Sunday, November 25, 2007

Doctor Noe's sexy gadgets and smooth stuff: Bugs and Buddha

http://thebuddhadiaries.blogspot.com/2007/11/cockroach.html

Bugs and Buddha


archy
Originally uploaded by Doctor Noe
This is a response to my friend Peter Clothier's seasonal musing (http://thebuddhadiaries.blogspot.com/2007/11/cockroach.html) about whether killing a cockroach is karmically correct. His blog post brought up some interest responses, such as this one from robin andrea, who said...

"When I catch bugs in the house I alway use a cup or small bowl to put over the critter. I then slide a postcard or envelope under the cup, catching the bug inside. The bug is only slightly offended by the experience, and is usually happy to crawl or fly out of the container. I've caught all kinds of citters this way, even a mouse the cat brought in.

Thus, my response took off from hers, and took in another gentleman's musing over the transcendental reincarnative implications. ...

Peter, around our house I use the Robin Andrea method as well, preserving the critters -- crickets mostly -- to carefully be served up to the reptile gods in the persons of my son's Gekko, Zeppo, and the three frogs that live in the next habitat over.

As to the reincarnation question, though you are correct in citing Mr. Kafka, I would prefer to honor the voice of an American auteur, Mr. Don Marquis:

mehitabel was once cleopatra

By Don Marquis, in "archy and mehitabel," 1927


boss i am disappointed in
some of your readers they
are always asking how does
archy work the shift so as to get a
new line or how does archy do
this or do that they
are always interested in technical
details when the main question is
whether the stuff is
literature or not
i wish you would leave
that book of george moores on
the floor
mehitabel the cat and i want to
read it i have discovered that
mehitabel s soul formerly inhabited a
human also at least that
is what mehitabel is claiming these
days it may be she got jealous of
my prestige anyhow she and
i have been talking it over in a
friendly way who were you
mehitabel i asked her i was
cleopatra once she said well i said i
suppose you lived in a palace you bet
she said and what lovely fish dinners
we used to have and licked her chops

mehitabel would sell her soul for
a plate of fish any day i told her i thought
you were going to say you were
the favorite wife of the emperor
valerian he was some cat nip eh
mehitabel but she did not get me

archy

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Thursday, October 25, 2007

From Hell and Back ...

To mangle a book title by Norman Mailer. OK, so it's just in time for

Halloween ...

and you thought you'd be seeing the usual run-o-the-mill clichéd images. Think again.

Just scroll down to the fourth entry on this blog (http://doctornoemedia.blogspot.com/2007/09/fear-of-fright-night.html) and you can read my essay on classic horror films entitled “Fear of Fright Night”. I wrote this in 2001 for an AOL site I was a regular contributor/reviewer for called Entertainment Asylum.

You can also find the page here:


http://www.angelfire.com/ma/babybrownsplace/articles/art7.html


I wrote numerous pieces for Entertainment Asylum in my tenure as an AOL correspondent/content editor, but only this one was saved for posterity. I share it with you now.

Cheers,

Noë Gold



aka Doctor Noe

> >


PS, there’s also a neato keeno compendium of creature features here on the same site:

http://www.angelfire.com/ma/babybrownsplace/articles/articles.html


PPS, check out my latest article here ...

This is my article about Zorina Kroop, Mega Lottery winner, in the Studio City Sun, 10-5-07:

http://suncomm.globat.com/~suncommu/archives/studio_city_sun_archives/2007/Oct%205/

PPS, and here’s the last one for the Sun ...

Noë Gold’s most recent cover story on director Brian Robbins in all three editions of the Sun Newspapers may be found here ...
http://www.studiocitysun.com/proof/STUv5n22.pdf


This is from a cover story by Noë Gold for the Sun Newspapers (Studio City, Sherman Oaks, Encino CA).

Brian Robbins, director of Eddie Murphy’s smash comedy Norbit, takes us on the set of his next Murphy vehicle, Starship Dave. (Photo by robertevans.com)

Noë Gold’s interviews with Gwyneth Paltrow, Halle Berry and Cameron Crowe are at www.noemedia.net .


Again, you might like to see how the story looks as a post on my blog

Doctor Noe’s Sexy Gadgets and Smooth Stuff

and here (Part 2)

and this about Oakwood School, where my son attends:

http://www.oakwoodschool.org/PDF/SunStory-Astman.pdf

I’d really appreciate your linking to my blog and inspiring others to ...

