Monthly Archives: June 2012

Lenny

Photography

A man for the ages.

“A young man came to see me, this morning. He had some ideas for lyrics. I think he has something.”

That ‘young man’ was Stephen Sondheim. The speaker was Lenny. Their collaboration gave us the greatest musical made.

West Side Story. The tale of America.

It opens with the simplest possible graphic.

Manhattan.

Then:

The Sharks gather. Is that a photograph, or what?

The story of ethnic strife is as old as the ages.

But there’s a little something more. This version has Bernstein and Sondheim.

And every cliché in the book.

The dumb cop. The White Boy trying to be ethnic. The worthless Irish, doomed at birth.

And ….

“Wall to wall floors in America.”

Could Sondheim write or what? Like Cole Porter he would go on to write not just the words but also the tunes. Sure, there’s a fair measure of Lenny schmaltz in the music here. Hey, that goes with the territory. My, but did talent attract, or what?

Trying to be not white.

Lenny knew the genie was out of the bottle. You no longer dated on ethnic lines. You dated because you wanted to. It was café au lait. There was no unscrambling the ingredients hereafter.

So, simply stated, would you rather be with these folk, and their passion?

Or with these, an umbrella up their posterior?

There is some genuinely awful acting, singing and lyrics here. Try ‘Maria’. But none of that detracts from the best musical America ever made. Because it is about the very essence of America.

“Maria. Say it loud because there’s music playing. Maria.”

“Instead of Puerto Rico, she’s queer for Uncle Sam.” Rita Moreno blows the doors off.

I mean, come on:

Great photography? Great music? Great lyrics? Great choreography?

Yup. The lot.

Grab West Side Story, and revel in the genius of Lenny Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim.

Microsoft Surface recycled

Hardware

More of the same.

Microsoft Surface was a visionary product from Redmond, a decade ago. A huge table-style touch screen allowed icons and elements to be moved around by touch, and the whole thing was just so tomorrow.

Of course it was so good that it had to die; Microsoft has long known how to kill a good thing. Though there are many brilliant, innovative thinkers at Microsoft, neither skill has been in abundant supply in the corner office, occupied by a doofus whose only claim to fame is that not even he has managed to screw up one of the world’s great annuities – Windows + Office. The only other product which has sold in volume in the Ballmer years is the Xbox360/Kinect, emphatically not a Microsoft invention, and one whose profitability is a rounding error, so brutal is price competition in the game console segment.

For a long while I have refrained from knocking Microsoft in this journal as it has just become sort of assumed that anything from Redmond would be a costly time sink, and why mock the afflicted? But Microsoft’s latest just begs for a thorough thrashing, which it is my pleasure to administer.

Doofus with his latest disaster.

I mean, goodness, must he really insist on demonstrating something he is clearly clueless about? Has no one at MSFT the courage to tell this emperor that he has no clothes? Imagine the management culture at a company which prohibits criticism.

You see, Surface is the name for MSFT’s new line of tablets. Yes, the same tablet which Doofus was knocking (in this case, knocking on) two years ago. That was just when MSFT’s previous tablet effort was scrapped. And there’s little reason to think that the new one will last any longer. Goodness, they couldn’t even make up a new name for the product.

Each iPad comes with bullet proof software, iOS, robustly interlinked Mail, Scheduling, Address Book, etc. through iCloud, and a vast ecosystem of hundreds of thousands of applications developed over many thousands of man-years.

Now look at MSFT’s offering. First they are offering the tablet with two completely different CPUs – ARM and Intel. Eh what? Lucky developers having to craft apps for that. Then they come with plain, touch or type keyboard covers. There are two sizes – 32 and 64gB. And while they are mum on cellular, you can bet they will have to offer at least two carriers in the US, in addition to wi-fi only. And of course they come with a stylus, presumably because the touch interface is so poor there is no alternative.

