It's Still Not Midnight!

Is he checking a device (in 1944!) or the watch that still has not struck midnight?

Artist: Peter Arno,  The New Yorker, January 1944

I Will Be In Circle No 3...फेसबुकावरील स्मारके, 2019

स्मारके म्हटले की पहिली आठवते शेलेची कविता:

Percy Bysshe Shelley:

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

 

I have created and maintained the following 20 Facebook pages. Yearly, I publish stat for them. Here it is for 2019.

 

अजून मला हे माहित नाहियेकी एवढी FB पेजेस करणारा user म्हणून माझी रवानगी कोणत्या circle मध्ये होणार आहे ते... कदाचित तिसऱ्या  circle मध्ये...Third Circle (Gluttony)

कलाकार : हॅरी ब्लिस

The Truth About Santa

Artist: John Klossner, The New Yorker

अनुयायाची महत्वाकांक्षा ....From Apostle to Messiah

जी ए कुलकर्णी:
"...त्याने प्रेमाचा व शांतीचा संदेश सांगितला, पण प्रसार झाला तो तलवारीच्या जोरावर; त्याने निरिच्छ्तेवर भर दिला, तर आता त्याच्या धर्माचा आधार आहे संपत्ती. हा तुला त्याचा विजय वाटतो, तसे पाहिले तर त्याचे सच्चे अनुयायी एखाद्या खेड्यातील वसतीपेक्षा जास्त नसतील. पण म्हणून का त्याच्या शिकवणीचे महत्व कमी होते?..."
('यात्रिक', 'पिंगळावेळ', १९७७)

 डेव्हिड सिप्रेस यांच्या कार्टून मधली माणसे मला खूप आवडतात, विशेषतः ज्यावेळी ती किंचाळून  किंवा मिश्किलपणे किंवा कुजबुजत बोलत असतात.. त्यांचे चित्र फार सुंदर नसते पण मला खूप हसवून जाते...

“Right now I’m his apostle, but my dream is to someday be my own Messiah.”  

 Artist: David Sipress, The New Yorker, November 2015

30th Death Anniversary of Samuel Beckett

#SamuelBeckett
 
Today December 22 2019 is 30th death anniversary of Samuel Beckett

Artist: Martin Keaney

Om Prakash@100

#OmPrakash100

Today December 19 2019 is 100th birth anniversary of Om Prakash (1919-1998), one of my favourite actors of Indian cinema.

कै ओम प्रकाश माझे खूप आवडते नट होते. त्यांचा 'चुपके चुपके' , १९७५ मधला अभिनय हिंदी सिनेमा विनोदाची कोणती उंची गाठू शकतो हे आपल्याला दाखवून देतो. हिंदी सिनेमातील सर्व नट-नट्यांसारखे ते सुद्धा टाईपकास्ट झाले होते पण तरी ते मधूनच आपल्या टॅलेंटची चुणूक दाखवत.

'बुड्ढा मिल गया', १९७१ हा सिनेमा अगदी  शेवट पर्यंत अतिशय इंटरेस्टिंग राहतो त्यांच्या अभिनयामुळे. 

कै श्रीलाल शुक्ल यांच्या 'राग दरबारी', १९६८ वरती एक चांगली टीव्ही सिरीयल निघाली (१९८६) पण त्यावर सिनेमा निघाला असता (आणि निघायला पाहिजे होता) तर त्यात ओम प्रकाश यांना महत्वाची भूमिका मी तरी दिली असती.

ओम प्रकाश यांनी बहुदा आत्मचरित्र लिहले नाही. ते लिहले असते तर कोणत्याही गॉसिप शिवाय ते एक वाचावेसे पुस्तक झाले असते असे मला कायम वाटत राहिले आहे कारण ते मनुष्य म्हणून सुद्धा खूप इंटरेस्टिंग असावेत अस मला उगाचच वाटत आले आहे. 

As Girdharilal in Hrishikesh Mukherjee's 'Buddha Mil Gaya', 1971

द सिम्पसन्स चे सर्वोत्तमत्व....The Greatest TV Show for Me: The Simpsons @30

#TheSimpsons30
 

Julian Gough :

“A comparison between The Simpsons and a soap opera is instructive. A soap opera is trapped inside the rules of the format; all soaps resemble each other (like psychologically plausible realist novels). What the makers of The Simpsons did was take a soap opera and put a frame around it: "this is a cartoon about a soap opera." This freed them from the need to map its event-rate on to real life: they could map its event-rate on to cartoon life. A fast event-rate is inherently comic, so the tone is, of necessity, comic. But that is not to say it isn't serious. The Simpsons is profoundly serious. And profoundly comic. Like Aristophanes, debating the war between Athens and Sparta by writing about a sex strike by the women of Athens and beyond.

With its cartoon event-rate, a classic series of The Simpsons has more ideas over a broader cultural range than any novel written the same year. The speed, the density of information, the range of reference; the quantity, quality and rich humanity of the jokes—they make almost all contemporary novels seem slow, dour, monotonous and almost empty of ideas.”

Louis Bayard:

"No matter how many times you're reminded, you will always forget you're watching an animated show. Mr. Burns and Waylon Smithers, Principal Skinner and Groundskeeper Willie, Barney and Apu and Moe and Ned Flanders and Krusty the Clown (with his superb initial "K") will seem more real than any flesh-and-blood television family. More real, maybe, than your own family because life can't distill us quite so succinctly into our essences. For that, we need art. Which "The Simpsons" manifestly is."

A O Scott:

“I have long been of the opinion that the entire history of American popular culture — maybe even of Western civilization — amounts to little more than a long prelude to "The Simpsons"..."

courtesy: The Newsweek

Walter Benjamin and New Angel...Paul Klee@140

#PaulKlee140

 

Artist: Paul Klee

Walter Benjamin:

"A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress."

Raymond Biesingers, The Baffler:

"....By the mid-nineteenth century, faith in progress was already so ubiquitous as to be largely invisible to its adherents, whether they counted themselves revolutionaries or traditionalists and whether they lived in Europe itself, in the rapidly expanding settlements in the Americas and Australia, or in colonial outposts in Africa and Asia. To question it with any seriousness was to marginalize yourself as a crank, a heretic, or a fool. In the European imagination—which increasingly operated in racial terms, understanding itself as white—progress defined the world..."

...आणि १९व्या शतकातील महाराष्ट्रातील सुद्धा तेच चालेले होते... सगळ्यांनी "प्रगती"चा नुसता धोशा लावला होता.. पेशवे गेले म्हणजे प्रगती झाली... हा विचार सुद्धा नाही की शिवाजीमहाराजांच्या आधीचा किंवा नंतरचा महाराष्ट्रातील इतिहास पुन्हा वेगळ्या स्वरूपात , पुढील काळात परत येऊ शकतो... उदाहरणार्थ: 'नवकोट नाना' १८व्या शतकाच्या शेवटी गेले पण २०-२१ व्या शतकात सर्व जातीत नाना निर्माण होऊ शकतात.... (आणि तसे झाले!)

वॉल्टर बेंजामिन सुद्धा प्रगतीला भुलले नाहीत आणि काही काळा पुरती  प्रगती नाही म्हणजे काही निराशेच्या खाईत पडायची गरज नाही ...  For Walter Benjamin at least, refusing to be blinded by the false promises of progress did not mean that hope was lost....