Here's another, better article about the fire in my old neighborhood....
Boston 4-alarm fire destroys restaurants
By Jessica Fargen
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
One hundred Boston firefighters braved the freezing cold overnight to battle a fast-moving fire that caused $5 million in damage to six restaurants and a dry cleaning business near Fenway Park [map] and caused the evacuation of 130 people, according to the Boston Fire Department.
“It’s almost all the good restaurants in the neighborhood right here, all lined up. It’s just a shame, really,” said Peter Wick, 25, who lamented the loss of El Pelon, where his favorite menu item was the steak burrito. “It’s a little shocking. I hope they find out what happened.”
The fire broke out at 1:57 a.m. at Thornton’s Fenway Grill on Peterborough Street and quickly became a four-alarm inferno. Flames spread to Sorento’s Italian Gourmet, Umi Japanese Restaurant, Greek Isles, Rod-Dee Thai Cuisine II, El Pelon Taqueria and a dry cleaning business. The string of one-story businesses on the block from 84 to 98 Peterborough Street were completely, or nearly completely destroyed, MacDonald said.
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One hundred thirty people in 98 units, mostly elderly and disabled people, were evacuated from a five-story apartment building next door after heavy smoke filled the units, said Boston Fire spokesman Steve MacDonald. Residents were welcomed into the nearby William McKinley Preparatory High School, which was opened as a shelter.
Residents are only being allowed back inside their apartments to pick up medication and belongings because of concern over elevated levels of carbon monoxide inside, said John Hardiman, acting director of emergency management for the city. American Red Cross volunteers assisted residents this morning and a mobile shelter trailer will be arriving shortly, said Red Cross spokesman Patrick Baldwin.
People who rely on the eateries to make a living said they were just happy nobody was killed.
Tori MacMillon, 24, paused as she walked up Peterborough Street before 9 a.m. today and saw the charred shell of Thornton’s, where she started two weeks ago as a waitress. “As long as everybody’s OK. That’s all I’m worried about,” she said.
Added Jeff Zamiri, owner of Sorento’s: “Material things can be fixed. I’m just thankful nobody was hurt,” he said as he surveyed the damage.
The fire completely gutted Thornton’s, even burning away the sign, but Christmas garland could still be seen winded around a pillar in front. Holiday lights still hung from the awning at Umi and the bright blue Greek Isles sign was almost untouched. The inside of the restaurants appear to be a scorched mess.
Fire trucks remained on scene this morning and at one point firefighters doused the buildings with water after smoke started billowing from the roof.
MacDonald said 100 Boston firefighters battled the blaze, and two were injured when they slipped on ice.
MacDonald said the fire chief ordered firefighters to fight the blaze from the outside of the buildings once it was determined that no one was inside.
“The fire got up in the ceiling and traveled horizontally throughout the building, above the ceiling and below the roof,” MacDonald said, adding that roof air conditioning units were a hazard.
Part of Peterborough Street remained closed this morning.
Showing posts with label news of note. Show all posts
Showing posts with label news of note. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Fire
I used to live about a 20 second walk from here and used to frequent these places quite often. I hope they are all able to re-build..
The article states that the fire was on Kilmarnock Street, but really It's Peterborough Street ...
Fire destroys 7 shops in Fenway
January 6, 2009
(George Rizer/Globe Staff)
By Andrew Ryan and John R. Ellement, Globe Staff, and Michele Richinick, Globe Correspondent
A four-alarm fire tore through a block of shops early this morning near Fenway Park, destroying six restaurants and a dry cleaner as it caused an estimated $5 million in damage.
Firefighters continued pouring water on the rubble seven hours after the blaze started just before 2 a.m. on Kilmarnock Street. It took more than 100 firefighters to battle the blaze, which also forced the evacuation of a block of brick apartment buildings that housed 130 people, some of whom were in wheelchairs.
No one was hurt in the blaze, but two firefighters slipped on ice while working to extinguish the flames, said Steve MacDonald, a spokesman for the Boston Fire Department.
"When firefighters arrived, they had heavy fire showing from the restaurant on the corner," Thornton's Fenway Grille, MacDonald said. "The fire spread, got in the ceiling, spread horizontal, and pretty much destroyed all seven stores."
All the businesses were closed when the fire started. When it was determined that no one was inside the block-long brick building, firefighters left the building because it appeared that the roof might give way. Crews continued fighting the flames from outside the building, dousing the fire with ladder pipes and tower units, MacDonald said.
Officials evacuated the apartment building because they detected high levels of carbon monoxide from the wafting smoke, MacDonald said. The residents were taken to William McKinley Preparatory High School on Peterborough Street, which also served as a shelter for firefighters seeking refuge from the 20-degree weather. The McKinley school was not damaged by the fire, but it will be closed today. All staff are required to report to the McKinley Middle School on St. Mary Street, according to the Boston Schools Department.
The restaurants destroyed by the blaze also included Greek Isles Restaurant, Rod-Dee Thai Cuisine II Fenway, El Pelon Taqueria, Umi Japanese Restaurant, Bon Cleaners, and Sorento's Italian Gourmet. The fire also inflicted minor damage on a two-story garage behind the row of shops, MacDonald said.
The cause of the fire is under investigation. Firefighters are expected to be on scene all day pouring water on hotspots.
The article states that the fire was on Kilmarnock Street, but really It's Peterborough Street ...
Fire destroys 7 shops in Fenway
January 6, 2009
(George Rizer/Globe Staff)
By Andrew Ryan and John R. Ellement, Globe Staff, and Michele Richinick, Globe Correspondent
A four-alarm fire tore through a block of shops early this morning near Fenway Park, destroying six restaurants and a dry cleaner as it caused an estimated $5 million in damage.
Firefighters continued pouring water on the rubble seven hours after the blaze started just before 2 a.m. on Kilmarnock Street. It took more than 100 firefighters to battle the blaze, which also forced the evacuation of a block of brick apartment buildings that housed 130 people, some of whom were in wheelchairs.
No one was hurt in the blaze, but two firefighters slipped on ice while working to extinguish the flames, said Steve MacDonald, a spokesman for the Boston Fire Department.
"When firefighters arrived, they had heavy fire showing from the restaurant on the corner," Thornton's Fenway Grille, MacDonald said. "The fire spread, got in the ceiling, spread horizontal, and pretty much destroyed all seven stores."
All the businesses were closed when the fire started. When it was determined that no one was inside the block-long brick building, firefighters left the building because it appeared that the roof might give way. Crews continued fighting the flames from outside the building, dousing the fire with ladder pipes and tower units, MacDonald said.
Officials evacuated the apartment building because they detected high levels of carbon monoxide from the wafting smoke, MacDonald said. The residents were taken to William McKinley Preparatory High School on Peterborough Street, which also served as a shelter for firefighters seeking refuge from the 20-degree weather. The McKinley school was not damaged by the fire, but it will be closed today. All staff are required to report to the McKinley Middle School on St. Mary Street, according to the Boston Schools Department.
The restaurants destroyed by the blaze also included Greek Isles Restaurant, Rod-Dee Thai Cuisine II Fenway, El Pelon Taqueria, Umi Japanese Restaurant, Bon Cleaners, and Sorento's Italian Gourmet. The fire also inflicted minor damage on a two-story garage behind the row of shops, MacDonald said.
The cause of the fire is under investigation. Firefighters are expected to be on scene all day pouring water on hotspots.
Shaheen...
Alfred Shaheen, garment industry pioneer, dies at 86
Shaheen revolutionized the garment industry in postwar Hawaii by designing, printing and producing aloha shirts and other ready-to-wear items under one roof.
By Claire Noland , January 4, 2009
Alfred Shaheen, a textile manufacturer who revolutionized the garment industry in postwar Hawaii by designing, printing and producing aloha shirts and other ready-to-wear items under one roof, has died. He was 86.
Shaheen died Dec. 22 of complications from diabetes in Torrance, where he had lived for the last five years, his daughter Camille Shaheen-Tunberg said.
After World War II, many servicemen and servicewomen returned to the United States from Asia and the Pacific islands with aloha shirts that had been made in Hawaii since the 1930s. Tourists began flocking to Hawaii in the 1950s as faster airplanes allowed for easier travel and the former U.S. territory became a state in 1959.
