Steinway Pianos Bought For Only 1/2 Billion $
Famed piano maker Steinway sold for $499M
After a last-minute bid canceled a planned sale to Kohlberg & Co., Steinway is selling itself to Paulson & Co. for a $3-per-share premium over the earlier offer.
(AP) — The famed piano maker Steinway is being sold for $499 million.
The company terminated an existing sales agreement with Kohlberg & Co. after it was outbid by another investment firm, Paulson & Co.
Paulson topped Kohlberg’s offer by $3 per share.
Steinway, which is being taken private and operates a flagship store on West 57th Street in Manhattan, will have to pay a termination fee of about $6.7 million.
THE MYSTERY OF FLYING KICKS
Too Much Johnson
Unfinished Orson Welles film found in Italy
A long-lost film directed by Orson Welles in 1938 has been found in a warehouse in a small town in north-eastern Italy where it will be shown for the first time in October.
By Josephine McKenna, Rome
“Too Much Johnson”, starring a young Joseph Cotton as a playboy who flees the violent husband of his mistress, is one of the first films made by the legendary director and was due to be screened at the Mercury repertory theatre in New York but it was never finished.
The film print was found by a Padua courier company in 2005 and sent to the Cinemazero art house cinema in Pordenone, 50 miles north of Venice.
Cinema staff tossed the box in its warehouse and only realised that it had a rare piece of Hollywood history when a projectionist checked the box in 2008.
The previously only known copy of the film was lost in a fire that destroyed Welles’ home near Madrid in 1970.
I Am Number Five
10 Cinematographers Who Turned Science Fiction Movies into Great Art
SEXPAND
5. Guillermo Navarro (All of Guillermo del Toro’s movies, I Am Number Four, Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Night at the Museum)
The Oscar-winning cinematographer told an interviewer a while back: “I want to design and create images as opposed to working on a contemporary piece where realities exist right outside your window and all you have to do is register them… I believe in [Guillermo del Toro] as a filmmaker. He is a very visual director and someone that understands the contribution that cinematographers offer is important not only for the creative process, but as a film language.”
Tiger Salad
Tiger Salad
This cooling and refreshing salad—with cilantro standing in for the lettuce—is great alongside spicy foods, like our Sambal Chicken Skewers.
Recipe by Alison Roman / Photograph by Peden + Munk
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon unseasoned rice vinegar
- 2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
- 1 teaspoon toasted sesame seeds
- 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
- 1 bunch cilantro leaves with tender stems, cut into 2 inches pieces
- 4 celery stalks, thinly sliced on a diagonal
- 2 small cucumbers or 1/2 large, thinly sliced
- 6 scallions, thinly sliced on a diagonal
- Kosher salt, freshly ground pepper
Preparation
- Whisk vinegar, oil, sesame seeds, and red pepper flakes in a large bowl. Add cilantro, celery, cucumbers, and scallions. Season with salt and pepper and toss to combine.
The First Million Martian Meeting
Applicants for One-Way Mars Trip to Descend on Washington
A coterie of aspiring Martians will descend on Washington, D.C. on Saturday (Aug. 3) for the first Million Martian Meeting.
The group consists of applicants for the Mars One mission, a one-way trip to establish a colony on Mars. The meeting will feature talks
by Mars Society president and founder Robert Zubrin, Mars One CEOand co-founder Bas Lansdorp, and five Mars One applicants.
Lansdorp announced plans for the Mars One mission in May 2012. The nonprofit Mars One Foundation, based in The Netherlands, plans to land humans on Mars in 2023. Teams of four people will be launched to the Red Planet every two years, and anyone over the age of 18 is eligible to apply.
As of May 7, about 78,000 people had applied for the one-way trip.
[He] was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip, and ear; survived a plane crash; tunnelled out of a POW camp; and bit off his own fingers when a doctor refused to amputate them.
Is This the Most Interesting Opening Paragraph Wikipedia’s Ever Published?
Posted By Elias Groll
Most Interesting Man in the World, meet your match.
On Sunday, Twitter user Matthew Barrett created something of a sensation by linking to the obscure Wikipedia biography of the British army officer Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart. His tweet — “This guy surely has the best opening paragraph of any Wikipedia biography ever” — has been retweeted more than 3,200 times over the past several days.
