The Identity of the Great Sphinx Revealed! Maybe. #Sphinx #Archaeology

Archaeologists have been arguing for many decades about the identity of the Great Sphinx of Egypt.  Was he Khufu, the ancient Pharoah who built the Great Pyramid, and who ruled Egypt around 4,500 years ago?  Or was he Khufu's son, Khafra?  Or somebody else?

I've stared at pictures of the Sphinx's battered face for some time now, trying to interpret it, Photoshop it, make it resemble its original appearance, whatever that was. Or whoever that was.  But who was that?

This past week I saw yet another documentary on the Sphinx, and it provided fairly convincing evidence that the Sphinx was made by Khufu's son, Khafra, in honor of himself.  Khafra is the man depicted by the Sphinx.  It is not Alfred E. Neuman, no matter how much you want to argue.

I found a fairly good image of Khafra and Photoshopped his face onto that of the Sphinx.  It seemed to fit.  Khafra had a slightly chubby face, big nose, high cheekbones, and full lips.  Khafra's ears also closely resembled those of the Sphinx.

Once I got Khafra's puss onto the Sphinx, I was astounded at how real it looks, how well it fits.  Now I can believe this version of the Sphinx.  This might well be what it really looked like 2,500 years before Christ.   Once again, I present the current condition of the Sphinx's face for comparative purposes.  It's on the right.  Don't pretend you didn't know.

Here's the Khafra image I used.  I like this guy.  I could have a beer with this guy and puff a few cigars too.

Jurassic World #Jurassic #Dinosaurs

I went to see the new film "Jurassic World" today.  It is yet another sequel to "Jurassic Park," which debuted in theaters in 1993 -- more than twenty years ago.  I always watch these films because I like dinosaurs, am fascinated with how they might have looked, moved and behaved.  However, I expected the latest installment, "Jurassic World," would be derivative, predictable and a bit  clichéd.  In this I was correct.  It is the usual scenario:

1. A bunch of irresponsible scientists and capitalists create one big-ass dinosaur, hoping to make money or get famous;
2. The dinosaur escapes his pen and eats people, who run amok, waving their arms, screaming and yelling.  

 All these movies have a recipe:  

A.  Insert a dash of cute (this one a 10 year old boy with a mop-top, along with his older teenage brother) --  oh please.  This is boring but necessary from a marketing standpoint: you want to draw kids to the movie and make young mothers say "Awwww!"

B.  Make the two main characters one Virile Man and one Hot Babe, to create some sexual tension (well you have to have that, otherwise, no story);

C.  Insert typical plot device:  the babe disdains the Virile Man until he saves her sorry ass from the dinosaurs;

D.  Throw in some good dinosaurs too, to offset the mean, vicious ones, relieve tension, provide comic relief, and avoid stereotyping extinct lizards.  This time, the raptors are on the side of the angels, as well as the T-Rex, as they join forces against the evil synthetic monster, a hybrid dinosaur created in the lab in an effort to draw more crowds to the park.

E.  There is a villain who wants to weaponize the dinosaurs, sell them to the military and teach them to eat terrorists.  This meme is a familiar one -- it was used in the first "Alien" film 36 years ago.  Yawn.  Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with that.  Turning ISIS into dinosaur dung would be an amusing solution to Islamic terrorism -- and probably fun too.

Some memes that are happily absent from the film:
1.  There are no professional victims to stoke guilt and shame among white heterosexuals, feign social relevance or cheerlead some asinine leftwing cause du jour.
2.  The obligatory gay character, inserted to satisfy GLAAD and Hollywood moguls who are fixated on homosexuality, is nowhere to be seen.  I was very pleased by its absence, as I hate the constant preaching from this interest group.

The Moral of the Story:  If you're going to genetically engineer dinosaurs and bring them back to life, don't make them larger than their pens.  Then, genetically engineer them some more and make them vegetarians, except maybe for the weaponized ones.

If the profound philosophical implications of the Moral are lost on you, you may want to see the film anyway.  CGI (computer graphics) are better than those of 1993.  Dinosaurs are always fun, even when presented in a highly predictable and clichéd film that is a modern rehash of the same old story.

A Swingin' Safari! Great Jazz From 1962 #jazz #swing

When I was in high school, I lived in San Jose, California with my parents. They ran a music school for guitar in Salinas, California, and on Saturdays would drive there to teach. One Saturday in 1962, I tagged along. There is a stretch of highway there that is lined with tall Acacia trees, and which was featured in Alfred Hitchcock's movie "Vertigo." As we were cruising through these trees in my father's 1961 Cadillac, a song came on the radio that I had never heard before. It was called "A Swingin' Safari." I loved it immediately and was thoroughly enchanted by it. Now, all these years later, I still hear it playing in my head whenever I drive that tree-lined highway.

