Here are George Clooney and Amal Alamuddin causing quite the stir as they step out and boldly continue to exist following their wedding ceremony. It’s weird how something momentous can happen — you turn a year older or you marry some actor from “ER” — and you still look pretty much exactly the same! Oh well, here they are:
Demonstrators in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv toppled one of the country’s largest statues of Vladimir Lenin on Sunday. Captured in a bevy of tweets and videos posted to social media, crowds of pro-Ukrainian protesters surrounded the Soviet idol as ropes wrenched the Lenin statue from its moorings and sent it hurtling to the ground.
Statues of Lenin, once abundant in Ukraine and a reminder of its past as part of the Soviet Union, have been a common target ever since the start of the revolution that ousted the nation’s Russian-leaning leader earlier this year.
Kharkiv’s statue was a notable exception to the massive cull, not only because of its size but also because previous attempts to take it down were met by opposition from a pro-Russian group, which formed a blockade against Lenin’s destruction. The division was emblematic of the rift between Western and Eastern Ukraine that continues to be a source of conflict.
Kyiv Post editor Christopher Miller reported that demonstrators had been threatened with jail time for attempting to take down the statue, but they persisted anyway.
Lenin: “There are decades where nothing happens and there are days where decades happen” MT @ChristopherJM: #Kharkiv pic.twitter.com/cLl4pSRooO“
— Sławomir Dębski (@SlawomirDebski) September 28, 2014
Lenin’s tombe. pic.twitter.com/kkhtVTJghU
— Mark MacKinnon (@markmackinnon) September 28, 2014
Kharkiv: One of the biggest Lenin monuments in the world is toppled down pic.twitter.com/OKaQNMxAbg
— Maxim Eristavi (@MaximEristavi) September 28, 2014
LENIN DOWN! pic.twitter.com/7NuxqoT8Xp
— Olaf Koens (@obk) September 28, 2014
Earlier, a pro-revolution activist group posted this to their Twitter account:
Unity march in #Kharkiv gathers several thousands of people, photo @itsector pic.twitter.com/WXKTNKn89F |EMPR
— Euromaidan PR (@EuromaidanPR) September 28, 2014
Of course, a bunch of people made “Good Bye Lenin!” jokes:
Kharkiv: Goodbye Lenin pic.twitter.com/LQLhJi6tPQ
— Eugenio Cipolla (@EugCipolla) September 28, 2014
‘Goodbye Lenin’ Kharkiv’de faşistler, Lenin heykelini yıktılar. pic.twitter.com/LU5lLO5OBC
— ibrahim soydan (@ibosoy) September 28, 2014
Goodbye #Lenin in #Kharkiv. But does this help resolve anything in #Ukraine? pic.twitter.com/eZx8LNO5Bi”
— Lindsey Hilsum (@lindseyhilsum) September 28, 2014
Goodbye Lenin! https://t.co/5qevuWT8Ey
— crisis_trustee (@crisis__trustee) September 28, 2014
Welcome to Reading List, Gizmodo’s Sunday afternoon roundup of the best writing from around the web. This week, we’ve got great stuff from Wired, The Washington Post, and more. Let’s dig in!
Washington Nationals pitcher Jordan Zimmermann needed a little help from his defense to get the final out of his no-hitter. Miami Marlins left fielder Christian Yelich lined Zimmermann’s 104th and final pitch to the left-center gap in the outfield, but Nationals left fielder Steven Souza Jr. was there to make an incredible diving catch to save the first no-no in Nats history.
In front of 35,085 fans at Nationals Park for the final game of the regular season, Zimmermann struck out 10 and walked one as the Nationals went on to win 1-0.
THAT’S A FINAL!! Jordan Zimmermann has thrown the first NO-HITTER in #Nats history!! 9 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 10 K pic.twitter.com/jQROSsneey
— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) September 28, 2014
For eight innings, the Nationals played defense without Souza on the field. But in the final inning, Nats manager Matt Williams decided to put the 25-year-old in as a defensive replacement.
