Kottage kitsch.

Monday, Monday (da dahh, da da dah dah). So much to do (da dahh, da da dah dah). Instead have some links, while I go take a shower so I can leave at 6:30 a.m. for Lansing, and here my singalong collapses somewhat. Fortunately, the links aren’t terrible:

Laura Miller at Salon stretches a bit to link Thomas Kinkade to George W. Bush, but not too-too far — they both peddled kitsch, after all. I didn’t know — or rather, I knew and then forgot — that the painter of light showed evidence of a serious drinking problem, and his premature death may well have been a result of same. His empire of kitsch seemed to be in financial trouble, but that’s nothing new; as a feisty interior decorator back in FW told me years ago, “Once he started whoring himself out on QVC, it was all over.” The story contains a link to a 2001 Susan Orlean profile of Kinkade. She visited the Knight Wallace Fellows my year, and revealed she’d made a bet with him, that “a major American museum” would have a show of his work “in (Kinkade’s) lifetime.” It was for a million dollars, too. I guess this means Orlean wins, but I don’t know how she’d collect. Anyway, it sounds like there’s not much left in the kitty.

People have known it’s possible to hack those flashing highway signs for some time. Someone hacked one on I-94 night before last to read, “Trayvon (is) a (big racial slur that sometimes trips internet filters).” What a world.

How my colleague Ron French almost killed Mike Wallace (sort of). A good one.

Finally, a supercut of various famous actors’ first screen appearances. Because why not.

By the time you read this, I’ll be sleepin’. Or drivin’. Happy Tuesday to all, and let’s hope it goes fast.

Posted at 12:13 am in Media, Movies, Popculch |
 

70 responses to “Kottage kitsch.”

  1. alex said on April 10, 2012 at 7:19 am

    Speaking of the Painter of Shite, here’s an exhibition you won’t want to miss.

    On edit: The slide show at the above link seems to be momentarily f*cked.

    In other news: So I live in the most sexually repressed state in the nation. But, hey, I already knew that. I remember statistical data from the 1980s that showed Indianapolis, one-tenth the size of NYC, had about fourfold more sexual assaults than the latter in any given year.

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  2. coozledad said on April 10, 2012 at 8:04 am

    They ought to have a class in art school on how to drink and paint properly. If Kinkade was self medicating to help shut down his critical thinking at the easel, chances are good every day at work was a brush with alcoholic poisoning.

    Goya seems to have been pretty good at it.

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  3. beb said on April 10, 2012 at 8:06 am

    I knew that Jack Nicholson appeared in Little Shop of Horrors, I didn’t realize that it was his first film appearance. A lot of the first appearances in the video nancy links to weren’t nearly as interesting as that. Jamie Lee Curtis not only debuted in Halloween, she starred in it; likely Eddie Murphy in 48 Hours. Tom Selleck, almost unrecognizable without his mustache, on the other hand, was an interesting catch.

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  4. Dorothy said on April 10, 2012 at 8:25 am

    Do you leave at 6:30 AM EVERY morning – and yet are posting just after midnight on the same day? Man oh day, Nance, you are one amazing woman. I think we all knew that already but it doesn’t hurt to remind the group from time to time.

    I haven’t gone to any links yet but read beb’s comment just now. I’m going to take a guess that Tom Selleck’s debut was in Coma, right?

    EDIT: I was wrong!

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  5. nancy said on April 10, 2012 at 8:29 am

    I go to Lansing one or two mornings a week, and I’m almost always asleep when the blog posts. I use the miracle of WordPress’ scheduling capability, just because I like entries to be posted on the day we mainly comment on them. Alan, Mr. Editor, pointed out some “today”/”yesterday” discrepancies last night, but meh. We ain’t puttin’ up a shuttle here, folks.

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  6. Deborah said on April 10, 2012 at 8:49 am

    I have jury duty today. I’ve never been elected before, hope I do this time.

    Sure seems like Kinkade was a flim flam man.

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  7. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 10, 2012 at 9:09 am

    Enjoy the video, Deborah! I wish there’d been a Schoolhouse Rock for jury duty.