Thanks to YouTube, there are several good versions of this song in video, but I like this one best. Cute early 1960's girls don't detract a bit. See and hear for yourself.  If you can listen to this song and not feel happy, there is something wrong with you.

 

Sally's Blues and the Lost Cues (Music!) #vinceguaraldi #jazz

This is jazz, baby.

"Sally's Blues" is part of the "Lost Cues," songs and snippets that were recorded for "Peanuts" television specials, but some didn't make the cut and get into the final film.  Having never heard some of these songs before, I was very surprised to see (or hear) just how great and how timeless they are.

Have you ever heard of these Guaraldi tunes:  Play It Again Charlie Brown, Centercourt, African Sleigh Ride, There's No Time for Love Charlie Brown, Woodstock's Dream, or Pitkin County Blues?  This is jazz at its best.  I purchased both albums of The Lost Cues from iTunes.  They cost $9.99 each.

 They are often quite different from what you would expect for a Charlie Brown theme, but at the same time, very cool, very hip, very melodic, very inspiring to the musical part of your soul.

A Celebration of Vince Guaraldi's Sacred Concert of 1965 - Grace Cathedral #jazz #vinceguaraldi, #peanuts

As a Vince Guaraldi fan, I have met and made contacts with other fans through articles on this blog. I received an invitation from jazz pianist Jim Martinez to attend the 50th anniversary sacred concert of 1965. Jim's jazz quartet will be substituting for the Vince Guaraldi trio/quartet, as alas, the great Guaraldi is no longer with us. Vince Guaraldi was the jazz pianist whose jazz trio provided much of the theme music for Charles Schultz's "Peanuts" television specials.  Some of Vince's most famous hits include Oh Good Grief, Linus and Lucy, and Christmas Time Is Here.   His biggest hit, not related to "Peanuts," was undoubtedly Cast Your Fate to the Wind, a jazz piece that in 1963 became a cross-over hit in popular music.  I still love that song, and it remains one of my favorites of all time.

Vince Guaraldi died of an aortic aneurism (not a heart attack, as is so often wrongly reported) during a gig in Menlo Park, California, on February 6, 1976. He was only 47, and could have given so much more to American music. Every Christmas, the hits on this blog linking to Guaraldi increase dramatically. "Peanuts" Christmas themes are played on television, and many folks note that the music is attributed to someone named Vince Guaraldi. They google the name, and begin a search for who he was and how he died.

Among Vince's accomplishments is playing for a sacred concert in Grace Cathedral Church in San Francisco. His sacred concert took place on May 21, 1965.  A couple of years ago I drove by Grace Cathedral while doing some accounting work near it.  I thought about Vince's sacred concert, and felt sorrow that I had not been there and did not hear it.  Now, however, I can experience a worthy facsimile of it, by attending this celebratory concert on August 15, 2015.  So can you.

You can read more about it at the website All About Jazz.

If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, please come and hear this musical tribute to a very great musician.

Rand Paul Is An ASS

This week Rand Paul, loony son of even loonier father Ron Paul, stated that his party, the Republicans, have been wrong on foreign policy for the past fifty years.  He also stated that the USA created ISIS with our policies.  Paul, whom I shall now refer to as "Wrong Rand," is a paleolibertarian, a strange blend of far right and far left politics.  I have always viewed paleos as political schizophrenics.  On foreign policy they agree with the far left Democrats, who believe our only foreign policy is to never intervene, and when we are attacked, to blame ourselves for "blowback," i.e., some ancient wrong we committed against our innocent enemies that caused simmering hostility toward us, finally exploding into violence.  We should humbly admit our sins, and apologize to our attackers for forcing them to attack us in the first place.

Screw you Rand Paul.  It'll be a cold day in Hell before I ever vote for you, in the primaries or even the general election should you make it that far.

Islam NOT WELCOME in the United States of America.

This week a crowd of bikers protested Islamic intolerance in front of a mosque in Phoenix.  They were there to draw pictures of Mohammed.  This was in response to the two (now dead) Muslim thugs who attempted to murder attendees at the "Draw Mohammed" art show in Garland, Texas, a few weeks ago.

The biker/Marine who organized the protest has received numerous death threats from the Religion of Peace.

The public is increasingly aware of how repugnant Islam is to western civilization and society.  They are also more and more fed up with Islamic violence and murder.  My advice to Muslims in the USA:  get the hell out.  We don't want you here.  You are not welcome.

