26 Miles, 385 Yards

Tomorrow is Marathon Monday! I shall, for the seventh time, tackle the Boston Marathon. I will be jogging this one in, folks! Age and injury have conspired against me, and I suspect that my days of sub-4:00 marathons and sub-1:45 half marathons are behind me.

The injury is the outcome of overuse, combined with a car accident six years ago, a few weeks after that year’s BAA marathon. I was hit from behind by an elderly man and pushed into the car in front of me. This damage is from the initial impact…

…and this is from the second collision.

I braked as hard as I could to avoid hitting the other car, and this was the result. A sprained ankle.

After a couple of months I was able to start running again. I thought everything was all right — it felt all right — but beneath the ligament that had been torn, a tendon was shifting, and rubbing, and building up scar tissue, as seen in this MRI. When the problem became serious I had trouble walking, let alone running. In fact, the reason I started blogging was because I had extra time that would have otherwise been spent on the road.

Thanks to two rounds of physical therapy, and some excellent custom orthotic inserts made by Jerry Pratt (no relation) after more than a year I was able to start running again. My right ankle is still comparatively weak, but I can use it. The question now is, will it hold up and go the distance? Less than 24 hours from now, I will know the answer.

Mr. Brown You’ve Got A Lovely “Daughter”

The interracial Star Trek kiss between Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura is a famous moment in 60’s TV. Petula Clark reversed the genders in her own famous 60’s interracial TV moment, and thereby raised an even bigger ruckus. The director of the show, Steve Binder, tells what happened in this Archive of American Television interview. Thanks to my twinster Jean for spotting this.

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And here is the scene itself, from Petula, April 9, 1968. Binder also directed the famous Elvis comeback special later in ’68, and ten years later he directed yet another legendary hour of TV, the Star Wars Holiday Special!

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On Friday, not far from here, in Boston, UK PM Gordon Brown will be giving the only speech of his visit to the United States. Mr. Brown, could you please request that Her Majesty The Queen grant British-born Pet the well-deserved title of Dame? Speaking of the PETition, there’s a new one worth noting. A request that the Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, be formally commemorated.

Battlestar Colbertica

There was a new Tek Jansen installment on Stephen Colbert last week. I’ll leave it to you to find it on ComedyCentral.com. There was also this funny pass-off from Jon Stewart to Colbert.
[flv:/Video/2008/APR/ColbertGalactica.flv 440 330]Thanks to my buddy Bismo, we’re very much into watching Battlestar Galatica on DVD. Very impressive with Emmy-winning special effects by Bismo’s friend Mojo Lebowitz, as seen on the Panasonic PT-AX200U projector! We’re about to start season 3, so the last thing we knew, the Cylons were occupying the new terrestrial settlement. Please, no spoilers!

Swipe-Meister Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein was, in his day, celebrated as one of the darlings of the elite and effete fine art circles for his gigantic “Pop Art” canvases. He was also appreciated by comic book fans for promoting what had been, until then, considered the lowest of the illustrative arts.

But Lichtenstein had a secret, and comic book fans knew it. He was, as is known in the comics biz, a hack, because everything he did was a swipe from actual comic book panels. Some are instantly recognizable characters, but many were taken from romance comic books, with no credit given to the original artist. Quite a few of them were drawn by John Romita, before he went to Marvel Comics and took over The Amazing Spider-Man from Steve Ditko. Go here for more about that. Click the picture of the John Romita comic book cover to enlarge. This weekend, my best buddy D.F. Rogers will be seeing John Romita Sr. at the New York Comic Con. I wish I could go with him, but I have to pick up my number for the Boston Marathon.

Back in late 2006, Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam featured an art gallery show called Deconstructing Lichtenstein, assembled by David Barsalou. One of the first times Barsalou exhibited the products of his research was in 2002, at the Arno Maris Gallery at my alma mater, Westfield State College. I should point out that Arno Maris knew the artwork of John Romita, because I was the one who showed it to him. In 2002 I donated $500 to the college, specifying that it was for the Arno Maris gallery. I hope my money helped make the Deconstructing Lichtenstein exhibit possible. Go to the link in this paragraph and check out the many examples of original source material that were “borrowed” by Lichtenstein. Here’s Alex Beam’s article.

ALEX BEAM
Lichtenstein: creator or copycat?
By Alex Beam, Globe Columnist | October 18, 2006

Art teacher David Barsalou has an interesting avocation. He has found and catalog ed almost every comic book panel later blown up and sold for megabucks by 1960s Op Art icon Roy Lichtenstein. So far, Barsalou has about 140. You will see a sample on this page, or go to his website, Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein.

Color me naive, but I never thought Lichtenstein’s work was a direct copy of scenes from comic books. I assumed that he stylized certain scenes suggested by the comic vernacular of the 1950s and 1960s. “He tried to make it seem as though he was making major compositional changes in his work, but he wasn’t,” says Barsalou, who teaches at the High School of Commerce in Springfield. “The critics are of one mind that he made major changes, but if you look at the work , he copied them almost verbatim. Only a few were original.”
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