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  8. Suzanne said on April 10, 2012 at 9:40 am

    Thomas Kinkade…another evangelical icon to be found less than the evangelical set wished him to be. It seems he put his soul on the altar of QVC money and he paid a great price for it. Or he was just a run of the mill alcoholic.

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  9. Julie Robinson said on April 10, 2012 at 9:59 am

    According to this article from the San Jose Mercury News, Kinkade and his wife were legally separated and there was another woman: http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_20356474/finding-cause-los-gatos-painter-thomas-kinkades-death?source=pkg

    I’m wondering if this news will cause my right-wing Iowa family to take their Kinkades down from the wall.

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  10. Bitter Scribe said on April 10, 2012 at 10:00 am

    Kinkade was positively inspirational compared with this guy.

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  11. nancy said on April 10, 2012 at 10:04 am

    My friend Bob called McNaughton what would happen if Kinkade was locked in a room and force-fed Glenn Beck tapes, Clockwork Orange-style.

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  12. brian stouder said on April 10, 2012 at 10:12 am

    We ain’t puttin’ up a shuttle here, folks.

    So, how many years before a phrase like that one draws a blank stare from the young folks?

    I remember when I was a kiddo, a popular refrain – when some seemingly simple task simply could not be accomplished – was “We can put a man on the moon, but we can’t _______(fill in the blank)_____”. And that now sounds dated – aside from the fact that we cannot put anyone on the moon, just now.

    Aside from that, I remember Jack Nicholson showing up in Mayberry (circa 1967?) – I think his wife and he had left their baby at the courthouse (or some such).

    And aside from that, the presumably fooling with highway informational signs, as the chucklehead who felt compelled to make the Trayvon remark did, are also eliminating whatever information the highway workers were trying to make available. How long before a family-laden minivan (for example) flips over after swerving to miss a mowing crew (or whatever), and we have several negligent homicides to deal with?

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  13. coozledad said on April 10, 2012 at 10:13 am

    I think McNaughton is just an Odd Nerdrum who had his bike stolen by the New Black Panthers.

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  14. Kirk said on April 10, 2012 at 10:28 am

    Jack Nicholson showed up on Andy Griffith another time, in which Aunt Bee held out against 11 male jurors to keep Jack from being wrongfully convicted of theft.

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  15. Deborah said on April 10, 2012 at 10:32 am

    That should have been “selected” not “elected”. I’m sitting in a large sunfilled room in Daley Center looking out over the city. I can even see a bit of the lake from here.This isn’t bad at all. Until they turn on the TV.

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  16. Little Bird said on April 10, 2012 at 10:34 am

    In the nine years we’ve lived in Chicago, Deborah has just now gotten her first jury duty summons. I, on the other hand, have had to go three times now. And she’s lucky, she’s serving downtown.

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  17. Sue said on April 10, 2012 at 10:39 am

    Deborah, the only time I got called for jury duty was to the Criminal Courts building, 26th & S. California. I lived in Barrington at the time. Whenever anyone quibbles that I’m not actually ‘from’ Chicago, I say hell yes I am and that’s one of the (many) things I point to.

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  18. Icarus said on April 10, 2012 at 10:39 am

    “We ain’t puttin’ up a shuttle here, folks.” i’m gonna use that as either a FB status or in the next corporate america meeting were we spend more time trying to make something perfect than trying to fix the problem.

    Funny someone else mentioned no longer going to the moon. We were talking about it at Easter dinner and the question was raised. Didn’t we stop going because it was too costly? Shouldn’t the cost of something go down the more you do it?

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  19. brian stouder said on April 10, 2012 at 10:45 am

    Shouldn’t the cost of something go down the more you do it?

    That doesn’t work in the healthcare industry!

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  20. ROGirl said on April 10, 2012 at 10:46 am

    McNaughton would have been right at home depicting heroic tractor drivers for Stalin.

    Art and kitsch have a long history together. Some day there will probably be a serious museum show of Kinkade’s work.

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  21. Sue said on April 10, 2012 at 10:55 am

    Brian, Icarus:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbIZU8cQWXc

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  22. Prospero said on April 10, 2012 at 11:15 am

    First person I hope Thom Kinkade .

