June 23

It created solidarity between me and my students that America and Korea were both eliminated from the World Cup competition this past weekend!

I think I'll root for Uruguay now -- plucky little nation and all that. (Back between the two world wars, Montenegro was often referred to that way by the British -- "plucky little Montenegro.") I pointed out to my students that even though Ghana keeps defeating the U.S. in the World Cup, our two nations are actually quite close, since Ghana was so honored to be the first African nation visited by Obama after he became president.

Ghana's team is called the Black Stars, and here's how it got that name:

http://www.myweku.com/2010/06/the-origins-of-the-nickname-black-stars-of-ghana/

Conceptually, visually, and musically, Josko Marusic's Fisheye is an animated horror short like no other.



http://www.animationblog.org/2010/06/josko-marusic-fisheye-riblje-oko-1980.html

Short films of all kinds, which have always been underexposed, find a natural home on YouTube, and it is one of the greatest benefits that remarkable website offers.

It is all Glenn Kenny can do to even halfway describe Giulio Questi's 1968 arthouse/exploitation/serial killer/chicken farming movie, Death Laid an Egg (which sounds like the title of a 1940s Phoenix Press mystery):

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/1996

http://www.lendinglibmystery.com/Phoenix/Pronzini.html

Five fun facts about pioneer photographer Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904):

1. He was born Edward Muggeridge and changed his name several times before he came up with the unspellable "Eadweard Muybridge."
2. He murdered his wife's lover, pleaded insanity, and got off.
3. He identified with Helios, the Greek god of the sun.
4. The great painter Francis Bacon frequently used Muybridge photographs as a visual starting point.
5. Photography expert Weston Naef (which has to be the best name ever for a photography expert) believes that many of Muybridge's early photographs were actually taken by others, including my fave Carleton Watkins.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/06/muybridge-photos-getty-curator-questioned-by-.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eadweard_Muybridge

A huge show of Muybridge's work, including his famous motion studies that influenced the development of motion pictures, is on display at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Tony Shaw, on a literary mission in France, visits sites associated with the now somewhat forgotten French novelist Pierre Loti (some of whose work was translated into English):

http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com/2010/05/pierre-loti-and-rochefort-charente.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Loti

The British World War II poet Keith Douglas is perhaps the closest equivalent for that war to the more celebrated World War I poets Wilfrid Owen, Isaac`Rosenberg, Siegfried Sassoon, and Charles Hamilton Sorley:

....[his] poems demonstrate a range of skill and subject matter most people don’t master in a lifetime of writing, let alone by age twenty-four, Douglas’s age when killed. He composed the enchanting opening lyric, “Encounter with a God,” when he was fifteen or sixteen, and while its Poundian influences are unmistakable, the fact that a teenager can even have Poundian influences is astonishing.

http://therumpus.net/2010/06/simplify-me-when-im-dead/

The Irish Museum of Modern Art has mounted an exhibition of the Spanish painter Ferran Garcia Sevilla (b. 1949), whose work "draws on influences as diverse as his travels in the Middle East, philosophy, Eastern cultures, comic books and urban graffiti":

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=38579

http://www.imma.ie/en/page_212198.htm 

Among notables born on this date are philosopher Giambattista Vico, poet Anna Akhmatova, playwright Jean Anouilh, composer Carl Reinecke, conductor James Levine, country singer June Carter Cash, jazz bassist Milt Hinton, biologist Alfred Kinsey, mathematician Alan Turing, dancer/choreographer Bob Fosse, ex-Beatle Stu Sutcliffe, golfer Colin Montgomerie, television auteur Joss Whedon, and actors Dennis Price and Frances McDormand. Golf spatwatch: Current European Ryder Cup captain Colin Montgomerie and former European Ryder Cup captain Nick Faldo are, um, not exactly getting along:

http://sports.yahoo.com/golf/blog/devil_ball_golf/post/Colin-Montgomerie-continues-to-ignore-Nick-Faldo?urn=golf,251679