Gifted and Talented: Nikola Tesla

A publicity photo of Nikola Tesla sitting in his laboratory in Colorado Springs in December 1899. The photo was taken by Dickenson V. Alley, photographer at the Century Magazines. The laboratory was built in 1899. Tesla sent a copy of this photograph to Sir William Crookes in England in 1901.

The photo is cited as a double exposure by Carl Willis and Marc Seifer.

Tesla's Colorado Springs notes also identify the photo as a double exposure.

To give an idea of the magnitude of the discharge the experimenter is sitting slightly behind the "extra coil." I did not like this idea but some people find such photographs interesting. Of course, the discharge was not playing when the experimenter was photographed, as might be imagined.

More on Bucky Fuller

From yee Wiki:

By age 32, Bucky Fuller was bankrupt and jobless, living in public, low-income housing in Chicago, Illinois. In 1922, Fuller's young daughter Alexandra died from complications from polio and spinal meningitis. Allegedly, he felt responsible and this caused him to drink frequently and to contemplate suicide for a while. He finally chose to embark on "an experiment, to find what a single individual [could] contribute to changing the world and benefiting all humanity."

In 1927 Fuller resolved to think independently which included a commitment to "the search for the principles governing the universe and help advance the evolution of humanity in accordance with them... finding ways of doing more with less to the end that all people everywhere can have more and more."

Pioneers of LTP: Michel Baudry and Gary Lynch Video

Ca²⁺/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) appears to be an important mediator of the early, protein synthesis-independent phase of LTP. Plus, it looks really cool.

In neuroscience, long-term potentiation (LTP) is a long-lasting enhancement in signal transmission between two neurons that results from stimulating them synchronously. It is one of several phenomena underlying synaptic plasticity, the ability of chemical synapses to change their strength. As memories are thought to be encoded by modification of synaptic strength, LTP is widely considered one of the major cellular mechanisms that underlies learning and memory.

LTP was discovered in the rabbit hippocampus by Terje Lømo in 1966 and has remained a popular subject of research since. Many modern LTP studies seek to better understand its basic biology, while others aim to draw a causal link between LTP and behavioral learning. Still others try to develop methods, pharmacologic or otherwise, of enhancing LTP to improve learning and memory. LTP is also a subject of clinical research, for example, in the areas of Alzheimer's disease and addiction medicine.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzrhxYijruE

Django Reinhart and Stephane Grappelli Quintette du Hot Club de France

Gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt (1910-1953).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV6AB3WsNcM

Emotions Revealed



It's said people with Autism Spectrum Disorders such as Asperger's have a hard time reading expressions.


I first encountered Paul Ekman in Malcolm Gladwell's Blink (see the link below to read his article). After reading about his life's work, I went out and bought an actual Ekman book:


Emotions Revealed, Second Edition: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life by Paul Ekman

"A tour de force. If you read this book, you'll never look at other people in quite the same way again."--Malcolm Gladwell

Renowned psychologist Paul Ekman explains the roots of our emotions--anger, fear, disgust, sadness, and happiness--and shows how they cascade across our faces, providing clear signals to those who can identify the clues. As featured in Malcolm Gladwell's bestseller Blink, Ekman's Facial Action Coding System offers intense training in recognizing feelings in spouses, children, colleagues, even strangers on the street.

In Emotions Revealed, Ekman distills decades of research into a practical, mind-opening, and life-changing guide to reading the emotions of those around us. He answers such questions as: How does our body signal to others whether we are slightly sad or anguished, peeved or enraged? Can we learn to distinguish between a polite smile and the genuine thing? Can we ever truly control our emotions? Packed with unique exercises and photographs, and a new chapter on emotions and lying that encompasses security and terrorism as well as gut decisions, Emotions Revealed is an indispensable resource for navigating our emotional world.

http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_08_05_a_face.htm

Icons From the Age of Anxiety: Writer/Actor/Director Woody Allen

From ye Wiki, "Woody Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg, December 1, 1935) is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, and playwright, whose career spans over half a century.

He began as a comedy writer in the 1950s, penning jokes and scripts for television and also publishing several books of short humor pieces. In the early 1960s, Allen started performing as a stand-up comic, emphasizing monologues rather than traditional jokes. As a comic, he developed the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish, which he insists is quite different from his real-life personality. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Allen in fourth place on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comics, while a UK survey ranked Allen as the third greatest comedian.

By the mid-1960s Allen was writing and directing films, first specializing in slapstick comedies before moving into more dramatic material influenced by European art films during the 1970s. He is often identified as part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmakers of the mid-1960s to late '70s. Allen often stars in his own films, typically in the persona he developed as a standup. The best-known of his over 40 films include the Academy Award–winners Annie Hall (1977), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and Midnight in Paris (2011); and the Golden Globe–winning The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985). Critic Roger Ebert has described Allen as "a treasure of the cinema".

Marriages and relationships

Harlene Rosen

At age 19, Allen married 16-year-old Harlene Rosen. The marriage lasted from 1954 to 1959. Time stated that the years were "nettling" and "unsettling."

Rosen, whom Allen referred to in his standup act as "the Dread Mrs. Allen," later sued Allen for defamation due to comments at a TV appearance shortly after their divorce. Allen tells a different story on his mid-1960s standup album Standup Comic. In his act, Allen said that Rosen sued him because of a joke he made in an interview. Rosen had been sexually assaulted outside her apartment and according to Allen, the newspapers reported that she "had been violated." In the interview, Allen said, "Knowing my ex-wife, it probably wasn't a moving violation." In a later interview on The Dick Cavett Show, Allen brought the incident up again where he repeated his comments and stated that the amount that he was being sued for was "$1 million."