    An art critic on Thomas Kinkade. Coozledad, if suppressing artistic integrity was Kinkade’s goal in being a drunk, he was wildly successful. And Pretzeldent Shrub undoubtedly loved the work of that hack. His favorite song is that Lee Greenwood atrocity. I was previously unaware that Kinkade had backed California gated communities with houses modeled after his cottages, starting at $475grand. Wonder if the cost included a resident shrink. Like the perfect setting for an Amityville Horror sequel full of family mayhem and dismemberment. Or Stepford.

    The mention of the name Kinkade always reminds me of the hilarious 1966 movie What Did You Do in the War Daddy, with James Coburn and Dick Shawn, in which Harry Morgan gets lost in some Italian catacombs and loses his mind, ending up in gladiator armor and spouting fracturedlines from the Oxbow Incident. The murder victim in that one was named Kinkaid.

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  23. Prospero said on April 10, 2012 at 11:52 am

    Just creepy.

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  24. alex said on April 10, 2012 at 12:01 pm

    I used to get summoned constantly for jury duty, and always to places like 26th and California or on Old Orchard Road in Skokie, never somewhere convenient. And I never got to serve. I was forced to just sit all day amongst the malodorous rabble in a waiting room with Jerry Springer blaring on the screen.

    On the other hand, I had a co-worker who ended up being sequestered in a downtown hotel under a heavy security detail during a mob trial that stretched on for weeks; one of the jurors had been threatened by someone, so they were all moved into hiding for the duration.

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  25. Jeff Borden said on April 10, 2012 at 12:09 pm

    My words of advice to anyone called to jury duty: don’t dress business professional.

    I was dragooned into service as the foreman of a jury when I was seated –once in four times called for jury duty– because I was wearing a suit and a tie. It fell to me to try to keep my fellow jurors from dismissing the plaintiff’s suit out of hand because they had the world’s worst attorney representing them. The guy was right out of “My Cousin Vinnie” and the judge used him as a pinata for the one and a half days we were convened.

    The case? It involved a $3,000 claim from an auto accident out in the ‘burbs. Twelve of us lost several hours of our lives before finding for the defendant. At least it was in the Daley Center.

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  26. Dexter said on April 10, 2012 at 12:26 pm

    From the years 1971 until 2001 I spent quite a bit of time in Ann Arbor, lots of sports events and also just going there to cycle, eat in the restaurants, and shop downtown. Every now and then a Mike Wallace story would surface…nothing big…he would come to town for some UM function and make a big donation to some illustrious department of the university.
    In the late 1990s a lady I knew at the time was attending a seminar at UM and had gone to the Mongolian Grill on Main for lunch where she saw Mike Wallace holding court at his seat.
    My friend is not shy and she just walked over there and introduced herself. Wallace was in a good mood and must have been taken by this damn-good looking middle aged blond woman, as she told us how he talked to her a good long while, asking questions, and then she left him alone. Not the crotchety old man at all, but a charmer who wasn’t the least bit pissed off that a stranger had intruded on his little luncheon party.

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  27. Prospero said on April 10, 2012 at 12:46 pm

    I’ve read that Mike Wallace was big on office lady grabass. No idea if that’s true. I always preferred Morley Safer, mainly on the strength of his Vietnam hard truth-telling way out front of anybody else in the media, including Walter Cronkite.

    Why is WaPo covering that bogus Blah-blah-blah-hous/Mercatus health care propaganda about increasing the deficit with a straight face? Quick primer. Doesn’t really matter what chicanery and dirty tricks Scalia and Roberts and Alito pull out of their cruddy sleeves, the camel’s nose is inside the tent. The Mercatus fellow’s report was funded in full by the Koch Bros. Kriminal Konspiracy, so consider the source. The Post missed that tidbit. NYT didn’t think it was news fit to print, but Fox, Drudge, pajamas, green footballs Freep World are all over it like horseflies on manure, as is the “liberal” bastion WaPo. The report is purely partisan crackpot bullshit and employs math and accounting from some other planet than Earth.

    http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/04/10/461265/gop-economist-deficit/

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  28. Jeff Borden said on April 10, 2012 at 1:03 pm

    I wonder sometimes what goes through the minds of vicious shitheels like the Koch brothers. Do they imagine that the millions they spend on the occasional cancer center or opera hall –which would be the equivalent of us giving away a few grand– balances the ugliness of all their other pursuits that generate their billions?