The tropical-print shirts for men and sundresses for women became standard and sometimes tacky souvenirs for travelers, but Shaheen raised the garments to the level of high fashion with artistic prints, high-grade materials and quality construction.
Even Elvis Presley wore a Shaheen-designed red aloha shirt featured on the album cover for the "Blue Hawaii" soundtrack in 1961.
Born into a family established in the textile business, Shaheen maintained high standards by controlling the process from start to finish at the factory he built in Honolulu.
He hired professional artists and silk-screened their designs on silk, rayon and cotton fabrics he imported to Hawaii. Then his seamstresses cut and pieced together garments that were sold at his own shops and other retail outlets in Hawaii or exported to the mainland and around the world.
"He was a genius," Dale Hope, art director for the Honolulu-based Kahala shirt maker and author of "The Aloha Shirt: Spirit of the Islands," told The Times. "He knew more about the inner workings of all of the elements of printing, the garment business and wholesaling and retailing and distribution. He was really a bright, sharp and smart man."
Linda Arthur, a professor of textiles and clothing at Washington State University who has written extensively about the Hawaiian fashion industry, said that "before Shaheen came along, there was no Hawaii garment industry. There were mom and pop stores but no real modern industry."
Shaheen was born Jan. 31, 1922, in New Jersey, where his father and grandfather owned textile mills and clothing stores. He moved to Compton with his family when his father decided to relocate. The elder Shaheen would travel to Guam to buy silk for the family's custom women's wear line, and after falling in love with Hawaii on stopovers, he moved the family again, this time to Honolulu in 1938.
Shaheen returned to California the next year to attend Whittier College, where he studied math and engineering and starred on the football team. After graduating in 1943, he joined the U.S. Army Air Forces and became a fighter pilot in Europe during World War II.
His cousin, another soldier, had been engaged to a woman named Amelia Ash in Olean, N.Y., but he died in the war. After the war, Shaheen wanted to meet the woman his cousin had told him about, so he went to meet her and wound up marrying her and bringing her back to Honolulu.
His parents operated a custom dress shop there, making bridal gowns and prom dresses from formal fabrics such as silks, chiffons and lace. But Shaheen wanted to branch out into ready-to-wear fashion.
He struck out on his own in 1948, opening Shaheen's of Honolulu with four seamstresses his mother had trained. In those days of relative isolation, clothing manufacturers in Hawaii had to store a year's worth of fabric to guard against the vagaries of shipping delays, strikes and other unforeseen factors. And they had to settle for whatever fabric the textile mill sent them.
Using equipment he built himself, Shaheen started a silk-screen printing plant in a rented Quonset hut in 1952. He put artists on salary to design patterns inspired by Polynesian and Asian cultures. Soon the company was printing more than 60,000 yards of fabric per month. Some of that fabric was used to make garments, and some was distributed in bolts to other businesses.
In 1956, to meet increasing demand, Shaheen expanded to a new, state-of-the-art factory that sprawled over 23,000 square feet. The company's focus remained on good design.
"I wanted a certain look that was different from everyone else's," Shaheen said in an interview for Hope's book. "I would not do hash prints or chop suey prints. I avoided bright or garish colors."
Most of the patterns featured three to five colors that laborers applied to silk screens by hand, saturating the fabric. Artists in the Shaheen studio had more than 1,000 dye colors to choose from, including innovative metallic shades, and they consulted rare books, libraries and museum collections. Sometimes Shaheen sent the designers on field trips to Tahiti and other exotic locales to soak up the culture for future work.
By 1959, according to company history, Shaheen employed 400 workers and grossed more than $4 million annually, dominating the local industry. The Hawaii garment industry overall had grown to roughly $15 million in sales from less than $1 million in 1947, according to the Honolulu Advertiser.
Shaheen sold men's shirts and shorts and women's dresses and sarongs in his own seven-store chain as well as to other retailers in the islands, on the mainland and across the world. Bullock's and the Broadway (both since closed) and other upscale department stores on the mainland carried the clothing, and some stores had special "East Meets West" boutiques dedicated to Shaheen's fashions.
Shaheen retired in 1988 and shut down the factory. He maintained homes in Honolulu and Los Angeles before relocating permanently to Torrance.
In addition to his daughter Camille, of Venice, he is survived by three other daughters, Susan Mulkern of Oahu, Cynthia Rose of Maui and Marianne Kishiyama of Culver City; a son, Alfred Shaheen II of La Cañada Flintridge; five grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; and a sister, Joyce Bowman. His first marriage ended in divorce, as did a second.
Although the company is defunct, vintage Shaheen shirts can sell for $1,000 or more, said David Bailey of Bailey's Antiques and Aloha Shirts in Honolulu, a well-known emporium that stocks about 15,000 aloha shirts.
As Arthur, the textile professor explained, a Shaheen garment "is like a piece of moving art."
Friday, December 12, 2008
Sad news.
1950s pinup model Bettie Page dies in LA at 85
By BOB THOMAS
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Bettie Page, the 1950s secretary-turned-model whose controverisal photographs in skimpy attire or none at all helped set the stage for the 1960s sexual revolution, died Thursday. She was 85.
Page suffered a heart attack last week in Los Angeles and never regained consciousness, her agent Mark Roesler said. Before the heart attack, Page had been hospitalized for three weeks with pneumonia.
"She captured the imagination of a generation of men and women with her free spirit and unabashed sensuality," Roesler said. "She is the embodiment of beauty."
Page, who was also known as Betty, attracted national attention with magazine photographs of her sensuous figure in bikinis and see-through lingerie that were quickly tacked up on walls in military barracks, garages and elsewhere, where they remained for years.
Her photos included a centerfold in the January 1955 issue of then-fledgling Playboy magazine, as well as controversial sadomasochistic poses.
The latter helped contribute to her mysterious disappearance from the public eye, which lasted decades and included years during which she battled mental illness and became a born-again Christian.
After resurfacing in the 1990s, she occasionally granted interviews but refused to allow her picture to be taken.
"I don't want to be photographed in my old age," she told an interviewer in 1998. "I feel the same way with old movie stars. ... It makes me sad. We want to remember them when they were young."
The 21st century indeed had people remembering her just as she was. She became the subject of songs, biographies, Web sites, comic books, movies and documentaries. A new generation of fans bought thousands of copies of her photos, and some feminists hailed her as a pioneer of women's liberation.
Gretchen Mol portrayed her in 2005's "The Notorious Bettie Page" and Paige Richards had the role in 2004's "Bettie Page: Dark Angel." Page herself took part in the 1998 documentary "Betty Page: Pinup Queen."
Her career began one day in October 1950 when she took a respite from her job as a secretary in a New York office for a walk along the beach at Coney Island. An amateur photographer named Jerry Tibbs admired the 27-year-old's firm, curvy body and asked her to pose.
Looking back on the career that followed, she told Playboy in 1998, "I never thought it was shameful. I felt normal. It's just that it was much better than pounding a typewriter eight hours a day, which gets monotonous."
Nudity didn't bother her, she said, explaining: "God approves of nudity. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, they were naked as jaybirds."
In 1951, Page fell under the influence of a photographer and his sister who specialized in S&M. They cut her hair into the dark bangs that became her signature and posed her in spiked heels and little else. She was photographed with a whip in her hand, and in one session she was spread-eagled between two trees, her feet dangling.
"I thought my arms and legs would come out of their sockets," she said later.
Moralists denounced the photos as perversion, and Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, Page's home state, launched a congressional investigation.
Page quickly retreated from public view, later saying she was hounded by federal agents who waved her nude photos in her face. She also said she believed that, at age 34, her days as "the girl with the perfect figure" were nearly over.
She moved to Florida in 1957 and married a much younger man, as an early marriage to her high school sweetheart had ended in divorce. Her second marriage also failed, as did a third, and she suffered a nervous breakdown.
In 1959, she was lying on a sea wall in Key West when she saw a church with a white neon cross on top. She walked inside and became a born-again Christian.
After attending Bible school, she wanted to serve as a missionary but was turned down because she had been divorced. Instead, she worked full-time for evangelist Billy Graham's ministry.
