Serious Austerity
December 28th, 2010
from: Popular culture goes back to the Thirties
Suddenly, austerity – and its twin, nostalgia – are breaking out all over
By Andrew Johnson and Charlie Cooper
Sunday, 26 December 2010
Susan Currell, a senior lecturer in American Studies at Sussex University, added: “I think people want to escape, but also to look at the reality of what’s happening. The bestselling book of the 1930s was Gone With the Wind, and that looked back to a previous period of hardship. Even with escapism, however, there’s a response to austerity. The Wizard of Oz is escapist, but it’s also about returning to how you were.”
bracketology
November 19th, 2010
in: The Enlightened Bracketologist, edited by Mark Reiter and Richard Sandomir, designed by Nigel Holmes
Introduction: “What’s your favorite movie?” [...] If you are like most people, you have a default response that is either The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Gone with the Wind, or the Wizard of Oz.
banksy?
October 30th, 2010
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/84/244095567_bfae1dfc3e_b.jpg
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/135/373935169_cd511fb892_b.jpg
Facebook screenshot - Hi Kirsten!
October 30th, 2010
When in Rome
October 30th, 2010
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1185416/movieconnections
– As she bids farewell to Gale, Beth says, “I think I’ll miss you least of all,” which reference Dorothy’s parting words to the Scarecrow.
Picture Books No Longer a Staple for Children
October 30th, 2010
By JULIE BOSMAN
Published: NYT, October 7, 2010
On a recent discussion board on Urbanbaby.com, a Web site for parents, one commenter asked for recommendations for chapter books to read to a 5-year-old, and was answered with suggestions like the 272-page “Phantom Tollbooth” by Norton Juster and “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum — books generally considered more appropriate for children 9 to 11.
Jen Haller, the vice president and associate publisher of the Penguin Young Readers Group, said that while some children were progressing to chapter books earlier, they were still reading picture books occasionally. “Picture books have a real comfort element to them,” Ms. Haller said. “It’s not like this door closes and they never go back to picture books again.”
Trader Joe’s
August 31st, 2010
catching up 2
August 31st, 2010
http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/08/12/happy-anniversary-the-wizard-of-oz/
catching up 1
August 31st, 2010
http://usanewsupdate.com/news/google-does-the-wizard-of-oz-logo.html
it’s complicated
August 31st, 2010
Kristin Chenoweth as April Rhodes in Glee Episode Home 1.16, broadcast 8/31/2010:
“I’m taking my hush money and producing the first ever all-white production of ‘The Wiz’.”
Betty White
June 19th, 2010
SNL: The Wonderful Wizard of Ass
rerun from May 9, 2010 also see this
THE WHIZ @ Abrons Art Center
June 15th, 2010
NICHOLAS LEICHTER DANCE + MONSTAH BLACK
THE WHIZ: OBAMALAND
June 16-19 | 8 pm
Ease on down the road to recession and back from the brink of fantasy in Nicholas Leichter Dance and Monstah Black’s take on The Wiz/ard of Oz for the Obama generation. Featuring choreography by Leichter, and a brand new commissioned score by Black with added musical selections, The Whiz is a full-spectrum original show of song, dance, and theatrical extravaganza. The 75-minute work showcases an array of different dance, performance, and music styles — house, funk, postmodern, drag, hip-hop, contemporary, and psychedelic — that traverse a landscape of hopes, fears, dreams, and home.
Twain’s guestbook
April 25th, 2010
There’s No Place Like Home
Billie Burke, the actress who went on to play Glinda in the Wizard of Oz, was Twain’s last visitor in 1908. He had her inaugurate the new guest book he was given that Christmas by Mary Rogers. Below her signature and her home town of Yonkers, he wrote, “Billie Burke, the young, the gifted, the beautiful, the charming.” He remarked that the pre-printed aphorism on this page was an apt one, in light of her visit. “The magic of her personality clears the spirit of such as come within its influence of nagging weariness and depression,” he wrote. “Her name is a pleasant one to close a pleasant year with.”
google/topeka
April 1st, 2010
We didn’t reach this decision lightly; after all, we had a fair amount of brand equity tied up in our old name. But the more we surfed around (the former) Topeka’s municipal website, the more kinship we felt with this fine city at the edge of the Great Plains.