“I thought that was a double for sure, and here he comes out of nowhere and makes the play,” Zimmermann said after the game, via the Associated Press.
Things are looking pretty good for the superrich.
The largest Americas-based hedge funds are controlling more money than ever before, according to a new analysis by Absolute Return, a hedge fund news site.
Absolute Return tallied firms in North and South America that control more than $1 billion. It found that at the beginning of the year, 293 firms made the $1 billion cutoff, controlling roughly $1.71 trillion total. As of July 1, there were 305 hedge funds that made the cut, with a total of $1.84 trillion.
In all, the global hedge fund industry is managing a record amount of money, Absolute Return noted.
According to the Wall Street Journal, that record total was around $2.8 trillion as of July 2014. Hedge funds controlled significantly less money in 2007 — before the financial crisis — with assets worth about $1.87 trillion, the WSJ reported.
Absolute Return found that two of every three hedge funds controlling more than $1 billion increased in size this year. And when it comes to the largest funds, Bridgewater Associates still tops the charts: It manages some $93.7 billion.
The surge in hedge fund assets underscores the highly uneven economic recovery that followed the financial crisis. A resurgent stock market has allowed wealthy Americans to recover their losses, while the wages of most Americans have stagnated.
We spend a lot of time talking about all the great films that are always a quick click away on our particular streaming platform of choice—and rightfully so. Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime do an admirable job of curating a rotating cast of blockbusters, art house sweethearts and critic-praising cinema. But to be honest, I also love bad movies.
China has a history of tightening its censorship of internet services during times of political upheaval, and that’s unfortunately happening again with massive pro-democracy protests underway in Hong Kong. Both monitoring sites and on-the-ground…
I drove out yesterday with the artist Gary Lloyd to California State University Northridge to see their current exhibition, “Valley Vista: Art in the San Fernando Valley ca. 1970-1990.” I wrote a “preview” about Chomsky’s Vessel, the Gary Lloyd piece selected for the show, and wanted to see the rest of it. I knew that I’d find many old friends there.
This proved to be true, and there was certainly a nostalgic element to my delight in “Valley Vista.” The Valley was its own hotbed of creative activity back in the day when Los Angeles was still on the cusp of recognition as an important center for contemporary art. In fact, it was Lloyd’s 1971 solo show at Orlando Gallery in the Valley that first inspired me to start writing about art. “Valley Vista” is a great documentation of that activity, reminding us that the art world can be unkindly selective in those it chooses to celebrate instantaneously and soon forget; and those who manage to maintain, some even enhance their reputation.
There are fine paintings in the show: Bruce Everett’s huge, magnificent photo-realist “Sand Canyon,” Fidel Daneli’s portrait of fellow artist Peter Lodato, Karla Klarin’s impressive 3-D construction painting, “Valley View”…
Karla Klarin, Valley View, 1984
acrylic on 3-D construction, 30″ x 60″
(All images reprinted with permission of CSUN Art Galleries)
… Judy Baca’s sketches for her monumental murals. (Danieli, as those who were around at the time will remember, was also an influential teacher and a widely published art critic, whose death at an early age was a significant loss to the art community. He was one of the chief movers and shakers in the San Fernando Valley, along with his wife, Edie Ellis-Brown, whose “Fluorescent Egg Sculpture” is also included in this show.) On the more traditional side, there are also two paintings by Hans Burkhardt, an inspired charcoal drawing by Steve Galloway with its multiple historical echoes, and an impressive cast resin sculpture by Bob Bassler–a work that surely rivals those of his better-known contemporaries. Celebrity is a fickle friend.