So who was this man of extraordinary valor? A Daily Mail profile last year relays much of the same information contained on Carton de Wiart’s Wikipedia page: By the end of his life, the British soldier had been awarded his military’s highest honor for bravery during World War I and served in the Second Boer War and World War II, commanding troops in a daring World War II raid in Norway. He wore a black patch to cover a missing eye, and had been wounded in the skull, groin, ankle, and stomach. A missing hand betrayed a grisly backstory — he had once chewed off his own wounded fingers. He had tunneled out of an Italian prisoner-of-war camp, and had wound up there after crashing his plane in the Mediterranean. To top it all off, he had also served as Winston Churchill’s special representative to China’s Chiang Kai-shek. He had indeed remarked that he “enjoyed” World War I, going on to add that “it had given me many bad moments, lots of good ones, plenty of excitement and with everything found for us.” (Readers in the U.K., you may want to go check out Carton de Wiart’s 20-bore, double-barreled shotgun, which just went on display in Leeds.)
Karen Black Gone
Beloved Actress Karen Black (Nashville, Five Easy Pieces) Dead at 74
UPDATE: Karen Black has died at age 74. She ran with a cool crowd when she burst onto the movie scene– Fonda, Nicholson, Hopper, DeNiro, Altman. She was a unique talent. God bless.
Earlier: This is a terrible story. But beloved actress Karen Black is dying of cancer. Her husband has posted a blog and a video updating her deteriorating condition. http://karenblackactress.blogspot.com/2013/08/august-7th-update-from-stephen-karens.html?m=1 Black is living in a nursing facility and the situation sounds pretty dire. If you’re too young to know, Karen Black made a name for herself in the 70s in “Five Easy Pieces,” “Nashville,” “Easy Rider,” and other classics.
The Longest Words From Around The World
George Duke Gone
George Duke, Legendary Jazz Keyboardist, Dies
by EYDER PERALTA
George Duke, the legendary jazz keyboardist, died on Monday, his publicist tells NPR.
Duke’s career spanned five decades and he always straddled the line between disparate genres, collaborating with artists such as Miles Davis, Barry Manilow, Frank Zappa, George Clinton and some of Brazil’s top musicians.
The Predator Wasp
Citrus growers use predator wasp to fight disease threat
BY RICARDO LOPEZ / PHOTOGRAPHY BY DON BARTLETTI
Invasive species expert Mark Hoddle coaxes a vial of predatory wasps to the tip of a citrus branch infested with psyllids. The tiny wasps become parasites to a species of psyllid that has been spreading a deadly bacteria in citrus trees throughout the Southland. More photos
California citrus farmers import a parasitic wasp from Pakistan to battle citrus greening, a disease threatening their groves.
Pesticides haven’t worked. Quarantines have been useless. Now California citrus farmers have hired an assassin to knock off the intruder threatening their orchards.
The killer-for-hire is Tamarixia radiata, a tiny parasitic wasp imported from Pakistan.
Its mission: Rub out the Asian citrus psyllid, which has helped spread a disease that turns citrus fruit lumpy and bitter before destroying the trees.
The pest is wreaking havoc in Florida’s 32 citrus-growing counties. In California, it’s been detected in nine counties, most of them south of the commercial growing areas in the Central Valley. Farmers are hoping the Tamarixia wasp can help keep it that way.
The wasp, which flew coach in a carry-on bag from Pakistan’s Punjab region, is a parasite half the size of a chocolate sprinkle. But it kills psyllids like a horror movie monster, drinking their blood like a vampire. The female wasp can lay an egg in the psyllid’s belly. When it hatches, it devours its host.
The wasp “is going to be our number one weapon to control to Asian citrus pysllid,” said Mark Hoddle, an invasive species expert at UC Riverside, who, over several trips, brought legions of wasps to California.
“We have no other choice except to use this natural enemy or do nothing. And the ‘do nothing’ option is unacceptable.”
NEVER BUILT LOS ANGELES
Review: A city’s unrealized ambitions in ‘Never Built Los Angeles’
By Christopher Hawthorne, Los Angeles Times Architecture Critic
Los Angeles has never been big on regret.
For most of the city’s history we’ve been so busy charging forward, inventing and reinventing the future, that we’ve rarely paused to wonder what might have been.
In architecture, when we do look back, we usually focus more on mistakes of action than inaction. We mourn the landmarks we’ve knocked down rather than the ones we failed to build in the first place.
But how do you catalog a history of mistimed, misguided or ill-fated ambition? What about a preservation movement for the ideas and designs that almost made it?
“Never Built Los Angeles,” a revelatory new exhibition at the Architecture and Design Museum on Wilshire Boulevard, is a first step in that direction, an attempt to corral the city’s most beautiful architectural ghosts and put them on public view.
A Year Of Reading The World
THOSE WHO WANDER (from New Canaan)
New Canaan’s fledgling filmmakers attract funds, star power
Tyler Woods
Two young New Canaanites picked up $70,000 in funding and the surprise aid of a best-selling novelist in their pursuit of filming a feature-length movie in town.