Subscribe! To Doctor Noe's Sexy Gadgets and Smooth Stuff, http://doctornoemedia.blogspot.com/




This is from my flickr pal Noemí Macías Vega and it was Uploaded by noemimmv (her flickr handle) on 19 Oct 07, 1.38PM MDT.

Here's what you will encounter when you go to her flickr profile (http://www.flickr.com/people/noemimmv/):
I have been interested in photography since I was 10 years old. Now I am studying photography in the Art high school of Canary Island (Spain).

I am learning new things from all sorts of people . . . I prefer portraits because I think in that form I can REALLY see the person.

The Self-portraits I do have death as a theme; I find that interesting and mysterious. If you want to see more of my photos please check out my website( which will be coming soon in English.)

Nomys Vega website: http://www.nomysvega.es.mw/

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Fear of Fright Night

Just in time for

Halloween ...

this here’s my essay on classic horror films entitled “Fear of Fright Night”. I wrote this in 2001 for an AOL site I was a regular contributor/reviewer for called Entertainment Asylum.

Find the page at:

http://www.angelfire.com/ma/babybrownsplace/articles/art7.html


I wrote numerous pieces for Entertainment Asylum in my tenure as an AOL correspondent/content editor, but only this one was saved for posterity. I share it with you now.

Cheers,

Noë Gold


FEAR OF FRIGHT NIGHT



What's to enjoy about scary films?


By Noë Gold @ Entertainment Asylum



We are now in the midst of another cycle of shock films, loosely categorized by film historians as the horror genre but I'll just call 'em Scary Movies, since these film historians tend to quarrel and quibble about what exactly is a horror film. I say "cycle" because these films come in bunches, about every twenty years or so, and are extremely popular. The current crop (typified in the late nineties by Scream, Scream 2, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Disturbing Behavior, the then-current Halloween: H20 and soon to be continued with I Still Know What You Did Last Summer), have one thing in common: they're not "monster movies" like Frankenstein or The Fly or any of the creepy horror films that were popular in the fifties.

The Scary Movie of the nineties relies more on psychological terror than the obvious makeup-enhanced movies of that more innocent era. It deals with ordinary people in ordinary situations who come across a deviant like "Halloween's" Mike Myers. The suspense in H20 is more on account of the audience's expectations and the throbbing, spooky music than from any obvious monster. Mike Myers comes with a lot of baggage, and it's all hidden beneath that very ordinary white Halloween mask. The effect is much more chilling than Godzilla could ever hope to be.

Why is this Scary cycle surfacing again now? On the surface, things are fairly stable in modern-day society. Crime statistics are down, the economy is whistling along and Charles Manson is tucked away neatly in prison with no hope of escape. So why do we flock to movies that scare the gizzards out of us? Because it gives us pleasure. When there are no real things to be scared of, we go to the movies to shake things up. In a weird way, it's therapeutic.

To illustrate this point, I call forth a reference in a seminal book by an author I used to know who taught me a lot about the genre, Carlos Clarens. On the frontispiece of his Illustrated History of the Horror Films, Carlos quotes sociologist Roland Penrose from his work, Violence in Contemporary Art: "The bogey of violence is particularly horrifying and intolerable to us when we meet it in cold blood. The arts, however, avoid its brutal impact by their appeal to the emotions, they warm us to its presence, turning terror into enjoyment and cruelty into compassion. We participate in the act of violence without suffering its evil consequences. Art, in fact, allows us, as in certain rituals, to satisfy our Olympian yearning to stimulate the forces of nature. Its nonviolent power has a therapeutic and catalytic influence."

So, watching Scary Movies in the relative safety of a theater with hundreds of other people around us will not turn us into raving, bloodthirsty lunatics. On the contrary, it's a cheap alternative to seeing a shrink. For the same reason we pay money and wait in long lines to ride the shriekiest roller coaster, we go to the movies to get our hair lifted. Steve Miner, who directed H20, says it this way: "My favorite scary film of all time was Psycho, which I could not sit through. I never saw the whole movie until I was an adult. Halloween I found reminiscent in spirit of that kind of movie: unrelentingly scary and suspenseful and atmospheric. I think people like to be scared because they can go to the edge without really being there."