In fact, Topeka Google Mayor Bill Bunten expressed it best: “Don’t be fooled. Even Google recognizes that all roads lead to Kansas, not just yellow brick ones.”
pun
December 27th, 2009
http://www.wizards-of-os.org/archiv/wos_3/sprecher/l_p/armin_medosch.html
weather phenomena
December 26th, 2009
from: National Geographic, December 2009. “South Georgia rises sheer and stark from the sea”, by Kenneth Brower
South Georgia sometimes seems like a time-lapse film of weather – one of those frantic abridgments in which clouds boil across the sky while a stroboscobic flickering of light and shadow passes over the land. You sail into a bay in bright sunshine and air scrubbed clean by the ceaseless circumpolar wind. You really can see forever. The steep headlands are in intense, improbable green. Depth of field is infinite, from the kelp beds in the foreground to the snows of the peaks beyond. A glacier, cradled in its high cirque, sends a skein of streams down the rock wall, icy rivulets glittering so bright they hurt the eyes. Then, moments later, like Dorothy whirled back to Kansas, you look out on that same emerald Oz rendered suddenly in gray halftones. A new front has blown in. The sun is just a dimly glowing patch of cloud across which flurries of snowflakes swirl and eddy, dark patterns against the glow. South Georgia suffers from a meteorological version of bipolar disorder.
Graphic Novel
November 30th, 2009
9 weeks on the list: THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ, by Eric Shanower and Skottie Young. (Marvel Entertainment, $29.99.) Dorothy travels to the land of OZ, graphic novel style.
Pillsbury
November 30th, 2009
clicks – a lot.
As the bubble closes in on her, Doctor Beverly Crusher says:
November 30th, 2009
“Click my heels togehter 3 times and I’m back in Kansas – could it be that simple?”
“Remember Me”, Star Trek the Next Generation, Episode 79; time code 40:53
psychedelic chick has the slippers
November 16th, 2009
Now also in Second Life - Credit Dorothy
November 16th, 2009
This image shows a page from Lynne Heller’s comic book “The Adventures of Nar Duell in Second Life.”
This is Lynne’s website: http://www.lynneheller.com/
oh my
October 29th, 2009
“Pandas, Lions, and Dragons, oh my!”: How White Adoptive Parents Construct Chineseness
Andrea Louie
Journal of Asian American Studies, Volume 12, Number 3, October 2009, pp. 285-320
from Chicago
September 8th, 2009
Jeffrey Baer, chanel 11 pledge drive: the Harlem Globe Trotters are not from Harlem, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is not from the North Pole, and the Wizard of Oz is not from Kansas – they are all from Chicago.
The Economics of Fairy Tales
September 1st, 2009
By Edward L. Glaeser, NYT, September 1, 2009
Perhaps the most famous example of economics-in-the-enchantment is “The Wizard of Oz,” which has been interpreted by Henry Littlefield and Hugh Rockoff as an allegory about the monetary policy debates of the populist era. According to this view, the Scarecrow represents the farmer, the Tin Woodsman is the working man, the Cowardly Lion is William Jennings Bryan, the Wicked Witches of the East and West are Grover Cleveland and William McKinley, and the Wizard, associated with green money and ounces of gold (Oz), is Marcus Alonzo Hanna himself.
oh my
August 25th, 2009
from a Facebook invitation sent by Area Chicago:
Bars, Businesses, Benefits, Oh MY!
To all guests of Bars, (da) Business & Benefits
This evening, as part of AREA Chicago’s ongoing More Money Issues event series, we will continue our conversation with leaders from Mucca Pazza, The Hideout, Backstory Cafe, Epiphany Church, Kuma’s Corner, Quennect 4, and Danny’s Tavern, among others, about the important role that independent business can play in raising consistent resources for activist and non-profit communities.
