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Please Buy a Copy A Cat Compendium DVD by the Museum's Video Unit  |
January 2009 Archive 31 January - The Cold, the Ice, the Pisco  The days are actually getting longer, but it's still bleeding cold and icy - the catwalk turned into a catcrawl, and was suspended early. But you know what's good? Fried yuca dipped in huancaina sauce. Plus a couple of pisco sours and a bistek a lo pobre - we were at La Flor de la Canela last night. link home 25 January - Inaugural Fashion Watch  This is kind of fascinating - I've been examining David Bergman's stupendous Gigapan photograph taken during President Obama's Inaugural address. Stitched together from 220 individual shots, the finished photograph allows one to zoom in on individual people and look for interesting or embarrassing details. While checking out the cold weather fashion notes, I came across the chap above - on the left, with the shades. He's wearing an odd piece of haberdashery from the Russian Civil War - a budyonovka; the traditional red star seems to be partially covered. Reproductions are available - very snappy looking hat. link home 25 January - Catwalk Blues  This superb image of Cat Natasha going walkies in the Museum's Forest Preserve suggests a blues number: Goin' Down That PathHere's some genuine cat-related blues - Charlie Patton's Mean Black Cat Blues (streaming MP3) from the album King of the Delta Blues. Hiatus Warning - As usual, the end of the month brings the news that the site will probably go over its chintzy bandwidth allowance and go off the air 'til February. Please try to remain calm. link home 20 January - Inaugural Coverage Continues  I feel so much better. link home comment 20 January - Inauguration Day  A Farewell Salute - very fine - by Tom Tomorrow via Salon. And now, I ask you to stand while you listen to The President's March (streaming MP3), part of The Federal Overture, from the album Colonial America by Hesperus. This is a great day. In other news, I hear that the doctors may be able to save some of Gus's toes (see below). link comment home 19 January - Inaugural Displacement  Regular readers may recall that the heartless heads of the Janus Museum have rented out, for vast sums, our squalid staff housing to Inaugural visitors. I lucked out and was able to blackmail an acquaintance into letting me stay at his apartment, but our maintenance man, Gus Norbeck, wasn't so lucky - here's his miserable bivouac out in the Museum's Forest Preserve. Looks like he lifted a bottle of rum from the Fellows' liquor cabinet - will have to turn him in, if he doesn't freeze to death, first - haw, haw! Here's an appropriate song for Gus - Tenting on the Old Camp Ground (streaming MP3), performed by the Haydn Quartet, 1900. link home 18 January - The Cinematic Švejk  Heinz Rühmann as Švejk on his anabasis to Budejovice in the 1963 German version of The Good Soldier Švejk, Der brave Soldat Schwejk. Oh! it's available complete (though without subtitles) on Google Video: Or watch it in a larger version on the Google Video site. The two fine Czech films starring Rudolf Hrusínský, Dobrý voják Švejk (The Good Soldier Švejk, 1956) and Poslušně hlásím, že jsem opět zde (Dutifully Report That I'm Here Again, 1957) are available as DVDs, and excerpts are to be found on Youtube. link home 17 January - Obamables  In 1974, I was living with a group of other chaps (including Bob Lyon) in Harpers Ferry. We were ill-furnished in the housekeeping line, and the only stores in the town sold souvenirs and chili dogs only. So that's how we ended up with a complete service of Richard Nixon dinner plates. When we had guests, we would serve out the grub already plated; the guests would eat their way through the entrée and slowly find Tricky Dick grinning up at them - we thought it a fine joke. Not long after he resigned, we were able to acquire plates with the same smiling portrait, but with the legend: RESIGNED AUGUST 9, 1974. My last resignation plate broke about five years ago, and I miss it extremely. I haven't bought any examples of presidential kitsch since the Nixon plates, but I still sort of like the idea of it. So I was happy to look through the Obamables* on offer in the temporary Obama mini-mall at Union Station the other day. Above, a CD entitled Obama - The Journey; I believe the artist, Glen C. Campbell, is the fellow on the left.  Of course, one could also have one's picture taken with the President-Elect.  Tempting, but I didn't purchase a pair of Obamic sandals...  ... Even though they were festooned with tiny Obama heads. Very fine, but not my look, I think. * Obamables, a very fine word, was coined by friend Richard Thompson, who has some nice Obamables for sale himself. link home 17 January - Change is Coming; Also Porta-Potties  One of the many elements of tension locals are feeling, as the Capital is readied for the great day, is this: are there enough Portable Sanitation Units (PSUs)? I refuse to dwell on it, myself; but thank the Lord there are people paid to cogitate on the eliminatory requirements of four million celebrants. During a trip downtown the other day, it looked to me like the Capitol Hill and Mall area was paved with Porta-Potties. Above, dawn breaks over some of the johns on Capitol Hill.  More PSUs on Capitol Hill. There's a rumor going around that to use the facilities on the day of the Inauguration, one would have to have made a reservation beforehand through Ticketron.  