Now listening to Get Lucky by Loverboy and Tuesday Knight by Tuesday Knight...

In David Lam Park in Yaletown. Autumn of 2018.

Just finished watching Beetlejuice (1988) and Cross Creek (1983)...

Just finished watching Dial M For Murder (1954) and The Paper Chase (1973)...

Lady With An Ermine (1491) and The Virgin And Child With Saint Anne (1519) by Leonardo da Vinci.

An Oral History of Prince's 'Purple Rain' Tour

https://www.insidehook.com/music/looking-back-princes-purple-rain-tour

You could call it the tour that began Prince’s purple reign.

As David Browne reports for Rolling Stone, in November 1984, four months after the premiere of Purple Rain in U.S. movie theaters—a watershed moment for the pop star and an immediate box office success—Prince embarked on the supporting Purple Rain tour.

It would go down as one of the greatest concert tours in history.

Packed with special effects and famous guest appearances by the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Madonna, the tour would span 98 shows and run through ’85.

Rolling Stone has pieced together an elaborate oral history of the Purple Rain tour. RealClearLife has curated our favorite memories below.

-Wendy Melvoin, Prince’s brand-new guitarist at the time, talks of the elaborate preparations for the tour that were underway before the first date. “I kept seeing sketches of plans and Prince would buzz in and out of the rooms,” says Melvoin. “We were all being fitted for clothes that were being made. I was standing on one of those pill boxes, and there are about five people doing the measurements on me.”

-Matt Fink, Prince’s keyboardist, said that everyone—including him—had to do coordinated dance moves during the shows.

-Keyboardist Lisa Coleman says that doing dance moves onstage during the tour ruined her back for the rest of her life.

-According to Melvoin, the band only had two weeks to rehearse the show. “I had boots on, tons of jewelry, and my instrument and I had to sing and do choreography,” she told the magazine. “It was literally the Olympics. We were like synchronized swimmers. If someone screwed up that thing, there’s not even a bronze medal. You’re just off the team. This was high stakes.”

-Per bassist Mark Brown, the first time Prince got into the stage prop bathtub for “When Doves Cry,” which was made out of a lightweight material and suspended above the stage, it went upside down and Prince took a nasty fall out of it.

-Brown also said the band would get fined if they made mistakes—up to $500, notes Coleman.

-When Prince brought Madonna onstage, keyboardist Coleman had no idea who she was. “I thought he just pulled some girl up on the stage.”

-The band would nightly bet on how long the song “Purple Rain” would be extended. There was even a pot of money involved—if one of them guessed right.

-Says Coleman of why Prince didn’t participate in Michael Jackson’s “We Are the World“: “I think he just saw a whole bunch of pop stars getting together to ‘do good,’ and I think he thought that was kind of bulls—, in a way,” she said.

-Lighting director LeRoy Bennett sums up the tour best: “That whole period was so magical. You could just feel the energy of [Prince’s] stardom just skyrocketing. He could’ve continued to write major hits like all the songs on Purple Rain. I think it just became too easy.”

Just finished watching Small Things Like These (2024) and Trolls (2016)...

Just finished watching Red One (2024) and Heretic (2024)...

Now reading Time magazine Vol. 121 No. 18: A Sensual Child Comes Of Age (May 2, 1983)…

Henry Cavendish (1731-1810)

Henry Cavendish was a prominent English physicist and chemist, born in Nice to British parents. Having left Cambridge without a degree, he lived reclusively in London, devoting his life to scientific investigation while living on the fortune that he had inherited from an uncle. Cavendish discovered the composition of water and estimated the density of the earth — his value was within 1.5 percent of that attained by modern methods. He also estimated the density of the atmosphere, and studied electrical currents and astronomical instruments.

