M Is FOR MASHUP - May 9th, 2012
DJ Useo Presents: Beatles vs Queen
By DJ Useo
Boy have I ever been thru the ringer here with hospital stuff. Like Roseannerosannadanna used to say, "It's always sumthin!" I hope that all of you are doing much better than I. Despite these vague health matters I mentioned, I've still managed to continue posting one new mashup album a month. As if the earlier released albums weren't good enough, I now offer you '
DJ Useo Presents The Beatles vs Queen'.
( groovytimewithdjuseo.blogspot.com/2012/05/dj-useo-presents-beatles-vs-queen.html )
How I managed to get this record done, a full disc, mind you, while I've had all these health problems, was simply that I started the album well over a year ago. So I took my time, and followed my usual pattern of making more tracks than I needed. Considering the source material that I was using, classic rock vs classic rock, my original plan was to make the album 40 minutes, like a 70's album would be. It became apparent after a while that there was plenty of great tracks to fill a disc. That did seem too long to me tho, so I pared it down to just one hour. This means there's a few good tracks left, maybe you will hear them later on this year.
I am a bigtime fan of the Beatles. You can tell, because I post so many Beatles mashups at the
Beatles Remixers site
( beatlesremixers.freeforums.org/ ) I have made it a point to buy all the Beatles, because I love having the discography. Who'd have ever thought that I would start to see Queen the same way. Damn, are they great! So at that point it made sense to me to do a whole album of the Beatles vs Queen.
The first track on the record turned out so good, I was convinced this was a viable project. The track is "Tie Your Mother Down" by Queen, with the Beatles singing "Getting Better". It's really a trip to hear a mashup with two songs you know, probably very well. That's the case with this entire record. The second song is Queens "Seven Seas of Rhye", with the Beatles singing "For the Benefit of Mr Kite".
I'm sure you see what I'm getting at now with this record. It continues like that until the very last track, which is the Beatle's "A Day in the Life" with Queen singing "The Prophets Song". Between the 18 songs on the record, you'll hear early Beatles and later Beatles. Also early Queen and later Queen.
And the great thing is, it's all going on at the same time. So there you have it, I hope you get this and enjoy. I think there is something here for Beatles' fans, Queen's fans, and fans of mashups in general.
Remember, next month I will have another brand new mashup album by me. No hints yet as to what it is, I like to keep you guessing.
Mix Of The Week
We had a mix of the week, but the dog ate it.
Mashup Tip : Add a little cinnamon to your mashup, it gives it that fresh baked aroma.
(A tip of the hat for this weeks tip to Dj Doughboypoke.)
Latest Useo Thing
'And Your Punkrocker Can Sing' (The Beatles vs Teddybears) is my latest single mashup. It fits in really good with the Beatles Queen theme, except it replaces the Queen with the Teddy Bears. This track is an awesome mix, the beat is driving with a kind of punky feel, but there is also some electronic sounds with a Depeche mode type of feeling. And of course wonderful Beatles vocals.
Find it here
( groovytimewithdjuseo.blogspot.com/2012/04/beatles-vs-teddybears.html )
Podgornio, The Mashup Psychic Predicts
DJ Strepthroat will defy the long-held tradition of never mashing Beyoncé in a month with an "R" in it.
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Never, Ever Give Up. Arthur's Inspirational Transformation! (YouTube)
Arthur Boorman was a disabled veteran of the Gulf War for 15 years, and was told by his doctors that he would never be able to walk on his own, ever again.?He stumbled upon an article about Diamond Dallas Page doing Yoga and decided to give it a try…
David Graeber: New Police Strategy in New York - Sexual Assault Against Peaceful Protestors (TruthOut)
"I was in Liberty Park on the 17th [the Six Month Anniversary of the Occupation]. When the cops were pushing us out the park, one of them yanked at my breast." "Again?" someone said.
Paul Abram: "Governor Romney's Job Growth Record -- Worse than Obama and Carter's" (Huffington post)
Romney's extrapolated-to-the-nation job growth during his tenure as governor is less than 25 percent of President Carter's record. Still want to compare your jobs record to President Carter, Mitt? You might do better picking on someone more like you -- such as George W. Bush.
