Friday, September 9, 2005

Cowboy Clotheshorse

The New York Times has a nice article about the late Nudie Cohn. Isn't that a great name? Nudie Cohn. And no, he was not a guy who made Jewish porn films. Nudie was a flamboyant designer who customized cars and wardrobes, and he was one of the great "media celebrities" in Los Angeles in the sixties and seventies. He turned up in parades and on talk shows and he'd make great entrances at events, often putting Liberace to shame in the category of glittering apparel. He had a store out on Lankershim and I went in there a few times and paid way too much for very nice western shirts that I wish I still had and could fit into.

From the article, I see that there's a website with the history of Nudie Cohn, and I see on the website that his family has closed down the store. He was a colorful gent and you might enjoy reading about him.

• Posted at 11:08 PM · LINK

Briefly Noted...

One of the folks behind the ifilm website wrote me a nice message a week or so ago and my e-mail program seems to have swallowed it. If you were the person in question, could you please resend it? I promise to be more careful with it this time.

To the rest of you who wrote e-mail I haven't answered: You are not alone. In fact, it's getting darn crowded in that "to be answered" folder. You may not make it out alive.

• Posted at 2:24 PM · LINK

Breaking News

This just in...

Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown is being removed from his role managing Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, The Associated Press has learned.

Like we said yesterday here: If anyone at FEMA or the Department of Homeland Security is sacked or even faulted, it will only be because they've reached some new, hitherto-unimaginable level of incompetence such that even their own party can't save them...or someone decides that they should take a bullet (and all the blame) for the team.

Looks like Brown met both conditions. And of course, it doesn't help when the major newspapers find out you lied on your résumé, either.

[UPDATE: And now it's looking like he's not even fired. He's just being moved out of on-the-line responsibility. The Washington Post reports that, "...a source close to Brown, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the FEMA director had been considering leaving after the hurricane season ended in November." Good move.]

• Posted at 11:02 AM · LINK

Poor Cartoonist

I think it was way back last Sunday that I posted an "unofficial" Blondie crossover strip that ran in Richard's Poor Almanac, a feature that has been running in The Washington Post for some seven years now. I must admit I was not familiar with the strip by one Richard Thompson as it is not generally available on the Internet and I, of course, don't bother with very many comics that exist only on the primitive medium of paper. In fact, I screwed up the name of the strip and have since gone back and fixed it. I have also come to enjoy it, thanks to a friend who e-mailed me a batch of scans. They were funny enough and clever enough that I'm going to take the extraordinary step of getting the book. Before I give you an Amazon link, here's a quick bio of the cartoonist, taken from a press release I received from his publisher...

Richard Thompson is a cartoonist and illustrator living in Virginia with his lovely wife and two daughters. His cartoon, Richard's Poor Almanac, appears weekly in The Washington Post, sometimes in color, but most often not. His work also illustrates Francis Heaney's Holy Tango of Literature, published by Emmis Humor, and is featured regularly in US News & World Report, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic and many other publications. It has also found its way onto gallery walls, won coveted awards such as the Society of Illustrators Gold and Silver Funny Bones, and made enduring presents for his aforementioned lovely wife and two daughters. In 2004, Mr. Thompson took home the Milton F. "Sonny" Clogg Alumni of the Year Award from his alma mater, Montgomery College. (And did he even graduate? No!) Since breaking his toe in a dance-related accident nearly twelve years ago, Mr. Thompson has been forced to draw with his hands.

Funny bio, funny cartoonist. It always follows. Anyway, if you'd like to see more of his work, I'll bet you can get a whole bookful of it by clicking here.

• Posted at 10:18 AM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

If someone is compiling a list of folks who've said stupid things about the Katrina Disaster and/or tried to exploit it to push their personal crusades, make sure you include this name: Senator Richard Santorum (R-PA). Santorum takes campaign donations from private weather forecasting companies and then turns around and introduces legislation to try and hamper the National Weather Service. Last April, he introduced a bill that would have barred the N.W.S., which is paid for with our taxpayer bucks, from sharing its info with the American public. The rationale for this had something to do with "unfair competition" since the companies that donate to the Santorum campaign are trying to profit from selling weather data.

The other day, Senator Santorum declared that the problem down in the Gulf Coast was that the National Weather Service's forecasts on Katrina were "not sufficient." This is after already suggesting (and then "clarifying" to back off slightly on what he said) that maybe some of the victims needed to be penalized for not evacuating sooner. He's wrong about that and wrong about the N.W.S., which did a phenomenal job of tracking Katrina and forecasting pretty much where she'd go and what she'd do. Yes, it would have been wonderful if there had been earlier notice and if the course of the storm had been pinpointed more precisely. But, Senator, storms don't always follow precise routes that can be predicted days in advance. None of the private weather services that Santorum champions could have done a better job, none of them could have done anything without inputting the N.W.S. data...and do we really want something as vital as Hurricane Alerts to be turned over to the private sector and run for profit? Jeez.

• Posted at 8:57 AM · LINK