The English statesman William Cavendish, a first cousin of Henry and prime minister from 1756 to 1757, was described as having no intimate friends in political life: “This detachment was natural to him and inevitably confirmed his exalted station ... He was the supremely objective man, never led away by passion, completely reliable and so the ideal receiver of confidences ... Devoted to work and duty, everything the fourth duke did he did well” (Brown & Schweizer, 1982, p. 19). Jungnickel and McCormmach (1996) stated “these characteristics of the fourth duke — self-assured, conscientious, cautious, withdrawn, competent, and supremely objective — were those, by and large, of the Cavendish family and, in particular, of that member who distanced himself furthest for the active political life of the nation, Henry Cavendish” (p. 257).'They also stated, “To judge from what we have seen, it would appear that he never recorded a feeling or a thought about life. He had a professional correspondence, which was never large but which is invaluable to his biographies, and a portion of this has survived” (Jungnickel & McCormmach, 1996, p. 5).

According to the engineer James Watt (1846), Cavendish was a rich man with a mean spirit. George Wilson (1851) defined Cavendish’s universe as consisting solely of a multitude of objects that could be weighed, numbered, and measured, and characterized Cavendish as a calculating engine.

Social Behavior

Cavendish had “two rather forbidding traits ... a pathological fear of strangers that could render him speechless, and a clockwork regularity in all his transactions with life” (Jungnickel & McCormmach, 1996, p. 8). He was an extremely shy man.

“Like his namesakes in government, whatever Henry Cavendish did, he did well. Whatever he did not do well — which included delivering speeches, inspiring men to follow him into political battle, his special ‘unfitness’ — he did not do at all. He acted constantly in society, only his was not the given society of high fashion and politics, his birthright, but that of his own choosing, the society of scientific men” (Jungnickel & McCormmach, 1996, p. 257). Ordinary company caused him acute discomfort. Cavendish lived all his adult life in and around London in solid houses with servants to protect his privacy. These houses he turned into places of science, where the drama of his life was staged.

Narrow Interests/Obsessiveness

Cavendish’s life was his science. Bickley (1911) pointed out, “There is something pathetic about such an existence as Henry Cavendish, so fruitful and yet so utterly barren” (p. 207). According to Edward Thorpe, general editor of Cavendish’s Scientific Papers, Cavendish was not a man as other men are, but simply the personification and embodiment of a cold, unimpassioned intellectuality (see Note 5).

In a similar vein, Jungnickel and McCormmach (1996) stated, “Henry Cavendish existed in another world, though he may not have recognized it as a new world to conquer, one which demanded of Henry what had been demanded of the first duke, hard work. [By ‘conquer’... we mean to understand the workings of nature, ruled by the authority of natural laws.]” (p. 10).

According to Jungnickel and McCormmach (1996), Henry had an interest in music, and made a mathematical study of it (on musical intervals): “Music was understood to be the art that spoke most directly to his feelings” (p. 127). The same could be said of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Routines/Control

Cavendish had a clockwork regularity in all his transactions with life. The “move to Clapham Common was a particularly upsetting event in Cavendish’s well-ordered life, but it could have been much worse. Cavendish, who in daily life always had held and depended on it, now had an associate, Blagden, who like his librarian was the soul of order” (Jungnickel & McCormmach, 1996, p. 238).

Cavendish had “demons that he could subdue only by imposing a vigilant orderliness on all phases of his life. By following in his father’s footsteps, he brought his world together with that of science, with its discoverable orderliness, the calming paths of wondering stars, laid bare by nature, from which demons are strictly excluded. Cavendish left no ‘inside narrative’ of his life telling us why science attracted him, nor would we expect one from him’ (Jungnickel & McCormmach, 1996, p. 368). Clearly he was reacting to the chaos that autism can create.

Language/Humor

As he was not good at delivering speeches, Cavendish avoided having to deliver them. Lord Brougham stated that he “uttered fewer words in the course of his life than any man who ever lived to fourscore years, not at all accepting the monks of La Trappe” (Jungnickel & McCormmach, 1996, p. 370). His silence was an acknowledgment of the inadequacy of customary spoken language to represent his world. When Cavendish did choose to speak, what he said was luminous and profound.

