America’s bespectacled caricature of male chauvinism and The Mob.
The Match Maker
Bobby Riggs, The Mafia and The Battle of the Sexes
by Don Van Natta Jr.
Carlos Marcello, Santo Trafficante Jr. and Frank Ragano, left to right, were among a group of mobsters and attorneys who dined at La Stella Restaurant in New York after appearing before a grand jury in the 1970s. Paul Demaria/NY Daily News/Getty Images
“HELLO AGAIN EVERYONE, I’m Howard Cosell. We’re delighted to be able to bring you this very, very quaint, unique event.”
On Thursday night, Sept. 20, 1973, 50 million Americans, fatigued by Vietnam and Watergate, tuned in to see whether a woman could defeat a man on a tennis court. Dubbed “The Battle of the Sexes,” the match pitted Billie Jean King, the 29-year-old champion of that summer’s Wimbledon and a crusader for the women’s liberation movement, against Bobby Riggs, the 55-year-old gambler, hustler and long-ago tennis champ who had willingly become America’s bespectacled caricature of male chauvinism.
Before 30,472 at the Houston Astrodome, still the largest crowd to watch tennis in the United States, the spectacle felt like a cross between a heavyweight championship bout and an old-time tent revival. Flanked by young women, Riggs, in a canary yellow Sugar Daddy warm-up jacket, was imperiously carted into the Astrodome aboard a gilded rickshaw. Not to be outdone, King, wearing a blue-and-white sequined tennis dress, sat like Cleopatra in a chariot delivered courtside by bare-chested, muscle-ripped young men. Moments before the first serve, King presented Riggs with a squealing, squirming piglet. “Look at that male chauvinist pig,” Cosell told viewers. “That symbolizes what Bobby Riggs is holding up. …”
TRAILER: THE FALL OF FIVE
See the trailer for the next ‘I Am Number Four Novel’, ‘The Fall of Five’ — EXCLUSIVE
By Stephan Lee
The countdown is ending … The Fall of Five is coming on Tuesday, and Pittacus Lore has beamed over a new trailer for fans. It’s told from the point of view of Sam’s father Malcolm, and recaps the last three novels and gives a few clues as to what’s going to happen in The Fall of Five. See it below:
In the newest installment, the Garde have always believed in strength in numbers, but after facing off with Mogadorian ruler Setrákus Ra, they realize they are hopelessly outgunned. So it’s back to Nine’s penthouse to perfect their legacies and emerge stronger than ever before. And when they find a crop circle in the shape of a Loric symbol, they think that might have found Number Five… unless it’s a trap.
STAR WARS DR. STRANGELOVE Cinematographer Gilbert Taylor Gone
‘Star Wars’ cinematographer Gilbert Taylor dies at 99
“Star Wars” cinematographer Gilbert Taylor died Friday at the age of 99, leaving behind a rich cinematic legacy.
Over the course of an impressive, decades-long career, Taylor amassed a lengthy résumé that included a number of landmark films, including Roman Polanski’s “Repulsion,” Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” and Alfred Hitchcock’s “Frenzy.”
He also served as the cinematographer on the Beatles’ film “A Hard Day’s Night,” Richard Donner’s horror film “The Omen” and 1979′s “Dracula” starring Frank Langella and Laurence Olivier, in addition to working with George Lucas on the original “Star Wars” film.
– Gina McIntyre
Too Many Friends
Queen’s Mute Swan Barbecued In Act Of Treason
Queen’s swan found barbecued near Windsor Castle riverbank
WARNING: Graphic image. The bird was butchered and cooked before its remains were dumped close to the river
By Barrie White
One of the Queen’s swans has been found killed and barbecued on the riverbank near to Windsor Castle.
The cooked swan’s carcass was dumped near Baths Water, and was discovered by Wendy Hermon, 46, a volunteer for charity Swan Lifeline, which cares for sick and injured birds.
She described the scene as ‘sickening’, and admitted she would have been distraught if her young son was with her when she made the grisly discovery after being called out by a council warden last Sunday.