With apologies to Bosch Fawstin

My First Jazz Band Recital Goes Well

Last night my Big Band, now called "the Cats Swing Band," gave a recital to mark the end of the semester. The Apostolic Church on Parr Avenue in Campbell, CA were kind enough to make their church available for our performance, and the pews were filled with friends and family. 

I played my acoustic string bass, and all the band members loved it more than my bass guitar.  My friend and attorney, who plays alto sax in our band, said that there is "no comparison" between the sound of my stand-up bass and my bass guitar, and he favors the former.  I agree.

However, a string bass requires a lot more stamina, and I need to improve mine. I was pooped by the end of the performance.  Playing a stand-up bass is much more physically demanding than playing a bass guitar.

Everyone told me I played quite well, but being my best critic, I am far from satisfied. I was, however, blown away by the enthusiastic audience, who broke into raucous applause when our lead tenor sax player soloed.  They broke into applause several more times before the performance ended.  This was thrilling for me, as I have played in many bands, but have never experienced this before. 

Everyone in the audience was grinning, open-mouthed, from ear to ear, including my always grouchy little wife. Afterwards we had a pot luck dinner. The band was ecstatic over the successful performance.

Listen Here:  Link to Band Performance.

If you are able to listen, please use headphones in order to hear my bass!  

"In Flanders Fields," the Story of Major John McCrae

This post was originally published here on May 27, 2007.  I first read the poem in my sophomore year of high school, and it's impact has stayed with me for more than half a century.  I am reposting it for Memorial Day 2015.

******

I have always loved the poem "In Flanders Fields," written by Canadian officer John McCrae in World War I. (Flanders is a section of Belgium).  I found his story at the website of Arlington National Cemetery. Here it is.

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McCrae's "In Flanders Fields" remains to this day one of the most memorable war poems ever written. It is a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in the Ypres salient in the spring of 1915. Here is the story of the making of that poem:

Although he had been a doctor for years and had served in the South African War, it was impossible to get used to the suffering, the screams, and the blood here, and Major John McCrae had seen and heard enough in his dressing station to last him a lifetime.

As a surgeon attached to the 1st Field Artillery Brigade, Major McCrae, who had joined the McGill faculty in 1900 after graduating from the University of Toronto, had spent seventeen days treating injured men -- Canadians, British, Indians, French, and Germans -- in the Ypres salient.

It had been an ordeal that he had hardly thought possible. McCrae later wrote of it:
"I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days... Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done."

One death particularly affected McCrae. A young friend and former student, Lieut. Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, had been killed by a shell burst on 2 May 1915. Lieutenant Helmer was buried later that day in the little cemetery outside McCrae's dressing station, and McCrae had performed the funeral ceremony in the absence of the chaplain.

The next day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked near the dressing station beside the Canal de l'Yser, just a few hundred yards north of Ypres, McCrae vented his anguish by composing a poem. The major was no stranger to writing, having authored several medical texts besides dabbling in poetry.

In the nearby cemetery, McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up in the ditches in that part of Europe, and he spent twenty minutes of precious rest time scribbling fifteen lines of verse in a notebook.

A young soldier watched him write it. Cyril Allinson, a twenty-two year old sergeant-major, was delivering mail that day when he spotted McCrae. The major looked up as Allinson approached, then went on writing while the sergeant-major stood there quietly. "His face was very tired but calm as we wrote," Allinson recalled. "He looked around from time to time, his eyes straying to Helmer's grave."

When McCrae finished five minutes later, he took his mail from Allinson and, without saying a word, handed his pad to the young NCO. Allinson was moved by what he read:

"The poem was exactly an exact description of the scene in front of us both. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene."

In fact, it was very nearly not published. Dissatisfied with it, McCrae tossed the poem away, but a fellow officer retrieved it and sent it to newspapers in England. The Spectator, in London, rejected it, but Punch published it on 8 December 1915.

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Stogie again. Red poppies are flowers whose seeds can remain dormant for years, and are activated into germination when the earth is broken or turned. When the soldiers in Belgium began burying their dead, there was a lot of freshly turned earth. In a few days the fresh graves were ablaze with the red poppies, as if God Himself had decorated the graves.

Because of this, the red poppy became a symbol of Memorial Day and for many years was worn by many to remember the war dead. This is an old tradition we should work to revive.

Here is McCrae's famous and beautiful poem, written 100 years ago this month, on May 3, 1915:

IN FLANDERS FIELDS

Maj. John McCrae (1872-1918)

.....

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

.....

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

......

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Memorial Day is Every Day for the Dutch Caretakers of American Graves

Here is a wonderful story of remembrance of the American war dead in Holland.  Hat tip to Always on Watch.

Read it all here.