Keld Jensen: "Intelligence Is Overrated: What You Really Need To Succeed" (Forbes)
Albert Einstein's was estimated at 160, Madonna's is 140, and John F. Kennedy's was only 119, but as it turns out, your IQ score pales in comparison with your EQ, MQ, and BQ scores when it comes to predicting your success and professional achievement.
Charles Murray: "Future tense, IX: Out of the wilderness" (New Criterion)
On major artistic accomplishments.
Dan Kois: You Are Very Cold, and This Feels Like an Adventure (Slate)
A hair-raising self-published novel of an epically bad love affair.
A brush with death persuaded me to go from fat to fit (Guardian)
Lying in hospital, gasping for air, AJ Jacobs made a pledge - if he made it out alive, he'd turn himself into the embodiment of health and fitness. Would he succeed? This is his year-long diary.
Chuck Norris: Are Energy Bars Healthy? (Creators Syndicate)
Men's Health reported: "Cut through the hype and flashy packaging, and you're often left with a hefty (and expensive) dose of sugar, oil, and a mass of added vitamins and minerals. With little research to back up the bars claims, many are nothing more than protein-containing candy in disguise." Despite the fact that some bars add real fruit - even nuts - and oats, they still can taste like glorified cookies.
David Bruce has 42 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $42 you can buy 10,500 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," "Maximum Cool," and "Resist Psychic Death."
wrote:
answered:
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Bosko Suggests
Bays
Have a great day,
Bosko.
Thanks, Bosko!
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Bit of a marine layer, but it burned off by noon.
2012 Polar Music Prize
Paul Simon, Yo-Yo Ma
Singer-songwriter Paul Simon and cellist Yo-Yo Ma have won the 2012 Polar Music Prize, Sweden's most prestigious award for musicians.
Simon and Ma will receive 1 million kronor ($166,000) each and an invitation to the prize ceremony in Stockholm Aug. 28.
The award was founded by the late Stig Anderson, the manager of Swedish pop group ABBA, and has been handed out since 1992. It is typically shared by a pop artist and a classical musician.
Paul Simon, Yo-Yo Ma
Declines To Be Roseanne Barr's VP
Willie Nelson
After what we can only assume was careful deliberation, Willie Nelson has turned down Roseanne Barr's Twitter invitation to be her running mate as she seeks the Green Party presidential nomination.
The musical icon wrote Tuesday: "Thank you but no thank you. Good luck to you!" in response to Barr's repeated tweeted entreaties to join her campaign.
Barr replied to Nelson: "Is this an actual response? I sure appreciate it! Good luck to you too, Willie!"
Barr had tweeted prior to Nelson's graceful response, "My Vice President will be announced at the debate in San Francisco this Saturday. I want Willie Nelson as Vice President."
Willie Nelson
Vastly Different Audiences
'DWTS' Vs. 'The Voice'
"Dancing With the Stars" and "The Voice" are the most popular prime-time shows on their networks. Last week illustrated how they have very different audiences.
The Nielsen Co. said Tuesday that ABC's "Dancing" had 16.2 million viewers, good enough for third place in the weekly program ranking. NBC's "The Voice" was seen by 9.5 million, rated by No. 20.
Peel away some of the numbers and the differences are revealed. Nielsen said 11.86 million "Dancing" viewers, almost three-quarters, are over 49 years old. The median age of a "Dancing With the Stars" viewer is nearly 61.
Less than half of "The Voice" viewers, or 4 million, are 50-plus, with the median age just under 46. In the business of television advertising, younger is usually better.
'DWTS' Vs. 'The Voice'
Shuts English Bureau After China Visa Denial
Al Jazeera
Al Jazeera has closed the China bureau for its English channel after Chinese authorities refused to renew its correspondent's visa, marking the first time an accredited foreign correspondent has been forced to leave the country in over a decade.
