August 28, 2013
Gil Gunderson, a.k.a. Ol’ Gil, is a character on ‘The Simpsons’ voiced by Dan Castellaneta that first appeared in the ninth season episode ‘Realty Bites’ as a real estate agent with Lionel Hutz’s Red Blazer Realty. He is a spoof of actor Jack Lemmon’s portrayal of Shelley Levene in the 1992 film adaptation of the play ‘Glengarry Glen Ross.’ (Lemmon himself voiced a character similar to Levene in the eighth season episode ‘The Twisted World of Marge Simpson’). Show runner Mike Scully said that the writers thought that Gil would be ‘a one-shot thing’ ‘Dan Castellaneta was so funny at the table read doing the character,’ Scully elaborated, ‘we kept making up excuses in subsequent episodes to put him in.’
Writer Dan Greaney said that it was a great take-off on Levene to make Gil more desperate than he was. Even so, the writers like to write Gil with ‘a little bit of the old sparkle’ left in him. With the retirement of the character Lionel Hutz (after voice actor Phil Hartman’s death), Gil has been working as the Simpsons’ lawyer in later episodes. He had several jobs but inevitably fails at any endeavour, often tragically. For example, he was shot on his first day as a security guard in the bank. As revealed in ‘Natural Born Kissers,’ he lives in a balloon..
Posted in Art, Humor, Money |
Leave a Comment »
August 28, 2013
Glengarry Glen Ross is a 1992 American drama, adapted by David Mamet from his 1984 Pulitzer Prize- and Tony-winning play of the same name. The film depicts two days in the lives of four real estate salesmen and how they become desperate when the corporate office sends a trainer to ‘motivate’ them by announcing that, in one week, all except the top two salesmen will be fired. The film, like the play, is notorious for its use of profanity, leading the cast to jokingly refer to the film as ‘Death of a Fuckin’ Salesman.’ The title of the film comes from the names of two of the real estate developments being peddled by the salesmen characters: Glengarry Highlands and Glen Ross Farms.
The film was not a commercial success, making only $10.7 million in North America, just below its $12.5 million budget. Al Pacino was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work in the film.
Continue reading →
Posted in Art, Language, Money |
Leave a Comment »
August 25, 2013
Saul McGill, known almost exclusively by his professional alias Saul Goodman, was a character on the TV show ‘Breaking Bad’ on AMC. He was portrayed by comedian Bob Odenkirk and was created by Peter Gould, a writer of the series. Saul is a criminal lawyer and can be easily found in the yellow pages of Albuquerque.
His made up surname ‘Goodman’ is a play on words to better attract clients: ”S’all good, man!’ becomes ‘Saul Goodman.’ (Additionally, he claims his clients feel more comfortable with a Jewish lawyer instead of a generic white guy.) He is also known for his low-budget commercials in Albuquerque, where he advertises mainly under the tagline ‘Better Call Saul!’ Continue reading →
Posted in Humor, Money, Politics |
1 Comment »
August 25, 2013
A shyster [shahy-ster] is a slang word for someone who acts in a disreputable, unethical, or unscrupulous way, especially in the practice of law, politics or business. The etymology of the word is not generally agreed upon. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary says it is based on the German ‘Scheißer’ (literally ‘defecator’ but also used to refer to deceivers), but the Oxford English Dictionary describes it as ‘of obscure origin,’ possibly deriving from a historical sense of ‘shy’ meaning disreputable. Various false etymologies have suggested an anti-Semitic origin, but there is no proof for that. One source claims that the term originated in Philadelphia in 1843 from a disreputable attorney named ‘Schuster.’
Notable ‘shysters’ of fiction include Sylvester Shyster (a Walt Disney cartoon character introduced in 1930), a disbarred attorney who schemes to deprive Minnie Mouse of her inheritance; and Dave Kleinfeld, a mob lawyer in ‘Carlito’s Way’ (1993) who was parodied in ‘Grand Theft Auto: Vice City’ as Ken Rosenberg.
Posted in Language, Money, Politics |
1 Comment »
August 25, 2013
Shylock [shahy-lok] is a fictional Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice’ who lends money to his Christian rival, Antonio, setting the security at a pound of Antonio’s flesh. When a bankrupt Antonio defaults on the loan, Shylock demands the pound of flesh as revenge for Antonio having previously insulted and spat on him.
Meanwhile, Shylock’s daughter, Jessica, elopes with Antonio’s friend Lorenzo and becomes a Christian, further fuelling his rage. She also takes money and jewels from Shylock. During Shakespeare’s day, money lending was a fairly common occupation among Jews because usury, charging interest on a loan, was a sin for Christians at the time. Continue reading →
Posted in Money, Philosophy, Politics |
1 Comment »
August 24, 2013
Syd Mead (b. 1933), is a ‘visual futurist’ and concept artist. He is best known for his designs for science-fiction films such as ‘Blade Runner,’ ‘Aliens,’ and ‘Tron.’ Of his work, Mead was once moved to comment: ‘I’ve called science fiction ‘reality ahead of schedule.” Sydney Jay Mead was born in Saint Paul Minnesota, but spent only a few years there before moving to what would be the second of many homes throughout the western United States prior to graduating from high school in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1951.
