#klieg light

[from1837to1945]

Souls for Sale (1923)

Pictures and Picturegoer, July 1924, p.22

[frankmayo]

Souls for Sale (1923)

Pictures and Picturegoer, July 1924, p.22

[ne0nwithazero]

Rouxls and Klieg go on a date :)

[televussy]

Late night reading

[thursdaymurderbub]

[oldguardleatherdog]

The Night Before the Tribute In Light

September 10, 2003

I.

One month ago today, this long-forgotten photo suddenly popped up in the photo app on my laptop. I took this photo with my Sanyo clamshell phone on September 10, 2003, 21 years ago tonight, from Hudson River Park in Manhattan.

Don't ask me how it survived all these years or where it's been stored all this time or how in the world it could have found its way to me from the long-dead storage servers of a long-defunct cell phone carrier. We're in the penumbra of The Anniversary, and time is out of joint.

I had been back in New York for about a month (after getting violently run out of the place I was staying by a fellow who is now one of my closest friends), homeless and living in that roach-infested HIV crack-house shelter at 96th and Broadway that I describe in "The One Decent Thing I Ever Did" (it’s archived on this blog), and you can imagine my state of head and spirit at this moment, the night before the 2nd anniversary of the terror attacks on the World Trade Center that drove me from my home in Lower Manhattan, four blocks east of the site.

I was sitting on a bench in Hudson River Park on the West Side of Manhattan, somewhere near Houston Street, maybe ten or fifteen blocks north of World Trade. I hadn't noticed these beams of light as I walked, and I think they might have just been activated while I was sitting there. As I recall, it was a full moon in Virgo, and I was positioned just right to snap this shot. I had *no* idea what this was all about, as I recall, but I thought the image was so striking and affecting that I wanted to capture it.

As it turns out, this was the tech run-through for the first September 11th installation of the “Tribute In Light”. Here’s Google’s AI summary of this remarkable memorial:

So there I was, just two years after the blast, stunned by this sudden, mysterious apparition rising from just south of what was still a giant, messy hole in the ground. I was still not fully myself at that time and would not regain my full memory or sense of who I was until the following January (therein lies a tale!), and as I recall I was just numbly stunned, not knowing what to make of it.

As I write, I’m getting the physical sense memory of that moment: the dog in me (my medulla oblongata speaking) feels his hackles rise, it’s not what I expect to see filling the hole in the sky, is it another attack? Do I bark at it, sound an alarm, run towards it, away from it, why is there light there, is this some unholy ruse, another trick being played on me from that big smoky hole where nothing but poison has spilled out for the longest time?

My phone rang. It was a fellow that I had met and hung out with in San Francisco while I was stranded there, and I was stunned to hear from him, especially at that moment. “Hi Dave… well, right now I’m on the riverfront looking at the damnedest thing… [I just wanted to make sure you were ok] hey, thanks for checking in… yeah, take care bud.” I closed the phone and started walking south along the riverfront, toward the light beams.

When I got there, I saw the massive banks of klieg lights assembled in their arrays, a strange and unfamiliar (unwelcome) echo of the shapes and the placement and the footprints of the place I loved so well.

The faces of the artists who surrounded the lights were intense, focused, sober. I still didn’t quite know what was going on, but there was profound reverence in the air, on those faces, at that place, as the beams of pure white light soared upwards, past the point of naked-eye discernment, unending, likely petering out tens of thousands of feet off that spoiled piece of ground, perhaps piercing the ionosphere, did they get clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration for this? Are pilots being disoriented by these columns at 45,000 feet? Do they touch the feet of God?

II.

And I kept walking south, my back to the light,

Down to the oldest part of the civilized island,

Past the Battery, the bronze bull, the buttonwood tree,

The Port of New York dead ahead,

The Staten Island Ferry terminal, ramshackle, ancient,

Entry restricted by terror tape and armed sentinels

No two uniforms alike, a panoply of enforcement,

Heavy weapons at the ready, so jarring in my neighborhood,

And the working dogs with the keen snouts, the trained muzzles,

Jumping up to paw at the brown bag in the soldier’s hand

Is that peanut butter? Apple? Hunk of cheese?

Let’s play! You’ve been so serious, so worried,

You smell sad and scared, are you lost? Let’s play!

Even Cerberus needs break time, belly rubs, treats!

For the first time in weeks, I smile to myself

As I round past the ferry, those strange lights at my back.

Hope I can sneak past the turnstile downstairs,

I won’t have to hike back up three hundred blocks

To that awful low place. Did you know roaches bite?