Melissa Chan had reported from Beijing for Al Jazeera's English language channel since 2007, as well as maintaining a Twitter feed with more than 15,000 followers.
"China addressed this problem in accordance with laws and regulations. The media concerned know in their heart what they did wrong," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters at a regular briefing on Tuesday. He did not provide further details about the case.
The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China (FCCC), which Beijing does not recognize, said the decision to allow Chan's accreditation to lapse came after they expressed dissatisfaction about some of Al Jazeera's content, including a documentary produced overseas.
Al Jazeera has produced a number of critical programs about China in recent years, including one examining the alleged use of prison labor to make products sold in Western markets.
Al Jazeera
Promoting Hate In Iowa
Bishop Martin Amos
Overruling school officials, a Catholic bishop in Iowa said Monday he would not let a group that promotes equal rights for gays and lesbians present a college scholarship to an openly gay student during an upcoming award ceremony.
Bishop Martin Amos in Davenport said the Eychaner Foundation would not be allowed to present the Matthew Shepard Scholarship to Keaton Fuller during the May 20 ceremony at Prince of Peace Catholic School in Clinton, saying the group's support for gay rights conflicts with church doctrine.
The announcement comes after a school official signed a document last month that promised to let a representative of the foundation's scholarship committee present the award to Fuller.
In an open letter released Monday, Fuller said he's never felt so "invalidated and unaccepted" as he did when he heard that news last week. He said he and his family were asking the school to reverse its decision, and he launched an online petition Monday that was signed by hundreds of supporters within its first hours.
The bishop's decision also stunned school officials, who had encouraged Fuller to apply for the award and wrote letters on his behalf.
Founded by Iowa businessman and gay rights activist Rich Eychaner, the Des Moines-based foundation has awarded more than 130 Matthew Shepard scholarships to graduating high school seniors who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender since 2000. It is named for the gay Wyoming college student killed in 1998.
Bishop Martin Amos
Judge OKs Child Support Deal
Linda Evangelista
Supermodel Linda Evangelista and a French billionaire, saying they were pleased to end a public fight over paying their 5-year-old's expenses, on Tuesday got a judge's approval for a confidential child-support deal.
"We are happy that we were able to reach an agreement for the benefit and well-being of our son, Augie," Evangelista and Francois-Henri Pinault said in a statement issued through a spokesman.
A Manhattan magistrate had signed off earlier in the day on their agreement and sealed it from public view.
The settlement came in the midst of a trial that delved into their finances and personal lives. The trial forced both to testify in open court about touchy subjects, ranging from Pinault discussing Hayek's difficult 2007 pregnancy to Evangelista talking about how much she still commands for modeling jobs.
Linda Evangelista
Masseur Sues
John Travolta
An anonymous male masseur is suing John Travolta for sexual harassment, claiming that he has "proof" the actor tried to have sex with him during a massage session.
According to papers filed in a Los Angeles court and obtained by TMZ , "John Doe" says that the "Grease" actor touched his legs and genitals and made unwanted sexual advances towards him.
Travolta allegedly took off all of his clothes, and rubbed the plaintiff's legs and genitals. The masseur, an aspiring actor, told Travolta that he would not have sex with his clients. Travolta supposedly told the man that the only way he would make it in Hollywood is if he performed sexual favors.
"Hollywood is controlled by homosexual Jewish men who expect favors in return for sexual activity," Travolta allegedly said.
Travolta then masturbated in front of the masseur, offered him a "reverse massage" and said, "Come on dude, I'll jerk you off."