Louise Lasser

Allen married Louise Lasser in 1966. They divorced in 1969, and Allen did not marry again until 1997. Lasser appeared in three Allen films after the divorce – Take the Money and Run, Bananas, and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) – and made a brief appearance in Stardust Memories.

Diane Keaton

In 1970, Allen cast Diane Keaton in his Broadway show, Play It Again, Sam. During the run she and Allen became romantically involved and although they broke up after a year, she continued to star in a number of his films, including Sleeper as a futuristic poet and Love and Death as a composite character based on the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Annie Hall was very important in Allen and Keaton's careers. It is said that the role was written specifically for her as Diane Keaton's given name is Diane Hall. She then starred in Interiors as a poet, followed by Manhattan. In 1987, she had a cameo as a night-club singer in Radio Days and was chosen to replace Mia Farrow in the co-starring role for Manhattan Murder Mystery after Allen and Farrow began having troubles with their personal and working relationship while making this film. Keaton has not worked with Allen since Manhattan Murder Mystery. Since the end of their romantic relationship, Keaton and Allen have remained close friends.

Stacey Nelkin

The film Manhattan is said by the Los Angeles Times to be widely known to have been based on his romantic relationship with the actress Stacey Nelkin. Her bit part in Annie Hall ended up on the cutting room floor, and their relationship, though never publicly acknowledged by Allen, reportedly began when she was 17 years old and a student at New York's Stuyvesant High School.

Mia Farrow

Around 1980, Allen began a relationship with actress Mia Farrow, who had leading roles in several of his movies from 1982 to 1992. Farrow and Allen never married and kept separate homes, but they adopted two children, Dylan Farrow (who changed her name to Eliza and is now known as Malone) and Moshe Farrow (now known as Moses); they also had one biological child, Satchel Farrow (now known as Ronan Seamus Farrow). Allen did not adopt any of Farrow's other family, including Soon-Yi Farrow Previn (the adopted daughter of Farrow and André Previn, now known as Soon-Yi Previn). Allen and Farrow separated in 1992, after Farrow discovered nude photographs that Allen had taken of a then 20-year-old Soon-Yi. In her autobiography, What Falls Away (New York: Doubleday, 1997), Farrow says that Allen admitted to a relationship with Soon-Yi.

After Allen and Farrow separated, a long public legal battle for the custody of their three children began. During the proceedings, Farrow alleged that Allen had sexually molested their adopted daughter Dylan, who was then seven years old. The judge eventually concluded that the sex abuse charges were inconclusive but called Allen's conduct with Soon-Yi "grossly inappropriate." She called the report of the team that investigated the issue "sanitized and therefore, less credible" and added that she had "reservations about the reliability of the report." Farrow won custody of their children. Allen was denied visitation rights with Malone and could see Ronan only under supervision. Moses, who was then 14, chose not to see Allen.

In a 2005 Vanity Fair interview, Allen estimated that, despite the scandal's damage to his reputation, Farrow's discovery of Allen's attraction to Soon-Yi Previn by finding nude photographs of her was "just one of the fortuitous events, one of the great pieces of luck in my life. . . It was a turning point for the better."

Of his relationship with Farrow, he said, "I'm sure there are things that I might have done differently. . . Probably in retrospect I should have bowed out of that relationship much earlier than I did."

In a report June 22, 2011, Reuters quoted Allen as saying, "What was the scandal? I fell in love with this girl, married her. We have been married for almost 15 years now. There was no scandal, but people refer to it all the time as a scandal and I kind of like that in a way because when I go I would like to say I had one real juicy scandal in my life."

Soon-Yi Previn
After ending his relationship with Mia Farrow in 1992, Allen continued his relationship with Soon-Yi Previn. Even though Allen never married Mia Farrow and was never Previn's legal stepfather, the relationship between Allen and Previn has often been referred to as a father involved romantically with his stepdaughter since he had been perceived as being in Previn's life in a father-like capacity.

For example, in 1991, The New York Times described Allen's family life by reporting, "Few married couples seem more married. They are constantly in touch with each other, and not many fathers spend as much time with their children as Allen does." In 1991, when the relationship started, Allen was 56 and Previn was 21. Asked whether their age difference was conducive to "a healthy, equal relationship," Allen said equality is not necessarily a requirement in a relationship and said, "The heart wants what it wants. There's no logic to those things. You meet someone and you fall in love and that's that."

Allen and Farrow's biological son, Ronan Seamus Farrow, is widely quoted as disparaging Allen and having said he cannot see him. On Fathers Day 2012, he tweeted 'Happy Father's Day— or as they call it in my family, Happy Brother-in-Law's day.'"

The Bill Evans Trio: Waltz For Debbie (1965)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMHsz5VqLhM

Icons From the Age of Anxiety: Billionaire Howard Hughes

Time magazine, July 19, 1948.  Art by Ernest Baker. The caption ironically reads "money + brains = fun (somtimes)." Nothing could be further from the truth.

Time magazine April 19, 1976. Art by Baron Storey. One of Storey's most famous works is perhaps this portrait of Hughes from 1976, drawn overnight while Storey was talking on the phone with the coroner who described the wasted state of Hughes’ body. I'm proud to add that I edited Vanguard Production's Best of Baron Storey's Watch #1 and 2.

You probably saw this one coming, right? Where to start? The very obsessions  and compulsions that made Howard Hughes (1905-1976) an enfant terrible and prodigy tormented him relentlessly later in life. His OCD and eccentricies, enabled by his great wealth, are the stuff of legend. He took the anxiety-producing concept  of "avoidance" to new stratospheric heights.

What I wonder is, could he have been helped by proper, modern medical treatment? According to many, he took a drastic turn for the worst after his near-fatal XF-11 plane crash in Beverly Hills, Callifornia.