A move to Southern California in 1979 brought more troubles.
She was arrested after an altercation with her landlady, and doctors who examined her determined she had acute schizophrenia. She spent 20 months in a state mental hospital in San Bernardino.
A fight with another landlord resulted in her arrest, but she was found not guilty because of insanity. She was placed under state supervision for eight years.
"She had a very turbulent life," Todd Mueller, a family friend and autograph seller, told The Associated Press on Thursday. "She had a temper to her."
Mueller said he first met Page after tracking her down in the 1990s and persuaded her to do an autograph signing event.
He said she was a hit and sold about 3,000 autographs, usually for $200 to $300 each.
"Eleanor Roosevelt, we got $40 to $50. ... Bettie Page outsells them all," he told The AP last week.
Born April 22, 1923, in Nashville, Tenn., Page said she grew up in a family so poor "we were lucky to get an orange in our Christmas stockings."
The family included three boys and three girls, and Page said her father molested all of the girls.
After the Pages moved to Houston, her father decided to return to Tennessee and stole a police car for the trip. He was sent to prison, and for a time Betty lived in an orphanage.
In her teens she acted in high school plays, going on to study drama in New York and win a screen test from 20th Century Fox before her modeling career took off.
Associated Press writer Raquel Maria Dillon in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
By BOB THOMAS
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Bettie Page, the 1950s secretary-turned-model whose controverisal photographs in skimpy attire or none at all helped set the stage for the 1960s sexual revolution, died Thursday. She was 85.
Page suffered a heart attack last week in Los Angeles and never regained consciousness, her agent Mark Roesler said. Before the heart attack, Page had been hospitalized for three weeks with pneumonia.
"She captured the imagination of a generation of men and women with her free spirit and unabashed sensuality," Roesler said. "She is the embodiment of beauty."
Page, who was also known as Betty, attracted national attention with magazine photographs of her sensuous figure in bikinis and see-through lingerie that were quickly tacked up on walls in military barracks, garages and elsewhere, where they remained for years.
Her photos included a centerfold in the January 1955 issue of then-fledgling Playboy magazine, as well as controversial sadomasochistic poses.
The latter helped contribute to her mysterious disappearance from the public eye, which lasted decades and included years during which she battled mental illness and became a born-again Christian.
After resurfacing in the 1990s, she occasionally granted interviews but refused to allow her picture to be taken.
"I don't want to be photographed in my old age," she told an interviewer in 1998. "I feel the same way with old movie stars. ... It makes me sad. We want to remember them when they were young."
The 21st century indeed had people remembering her just as she was. She became the subject of songs, biographies, Web sites, comic books, movies and documentaries. A new generation of fans bought thousands of copies of her photos, and some feminists hailed her as a pioneer of women's liberation.
Gretchen Mol portrayed her in 2005's "The Notorious Bettie Page" and Paige Richards had the role in 2004's "Bettie Page: Dark Angel." Page herself took part in the 1998 documentary "Betty Page: Pinup Queen."
Her career began one day in October 1950 when she took a respite from her job as a secretary in a New York office for a walk along the beach at Coney Island. An amateur photographer named Jerry Tibbs admired the 27-year-old's firm, curvy body and asked her to pose.
Looking back on the career that followed, she told Playboy in 1998, "I never thought it was shameful. I felt normal. It's just that it was much better than pounding a typewriter eight hours a day, which gets monotonous."
Nudity didn't bother her, she said, explaining: "God approves of nudity. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, they were naked as jaybirds."
In 1951, Page fell under the influence of a photographer and his sister who specialized in S&M. They cut her hair into the dark bangs that became her signature and posed her in spiked heels and little else. She was photographed with a whip in her hand, and in one session she was spread-eagled between two trees, her feet dangling.
"I thought my arms and legs would come out of their sockets," she said later.
Moralists denounced the photos as perversion, and Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, Page's home state, launched a congressional investigation.
Page quickly retreated from public view, later saying she was hounded by federal agents who waved her nude photos in her face. She also said she believed that, at age 34, her days as "the girl with the perfect figure" were nearly over.
She moved to Florida in 1957 and married a much younger man, as an early marriage to her high school sweetheart had ended in divorce. Her second marriage also failed, as did a third, and she suffered a nervous breakdown.
In 1959, she was lying on a sea wall in Key West when she saw a church with a white neon cross on top. She walked inside and became a born-again Christian.
After attending Bible school, she wanted to serve as a missionary but was turned down because she had been divorced. Instead, she worked full-time for evangelist Billy Graham's ministry.
A move to Southern California in 1979 brought more troubles.
She was arrested after an altercation with her landlady, and doctors who examined her determined she had acute schizophrenia. She spent 20 months in a state mental hospital in San Bernardino.
A fight with another landlord resulted in her arrest, but she was found not guilty because of insanity. She was placed under state supervision for eight years.
"She had a very turbulent life," Todd Mueller, a family friend and autograph seller, told The Associated Press on Thursday. "She had a temper to her."
Mueller said he first met Page after tracking her down in the 1990s and persuaded her to do an autograph signing event.
He said she was a hit and sold about 3,000 autographs, usually for $200 to $300 each.
"Eleanor Roosevelt, we got $40 to $50. ... Bettie Page outsells them all," he told The AP last week.
Born April 22, 1923, in Nashville, Tenn., Page said she grew up in a family so poor "we were lucky to get an orange in our Christmas stockings."
The family included three boys and three girls, and Page said her father molested all of the girls.
After the Pages moved to Houston, her father decided to return to Tennessee and stole a police car for the trip. He was sent to prison, and for a time Betty lived in an orphanage.
In her teens she acted in high school plays, going on to study drama in New York and win a screen test from 20th Century Fox before her modeling career took off.
Associated Press writer Raquel Maria Dillon in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Oh Dear.
Pinup Bettie Page Hospitalized After Heart Attack
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Bettie Page, a 1950s pinup known for her raven-haired bangs and saucy come-hither looks, was hospitalized in intensive care after suffering a heart attack, her agent said Friday.
''She's critically ill,'' Mark Roesler of CMG Worldwide told The Associated Press.
He said the 85-year-old had been hospitalized for the last three weeks with pneumonia and was about to be released when she had the heart attack Tuesday. Page was transferred to another hospital in Los Angeles and remained in intensive care Friday.
A family friend, Todd Mueller, said Page was in a coma. When asked to confirm, Roesler said, ''I would not deny that,'' but he would not comment further on her condition.
Page, a secretary turned model, is credited with helping set the stage for the sexual revolution of the rebellious 1960s. She attracted national attention with magazine photographs of her sensuous figure that were tacked up on walls across the country.
Her photos included a centerfold in the January 1955 issue of then-fledgling Playboy magazine, as well as controversial sadomasochistic poses.
Page later spent decades away from the public eye, and during that time battled mental illness and became a born-again Christian.
After resurfacing in the 1990s, she occasionally granted interviews but refused to allow her picture to be taken.
Mueller credits his business dealings with Page for bringing her out of seclusion. He said he first met her in 1989 when he offered her ''a bunch of money'' to show up at autograph signings.
''I probably sold 3,000 of her autographs, usually for $200 to $300,'' he said. ''Eleanor Roosevelt, we got $40-$50. ... Bettie Page outsells them all.''
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Bettie Page, a 1950s pinup known for her raven-haired bangs and saucy come-hither looks, was hospitalized in intensive care after suffering a heart attack, her agent said Friday.
''She's critically ill,'' Mark Roesler of CMG Worldwide told The Associated Press.
He said the 85-year-old had been hospitalized for the last three weeks with pneumonia and was about to be released when she had the heart attack Tuesday. Page was transferred to another hospital in Los Angeles and remained in intensive care Friday.
A family friend, Todd Mueller, said Page was in a coma. When asked to confirm, Roesler said, ''I would not deny that,'' but he would not comment further on her condition.
Page, a secretary turned model, is credited with helping set the stage for the sexual revolution of the rebellious 1960s. She attracted national attention with magazine photographs of her sensuous figure that were tacked up on walls across the country.
Her photos included a centerfold in the January 1955 issue of then-fledgling Playboy magazine, as well as controversial sadomasochistic poses.