360
August 3rd, 2009
Kurt Andersen follows the yellow brick road through America’s favorite story and discovers places in the Land of Oz more wonderful, and weirder, than you ever imagined.
cold man
May 8th, 2009
click and clack
April 21st, 2009
Nova – Car of the Future – Click and Clack go to a geothermal field in Iceland: “where are we? I don’t know, we are not in Kansas anymore.”
camp
April 15th, 2009
” I just came back from a trip to Oz”, Meshach Taylor as Hollywood Montrose in “Mannequin: On the Move”, after wearing the mannequin’s necklace for a few moments.
home
April 2nd, 2009
from today’s NYT
Whoa! A big day for the daily reference …
March 28th, 2009
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102438008
Fraser
March 13th, 2009
Kelsey Grammer in the episode ‘Fortysomething’: “I’m sort of like the Wizard of Oz.” (1994)
The White House gave Gordon Brown 25 films on DVD
March 6th, 2009
Obama's DVD gift to Brown - it's the thought that counts
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/mar/06/obama-dvd-brown
Kansas
February 7th, 2009
from e-flux:
Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA)
Thomas Bayrle.
I’ve a Feeling We’re Not in Kansas Anymore
6 February – 19 April 2009
Under the title I’ve a Feeling We’re Not in Kansas Anymore, the Contemporary Art Museum of Barcelona not only presents, for the first time, a large array of Thomas Bayrle’s works, but also highlights the artist’s ability to take us to a different place in his work, a place far from what has become familiar, where we can consider how humans and the technology they invent can create or destroy the meaning of things.
This exhibition offers an overall vision of the praxis of German artist Thomas Bayrle (Berlin, 1937) from the end of the 1960s until now. The beginnings of his work were conceived in a key historical, political and social moment in the recent history of Europe, at the end of the ‘60s. This was a moment defined by the need to create a new conception of the cultural identity and aesthetic sensibility of a country in a state of upheaval, Germany. Frankfurt, the city Thomas Bayrle was living and working in, became one of the most important centres of protest. The economic miracle following the Second World War had reached its end, and the need to completely revise the ideological bases and structure of existing hierarchies had become urgent for a generation that felt the need to write history in other terms, and to create cultural alliances different from those of preceding generations. The atmosphere generated by the American presence in Germany, the crisis in the Middle East an d the war in Vietnam undoubtedly marked the starting point of an œuvre that has remained attentive to the possibility that change can be produced in the world we know, and that from this, another new and different world might emerge.
This exhibition provides a thematic and chronological tour through his work as a whole, from the photographic collages of the 1950s; the ‘machines’, as the artist calls them (oil paintings that turn out to be mechanical toys in which the figures can be activated by the spectator); to his 16 mm film collages and the digital animation work created in the nineties. A vision of the whole leads to another reading of the relationship between popular and high culture in a moment and a context – Europe – in which modernity sees the possibility of reaching the general public via the culture industry.
...
Bayrle’s work grows out of that we might call ‘conceptual enthusiasm’: the belief that the real is just as susceptible to being mythified as the mythical is capable of engendering strong effects of reality.
Scarecrow
February 1st, 2009
I’m very excited to have been alerted by Jennifer Geigel Mikulay about this Super Bowl ad
The Ascent of Money
January 31st, 2009
by Niall Ferguson
Home-owning Democracy
“An Englishman’s home is his castle, or so the saying goes. Americans, too, know that (as Dorothy says in The Wizard of Oz) there’s no place like home – even if the homes do all look rather similar. But the origins of the Anglo-American model of the highly geared home-owning family lie as much in the realm of government policy as in the realm of culture.” page 241
Wicked Witches
January 25th, 2009
No Time for Poetry
By FRANK RICH
NYT, January 24, 2009
PRESIDENT Obama did not offer his patented poetry in his Inaugural Address. He did not add to his cache of quotations in Bartlett’s. He did not recreate J.F.K.’s inaugural, or Lincoln’s second, or F.D.R.’s first. The great orator was mainly at his best when taking shots at Bush and Cheney, who, in black hat and wheelchair, looked like the misbegotten spawn of the evil Mr. Potter in “It’s a Wonderful Life” and the Wicked Witch of the West.
