Tag: Things of beauty

Art, music, whatever

Different List

Good Stuff

The Daily Mail  has published its list of the Top 39 (?) Beautiful Moments of the last one hundred years.  Of course, a lot of the things they celebrate are among the events I’d have added to my list of the worst moments in the past century (e.g. election of Obama), but there ya go.

Here’s my list of beautiful moments (since Jan 1, 1923, in chronological order).

  1. 1923: Calvin Coolidge inaugurated
  2. 1940: Battle of Britain
  3. 1945:  VE- and VJ Day
  4. 1947: AK-47 first submitted for USSR military trials
  5. 1963: getting my first air rifle (birthday present)
  6. 1964: Beatles release A Hard Day’s Night  album
  7. 1967: Beatles release Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band  album
  8. 1968: first Shakespearean acting gig (in Hamlet)
  9. 1968: French-kissed a girl for the first time
  10. 1969: Moon landing with Neil Armstrong / Buzz Aldrin
  11. 1970: bought my first beer (age 15, Castle Inn, Hillbrow, Jhb)
  12. 1971: lost my virginity
  13. 1971: first played on stage to an audience (rhythm guitar)
  14. 1971: member of team competing on S.A. schools’ radio quiz (we won)
  15. 1971: graduated St. John’s College (First)
  16. 1972: arrested during anti-apartheid demonstration
  17. 1972: bought my first two centerfire guns (Mauser 98K, Llama XI 9mm pistol)
  18. 1973: first professional music gig
  19. 1974: co-founded Pussyfoot Show Band (later Atlantic Show Band)
  20. 1976: bought a Rickenbacker 4001S bass guitar
  21. 1979: first apartment (solo)
  22. 1979: joined A.C. Nielsen
  23. 1980: Ronald Reagan elected
  24. 1980: Borg-McEnroe Wimbledon final
  25. 1981: Hill Street Blues first episode aired
  26. 1981: slept with four different women over a single weekend
  27. 1982: first marriage
  28. 1982: visited America for the first time
  29. 1983: first extramarital fling
  30. 1984: first presentation to the Board of a major client
  31. 1985: bought my first computer (Apple IIe)
  32. 1986: emigrated to America
  33. 1989: Berlin Wall came down
  34. 1989: birth of the Son&Heir
  35. 1997: my first trip to London
  36. 1999: published my first novel (Vienna Days)
  37. 2015: B.A. degree (summa ) in Western European History (UNT)
  38. 2016: Donald Trump elected
  39. 2017: met New Wife again, after over 40 years apart

Bygone Broads 3

Drive Time, Gratuitous Chick Pics

Seems like the combination of bedroom-poster-worthy cars and women is becoming a fan favorite over on this back porch of mine, so here we go with another “pairing”.  This time, it’s the Sunbeam Tiger / AC Cobra 427 and Ann-Margret.

And another lil’ red thing:

And a little while later:

Lemme tell y’all:  it was pure hell trying to decide which A-M pics to feature here.  There may have to be a Part 2 at some point…

Bygone Broads 2

Drive Time, Gratuitous Chick Pics

Last year, I posted the first of this series, in which I lamented the disappearance of beautiful cars and lovely women from teenage boys’ bedroom walls.  That post featured a couple Ferraris and Lucy Pinder.

Here’s another such coupling [sic].  First, two cars of the Corvette persuasion:

…and second, one of the pinups who might have appeared on the opposite wall:

As the old saying went:  “Farrah Fawcett:  creating pup-tents in teenage boys’ beds since the 1970s.”

And as an older woman:

Dark Art

Fine Art

I really, really like the work of one-time civil engineer and now photographer Alec Dawson.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, each one of Dawson’s eerie still-life pics is a volume.  Here are several of my favorites (right-click to embiggen).

In case you missed the detail:

Some suggest abandonment:

And then there are the more explicit (and even more tragic) ones:

I could write a short story — or possibly a novella — about each and every one of these, simply because of the feelings and emotions contained in that simple picture.

I’m not even going to get into the lighting, other to say that it’s a rare skill to light a night scene without making it look contrived and artificial.  And if these pics are nothing else, they’re realistic, almost hyper-realistic.

While all the above are part of Dawson’s Nocturna  series, here’s a video sample of Nobody Claps Anymore.  The man’s a genius.

Random Tottie

Gratuitous Chick Pics

And then there was Cindy Morgan.

“Who she, Kim?”

This Cindy Morgan, from Caddyshack :

“Oh yeah.”

And she grew up, as they say, rather well:

Apparently, she was in some movie named Tron :

…but I never saw it because genre.  To continue:

 

Of course, she’s no spring chicken now — she’s my age — but she has matured, in the nicest possible way:

Quite lovely, then and now.