Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Queenpins

.One of the most interesting things about the late International Bowling Museum and Hall of Fame is the large area devoted to women bowlers and the Women' International Bowling Congress. The greater part of it contains scores of portraits like the ones you see here. They are all formulaic but there are interesting little differences. Who gets blue and who gets gray backgrounds? What's with the one in pink? What if anything do these paintings tell us about the subject? I think the best one is the Italian-looking woman on the right of the top photo, who looks like she is about to leap out of the plane of the picture. By the way, IMHO the last photo is the best image I've made in some time. Your results may vary. Which portrait appeals to you the most? Why?

WHAT I FOUND OUT TODAY:
St. Louis has an ambitious little semi-pro opera company, New Opera St. Louis, that puts on one or two productions a year in church halls or school auditoriums. We just heard that they are doing a rarely performed gem this weekend,
Camille Saint-Saëns' Samson and Delilah, in the sanctuary of a local Jewish temple. We say: be there or be square. This burgh has three opera companies. How about that?

TOMORROW: they say white men can't jump. But they sure can bowl.

COME BACK THURSDAY FOR A SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT




5 comments:

  1. i agree with the comment above! Bob, I am pretty much at a loss for words today. The National Portrait Gallery in D.C. would be envious I;m sure!
    V

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  2. I ran the text in the first comment through Babelfish. Of course, I don't know if it's Chinese or Japanese. If Chinese, the name of the commenter comes out as "Is distressed the multi-earthen bowls to be distressed entirely Luo planet." The machine translation of the comment it "Evidence effectiveness."


    In Japanese, the software translates the name as "悉 怛 Multi 缽 怛 囉 planet" and the comment as "At the time of 證 據 效."

    So I'm guessing that this is Chinese because Babelfish can't handle a number of the characters and there are no hiragana or katakana in the text. Can anyone help with this? I think I'll ask my friend Jing in Shanghai.

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  3. I'm liking the second to last one. A lot. I dig the last one too, but it's just not quite lined up like I'd want it to be, and maybe that wasn't actually possible anyway. In any case, this is all pretty great. For some reason I'm reminded of visuals and aesthetics from 2001 A Space Odyssey.

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  4. wow...
    interesting post ~~~ :)))

    btw, about the Chinese, First about the name, it looks like some random codes or ... for me, it doesnt make any sense... Second, the comments, as I think 時效 = prescription in law; 證據 = evidence or testimony. But I am really a little bit lost about this comment....

    ReplyDelete