Despite the inclusion of these–and indeed many other accomplished, more conventional works–the majority of the artworks in “Valley Vista” are cheerfully subversive, reminding us of the pervasive influence of conceptualism at the time. The assemblages of Esteban Bojorquez, the photographs of Robert E. Von Sternberg, John Divola…
John Divola, San Fernando Valley (I hate you), 1971
Gelatin silver photograph, 14″ x 18″
… Mike Mandel and Ed Sievers, among others, and the display cases of posters, flyers and magazines all take us back to the day when ideas, and often words, became an important part of the artist’s language, as well as of the continuing dialogue between them. In one of the “LAICA Journals” put out by the Los Angeles Institute of contemporary art, I spotted an example of my own early art writing, the review of a performance by the Kipper Kids, reminding me that conceptually-based performance, video, and other post-studio media were also beginning to flourish in the early 1970s.
Subversion–whether political, social or aesthetic–is the keynote of “Valley Vista.” While serious in intent, we can be grateful that much of it is light-hearted and light-handed. I walked around with a big grin on my face, a frequent chuckle, and an occasional burst of laughter. Consider, for example, Mike Mandel’s prescient “selfies”–four decades before the iPhone came along–posing his skinny, long-haired hippie self in front of a long line of cops in riot gear at an anti-Vietnam war protest…
Mike Mandel, Myself: Timed Exposure (CSUN War Protest, 1971)
Gelatin silver print, 8″ x 10″
… or between a young African American woman and two elderly white suburbanites on a park bench; in “Impersonations”–deadpan “homages” to his own art heroes–Scott Grieger’s photographs replace the iconic Robert Irwin disc with his head, a John McCracken plank with his body…
Scott Grieger, Impersonations: John McCracken, 1971/2000
Photo on canvas, 23.75″ x 35.5″
A large number of works in “Valley Vista” share this kind of fake, ingenuous simplicity and modesty of means, qualities I happen to value greatly in a work of art. Benjamin Weissman’s “Others’ Tombstones” juxtaposes whimsical, anthropomorphic gravestone figures with typewritten qualifiers: “BACKS TURNED,” “COULD BE ME.” Jeffrey Vallance pokes fun at suburban values (and eating habits!) in the photographs and assemblages put together as a tribute to Oscar Mayer Wiener…
Jeffery Vallance, b & w photo included as an element in the mixed media work,
Oscar Mayer Wiener Mascot Meetings with Drawing, 1974
A delight in the absurd is the characteristic many of the assemblage works. Michael C. McMillen’s “Mystery Mummy,” enshrined in its museum display case, is a part of his Mystery Museum spoof on our cultural institutions. Stuart Rapeport’s “The Right Tool for the Job” is a fine example of the artist’s sharp, if offhand humor. Encased in a smart aluminum attaché case, his modified paint brushes (the forked brush, for example, is the right tool for the indecisive moment) offer a gentle mockery of the pretensions of the art world.
Stuart Rapeport, The Right Tool for the Job, 1968-72
Found aluminum attaché case with seven expressive brushes
(courtesy of the artist)
Does all this subversion still hold up, some thirty or forty years later? I ask myself how much of my enjoyment of this wonderfully diverse and multi-faceted show derives from my having known and enjoyed the company of many of the artists back then; and from my simply having been there, immersed, myself, in the cultural climate of the time. Do you have to have “been there,” in that time and place, if you want to “get it”? But then, of course, that’s a part of the point: the whole idea of “timeless art” was being challenged by these artists, intent on demonstrating the art can well be of the moment, a simple aperçu, grasped, sketched out, or photographed without grand notions of its own importance.