Good Witch
January 4th, 2009
From “Mirror Reflections on Time’s Dualities” by By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: December 31, 2008
“It’s always best to start at the beginning,” Glinda the good witch tells Dorothy as she waves her wand at the Yellow Brick Road, which of course really starts back in Kansas with three farmhands, a witchy neighbor and a song about somewhere over the rainbow.
Madoff
December 30th, 2008
“He had a secret formula, kind of like no one could look. Like the man behind the curtain.”
ABC news, 11:00pm
peep
October 2nd, 2008
NYT, This Economy does not compute, By MARK BUCHANAN, October 1, 2008
“Something of the attitude of economic traditionalists spilled out a number of years ago at a conference where economists and physicists met to discuss new approaches to economics. As one physicist who was there tells me, a prominent economist objected that the use of computational models amounted to “cheating” or “peeping behind the curtain,” and that respectable economics, by contrast, had to be pursued through the proof of infallible mathematical theorems.”
dropping a house
August 31st, 2008
“There’s no place like home. We’re going to drop a house on some really bad politicians.” Description of Mardi Gras Float, American Experience: New Orleans.
the three
August 15th, 2008
Rothenberg, Ryman, and Johns? Oh my!
from: http://anaba.blogspot.com/2004_12_01_archive.html
PGA Players Championship
May 11th, 2008
It’s a very windy day at the golf course. “Murph, we are not in Kansas anymore.”“Well, thank you, Dottie.”
seen at the LAX Hertz auto rental …
May 10th, 2008
tinman
May 2nd, 2008
American Idol
April 8th, 2008
Jason Castro sings a VERY nice version of Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s “Somewhere over the Rainbow”.
Surrender Already, Dorothy
March 30th, 2008
.... Hillary sunnily riposted that she likes long movies. Her favorite as a girl was “The Wizard of Oz,” so surely she spots the “Surrender Dorothy” sign in the sky and the bad portent of the ladies of “The View” burbling to Obama about how sexy he is …..
Castro
February 19th, 2008
http://www.flowgo.com/funny/13147_ding-dong-castros-dead.html
the real ruby slippers
January 23rd, 2008
...tonight on Oprah, “with their own bodyguard, in a box backstage”.
Sunday afternoon at three
December 8th, 2007
..... just heard an ad on NPR for a show about the Wizard of Oz (“a source of metaphors for everything”) ... Sunday, 12/9/07, 3pm
How Hollywood Saved God
November 10th, 2007
Hanna Rosin, “How Hollywood Saved God”, The Atlantic, December 2007: “The series builds up to a cataclysmic war between Heaven and Earth, on the model of Paradise Lost (the source of the phrase his dark materials). But in Pullman’s version, God is revealed to be a Charlatan more pitiable even than OZ. His death scene is memorable only for its lack of drama and dignity: ...”
NYT Halloween
November 3rd, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/11/02/nyregion/20071102_WEEKINPICTURES_SLIDESHOW_8.html
Ova
July 15th, 2007
NYT. From: Your Gamete, Myself, by Peggy Orenstein: Becky, who asked me to use a nickname, sat down and began scrolling through pictures on the Web site of Ova the Rainbow, one of the (regrettably named) agency sites she browsed last fall during her search for an egg donor. “When I first started doing this it was really emotional for me,” she said. “I kept thinking about that kids’ book, ‘Are You My Mother?’ I’m looking through these pictures of young women and feeling like: ‘Oh, my God! Is this the mother of my future child? Is this the mother of my future child?’ ”
democrats
June 7th, 2007
WTTW11, Chicago Tonight; Phil Ponce responds to Bill Geist, who mentioned that his father had warned him that there were democrats in Chicago :”Lions and tigers and democrats, oh my!”