Page later spent decades away from the public eye, and during that time battled mental illness and became a born-again Christian.
After resurfacing in the 1990s, she occasionally granted interviews but refused to allow her picture to be taken.
Mueller credits his business dealings with Page for bringing her out of seclusion. He said he first met her in 1989 when he offered her ''a bunch of money'' to show up at autograph signings.
''I probably sold 3,000 of her autographs, usually for $200 to $300,'' he said. ''Eleanor Roosevelt, we got $40-$50. ... Bettie Page outsells them all.''
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Save Mister Rogers
Apparently, PBS has decided to remove "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" from it's daily syndicate offerings, beginning in September. Jerks.
Visit
http://savemisterrogers.com
for more information regarding this HORRIBLE decision.
Here's a great article I found while rooting around...
(Mental Floss) -- Here are 15 things everyone should know about Fred Rogers:
1. Even Koko the Gorilla loved him. Most people have heard of Koko, the Stanford-educated gorilla who could speak about 1000 words in American Sign Language, and understand about 2000 in English.
What most people don't know, however, is that Koko was an avid Mister Rogers' Neighborhood fan. As Esquire reported, when Fred Rogers took a trip out to meet Koko for his show, not only did she immediately wrap her arms around him and embrace him, she did what she'd always seen him do onscreen: she proceeded to take his shoes off!
2. He made thieves think twice. According to a TV Guide piece on him, Fred Rogers drove a plain old Impala for years. One day, however, the car was stolen from the street near the TV station. When Rogers filed a police report, the story was picked up by every newspaper, radio and media outlet around town.
Amazingly, within 48 hours the car was left in the exact spot where it was taken from, with an apology on the dashboard. It read, "If we'd known it was yours, we never would have taken it." Mental Floss: Memorable commencement speakers
3. He watched his figure to the pound. In covering Rogers' daily routine (waking up at 5 a.m.; praying for a few hours for all of his friends and family; studying; writing, making calls and reaching out to every fan who took the time to write him; going for a morning swim; getting on a scale; then really starting his day), writer Tom Junod explained that Mr. Rogers weighed in at exactly 143 pounds every day for the last 30 years of his life.
He didn't smoke, didn't drink, didn't eat the flesh of any animals, and was extremely disciplined in his daily routine. And while I'm not sure if any of that was because he'd mostly grown up a chubby, single child, Junod points out that Rogers found beauty in the number 143.
According to the piece, Rogers came "to see that number as a gift... because, as he says, "the number 143 means 'I love you.' It takes one letter to say 'I' and four letters to say 'love' and three letters to say 'you.' One hundred and forty-three."
4. He saved both public television and the VCR. Strange but true. When the government wanted to cut public television funds in 1969, the relatively unknown Mister Rogers went to Washington.
Almost straight out of a Frank Capra film, his 5-6 minute testimony on how TV had the potential to give kids hope and create more productive citizens was so simple but passionate that even the most gruff politicians were charmed. While the budget should have been cut, the funding instead jumped from $9 to $22 million.
Rogers also spoke to Congress, and swayed senators into voting to allow VCR's to record television shows from the home. It was a cantankerous debate at the time, but his argument was that recording a program like his allowed working parents to sit down with their children and watch shows as a family. Mental Floss: Forgotten kids shows sure to give you nightmares
5. He might have been the most tolerant American ever. Mister Rogers seems to have been almost exactly the same off-screen as he was onscreen. As an ordained Presbyterian minister, and a man of tremendous faith, Mister Rogers preached tolerance first.
Whenever he was asked to castigate non-Christians or gays for their differing beliefs, he would instead face them and say, with sincerity, "God loves you just the way you are." Often this provoked ire from fundamentalists.
6. He was genuinely curious about others. Mister Rogers was known as one of the toughest interviews because he'd often befriend reporters, asking them tons of questions, taking pictures of them, compiling an album for them at the end of their time together, and calling them after to check in on them and hear about their families. He wasn't concerned with himself, and genuinely loved hearing the life stories of others.
And it wasn't just with reporters. Once, on a fancy trip up to a PBS exec's house, he heard the limo driver was going to wait outside for 2 hours, so he insisted the driver come in and join them (which flustered the host).
On the way back, Rogers sat up front, and when he learned that they were passing the driver's home on the way, he asked if they could stop in to meet his family. According to the driver, it was one of the best nights of his life the house supposedly lit up when Rogers arrived, and he played jazz piano and bantered with them late into the night. Further, like with the reporters, Rogers sent him notes and kept in touch with the driver for the rest of his life.
7. He was color-blind. Literally. He couldn't see the color blue. Of course, he was also figuratively color-blind, as you probably guessed. As were his parents, who took in a black foster child when Rogers was growing up. Mental Floss: Praise for the blind genius who invented cruise control
8. He could make a subway car full of strangers sing. Once while rushing to a New York meeting, there were no cabs available, so Rogers and one of his colleagues hopped on the subway. Esquire reported that the car was filled with people, and they assumed they wouldn't be noticed.
But when the crowd spotted Rogers, they all simultaneously burst into song, chanting "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood." The result made Rogers smile wide.
9. He got into TV because he hated TV. The first time he turned one on, he saw people angrily throwing pies in each other's faces. He immediately vowed to use the medium for better than that. Over the years he covered topics as varied as why kids shouldn't be scared of a haircut, or the bathroom drain (because you won't fit!), to divorce and war.
10. He was an Ivy League dropout. Rogers moved from Dartmouth to Rollins College to pursue his studies in music.
11. He composed all the songs on the show, and over 200 tunes.
12. He was a perfectionist, and disliked ad libbing. He felt he owed it to children to make sure every word on his show was thought out.
13. Michael Keaton got his start on the show as an assistant. He helped puppeteer and operate the trolley.
14. Several characters on the show are named for his family. Queen Sara is named after Rogers' wife, and the postman Mr. McFeely is named for his maternal grandfather who always talked to him like an adult, and reminded young Fred that he made every day special just by being himself. Sound familiar? It was the same way Mister Rogers closed every show.
15. The sweaters. Every one of the cardigans he wore on the show had been hand-knit by his mother.
Visit
http://savemisterrogers.com
for more information regarding this HORRIBLE decision.
Here's a great article I found while rooting around...
(Mental Floss) -- Here are 15 things everyone should know about Fred Rogers:
1. Even Koko the Gorilla loved him. Most people have heard of Koko, the Stanford-educated gorilla who could speak about 1000 words in American Sign Language, and understand about 2000 in English.
What most people don't know, however, is that Koko was an avid Mister Rogers' Neighborhood fan. As Esquire reported, when Fred Rogers took a trip out to meet Koko for his show, not only did she immediately wrap her arms around him and embrace him, she did what she'd always seen him do onscreen: she proceeded to take his shoes off!
2. He made thieves think twice. According to a TV Guide piece on him, Fred Rogers drove a plain old Impala for years. One day, however, the car was stolen from the street near the TV station. When Rogers filed a police report, the story was picked up by every newspaper, radio and media outlet around town.
Amazingly, within 48 hours the car was left in the exact spot where it was taken from, with an apology on the dashboard. It read, "If we'd known it was yours, we never would have taken it." Mental Floss: Memorable commencement speakers
3. He watched his figure to the pound. In covering Rogers' daily routine (waking up at 5 a.m.; praying for a few hours for all of his friends and family; studying; writing, making calls and reaching out to every fan who took the time to write him; going for a morning swim; getting on a scale; then really starting his day), writer Tom Junod explained that Mr. Rogers weighed in at exactly 143 pounds every day for the last 30 years of his life.
He didn't smoke, didn't drink, didn't eat the flesh of any animals, and was extremely disciplined in his daily routine. And while I'm not sure if any of that was because he'd mostly grown up a chubby, single child, Junod points out that Rogers found beauty in the number 143.
According to the piece, Rogers came "to see that number as a gift... because, as he says, "the number 143 means 'I love you.' It takes one letter to say 'I' and four letters to say 'love' and three letters to say 'you.' One hundred and forty-three."
4. He saved both public television and the VCR. Strange but true. When the government wanted to cut public television funds in 1969, the relatively unknown Mister Rogers went to Washington.