The pair, writer Abigail Schwarz and producer Nico Scandiffio, both 20, have been working on the film for more than a year. “Those Who Wander” is a coming-of-age story about a group of friends’ spring break road trip to rural Georgia. Schwarz and Scadiffio have made the project a community-based one by choosing to shoot in New Canaan and by getting friends and peers from New Canaan High School involved in acting and musical roles. All they needed was money to finance the project.
On June 20, they started a page on Kickstarter.com, which allows people to request a specified amount of money to fund a project over a certain number of days. If the goal is not met, donors get their money back and the project doesn’t get made. Schwarz and Scandiffio, who have already raised funds through their friends and family, asked for $70,000. They had 30 days to meet that amount.
In support of their Kickstarter, the pair interviewed with local media, printed 1,500 cards advertising their project which were placed near the cash registers of 20 to 30 stores in town, put up 70 posters around town, and relentlessly made phone calls to potential donors, they said.
One person who heard about the project is bestselling author and New Canaan resident James Frey. Frey said he learned of the film when a friend sent him a link to a news story profiling the duo, and it struck a chord with him. He contacted the pair and said he’d come on board to help however he could.
“I was in their position once, young and ambitious and trying to raise money to shoot film. I think it’s good to pass the type of support I received on to the next generation of storytellers,” he wrote in an email. “New Canaan is a beautiful place and will look great on film. And it will be fun to see a crew out shooting.”
Bigod Bogs
The Bodies in the Bogs: An Eerie Gift From the Iron Age
Peat bogs are home to some creepy secrets. International Bog Day (yes such a thing exists) is a good time to revisit them
GETTY IMAGES
There are cold cases and there are cold cases, but it’s hard to beat the one that came to light on May 6, 1950, in Silkeborg, Denmark. The local folks were already on edge after reports that a schoolboy from Copenhagen had recently gone missing, and when two brothers from the nearby town of Tollund went digging for peat in a Silkeborg bog, they made a gruesome discovery: a buried body with a rope around its neck showing no signs of decomposition. This was a murder — and it was clearly a fresh one.
Except it wasn’t. The body wore no clothes other than a pointed, leatherized, sheepskin cap that seemed not of this era. The rope was handwoven, not machine-made. And the face of the victim was covered with stubble — clearly not belonging to a young boy. All that, plus the noose, plus the ancient history of the site, suggested that this was not a body from the early years of the space age, but the latter years of the Iron Age. Carbon dating confirmed that — placing the man’s death somewhere between 375 B.C. and 210 B.C.
The extraordinarily well-preserved state of what became known as the Tollund Man was due to the unique chemistry of the bog, with its lack of oxygen, cool temperatures and bacteria-unfriendly acidic environment. The fact that there were remains to unearth at all suggested that, despite the noose, this man was not technically murdered or hanged as a criminal. If he had been, he would have been cremated. Rather, he was probably ritually hanged as a spiritual sacrifice.
Breaking Weird
Hideous Tunnel Transformed
A Rare Chance to Stroll a Park Avenue Tunnel, in the Name of Art
By JULIE TURKEWITZ
Since the 1930s, the Park Avenue tunnel has been closed to pedestrians, and its weathered stone walls and ridged metal ceiling have been visible only to New Yorkers whipping past inside their automobiles.
That will soon change, to dramatic effect.
On Saturday, the city will temporarily shut the tunnel to car traffic, and the 1,394-foot cavern — which runs on Park Avenue between 33rd and 40th Streets — will be turned into an incandescent, echoing, interactive art show.
From 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., visitors will be able to enter the tunnel at 33rd Street, at the spot where Park Avenue dips sharply downward. (There are six signs there that tell pedestrians to stay away. Ignore them.) Participants will be instructed to walk to a midpoint in the tunnel and deliver short messages into a silver intercom.
The messages will then billow outward in waves of sound and arching light until they disappear. The intensity of each beam will be determined by the pitch and volume of the messenger’s voice. And the messages will shoot out quickly, one after another, creating a seemingly endless, ever-changing cascade of sound and light.
J.J. Cale Gone
Singer-songwriter J.J. Cale dead at 74
The songwriter behind Eric Clapton classics such as ‘Cocaine’ and ‘After Midnight’ was revered for pioneering the ‘Tulsa Sound.’
By Gerrick D. Kennedy
J.J. Cale, the songwriter behind Eric Clapton classics such as “Cocaine” and “After Midnight,” died Friday at the age of 74.