Sarah Dreher, too
May 27th, 2007
Sarah Dreher, “Other World”, 1993, p. 174; “The air suddenly turned cooler. A breeze came up. In the distance they could hear a rumbling sound, like boxcars rolling slowly along a track. Stoner shivered. “I know it’s irrelevant, but I really wish I knew where we were. I thought we’d just kind of hover around inside the tunnel or something. Outside, at the very least. I feel like a character in The Wizard of Oz.” “Oh, I’m so sorry”, Aunt Hermione said. “I know you hated that movie.”
RAPE IN THE MEDIA
May 11th, 2007
Rove the Wizard
April 15th, 2007
New York Times. Editorial. The Fantasy Behind the Scandal. ...”The only solution is to get these issues out into the open. It is good that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will finally testify in the Senate this week. But Mr. Rove, who seems to be at the heart of this affair, should also be required to testify under oath — and in public. Even the Wizard of Oz eventually came out from behind the curtain.”
Glenda on SNL
April 14th, 2007
Kristen: “Look how excited I am. I get to play my dream role, Glenda the Good Witch”
Lorne: “Hi, the Wizard of Oz thing was cut.”
Pauline Oliveros, too!
April 13th, 2007
Software for People. Smith Publications. 1984
Divisions Underground. page 99. “The Patchwork Girl of Oz was made with golden ears. The Crooked Magician brought her to life with magic powder. He provided march music via phonograph so that her first sensation would be of music. .... The Patchwork Girl had other ideas” “Scraps”, (as she was called by her friends) first action was to accidentally knock the vial of Powder of Life out of the Crooked Magician’s hand. All of the rest of the powder spilled over the phonograph, thus bringing it to life as well. “You were bad enough before,” said the magician, resentfully, “but a live phonograph is enough to drive every sane person in the land of Oz stark crazy.” “No insults, please,” answered the phonograph in a surly tone. “You did it, my boy; don’t blame me.” ...”
Rags and Patches. page 112: ” Said the March Hare to Alice, “Take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves.” That infernal machine is still chasing me all over and out of the Land of Oz. ...”
page 113: “I adore stuffing,” said the Patchwork Girl. “Well, as for that, my head is stuffed with pumpkin seeds,” declared Jack. I use them for brains, and when they are fresh, I am intellectual. ...”
page 117: ” Because! Alice! Where are you? Well – Alice is still among the missing but I did find Charlotte Moorman at Mills College in Oakland, grandly doing her grand thing. Lewis Carroll would have loved her! and Frank Baum would surely have found Charlotte in Oz fingering her chameleon cello.”
B+W to color
April 10th, 2007
WTTW, Chicago Tonight: Phil Ponce talks to several food critics about becoming a food critic by slowly being exposed to more dishes and restaurants: “...like the Wizard of Oz, going from black and white to color.”
YBR (yellow brick road)
March 31st, 2007
At last, the yellow brick road becomes accessible; milwaukee journal sentinel; by Laurel Walker: You know the story, but here it is – “The Wizard of Oz Unplugged” – with a powerful new twist and an intriguing cast of characters.
There’s Tariq, the tin man, who sits in the wheelchair and wants to walk again. There’s Lionel, the blind man, who wants to see. And there’s Scarecrow, the brain-injured, who wants his foggy memory repaired. The actors who take these characters along the Waukesha Civic Theatre’s version of a yellow brick road over the next week are new to the stage. ... read more
Rove
March 17th, 2007
NBC Nightly News; unidentified speaker: “Karl Rove is the evil Wizard of Oz for democrats on the hill.”
MBC (Man Behind the Curtain)
March 11th, 2007
NBC; Chris Matthews Show: Chris Matthews: “I don’t think Cheney enjoys the role of the man behind the curtain.”
weather
March 4th, 2007
NPR; ... Linda clutches her Dorothy doll (according to Patrick) clutches her Glenda-the-good-witch doll (according to Scott) after a Tornado destroyed her home in Enterprise, Alabama. She collects Wizard of Oz memorabilia …
more than one
February 26th, 2007
Leading Creatively: The Art of Making Sense
Charles J. Palus; David M. Horth
Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 30, No. 4, Special Issue: The Aesthetic Face of Leadership.” (Winter, 1996), pp. 53-68.