From ye Wiki, "Howard Hughes was involved in a near-fatal aircraft accident on July 7, 1946, while piloting the experimental U.S. Army Air Force reconnaissance aircraft, the XF-11, over Los Angeles. An oil leak caused one of the contra-rotating propellers to reverse pitch, causing the aircraft to yaw sharply. Hughes tried to save the craft by landing it at the Los Angeles Country Club golf course, but just seconds before he could reach his attempted destination, the XF-11 started to drop dramatically and crashed in the Beverly Hills neighborhood surrounding the country club.


When the XF-11 finally came to a halt after destroying three houses, the fuel tanks exploded, setting fire to the aircraft and a nearby home at 808 North Whittier Drive, owned by Lt Col. Charles E. Meyer. Hughes managed to pull himself out of the flaming wreckage but lay beside the aircraft until he was rescued by Marine Master Sergeant William L. Durkin, who happened to be in the area visiting friends. Hughes sustained significant injuries in the crash, including a crushed collar bone, multiple cracked ribs, crushed chest with collapsed left lung, shifting his heart to the right side of the chest cavity, and numerous third-degree burns. A oft-told story said that Hughes sent a check to the Marine weekly for the remainder of his life as a sign of gratitude. However, Durkin's daughter denied that he took any money for the rescue."

One of the first effective medications for OCD, clomipramine (trademarked as Anafranil), a tricyclic antidepressant (TCA) was developed in the 1960s by the Swiss drug manufacturer Geigy (now known as Novartis) and has been in clinical use worldwide ever since. Along with SSRIs, clomipramine is a frequently prescribed drug for the treatment of OCD. As is typical with the older tricyclic antidepressants (the tertiary amines), it has more side effects than SSRIs, so some authorities regard it as a second-line treatment to be used if treatment with SSRIs fails. However, disregarding side effects, it may be slightly more effective in combating the symptoms of OCD.

I've never read that Hughes ever tried Anafranil. He sure consumed plenty of other drugs though. Another interesting irony is, according to one of the biographies I read, is that when he opened the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the non-profit medical research organization based in Chevy Chase, Maryland, it was founded cynically as a tax dodge.

Initially, the institute was formed with the stated goal of basic research including trying to understand, in Hughes' words, "the genesis of life itself." Despite its principles, in the early days it was generally viewed as largely a tax haven for Hughes' huge personal fortune. Hughes was the sole trustee of HHMI and transferred all his stock of Hughes Aircraft to the institute, in effect turning the large defense contractor into a tax-exempt charity.

Hughes never intended it to become the world-class medical research facility it is today. HHMI spends about $1 million per HHMI investigator per year, which amounts to annual investment in biomedical research of about $825 million. The institute has an endowment of $16.1 billion, making it the second-wealthiest philanthropic organization in the United States and the second best endowed medical research foundation in the world.

It was not until after Hughes' death in 1976 that the Institute's profile increased from an annual budget of $4 million in 1975 to $15 million by 1978. In this period it focused its mission on genetics, immunology and the rapidly growing field of molecular biology. Since Hughes died without a will as the sole trustee of the HHMI, the Institute was involved in lengthy court proceedings to determine whether it would benefit from Hughes' fortune.

As early as the 1930s, Hughes displayed signs of mental illness, primarily obsessive-compulsive disorder. Close friends reported that he was obsessed with the size of peas, one of his favorite foods, and used a special fork to sort them by size.

Richard Fleischer, who directed His Kind of Woman with Hughes as executive producer, wrote at length in his autobiography about the difficulty of dealing with the tycoon. In his book, Just Tell Me When to Cry, Fleischer explained that Hughes was fixated on trivial details and was alternately indecisive and obstinate. He also revealed that Hughes' unpredictable mood swings made him wonder if the film would ever be completed

In December 1957, Hughes told his aides that he wanted to screen some movies at a film studio near his home. Hughes stayed in the studio's darkened screening room for more than four months, never leaving. He subsisted exclusively on chocolate bars, chicken, and milk, and relieved himself in the empty bottles and containers. He was surrounded by dozens of Kleenex boxes, which he continuously stacked and re-arranged. He wrote detailed memos to his aides on yellow legal pads giving them explicit instructions not to look at him, to respond when spoken to, but otherwise not speak to him. Throughout this period, Hughes sat fixated in his chair, often naked, continuously watching movies, reel after reel, day after day.

When he finally emerged in the spring of 1958, his hygiene was terrible, as he had not bathed or cut his hair and nails for weeks (although this may have been due to allodynia -- pain upon being touched.)

Hughes insisted on using tissues to pick up objects, so that he could insulate himself from germs. He would also notice dust, stains or other imperfections on people's clothes and demand that they take care of it.

As a result of numerous plane crashes, Hughes spent much of his later life in pain, eventually becoming severely addicted to codeine, which he injected intramuscularly. Hughes only had his hair cut and nails trimmed once a year. He may have been in severe chronic pain from his extensive injuries, so much so that even the act of tooth brushing was painful, so he avoided doing it.

A retrospective case study suggests that Hughes' drug situation is more reminiscent of "pseudoaddiction" than true addiction; he suffered chronic pain and used narcotic medicine to control it. He did not inject it intravenously for immediate effect, rather, he injected it into muscle, where it would have more of an effect on pain, however it should be noted that codeine, when injected intravenously, leads to life threatening symptoms and is not by any means a safe route of administration, under any circumstance.

He did not use tobacco or other drugs, and rarely consumed alcohol. He used diazepam to control the symptoms of withdrawal when he had not taken enough codeine. At the time, the field of pain management was small and there were few options for long-term pain control. As codeine is a relatively weak narcotic, his pain was probably not controlled effectively.

Toward the end of his life, his inner circle was largely composed of Mormons, as they were the only people he considered trustworthy, even though Hughes himself was not a member of their church.

