prince Andrew’s private office to be moved out of Buckingham Palace,” theguardian.com, 11-22-19)

(c) 2019 JMN

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Accents

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Fiona Hill leaving a closed hearing on Capitol Hill early this month. Credit…T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times.

Roger Cohen writes opinion for the NYTimes, is a naturalized American citizen raised in Britain, and in his own words “a Jew, the son of South African immigrants.”

Cohen writes about another naturalized American, Fiona Hill, who emigrated from County Durham in northern England. Her father was a coal miner from age 14.

American possibility contrasted for Hill with British prejudice. A “very distinctive working-class accent” would have “impeded my professional advancement” in the England of the 1980s and ’90s, she told the House Intelligence Committee. That same accent cut through bloviating Republicans like a knife.

(Roger Cohen, “Fiona Hill and the American Idea,” NYTimes, 11-22-19)

Fiona Hill’s mention of how her accent would have held her back in England triggered memory of a remark by Dr. Katherine Kennedy Carmichael (1912 – 1982), the first dean of women at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.

In her distinguished drawl she quipped with twinkling eyes to a gaggle of language students, “All my life people have listened less to what I say and more to how I say it.”

(c) 2019 JMN

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Pumpkin Fun

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This is the best pumpkin painting I’ve ever done (the only one for now) and the most fun I’ve had doing it. It’s the fruit of a swell evening of social painting staged here in The Shed Art Studio on November 21st by the two enterprising movers-and-shakers behind Occasionally Festive: Chelsea Hill and Megan Gomez.

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This creative duo stages events in and around Victoria and makes them sparkle with innovative designs, refreshment, and camaraderie.

Two more Occasionally Festive painting sessions at TSAS are set for December 12th and 21st. A great way to bring in the holiday!

(c) 2019 JMN

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About That Pig…

 

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Excerpts from the insert that came with a shipment of Tennessee Home Goods Bamboo Charcoal Air Purifying Bags:

We are just a small US company building a Tennessee home-style brand from right down here… We are happier than a dead pig in the sunshine [my bolding] that you chose our product… We are just regular, down-home people… We love Jesus, America, and our customers (in that order).

… We recognize that nobody’s perfect… (well, except for Aunt Edna)… If for *any* reason you are not tickled pink… we will refund your money, 100% lickety-split.

The best way to earn the trust of a customer, is to please the punch out of the previous customer… so much so, that he climbs on every stump a’tween here and home to shout about how great you are.

So if you left us a review… well we’d be all like… “a possum eatin’ a sweet-tater, kinda happy”! So thank y’ins in advance for doing that. And… in the words of the late great Minnie Pearl… Y’all come back now, ya here [sic]!

(Cc) 2019 JMN

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