“The idea that reality is constructed evokes the activity of the wizard behind the curtain. Society often relegates leadership to “wizards”; such heroic, talented, individual leaders are undeniably a key part of many leadership situations. Inevitably. there are layers of wizardry beside, beneath, and beyond the wizard.”
Carl Hiaasen, too
February 26th, 2007
In “Lucky You”, page 228:
“Good. Here’s more: I’m not feeling so brave myself.”
OK. When we get to Oz, we’ll ask the wizard to give you some courage.”
Krome said. “Toto too?”
“Yes dear. Toto too.”
tinman
February 12th, 2007
Char wears Tinman on a commercial shoot.
Slippers at the Smithsonian
February 7th, 2007
The National Museum of American History collects and preserves more than 3 million artifacts. We take care of everything from the original Star-Spangled Banner and Abraham Lincoln’s top hat to Dizzy Gillespie’s angled trumpet and Dorothy’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz. Our collections form a vast and fascinating mosaic of American life.
power
January 26th, 2007
The Reader, Section 1, p. 9, Our Town: Elections, by Mick Dumke: The Men Behind the Curtain – Most voters have never heard their names, but these two well-connected guys decide who’s allowed to run for office in Chicago. The two current members of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, Richard Cowen and Langdon Neal, ....
healthy food
January 26th, 2007
Check Please, WTTW: the owner of the raw food restaurant Karyn’s is interviewed: “... you may think lettuce, tomato and cucumbers, oh my, you can’t live on that …”
to The White House
January 21st, 2007
NPR, Sunday Morning Edition; as part of a sound collage at the beginning of the show Senator Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, is heard: “These are the first steps on the Yellow Brick Road to the White House.”
at Intelligentsia in the Monadnock Building, in Chicago
January 16th, 2007
A customer is describing a roadtrip in Kenia: ” ... and we were driving lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my …”
Letters from Iwo Jima
January 10th, 2007
Clint Eastwood talks to Terri Gross about his new film. When asked about the washed out, blue-gray colors he responds: “I didn’t want it in Technicolor, like the Wizard of Oz.”
a CD of the soundtrack …
December 30th, 2006
... is for sale in the giftshop of K21 in Düsseldorf.
Glenda
December 6th, 2006
WWME TV, “Bewitched”, Charlie Leech, a detective, to Samantha: “I’ve got you figured more like Glenda, you know, the good witch from the Wizard of Oz.”
Curtain
December 5th, 2006
Vanity Fair, December 2006, by Todd S. Purdum: “MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN Rove’s hopes of a long-term “rolling re-alignment” around the Republican Party may founder on his very methods.”
Tinman
November 23rd, 2006
WGN. ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’.
Question: “In the movie “The Wizard of Oz”, what is the name of the Kansas City farm hand who later becomes the Tinman: Burt, Hickory, Hunk or Zeke?
Tesla in Oz
November 18th, 2006
From Make Magazine, Vol 8, 2006, “Toys and Games”, Hands on Egghead on Nicola Tesla: “There may not be adequate words to describe the extreme events that took place within Tesla’s skull. The shattering flashes of light that paralyzed him were likely migraines. The childish bedtime trips into imaginary, Oz-like cities, where he befriended people and flew through the air, were lucid dreams.”
One last living Munchkin
November 13th, 2006
NYT; By CHARLIE LeDUFF: American Album; Step Right Up, Ladies and Gents, to See the End of an Oddity:
... “Now, Poobah here is the king of the Pygmies,” Mr. Hall yaps. The crowd comes closer.
Poobah’s real name is Pete Terhurne.
“Poobah comes all the way from Beverly Hills.”
Poobah grew up in Minnesota, met Mr. Hall at a carnival there in the mid-’50s.
“Poobah is the last living munchkin from ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ ”
Poobah first saw the movie as a television rerun.
“He is the star of 84 Hollywood pictures, 114 television shows and numerous Broadway musicals.”
Poobah couldn’t sing to save his life. But Poobah says he doesn’t mind. It’s a living. He says he loves Mr. Hall. And it beats retirement.
“Now, watch as Poobah eats the fire.”