Almost straight out of a Frank Capra film, his 5-6 minute testimony on how TV had the potential to give kids hope and create more productive citizens was so simple but passionate that even the most gruff politicians were charmed. While the budget should have been cut, the funding instead jumped from $9 to $22 million.
Rogers also spoke to Congress, and swayed senators into voting to allow VCR's to record television shows from the home. It was a cantankerous debate at the time, but his argument was that recording a program like his allowed working parents to sit down with their children and watch shows as a family. Mental Floss: Forgotten kids shows sure to give you nightmares
5. He might have been the most tolerant American ever. Mister Rogers seems to have been almost exactly the same off-screen as he was onscreen. As an ordained Presbyterian minister, and a man of tremendous faith, Mister Rogers preached tolerance first.
Whenever he was asked to castigate non-Christians or gays for their differing beliefs, he would instead face them and say, with sincerity, "God loves you just the way you are." Often this provoked ire from fundamentalists.
6. He was genuinely curious about others. Mister Rogers was known as one of the toughest interviews because he'd often befriend reporters, asking them tons of questions, taking pictures of them, compiling an album for them at the end of their time together, and calling them after to check in on them and hear about their families. He wasn't concerned with himself, and genuinely loved hearing the life stories of others.
And it wasn't just with reporters. Once, on a fancy trip up to a PBS exec's house, he heard the limo driver was going to wait outside for 2 hours, so he insisted the driver come in and join them (which flustered the host).
On the way back, Rogers sat up front, and when he learned that they were passing the driver's home on the way, he asked if they could stop in to meet his family. According to the driver, it was one of the best nights of his life the house supposedly lit up when Rogers arrived, and he played jazz piano and bantered with them late into the night. Further, like with the reporters, Rogers sent him notes and kept in touch with the driver for the rest of his life.
7. He was color-blind. Literally. He couldn't see the color blue. Of course, he was also figuratively color-blind, as you probably guessed. As were his parents, who took in a black foster child when Rogers was growing up. Mental Floss: Praise for the blind genius who invented cruise control
8. He could make a subway car full of strangers sing. Once while rushing to a New York meeting, there were no cabs available, so Rogers and one of his colleagues hopped on the subway. Esquire reported that the car was filled with people, and they assumed they wouldn't be noticed.
But when the crowd spotted Rogers, they all simultaneously burst into song, chanting "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood." The result made Rogers smile wide.
9. He got into TV because he hated TV. The first time he turned one on, he saw people angrily throwing pies in each other's faces. He immediately vowed to use the medium for better than that. Over the years he covered topics as varied as why kids shouldn't be scared of a haircut, or the bathroom drain (because you won't fit!), to divorce and war.
10. He was an Ivy League dropout. Rogers moved from Dartmouth to Rollins College to pursue his studies in music.
11. He composed all the songs on the show, and over 200 tunes.
12. He was a perfectionist, and disliked ad libbing. He felt he owed it to children to make sure every word on his show was thought out.
13. Michael Keaton got his start on the show as an assistant. He helped puppeteer and operate the trolley.
14. Several characters on the show are named for his family. Queen Sara is named after Rogers' wife, and the postman Mr. McFeely is named for his maternal grandfather who always talked to him like an adult, and reminded young Fred that he made every day special just by being himself. Sound familiar? It was the same way Mister Rogers closed every show.
15. The sweaters. Every one of the cardigans he wore on the show had been hand-knit by his mother.
Friday, February 01, 2008
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Darkness.
Health Ledger passed away this week, which bothers me more than it should. I'm not a big fan of his or anything, so I really don't know why this has bothered me as it has. I must say though, that I've been geekily excited for his "Joker" this coming Summer, and now it will be a bit odd to watch I think.
Now...
Bettie Page is deathly ill.
She has been moved from a hospital to a nursing home and is currently unable to speak. She is suffering/recovering from pneumonia and a kidney infection. She is 84 years old. According to her brother, it's not looking good.
Now...
Bettie Page is deathly ill.
She has been moved from a hospital to a nursing home and is currently unable to speak. She is suffering/recovering from pneumonia and a kidney infection. She is 84 years old. According to her brother, it's not looking good.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
65 years ago today...
November 28, 1942 was the day of the Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston.
I've never seen this sidewalk plaque located on Piedmont, but I'm going to make a point of hunting it down next time I'm in the general area...
A good book regarding this tragedy is "Fire in the Grove: The Cocoanut Grove Tragedy and it's Aftermath," by John C. Esposito. Uh, It might be the ONLY book about Cocoanut Grove, but it's quite good none-the-less.
I've never seen this sidewalk plaque located on Piedmont, but I'm going to make a point of hunting it down next time I'm in the general area...
A good book regarding this tragedy is "Fire in the Grove: The Cocoanut Grove Tragedy and it's Aftermath," by John C. Esposito. Uh, It might be the ONLY book about Cocoanut Grove, but it's quite good none-the-less.
Monday, September 03, 2007
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Graceland.
TODAY IS THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH OF ELVIS.
It's in caps because it is important.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Please leave your name and number...
I don't use a cell phone, and I'm doing just fine. I like not being teathered to an electronic leash. This article, from wired.com is great...
"Ten Reasons To Throw Away Your Cellphone
By Rob Beschizza July 31, 2007
It makes your life more complicated
A phone is just another thing that checks email, holds information and schedules events, and which has to be carefully kept in sync with all the other crud in your life that checks email, holds information and schedules events. The difference? This one likely has a 240 pixel-wide screen and a shabby interface spawned from the hellish loins of Windows CE.
It's horribly expensive
Total Cost of Ownership. Apply that idea to everything, not just cars and mortgages. The fact is that most cellphones will cost you thousands over the life of the contract. Short of paying-as-you-go with a Wal-Mart crapdybar, you're in it for a good $1,000, and about $2,000 or so with a smartphone.
It enslaves you to a one-sided contract
This is the magic that allows the previous item to happen, but is sufficiently vile to warrant an entry of its own. Everyone is at it, but the most iconic example of how times have changed is AT&T: Ma Bell has reglued itself together with almost Marxian inevitability, but now has the advantage of having countless customers under astonishingly abusive contract terms. Take that, deregulation.
It makes you perpetually available
If it's on, they can get you. If it's off, they wonder why they can't get you. It's a lose-lose situation for your Zen.
It is boring
The hype tsunami surrounding Apple's iPhone reveals that even something minimally inventive can completely wire public interest in what is otherwise a completely hidebound and risk-averse industry. Are we in the future yet?
It must constantly be recharged
Unless you want to hoik around a brick, the chances are you're recharging it daily. Screw fuel-cells: with WiFi, BlueTooth, WWAN and whatever else, we need AAA-size disposable fission reactors to keep these buggers awake.
It knows where you are
GPS is in every box, but you can't use it for much. The government loves to watch them without warrants or probable cause: if it's in your pocket, you are Robocop and The Man is Dick Jones.
It encourages stupid people to become a public menace
Forget about whether talking on cellphones while driving should be illegal: the fact remains that it is stupid. I know that you are perfectly capable of the mental gymnastics required for all this — you are a hypercephalic Gadget Lab reader — but it's best that you stop now, so as not to encourage lesser minds to attempt similar feats. Some are now being caught texting while driving. Just pull the car over, for heaven's sake!
Ubiquitous pleather accessory shops
Mallbound Cellphone crap shacks are an offense to nature. On the bright side, they support the whitewashed pegboard industry.
It turns you into a public annoyance
Hell is other people's ringtones."
"Ten Reasons To Throw Away Your Cellphone
By Rob Beschizza July 31, 2007
It makes your life more complicated
A phone is just another thing that checks email, holds information and schedules events, and which has to be carefully kept in sync with all the other crud in your life that checks email, holds information and schedules events. The difference? This one likely has a 240 pixel-wide screen and a shabby interface spawned from the hellish loins of Windows CE.
It's horribly expensive
Total Cost of Ownership. Apply that idea to everything, not just cars and mortgages. The fact is that most cellphones will cost you thousands over the life of the contract. Short of paying-as-you-go with a Wal-Mart crapdybar, you're in it for a good $1,000, and about $2,000 or so with a smartphone.