A fine catalogue accompanies “Valley Vista,” with a text by the exhibition’s curator, Loyola Marymount art history professor Damon Willick and contributions by some of the artists included in the show–all of which give useful context to the time and place mentioned above. One quibble: why no page references in the checklist of artworks at the back? An annoyance to anyone, like myself, who needs to constantly leaf through to find the images he’s looking for. Ah, well. As they say, you can’t have everything…
I revisited my childhood yesterday. I have been reading Wounded Leaders: British Elitism and the Entitlement Illusion, a recent book by Nick Duffel, (I’ll have more to say about the book in a later post) and came across a reference to a video made in 1994 for the BBC, The Making of Them. I had an exchange of correspondence with Nick Duffell some fifteen years ago, at the time of the publication of my own memoir, While I Am Not Afraid: Secrets of a Man’s Heart. I’m no longer sure how it came about, but I heard about the organization he had founded, Boarding School Survivors, and the title immediately struck a chord. I am, myself, a “survivor” of the British boarding school system, and was pleased to learn that someone was seriously addressing the issues I had been struggling with for my entire adult life.
“The Making of Them” is about the earliest stage of the private boarding school system, the “prep” school. Boys–and girls, but I was obviously at an all-boys school; my sister has a similar story–are sent there by their parents at the age of seven or eight, and spend their early education there until about age twelve, when they move on to “public”. i.e. private boarding school. What I remember most from that time in my life is the intense loneliness, the homesickness, the sense of alienation and difference from all the other boys. In retrospect, much later, I learned to acknowledge that I was suffering, but would have been unable to formulate such a recognition at the time. As an act of self-preservation, if nothing else, it was necessary to conceal it. Vulnerability was not an option. I created for myself a fine, extremely effective coat of armor–and wore it for another four decades. I still find myself, today, shielding myself from the unkind world out there! I am still uncomfortable with my body. I still “hold myself in.”
The BBC documentary brought these memories and feelings back with force. At several points, I found myself holding back (see?!) the tears. Granted, things had changed much between 1994 and when I first went to boarding school, in 1943. I was seven years old. Funny, I often hear myself saying I was six, but I must have been seven by then. These days, to judge from the documentary, the teachers and staff make a far greater effort to be kind and compassionate. I watched with interest, for example, how a small group of the boys themselves gathered protectively around a little lad who was suffering from homesickness. In my day, that kind of vulnerability would have been met with jeers and teasing. Even the school environment seemed friendlier, more open to individuality and expressive freedom. The periods of separation from the parents seemed much shorter: three weeks was mentioned. My own terms lasted an three interminable months, three times a year. With luck, your parents might come down at mid-term to take you out to lunch.
I watched those parents in the video, thinking of my own. How they felt, said, persuaded themselves that this was “the best thing” for their children. But their facial expressions and body language betrayed quite different feelings than their words. I noticed how a mother, picking her son up to bring him home, asked the leading question, “Was it wonderful?” To which the boy could only answer, yes. The discordance between words and body language on the part of both the parents and their sons is, at times, painful to watch. Like these young boys, I was unable to be truthful with my parents: at huge sacrifice, they were buying me the best education they could think of; it was my job to be grateful, not to whine. But at what cost, to live so great a lie?
So it’s a slightly more enlightened time, I think. At one moment, I watched with envy how a mother hugged her little boy in a genuine effusion of affection, and told him–in parting!–that she loved him. How, he must have been thinking, if she loved him, could she drive off and leave him? My own mother could never have hugged me in that way at Victoria Station, where they left me off. My father would shake my hand to say goodbye. So, yes, things have changed in many ways for the better. But still… the impact of the documentary is unmistakable: the institution of the boarding school is no substitute for what young children need most at this time in their lives, the love of their parents and the security of home. (I’m tempted to add that it’s not only boarding schools that cause the childhood wounds which, unless we work to heal them, we carry around with us for life. But that’s another story…)
I note with curiosity that there are two ways of hearing that title phrase. Until I watched this documentary I had heard only one of them–“The Making of Them”–the one with the emphasis on the last word: Them. The boarding school system is geared to creating a specific class of people, them, a peculiarly British elite, the ones who go on to Oxford or Cambridge and who generally end up running the country. O lucky me! I am one of them, and I have traveled many miles on my nice educated English accent, my charm, my finely educated mind. I “should be grateful,” and in so many ways I am. I account myself one of Them.
