More from New York Erratic:
Who is your favorite visual artist? Favorite director?
I tend to be rather catholic about these things. Here’s the best way to recognize the artist of paintings, BTW.
My church has Tiffany windows, which I like; the one above is one of them. Gordon Parks is a favorite photographer. Always though Frank Lloyd Wright’s buildings were interesting, if not always practical. Van Gogh I enjoy, but there are so many more; I love going to the house in the Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, NY because it’s so eclectic. Did one of those Facebook things where you should live, and it came up with French Polynesia, which reminded me that I like Gauguin too.
But I guess my favorite visual artist is Rodin, whose work I find sensual as all get out, even if it isn’t all his work.
I took this list of a list of the 50 greatest directors of all time. Of all the directors whose films I’ve seen more that three, most of them made movies I disliked, even the ones whose works I generally enjoyed (Alfred Hitchcock, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Mel Brooks, of course Woody Allen, many more). I suppose, as I looked at the list, I find most reliable: Billy Wilder, Robert Zemakis, and, though he understandably became a persona non grata in Hollywood, Elia Kazan.
Have you seen the new Cosmos? How do you feel it compares?
I recorded the first episode of the new COSMOS. STILL haven’t seen it. We’ve been busy. I did see segments of the original series, and while it was very good, it was not appointment television for me at the time.
What is your favorite science subject?
Speaking of sexy, chemistry. You have this +1 sodium just hanging out when it hooks up with the -1 chloride. Hubba, hubba, you have you table salt.
Though I probably would have picked physics if I had actually paid attention to it; senioritis in high school dashed that hope. And since I had my solar system painted on the ceiling of my room when I was nine, I did have a passing interest in astronomy.
Does anything in science ever make you tear up? If so, what things?
Northern Lights. A half-frozen waterfall.
Have you ever cried or teared up over a robot character in a book, movie or TV show? E.g. a robot in “I, Robot”, a cylon in Battlestar Galactica, or HAL.
The Day The Earth Stood Still. Stupid humans.
Which Bible story touched you the most as a kid? Which one does now?
As a kid, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from Daniel 3, saved from the blazing furnace.
Now, that Jesus parable about turning the other cheek from Matthew 5:39, which is totally radical, and probably misunderstood. Perennially, the Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat story from the latter part of Genesis.
You talk about baseball a lot – did you ever play or want to play major league?
I was TERRIBLE at softball and baseball as a kid – no hit, no field, no run. I was pitching once when I was 12, and got conked in the temple by a batted ball back to me; my mother stayed up much of the night to make sure I didn’t have a concussion. But I had a good collection of baseball cards, from which I would memorize players’ stats; they were stolen in 1972. I got to be a better player by college, but I was never that great, though I was a pretty good student of the game. I know even some of the more obscure rules, and have at least one book on the subject. But I liked to play. I certainly liked to watch – which reminds me of another film, but that’s for another day – and find a new season a sign of spring.
Now I have to see “The Day The Earth Stood Still”!
Rodin is lovely. One of the things that I think makes his sculptures so beautiful is that they show the human body in positions that accentuate the play of muscle (which makes me pity his models.) If you want to see something similar in photography, Google “Stone Nudes.”
I once—only once—threw a baseball/softball/whatever especially well, but it was among friends outside of school hours. All sports represented for me just another thing I could never succeed at, but for which I would always be judged—and ridiculed. To this day I will NOT do any sport whatsoever, even under pain of death.