    These two are vermin of the lowest order. And my god, but they wield a lot of power and influence. Their gazillions make keep that empty-headed doofus in office up in Wisconsin, may make “Stand Your Ground” laws pushed by ALEC the rule of the land, may crush what handful of unions still exist to stand for the rights of working people, etc.

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  29. Charlotte said on April 10, 2012 at 1:16 pm

    I got a summons for Federal Jury duty last year– had to call in every Friday for a month to see if I’d be required in Billings (90 miles away) at 8am Monday morning. Luckily, no. Only other time I got called was in California — they dismissed me for having graduate degrees — sigh.

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  30. JWfromNJ said on April 10, 2012 at 1:22 pm

    Those DOT highway signs are ridiculously easy to hack – not that I would know from actual practice. The default code is usually never changed and the simple act of putting a padlock over the access panel is often neglected. The hacker who posted the Travon message however is a disgrace to anarchists and hackers the world over. Way to use your power for the dark side!

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  31. Julie Robinson said on April 10, 2012 at 1:33 pm

    I’ve served on a criminal case and had nightmares from the evidence and testimonies. But a couple years back I was also supposed to serve on a federal trial involving business fraud, which I thought would be easier, given no bloodied evidence. However it was supposed to take a minimum of two weeks, so I was grateful when it was settled out of court. The system around here is that you have to call in after 5 the night before you’re supposed to serve.

    I’m a little envious Deborah, that you can have your phone. Neither our federal or county courthouse allow any electronics into the building, beginning with phones. The Feds take it even further and don’t allow any reading or writing material into the building. Waiting around for duty is pretty dull.

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  32. Deborah said on April 10, 2012 at 1:48 pm

    I’ve already been dismissed, damn it. I’d really like to serve on a jury sometime. It was a case involving a car accident and payment for physical therapy. I was one of two on the jury panel who had never been in an accident, we were both dimissed. I’m guessing that’s why. Bummer. Oh well, now I’m taking the afternoon off.

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  33. LAMary said on April 10, 2012 at 1:58 pm

    I’ve been put on juries twice. Once it was a civil case and they settled after we sat through two days tedium and the other was a criminal case where the defendant chose to change his plea to guilty after his fellow gang members got found guilty in the next courtroom down the hall.

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  34. Dorothy said on April 10, 2012 at 2:00 pm

    My daughter got notice of jury duty for every Thursday in May – she has to phone in each Thursday morning to see if she’s needed. This caused us some dismay because I’m arriving in her city on May 3rd for a long weekend trip. (Heading to Maryland for a Sheep and Wool Festival – it’s probably more fun than it sounds.) She is not sure if they’ll allow her to have knitting while she’s there, but she can bring a book. What do they do with you if you bring banned objects? Send you back to your car with your phone/book/knitting? What if you rode the bus??

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  35. Prospero said on April 10, 2012 at 2:05 pm

    Golden Fluffo.

    Today is Terre Roche’s birthday. With gorgeous guitar accompaniment by Robert Fripp, Esq. Best singing sisters not named McGarrigle, I think.

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  36. Bob (not Greene) said on April 10, 2012 at 2:27 pm

    Never been a on ajury myself. I’ve been called four times — Daley Center (twice), 26th and California and Bridgeview. In I think three of the four times I never made it out of the holding pen. My wife, on the other hand, was on a murder jury (guilty!) a couple of years ago and had to be sequestered overnight at a crappy hotel in Hillside. She always wants to go drive by the scene of the crime (it was like at Chicago and Pulaski or something).

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  37. alex said on April 10, 2012 at 2:29 pm

    Well, it looks like Mister Frothy Butt won’t have to endure the humiliation of getting trounced by Mister Windsock in his home state.