United we stand, or sit, as the occasion demands. Update - the Washington Post is now all over the PSU situation. There may be as many as 7,000 johns deployed for the event, which would be a U.S. record. According to the article, though, the Germans hold the record with 8,000 for a papal visit. The air of excitement in the Washington area is palpable, but so is a rising sense of frustration and irritation among us locals - the information coming down to us is copious but contradictory - the security requirements seem draconian. Virginians are irritated that the Potomac River bridges will be closed to cars, for example. And there appear to be some odd deficiencies in the planning: no provision for mass catering, for example - I bet that the Smithsonian museums' restaurants will be overwhelmed, to say nothing of the poor suffering hot dog vendors. If you're attending, bring grub. But what to put it in? Back packs are banned, you know. Also, I understand that attendees will be able to watch the swearing-in on the Mall, or view the parade from Pennsylvania Avenue, but not both - because of the numbers and the security checkpoints. I don't think this is generally known, and I suspect that there'll be massive confusion at the end of the ceremony of the swearing in as the herds attempt to migrate to the parade route. So I'm staying home - I think we'll be allowed to watch the proceedings in the Fellows' Common Room.  I had hoped for a less imperial Inauguration than the last, oh well. But there do seem to be fewer cattle pens than last time around.  But the festive Jersey Barriers are nice and fresh looking, anyway. link home 10 January - Landscape Minus Cats  The cats were up to something somewhere out of frame, and so missed being included in this sublime view of the Museum's Forest Preserve in the golden light of late afternoon. But the history of art gives us many fine landscapes without cats, and they're not appreciated the less for it - this is still a very fine landscape. But here are a couple of cats, in case anyone feels deprived:  Peake in front and Leroy in back. Yes, I have to admit that I do prefer a view with cats in it; that's why I've never been fully engaged by the work of the late Ansel Adams. He was a very good photographer, but for me his images lacked something. That's right - cats. Llamascapes are nice, too. link home 6 January - Splendidly Tight Grouping  Here's a snap of a nice tight grouping during a recent catwalk - Nutmeg in front, then Natasha, and Leroy bringing up the rear. Eventually, I'd like to train them to march in line, in step, like a platoon of fluffy Potsdam Grenadiers - what a sight that'll be! Listen to a traditional Prussian march, the Hohenfriedberger (streaming MP3) while watching the disciplined ranks of cats marching by in your mind's eye. link home 3 January - A Famous Victory, With Dinner to Follow  I came across this photograph while organizing our so-called Frantisek Strašlipka Collection - two Austro-Hungarian sad sacks, the sergeant-major's despair, working over a liberated goose - a very Švejkian scene. In fact, the two sad sacks look like younger versions of Švejk and Sapper Vodička:  From the Švejk Picture Gallery. Strange; World War I was not, for Austria-Hungary, what could be described as a good war - far from it. But you wouldn't know it from the photographic evidence: Chin Chucking the Test Pilot Aviators with Bunny Ears K.u.K. Chorus Line Oh, we must have a listen to the Radetzky March (streaming MP3) - this version is played on a 1904 street organ, and was recorded by bilwiss. link home 3 January - Treasure Hunting Pleased to pass on the news that friend and neighbor Charlie Challstrom has set up Washington Grove's first geocache (free registration required) almost within spitting distance of the Museum's Historic Cottage (no spitting, please). If you're not familiar with the term, a geocache is a sort of hidden trove - one obtains the cache's geographical coordinates, and then finds it through the exercise of one's navigational skills, using a GPS unit or astrolabe. Or read the FAQ. Why not combine a hunt for the Grove geocache with a visit to the Janus Museum, or at least to the Janus Museum Museum Shop? And then a snack in the Museum café? Sounds like a plan to me. link home 2 January - Five Fine Fezzes  Flickr user Wackystuff has some truly wonderful ephemera on view...  ... Including this commemoration of the explosion of the laughing gas works in Elgin, Minnesota, 1914. Oh, have a look at the matchbox labels, too. Via Martin Klasch. link home 2 January - 2008 - The Year in Catwalks  A pretty good year for catwalks, 2008. I think the highlight of the year in catwalks would have to be the arrival of Max Gray, that rising young photographer, and his attendance on some of our expeditions - I've included a selection of his superb images in our slideshow: Or view it in glorious full screen. The Circle Cats and I look forward to another year of brisk catwalks, and snacks and naps, too. The Year in Catwalks, 2007 Edition link home 1 January - Like an Eel to a Monadnock  Sugarloaf Mountain, from One Hundred Famous Views of Sugarloaf Nothing gets the new year off to a good start than to light out northwest into the wilds of central Maryland to that famous monadnock, Sugarloaf Mountain. I don't question this; I just get in the car and go take a few snaps of Sugarloaf on or around the first, like an eel returning from the ocean to his natal stream. Yes, very eel-like, now I come to think of it. Here's a sort of mountain song, Elkhorn Ridge (streaming MP3), sung by Jody Stecher and Kate Brislin, from Old-Time Music on the Air Volume 1. Oh, speaking of old-time music, thanks to Dogma for sending this Christian Science Monitor article on the greatly revived interest in the genre - very interesting. Today is the blog's sixth anniversary - please send presents. Previous Sugarloaf Views: New Year's 2006 From Old Hundred Road From Mt. Ephraim Road From Thurston Road Summiting Sugarloaf, November 2007 link home |
