Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Happy Birthday Pamela
December 30 is all about Pam. I am so lucky to be on your journey of discovery. We are indeed doing our best to follow up on a request to have good trips that was made to us 14 years ago. Your fortunate, blessed and admiring husband.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:21 PM
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Tuesday, December 29, 2009
A Holiday Highlight: Blazer Chanukah Night 12.15.09
It was not an ordinary evening on the concourse in mid-December. We decided to go to a Trailblazer game when my brother was in town. There was festive music and kosher food and T-shirts that had Trailblazers written in Hebrew that I wish I had been able to snag a T-shirt who would have dug it for both the medium and the message.
In keeping with the theme of the evening, I took this picture of my bro in front of the Blazer's first owner, Harry Glickman. We were at the first Blazer home game back in 1970 I remember they played Cleveland and that Glickman gave the opening ball to his son, Marshall to throw out. I remember disliking Marshall, who was roughly the same age as my brother and I. Ol' Marsh got into quite a mess with PGE park many years later and is now apparently trying to do sports development stuff in Bend.
Harry Glickman was actually on hand that night to light the menorah while local Rabbis and others danced to dreidle song. Earlier a couple of Rabbis played a variation of around the world during one of the breaks. All of the ornamentation, loud noise, entertainments on the jumbo screen can get to be a bit much at a live sporting event, but this was pretty cool. Maybe my next Blazer game will be next year's Chanukah night. And if so, I will sign up for a t-shirt. Or two.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:15 PM
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Monday, December 28, 2009
Meet The Vogels
Throughout the eighties, it became a kind of ritual for me to watch CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt. I understand that program was CBS Chairman William S. Paley's kind of loss leader. Ratings didn't matter. It was a show Bill Paley liked, so it would stay on the air.
One of those mornings back in the 1986, I found myself impressed by a story about two ordinary folks, Herb and Dorothy Vogel postal worker and a librarian and a who over twenty years or so had amassed an exceptional art collection that they kept in their Manhattan apartment. Now nearly a quarter century later, filmmaker Megumi Sasaki has captured their normal yet remarkable lives in Herb & Dorothy, a solid and unpretentious non-fiction film.
The spirit of the film and the Vogel's is summarized quite well in the director's statement Sasaki posted on the website:
"I hope to share the story of Herb and Dorothy Vogel with as large an audience as possible, particularly with those who appreciate the passion of creativity in any of the fine arts. Or to those who are intimidated and discouraged in taking up an interest in art, simply because of their lack of education or money. Or to anybody who is trying to survive day-to-day living. You may not have lots of money. Your job may be boring. Still life can be exciting and fulfilling to the extent that we allow ourselves to follow our passions.
My responded to Herb & Dorothy much as I did to Young At Heart, the documentary about seniors who sing contemporary music in a choral group. Passion, it seems to me is the magic ingredient that turns ordinary lives into rich extraordinary experience. Sasaki is right, we can all be enriched by stories like these.
The nearly four thousand pieces collected by the Vogel, mostly small works on paper are mostly minimalist and conceptual. And a great many of the artists they collected, beginning with Sol Hewitt became friends of theirs. Herb Vogel loves animals almost as much as he loves art and collecting art. The film shows tells how they cat-sit for Christo and Jean Claude when they went out to California to install Valley Curtain. And one of the most ebullient moments in the film is when the Vogel's are awstruck at the Central Park installation of The Gates in 2005.
Yes, there is something odd and compulsive about this couple, but they also maintain their integrity because they have not sold their art for profit. Herb Vogel has no issue with those who are in the art game as professionals, but what seems to drive them is the aesthetic joy and the relationships they have fostered with the artists over the year. The film covers how they donated their collection to the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and have also worked with the Gallery, that could not maintain and display a collection of their size into a distribution for art museums across the entire country called Vogel 50 x 50.
Sasaki's film needs to have a life a bit longer than a broadcast screening or two on PBS. And this is why I am doing my part telling you about it here on the buffet.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:25 AM
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Sunday, December 27, 2009
Pee In The Shower, Save the Rainforest
The following viral clip is my vote for the best offering in the 60th issue of the STASH DVD magazine that monthly features the best in computer animation, motion graphics, and international television commercials. I don't know to what extent it will be successful in getting millions of homes around the world to save billions of gallons of water. But it is definitely a joy to watch this idea be riffed visually in such an entertaining and simple way. Props to Prodigio, the company of talented Brazilian animators that made it happen.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:03 PM
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Saturday, December 26, 2009
The Buffet Is Back!