After serving a three-year enlistment in the U.S. Army, Syd Mead continued on to the Art Center School in Los Angeles, (now the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena) where he graduated in 1959. He was recruited by the Ford Motor Company’s Advanced Styling Studio under the management of Elwood Engel. Mead left the studio after two years to accept a variety of assignments to illustrate books and catalogues for large corporate entities such as United States Steel, Celanese, Allis Chalmers and Atlas Cement.
Continue reading →
Posted in Art, Technology |
Leave a Comment »
August 23, 2013
The Illuminati [ih-loo-muh-nah-tee] (‘enlightened’) was a secret society founded by university professor Adam Weishaupt in 1776, in Upper Bavaria, Germany. The movement consisted of advocates of freethought, secularism, liberalism, republicanism and gender equality, recruited in the German Masonic Lodges (Freemasonry is a fraternal organization that traces its origins to the loose organization of medieval Stonemasonry), who sought to teach rationalism through mystery schools (Western esotericism, which places emphasis on spiritual ‘knowledge’ or Gnosis and the rejection of blind faith).
In 1785, the order was infiltrated, broken up and suppressed by the government agents of Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria, in his preemptive campaign to neutralize the threat of secret societies ever becoming hotbeds of conspiracies to overthrow the Bavarian monarchy and its state religion, Roman Catholicism.
Continue reading →
Posted in Philosophy, Politics |
Leave a Comment »
August 22, 2013
Otto Rahn (1904 – 1939) was a German medievalist and First Lieutenant of the SS. Speculation still surrounds Rahn and his research. From an early age, he became interested in the legends of Parsifal, the Holy Grail, Lohengrin, and the Nibelungenlied. While attending the University of Giessen he was inspired by his professor, the Baron von Gall, to study the Albigensian (Catharism) movement, and the massacre that occurred at Montségur. Rahn is quoted as saying that ‘It was a subject that completely captivated me.’
In 1931 he travelled to the Pyrenees region of southern France where he conducted most of his research. Aided by the French mystic and historian Antonin Gadal, Rahn argued that there was a direct link between Wolfram Von Eschenbach’s Parzival and the Cathar Grail mystery. He believed that the Cathars held the answer to this sacred mystery and that the keys to their secrets lay somewhere beneath the mountain pog where the fortress of Montségur remains, the last Cathar fortress to fall during the Albigensian Crusade.
Continue reading →
Posted in Philosophy, War |
Leave a Comment »
August 21, 2013
Evan Penny (b. 1953) is a South African-Canadian artist currently living and working in Toronto (he completed a postgraduate degree from the Alberta College of Art and Design in 1978). He makes sculptures of human forms out of silicone, pigment, hair and aluminium.
His pieces range from the almost precisely lifelike, to the blurred or stretched. Penny says one of his interests ‘is to situate the sculptures perceptually between the way we might see each other in real time and space and the way we imagine our equivalent in a photographic representation.’ Though his creations are lifelike, Penny believes that ‘the real can’t be represented or symbolized,’ leaving everything to be a representation.
Continue reading →
Posted in Art |
Leave a Comment »
August 20, 2013
The dose makes the poison, a principle of toxicology, was first expressed by German-Swiss Renaissance physician Paracelsus. It means that a substance can produce the harmful effect associated with its toxic properties only if it reaches a susceptible biological system within the body in a high enough concentration (dose).
The principle relies on the finding that all chemicals—even water and oxygen—can be toxic if too much is eaten, drunk, or absorbed. ‘The toxicity of any particular chemical depends on many factors, including the extent to which it enters an individual’s body.’ This finding provides also the basis for public health standards, which specify maximum acceptable concentrations of various contaminants in food, public drinking water, and the environment.
Continue reading →
Posted in Drugs, Health |
Leave a Comment »
August 19, 2013
‘More popular than Jesus‘ was a controversial remark made by musician John Lennon of the Beatles in 1966: Lennon said that Christianity was in decline and that the Beatles had become more popular than Jesus Christ.
When the quote appeared in the American teen magazine ‘Datebook,’ angry reactions flared up from Christian communities. Lennon had originally made the remark in March 1966 during interviews with Maureen Cleave on the lifestyles of the four individual Beatles. When Lennon’s words were first published, in the ‘London Evening Standard’ in the United Kingdom, they had provoked no public reaction. Continue reading →
Posted in Language, Philosophy, Politics |
Leave a Comment »
August 18, 2013
Yellow Arrow is a public art project that was active from 2004-2006 and was created by Christopher Allen, Brian House, and Jesse Shapins, collectively known as Counts Media. The project was an important example of locative media and mobile phone art and draws concepts from psychogeography (emphasizing playfulness and ‘drifting’ around urban environments).
Yellow Arrow stickers were obtained from the project website and placed anywhere in the public realm. When encountering a sticker on the street, individuals could send the unique code printed on it as a text message to the project phone number. Moments later a message would be received that was left by the person who placed the sticker. Continue reading →
Posted in Games, Technology, World |
Leave a Comment »
The Daily Omnivore 