And this from a manufacturer whose experience in hardware is largely limited to making mice and has little skill in complex hardware supply chain management.

Oops, did I mention applications? Ummm, no, there are none as of the time of writing.

Worst of all, the Surface Mk.2 runs Windows. Two different versions, no less. That spells DOA to me. And by the time these things hit the stores, if they ever do, iPad4 will have been released, instantly obsoleting whatever claims to currency Surface2 may have made.

So thanks, Microsoft, for reinforcing my disgust in you and confirming my decade old decision never to touch one of your foul products again. Apple may make mediocre, overpriced PC and laptop hardware, but OS X and iOS are robust as they come, the iPad is insanely great, and the whole ecosystem linking the two hardware platforms is not something that the dysfunctional corner suite in Redmond is remotely capable of disciplining into a functional whole.

Kudos to Bill Gates, however. He got out at the top and is doing truly wonderful things with his fortune. I would prefer to see a fool like Ballmer running MSFT into the ground than have Gates return and leave behind his groundbreaking philanthropic work. The only thing which mystifies is that Gates allows this Boob to continue running the business.

Erich Salomon

Photographers

A master of the candid photograph.

Before the Leica popularized the candid snap in the hands of the likes of Cartier-Bresson, there was Erich Salomon (1886-1944) and his Ermanox.

With f/1.8 lens and plates.

The lens was very fast for the time and the body took glass plates 6 x 4.5cm (2.4″ x 1.8″). Leicas came with an f/3.5 Elmar as standard, whereas the faster 50mm Leitz f/2 Summar was not introduced until 1933. By contrast, the Ermanox with its f/1.8 lens was first sold by Ernemann, a German maker, in 1924, so it’s not hard to see why Salomon favored it. 2 stops may not seem that much in the day of 6,400 ISO digital, but film was 5-10 ISO at best back then, a full 10 stops slower! In addition to the faster lens, the negative only needed half as much enlargement for the same size print compared to the Leica, reducing apparent movement blur and grain.

Clunky as the camera may be, with the plates meaning only one snap at a time, this German master made the best of what he had, and pulled off great photojournalistic snaps in the 1920s and 1930s before the Nazi killing machine chewed him up at Auschwitz. Salomon was a German Jew, training in engineering and law before devoting himself to photography, something we can all be grateful for.

I was vividly reminded of his work when contemplating the current spectacle of Europe’s evil, corrupt men (and now women) destroying all around them in the interest of self rather than that of their fellow human beings. They call this a Union?

Evil men, wondering how to safeguard their supply of brandy and cigars.

The picture shows various purported diplomats at the 1930 Second Hague Reparation Conference where the assembled victors of 1918 are trying to figure out how to squeeze dry what is left of Germany in the name of war reparations. Brilliant economic concept that – tax the poor into oblivion, drive them to extremism. Among the collected toadies are Louis Loucheur, French Minister of Labor, holding his hands to his eyes, the poor tired dear; French Premier André Tardieu wondering when the cognac would run out. Next is Germany’s Foreign Minister Dr. Julius Curtius, (all Germans are Doctors, it’s a well known fact), yet to realize that he would soon be so much chopped meat. Henri Cheron, French Finance Minister, is on the right, seated in the high-backed chair, hoping his mistress is in town.

What caused this flashback? After all, these were pictures I had first seen when knee high to a grasshopper. Well, just look what is being done to the poor nations of Europe right now by the rich ones. And it’s the same lot, with all their expenses paid by the taxpayer, residing in their fancy palaces, transported in chauffeur driven bulletproof limousines, with legions of servants, wondering how to best screw the taxpayer while preserving their life of comfort and sloth.

Former French Prime Minister Aristide Briand points to
Salomon whom he dubbed ‘The King of Indiscretion”. 1930.
Such a witty, charming rogue, that Aristide.

How sad that Erich Salomon was murdered by the same evil men whom he so ably portrayed. Truly a great photojournalist.