It enslaves you to a one-sided contract
This is the magic that allows the previous item to happen, but is sufficiently vile to warrant an entry of its own. Everyone is at it, but the most iconic example of how times have changed is AT&T: Ma Bell has reglued itself together with almost Marxian inevitability, but now has the advantage of having countless customers under astonishingly abusive contract terms. Take that, deregulation.
It makes you perpetually available
If it's on, they can get you. If it's off, they wonder why they can't get you. It's a lose-lose situation for your Zen.
It is boring
The hype tsunami surrounding Apple's iPhone reveals that even something minimally inventive can completely wire public interest in what is otherwise a completely hidebound and risk-averse industry. Are we in the future yet?
It must constantly be recharged
Unless you want to hoik around a brick, the chances are you're recharging it daily. Screw fuel-cells: with WiFi, BlueTooth, WWAN and whatever else, we need AAA-size disposable fission reactors to keep these buggers awake.
It knows where you are
GPS is in every box, but you can't use it for much. The government loves to watch them without warrants or probable cause: if it's in your pocket, you are Robocop and The Man is Dick Jones.
It encourages stupid people to become a public menace
Forget about whether talking on cellphones while driving should be illegal: the fact remains that it is stupid. I know that you are perfectly capable of the mental gymnastics required for all this — you are a hypercephalic Gadget Lab reader — but it's best that you stop now, so as not to encourage lesser minds to attempt similar feats. Some are now being caught texting while driving. Just pull the car over, for heaven's sake!
Ubiquitous pleather accessory shops
Mallbound Cellphone crap shacks are an offense to nature. On the bright side, they support the whitewashed pegboard industry.
It turns you into a public annoyance
Hell is other people's ringtones."
Friday, July 20, 2007
Dee Plane! Dee Plane!
I have an irrational fear of flying. It doesn't stop me from traveling, but it's annoying for those sitting around me on a plane if there is any sort of turbulence. The article below, from popular Mechanics, is really comforting. Especially the last line.
Safest Seat on a Plane: PM Investigates How to Survive a Crash
In the wake of nearly 200 passenger deaths in a Brazilian airliner accident, we take an exclusive look at 36 years’ worth of NTSB reports and seating charts. The best way to live through a disaster in the sky? Move to the back of the Airbus.
By David Noland
Published on: July 18, 2007
MYTH: It Doesn't Matter Where You Sit
"It's like a lottery to pick your seat."
-Nora Marshall, passenger survival expert, National Transportation Safety Board
"One seat is as safe as the other."
-Boeing Web site
"It's an age-old question. There's just no way to say."
-Federal Aviation Administration spokesman
"There is no safest seat."
-airsafe.com
REALITY: It's Safer In the Back.
The funny thing about all those expert opinions: They're not really based on hard data about actual airline accidents. A look at real-world crash stats, however, suggests that the farther back you sit, the better your odds of survival. Passengers near the tail of a plane are about 40 percent more likely to survive a crash than those in the first few rows up front.
That's the conclusion of an exclusive Popular Mechanics study that examined every commercial jet crash in the United States, since 1971, that had both fatalities and survivors. The raw data from these 20 accidents has been languishing for decades in National Transportation Safety Board files, waiting to be analyzed by anyone curious enough to look and willing to do the statistical drudgework.
And drudgework it was. For several weeks, we poured over reports filed by NTSB crash investigators, as well as seating charts that showed where each passenger sat and whether they lived or died. We then calculated the average fore-and-aft seating position of both survivors and fatalities for each crash.
We also compared survival rates in four sections of the aircraft. Both analytical approaches clearly pointed to the same conclusion: It's safer in the back.
In 11 of the 20 crashes, rear passengers clearly fared better. Only five accidents favored those sitting forward. Three were tossups, with no particular pattern of survival. In one case, seat positions could not be determined.
In seven of the 11 crashes favoring back-seaters, their advantage was striking. For example, in both the 1982 Air Florida accident in Washington, D.C., and the 1972 crash of an Eastern 727 at New York's Kennedy Airport, the handful of survivors were all sitting in the last few rows. And when a United DC-8 ran out of fuel near Portland, Ore., in 1978, all seven passengers who died were sitting in the first four rows.
Oddly, the five accidents that favored front-cabin passengers all occurred between 1988 and 1992. In the 1989 United DC-10 accident in Sioux City, Iowa, for example, the majority of the 175 survivors sat ahead of the wing.
There was just one crash in which passengers in the front had a pronounced survival advantage. The only two fatalities in a 1989 USAir runway accident at LaGuardia were both sitting in Row 21 in the 25-row Boeing 737-400.
Where detailed seating charts were available, we also calculated survival rates for various parts of the passenger cabin. Again, the trend was clear: The rear cabin (seats located behind the trailing edge of the wing) had the highest average survival rate at 69 percent. The overwing section had a 56 percent survival rate, as did the coach section ahead of the wing. First/business-class sections (or in all-coach planes, the front 15 percent) had an average survival rate of just 49 percent.
So when the "experts" tell you it doesn't matter where you sit, have a chuckle and head for the back of the plane. And once your seatbelt is firmly fastened, relax: There's been just one fatal jet crash in the U.S. in the last five-plus years.
Safest Seat on a Plane: PM Investigates How to Survive a Crash
In the wake of nearly 200 passenger deaths in a Brazilian airliner accident, we take an exclusive look at 36 years’ worth of NTSB reports and seating charts. The best way to live through a disaster in the sky? Move to the back of the Airbus.
By David Noland
Published on: July 18, 2007
MYTH: It Doesn't Matter Where You Sit
"It's like a lottery to pick your seat."
-Nora Marshall, passenger survival expert, National Transportation Safety Board
"One seat is as safe as the other."
-Boeing Web site
"It's an age-old question. There's just no way to say."
-Federal Aviation Administration spokesman
"There is no safest seat."
-airsafe.com
REALITY: It's Safer In the Back.
The funny thing about all those expert opinions: They're not really based on hard data about actual airline accidents. A look at real-world crash stats, however, suggests that the farther back you sit, the better your odds of survival. Passengers near the tail of a plane are about 40 percent more likely to survive a crash than those in the first few rows up front.
That's the conclusion of an exclusive Popular Mechanics study that examined every commercial jet crash in the United States, since 1971, that had both fatalities and survivors. The raw data from these 20 accidents has been languishing for decades in National Transportation Safety Board files, waiting to be analyzed by anyone curious enough to look and willing to do the statistical drudgework.
And drudgework it was. For several weeks, we poured over reports filed by NTSB crash investigators, as well as seating charts that showed where each passenger sat and whether they lived or died. We then calculated the average fore-and-aft seating position of both survivors and fatalities for each crash.
We also compared survival rates in four sections of the aircraft. Both analytical approaches clearly pointed to the same conclusion: It's safer in the back.
In 11 of the 20 crashes, rear passengers clearly fared better. Only five accidents favored those sitting forward. Three were tossups, with no particular pattern of survival. In one case, seat positions could not be determined.
In seven of the 11 crashes favoring back-seaters, their advantage was striking. For example, in both the 1982 Air Florida accident in Washington, D.C., and the 1972 crash of an Eastern 727 at New York's Kennedy Airport, the handful of survivors were all sitting in the last few rows. And when a United DC-8 ran out of fuel near Portland, Ore., in 1978, all seven passengers who died were sitting in the first four rows.
Oddly, the five accidents that favored front-cabin passengers all occurred between 1988 and 1992. In the 1989 United DC-10 accident in Sioux City, Iowa, for example, the majority of the 175 survivors sat ahead of the wing.
There was just one crash in which passengers in the front had a pronounced survival advantage. The only two fatalities in a 1989 USAir runway accident at LaGuardia were both sitting in Row 21 in the 25-row Boeing 737-400.
Where detailed seating charts were available, we also calculated survival rates for various parts of the passenger cabin. Again, the trend was clear: The rear cabin (seats located behind the trailing edge of the wing) had the highest average survival rate at 69 percent. The overwing section had a 56 percent survival rate, as did the coach section ahead of the wing. First/business-class sections (or in all-coach planes, the front 15 percent) had an average survival rate of just 49 percent.