Poobah does so for the umpteenth time today.
Four last living Munchkins
November 12th, 2006
WGN teaser for The News: ... last week Robin and Pat took on the Munchkins from the Wizard of Oz , and this week …
book title
November 9th, 2006
Rajiv Chandrasekaran; Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone. finalist, National Book Award.
Kansas elections
November 6th, 2006
Dean Reynolds, ABC, reporting from Kansas, adressing the unpredictability of the election:”It’s almost enough for a visitor to think ‘gee, we’re not in Kansas anymore.’ ”
because…
November 1st, 2006
NBC: ad for “Medium”: “she’s a supermom, she’s supernatural … and we know this because? ... because of the wonderful things she does!”
Announcement
October 24th, 2006
Event date: Thursday Oct 26th, 2006
Gallery Talk
Dzine: Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Thursday, October 26, 12:15pm
Michigan Avenue Galleries, Chicago Cultural Center
With Gregory Knight, Deputy Commissioner/Visual Arts, Chicago Depatment
of Cultural Affairs.
Dzine: Somewhere Over the Rainbow is on view in the Michigan Avenue
Galleries through October 29.
Chicago Cultural Center http://www.chicagoculturalcenter.org 78 E. Washington St. Chicago, IL 312-744-6630
Good Girls Go Bad
October 19th, 2006
NYT, STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM: ... Donning one of the many girlish costumes that sexualize classic characters from books, including “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” “Cinderella” and “The Wizard of Oz,” can be campy, female sartorial humor, said Professor Gill. It can be a way to embrace the fictional characters women loved as children while simultaneously taking a swipe at them, she said. “The humor gives you a sense of power and confidence that just being sexy doesn’t,” she said.
Dr. Tolman added that it is possible some women are using Halloween as a “safe space,” a time to play with sexuality. By taking it over the top, she said, they “make fun of this bill of goods that’s being sold to them.”
“Hey, if we can claim Halloween as a safe space to question these images being sold to us, I think that’s a great idea,” Dr. Tolman said.
But it may be only an idea. Or, more fittingly in this case, a fantasy. ...
most sincerely dead
October 18th, 2006
The first sentence in “Flattened Fauna – a Field Guide to Common Animals of Roads, Streets, and Highways”, by Roger M. Knutson reads: “This is a book about animals that, like the Wicked Witch of the East in The Wizard of Oz, are not just merely dead, but really most sincerely dead. These are animals in which even flies have lost interest.”
‘Through the Children’s Gate’
October 15th, 2006
from NYT, First Chapter, By ADAM GOPNIK: ... “I had arrived in Oz only to think, Well, you don’t live in Oz, do you?”
oh my
October 12th, 2006
NPR, 2:55 pm, “The World”, Geo Quiz, describing the Blair Drummond Safari Park:”There are lions and tigers and bears, but so far no flying monkeys.”
The Wizard
October 11th, 2006
NBC news, 6:03 pm, “... the man behind the curtain … is indicted on corruption charges …. Antoin “Tony” Rezko ….
Tinman
October 6th, 2006
Overheard by Patrick on set of a TV commercial in downtown Los Angeles: “I mean I suppose I could go as the Tinman, but that would just be boring.”
“Things Fall Apart”
October 2nd, 2006
Paul Krugman, NY Times
“So the right-wing coalition is showing signs of coming apart. It seems that we’re not in Kansas anymore. In fact, Kansas itself doesn’t seem to be in Kansas anymore.”
Follow the Red Brick Road …
September 30th, 2006
.. is the title of an accepted session proposal for the 2007 College Art Association Conference.
Not In Kansas
September 16th, 2006
This Old House banter.
Contractor: “These bricks came from Kansas.”
Norm: “Who would have thought that you could find bricks in Kansas that match our house in Washington.”
