cinema history class: an evening of vincent price

Session: Price and Poe -- a Match Made on Heaven, Week 4
Movie: An Evening of Edgar Allen Poe (1970)
Directed by Ken Johnson
As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
1) Our protagonist is driven to a murderous rage by an old man's eye. Hilarity ensues.
2) Our protagonist mistakes a normal-sized bug for a giant. Hilarity ensues.
3) Our protagonist, hurt by countless insults, plots the death of an acquaintance. Hilarity ensues.
4) Our protagonist tries to escape a painful death. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
Vincent Price, alone, performing four Poe stories as monologues. I was actually kind of skeptical going in. I'm not nearly as enamored of Vincent Price as some of the other guys in the class -- notably Ethan -- are. And I don't think of myself as being positively inclined toward one-man shows.

But this was a tour de force. Price had me rapt as he performed these pieces, turning him into Poe's tortured protagonists. Price contorted his face as he transformed himself into these characters. In "The Tell-Tale Heart," he seemed like a patient in an insane asylum describing his crime. His transformation was complete, down to the rocking motions he affected.

The fact is, Poe's work lends itself to this kind of performance, being that it was written in the first person. But this performance gave me a newfound respect for both author and actor. While I'd enjoyed the movies in the first three weeks of this session, nothing really got me saying "Wow!" about Price. But this did it. And, similarly, this forced me to realized how well-chosen Poe's words were. I think it was Sean who observed that this performance had the gravitas of a Shakespearian performance.

Ratings:
Me: 10
Dave: 10
Ethan: 8
Sean: N/R

Extras:
Because this was on the shorter side, Keith added some extras -- short interview segments about Vincent Price's career, and a collection of horror movie trailers.

album challenge day 1: ducks deluxe

Someone nominated me for one of those Facebook challenges that I can't resist. The text is as follows:

Day X of 10. In no particular order - 10 all-time favourite albums that really made an impact and are still on your rotation list, even if only now and then. Post the cover, no need to explain and nominate a person each day to do the same.Album: <album>Nominated by: <person who nominated you>I now nominate <person you want to nominate>

For the first day I picked Don't Mind Rockin' Tonite by Ducks Deluxe.

Why?

The Ducks are a bit obscure. But they were hugely influential in my musical taste.

First, some of the history. The Ducks were a British pub rock band in the early 1970's. During their life, they put out two albums and an EP before breaking up in 1975. The members went on to various projects, with varying levels of success, but none became a household name. DMRT is a compilation of tracks from the group's brief life. Before I go on, here's a video of them, during their heyday, at their sweaty best, performing live:

Anyhoo...Back when I was in high school I would spend some time every Sunday afternoon browsing at a small record store me. Specifically, the used bins. At the time, I was just getting into music. I liked the Monkees and some early Beatles. But my biggest interest at that point was the folk rock of the 1960s. Simon and Garfunkel, Donovan, The Incredible String Band...

So, this one Sunday, I was browsing the bins and over the PA came something new that I hadn't heard before. It was loud and gritty. And rough. And exciting. It was Ducks Deluxe. They had a used copy of Don't Mind Rockin' Tonite. Something about it just struck a chord. I had to buy it. There are some things like music where, if they hit you at just the right point of your life, they burn themselves into your brain. And that was the case with this album. For the remainder of my high school years, and into college, this was my favorite band.

But that's not the entirety of why I chose this album, and purposely made it my first pick. The back of the record had pictures of the band members (and of Dave Edmunds who had produced one of their albums, and whom I mistook for a member of the group). I started buying albums by other groups that the guys were in, as well as Dave Edmunds' solo albums. And then albums by members of those groups, or by other groups those guys were in. And so on and so on. Ducks Deluxe essentially became my rock and roll ground zero.