So when the "experts" tell you it doesn't matter where you sit, have a chuckle and head for the back of the plane. And once your seatbelt is firmly fastened, relax: There's been just one fatal jet crash in the U.S. in the last five-plus years.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Farewell, Mr. Butch
from bostonist.com...
"Boston Has Lost Mr. Butch
Harold Madison Jr., also known as Mr. Butch, died Thursday morning after his scooter crashed into a pole in Newton Square. Madison was pronounced dead at Brigham and Women's Hospital a short time after the accident occurred, according to Regeneration Tattoo, the Allston tattoo and record shop whose staff has long looked out for and after Mr. Butch.
Known throughout Boston circles as "the King of Kenmore Square" for more than three decades, Mr. Butch was recognizable by his dreadlocked hair, fondness for Miller High Life and musical stylings. He was often seen playing guitar in the Kenmore Square area - including gigs at The Underground and The Rathskellar - throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He relocated (read: was forced by police to relocate) to Allston in the late 1990s and had been there ever since. He was featured in a 2002 documentary.
A memorial service is being planned and has been tentatively scheduled for Monday."
As a former Allston-dweller, I am saddened.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Waste of words...
The following article, reprinted here from bostonglobe.com, is quite possibly the worst article about tattooing I have ever read. The author apparently has done absolutley no research about the topic before attempting to scribe something worth reading, and instead fumbles around for paragraphs spewing cliches and even goes so far as to refer to patrons in a parlor as "extraterrestrials."
The whole article reads like it was written in 1952. Ugh.
Why this author would even bother to take on this subject, when he obviously holds such archaic thoughts regarding it and is unwilling to reconsider his opinions, I have no idea.
I pity Ram for having to even waste his time being a part of this....
The colors of success
People line up to be this tattooist's canvas
By Sam Allis, Globe Columnist | June 17, 2007
Last week I watched Fat Ram skateboard up to his tattoo parlor in Hyde Square embracing an air conditioner. You just don't see that every day on the streets of Boston, not even in J.P.
But then Ram (pronounced "rahm") has always lived in a parallel universe. He used to wear a suit or tux every Friday during his estimable "Formal Fridays" campaign to ridicule the "Casual Fridays" instituted by corporate America.
Ram is covered with freckles and tattoos. He is a robust mix of Lithuanian, Irish, and Scottish, leavened by something exotic from the West Indies. He's a skateboard and surfing addict. Spent last weekend on the waves off Nantucket.
How was the surfing, I ask. "It was sick," he says. "Is that good?" I ask. "Yes," he says.
Ram is widely considered Boston's primo tattoo artist. The waiting list to see him can run a year, and people come from far and wide for his talents. Now 35, he's been tattooing for 20 years -- underground on occasion in Massachusetts before tattooing was legalized here in 2001 -- and above ground from Texas to Virginia, New Hampshire to Rhode Island. His shop, Fat Ram's Pumpkin Tattoo, was the first licensed tattoo parlor in Boston.
Upon entering it for the first time, the Observer is convinced he has stumbled into the space bar in "Star Wars." It is full of strange-looking people sporting strange-looking haircuts wearing strange-looking clothes with really strange-looking stuff all over their bodies.
That said, it should be noted that I, outré in khakis, blue shirt, and sensible shoes, look every bit as bizarre to them. Ozzie Nelson meets the extraterrestrials.
You generalize at your peril these days about tattoo clientele. Yes, a guy can still walk into a tattoo parlor near a military base at midnight and get a SS Death's Head on his forearm. And you still hear about someone who went into a blackout after the fifth bar and woke up with "Shirley" written across a red heart on his groin.
But it's old news that tattoos have migrated to the right side of the tracks. They've been de rigueur for ages from Hollywood to the Hamptons. They're ubiquitous in the world of J. Crew and Armani. What may soon define cutting edge will be an adult without one.
Ram works on countless doctors and lawyers who should recoil from tattoos like vampires to garlic. Wrong. "You have no idea who's sporting what," he says.
Ram's clients take their tattoos seriously. They want something profound. An 81-year-old man got a small tattoo on his arm from Ram in memory of the beloved wife he had just lost.
Lew Loren, 41, an engineer from Medford is getting his entire back covered. "It came pretty easily," he says. "I talked to my wife about it for about six weeks. I wanted to tell a story that will be aesthetically pleasing."
In it will be a star, representing Stella, their young daughter who died. There will be a lily to honor the name of the South Korean child he and his wife adopted. There will be a moon for his wife, Diana. Anchoring everything will be a large likeness of Ganesh, the Hindu elephant deity Loren calls the mover of obstacles and protector of women.
"When we finally brought a child home, we wanted to commemorate it in some way," he says.
Today, Loren undergoes a grueling three-hour session to get the outlines down. Then he faces four more marathons of another four hours each for the coloration and detail work.
Does it hurt, I ask.
"It stings," Ram says.
"It feels horrible," Loren corrects.
Does he feel strange getting his back covered? Nope. "My friends have always been a couple of deviations from the norm," he replies. "I don't hang out with people who judge me on my appearance."
And then there's Dane Loeliger, 26, a long-ball hitter who is having Ram extend on his upper right arm a tattoo that began on his left one and will eventually end up at his right wrist. "I'll get my back done as soon as I have the money," he says. What about parents? "They're not big fans."
Loeliger's tattoo tells the saga of a lone samurai and a child. In this latest chapter, explains Ram, "There's a demon guy mashing people into a pestle." (Loeliger, who runs a mouse colony of 1,200 rodents at Harvard Medical School, sports a T-shirt that displays, in his own words, "spiders having sex with people.")
The Observer was delighted to learn the classic tattoos common to generations of American servicemen -- anchors, pinups, hearts -- are back. "They're huge," confirms Ram, who calls them "neo-traditional." "Simple color palette, bold outline, heavy shading. There are people who do that exclusively."
Tattoos have always spooked me, and I've hectored my daughter for years to avoid them or face immediate death. So far, so good. She's 24 and inkless. I tell her: Picture yourself in your 40s. You're at a nice dinner party. Killer black dress, fab heels, pearls if you're lucky. And a coil of barbed wire tattooed around your arm. Nonono.
I, however, subscribe to the school that says you can do anything you want when you hit 60, which I have done.
The whole article reads like it was written in 1952. Ugh.
Why this author would even bother to take on this subject, when he obviously holds such archaic thoughts regarding it and is unwilling to reconsider his opinions, I have no idea.
I pity Ram for having to even waste his time being a part of this....
The colors of success
People line up to be this tattooist's canvas
By Sam Allis, Globe Columnist | June 17, 2007
Last week I watched Fat Ram skateboard up to his tattoo parlor in Hyde Square embracing an air conditioner. You just don't see that every day on the streets of Boston, not even in J.P.
But then Ram (pronounced "rahm") has always lived in a parallel universe. He used to wear a suit or tux every Friday during his estimable "Formal Fridays" campaign to ridicule the "Casual Fridays" instituted by corporate America.
Ram is covered with freckles and tattoos. He is a robust mix of Lithuanian, Irish, and Scottish, leavened by something exotic from the West Indies. He's a skateboard and surfing addict. Spent last weekend on the waves off Nantucket.
How was the surfing, I ask. "It was sick," he says. "Is that good?" I ask. "Yes," he says.
Ram is widely considered Boston's primo tattoo artist. The waiting list to see him can run a year, and people come from far and wide for his talents. Now 35, he's been tattooing for 20 years -- underground on occasion in Massachusetts before tattooing was legalized here in 2001 -- and above ground from Texas to Virginia, New Hampshire to Rhode Island. His shop, Fat Ram's Pumpkin Tattoo, was the first licensed tattoo parlor in Boston.
Upon entering it for the first time, the Observer is convinced he has stumbled into the space bar in "Star Wars." It is full of strange-looking people sporting strange-looking haircuts wearing strange-looking clothes with really strange-looking stuff all over their bodies.
That said, it should be noted that I, outré in khakis, blue shirt, and sensible shoes, look every bit as bizarre to them. Ozzie Nelson meets the extraterrestrials.