They shit on you too. Try to sleep, fully dressed,

Watch cap pulled low on my head, long sleeved shirt

Buttoned up to the collar, heavy pants tucked in boots,

Gloves on my hands, one more night without food

Half-bag of speed takes my mind off the pain

Sleep comes in fits if at all. – On the train

Dreading the stop: ninety-sixth street and Broadway.

Tomorrow, this city will jack itself off

In performative weeping and gnashing and cursing

Oh, how we loved them! I snort in derision,

You didn’t lose nothin', you pieces of shit!

Let the dead bury the dead. Beams of light

Don’t feed this refugee reeking of ashes -

What, do I smell bad? So sorry to stink up

The place where you’ve laid out the feast for your friends

Who still have their jobs, their high homes in the towers

Behind the glass doors where your larders are stocked

With the food that you bought with your government money

That flooded your midtown Manhattan apartment

With all the new clothes, electronics, the sausages

Fresh from Enrico’s, Zabar’s, D’agostino’s,

Bought with the Victim’s Fund money you stole

When you filed your claim. “OMG, it was awful!

“I couldn’t get up to the fifty-fourth floor,

“I had to find shelter on Upper Park Avenue.

“Power was out. I was homeless that night!

“So glad that my friend who was shopping in Gramercy

“Gave me the number to call for my claim

“September 11th was horrid! I told them

“I couldn’t go home for two nights! Oh, thank God

“The claim got approved with a wink and a nod

“And no one’s the wiser – I’ve never been south

“Of the Plaza Hotel! That all happened on Wall Street,

“Who goes down there? Jesus Christ, are you kidding?

“That’s four miles away! Christopher, are you coming

“Or what? Reservations at Nobu won’t wait

“For you or for me, so quit primping!”

The pain

In my stomach, relentless. My gorge won’t stop heaving.

Am I gonna make it? Damn, *ouch!* What the fuck…

The tooth that I hoped would hold out just gave way,

Fuck me. Another huge hole in my grille.

When I made six figures and lived in a high-rise,

Fuck buddies laughing on Saturday night,

Nobody told me that one hundred minutes

And two hijacked jet planes would make such a difference.

No one will laugh with me now – my best friends

Are yelling and angry, how dare I show up

Sweaty and toothless, a walking reminder

Of September tenth. No, I’m not gonna feed you.

III.

Now, twenty years later, they’ve retooled their memory:

“Animal! Damn, dog! We’ve missed you, you know,

“Wow, you’re alive! You look fabulous! Listen,

“I never gave up on you. Give a call

“When you come to the City. I want you to meet

“My beautiful husband – he remembers you too!”

IV.

Twin beams of light where the Towers were anchored,

Okay, not exactly precisely those spots,

But who’s gonna criticize? Look and recall

How majestic they were. Yeah, the new One World Trade

Is cool, I suppose – no one mentions the absence

Of Two World Trade Center. Insurance, you know.

Not enough money or civic ambition,

And Bloomberg discouraged it. Why add a target?

“Don’t you think sixty or seventy stories

“Are more than enough? Hell, let’s just get it done.

“The sooner we finish construction, the better.”

V.

*There will never be lumens of adequate volume

Sufficient to seal that hole in the sky,

But the hole in my heart I will finish, I tell you.

Walk with me as I go forward. Tomorrow

I’m back in the studio. Tonight, we can play!

You smell like apples and – damn, is that chocolate?

(our light beams shine upward forever)

"Good boy!"

Animal J. Smith

San Francisco, California

September 10, 2024

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

"But if the forces of evil should rise again, to cast a shadow on the heart of the city, call me." -Batman

A call went our last night with this signal by the people of Los Angeles:

The Bat-Signal is a distress beacon appearing in the various interpretations of the Batman mythos. It is a specially modified Klieg searchlight with a stylized symbol of a bat attached to the light so that it projects a large Bat emblem on the sky or buildings of Gotham City.

In the stories, the signal is used by the Gotham City Police Department as a method of contacting and summoning Batman to their assistance in the event of a serious crisis and as a weapon of psychological intimidation to the numerous villains of Gotham City.

"Please inform the citizens of Gotham that Gotham City has earned a rest from crime But if the forces of evil should rise again, to cast a shadow on the heart of the city, call me." Batman's letter to the GCPD

[porterdavis]

The (ex-) Emperor has no clothes

Top marks to the Harris/Walz team for not mincing any words or wasting any time when it comes to rebutting Trump and his gaseous lies.

Shine a klieg light on the pus while it's still oozing from the wound. Don't let the spin doctors in to try to lick it up.