This isn't my favorite record anymore. And the Ducks aren't my favorite band. And there are plenty of bands that I have since gotten into through paths that didn't involve the Ducks Deluxe extended family tree. But many of my favorites came to my attention through them -- either directly or indirectly. No less a luminary than Johnny Cash came to my attention through Ducks Deluxe. So, for the enormous effect it had on my taste, I had to pick this record first.

cinema history class: the oblong box

Session: Price and Poe -- a Match Made on Heaven, Week 3
Movie: The Oblong Box (1969)
Directed by Gordon Hessler
As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
Sir Edward Markham gets disfigured (because of his brother's crime), kept as a virtual prisoner (by his brother) and then buried alive (by his brother). He wants revenge. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
Unlike some of the guys in the class, I can't really say that this was a great movie. But it was a good, solid story and entertaining to the end. In fact, I was kind of all set to give this thing a 7. But the end -- a twist worthy of The Twilight Zone --was strong enough to make me bump this up to an 8.5. Similarly, the ending got Joe to move his needle from 9.8 to 10.

The other part that I particularly liked was the barroom scene. I realize that it was mostly filler. But I kept expecting to see Georgia Brown belt out a round of "Oom-Pah Pah."

Ratings:
Me: 8.5
Dave: 9.4-9.5
Ethan: 10
Joe: 10
Sean: 2 out of 4

lids luncheon 2018

Yesterday was the annual LIDS luncheon. After a couple months of hibernation, it was nice to see the usual friendly faces of other Daylily enthusiasts.

The speakers were legendary hybridizers David Kirchhoff and Mort Moss from Daylily WOrld. David is known for reds and doubles. Mort is known for patterns. Their talk, illustrated by beautiful pictures, focused on their move from Florida to Kentucky.

One thing that's really interesting about these guys is the number of cultivars that they named after celebrities. I didn't catch the exact story, but it involves a garden, near the Country Music Hall of Fame, that has daylilies for a lot of the inductees. These celebrities ask Kirchhoff to name cultivars after them, and he shows them what's available and they pick the ones they like.

If only there were a simple way to get him to name one after me... I mean simpler than becoming a country music star.

I had planned not to buy anything during the auction. Since I'm generally more interested in getting daylilies that are pretty than getting the recent cultivars (for the sake of their recentness), I'm trying to focus on getting the cheaper things that are available. And for a while I was good. Several plants went up for bid and I resisted the urge.

Bessie Smith (Kirchhoff-D., 2016)

But then he put up "Bessie Smith." My great grandmother's maiden name was Bessie Smith. How could I not bid on it? I'm gonna digress here with a story about Great grandma Bessie. She lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Near my grandparents in Greensburg. When I was a kid we would, as a family, visit and stay with the grandparents in Greensburg. During those visits we would go to Pittsburgh to see Bessie. One year we had our puppy, Max, with us. I don't remember why. Anyway, we left him in the car. because Grandma Bess was really old and Max was a golden retriever puppy. It was a cold overcast day so there was no danger of the car overheating. Anyway, when Grandma Bess realized that we had the dog in the car she made us go down and get him and bring him up. By the time we got up, she was busy making him a meal. Hot dogs, some cold cuts...anything she could find in her fridge. Back to the point. I won the bidding for Bessie Smith.

And once the seal was broken...

Grape Pearls (Morss, 2015)

I bid on a dozen or so plants, and ended up coming away with four (including the aforementioned Bessie Smith.

Red Revival (Kirchhoff-D., 2015

The others I bought were Red Revival, Violet Muse and Grape Pearls. I loved the color on these three. More and more I'm finding recently that I am liking simple-looking blooms like these. There have been a lot of introductions recently that have pink and yellow, with ruffles and teeth. And they look like frosting flowers on birthday cakes. At this point I prefer less complexity. I also note that, with Grape Pearls, I was really sold on the fact that it has a high bud count and lots of branching, and that it clumps up a lot.

Violet Muse (Morss, 2016)

three minor commerce-related events from my day

I have three commerce-related observations from today.