The singer-songwriter’s official website confirmed Cale passed away at Scripps Hospital in La Jolla after suffering a heart attack Friday night.
Born John Weldon Cale in Oklahoma City, he’s revered for pioneering the “Tulsa Sound,” a blend of rockabilly, country, jazz and blues.
Cale, who scored minor solo hits like “Crazy Mama” and “Lies,” is better known for tunes like “After Midnight” and “Cocaine” which Clapton covered and turned into smashes.
News Whore with Mandy Stadtmiller
Day For Night For Real
from International Business Times
Massive Mirrors Will Bring Light To Norway Town Shrouded In Darkness
The Norwegian town of Rjukan is shrouded in darkness for five months every year, but a project completed this month promises to bring a bright spot to the town’s central square via a series of massive mirrors that will reflect sunlight onto the meeting spot.
Rjukan, which is located about halfway between Bergen and Oslo and is encircled by sun-obstructing mountains, is a dreary place to be between September and March, when the sun’s rays cannot reach its quaint streets.
But the effort, dubbed the “Mirror Project,” will ensure that Rjukan residents have a place to bask even on the darkest days of the frigid Scandinavian winters.
“The aim of this project is to illuminate the town square of Rjukan with reflected sunlight. Rjukan is a town surrounded by mountains that prevent the sun from reaching the floor of the valley for five months of the year,” an online description of the plan states. “The project will result in a permanent installation which, with the help of 100 [square-meter] mirror[s], will redirect the sun down into the valley. The square will become a sunny meeting place in a town otherwise in shadow.”
It’s The Mud Not The Flood That Gets You
Stand Your Grammar
THE FALL OF FIVE – Sneak Peak from EW @ First Three Chapters
Read the first three chapters of the next ‘I Am Number Four’ novel ‘Fall of Five’ — EXCLUSIVE
In the first three chapters of The Fall of Five, Sam doesn’t know what happened to the Garde, which turns out to be useful when all-powerful Mogardorian leader Sektrakus Ra interrogates him personally. Thrown into isolation, Sam starts to go a bit crazy, until he’s rescued by hid dad. Now father and son have a lot of catching up to do if they’re going to help save an endangered planet…
Frey Check
James Frey Interview
I’m sure many people are aware of the backlash that came from James Frey’s television appearances. My thinking was this, here is a guy that is recounting his years of drug use, there is bound to be some moments that are blurry. No one ever took Hunter S. Thompson to task over the alleged bat sightings in Barstow.
1. First off, I want to thank you for agreeing to do this interview. I have always felt that the first chapter of A Million Little Pieces was, probably, one of the best first chapters written in the last ten to twenty years. How long before it was published did you write it?
Thank you. Happy to do it. I wrote AMLP in 2001. It took about a year to write. I was living in LA, in Venice. I had been writing movies and sort of hated it, decided I would rather fail at what I wanted to do than be sort of successful at something that I didn’t really want to do. When we sent it to publishers, 17 turned it down before somehow was willing to publish it.
2. In My Friend Leonard you write about you and your friends going to a Vandals concert. Were/are you a fan of punk rock or was this a one off event?
Definitely not a one off. Have listened to punk since I was about fourteen. In the 80’s, when I grew up, I loved the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, Black Flag, the Dead Kennedys, the Circle Jerks. The Vandals put on an amazing show. Have seen them a few times. The best shows I saw were in LA, where they got an amazing crowd, and Live Fast, Diarrhea is one of the great albums of the 90’s. Still listen to most of the same music I listened to when I was a teenager. Always listen to music while I write.
Corpse Flower Blooms
from the United States Botanic Garden
Return of the Titan
The titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum), also known as the corpse flower or stinky plant, is blooming at the United States Botanic Garden Conservatory! Once fully open, it may remain in bloom for 24 to 48 hours, and then it will collapse quickly.
The magic of the titan arum comes from its great size – it is reputed to have the largest known unbranched inflorescence in the plant kingdom. Referred to as the corpse flower or stinky plant, its putrid smell is most potent during peak bloom at night into the early morning. The odor is often compared to the stench of rotting flesh. The inflorescence also generates heat, which allows the stench to travel further. This combination of heat and smell efficiently attracts pollinators, such as dung and carrion beetles, from across long distances.
The titan arum does not have an annual blooming cycle. The time between flowering is unpredictable, which can span from a few years to a few decades.