[smallgodseries]

[image description: Against the Klieg lights of a dark city, the glowing bright eyes of this sneering night stalker are in direct contrast to his extravagantly silly, er… ‘eccentric’ rubber (or is it leatherette?) headgear. Text reads, “64, The Scowl ~ The Small God: Vigilante Headgear”]

It’s raining in Dark City. 

It’s always raining in Dark City. Urban legend says the clouds cleared once and the sun broke through, on a Thursday afternoon in the middle of July. Men vomited, women wept, non-binary people fled shrieking from the light, and a surprising (not surprising) percentage of the city’s population was revealed to be vampires looking for a safe refuge. 

The streets are silver in the moonlight, barely brightened by the glow of street lamps that haven’t been cleaned since the industrial revolution. People hurry, their coat collars popped high, their hats drawn low, their hands oddly empty of umbrellas. There’s no point in Dark City. Umbrella or no, you always wind up getting wet. 

The sound of screams splits the night, shrill and insistent, and what seemed to be a gargoyle on a nearby rooftop straightens and springs into action, revealing itself to be a lithe, long-limbed man who is inexplicably wearing skin tight gray spandex while he does his evening parkour. No one who sees him bats an eye. He is justice. He is the law. 

He is a private citizen with no legal authority or training in conflict de-escalation. Dark City has never had a police shooting. The police are too busy helping the criminals—many of whom had to be bussed in from other communities; the people of Dark City are smart enough to choose safer professions, like lion-taming or shark-fluffing—through their recovery and rehab. 

Somehow, they never seem to catch The Scowl. Even though he seems like he’d be fairly easy to find, they’re all too scared to put the hours in. Last year he paralyzed a man for tax evasion, and broke another’s legs because he’d been seen jaywalking. 

The people of Dark City are afraid. But when asked why they don’t leave, they shrug and ask, “Have you seen his hat? Cool hat like that, he must be a good guy. 

“He must be on our side.” 

He’s not.

[omg-hellgirl]

Age has marked his face — there are sea-horse-shaped hollows below his cheekbones, and huge furrows alongside the grouper mouth — but hasn't robbed it of its appeal. His grin is still a Hollywood premiere, all klieg lights and swinging limo doors.

Stephen Schiff, Vanity Fair, 1992.

[gcldfanged]

@monstersmade:

Ruluf was a man of many talents; a brilliant Turk and a desperately sought after bodyguard before that. Born and raised in Wallmarket, few could match how easily he took to violence, and his capacity for dirty fighting. Perhaps it was his time working with the Turks that had taken a slight edge off, or perhaps Jae had just picked a very good moment to strike - because he caught him off guard with a blow that sent him to his knees. "Oi! Get fucked, Jae! What was that for?!"

Yoon thought he would have been over it by now. Jules was right- It was over with and he hadn't come out worse for wear aside from some bruising.

Ah, but he personally knew how it could have all gone horribly wrong.

Suddenly he was fourteen years old again, snot-nosed and sobbing. Heavy footfalls echoed against corrugated metal and concrete walls and massive silhouettes cast long shadows that oozed across the ground like tar from the devil’s hooves himself. Light flooded his vision from a klieg and he'd raised his head, blinking and squinting against the harsh blue florescent bulb covered with crisscrossed wires and fat black buzzing mosquitoes.

"You could have asked me for help, y'know- It would have been easy: Just cut some fucker's fingers off and call it a day once we found who you were looking for. But your stupid ass thought up some dumb as shit plan involving Jules getting fucking drugged and snatched?"

He doesn't care if he's freaking out, he doesn't care if Ruluf is pissed as Hell, he just shoves the other Turk's chest roughly and glares so hard a lesser man would've spontaneously combusted from the sheer shame of it all.

"He could've been branded, ASSHOLE! Or has the top-sider life gotten to your head so much, you magically forgot how things work in our line of business."

[ne0nwithazero]

Aggie stuff from last night 💕

[sticksstonesbonespoems]

The Tower of London

The Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, French, Germans and all the “nationalities” that make up the people soup of London have been joined by the civilizations that soup colonized. It is a wondrous, multi-cultural city. Smack dab in the middle is a fortress that started as a medieval palace and became infamous for executions. The central building was erected by William the Conqueror who is responsible for making the English at least partly French even if they will not admit it as England and France became the Cain and Abel of Western Europe for centuries.