• I was at the annual LIDS luncheon. I have a job within LIDS to handle sales of marker stakes -- metal poles you stick in the ground to mark what plants are planted where. I bring boxes of stakes to the meetings and put them out on a table with a cash box. People who want the stakes are supposed to take what they want and leave the money in the box. It's an honor system. Today, after the meeting, I went to pack up and found that people had paid a total of $21.82. The stakes cost $1.50 each. Someone please explain.

• While Blair and I were at the LIDS luncheon, the kids walked to Qdoba for burritos. When they got there, they noticed that the cashier was a guy who was rude to them the last time they went. And that wasn't the first time he was rude to them. Today, when they saw him they turned around and left. They went to Five Guys for lunch instead. Good for them.

• On the way home we went to Costco. I had with me the certificate for our annual rebate. When I went to pay, I gave the cashier our Costco-branded credit card and the rebate certificate. He asked if I wanted to take the amount on the certificate out of the bill and pay with the rest with the credit card. I started to say yes, but then the light went on.
  
  "Can I get the rebate in cash and put the entire bill on the card?"
  "Sure"
  "Then let me do that."
  
  So I paid for everything with the credit card. Then he rescanned the card and rebate certificate. And then he gave me the rebate in cash. It doesn't really make much of a difference, but it does mean an extra $7 and change on my next rebate. Ka-ching!

cinema history class: tales of terror

Session: Price and Poe -- a Match Made on Heaven, Week 2
Movie: Tales of Terror (1962)
Directed by Roger Corman
As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
1) A dying woman comes to visit her father. And her mother's corpse. Hilarity ensues.
2) A drunkard is more interested in wine than in his wife. Hilarity ensues.
3) A dying man seeks the comfort of an end to his pain, but his doctor has other plans. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
As implied by the plot synopsis, ToT is an anthology move -- three short films unconnected to each other. And it was a wonderful showcase for Vincent Price. I note with a bit of bemusement that, last week when we saw The Pit and the Pendulum which failed to engage me, I concluded that maybe I just didn't care foe Vincent Price. Now, I see this and do a complete reversal. Ethan has mentioned that, at first, he didn't care for Vincent Price, but that he grew on him. So...

The three parts, "Morella," "The Black Cat" and "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" are each based on a Poe story. Sort of. Kind of. Each is named for a Poe classic and shares some elements with that classic, but otherwise bears little resemblance to its namesake.

The best of the pieces by far, and this opinion was shared by the rest of the class, was "The Black Cat," which paired Price with Peter Lorre. Before things took a turn for the dark, Lorre seemed to be channeling Jackie Gleason as Ralph Kramden. Then, when Price entered, he took on Art Carney's Ed Norton. The whole wine-tasting sequence was arguably the highlight of the movie. Then, when things did get dark, Peter Lorre was great with the one liners delivered to Vincent Price as straight man. It was enough to make me wish that the two of them had done more performing together.

In one way I was a bit of a contrarian. Most of the class commented that the Morella was too short. That it would have benefited from a little more fleshing out. And that, since the movie only runs 82 minutes, there was room. I understand where they're coming from. It was very short. But I don't think it needed anything else.It was a good quick gut punch of a story. It got right to the point and it thrilled.

Ratings:
Me: 9
Dave: 9.8
Ethan: 8.5
Joe: 10
Sean: 3 out of 4
Sharon: 7

keratoconus: fingers crossed for a cure

Someone on FaceBook posted an interesting question about keratoconus, the eye disorder that afflicts Ethan. The question was whether we think there's hope for a "medicine for keratoconus in our lifetime.

By way of background, keratoconus is a weakening and/or thinning of the cornea. It gets distorted, typically forming a conical shape due to the pressure from behind it. The cause is unknown, there is some speculation. The treatment is a process called "crosslinking." Riboflavin drops are administered to the affected eyes as UV light gets shone on them. Under the UV light, the riboflavin bonds with the collagen in the cornea, thereby strengthening it and slowing or (hopefully) stopping the progression. I'm not a medical professional, but that's the nickel tour.

