Monday, September 18, 2017

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, originally Take Barney Google, F'rinstance, is an American comic strip created by cartoonist Billy DeBeck.  Since its debut on June 17, 1919, the strip has gained a large international readership, appearing in 900 newspapers in 21 countries.  The initial appeal of the strip led to its adaptation to film, animation, popular song and television.  It added several terms and phrases to the English language and inspired the 1923 hit tune "Barney Google (with the Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes)" with lyrics by Billy Rose, as well as the 1923 record, "Come On, Spark Plug!"  Barney Google himself, once the star of the strip and a very popular character in his own right, has been almost entirely phased out of the feature.  An increasingly peripheral player in his own strip beginning in the late 1930s, Google was officially "written out" in 1954, although he would occasionally return for cameo appearances.  These cameos were often years apart—from a period between 1997 and 2012, Barney Google wasn't seen in the strip at all.  Google was reintroduced to the strip in 2012, and has been seen very occasionally since, making several week-long appearances.  Snuffy Smith, who was initially introduced as a supporting player in 1934, has now been the comic strip's central character for over 60 years.  Following "The Goo-Goo Song" (1900), the word "Google" was introduced in 1913 in Vincent Cartwright Vickers' The Google Book, a children's book about the Google and other fanciful creatures who live in Googleland:  "The Google has a beautiful garden which is guarded night and day.  All through the day he sleeps in a pool of water in the center of the garden; but when the night comes, he slowly crawls out of the pool and silently prowls around for food."   Aware of the word's appeal, DeBeck launched his comic strip six years later, and the "goo-goo-googly" lyrics in the 1923 song "Barney Google" focused attention on the novelty of the word.  When mathematician and Columbia University professor Edward Kasner was challenged in the late 1930s to devise a name for a very large number, he asked his nine-year-old nephew, Milton Sirotta, to suggest a word.  The youthful comic strip reader told Kasner to use "Google".  Kasner agreed, and in 1940, he introduced the words "googol" and "googolplex" in his book, Mathematics and the ImaginationThis is the term that Larry Page and Sergey Brin had in mind when they named their company in 1998, but they intentionally misspelled "googol" as "google," bringing it back full circle to Vickers' form.  In 2002, when Page set up a scanning device at Google to test how fast books could be scanned, the first book he scanned was Vickers' The Google Book.  DeBeck, who had a gift for coining colorful terms, is credited with introducing several Jazz Age slang words and phrases into the English language—including "sweet mama", "horsefeathers", “heebie-jeebies”, “hotsy-totsy” and “Who has seen the doodle bug?”  Snuffy's catchphrases “great balls o’ fire” and “time's a-wastin'” remain popular to this day.  In DeBeck's memory, the National Cartoonists Society in 1946 introduced the Billy DeBeck Award.  (Eight years later, the name was changed to the Reuben Award after Rube Goldberg.)  Snuffy Smith currently appears in 21 countries and 11 languages.  In 1995, the strip was honored by the U.S. Postal Service; it was one of 20 included in the Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative USPS postage stamps.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barney_Google_and_Snuffy_Smith

More than 90 percent of global trade moves by ship and the top 25 ports in North America account for a whopping 97 percent of total trade for the continent.  Read on to learn more about North America’s top ports in 2015, and just what cargo they are bringing in and sending out.  https://thebossmagazine.com/busiest-north-american-ports-cargo/ 

Lillian Michelson:  Hollywood's Librarian  7,000 books.  100,000 periodicals.  Over 1,000,000 clippings.  This is the Lillian Michelson Research Library.  It is the largest private motion picture library in Hollywood and it’s been a passion of Lillian’s since 1961 when she happened upon it at the Samuel Goldwyn Studios.  Under the tutelage of a librarian named Lelia Alexander, Lillian learned how to have a seven-track mind--as questions poured in from filmmakers, needing research for films they were making--and every question was answered in detail--because nothing was more important to great storytelling than “getting it right.”  By 1969, the library was facing eviction.  Lelia was done, too, but she had a strange vision she shared with her pupil, “Lillian, I feel as if you’re going to own this library.”  Now, her husband Harold was making a nice living by this time, but “owning a library?”  Still, Lillian was compelled--or, as she put it “in a fit of insanity” to ask Harold, what would you think if I borrowed on your life insurance policy to buy that library?”  Harold paused, “Where are you going to put it?”  Lillian said, “I don’t know yet.”  Harold replied, “Sure.  Sounds like a terrific idea.”  If Harold were story-boarding this love story, he’d now cut to a frame showing Lillian moving every box of her massive library to AFI, after persuading them to give her space in their basement.  From there, Lillian helped to shape ten years’ worth of the next generation of great filmmakers.  In 1980, she met Francis Coppola--that man who defined film the same way you might define Harold and Lillian.  Once Coppola saw what she had--and, even better, saw the encyclopedic mind of the woman that came with this library--he made her library the central hub of his own dream--Zoetrope Studios.  The library would move a few more times--to Paramount and, most prominently, under Lillian’s care, via Jeffrey Katzenberg to Dreamworks Animation Studios in Glendale.  During their lives together, Harold and Lillian worked on the films of all of our lives:  Ben Hur, West Side Story, The Apartment, Chinatown, Rosemary’s Baby, Terms of Endearment and on and on.  As their boys grew into men, with prospering lives of their own, Harold and Lillian quietly became known, through their mentorship and giving back, the heart and soul of the best of what Hollywood can be.  The very definition of invaluable behind-the-scenes contributors--and true Hollywood royalty.  Sweetly, in 2004, Dreamworks Animation (who’d lent office space to the couple to continue work at their ripe young age) made a sequel to their greatest success and, let’s just say, there’s no coincidence Princess Fiona’s parents in Shrek 2 are named King Harold and Queen Lillian.   https://www.mptf.com/reelstories/lillianmichelson 
LILLIAN MICHELSON RESEARCH LIBRARY  Dreamworks SKG 1000 Flower Street  Glendale, CA 91201  (818) 695-6445  http://www.theacme.com/?product=1030205974