Kevin Williamson, the Dawson's Creek director who wrote the screenplay of H20 as well as that of Scream, credits Halloween for what he is today. "Halloween is and always has been my favorite film of all time," he says. "It wasn't just a movie, it was an experience. ... The audience participation factor was one of the most incredible parts of the movie. The way the audience jumped and screamed at the characters on screen got my blood pumping. It was this effect in Halloween that made me realize that I wanted to be a filmmaker.

Okay, what about that "every twenty years" theory? It's no coincidence that the current Halloween is subtitled H20, since the original Halloween was released in 1978. That one put its director, John Carpenter, on the map and kicked off the career of Jamie Lee Curtis as well (it was her first feature film). H20 has among its co-stars Jamie Lee's mom, Janet Leigh, who was the star victim of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, released 18 years before Halloween in 1960 (and later to be redone in a faithful translation by Gus Van Sant). Carpenter's stated purpose in conceiving Halloween was that he wanted to create a picture that would play like a full-length version of the shower scene in Psycho.

Go back roughly twenty years from Psycho and you have the beginning of another Scary cycle in the early forties. A series of films produced by Val Lewton has a lot in common with what the Scary cycle of the nineties is going for - psychological horror with no monsters or creatures in sight. The great director Jacques Tourneur did more with camera angles, lighting and sound to chill the audience's bones with his masterpieces the original Cat People and his follow-up I Walked With a Zombie. I command you to go out and rent these right now so you can see what I mean.

The first of these twenty-year cycles, just to round out my argument, goes back to Germany in the twenties. You won't be able to rent Paul Weggener's Student of Prague or his series of films about the Golem, a vengeful Jewish monster who haunted Czechoslovakia. But there is also The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu, the original vampire story (with Max Schreck as the Vampire). And rounding out the cycle is The Hands of Orlac, with Caligari's Conrad Veidt, about a concert pianist who has the hands of a murderer grafted on after he loses his in an accident. The fright genre moved (along with a number of German filmmakers escaping the Nazis) to America for its next cycle, and it is also no great coincidence that another one of these German exports, Peter Lorre, made his American film debut in 1935 in a remake of Orlac called Mad Love, another one that you must rent or seek out on cable TV.

Which is all to say that what comes around goes around in the world of roller coasters and Scary Movies. Now that I have given you a quick sense of its history, it's a good time to grab a ride.




PS, there’s also a neato keeno compendium of creature features here on the same site:

http://www.angelfire.com/ma/babybrownsplace/articles/articles.html

.... and in this photo gallery from The Hollywood Reporter:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/gallery/iconic-horror-movies-32472


Noë Gold’s most recent cover story on director Brian Robbins in all three editions of the Sun Newspapers may be found here ...
http://www.studiocitysun.com/proof/STUv5n22.pdf


This is from a cover story by Noë Gold for the Sun Newspapers (Studio City, Sherman Oaks, Encino CA).
Brian Robbins, director of Eddie Murphy’s smash comedy Norbit, takes us on the set of his next Murphy vehicle, Starship Dave.

Noë Gold’s most recent cover story on director Brian Robbins in all three editions of the Sun Newspapers may be found here ...
http://www.studiocitysun.com/proof/STUv5n22.pdf



Noë Gold’s interviews with Gwyneth Paltrow, Halle Berry and Cameron Crowe are at www.noemedia.net .

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Lovely Antifascist


GerdaTaroSlide2.jpg
Originally uploaded by Doctor Noe
What is amazing to me about this person is that she lived in a time when everything was possible. See the three listings below. ...

"Gerda Taro, Guadalajara Front, Spain," July 1937, by an unknown photographer.

Photo: International Center of Photography

Related Article: A Wartime Photographer in Her Own Light (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/22/arts/design/22taro.html)

----------------
Now playing: Paul McCartney - All Things Must Pass
via FoxyTunes

GerdaTaro: Premature Anti-Fascist Icon Lady


GerdaTaroSlide1.jpg
Originally uploaded by Doctor Noe
Gerda Taro began her short, adventurous life as Gerta Pohorylle, a Jewess born in Poland.Sometime in the spring of 1936, she and her lover André Friedmann, a Hungarian Jew, who took the name Robert Capa, changed their names and, in the process, the history of photography. Ms. Pohorylle became Gerda Taro. Working at times as “Capa,” an imaginary American photographer, they began documenting the Spanish Civil War, capturing the ruined towns and devastated civilians and soldiers on the Republican side.