Hughes was reported to have died on April 5, 1976, at 1:27 pm on board an aircraft owned by Robert Graf and piloted by Jeff Abrams, en route from his penthouse at the Acapulco Fairmont Princess Hotel in Mexico to The Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas. Alternatively, other accounts indicate that he died in the flight from Freeport Grand Bahamas to Houston. His reclusive activities (and possibly his drug use) made him practically unrecognizable; his hair, beard, fingernails, and toenails were long (possibly due to allodynia making him averse to touch), his tall 6-foot, 4-inch frame now weighed barely 90 pounds, and the FBI had to resort to fingerprints to identify the body. Howard Hughes' alias, John T. Conover, was used upon the arrival of his body at a morgue in Houston on the day of his death. There, his body was received by Dr. Jack Titus.

A subsequent autopsy noted kidney failure as the cause of death. Hughes was in extremely poor physical condition at the time of his death. He suffered from malnutrition. While his kidneys were damaged, his other internal organs, including his brain, were deemed perfectly healthy. X-rays revealed five broken-off hypodermic needles in the flesh of his arms. To inject codeine into his muscles, Hughes used glass syringes with metal needles that easily became detached. Phenacetin, used for chronic pain until 1983, may have been the cause of his kidney failure. Hughes is buried in the Glenwood Cemetery in Houston, Texas, next to his parents.

Icons From the Age of Anxiety: Record Producer Phil Spector

One of the most disturbing freefalls from celebrated wunderkind to profoundly disturbed adult, rivaling those of chess champion Bobby Fischer, filmaker Howard Hughes, and pop star Michael Jackson, is that of Phil Spector (b. 1940), the originator of the Wall of Sound production technique (a dense, layered effect that reproduced well on AM radio and jukeboxes).

Spector was a pioneer of the 1960s girl-group sound and produced over 25 Top 40 hits in 1960–1965. Some of his famous girl groups are The Ronettes and The Crystals. After this initial success, Spector later worked with artists including Ike and Tina Turner, John Lennon, George Harrison, and the Ramones with similar acclaim. He produced The Beatles' Academy Award winning album Let It Be, and the Grammy Award–winning Concert for Bangladesh by former Beatle George Harrison.

In 1989, Spector was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a non-performer. The 1965 song "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin,'" produced and co-written by Spector for The Righteous Brothers, is listed by BMI as the song with the most US airplay in the 20th century.

Philles Records:

In late 1961, Spector formed a new record company with Lester Sill, who by this time had ended a business partnership with Lee Hazlewood. Philles Records combined the names of its two founders. Through Hill and Range Publishers, Spector found three groups he wanted to produce: the Ducanes, the Creations, and The Crystals.

Tom Wolfe, author of "The Pump-House Gang," the famous piece in which he predicted the death of surf culture in 1965, had earlier written a profile of Phil Spector. “The First Tycoon of Teen,” was Tom Wolfe’s 1964 profile of pop wunderkind Phil Spector -- “the first millionaire businessman to rise up out of the teen-age netherworld.” At 23, Spector had already produced “Zip-a-dee-doo-dah,” “He’s a Rebel,” “Be My Baby,” “Da Do Ron Ron,” “Then He Kissed Me,” “Uptown,” and “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin.” “I get a little angry when people say it's bad music,” Spector tells Wolfe. “It has limited chord changes, and people are always saying the words are banal and why doesn't anybody write lyrics like Cole Porter anymore, but we don’t have presidents like Lincoln anymore either.”

By 1967 Spector had lost his enthusiasm for his Philles label and the recording industry. Already something of a recluse, he withdrew temporarily from the public eye, marrying Veronica "Ronnie" Bennett, lead singer of the Ronettes, in 1968. Spector emerged briefly for a cameo as a drug dealer in the film Easy Rider, in 1969. (He had also, in 1967, appeared as himself in an episode of I Dream of Jeannie.)

In 1970, Allen Klein, manager of the Beatles, brought Spector to England. While producing John Lennon's hit solo single "Instant Karma!", which went to #3, Spector was invited by Lennon and George Harrison to take on the task of turning the Beatles' abandoned "Get Back" recording sessions into a usable album. Spector went to work using many of his production techniques, making significant changes to the arrangements and sound of some songs. The resulting album, Let It Be, was a massive commercial success and topped the US and UK charts. The album also yielded three #1 singles: "Get Back", "The Long and Winding Road" and "Let It Be". His overdubbing of "The Long and Winding Road" infuriated its composer, Paul McCartney, especially since the work was allegedly completed without his knowledge and without any opportunity for him to assess the results. In 2003, McCartney spearheaded the release of Let It Be... Naked, which stripped the songs of Spector's input.

Many producers have tried to emulate the Wall of Sound, and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys—a fellow adherent of mono recording—considered Spector his main competition as a studio artist, going so far as to name the acclaimed Pet Sounds album using Spector's initials. Bruce Springsteen emulated the Wall of Sound technique in his recording of "Born to Run".

As the 1970s progressed, Spector became increasingly reclusive. The most probable and significant reason for his withdrawal, recently revealed by biographer Dave Thompson, was that in 1974 Spector was seriously injured when he was thrown through the windshield of his car in a crash in Hollywood. According to a contemporary report published in the New Musical Express, Spector was almost killed, and it was only because the attending police officer detected a faint pulse that Spector was not declared dead at the scene. He was admitted to the UCLA Medical Center on the night of March 31, 1974, suffering serious head injuries which necessitated several hours of surgery with over 300 stitches to his face and more than 400 to the back of his head. His head injuries, Thompson suggests, were the reason that Spector began his habit of wearing outlandish wigs in later years.