With that in mind, I answered yes. I do think medicine will be developed to treat keratoconus. Why? Because, essentially it has been. The riboflavin drops -- are essentially medicine. The fly in the ointment is that it has to be administered with UV light. Also, many believe it's not efficacious unless you first remove the epithelium from the cornea. But that means that the big issue is finding a way to deliver the riboflavin so without having to remove the epithelium. And, hopefully, without needing the UV light. I think -- I hope -- they're on their way.

i hate when i forget math stuff

This is kind of frustrating. I was up last night trying to recall about a proof from grad school, and realize that I can't remember one important point.

Henri Lebesgue

The topic is Lebesque Measure. Specifically, the existence of nonmeasurable sets. It's a pretty fundamental question. There's all sort of stuff built up, starting with the basic definitions and rules. Then there's all sorts of stuff built up around measure, and theory. And, yes, I know the foregoing is a bit hazy. That's because it's been long enough ago that I don't fully remember what are matters of definition and what are results that are proven.

At any rate, with all that stuff around measure, it's good to establish whether there actually are sets that are nonmeasurable. It's not immediately intuitively obvious (at least it wasn't to me when I was a first semester grad student) that there are nonmeasurable sets. All the obvious ways of constructing sets -- take some intervals or single points. Take intersections or unions of them -- don't immediately work.

But I recall the basic construction. Start by splitting the unit interval into equivalence classes where two points are in the same class if their difference is rational. Then take one element from each equivalence class. That set, call it N, is nonmeasurable.

The proof that N is nonmeasurable relies on taking the union of all sets N+a where:
1) N+a is defined as the set of all numbers n+a where n is an element of N; and
2) a is a rational number in the unit interval.
Let's call that union U.

If N is measurable, then it has a measure which must be either zero or positive. Also, because N+a is just a translation of N, its measure is the same as that of N. Finally, N+a and N+b are disjoint for a not equal b.

So, what is the measure of U? We know it has to be finite because U is a subset of [0,2], which has finite measure. But if N has positive measure, then the measure of U, which is the sum of the measures of N+a (for all a in the unit interval) is infinite. Therefore N has measure zero. If N has measure zero, then U has measure zero. This is a contradiction.

And that's where I'm stuck. How do we know that U cannot have measure zero? I think it has to do with the assertion that U contains an interval, and therefore has to have measure greater than or equal to the length of the interval? Maybe it's that U is equal to [0,2], and therefore has to have measure 2? But how do we know that?

Help! Help, help!

bitcoin not for me

Warren Buffet, the brains behind Berkshire Hathaway, has said that he doesn't invest in companies if he doesn't understand what they do. There's a lot of sense in that.

Which is why I do not and will not invest in Bitcoin.

Other, mainstream investments I understand. Equities? Bonds? Mutual funds? Options and other derivatives? I understand the basic principles. And, on the macro level, I understand the risks and rewards. And what drives prices up and down.

But Seriously...I don't get it. As near as I can tell, there are two reasons to invest in it:

• To hide money, income or transactions.
• All those great stories of other people who got rich as Bitcoin traders. Berkshire Hathaway ain't gonna get me a lambo.

The first reason doesn't apply to me. No more elaboration needed. The second? Yeah...It's kind of tempting to try to make an easy fortune. But there's that risk/reward tradeoff. Too much is at stake. I suppose, in theory, I could invest a little bit of money in the things and forget about it. Then, some years later come back and see what happened. But I seem to recall reading about someone who lost a large bitcoin investment because he threw away the hard drive where he stored some critical information. Is it seriously the case that it's that easy to screw up and lose your investment? Like a winning lottery ticket? No...I can't believe that. I gotta figure there are some kind of services that will track your investments for you, through which you buy and sell. Aren't there? That guy who lost everything -- he was just being a dumbass. Right? Please tell me I'm right?

But, anyway, the fact that I have to seriously ask that question indicates how little I know about the Bitcoin Market. So, yeah, it's artificially-created currency, tracked on computers through some kind of (presumably) tamper-proof coding to ensure the accuracy of record-keeping.