Contractor: ” That’s right, we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Oz the dog, and a member of the same household
September 4th, 2006
Kansas into Oz
August 31st, 2006
from CODEPINK: .... CODEPINK who responded to our alert and supported the transformation of dirt into Paradise, or as Cindy said, Kansas into Oz.
prize
August 19th, 2006
on NPR’s, “What do you know with Michael Feldman”, a rerun, the commemorative pop-up book “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” is offered as a prize for the What Do You Know Quiz.
purse sighting
August 15th, 2006
Tinman
August 12th, 2006
August 12, 2006
Horse #2 in the Arlington Million Thoroughbred Race is named Tinman.
There’s No Place like Home
August 12th, 2006
August 12, 06
CBS
in an ad for NFL Sunday it is announced that “James Brown will be back”, followed by a litany of “there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, ...”
yellow brick road
August 12th, 2006
from last Tuesday: Patrick was in San Juan, PR. His assistant, Yasidis, told him that the blue bricks of Old San Juan “look like the yellow brick road at night when the street lights are on.”
Untrampled Vineyard
August 12th, 2006
As told to Bethany Lyttle
NYT: August 11, 2006
“... Cathy: California wine country is beautiful, but what we love about the Finger Lakes is seeing the vineyards stretch off into the distance toward all of our clear blue lakes. And unlike Long Island, it’s not crowded. Before buying this place, we looked all over the country in search of a special place. But it was like Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz.” There’s no place like home. It takes only 50 minutes for us to get here from our home in Painted Post. ...”
Family Fare
August 12th, 2006
By LAUREL GRAEBER
NYT: August 11, 2006
...”He will demonstrate this lost art in four half-hour sessions at Sunnyside, the Tarrytown, N.Y., museum that is the former estate of Washington Irving. “It’s not too unlikely that Irving had it done himself,” Mr. Clark said. He will dress the part — “a little like Professor Marvel at the beginning of ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ ” he said — and take his subjects from the audience. ...”
The Emerald City, in All Its Colors
August 12th, 2006
By GRACE GLUECK
NYT: August 11, 2006
“The Wonderful Art of Oz” continues through Oct. 22 at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, 125 West Bay Road, Amherst, Mass.; (413) 658-1100.
“CLICK your heels together three times if you know who L. Frank Baum (1856-1919) was, and why his 150th birthday this year should be celebrated. No? Well, as any Ozophile can tell you, he was the author of what is still one of the most popular children’s books in the world (eat your heart out, Harry Potter), “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” published in 1900. Even before the legendary movie starring Judy Garland was made in 1939, Baum’s creation had become a classic of children’s literature.
That’s reason enough to honor his sesquicentennial. So the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art here has mounted “The Wonderful Art of Oz,” a wonderful show tracking Oz-inspired artists, from W. W. Denslow, who drew the brilliant illustrations for the first edition, to more recent interpreters, including Maurice Sendak, Andy Warhol, Kiki Smith and Barry Moser. ...”
Oz was outside the door
August 5th, 2006
BILL MOYERS ON FAITH & REASON
Bill Moyers and Pema Chödrön . August 4, 2006
PEMA CHÖDRÖN: The first thing that happens is you climb the walls. This is personal with me. It doesn’t happen anymore. But because the detox is so intense, I remember thinking like, someone coming to the door to just drop off a note or something. And I felt like I was in Kansas, and Oz was outside the door. You know, it’s like sensory deprivation. But, gradually, what begins to happen is that you sink so deeply into what life has been distracting you from. Because it’s a definition of no distractions. That’s the purpose of the retreat, no distractions. You quickly learn that distractions are not just phone calls and emails and outer phenomena. Our own mind, and our longings, and our cravings, and our fantasies and everything are also major distractions. And, as time goes on, and you’re feeding it less because no talking. You begin to sink deeper into the undistracted state. And then you begin to realize that life is always pulling you away from being fully present.
“Electronic Superhighway”
August 3rd, 2006
WTTW, 6:48 PM: Kansas gets the ‘Wizard of Oz’ in Nam June Paik’s artwork “Electronic Superhighway” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Somewhere Over The Rainbow
July 27th, 2006
On NBC’s “America’s Got Talent”, contestant #4 of the “crazy caliber talent” played “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” on the glass harmonium (a glass instrument invented by Thomas Jefferson).