Power, monarchy and human weakness fed war and cruelty. Edward the first taxed the Jewish population higher than anyone else to pay for the construction of towers. Then he kicked them all out of England. The one room dedicated to devices of torture has boards glibly stating that there was not nearly as much torture as you would think. Oh no. There were only 81 cases of state-sanctioned torture. Mmmm hmmm. Who are you trying to kid? That statement should not be allowed to assuage any guilt felt by the largest purveyor of medieval hijinks and abject colonization. There is a quaint little pub across the street from the Tower called the Hung, Drawn. And Quartered. Own it England.

There are some things that have not evolved well. In the 50 or so years since my last visit, the ravens of the tower are now kept locked up. When I was a child, they free-roamed the grounds when tourists were there. Men just cannot be trusted.

Also, not one of us avoids death. Life is for living.

Haman

“So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai.”

Esther 7:10

“The loveliest lynchee was our Lord.”

Gwendolyn Brooks

Haman, good provider, brought his own rope.

Arranged with care his own unique reward.

He was risen higher in public death

Than he dared hope to rise in public life,

High as the best carpenters of the realm

Could build, high as the best gallows makers

He could afford to hire could lofty reach.

He twists slowly, slowly, at his rope’s end,

Turning slowly, his gaze could see for miles

Around now if still his eyes could see,

Turning slowly, could scan the capital,

The ways and and avenues that lead to power,

Turning slowly, South, East, North, West, search for

The junction where it all went somehow wrong.

Always and only he had expected

Simple justice: just what he had coming,

Had served his king, had shirked no drudging task,

Kept his desk clean, filed reports on time,

Learned decorum proper to high command—

Whose wife to flirt with and whom to avoid,

How to carve the roast, when to chill the wine,

How to serve up what the king wants to hear

At conference, and serve it up sincere.

Order, protocol, rank, degree, respect—

He knew his place and merely asked that those

Below know theirs; he wasn’t asking much:

The easy bow, the bending of the knee

To rank, acknowledging the earned degree.

His wife at first had thought his ravings odd,

A petty agnostic fret; his friends

Had humored him and failed to understand

His point that so much more than wounded pride

Was on the line, that the whole nation reeled

When one small wretched Jew refused to kneel.

If order, rank, and rule were not for all,

None would have them—the gutted state would fall.

The king, poor blind mindless amorous fool,

Must be saved from himself like it or not,

The state pushed back from the brink of chaos:

Blot out a people to save a nation,

Encourage a race for civilization.

The sentimental sops might call it cruel,

But realists would cautiously applaud:

And see him clear: a man doing the job

That years of public life had trained him for.

He liked to think that the years had prepared

Him precisely to meet this Jewish threat:

A moment to shine high in the klieg lights

Of all the focusing historians.

The man who knew his job and got it done.

Let the klieg lights of time affix him now

Twisting, slowly, slowly, at his rope’s end.

See him now in the bright harsh light of time

As man the butt of all ironic jokes,

Prickled on his own barbed wire, blown to hell

By his own bombs, gassed in the seclusion

Of his own chambers, and asking always

Only for what he has coming to him

And always, always, always getting it.

Man twists, slowly, slowly, at his rope’s end.

Turning slowly, scanning North, East, South, West:

History’s avenues all lead to death.

The light winks, the bands play, the boots march on.

Man dances absurd at the end of his rope.

For life is gala lynching party

Where every swinger brings his own rope:

It’s bring your own rope and reap your reward.

Except once: that grim party crashed by Him,

Intruding, who brought no rope of His own,

But borrowing man’s He stole the scene

And died, took what wasn’t coming to Him.

Look on Him, scene stealer, on His hilltop,

Changing the rules, muddling simple justice

With mercy, redemption, something called grace,

And cheating man of his hard earned reward:

Man’s antic rope’s end dance eclipsed at last

By the still shadow high on Golgotha.

E.W. Oldenburg 1936 - 1974

[afnews7]

‘Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes’ Director Nanette Burstein on Capturing the Private Side of the Screen Legend

http://www.afnews.info segnala: She was the most famous woman in the world. Her marriages (there were eight), affairs, jewelry and medical disasters were all exhaustively chronicled by the tabloids and paparazzi. But away from the klieg lights, a different side of Elizabeth Taylor — witty, wounded, desperate to prove herself — was shared with the tight circle of […] Leggi il resto su Variety…

[art-chap-enjoin]

87-2705-6 - Lights…cameraman - Discover biodiversity

Here are the other sketches I did when I joined #UskManila at the #DiscoverBiodiversity event at the Gateway Mall 2 in Araneta City, celebrating International Day for Biodiversity. The cameraman was a popular subject for us sketchers (while the talks were going on several of us drew him). I found out afterwards (with the help of @nice.r.rodriguez) that the lights I drew are called Klieg Lights…