The 1974 accident took place shortly after Spector had established the Warner-Spector label with Warner Bros. Records, which undertook new recordings with Dion, Cher, Harry Nilsson and others, as well as several reissues. A similar relationship with Britain's Polydor Records led to the formation of the Phil Spector International label in 1975.

On February 3, 2003, actress Lana Clarkson was found dead, killed by a firearm, in Spector's mansion in Alhambra, California. Spector stated that Clarkson's death was an "accidental suicide" and that she "kissed the gun." The emergency call from Spector's home, made by Spector's driver Adriano de Souza, quotes Spector as saying, "I think I've killed someone." According to some women who were said to have met Spector, there would come a point when they wanted to leave Spector's home, whereupon he would hold them at gunpoint.

First trial:

Spector remained free on $1 million bail while awaiting trial. The trial began on March 19, 2007. Presiding judge Larry Paul Fidler allowed the trial to be televised. At the start of the trial, the defense's forensic expert Henry Lee was accused of hiding crucial evidence which the District Attorney's office claimed could prove Spector's guilt. On September 26, 2007, Judge Fidler declared a mistrial because of a hung jury (10 to 2 for conviction).

Second trial:

The case went to the jury on March 26, 2009, and nineteen days later, on April 13, the jury returned a guilty verdict  of second-degree murder. In addition, he was found guilty of using a firearm in the commission of a crime. Spector was immediately taken into custody and was formally sentenced on May 29, 2009, to 19 years to life in the California state prison system.

Discography

Albums:

1959: The Teddy Bears Sing – The Teddy Bears
1963: A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records – Various Artists
1963: Twist Uptown – The Crystals
1963: He's A Rebel – The Crystals
1963: Zip-A Dee-Doo-Dah - Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans
1964: Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes Featuring Veronica – The Ronettes
1965: Ronettes – The Ronettes
1966: River Deep - Mountain High – Ike and Tina Turner
1969: Love Is All We Have to Give - Sonny Charles and the Checkmates, Ltd.
1970: Let It Be – The Beatles
1970: All Things Must Pass (co-producer) – George Harrison
1970: Plastic Ono Band (co-producer) – John Lennon and The Plastic Ono Band
1971: Imagine (co-producer) – John Lennon and The Plastic Ono Band with the Flux Fiddlers
1971: The Concert for Bangladesh (co-producer) – George Harrison and friends
1972: Some Time in New York City (co-producer) – John Lennon and Yoko Ono     with Elephant's Memory plus Invisible Strings
1975: Rock N' Roll (co-producer) – John Lennon
1975: Born To Be With You – Dion
1977: Death of a Ladies' Man – Leonard Cohen
1980: End of the Century – Ramones
1981: Season of Glass (co-producer) – Yoko Ono
1986: Menlove Ave. (co-producer) – John Lennon
1991: Back to Mono (1958-1969) (box set compilation) – Various Artists
2003: Silence Is Easy (co-producer) – Starsailor
Singles:

"To Know Him Is to Love Him" – The Teddy Bears (12/01/58, #1)
"Corrina, Corrina" – Ray Peterson (1/09/61, #9)
"Pretty Little Angel Eyes" – Curtis Lee (8/07/61, #7)
"Every Breath I Take" – Gene Pitney (9/11/61, #42)
"I Love How You Love Me" – The Paris Sisters (10/30/61, #5)
"Under the Moon of Love" – Curtis Lee (11/27/61, #46)
"There's No Other (Like My Baby)" – The Crystals (1/22/62, #20)
"I Could Have Loved You So Well" – Ray Peterson (1/27/62, #57)
"Uptown" – The Crystals (3/03/62, #13)
"He Knows I Love Him Too Much" – The Paris Sisters (3/10/62, #34)
"Let Me Be the One" – The Paris Sisters (5/26/62, #87)
"Second Hand Love" – Connie Francis (6/09/62, #7)
"He's A Rebel" – The Crystals (11/03/62, #1)
"Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" – Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans (1/12/63, #8)
"He's Sure the Boy I Love" – The Crystals (1/19/63, #11)
"Puddin N’ Tain (Ask Me Again, I’ll Tell You the Same)" – The Alley Cats (2/16/63, #43)
"Why Do Lovers Break Each Other’s Hearts" – Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans (3/30/63, #38)
"(Today I Met) The Boy I’m Gonna Marry" – Darlene Love (5/11/63, #39)
"Da Doo Ron Ron (When He Walked Me Home)" – The Crystals (6/08/63, #3)
"Not Too Young to Get Married" – Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans (7/13/63, #63)
"Then He Kissed Me" – The Crystals (8/17/63, #6)
"Wait ’Til My Bobby Gets Home" – Darlene Love (9/07/63, #26)
"Be My Baby" – The Ronettes (10/12/63, #2)
"A Fine Fine Boy" – Darlene Love (11/23/63, #53)
"Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)" – Darlene Love
"Baby, I Love You" – The Ronettes (2/01/64, #24)
"(The Best Part of) Breakin' Up" – The Ronettes (5/16/64, #39)
"Do I Love You?" – The Ronettes (8/01/64, #34)
"Walking In the Rain" – The Ronettes (12/05/64, #23)
"You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" – The Righteous Brothers (2/06/65 #1, UK #1)
"Just Once in My Life" – The Righteous Brothers (5/15/65, #9)
"Unchained Melody" – The Righteous Brothers (8/28/65, #4)
"Ebb Tide" – The Righteous Brothers (1/08/66, #5)
"River Deep - Mountain High" – Ike and Tina Turner (6/18/66, #88 UK #3)
"Love Is All I Have to Give" – The Checkmates, Ltd. (5/03/69, #65)
"Black Pearl" – The Checkmates, Ltd. (7/05/69, #13)
"Proud Mary" – The Checkmates, Ltd. (11/01/69, #69)
"Instant Karma (We All Shine On)" – John Lennon (3/28/70, #3)
"The Long and Winding Road"/"For You Blue" – The Beatles (6/13/70, #1)
"My Sweet Lord" – George Harrison (12/26/70, #1)
"What Is Life" – George Harrison (3/27/71, #10)
"Power To The People" – John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band (5/15/71, #11)
"Try Some, Buy Some" – Ronnie Spector (5/22/71, #77)
"Bangla-Desh" – George Harrison (9/11/71, #23)
"Imagine" – John Lennon (11/13/71, #3)
"Rock 'n' Roll High School" – Ramones (8/04/79, UK #67)
"Baby, I Love You" – Ramones (2/04/80, UK #8)
"Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?" – Ramones (5/16/80, #54)
"Unchained Melody – The Righteous Brothers (10/20/90 Reissue, #13)
"Silence Is Easy" – Starsailor (01/09/03, UK #8)
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Movies:

Easy Rider (The Connection)

Television:

I Dream of Jeannie (Himself)

Icons from the Age of Anxiety: The Mordant Wit of Oscar Levant

Oscar Levant lensed by master photographer Richard Avedon.

There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.

Oscar Levant (1906-1972) American pianist, composer, author, comedian, and actor. He was as famous for his mordant character and witticisms, on the radio, and in movies and television, as for his music.

In 1928, Levant traveled to Hollywood. During his stay there, he met and befriended composer George Gershwin. From 1929-1948 Levant composed the music for more than twenty movies. During this period, he also wrote or co-wrote numerous popular songs that made the Hit Parade, the most noteworthy being Blame It on My Youth, now considered a standard.

Around 1932, Levant began composing seriously. He studied under Arnold Schoenberg and impressed him sufficiently to be offered an assistantship (which he turned down, considering himself unqualified). His formal studies led to a request by Aaron Copland to play at the Yaddo Festival of Contemporary American Music that year. Successful, Levant began on a new orchestral work, a sinfonietta. He also married actress Barbara Woodell, but they soon divorced.

In 1939, Levant married for the second time, to singer and actress June Gale, one of the Gale Sisters. Oscar and June were married for 33 years, until his death in 1972.

For a time, Levant was perhaps best known to American audiences as one of the regular panelists on the radio quiz show, Information Please. Originally scheduled as a guest panelist, Levant proved so quick-witted and popular that he became a regular fixture on the show in the late thirties and forties,

Between 1958-1960, Levant hosted a television talk show on KCOP-TV in Los Angeles, The Oscar Levant Show, which later became syndicated. It featured his piano playing along with monologues and interviews with top-name guests such as Fred Astaire and Linus Pauling. A full recording of only two shows is known to exist, one with Astaire, who paid to have a kinescope recording of the broadcast made, so that he could assess his performance.

The TV show was highly controversial, eventually being taken from the air after a comment about Marilyn Monroe's conversion to Judaism, "Now that Marilyn Monroe is kosher, Arthur Miller can eat her." Levant later claimed that he "hadn't meant it that way".

Levant was also a frequent guest on Jack Paar's talk show, prompting Paar in later years to sign off by saying, "Good night, Oscar Levant, wherever you are." On an appearance on the Tonight Show, from New York, Levant once quipped that his Jaguar ambulance was waiting outside for him.

Open about his neuroses and hypochondria, Levant, in later life became addicted to prescription drugs and was frequently committed to mental hospitals by his wife. Despite his afflictions, Levant was considered a genius in many areas.

Famous Quips:

Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.

I'm going to memorize your name and throw my head away.

So little time, and so little to do.

The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too.

Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character.

A politician is a man who will double cross that bridge when he comes to it.

Behind the phony tinsel of Hollywood lies the real tinsel.

Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome.

I am no more humble than my talents require.

I knew Doris Day before she became a virgin.

I don't drink. I don't like it. It makes me feel good.

I envy people who drink -- at least they know what to blame everything on.

I have given up reading books. I find it takes my mind off myself.

There are two sides to every question: my side and the wrong side.

What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.

Lester's Lingo

Lester Willis Young, Prez (August 27, 1909 – March 15, 1959).

Coming to fame while a member of Count Basie's orchestra, Lester Young aka Prez ( for President of the saxaphone) was one of the most influential players on his horn, playing with a cool tone and using sophisticated harmonies.

Prez also invented or popularized much of the hipster ethos which came to be associated with jazz.
Young’s smooth tone and relaxed lyrical playing style often earned him the spotlight in Basie’s band in the early thirties. Most soloists at the time played with a boisterous and raspy sound, influenced by the star soloist of Fletcher Henderson’s Big Band, saxophonist collossus Coleman Hawkins. In 1934, when Hawkins left Henderson’s group to tour Europe, Young briefly replaced him. However, he found his stint intolerable due to the high audience expectation that he play more like Hawkins.

Always a strong individualist, Young gained the reputation of being something of an eccentric -- indeed, in the public's mind he was the quintessential way-out hipster jazzman. Some of his quirks were visual. For starters, he held his saxophone at an odd, almost horizontal, angle, instead of straight up and down like most other saxophonists.

Prez also always wore a porkpie hat, and this flat-topped, wide-brimmed chapeau-along with finely tailored, but severely rumpled suits -- became his sartorial trademark. But it was his inventive use of slang that really fired the public's imagination. Young went well beyond the usual jazz lingo, and at times seemed to be speaking a language of his own.

Thus, Prez's saxophone keys were people, an old girlfriend was a wayback, a narcotics officer was a Bob Crosby -- he even coined the term now-commonly used bread for money. Critics, during this time, were spellbound by Young's personality, but more importantly, they were finally able to accept his cool style, and, in 1944, he was named the year's top tenor saxophonist in Down Beat magazine. Although jazz was not as popular among the general public as the Swing band music played by white orchestras, Young had become about as famous as a jazz man could be in the late forties.