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  38. Judybusy said on April 10, 2012 at 2:30 pm

    Oh, Alex you beat me to it. What a pleasant surprise this Tuesday afternoon.

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  39. JWfromNJ said on April 10, 2012 at 2:35 pm

    Someone needs to CC Newt Gingrich on the memo. I forget which one of this crew came up with the theory but the whole “Romney was too liberal,” thus driving the GOP right over the cliff” thing may be playing out well.

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  40. Prospero said on April 10, 2012 at 2:45 pm

    If I could paint, I’d do a Thomas Kinkade cottage on an icy river, with Eliza escaping across the ice floes.

    Stimulus success story. Check the comments mindlessly gainsaying the article, and accusing a staunch GOP-supporting newspaper with being the “liberal media”. Bigots are stubborn as mules.

    Willard RMoney Windsock: Creative Job Destroyer, extraordinaire. When he starts unzipping and shaking the Etch-a-Sketch, how’s he going to get out from under that one?

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  41. Sue said on April 10, 2012 at 3:06 pm

    Prospero:
    Something like these?
    http://www.salon.com/2012/04/09/kinkades_world_of_parody/

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  42. LAMary said on April 10, 2012 at 3:08 pm

    I don’t remember where I read it. It might have been here. Someone referred to this Thomas Kinkade painting as the one with the glowing urine stream coming out the front dooor.

    http://www.thomaskinkadegallery.com/store/index.php/images-gallery/cottages-inns-manors/stonehearth-hutch-1993.html

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  43. Prospero said on April 10, 2012 at 3:26 pm

    Joan Didion said all of Kinkade’s Kottages were characterized by “such insistent coziness as to seem actually sinister, suggestive of a trap designed to attract Hansel and Gretel. Every window lit, to lurid effect, as if the interior of the structure might be on fire.” That is pretty damned funny to me.

    Make that “glowing” read “radioactive”.

    Priebus on Frothtorum:

    “Today, Senator Santorum has made a commendable decision. He has decided to put his country, party, and desire to defeat President Obama ahead of any personal ambition. I applaud his decision and congratulate him on the campaign he has run.”

    The final clause of that second sentence is remarkable. In 50 years of following politics, I have never heard a Party apparatchik make a statement like that, aside from McConnell’s drunken utterances that I imagine he’d like to take back. This business of trying to make Obama out as evil is flagrant in its Willie Horton/Lee Atwater appeal to abject bigotry. It’s a sputtering Teabanger saying “He’s an Arab”, all over again, but this time bitter old man McCain won’t correct it.

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  44. coozledad said on April 10, 2012 at 3:38 pm

    LA Mary: That cottage? The Burl Ives snowman lives there wearing a pair of combined fetish pants.

    http://www.cracked.com/article_17372_18-more-worlds-most-disturbing-sex-toys.html

    NSFW!

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  45. Prospero said on April 10, 2012 at 3:49 pm

    Scott Walker’s most recent outrages:

    REPEAL of Wisconsin’s Equal Pay law!

    A BAN on abortion coverage by private health insurers taking part in the upcoming Affordable Care Act health exchange!

    A bill requiring women seeking abortions to undergo a one-on-one exam with a doctor to determine whether someone is pressuring the woman into the procedure — doctors not correctly following the law could be charged with a felony.

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  46. beb said on April 10, 2012 at 3:55 pm

    I was officially grossed by the “canned vagina” sex toy.

    Did Reese Pieces Priebus really say He has decided to put his country, party, and desire to defeat President Obama ahead of any personal ambition. or did something get turned around. Since his trosimy afflected daughter was expected to died any time soon it’s strange that he ever got into the tace going that, or would leave before of some inevitable grief.

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  47. Bob (not Greene) said on April 10, 2012 at 3:57 pm

    beb, did Prospero hack into your account?

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  48. Dorothy said on April 10, 2012 at 4:01 pm

    It’s almost the end of a very busy day here at work, and I finally had time to read the Mike Wallace/Ron French story. Thanks for the smiles!

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  49. Sherri said on April 10, 2012 at 4:11 pm

    I served on a jury about twenty years ago, and it was a totally depressing experience; it was a child molestation case. We convicted the mother’s boyfriend; we wished we could convict the mother for terminal stupidity.

