Art in the city

Jimmy from H.R. Pufnstuf, R.I.P.

Jack Wild, the guy who played Jimmy in "H.R. Pufnstuf", has died.

Big Brother says, "You want fries with that?"

Somehow, I don't think this is what George Orwell had in mind. 

Commies in DC

It's hard to believe that the Washington City Paper would waste ink and dead tree covering the goings-on of DC's very own Communist Party cell.  This paragraph is typical of the whole article:

D.C.’s club has six members in attendance, and one is a brand-new face—Jonny Malm, 32, who joined the party online the week before. Malm is half-American and half-Swedish and has a tattoo on his upper arm of Fidel Castro speaking and pointing a finger. “He’s pointing towards my heart,” he says.

But D.C. club members are too busy running from place to place to schmooze with the new member. Weinstein is in and out on errands, as is Wolf, who says, “Sorry, today is such a mess.” Elkind is on the scene, too, but not long after the communist section gets moving, he and his girlfriend are gone. The D.C. club doesn’t have a banner of its own to march behind—it’s over at the house of some inactive member, and Weinstein couldn’t pick it up. During the march, Weinstein disappears, as does Wolf. The march’s last holdout from D.C. is the new guy, Malm.

Who'd have though that the Vanguard of the Proletariat would be a bunch of losers?  Maybe next week's cover story could be about the DC area's own Dungeons and Dragons club.  That could actually be just as newsworthy.

Written by Stephen King, maybe

Paul O'Brien, over at NinthArt.com, dissects a press release regarding a comic book release based on Stephen King's the Dark Tower.  He wonders what it is Marvel is really saying in their press release announcing the corroboration between King and Marvel.

That's my dad

Cool.  My dad made the pages of Instapundit.  You can see video here of the story ABC news ran last night about the Marine who was caught spying, or allegedly spying, for the Philippines .  My father gives a few short comments about the case towards the end of the piece.

Moscow Metro turns 70

Sunday is going to be the 70th anniversary of the opening of the Moscow Metro.  At Sokolniki, the first station they built, the drivers and staff will be dressed in 1930's style costume.  The Moscow Times adds:

"The passengers will walk into the atmosphere of the 1930s, just as it was on May 15, 1935," Morozova [a Metro spokesperson] said. Journalists and metro officials will follow the train -- whose exact departure time was unconfirmed on Thursday -- to Park Kultury, the last station on the original red line, and then ordinary members of the public will get on as usual.

Ah, the chance to relive the 30's in Russia.  Will they have summary executions after you detrain? 

Good paper

While you're checking out the post below, do yourself a favor and check out the rest of the Post-Gazette's A&E coverage.  A small hick paper for a small, backwoods hick town like Pittsburgh, PA does a better job of covering the arts in its area than a large, urbane, snooty paper for a town that's smaller than it thinks and much too snooty for its own good and oh-so-urbane like, oh, say the WaPo.  Who'd have thunk it?

Some British guy doesn't watch MTV much

I realize that guys sneaking their art into art museums, like this guy recently did, is something of an old tradition, but I think that if somebody from MTV, like, oh say, Tom Green has done it, then the joke is dead and it's time to move on.

Fire in Izmailovsky Park

I was going to comment on this story, but I realized in reading it that there's too much to cover in it.  It's a typically Russian story.  I'll just point out 2 quotes that I think are particularly poignant:

One firefighter complained that their work was hampered by a lack of water at the site.

``Do you really expect there to be hydrants and extinguishers? This is Russia - people don't give a damn,'' said the firefighter, Vladimir Tensky.

And this:

Despite the intensity of the blaze, the market was not immediately evacuated, perhaps testimony to Russians' sometimes cavalier attitude toward safety or a reluctance to surrender the brisk Saturday business.

Some merchants were not told to pack up and leave their sectors of the market until two hours after the blaze began. When asked why he had not left earlier, a trader in Soviet trinkets, who gave his name only as Kolya, said: ``What for?'' he said. ``It seemed far away.''

The article points out that they suspect arson.  This kind of thing happened, albeit on a smaller scale, when I was in Moscow in the early 90's.  Every so often you would walk by a kiosk that had been burned down.  And by every so often, I mean every few blocks every other week.  The basic rule of thumb you should follow is if there's a fire in a market in Russia, somebody wasn't paying their protection bills on time.  To my mind, there's no reason to think otherwise.