Leter's Lingo:

Burn = to cook. "Does madam burn?," means "Does your wife cook?"

To Have Eyes = to desire or aspire to. "I had big eyes for a spot with Basie" means "I really wanted to play with Basie." To have Great Big Eyes is to really, really want something.

Bob and Bing = the cops on the narcotics squad. Acording to lore this slang was derived from the fact that Prez was allegedly busted by a cop who resembled Bob Crosby. "Bob and Bing are in the house" meant "The cops are here."

Prez also had other phrases, like to get bruised, would mean to have a bad show, or to have no crowd come to see a performance.
Young would often refer to people as Lady this or Lady that. Hence Billie Holiday's nickname Lady Day. However, Prez was known to call everybody Lady, be they male or female, because, as Prez would say, "Anyone with music in their heart is a lady."

Ivey Divey = cool, or OK.

Poundcake = a good-looking woman

I feel a draft could mean that he sensed racial prejudice, or that somebody was in the room who had hurt his feelings in the past.

George Washington was, according to jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, Prez's term for the bridge of a tune. He would say something like, "Lady Pete, may I have my George Washington again?"

Lester called his saxophone his baby doll.

Some of the nicknames Lester gave other jazz greats:

Billie Holiday - Lady Day
Harry Edison - Sweets
Bobby Scott - Bobby Socks
Count Basie - The Holy Main
Miles Davis - Midget

Now Playing On the Video Bar: Bluesman Magic Sam

Mississippi born and Chicago based, Samuel Magic Sam Gene Maghett (February 14, 1937 – December 1, 1969) was one of the leading lights of the second generation of Post-World War II Chicago blues artists. He was a contemporary of Buddy Guy, Otis Rush and Junior Wells. His 1967 Demark Album West Side Soul is considered one of the top blues albums of all time.

After moving to Chicago in 1950, his guitar playing earned bookings at blues clubs in Chicago's West Side. Sam recorded for Cobra Records from 1957-59, recording singles, including All Your Love and Easy Baby. They did not appear on any record charts, yet they had a profound influence, far beyond Chicago's guitarists and singers. Together with recordings by Otis Rush and Buddy Guy (also Cobra artists), they made a manifesto for a new kind of blues.

His guitar style, vocals, and songwriting ability have inspired and influenced many blues musicians ever since. In The Blues Brothers, Jake Blues dedicates the band's performance of Sweet Home Chicago to the "late, great Magic Sam".

The stage name, Magic Sam, was devised by Sam's bass player and childhood friend Mack Thompson, at Sam's first recording session for Cobra, from an approximation of "Maghett Sam". The name Sam was using at the time, Good Rocking Sam, was already being used by another artist.

One of the all-time electric blues greats -- Magic Sam.

Icons From the Age of Anxiety: The King of Pop Michael Jackson

Michael Joseph Jackson (1958-2009): The American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman who is often referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records. If ever there was a text-book poster boy for the anxiety disorder known as Body dismorphic disorder, MJ would have to be it.

From Wikipedia: Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD, also body dysmorphia, dysmorphic syndrome; originally dysmorphophobia) is a type of mental illness, a somatoform disorder, wherein the affected person is concerned with body image, manifested as excessive concern about and preoccupation with a perceived defect of their physical features. The person complains of a defect in either one feature or several features of their body; or vaguely complains about their general appearance, which causes psychological distress that causes clinically significant distress or impairs occupational or social functioning. Often BDD co-occurs with emotional depression and anxiety, social withdrawal or social isolation.

Common compulsive behaviors associated with BDD include:

Compulsive mirror checking, glancing in reflective doors, windows and other reflective surfaces.
Alternatively, inability to look at one's own reflection or photographs of oneself; also, removal of mirrors from the home.
Attempting to camouflage the imagined defect: for example, using cosmetic camouflage, wearing baggy clothing, maintaining specific body posture or wearing hats.
Use of distraction techniques to divert attention away from the person's perceived defect, e.g. wearing extravagant clothing or excessive jewelry.
Excessive grooming behaviors: skin-picking, combing hair, plucking eyebrows, shaving, etc.
Compulsive skin-touching, especially to measure or feel the perceived defect.
Immotivated hostility toward people, especially those of the opposite sex (or same sex if homosexual).
Seeking reassurance from loved ones.
Excessive dieting or exercising, working on outside appearance.
Self-harm.
Comparing appearance/body parts with that/those of others, or obsessive viewing of favorite celebrities or models whom the person suffering from BDD wishes to resemble.
Compulsive information-seeking: reading books, newspaper articles and websites that relate to the person's perceived defect, e.g. losing hair or being overweight.
Obsession with plastic surgery or dermatological procedures, often with little satisfactory results (in the perception of the patient). In extreme cases, patients have attempted to perform plastic surgery on themselves, including liposuction and various implants, with disastrous results.

Common locations of perceived defects:

In research carried out by Dr. Katharine Philips, involving over 500 patients, the percentage of patients concerned with the most common locations were as follows;

Skin (73%)
Hair (56%)
Nose (37%)
Weight (22%)

MJ appears to be another high-profile case of an afflicted person of wealth and celebrity that, instead of being treated for his anxiety disorders, was enabled and exploited. It's a tragedy, because he was a talented, good looking kid and it all went horribly wrong. Avoidance is a bitch.