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  50. MichaelG said on April 10, 2012 at 4:31 pm

    That was hilarious, Mary, and spot on.

    I was on a criminal jury once. In SF about 30 yrs or so ago. We convicted a guy of selling drugs. They had him so dead to rights that we must have deliberated all of fifteen minutes.

    Here they send you a letter with instructions and an assignment to a panel. Panel Twelve for example. All you do is check their web site every evening for Panel Twelve instructions. Clean and simple. It’s been five or six years for me. I’m feeling kind of ripe for the plucking.

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  51. Minnie said on April 10, 2012 at 5:00 pm

    Thanks to y’all I now know way too much about Thomas Kinkade and his oeuvre. Until the announcement of his death I’d only once sighted a “painting” in a mall shop. I’d walked on with never another thought of the man or the piece. Sheesh. How do I delete these pictures from my mind?

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  52. alex said on April 10, 2012 at 6:05 pm

    I actually once set foot in a Thomas Kinkade retail outlet in St. Petersburg to humor a ditzy queen with gingham duck tastes. It was my introduction to the man and his work. I thought he would have made a fine greeting card or children’s book illustrator.

    LA Mary, I about peed myself over your comment on the house with the golden urine stream.

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  53. Rana said on April 10, 2012 at 6:06 pm

    I got seated for jury duty once, though it didn’t go to trial, because it was a domestic violence case and the witnesses were (a) reluctant (in the case of the victim) and (b) incomprehensible (underage daughter with ESL problems). (The prosecutor had the authority to bring the case on the unwilling victim’s behalf, but the physical evidence wasn’t sufficient on its own without corroborating testimony.)

    What was sobering was when they were doing the selection, and they asked the pool if anyone had any personal connection to domestic violence. Just about all of us raised our hands. Oof.

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  54. LAMary said on April 10, 2012 at 6:19 pm

    I sitting in an office that until recently had 16 Thomas Kinkade prints on the walls. We had the covers of 4 years of Thomas Kinkade calendars and all the months of 2009 cut out and framed. The person who did this was offered early retirement. She and my boss from hell who left last year used to one up each other about who owned the most or best Kinkade items. Seriously. Her house combined her extensive Kinkade collection and her husband’s stuffed and mounted hunting trophies. A bobcat, a bear, some deer heads.

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  55. Deborah said on April 10, 2012 at 6:29 pm

    I’ve been to Placerville, CA before, where Kinkade was from. It’s the kind of place you never think will ever be mentioned nationally in any context. We were there with my husband’s daughter and her in-laws for a weird car racing event, The cars were small and the track was very muddy and blobs of mud got kicked up and spread all over the stands. It ruined the shirt I was wearing and I was miserably hot, irritated by the noise and bored. If I had known then that it was Kinkade’s hometown, that would have made it even worse.

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  56. Prospero said on April 10, 2012 at 6:33 pm

    Thomas Kinkade is the great white hunter that never in a million years confronted a fierce prey animal. These NRA asshole types have no cojones but fracking raisins. Shrivelled. And they believe in Vigilante Gets off on Jail Free Card. I was robbed once at gunpoint. In an abandoned MBTA right of way when I lived in Jamaica Plain Boston. I was ridicculously not scared. And I told my assailant to go ahead and pull the trigger. I had been ay a neighborhood Baseball game. I had several hundred bucks in my pocket, but I moved their focus to something else. I wear a ring that was brought to the USA by my dad’s forebears. These bastards focused on the ring, and I told the chief thug to start sawing and I’d kill him before he got through the bone. He flinched and was obviously scared. I was bigger than all of them, put together. But they had a gun. Who knows?

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  57. Prospero said on April 10, 2012 at 6:39 pm

    I meant to say, as an artist of light, I’d say Rembrandt got that light shit better than Kinkade. Is anybody remotely close to getting this shit right? Anybody that knows dick knows It’s the Night Guard.

