9/27/08

Where am i?


Can you see me?
Originally uploaded by pompey shoes.

Almost done.. I have been getting ready for a big convention, scroll down and you'll know which one :) I am selling my incense there and I hand make everything- EVERYthing LOL. It's worth it, it's a challenge too, I need to see what I can accomplish, how much, what it takes. It's my first thing like this so its also an adventure. What I told Rick I was telling myself is, when I wonder how this will go I think of this.. if Dorothy Parker can in the late 1920's move an entire family's luggage and pets (two in heat) via trains and a funicular from the south of France to Switzerland alone.. then this is nothing :)

Paul Newman, rest in peace


He was what a "star" should be. Looking at what some actors become it is sad. Here was a man overflowing with talent and beauty and he in turn filled the world with hope and beauty with his money, heart, passion fueling so many wonderful things. He has an equally talented wife who he stayed with- not going that embarrassing route some men go making fools of themselves in mid-life crisis with underage girls. He didn't squander his gifts and hard work stumbling drunk and drugged in and out of rehabs. I see men and women now who have talent and fame and they throw it away.

Paul Newman was truly a great man, he was what so many equally gifted men and women should be. Thank you for an example Paul, proof of what could be when someone has beauty and fame and money and how it can be used to make the world a better place, not just feed the tabloids with garbage. I am sad to see you go onward to whatever the afterlife is but you have an amazing legacy that proves fame and fortune do not have to be a curse but a blessing.


Why Paul Newman fascinated us decade after decade
By SCOTT EYMAN
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 27, 2008

Most actors leave behind little more than the sum of the parts they've played. Paul Newman spent 83 years proving that an actor can be a thinking organism whose importance can transcend even his greatest performances.

Decades from now, Newman may be as highly regarded for his role in establishing camps for terminally ill children, and for donating $175 million in profits - and counting - from his Newman's Own food products to charity, as for all but the very finest of his movies.

Newman's death Friday from cancer will doubtless provoke many written and televised valedictories, because he was a star in the grand American tradition: extremely handsome, but somehow uncomfortable with his handsomeness, which he attempted to subvert by playing a succession of engaging opportunists.

Whether it was his signature performance as Fast Eddie Felson in Robert Rossen's The Hustler - one of the truly great post-war American movies - the utterly heartless title character in Hud, the main chance artist of Sweet Bird of Youth, the self-destructively rebellious Cool Hand Luke, or a gradually overmatched, more or less incompetent outlaw in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Newman spent his prime starring years exposing the dark heart of narcissism in portrayals of relentless losers.

Despite the flawed characters he delighted in playing, there was something wary and cynical about his persona; Newman was always alert for a con, even if it was a con he was running, as in the immensely popular The Sting.

The odd thing was that even though Newman was fairly merciless in his choices, the public knew better; they treated him with the affection accorded the great movie stars of earlier eras because, even if Newman had the soul of a character actor, he had the looks of a classic leading man, and the attitude of an unpretentious guy next door.

He was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1925. There was a successful family business just waiting for him - Newman-Stern Sporting Goods - but he didn't want to sell baseball gloves and went to the liberal arts haven of Kenyon College. From there it was the Yale School of Drama and the Actor's Studio in New York. He made a splash on Broadway in William Inge's Picnic and in The Desperate Hours, and went to Hollywood to star in what he always insisted was the worst movie ever made: The Silver Chalice. (It's terrible, but not that terrible.)

Initially, Newman was one of the hord of method actors who followed in the wake of Marlon Brando, to whom Newman had a physical resemblance. He tested for the part of James Dean's brother in East of Eden and lost out to the forgotten Richard Davalos. But when Dean was killed in a car crash in September 1955, Newman landed the part that Dean was to play next: the boxer Rocky Graziano in Somebody Up There Likes Me.

After that he was off to the races, and even if he was an outrageously mannered Billy the Kid in The Left-handed Gun - a project that was also on Dean's dance card - the audience willingly followed him from film to film, from decade to decade.

Later in his career, as he moved into character roles, he found more signature parts: an alcoholic lawyer in The Verdict, and, in one of his most fascinating performances, a hopelessly repressed Kansas lawyer in Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, which proved yet again that only an interesting man should play an uninteresting man.

Any one of these performances could have won him his ridiculously delayed Academy Award for Best Actor, but he got it for encoring Eddie Felson in The Color of Money, a picture that wasn't close to being good enough to exist beside the original. His last great performance was as Sully in Robert Benton's Nobody's Fool, where he played an utterly unambitious but sharp-witted layabout of great charm and still simmering sexiness.