Movie fans know the work of Harold and Lillian Michelson, even if they don't recognize the names.  Working largely uncredited in the Hollywood system, storyboard artist Harold and film researcher Lillian left an indelible mark on classics by Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Mel Brooks, Stanley Kubrick, Roman Polanski and many more.  Through an engaging mix of love letters, film clips and candid conversations with Harold and Lillian, Danny DeVito, Mel Brooks, Francis Ford Coppola and others, the deeply engaging documentary Harold and Lillian:  a Hollywood Love Story from Academy Award (R)-nominated director Daniel Raim offers both a moving portrait of a marriage and a celebration of the unknown talents that help shape the films we love.  Adama Films  100 min.  https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/harold_and_lillian_a_hollywood_love_story/  Harold and Lillian opened in New York on April 28, 2017 and Los Angeles on May 12, 2017.  Available in DVD and Blu-Ray

Equifax is one of many companies that collect information about you by  on September  14, 2017  Via NBR/CNBC:  “There are literally hundreds of smaller consumer-reporting companies [33-page PDF] operating in the U.S. and the smaller ones are collecting information you might not expect.  The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau maintains a self-reported list of the companies.  Consider Milliman IntelliScript, for example.  The company collects information on the prescription drugs you buy.  If you’ve ever authorized the release of your medical records to an insurance company, they might have shared them with Milliman.  Or look at Retail Equation, a company that monitors consumers’ return and exchange behavior at retail companies.  Company critics say the information collected can prevent legitimate returns from being accepted.  Consumer-reporting companies are governed by the Fair Credit Reporting Act, according to the CFPB.  That means consumers can request copies of their reports, though some will charge you for it.” [h/t Pete Weiss]  The New York Times provides answers to some of the many questions causing us considerable concern following the delayed announcement by Equifax of a massive breach of personal data that impacts perhaps half of the American populationhttps://www.bespacific.com/  See also FTC launches Equifax breach probe, warns consumers about credit scammers:  Posing as Equifax employees, crooks are calling to verify your account information by David Kravets at https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/ftc-opens-equifax-investigation-says-beware-of-equifax-calling-scams/

On September 14, 2017, hundreds of spectators lined across a portion of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway to watch the boulevard turn into a glittering spectacle of moving lights.  It was the world debut of artist Cai Guo-Quang’s “Fireflies” performance. Twenty-seven pedicabs adorned in colorful handmade lanterns of all shapes and sizes wheeled their way down the Parkway in synchronized rhythm to the tune of something that resembled the Pennsylvania’s official state song.  Through an interpreter, Guo-Quang explained before the performance that growing up in China, playing with paper lanterns was a childhood pastime.  So when the Association for Public Art approached Guo-Quang to bring his work to Philly for the 100th Anniversary of the Parkway, he jumped at the chance to play with these lanterns once again.  Thousands of lanterns—aka the fireflies—were handmade by Guo-Quang in his hometown of Quanzhou, then carefully transferred to the U.S. this summer and installed onto pedicabs in a warehouse in Kensington.  Guo-Quang said the lanterns are symbols of his childhood, although new shapes like emoji’s have been added to the mix.  Coincidentally, aPA’s executive director Penny Balkin Bach, says only after the association commissioned Guo-Quang did they find out that Pennsylvania’s state insect is the firefly.  Melissa Romero  Read more and see pictures at https://philly.curbed.com/2017/9/15/16311634/cai-guo-quang-fireflies-philadelphia-benjamin-franklin-parkway-photos

"Rocket Man" (officially titled as Rocket Man (I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time)), is a song composed by Elton John and Bernie Taupin and originally performed by John.  The song first appeared on John's 1972 album Honky Château and became a hit single, rising to No. 2 in the UK and No. 6 in the US.  The song was inspired by the short story "The Rocket Man" in The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury, and echoes the theme of David Bowie's 1969 song "Space Oddity" (both recordings were produced by Gus Dudgeon).  But according to an account in Elizabeth Rosenthal's book His Song:  The Musical Journey of Elton John, the song was inspired by Taupin's sighting of either a shooting star or a distant aeroplane. Elton John - Rocket Man (Official Music Video)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtVBCG6ThDk  4:42  President Donald Trump began September 17, 2017 with a stream of tweets taking a dig at North Korea's leader, referring to him as "Rocket Man".  http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/17/trump-tweets-about-north-koreas-rocket-man-242812


http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1770  September 18, 2017  On this date in 1837Tiffany and Co. (first named Tiffany & Young) was founded by Charles Lewis Tiffany and Teddy Young in New York City. The store was called a "stationery and fancy goods emporium".  On this date in 1948, Margaret Chase Smith of Maine became the first woman elected to the United States Senate without completing another senator's term, when she defeated Democratic opponent Adrian Scolten.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_18  

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