On the subjects he cared to speak about, Cavendish spoke precisely and sparingly as a point of conscience (Jungnickel & McCormmach, 1996). In fact, persons with high-functioning autism tend toward gravity (e.g., Ludwig Wittgenstein). Thomas Young stated that Cavendish’s hesitancy of speech was not a physical defect but an expression of the constitution of his mind (see Note 6).

Lack of Empathy

Wilson, in his biography, according to Jungnickel and McCormmach (1996), “tried to penetrate to where Cavendish’s courage, hope, and faith lie, his heart, only to discover that Cavendish was a “man without a heart” (p. 8). Wilson described Cavendish as passionless, and said that he was only a cold, clear intelligence whose light brightened everything on which it fell, but warmed nothing. Berry (1960) noted Cavendish’s “striking deficiencies as a human being” (p. 22). Indeed, his habitual profound withdrawal led one contemporary to characterize him as the “coldest and most indifferent of mortals” (Shapiro, 1991, p. 292).

Motor Clumsiness

A slouching walk was a family trait of the Cavendishes. Horace Walpole observed that a “peculiar awkwardness of gait is universally seen in them” (see Note 7).

Idiosyncrasies

According to Jungnickel and McCormmach (1996), the only portrait of Henry Cavendish is “a graphite and gray-wash sketch ... Cavendish was an immensely wealthy man, but one would not know it from this portrait, which showed him in his rumpled coat and long wig, both long out of date, and with his slouching walk” (p. 8).

Conclusion

Jungnickel and McCormmach (1996) were probably on the point of diagnosing Cavendish as autistic, but for some reason stepped back from this position. They came extremely close, stating that Cavendish may have suffered from an affective disorder of a less familiar kind than depression. It is interesting that Jungnickel and McCormmach (1996) mentioned Newton and Einstein absolutely correctly in this discussion, but without using the word “autism.” They refer to Cavendish’s singular drive to understand the universe, and note that his mentality might one day invite a neurological and psychological interpretation. There is little doubt that he had an autistic desire to understand the world.

In the footnotes to their work, Jungnickel and McCormmach discussed Temple Grandin’s (1986) autobiography. They pointed out that, regarding herself as a totally logical and scientific person and her autism as a disorder of affect and empathy, she recalls Cavendish in certain ways. Jungnickel and McCormmach observe in Cavendish a number of autisticlike traits: singlemindedness, apparent inability to feel certain emotions, secludedness, rigidities of behavior, odd gait, harsh voice, strange vocalizations, panic attacks, self-acknowledged social unfitness. There is little doubt that in hinting at autism they were absolutely correct.

Jungnickel and McCormmach are also correct in stating that Cavendish had access to an expression of feeling that was at once mathematically precise and distinct from the mathematics of natural description, one that could stand in for the spoken and otherwise conventionally acted out expression of feeling. These authors concluded: “This silent man is an endlessly fascinating figure ... when all is said and done, the person of Cavendish remains in large part in shadow. At the heart of the problem of Cavendish lies the mystery of human communication” (Jungnickel & McCormmach, 1996, p. 371). We feel that what he was demonstrating was highfunctioning autism and the lack of a clear identity (i.e., part of his autism was a disorder of identity or identity diffusion).

- Michael Fitzgerald, Former Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

Now listening to Piano Sonata No. 9 by Ludwig van Beethoven and Hey Ricky by Melissa Manchester...

Near the Vancouver Art Gallery in Downtown Vancouver. Summer of 2018.

The Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) is an art museum located at 750 Hornby Street in Vancouver, British Columbia. It is a permanent collection of about 11,000 artworks includes more than 200 major works by Emily Carr, the Group of Seven, Jeff Wall, Harry Callahan and Marc Chagall.