No estimate of Newman should overlook his film directing career, which was not extensive but was distinguished. Special attention should be paid to Rachel, Rachel, a 1968 vehicle for his wife of 50 years, Joanne Woodward, and a very good version of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, again starring Miss Woodward.

Newman was not a faultless artist. He was oddly awkward at comedy, and helpless if asked to inhabit an essentially unwritten part. Roles calling for little more than glamour and charisma, such as Hitchcock's Torn Curtain, left him visibly irritated and at sea. And he had terrible dry periods: in the mid-70s alone, he made The Mackintosh Man, The Towering Inferno, Buffalo Bill and the Indians and Quintet.

But no string of losers could dampen the affection audiences had for him, or diminish his casual power as an actor and a personality.

Despite what he played, Paul Newman was never a loser. source

9/15/08

Chicken chicken (wild laughter)

If it looks like a meeting and sounds like a meeting is it a.... chicken?

9/13/08

Malan Breton Spring 2009 Fashion Week Show 9/11 2008

Jewelry 5 Great Expression
Click the gorgeous model for many pix and videos of behind the scenes glimpses of Malan Breton's gorgeous Fashion Week show! :)

9/7/08

Light Lines






Loopy







Inner Art, DNA for your Walls


The artwork is made of up DNA symbols from animal and plant genes Photo: GB / Barcroft Media
Inner Beauty, deep inside- did you ever think DNA could be beautiful- besides your outer shell and all those organic gadgets that make up your mind's home. Now its patterns have been turned into art that can decorate your four-walls home.

German creator Daniel Becker, explains "DNA art interprets the complex information of DNA with the help of symbols and colours," says the 29-year-old from Frankfurt.
"The result is a individual graphic pattern for any creature or plant.
"But for the naked eye it is not easily possible to see the difference between a human and a shark, because the information is too complex.

"I was very interested in finding a way showing this grid of confusing Gs, As Ts and Cs in a graphical way."
The result was Daniel's DNA art - and he is now finding they have become increasingly popular worldwide.
Costing just five Euros, Daniel saves the patterns into PDF format ready to be printed onto a canvass of the buyers choice.
"I am finding that people are buying a PDF of their favourite animal or plant and printing them out for their homes and offices," he says.

"Younger people are interested in the more dangerous animals and plants - for example the Great White Shark patterns are very popular with men.
"But I also find that the patterns of mice, elephants and koalas are popular amongst women.
"In general the more "strange" the subject like wild mushrooms or dangerous creatures are more popular."
And Daniel is hoping that in years to come, people will be able to use their own DNA to make their own art.

ead the whole srticle here. Click to order here.

9/6/08

The Body Building Beautiful

A kind of body building that involves glass and steel not flesh and bone although it does teach you all about that too.. It's a beautiful big work of architectural art.

"If ever the word ‘Body’ and ‘Building’ were gelled together in a geeky sense other than the conventional physique development, this is it. Hailing from the Netherlands, this unique structure indeed gels those words in a manner never heard off before. Dubbed the CORPUS, this mammoth (35 meter high) building startles the gazer by revealing a transparent building clad with in a human body structure. If any of you plan to visit the country, make sure that you explore this structure located on the A44 highway that connects Hague and Amsterdam."
Source and more wonderful photos here

Turtle Frog!


Turtle

Frog

Turtle Frog! :)

9/5/08

One Day Free Pass to FaerieCon for my Readers!

Thank you to everyone who comes by to read. If even one person found it fun I would blog my "brain candy". Someone called it that (I loved that). I can offer to those of you in the Philly area or those that can make it, a free one day pass to a beautiful event. Alan Lee is the guest of honor but when you see the line-up you'll see there are so many wonderful artists and writers and performers there you'll have have a hard time choosing who would be your pick for guest of honor. Email me with your mailing address and I'll send you one or two One Day passes free for as long as they last!
xnmerry@gmail.com


Click the photo to go to the Faerie Con Website

Here is a hint at how amazing this event will be.. Alan Lee who created the world of the gorgeous "Lord Of The Rings" films, co-authored a book that created an entire genre of art called "Faeries". And his co-author Brian Froud will be there too. Brian also created with Jim Henson the pioneering film "The Dark Crystal" that also changed the way films created special effects, my friend and amazing artist Wendy Froud also worked on that film and created Yoda for the "Star Wars" series- all of these folks will be there. Do I need to continue? Please come and enjoy this stunning event.

Shapely Beauty