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  58. ROGirl said on April 10, 2012 at 6:43 pm

    I was called for jury duty twice, once for district court and the other time for criminal court, within a year or so. I got on both juries. The first one was a drunk driving case. The deliberation was very short. He disputed the breathalyzer reading and the prosecution brought to the witness stand the officer who came in from Lansing every week to calibrate the breathalyzer.

    The other case was against a used car salesman who was charged with theft of the car a client had left on his lot to be sold. The client was a lawyer. We found the salesman guilty of a lesser charge, not outright theft.

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  59. Prospero said on April 10, 2012 at 7:18 pm

    Are you kidding bout light? Reembrandt got light right nesct pa? Are you bastards some sort of whack? What ever anybody thinks? Who believes what anybody thinks. Whatever anybody thinks. Whatever anybody thinks about Maruy McCormick thinks whatever. She is astounding. What she says about what you dumbasses say. We believe what that no shit what we could make whatever you claim. We believe what you say. We believe what what you claim is what what we believe. Whatever you rhought , whatever you claimed. As I could say you are nuts. What ever you think.

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  60. LAMary said on April 10, 2012 at 7:30 pm

    I vote for Vermeer for painter of light.

    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/32/JohannesVermeer-TheAstronomer(1668).jpg/250px-JohannesVermeer-TheAstronomer(1668).jpg

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  61. Deborah said on April 10, 2012 at 8:26 pm

    Georges de La Tour is pretty good too. His paintings are often lit from within not coming from the side. I’ll look for a link.

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  62. Deborah said on April 10, 2012 at 8:33 pm

    Hilary meets Text from Hillary creators http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/hillary-clinton-meets-texts-from-hillary-creators?ref=fpblg

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  63. Bitter Scribe said on April 10, 2012 at 9:06 pm

    I’ve never served on a jury, but I dated a prosecutor for a few months and heard stories about how an airtight case would be undone by one ninny juror who refused to convict despite overwhelming evidence. It made me resolve never to game the system by, say, deliberately saying something stupid on voir dire.

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  64. MarkH said on April 10, 2012 at 9:17 pm

    That supercut clip of first film appearances seems to have most of them right, but the blew the very first, most important and therefore easiest one. Jack Nicholson’s first film apearance was in Cry Baby Killer, 1958.

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051500/combined

    There were two other film appearances in between that and Little Shop of Horrors as well, Too Soon to Love, and The Wild Ride.

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  65. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 10, 2012 at 9:33 pm

    Georges de La Tour’s estate should sue every time anyone else is called a “painter of light.”

    http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/caravaggio/fig2a.htm

    http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/georges-de-la-tour/repenting-magdalene-also-called-magdalene-in-a-flickering-light

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  66. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 10, 2012 at 9:36 pm

    [and, evading the two link protocol…]

    http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/georges-de-la-tour/st-joseph-the-carpenter-1640

    http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/georges-de-la-tour/the-dice-players-1651

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  67. Deborah said on April 10, 2012 at 11:03 pm

    Jeff (tmmo) thanks, those are beautiful examples.

    Edit: but I’m also a huge fan of Vermeer. I was on a quest to see all the existing Vermeers in the world. I think there are about 30 maybe less. I have seen them in NY, London, Dublin, Florence, but there are many more I have not seen. A friend of mine planned a trip to DC to see a bunch at a special exhibit but it turned out to be one of those times in the 90s when the Federal government was closed down because of the inability of Congress to fund it, so she missed it.

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  68. Dexter said on April 11, 2012 at 12:22 am

    Some little kid apparently left her plastic tricycle on the sidewalk and my dog got her leash caught in it, the noise of that loud thing on the sidewalk spooked the pooch, and she ran around a tree and worked herself out of her harness…she took off. Somehow my grandson found her and caught her and we have her back. I have to find a way to stop her from running away at every chance…any suggestions?

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  69. beb said on April 11, 2012 at 7:54 am

    Not to disrespect Vermeer or Georges de la tour, but there was a whole (American) school of light in the early 19th century
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminism_%28American_art_style%29
    that was just awesome.

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  70. LAMary said on April 11, 2012 at 11:45 am

    Deborah, a friend and I planned to go to DC for that same exhibit and cancelled for the same reason. We were furious.

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