You generalize at your peril these days about tattoo clientele. Yes, a guy can still walk into a tattoo parlor near a military base at midnight and get a SS Death's Head on his forearm. And you still hear about someone who went into a blackout after the fifth bar and woke up with "Shirley" written across a red heart on his groin.
But it's old news that tattoos have migrated to the right side of the tracks. They've been de rigueur for ages from Hollywood to the Hamptons. They're ubiquitous in the world of J. Crew and Armani. What may soon define cutting edge will be an adult without one.
Ram works on countless doctors and lawyers who should recoil from tattoos like vampires to garlic. Wrong. "You have no idea who's sporting what," he says.
Ram's clients take their tattoos seriously. They want something profound. An 81-year-old man got a small tattoo on his arm from Ram in memory of the beloved wife he had just lost.
Lew Loren, 41, an engineer from Medford is getting his entire back covered. "It came pretty easily," he says. "I talked to my wife about it for about six weeks. I wanted to tell a story that will be aesthetically pleasing."
In it will be a star, representing Stella, their young daughter who died. There will be a lily to honor the name of the South Korean child he and his wife adopted. There will be a moon for his wife, Diana. Anchoring everything will be a large likeness of Ganesh, the Hindu elephant deity Loren calls the mover of obstacles and protector of women.
"When we finally brought a child home, we wanted to commemorate it in some way," he says.
Today, Loren undergoes a grueling three-hour session to get the outlines down. Then he faces four more marathons of another four hours each for the coloration and detail work.
Does it hurt, I ask.
"It stings," Ram says.
"It feels horrible," Loren corrects.
Does he feel strange getting his back covered? Nope. "My friends have always been a couple of deviations from the norm," he replies. "I don't hang out with people who judge me on my appearance."
And then there's Dane Loeliger, 26, a long-ball hitter who is having Ram extend on his upper right arm a tattoo that began on his left one and will eventually end up at his right wrist. "I'll get my back done as soon as I have the money," he says. What about parents? "They're not big fans."
Loeliger's tattoo tells the saga of a lone samurai and a child. In this latest chapter, explains Ram, "There's a demon guy mashing people into a pestle." (Loeliger, who runs a mouse colony of 1,200 rodents at Harvard Medical School, sports a T-shirt that displays, in his own words, "spiders having sex with people.")
The Observer was delighted to learn the classic tattoos common to generations of American servicemen -- anchors, pinups, hearts -- are back. "They're huge," confirms Ram, who calls them "neo-traditional." "Simple color palette, bold outline, heavy shading. There are people who do that exclusively."
Tattoos have always spooked me, and I've hectored my daughter for years to avoid them or face immediate death. So far, so good. She's 24 and inkless. I tell her: Picture yourself in your 40s. You're at a nice dinner party. Killer black dress, fab heels, pearls if you're lucky. And a coil of barbed wire tattooed around your arm. Nonono.
I, however, subscribe to the school that says you can do anything you want when you hit 60, which I have done.
Friday, June 01, 2007
Return of the pink-dotted lawns.
I was just sent this news article, originally from boston.com....
In the pink again: lawn flamingos
N.Y. firm buys molds from Mass.'s Union Products, plans revival.
Don Featherstone studied art before Union Products hired him in 1956 to design lawn ornaments.
(AMY SANCETTA/ASSOCIATED PRESS/FILE 1998)
By Associated Press | June 1, 2007
The original pink flamingo lawn ornament, the symbol of kitsch whose obituary was nearly written after its Central Massachusetts manufacturer went out of business, is rising phoenix-like from the ashes and taking wing to New York.
A manufacturer that bought the copyright and plastic molds for the original version plans to resume production in Westmoreland, N.Y., by Labor Day. HMC International LLC will pick up where Union Products Inc. left off last year when it shuttered its Leominster plastics factory after 50 years.
J.C. Waszkiewicz, head of family-owned HMC, yesterday said he expects retailers buying his firm's flamingos wholesale will appreciate subtle design differences between knockoff versions and the original by Don Featherstone, who studied art before Union Products hired him in 1956 to expand its lineup of lawn ornaments.
"There are other people who have tried to capitalize on his design," said Waszkiewicz, "but none that I've seen hold a candle to the quality and detail he created."
The molds are based on flamingos Featherstone sculpted from clay, working from photos of the graceful birds in National Geographic magazine.The ornaments hit the market in the late 1950s, when the color pink was in vogue, and America's exploding population of suburbanites sought to add flair to their lawns.
But the birds also came to symbolize bad taste: Some developments even banned flamingo ornaments from lawns. The bird also became a target of pranksters, some of whom swiped the ornaments from front yards, took them on the road, and then sent photos to their owners, showing the kidnapped birds at places like the Grand Canyon.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
This is very exciting news. The flamingos that currently live on my lawn have been horribly bleached by the sun, and resemble the look of flamingos that don't get enough shrimp in their diets. I bought some pink spray paint specifically for plastic applications that I may try to use to bring them back to their proper vivid pinkiness, but I'm afraid I'll muck them up, especially at the beak, where the yellow blends into the pink. I have a small hoard of brand new flamingos that I manically bought up when I heard news of Union Products closing, but I don't want to dip into my flock to replace the near-white birds because once those are gone, that's it!
Now I'll be able to replace the poor, pale birds with these second generation birds and still keep the original Union Products birds in their original boxes, safe from the elements and lawn ornament poachers.
It's really sad how happy this news makes me. Really.
In the pink again: lawn flamingos
N.Y. firm buys molds from Mass.'s Union Products, plans revival.
Don Featherstone studied art before Union Products hired him in 1956 to design lawn ornaments.
(AMY SANCETTA/ASSOCIATED PRESS/FILE 1998)
By Associated Press | June 1, 2007
The original pink flamingo lawn ornament, the symbol of kitsch whose obituary was nearly written after its Central Massachusetts manufacturer went out of business, is rising phoenix-like from the ashes and taking wing to New York.
A manufacturer that bought the copyright and plastic molds for the original version plans to resume production in Westmoreland, N.Y., by Labor Day. HMC International LLC will pick up where Union Products Inc. left off last year when it shuttered its Leominster plastics factory after 50 years.
J.C. Waszkiewicz, head of family-owned HMC, yesterday said he expects retailers buying his firm's flamingos wholesale will appreciate subtle design differences between knockoff versions and the original by Don Featherstone, who studied art before Union Products hired him in 1956 to expand its lineup of lawn ornaments.
"There are other people who have tried to capitalize on his design," said Waszkiewicz, "but none that I've seen hold a candle to the quality and detail he created."
The molds are based on flamingos Featherstone sculpted from clay, working from photos of the graceful birds in National Geographic magazine.The ornaments hit the market in the late 1950s, when the color pink was in vogue, and America's exploding population of suburbanites sought to add flair to their lawns.
But the birds also came to symbolize bad taste: Some developments even banned flamingo ornaments from lawns. The bird also became a target of pranksters, some of whom swiped the ornaments from front yards, took them on the road, and then sent photos to their owners, showing the kidnapped birds at places like the Grand Canyon.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
This is very exciting news. The flamingos that currently live on my lawn have been horribly bleached by the sun, and resemble the look of flamingos that don't get enough shrimp in their diets. I bought some pink spray paint specifically for plastic applications that I may try to use to bring them back to their proper vivid pinkiness, but I'm afraid I'll muck them up, especially at the beak, where the yellow blends into the pink. I have a small hoard of brand new flamingos that I manically bought up when I heard news of Union Products closing, but I don't want to dip into my flock to replace the near-white birds because once those are gone, that's it!
Now I'll be able to replace the poor, pale birds with these second generation birds and still keep the original Union Products birds in their original boxes, safe from the elements and lawn ornament poachers.
It's really sad how happy this news makes me. Really.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Here's what's next...
Don Ho died. Tiny Bubbles float to heaven.
It should be mentioned that he has done a lot more than belt out "Tiny Bubbles."
Check out "The Don Ho Show" which gathers two live shows onto one album, for starters. It's really good.
(I ripped off the Don Ho mug image from dvagallery.com)
Thursday, April 12, 2007
What next?
First, A Bee Gee burns down Johnny Cash's house. Now, Kurt Vonnegut has died.
What the hell.
What the hell.
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