Beekman Boys Soap-Up Natalie from Facts Of Life
Mindy Cohn: Avid Beekman 1802 Soap User Since 2010
by Adam Asea
Just received this picture from Beekman Boy Josh Kilmer-Purcell:
“We were at an event presenting Sonja Morgan from Real Housewives of New York with an Inspiration Award from the NY State Senate. We spotted Mindy from across the room and couldn’t wait till we were done so that we could go meet her. She was one of our favorite childhood actresses. She mentioned that she came to the event because she saw our names on the invite, and had long admired what we were building. We thought she was just being polite, but then she made us sniff her forearm to prove that she’d just showered with our soap before coming to the party. Which we gladly did. And she had!”
Smoke And Mirrors Feted
DESERT BUS: THE VERY WORST VIDEO GAME EVER CREATED
Morgan van Humbeck completed his shift in front of the television and passed out. Ten minutes later, his cell phone woke him. “Morgan, this is Teller,” said a small voice on the other end of the line. “Fuck off,” replied Morgan in disbelief. He hung up the phone and went back to sleep.
The drive from Tucson, Arizona, to Las Vegas, Nevada, takes approximately eight hours when travelling in a vehicle whose top speed is forty-five miles per hour. In Desert Bus, an unreleased video game from 1995 conceived by the American illusionists and entertainers Penn Jillette and Teller, players must complete that journey in real time. Finishing a single leg of the trip requires considerable stamina and concentration in the face of arch boredom: the vehicle constantly lists to the right, so players cannot take their hands off the virtual wheel; swerving from the road will cause the bus’s engine to stall, forcing the player to be towed back to the beginning. The game cannot be paused. The bus carries no virtual passengers to add human interest, and there is no traffic to negotiate. The only scenery is the odd sand-pocked rock or road sign. Players earn a single point for each eight-hour trip completed between the two cities, making a Desert Bus high score perhaps the most costly in gaming.
Van Humbeck, unconscious on the couch, had just contributed to what was then a Desert Bus world record of five points.
When I Paint My Masterpiece
Bob Dylan Spotted Painting Topless Women in Central Park
Bob Dylan ditched his microphone for an easel last Thursday (June 13) when he was spotted in Central Park, seemingly painting portraits of topless models lounging in the grass.
The musician tagged along with artist pal Richard Prince for the outing, which has caused a bit of a stir.
While onlookers and art bloggers initially assumed Dylan was basing his work off the live models in front of him, it has been revealed that the inspiration behind his painting is actually a photo of Italian actress Sonia Aquino by fashion photographer Bruno Bisang. Read more, and see the NSFW image here.
Woman with Eyes Closed
OFFICIALS SEEKING STOLEN ART FIND PAINT IN ASHES
BY ALISON MUTLER AND JILL LAWLESS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A Romanian museum official said Wednesday that ash from the oven of a woman whose son is charged with stealing seven multimillion-dollar paintings – including a Matisse, a Picasso and a Monet – contains paint, canvas and nails.
Ernest Oberlander-Tarnoveanu, director of Romania’s National History Museum, told The Associated Press that museum forensic specialists had found “small fragments of painting primer, the remains of canvas, the remains of paint” and copper and steel nails, some of which pre-dated the 20th century.
“We discovered a series of substances which are specific to paintings and pictures,” he said, including lead, zinc and azurite.
Romanian prosecutors say Olga Dogaru – whose son is the alleged heist ringleader – claims she buried the art in an abandoned house and then in a cemetery in the village of Caracliu. She said she later dug the paintings up and burned them in February after police began searching the village for the stolen works.
“Olga Dogaru describes how she made the fire, put wood on it and burned the paintings, like she was burning a pair of slippers,” he said. “She’s either a repressed writer or she is describing exactly what she did.”
Birth of The Mitt
The Invention of the Baseball Mitt
To round out our series on the the design of baseball equipment, let’s take a brief look at the baseball glove. Unlike the baseball bat or the baseball itself, the glove was not initially a part of the game. Players just used the mitts they were born with. Lest you think that all men were walking around with swollen and broken fingers, it’s important to remember that this was a very different game than the today. There were a lot of differences in the game, not least of which is the fact that much of the throwing was underhand. In the beginning, there wasn’t much need for hand protection, but even as the game evolved and balls were thrown harder and faster, there was some reluctance to use any protection or padding. These were the days when the measure of a man was the number of calluses on his fingers and of broken bones in his hand. Wearing a glove just wasn’t manly.
The earliest gloves were simple leather work gloves, often with its finger removed to ensure that ball handling isn’t inhabited in any way. It’s hard to say exactly who wore the first glove, but some reports claim that catchers were wearing work gloves as early as 1860. A pitcher for the by the name of A.G. Spalding claims that it was New Haven first baseman Charles C. Waite who, in an 1875 game against Boston, first had the audacity (i.e. common sense) to take the field with a glove.