John Travolta
1981 Arrest
Willard
Believe it or not, the unflappable Romney was once arrested for disorderly conduct. And that wasn't his only "Mitt-frontation"
Fans of truly explosive political fireworks may have been disappointed when the seemingly unflappable Mitt Romney won the Republican nod to face the famously no-drama President Obama. But flashes of Romney's well-guarded temper have made cameo appearances on the campaign trail, and BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski just unearthed a gem from Romney's past: A three-decade-old arrest for clashing with a law officer. Here, a look at that tale and four classic "Mitt-frontations" (as his family calls them):
This story first surfaced in Romney's doomed 1994 bid to unseat Sen. Ted Kennedy, Kaczynski says: In 1981, Romney was putting the family boat into Lake Cochituate, an hour outside of Boston, when a park officer told him he couldn't because the license looked painted over. If he launched, he'd face a $50 fine. "I was willing to pay the fine," Romney told The Boston Globe. But the officer returned as Romney put the boat in and, visibly angry at being ignored, handcuffed Mitt, who was "dripping wet in a bathing suit," and booked him for disorderly conduct. Romney contested the arrest in court, threatened to sue, and got the arrest dismissed and sealed. "He did not have the right to arrest me because I was not a disorderly person," Romney told The Globe. Right, I guess "laws are [just] for little people and suckers, aren't they?" says Kaili Joy Gray at Daily Kos.
During the 2002 Winter Olympics, says Alec MacGillis at The New Republic, Romney, who was the Games' chief organizer, pushed local sheriff's deputies out of the way to personally manage a traffic snarl outside the downhill ski area. He also lit into an 18-year-old security volunteer, Shaun Knopp, who told reporters that Romney rudely asked "who the fuck" he was and "what the fuck" an amateur like him was doing at the Olympics. Romney denied dropping f-bombs, saying the worst he broke out was "H-E-double hockey sticks." I find the idea of Romney directing traffic and dropping f-bombs "immensely humanizing," says Tommy Christopher at Mediaite
For more - Willard
Utah Trial Ends
Gary Coleman
It's now up to a Utah judge to decide whether Gary Coleman's ex-wife or an ex-girlfriend is entitled to the late child TV star's estate.
Judge James Taylor heard closing arguments Tuesday in Provo but didn't specify when he'll issue a ruling.
Shannon Price testified Monday that even though she and Coleman divorced in 2008, they continued to live together and present themselves in public as husband and wife.
Another woman, Anna Gray, says Coleman named her a beneficiary and executor of his estate in 2005. Gray managed Coleman's affairs for a number of years and was his ex-girlfriend.
Gary Coleman
Earnings Rise Despite "John Carter"
Disney
Walt Disney Co's quarterly earnings beat Wall Street expectations as profit rose 21 percent despite a loss from the science fiction film bomb "John Carter."
Strong attendance at theme parks and higher advertising revenue at cable networks, including sports powerhouse ESPN, helped drive quarterly growth.
The earnings report followed a massive opening weekend for "The Avengers," a superhero movie that set an industry record with ticket sales of $207.4 million over its first weekend. An "Avengers" movie sequel is in the works, Chief Executive Bob Iger told analysts.
The company's film studio needed a hit after "Carter," a $250 million production that dragged the company's studio unit to an operating loss of $84 million for the fiscal second quarter. Studio chief Rich Ross stepped down April 13 after the film flopped.
Despite the studio loss, Disney posted fiscal second quarter earnings of $1.1 billion and a 6 percent increase in revenue to $9.629 billion.
Disney
Profit Falls, Hurt By Oprah
Discovery
Discovery Communications reported a lower-than-expected quarterly profit on Tuesday, hurt by losses at the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), sending its shares down 6.5 percent.
OWN, the joint venture with the "queen of talk" that is struggling with lackluster ratings, was part of the reason Discovery reported a nearly 30 percent decline in first-quarter earnings.
OWN has slashed costs by cutting 30 employees and canceling its heavily hyped Rosie O'Donnell talk show. It recently came out with a new slate of reality shows to help the network find its legs.
Discovery expects the network's cash flow to break even during the second half of 2013, Zaslav said on the call.
Discovery
Site Of Scientific Ghost Town
Hobbs, NM
A scientific ghost town in the heart of southeastern New Mexico oil and gas country will hum with the latest next-generation technology - but no people.
A $1 billion city without residents will be developed in Lea County near Hobbs, officials said Tuesday, to help researchers test everything from intelligent traffic systems and next-generation wireless networks to automated washing machines and self-flushing toilets.