The gallery has 3,850 square metres (41,400 sq ft) of exhibition space and more than 11,000 works in its collection, most notably its Emily Carr collection. It has also amassed a significant collection of photographs. In addition to exhibitions of its own collection, the gallery regularly hosts international touring exhibitions. The gallery also features a variety of public programmes and lectures. The gallery also has a gift shop, a café, and a library.

The Vancouver Art Gallery was founded in 1931 and had its first home at 1145 West Georgia Street. In 1983 it moved to the Hornby Street location, the former provincial courthouse. It was renovated at a cost of $20 million by architect Arthur Erickson, which completed his modern three city-block Robson Square complex. The gallery connects to the rest of the complex via an underground passage below Robson Street to an outdoor plaza, restaurants, the University of British Columbia’s downtown satellite campus, government offices, and the new Law Courts at the southern end.

In March 2007, the 2010 Olympic countdown clock was placed in the front lawn of the VAG. It was open for free for the public to see. The clock has since been disassembled, with one half going to BC Place and the other to Whistler Village.

In November 2007, the gallery announced plans to move to a new building at Larwill Park, a block formerly occupied by a bus depot on the corner of Cambie and Georgia streets opposite the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. The new building would be about 30,000 square metres (320,000 sq ft), almost 10 times the current building size, and would include more gallery space for the permanent collection now in storage, a larger exhibit space for visiting international works, more children’s and community programming, and an improved storage and display environment. Construction was planned to begin after the 2010 Olympics with a tentative opening date in 2013. The projected cost was in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and the gallery hoped to secure funding from provincial and federal governments, as well as private donors.

In May 2008, a different site was chosen for the new gallery, on land occupied by the Plaza of Nations near BC Place. The new plans would double the gallery size to 320,000 square feet (30,000 m2). In 2013, the decision was made to go back to the Georgia and Cambie site.

In April 2014, Vancouver Art Gallery selected Herzog & de Meuron, from a group of five shortlisted firms, from across the globe following a series of in-depth interviews and site visits to significant projects designed by each firm. The finalists, announced in January 2014, represented five of 75 firms from 16 different countries, who submitted their credentials through an open request for qualifications (RFQ) process issued by the gallery. The new Vancouver Art Gallery building is Herzog & de Meuron’s first project in Canada, working in collaboration with Vancouver-based Perkins + Will as executive architect in the realization of the design.

In September 2015, the gallery unveiled its conceptual design for the new building in a public event held at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.

The art gallery is located in the former main courthouse for Vancouver. The 165,000-square-foot (15,300 m2) neoclassical building was designed by Francis Rattenbury after winning a design competition in 1905. Rattenbury also designed the British Columbia Parliament Buildings and the Empress Hotel in Victoria. The building was used as a provincial courthouse until 1979, with the provincial courts moving to the Law Courts, located south of the building.[4] The building was named a National Historic Site of Canada in 1980.[4] Both the main and annex portions of the building are municipally designated “A” heritage structures. The Vancouver Art Gallery moved into the former courthouse in 1983.

The design includes ionic columns, a central dome, formal porticos, and ornate stonework. The building was constructed using marble imported from Alaska, Tennessee, and Vermont. The new building was constructed in 1906 and replaced the previous courthouse located at Victory Square. At the time, the building contained 18 courtrooms. An annex designed by Thomas Hooper was added to the western side of the building in 1912. The Annex Building is the only part of the VAG that was not converted to use as an art gallery. It was declared a heritage site and retains the original judges’ benches and walls as they were when the building was a courthouse.

On the Georgia Street side of the building was the Centennial Fountain. This fountain was installed in 1966 to commemorate the centennial of the union of the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. The Centennial Fountain was removed in 2017 as part of the Georgia Street plaza renovations. The plaza opened to the public in late 2017.

