Duff of Ace of Cakes has made The Millennium Falcon cake. The detail is incredible, and they actually served it up.
All posts by Phil
Untitled or What Do You Know?
Mary DeMuth asks what we know about writing and art, if anything. She says:
I am finally reading My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok. I wish I would’ve read it sooner. I’m halfway through the book where the young Asher Lev, an undiscovered but brilliant artist, meets with his soon-to-be mentor. This is what the mentor says to Asher:
“This is not a toy. This is not a child scrawling on a wall. This is a tradition; it is a religion, Asher Lev. You are entering a religion called painting. It has its fanatics and its rebels. And I will force you to master it. Do you hear me? No one will listen to what you have to say unless they are convinced you have mastered it. Only one who has mastered a tradition has a right to attempt to add to it or to rebel against it. Do you understand me, Asher Lev?”
Then she asks several questions I’m not qualified to answer.
Exhibition of Forgeries
The Brooklyn Museum plans to exhibit art forgeries next year. The curator said, “‘The idea of connoisseurship’ — how scholars examine a work of art in order to determine its authenticity and proper attribution — ‘has a lot of general appeal.'”
Taking the Credit
There are disputes over the authorship of two popular Christian poems. “My client wants to preserve for all time the knowledge in the public that his mother wrote this poem,” states one lawyer, and some of us have to ask what the real point of that knowledge would be–credit or money?
The Great Tony Snow
Tony Snow, commentator and former press secretary for the president, died of cancer at 2:00 a.m. this morning at Georgetown University Hospital. He was 53. I think if talk radio commentators were stereotyped as being like Tony Snow, few people would have room to complain about them. He was a great man.
Let me add that I hope to him in heaven. I believe he was Catholic, and I heartily disagree with the doctrine of the Catholic church, but I’ve heard Tony talk about life and dealing with cancer a few times and I believe he understood the gospel.
You know, I never feel much when public figures pass away. I don’t know them, even if I admire them, so I don’t feel more than a bit of disappointment, if that. So why am I crying now?
WALL-E Could Win an Oscar
“More important than its homages to Hollywood classics may be WALL-E’s status as an example of the kind of films Hollywood rarely makes anymore: well-crafted stories for a mass audience.“
Recommended Reading
Greybeard sends a link to a post on “what church leaders can learn from literature.” He says he has read only Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, which I have not read and I would say is not high on my list except I don’t have an actual list, so I can’t quite judge this title’s placement on it. I would like to read it some day. Maybe once I become rich and famous.
I have read Potok’s My Name is Asher Lev. I read it for a modern literature class in college and had to give a type of oral report on it even though I hadn’t gotten beyond 100 pages. But in those pages, Asher Lev grabbed me. It’s a thickly tensioned story of a family that feels out of place in the world and a gifted boy who feels out of place in his family. I’d like to read it again before getting around to Dorian Gray. I mean, I like Oscar Wilde. I have enjoyed my frequent experience with The Importance of Being Earnest. But I want to read more of Chaim Potok. One is flash, the other heat.
Many more reading recommendations follow in the comments on that post.
Listen, O Man (or Woman or whatever the case may be)
The folks at Faith by Hearing suggest we seize our commutes with loads of MP3s.
“Indiana Jones and the Dodgy Antiques Dealer”
Crystal skulls on display in various museums have been ruled fake, not the Aztec artworks they were declared to be.
Tolkien Postcard Found While Razing Tolkien Home
The team taking apart one of Tolkien’s homes found a postcard in the fireplace. Reporter Mike Collett-White writes:
The postcard was addressed to Tolkien at the Miramar Hotel in Bournemouth, where he and his wife Edith often stayed. [It is dated 1968.]
It is from “Lin,” which Malton [the demolition man] believed could be fellow fantasy author Lin Carter who wrote Tolkien: A Look Behind ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ published in 1969.
Depicting a scene from Ireland, it reads: “I have been thinking of you a lot and hope everything has gone as well as could be expected in the most difficult circumstances.”
The circumstances in question are not described in this report.