Pegasus Holdings and its New Mexico subsidiary, CITE Development, said Hobbs and Lea County beat out Las Cruces, for the Center for Innovation, Technology and Testing.
Bob Brumley, senior managing director of Pegasus Holdings, said the town will be modeled after the real city of Rock Hill, S.C., complete with highways, houses and commercial buildings, old and new. No one will live there, although they could as houses will include all the necessities, like appliances and plumbing.
Hobbs, NM
Prime-Time Nielsens
Ratings
Prime-time viewership numbers compiled by the Nielsen Co. for April 30-May 6. Listings include the week's ranking and viewership.
1. "NCIS," CBS, 17.58 million.
2. "American Idol" (Wednesday), Fox, 16.66 million.
3. "Dancing With the Stars," ABC, 16.2 million.
4. "American Idol" (Thursday), Fox, 15.56 million.
5. "NCIS: Los Angeles," CBS, 15.21 million.
6. "The Big Bang Theory," CBS, 13.91 million.
7. "Dancing With the Stars Results," ABC, 13.87 million.
8. "Person of Interest," CBS, 13.27 million.
9. "The Mentalist," CBS, 12.94 million.
10. "60 Minutes," CBS, 11.73 million.
11. "Criminal Minds," CBS, 11.47 million.
12. "Two and a Half Men," CBS, 11.32 million.
13. "Castle," ABC, 11.08 million.
14. "Hawaii Five-0," CBS, 10.91 million.
15. "Unforgettable," CBS, 10.66 million.
16. "Blue Bloods," CBS, 10.36 million.
17. "Mike & Molly," CBS, 10.16 million.
18. "Modern Family," ABC, 10.06 million.
19. "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," CBS, 9.75 million.
20. "The Voice," NBC, 9.52 million.
Ratings
In Memory
Margie Stewart
Margie Stewart, who has died aged 92, was the official US Army poster girl during the Second World War, with millions of her pin-up photos distributed to American GIs around the world.
Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, she "dutifully" accepted the US government's invitation, posing for the Hollywood portrait photographer George Hurrell, who shot pictures for three posters, each of which bore the legend: "Please get there and back. Be careful what you say or write."
More posters were printed bearing Margie Stewart's girl-next-door image than those of the Hollywood sirens Ann Sheridan and Betty Grable combined, an estimated 94 million circulating between 1943 and 1945.
The wartime First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, tried unsuccessfully to get them scrapped on the ground that Stewart's wholesome image might make soldiers feel homesick. But despite Mrs Roosevelt's best endeavours, GIs asked for more and wanted to know who the pretty girl was. Nine more posters were ordered showing Margie Stewart, pen in hand, writing letters urging American servicemen to buy war bonds and to save money to buy homes after the war.
In all, a dozen different posters featuring Margie Stewart were produced, each version carrying an encouraging message to servicemen in the US forces overseas.
By the end of 1943 she had become one of the most familiar faces in America, mobbed by soldiers on leave as well as by their wives, who approved of Margie Stewart's wholesome, unerotic image (unlike those of Hollywood stars such as Betty Grable with her "Million Dollar Legs"; Ann Sheridan, the "Oomph girl"; the cantilevered Jane Russell; and the "peek-a-boo girl" Veronica Lake).
On a visit to London in June 1945, "Uncle Sam's Poster Girl" - as The Daily Telegraph dubbed her - caused gridlock at Hyde Park Corner, traffic backing up Park Lane and into Oxford Street as crowds tried to catch a glimpse of her. During her stay she became a regular with the bandleader Artie Shaw at Rainbow Corner, the American Red Cross Club near Piccadilly Circus, entertaining US servicemen.
Margery Stewart was born on December 14 1919 at Wabash, Indiana. After a year studying at Indiana University, where she was elected Freshman Princess, she became a photographic model at a department store in Chicago. In 1941 she moved to Los Angeles and modelled at another store on Wilshire Boulevard. When RKO signed her to a contract in 1942, she made 20 films in short order.