A regular gathering spot for protests and demonstrations, the Vancouver Art Gallery’s lawn and steps hosts gatherings several times a week. The Vancouver Art Gallery is the monthly meeting spot for Vancouver’s Critical Mass, as well as flash mobs, the Zombie Walk, pro-marijuana rallies, and numerous environmental demonstrations. The steps on both the Robson Street and Georgia Street sides of the building are popular gathering spots for protest rallies. The Georgia Street side is also a popular place in the summertime for people to relax or socialize.

The Vancouver Art Gallery’s permanent collection includes approximately 11,000 works from Canadian, and international artists, and acts as the principal repository of works produced in the region. The collection is organized into several smaller departments, contemporary art from Asia, photography and conceptual photography, works by indigenous Canadian artists, and artists from Vancouver and British Columbia.

The gallery’s European historical collection includes Dutch paintings from the seventeenth century by Jan Anthoniszoon van Ravestyn (1570–1657), Jan Wynants (1630/35–1684), Isaac van Ostade (1621–1649), Pieter Neefs the Elder (1578–1656), Jacob Marrel (1614–1681), Jan van Huysum (1682–1749), Balthasar van der Ast (1590–1656), Ambrosium Bosschaert the Younger (1609–1645), Jan Josefsz van Goyen (1596–1665), Abraham Storck (1635–1710), Roelof de Vries (1631 – c.1681), Willem van de Velde the Younger (1633–1707), Adriaen van der Kabel (1631–1705), Salomon van Ruysdael (1600–1670), Flemish-Cornelius de Heem (1631–1695), Roelandt Savery (1576–1639), and a fine first edition of Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes’ Disasters of War.

The Vancouver Art Gallery Library and Archives is a non-circulating collection specializing in modern, contemporary and Canadian art. The Library holds more than 45,000 books and exhibition catalogues, 100 journal subscriptions, 5,000 files on Canadian artists, sound recordings, slides and auction catalogues that document painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography, video and emerging art forms.

The Archives contain the official papers and records of the gallery’s activities since its founding in 1931. In addition, there are the personal papers of painter and educator B.C. Binning and the Bill Bissett special collection, which comprises over 100 items, including books and serials where Bill Bissett’s concrete poetry was published.

The Vancouver Art Gallery offers a wide range of public programs throughout the year, including FUSE, scholar’s lectures, artist’s talks, as well as dance and musical performances. In its most recent year, the gallery has featured over 60 presenters, including Timothy Brook, writer Sarah Milroy, and leading Emily Carr scholar, Gerta Moray. In May 2015, the gallery welcomed architect Jacques Herzog as he presented his first lecture in Canada on architecture and the new Vancouver Art Gallery building.

Every Sunday, the Vancouver Art Gallery offers Weekly Family Programs, welcoming all children under the age of 12 to attend the gallery and its events free of admission costs. In addition to Weekly Family Programs, the gallery holds its Family FUSE Weekend event 3-4 times per year.

 

Elon Musk roasted by Elden Ring players for “worst build ever” - Dexerto

https://www.dexerto.com/elden-ring/elon-musk-roasted-by-elden-ring-players-for-worst-build-ever-1832533/

Elon Musk has been in the news recently for his attempts to acquire Twitter for a reported $44 billion.

Since that deal might be on hold for now, he’s found the time to finally dig his teeth into 2022’s most beloved open-world game Elden Ring.

Now, after finally sharing details about his character, he’s received a massive amount of criticism on the very website he’s aiming to purchase.

The 50-year-old billionaire tweeted out his character’s build on May 24, showing off his “power mage” build.

The tweet revealed his level 111 character with a focus on high Mind and Intelligence stats.

Many Elden Ring players were quick to point out just how bad his gear is paired together, focusing on the fact he was wielding two shields at once and opting for a heavy roll.

One user said, “Wtf is this build? I thought this guy was supposed to be a genius?”

Another user mocked his use of a cell phone photo instead of an actual screenshot and said, “Elon Musk posting phone photos of the least efficient Elden Ring build I’ve ever seen proves meritocracy is fake.”

Although Elon Musk might become the owner of Twitter someday, that won’t shield him from its users roasting him when they see fit.