But then I heard one of the mothers say the words in a quite different way: “It’s the making of them,” she said. I registered the difference with a shock. It was like one of those optical illusions, where you can’t see one aspect of the image until you blink your eyes, and then can’t see the other. Of course. I had never heard it, in my mind, with this particular emphasis. This way, it gets to be the justification, a positive rather than a negative. This way, the mother could allow herself to believe that the experience was a fine way for her son to build the character he’d need to be successful in his future life.
In this context, I’ll confess to a part of myself that listened to the grown men in this powerful and moving documentary, products of the boarding school system, with the knee-jerk response: they’re “wet,” to resort to the boys’ school terminology; they’re “pathetic.” These extraordinarily privileged men actually feel sorry for themselves. Such was my conditioned reaction; and in this way was my conditioning so powerful, it triggered that judgment over decades of sometimes deep inner work and reflection. Because I recognized myself in them, these men who had come to understand the depth of the wound they had sustained, and the lasting effects it can have on a man’s life–including, but not limited to the ability to form trusting relationships and engage in simple expressions of love. Like the hugs my wife reminds me again this morning, as I write, I am too reticent to share…
Please note: you don’t have to be a “boarding school survivor” to find deep resonance in this documentary. You just need to have survived your childhood. Which, likely, if you are reading this, you have done.
MANTIQA, Iraq (AP) — Behind the wall of sandbags at the end of a narrow bridge in northern Iraq, a man in a black ski mask paces back and forth, brandishing a machine-gun and poking the barrel above the wall. Alongside him, a second militant in a red and white turban waves angrily. A third looks across the bridge with binoculars.
“If they shoot one bullet at us, we’re going to return it with five,” said Lt. Gen. Bapir Sheikhwasani of the Kurdish peshmerga militia as he tracked the Islamic State fighters through his own binoculars. “They are not the type of people who are up to stand against the peshmerga.” The Kurdish fighters, who number in the dozens, have been in a standoff with the extremists across the bridge for three months. They say U.S. airstrikes that began Aug. 8 have helped to weaken the Islamic State group in remote areas, but efforts to retake more populated areas have stalled because militants are taking refuge among civilians, making it harder for ground forces to go after them.
Stationed in an abandoned house they’ve barricaded in the town of Mantiqa, the Kurds are unable to effectively engage the militants, who retreat to the nearest town whenever they come under fire, the Kurdish fighters say.
Over the past 10 days, the peshmerga commanders have given strict instructions not to fire at the militants on the bridge. Sheikhwasani believes the Islamic State fighters may be plotting to blow up the bridge, but would need to lay explosives in the middle in order for the charge to be effective.
“They will not succeed if they try,” Ahmed Hussein Abdullah, a peshmerga soldier on the bridge, said confidently.
The peshmerga on the Mullah Abdullah Bridge are quick to praise American forces, who recently expanded the air campaign to Syria in coordination with a coalition of Arab allies. Progress has been steady in Iraqi towns further west, where the peshmerga, backed by airstrikes, have managed to retake territory. But one-third of Iraq is still under the control of the Sunni militants.
Across the Mullah Abdullah Bridge, some 90 Islamic State fighters live among the residents, the peshmerga said — most of them in hiding, afraid of bombardment from the air.
“Airstrikes very good,” said one of the fighters in broken English, withholding his name because he’s not supposed to speak to the media. “But we need more.”
The unit in Mantiqa said it received a few new guns donated by several European countries to boost their offensive against the jihadi group, although they were unsure which country they came from. Sheikhwasani said that the weapons deliveries, while appreciated, are not nearly enough to guarantee their position on such a narrow front line.
Still, the fighters say they will hold their position on the bridge as long as they have to, and are prepared for the outcome, whatever it may be. “We said goodbye to our families,” said Sheikhwasani, “not see you soon. We came here to defend our land and our families — even if it means we never see them again.”
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