Her career began with a series of small parts in Here We Go Again, The Falcon Strikes Back, Gildersleeve's Bad Day (all 1942), and Bombardier (1943) with Pat O'Brien, Randolph Scott and Eddie Albert. Other film roles included Mexican Spitfire's Blessed Event (1943), with Lupe Velez; Gildersleeve's Ghost; the Frank Sinatra musical Step Lively; Heavenly Days; and Music in Manhattan (all 1944), with Anne Shirley and Dennis Day.
But she never became a star. "My agent in Hollywood once asked an RKO casting director why he wasn't giving me better parts," she recalled. "He was honest in his response: 'Every time I look out she's talking to a grip, an electrician or a group of extras. That doesn't look like a star to me.' The truth was I never wanted to be a star. I still wanted to be me."
When her contract with RKO was cancelled, Margie Stewart embarked on a European tour in June 1945, entertaining US troops in England, France, Belgium and Germany.
In later life Margie Stewart worked in the music industry and produced shows at the Hollywood Bowl featuring The Beatles, Barbra Streisand and The Beach Boys.
Margie Stewart married, in July 1945, Jerry Johnson, with whom she had a son.
Margie Stewart
In Memory
Maurice Sendak
Maurice Sendak didn't think of himself as a children's author, but as an author who told the truth about childhood.
"I like interesting people and kids are really interesting people," he explained to The Associated Press last fall. "And if you didn't paint them in little blue, pink and yellow, it's even more interesting."
Sendak, who died early Tuesday in Danbury, Conn., at age 83, four days after suffering a stroke, revolutionized children's books and how we think about childhood simply by leaving in what so many writers before had excluded. Dick and Jane were no match for his naughty Max. His kids misbehaved and didn't regret it, and in their dreams and nightmares fled to the most unimaginable places. Monstrous creatures were devised from his studio, but none more frightening than the grownups in his stories or the cloud of the Holocaust that darkened his every page.
Rarely was a man so uninterested in being loved or adored. Starting with the Caldecott, the great parade marched on and on. He received the Hans Christian Andersen award in 1970 and a Laura Ingalls Wilder medal in 1983. President Bill Clinton awarded Sendak a National Medal of the Arts in 1996 and in 2009 President Obama read "Where the Wild Things Are" for the Easter Egg Roll.
Communities attempted to ban him, but his books sold millions of copies and his curmudgeonly persona became as much a part of his legend as "Where the Wild Things Are," which became a hit movie in 2009. He seemed to act out everyone's fantasy of a nasty old man with a hidden and generous heart. No one granted the privilege could forget his snarly smile, his raspy, unprintable and adorable dismissals of such modern piffle as e-books and publicity tours, his misleading insistence that his life didn't matter.
Besides illustrating his own work, he also provided drawings - sometimes sweet, sometimes nasty - for Else Holmelund Minarik's series "Little Bear," George MacDonald's "The Light Princess" and adaptations of E.T.A. Hoffman's "The Nutcracker" and the Brothers Grimm's "King Grisly-Beard." His most recent book that he wrote and illustrated was "Bumble-Ardy," a naughty pig party which came out in 2011, based on an old animated skit he worked up for "Sesame Street."
In recent months, he had said he was working on a project about noses and he endorsed - against his best judgment - Stephen Colbert's "I am a Pole (And So Can You!)", a children's story calculated to offend the master. Colbert's book was published Tuesday.
Sendak also created costumes for ballets and staged operas, including the Czech opera "Brundibar," which in 2003 he put on paper with his close friend, Pulitzer-winning playwright Tony Kushner. He designed sets for several productions at New York City Opera and he wrote the libretto for composer Oliver Knussen's opera adaptation of "Where the Wild Things Are," which premiered at Brussels' Theatre de la Monnaie in 1980 as "Max et les Maximontres." A revised final version debuted in 1984 in London.
He designed the Pacific Northwest Ballet's "Nutcracker" production that later became a movie shown on television, and he served as producer of various animated TV series based on his illustrations, including "Seven Little Monsters," ''George and Martha" and "Little Bear." He collaborated with Carole King on the musical "Really Rosie."