“We could see that whoever did this had taken the breast out.
“It was done neatly, presumably to get at the meat. We have no idea how it was killed, it could have been shot or beaten.”
It is considered an offence to kill a wild mute swan as it is believed they are the property of the Crown, though centuries ago, their meat was considered a delicacy.
The birds are now protected under under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and killing or injuring a swan used to be classed as treason under a law dating back to the 12th century.
Elmore Leonard Gone
Elmore Leonard Dies at 87
by Hilary Lewis, Andy Lewis, Duane Byrge
Elmore Leonard, considered by many to be the greatest crime writer of modern times, has died due to complications of a stroke. He was 87.
He wrote 45 novels, many of which were adapted for movies or TV over the years.
His most recent TV hit was the FX series Justified, starring Timothy Olyphant as Raylan Givens, which was based on his short story “Fire in the Hole.”
Films based on his work included Hombre, 52 Pick-Up, Out of Sight, Get Shorty and Jackie Brown.
The film version of Leonard’s The Switch, starring Jennifer Aniston, Mos Def, Tim Robbins and Isla Fisher, will premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. At the time of his death, he was at work on another novel, which was set in the world of competitive bull riding.
Hic Sunt Dracones.
Oldest globe to depict the New World may have been discovered
By Meeri Kim
An Austrian collector has found what may be the oldest globe, dated 1504, to depict the New World, engraved with immaculate detail on two conjoined halves of ostrich eggs.
The globe, about the size of a grapefruit, is labeled in Latin and includes what were considered exotic territories such as Japan, Brazil and Arabia. North America is depicted as a group of scattered islands. The globe’s lone sentence, above the coast of Southeast Asia, is “Hic Sunt Dracones.”
“ ‘Here be dragons,’ a very interesting sentence,” said Thomas Sander, editor of the Portolan, the journal of the Washington Map Society. The journal published a comprehensive analysis of the globe Monday by collector Stefaan Missinne. “In early maps, you would see images of sea monsters; it was a way to say there’s bad stuff out there.”
News Corp. Peddling In VICE
Fox Paid $70M For 5% Stake In Vice Media
By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Financial Editor
The deal just came to light although it was made before the end of June when News Corp split into separate entertainment and publishing companies. But it gives 21st Century Fox a foothold in a trendy digital media, TV, and publishing company that has captured the imaginations and financial support of former MTV chief Tom Freston, WME’s Ari Emanuel, WPP, and The Raine Group as well as comedian Bill Maher. Vice plans to use the cash and connections with Fox to expand overseas, especially India. “We get to make all the content we want? With the best platforms in the world? Grow our brand exponentially? Become the next global media brand? And all the while own the vast majority of the company and vote 95% of the board? Where-do-we-fucking-sign?!” Vice founder and CEO Shane Smith says.
Sharks Make Movies Better
New Petzval
A Legendary 19th Century Lens. Reinvented For Use With All Nikon F & Canon EF Mount Analog & Digital SLR Cameras.
In the 19th Century, the vast majority of photos were shot with the extremely popular Petzval lens. The lens was invented by Joseph Petzval in Vienna in 1840 and had a huge impact on the development of photography. Photos shot with a Petzval lens are immediately recognizable for their sharpness and crispness, strong color saturation, wonderful swirly bokeh effect, artful vignettes and narrow depth of field. The totally distinctive look of Petzval photos is all about the fantastic lens design that gives you the satisfaction of the instant optic experience that goes far beyond using photo editing software and filters.
For this Kickstarter project, we are reinventing the Petzval Lens for 21st century photographers and videographers. It doesn’t matter whether you shoot analog or digital; the brand new Lomography Petzval Portrait Lens is designed to work withCanon EF and Nikon F mount cameras. So, for the first time, you can easily get the fantastic Petzval photographic look with 35mm analog cameras and DSLR cameras too. This will bring with it a whole new world of possibilities; from shooting Petzval photos with your 35mm SLR or DSLR, to creating amazing DSLR movies with the lens!
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.”