Icons From The Age of Anxiety: The Genius of Logic Kurt Gödel

Kurt Friedrich Gödel (1906-1978): Celebrated for Gödel's incompleteness theorems, Gödel's completeness theorem, the consistency of the Continuum hypothesis with ZFC, Gödel metric, Gödel's ontological proof. Gödel, “established, beyond comparison, as the most important logician of our times,” in the words of Solomon Feferman, founded the modern, metamathematical era in mathematical logic. His Incompleteness Theorems, among the most significant achievements in logic since, perhaps, those of Aristotle, are among the handful of landmark theorems in twentieth century mathematics. His work touched every field of mathematical logic, if it was not in most cases their original stimulus. In his philosophical work Gödel formulated and defended mathematical Platonism, involving the view that mathematics is a descriptive science, and that the concept of mathematical truth is an objective one. On the basis of that viewpoint he laid the foundation for the program of conceptual analysis within set theory. He adhered to Hilbert's “original rationalistic conception” in mathematics (as he called it);  he was prophetic in anticipating and emphasizing the importance of large cardinals in set theory before their importance became clear.

Logic failed in later life, as Gödel suffered periods of mental instability and illness. He had an obsessive fear of being poisoned; he would eat only food that his wife, Adele, prepared for him. Late in 1977, Adele was hospitalized for six months and could no longer prepare Gödel's food. In her absence, he refused to eat, eventually starving to death. He weighed 65 pounds when he died. His death certificate reported that he died of "malnutrition and inanition caused by personality disturbance" in Princeton Hospital on January 14, 1978.

Math Prodigy: Srinavasa Ramanujan Iyengar

Mathematician Srinavasa Ramanujan's handwritten notebooks in the possession of University of Madras Library.
Photo: V. Ganesan

The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan by Robert Kanigel

"This moving and astonishing biography tells the improbable story of India-born Srinavasa Ramanujan Iyengar, self-taught mathematical prodigy. In 1913 Ramanujan, a 25-year-old clerk who had flunked out of two colleges, wrote a letter filled with startlingly original theorems to eminent English mathematician G. H. Hardy. Struck by the Indian's genius, Hardy, member of the Cambridge Apostles and an obsessive cricket aficionado, brought Ramanujan to England. Over the next five years, the vegetarian Brahmin who claimed his discoveries were revealed to him by a Hindu goddess turned out influential mathematical propositions. Cut off from his young Indian wife left at home and emotionally neglected by fatherly yet aloof Hardy, Ramanujan returned to India in 1919, depressed, sullen and quarrelsome; he died one year later of tuberculosis. Robert Kanigel gives nontechnical readers the flavor of how Ramanujan arrived at his mathematical ideas, which are used today in cosmology and computer science."

Icons from the Age of Anxiety: Bobby Fischer

My maternal grandfather, Chester H. Gray, taught my older brother, Alfred, and me how to play chess in the early sixties. My brother warmed to the game more than I did. He was into cold, winning logic, while I made these ill-advised "artistic" moves, each executed with a grand Ed Norton-like flourish, and was soon mated. I think I even made the classic "Fool's Mate" moves several times where you're checkmated in only two moves. I don't think I ever beat Alfred, ever. To my credit, I only kicked the game board over or threw my Rook at his head a half-dozen times. I took my revenge by rolling the dice in "luck-based" board games like Conflict and Risk.

Like mastering math, pool, or poetry I really savored the idea of playing winning chess -- sadly, I just wasn't too successful at those endeavors. My brother played our neighborhood pals like Mark Moustakis, who went on to become the Alaskan State Chess Champion for a while. Alfred played on the East Anchorage High School chess team with his classmates, Steven "Wayne" Gordon and Willie Stone. Ultimately though, Alfred had to quit playing in his post-High School chess career because he just couldn't stand the pain of losing, even if he didn't lose that many matches. The soul-wrenching agony of losing was far more intense than the joy of winning -- a textbook case of "loss aversion."

After High School, Mark and Wayne used to go to chess tournaments in the "Lower 48" to collect autographs from chess Grandmasters, as well as try to increase their Elo ranking by winning matches. I've had two good friends that have written chess columns and books, Wayne Gordon, and here in Dallas, Ken Artz. Both of them also collected comic books.

I enjoyed being a chess hanger-on, and followed Bobby Fischer's career avidly, along with my friends'. He went from being a national hero to being a despised pariah. The only comparable crash I can think of is the soaring popularity and then dizzying plunge in the pop culture status of The Green Berets during the Vietnam era.

From the DVD description, "In 1972, America was chess-obsessed. The Soviet Union used chess to demonstrate its intellectual superiority to the West, but along came a young, lone American, who demolished the Russian masters of the sport. At the height of his career, Bobby Fischer was better known than any other man in the world. Relentless press attention, political pressure and a monomaniacal focus on chess ultimately led to his undoing.

Filmmaker Liz Garbus uses the narrative tension of the 1972 match between Fischer and the defending World Champion, the Russian Boris Spassky, to explore not only the politically charged period of the early 1970s but also the nature of genius, madness and the game of chess itself."

Read, Read, and Read Some More: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

Here's a great book that sheds some light on Edward O. Thorp's roulette wheel-predicting buddy, the genius Claude Shannon. I smile when I recall William Poundstone's opening description about Shannon in Fortune's Formula, something along the lines of, "It would be unfair to Claude Shannon to Albert Einstein. Unfair to Shannon because he was so much smarter."

This hefty tome is touted on Amazon as, "From the bestselling author of the acclaimed Chaos and Genius comes a thoughtful and provocative exploration of the big ideas of the modern era: Information, communication, and information theory.  

Acclaimed science writer James Gleick presents an eye-opening vision of how our relationship to information has transformed the very nature of human consciousness. A fascinating intellectual journey through the history of communication and information, from the language of Africa’s talking drums to the invention of written alphabets; from the electronic transmission of code to the origins of information theory, into the new information age and the current deluge of news, tweets, images, and blogs. Along the way, Gleick profiles key innovators, including Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Samuel Morse, and Claude Shannon, and reveals how our understanding of information is transforming not only how we look at the world, but how we live."