Especially went it comes to something as serious and meticulously thought-out as Elden Ring builds.

The Importance of Being Earnest (2/12) Movie CLIP - A Metaphysical Speculation (2002) HD

When Gwendolen (Frances O'Connor) professes her love to Earnest (Colin Firth), he begins to probe into how she would feel if his name weren't Earnest.

FILM DESCRIPTION:
A superb cast brings Oscar Wilde's classic comedy of manners to life in the third big-screen adaptation of this hilarious look at fun, games, and dubious ethics among the British upper crust. Algernon Moncrieff (Rupert Everett) is a slightly shady, but charming gentlemen from a wealthy family who has a bad habit of throwing his money away. Algernon has a close friend named Jack Worthing (Colin Firth), a self-made man who acts as a ward to his cousin, a beautiful young lady named Cecily (Reese Witherspoon). Algernon has created an alter ego to help him get out of tight spots brought on by his financial improprieties, and when he learns that Jack has created a false identity of his own — Earnest, a brother living in London whose exploits have earned him no small amount of notoriety — Algernon arrives for a weekend visit in the country posing as the mysterious Earnest. Having heard of Earnest's misadventures many times over the years, Cecily had developed something of an infatuation with the lovable rogue, and Algernon's impersonation of him works no small degree of magic on Cecily. Meanwhile, Algernon's cousin, Gwendolyn (Frances O'Connor), arrives for the weekend, and is startled to discover Jack is also there — except that she knows him as bad-boy Earnest. So just who is in love with who? How will Lady Bracknell (Judi Dench) handle the matter of her daughter Gwendolyn's suitors? And what's the truth about Jack's mysterious heritage? The Importance of Being Earnest was director Oliver Parker's second film adaptation of an Oscar Wilde comedy; he previously helmed An Ideal Husband, which also starred Rupert Everett. Everett and Colin Firth also co-starred in the 1984 drama Another Country.

Now listening to String Quartet No. 14 by Ludwig van Beethoven and Little Queen by Heart...

In Davie Village in Downtown Vancouver. Autumn of 2018.

Davie Village (also known as Davie District or simply Davie Street) is a neighbourhood in the West End of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It is the home of the city's gay subculture, and, as such, is often considered a gay village, or gaybourhood. Davie Village is centred on Davie Street and roughly includes the area between Burrard and Jervis streets. Davie Street—and, by extension, the Village—is named in honour of A.E.B. Davie, eighth Premier of British Columbia from 1887 to 1889; A.E.B's brother Theodore was also Premier, from 1892 to 1895.

Along Davie Street are a variety of shops, restaurants, services, and hotels catering to a variety of customers, in addition to private residences. The business with the most notoriety is Little Sister's Book and Art Emporium ("Little Sister's"), a gay and lesbian bookstore, because of its ongoing legal battles with Canada Customs that have received extensive national media coverage. Many businesses and residents along Davie Street and in the West End generally also fly rainbow flags as a symbol of gay pride, and many of the covered bus stop benches and garbage cans along Davie Street are painted bright pink.

The Village hosts a variety of events during the year, including the Davie Street Pride Festival which runs in conjunction with Vancouver's annual Gay Pride Parade, during which sections of the street are closed to motor traffic.

Davie Day is also held each year in early September, to celebrate local businesses and the community itself. This Day is designed to build awareness and promote the surrounding businesses, and is focused around Jervis to Burrard Street.

The Davie Street Business Association coined the name "Davie Village" in 1999 and also commissioned banners from local artist Joe Average, which fly from lampposts in the district. The two-sided banners depict a rainbow flag on one side and a sun design by Average on the other.

Davie Village is also home to the offices of Xtra! West, a biweekly LGBT newspaper, Qmunity (formerly the Gay and Lesbian Centre) which provides a variety of services for the city's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender residents, and the Vancouver Pride Society, which puts on the annual Pride Parade and Festival.