Gerda Taro - Republican Bugle Boy


GerdaTaroSlide10.jpg
Originally uploaded by Doctor Noe
This series of photos (see the next three blog entries) took me back to an adolescent obsession triggered by George Orwell's most amazing Homage to Catalonia, his tale of the revolutionary atmosphere that pervade Spanish Civil War-era Barcelona and its environs. The streets were teeming with anarchism and good vibrations, powered by the common struggle to off the Fascist forces of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. For this, Taro, her husband Robert Capa and the sainted Brooklyn soldiers of the Lincoln Brigade were anointed "premature antifascists" by the Hoover-led FBI and its successors in the Great American Witch Hunt, the House Unamerican Activities Committee and McCarthyism.

War Portraitist With a Cause

Gerda Taro, who died young, is only now being honored by the International Center of Photography in New York. See above and link at right for more ... (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/22/arts/design/22taro.html?ex=1348200000&en=3ccb5a5546f4abe1&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink)

Friday, September 7, 2007

Ham on Ry


RyCooder1981.jpg
Originally uploaded by Doctor Noe
This is a pic my buddy Lyle Wachovsky took of Ry Cooder as I interviewed him (I'm on the left) for Guitar World magazine. I was the founding editor of this rag. I'll post the entire story in the next blog entry.

Ry Cooder Guitar World March 1981


RyCooderGW03-81#1.jpg
Originally uploaded by Doctor Noe
to actually read this, follow the link to my Flickr page.

Ry Cooder interview P. 2


RyCooderGW03-81#2.jpg
Originally uploaded by Doctor Noe
... now you're getting there. Follow the link, dude...

Ham on Ry take 3


RyCooderGW03-81#3.jpg
Originally uploaded by Doctor Noe
link on dude ...

Ham on Ry Take 4


RyCooderGW03-81#4.jpg
Originally uploaded by Doctor Noe
just follow the bouncing link ...

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Tart Sweet

A picture is worth a thousand calories.

I'll leave it at that: http://www.rockenwagner.com/cafe.html

Besides, Triplecreme (http://triplecreme.blogspot.com/2007/03/3-square-bakery-now-open.html) can give you the down low. She's a real foodie.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Now here's a fun idea ...


Not The Press badge
Originally uploaded by andyi
... from Andy Ihnatko, my favorite tech columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times who I first encountered as an original MacUser fan back in the '90s, and this marks the second but doubtless not the last time I quote him in this here space.

I highly recommend his books (www.wiley.com) about technology, which like Herman Melville's tomes, give me the minutia of a subject at the same time as they delve into the blubber. For more of his wit and wisdom, do visit his "Colossal Waste of Bandwidth" at www.andyi.com.

Andy's caption to "Not the Press Badge":

While explaining a recurring phenomenon, I came up with the idea for a special "Not The Press" badge for me to wear when I'm out shooting an event with the Big-Ass SLR.

Made with FD's Flickr Toys.

... about which the ever-observant Jim Heid noted ...

view profile

jimheid Pro User says:

Ha! And always with the Clairefontaine notebook. That alone gives away that you aren't a photog. They use, like, Mead or something.

Another Andy I. gem


Letdown
Originally uploaded by andyi
This is the photo that inspired the anti-press badge above.

Here's what Andy I. says about the captured event and the badge it inspired. The photo is entitled "Letdown":

I felt like I was disappointing some people. The folks who do lots of parade would spot the Better Than Normal camera and pointedly slow down or do something cool in front of me, and often the ringleader would ask what paper I work for so they can snag the clipping for their press kit.

The factual answer is "The Chicago Sun-Times" but I'm sure that they mean "how can your photo further any of our life goals?" so the truthful answer is "I'm just shooting for fun."

They don't spit on me after that, but still, I wonder if I shouldn't make up some sort of NOT THE PRESS badge to wear, just to keep things clear.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Visual Poetry


I may, I might, I must
Originally uploaded by jimheid
One of the rare pleasures of meandering around Flickr is when I discover someone who is not only a great photographer but someone who with his photography and his words comments on life around us. Just such a creator is Jim Heid, who is not only one of my new gurus of the Mac (a particular religion in whose congregation I worship regularly), but also quite a philosopher indeed. His paper trail is worth following.

I may, I might, I must

If you will tell me why the fen
appears impassable, I then
will tell you why I think that I
can get across it if I try.

Marianne Moore (1887-1972)

Another of the poems showcased on the London Underground as part of the system's Poems on the Underground program.

View the first photo in the series or the previous one.