None of Sendak's books were memoirs, but all were personal, if only for their celebrations of disobedience and intimations of fear and death and dislocation, sketched in haunting, Blakean waves of pen and ink. "It's a Jewish way of getting through life," Kushner said last fall. "You acknowledge what is spectacular and beautiful and also you don't close your eyes to the pain and the difficulty."
Revenge helped inspire "Where the Wild Things Are," his canonical tale of the boy Max's mind in flight in a forest of monsters, who just happen to look like some of Sendak's relatives from childhood. "In The Night Kitchen," released in 1971, was a forbidden dance of Laurel and Hardy in aprons and the flash of a boy's genitals, leading to calls for the book to be removed from library shelves.
"It was so fatuous, so incredible, that people would get so exercised by a phallus, a normal appendage to a man and to a boy. It was so cheap and vulgar. Despicable," Sendak said last fall. "It's all changed now. We live in a different country altogether. I will not say an improved version. No."
His stories were less about the kids he knew - never had them, he was happy to say - than the kid he used to be. The son of Polish immigrants, he was born in 1928 in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. The family didn't have a lot of money and he didn't have a lot of friends besides his brother and sister. He was an outsider at birth, as Christians nearby would remind him, throwing dirt and rocks as he left Hebrew school. The kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh's baby son terrified him for years.
He remembered no special talent - his brother, Jack, was the chosen one. But he absorbed his father's stories and he loved to dream and to create, like the time he and his brother built a model of the 1939 World's Fair out of clay and wax. At the movies, he surrendered to the magic of "Fantasia," and later escaped into "Pinocchio," a guilty pleasure during darkened times. The Nazi cancer was spreading overseas and the U.S. entered the war. Sendak's brother joined the military, relatives overseas were captured and killed. Storytelling, after the Holocaust, became something more than play.
Sendak didn't go to college and worked a variety of odd jobs until he was hired by the famous toy store FAO Schwarz as a window dresser in 1948. But illustration was his dream and his break came in 1951 when he was commissioned to do the art for "Wonderful Farm" by Marcel Ayme. By 1957 he was writing his own books.
Claiming Emily Dickinson, Mozart and Herman Melville as inspirations, he worked for decades out of the studio of his shingled 18th century house in Ridgefield, Conn., a country home reachable only by a bumpy road that seemed designed to shield him from his adoring public. The interior was a wonderland of carvings and cushions, from Disney characters to the fanged beasts from his books to a statuette of Obama.
Sendak spoke often, endlessly, about death in recent years - dreading it, longing for it. He didn't mind being old because the young were under so much pressure. But he missed his late siblings and his longtime companion, Eugene Glynn, who died in 2009. Work, not people, was his reason to carry on.
"I want to be alone and work until the day my head hits the drawing table and I'm dead. Kaput," he said last fall. "Everything is over. Everything that I called living is over. I'm very, very much alone. I don't believe in heaven or hell or any of those things. I feel very much like I want to be with my brother and sister again. They're nowhere. I know they're nowhere and they don't exist, but if nowhere means that's where they are, that's where I want to be."
Maurice Sendak
Where the Wild Things Are (as read by Christopher Walken) - YouTube
In Memory
Digby Wolfe
Digby Wolfe, the comedy writer who co-created the 1960s variety show "Laugh-In," has died. He was 82.
Friends have confirmed that the British-born writer, actor, singer and teacher died May 2 of lung cancer at his home in Albuquerque, N.M.
Friend and former teaching colleague Jim Linnell described Wolfe as a "whirlwind of ideas and encouragement." He says Wolfe had the power to set loose uncontrollable laughter in people.
Wolfe and his "Laugh-In" colleagues earned an Emmy in 1968 for their work on the television show.
Wolfe had small guest roles on various TV series and also mentored hundreds of young writers.
A memorial service is being planned for June 10 at the University of New Mexico, where Wolfe taught writing for 12 years.
His 37-year teaching career also included a stint at the University of Southern California.
Digby Wolfe
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