Other than that?

Is "bitcoin" synonymous with "crypto-currency"? Or is it a subset?

Are there different types of bitcoins whose prices move differently? Or is it all the same?

What drives prices? Is it seriously just supply and demand? If so, are we talking tulip bulbs or something more real?

I hear talk of "mining" bitcoins, which I assume means there's some means of creating new ones. How in the hell does that work?

I suppose I can look it up on Wikipedia to get some answers. WHich should not be interpreted to mean that I'm actually going to invest in the things. Just that I'm curious about the mechanics.

cinema history class: the pit and the pendulum

Session: Price and Poe -- a Match Made on Heaven, Week 1
Movie: The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)
Directed by Roger Corman
As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
A man, grief-stricken over his sister's untimely passing, visits his brother-in-law to understand what actually happened. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
I had a really hard time getting around the fact that this movie felt like a live-action episode of Scooby Doo. I kept expecting someone to pull some mask off and say "It was the groundskeeper all along!" On the other hand, the flashbacks reminded me of dream sequences from Gilligan's Island. That said, the use of color -- Corman shot some scenes in monochrome and then printed on color stock --was inspired at times.

I knew going in that the movie's connection to the classic Poe story would be tenuous at best. And Richard Matheson's script didn't surprise me in that respect. But it was a decent story with some very good twists. Dave noted the wonderful irony of Elizabeth, having pretended to have been entombed while still alive, actually did get entombed alive.

The fact is, I'm not a huge Vincent Price fan. Unlike Ethan, who counts Price among his favorite actors. But I do have to hand it to the man -- he was perfect for this role -- especially the part at the end when his grip on sanity dissolves. This was a better movie than it should have been.

Ratings:
Me: 7
Dave: 9.9
Ethan: 9
Sean:2 out of 4

cinema history class: la loba

UPDATE: Corrected the name of the Director

Session: Man/Corpse/Woman into Monster, Week 4
Movie: La Loba (1965)
Directed by Rafael Baledon
As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
A young, beautiful rich Mexican woman is planning to marry the doctor who's trying to cure her of her lycanthropy. Of course, he's a werewolf too. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
This film opened strong. The titular she-wolf climbs out of a tomb and slinks off in search of victims. There's a cat-like quality to the way she moves.* I don't think I've ever before seen such athleticism in werewolves. Clearly the producers hired gymnasts and hid trampolines in the bushes. The result was a visual effect that was actually quite stunning. It was, perhaps, the most interesting portrayal of a werewolf I've ever seen. And the visuals as she was attacking her victims were beautiful in their ferocity. That was mirrored by the parallel fight scenes nera the end, as two werewolves separately fought two victims.

Sadly, the plot just didn't catch my interest. The mute daughter was a nice touch, and it was kind of interesting to see the love story between two werewolves. Although even then, I was kind of turned off by the psychic mumbo jumbo at the end. I kind of wanted to like this more than I did.

By the way, the video above is of the entire movie. I usually include the trailers, but I couldn't find it. This, though, is without subtitles. The film, as we watched it, had subtitles.

Ratings:
Me: 4
Dave: 9.7
Ethan: 7
Joe: 9.8
Scott: 7.5
Sean:3 out of 4

Extras:
Joe, a huge fan of the classic comics and comic books (his blog is listed on the side under "what i read"), delivered a memorial to the late great Tex Avery. Not that Avery just died or anything. His condition stabilized in 1980. But we just had his 110th birthday, and Joe didn't want to let the occasion pass without notice. Anyway, Joe delivered his tribute to Tex, and then showed us "King-Size Canary," a 1947 short that Avery directed for MGM.

In case you want to see it, it's here. It had some really good meta touches. And, while Blair, Ethan and I were just watching it (while I typed this post), Sharon came in the room. She commented that the animation, hand drawn as it is, is much better than what they make today. Joe would have been pleased to hear her say that.

*Yeah, I know it should be doglike, since we're talking she-wolf, but it really was catlike