Time Traveler in 1928 Chaplin Premiere

“When all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” – Sherlock Holmes

The internet is all a buzz with the video of a woman walking down the street talking on a cell phone… in 1928. The fact is that there is a video of a premiere of Chaplin’s movie The Circus that shows a person dressed as a woman holding her hand up to her ear and talking.
In all fairness, before I opine one way or the other, here is the original video with a pitch from the guy who spotted the discrepancy, he concludes that it as a time traveler who is talking on a cell-phone-like device.



I like Sherlock Holmes, he’s one of my favorite characters, and I agree with his statement that ‘when all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” That is reasonable and logical to me. My point of contention is that in this day and age people think they have considered all other contingencies and the only thing that was left is “time traveler with a cell phone”. Here are some contingencies that were not considered:

• Alien talking to the mother ship
• Resident of the lost city of Atlantis
• 1928 secret government stealth airplane, no wait that’s a different conspiracy
• Maxwell Smart’s father in drag talking on a shoe phone.
• Alien trying to talk to the mother ship, not getting through and mumbling “for this quality I could have AT&T”
• Clairvoyant who saw into the future and is just messing with us.

And here is mine: It is an old woman, or a man dressed like an old woman. She is either cold or has seen the camera and does not want to be filmed so she holds her scarf up over her face. It’s a hefty sort of garment and she holds it up above her ear and covers her face shielding it form wind and prying lenses. You can see the black scarf pass through her hand drape around her neck and fall over her shoulder on the other side. Since it is a thick garment her hand wraps around it as she holds it up in a position similar to holding a cell phone.

It fascinates me that even CNN picked up the story. Well that is not so much a testament to the story’s veracity, but rather to the complete descent of CNN into the realm of credibility previously occupied only by FoxNews.

trust me, it's a typo

“Hello, is this Bubah’s printing services?”

“Yes sir, what can I do you for?”

“It’s about this order of letterhead you printed for me"

“Yes sir, what’s the problem?”

“There are a couple of typos in the header.”

“That’s impossible, we always use a spell checker on all our jobs, and if there were any mistakes I’m sure it would have fixed them. No job gets by without the spell checker, ‘Quality first’ is our motto!”

“I’m looking at my own name and I ought to know whether it’s wrong!”

“Is your name Ryder?”

Yes, my name is Ryder, but my first name is Mick, with an M, not a D.  And just so you know, my partner is coming down to your offices to express his displeasure in person.  Later on today, when you are filing the inevitable restraining order, you should know that his name is spelled F-U-C-H-S.  There is no K.

too often it goes without saying

That I didn’t mean it goes without saying.

That I would take it back if I could, goes without saying.

That I am sorry certainly goes without saying.

That the fault is mine, that too goes without saying.

Things that go without saying should never remain unsaid

Irene: Renoir's poor little rich girl

I have a replica of a Renoir painting called Irène Cahen d'Anvers. It’s an artagraph , a process where a computer scans the original and reproduces it down to the brushstrokes on canvas. Her angelic face and verdure background speak of happy, carefree times, of childish games and a loving fulfilled existence surrounded by beauty. For the better part of a decade she has personified idyllic existence on my wall. And during that time I have idealized her life as having been as beautiful as her portrait. So certain was I that her story was beautiful that I researched her life. Now I wish I hadn’t.

The painting is simply signed Renoir ’80, but it is famous enough that I knew her name before she was mine. Irene was 11 years old when she posed for Renoir and the portrait was completed in two sittings. She was the daughter of Louis Cahen d'Anvers a wealthy Jewish banker born in Belgium in 1837, died in Paris in 1922. Her mother was Louise de Morpurgo (1845-1926). Irene had two brothers Robert (1871-1931), and Charles (1879-1957), and two sisters Elisabeth (1874-1944) and Alice (1876-1965).

Renoir's Blue et Rose - Irene's sisters Elisabeth and Alice

Renoir painted a portrait of Irene and another of her sisters, that painting is now known as Rose et Blue and also as les demoiselles Cahen d'Anvers. And I think is equally famous and equally priceless as Irene. Elisabeth is blue and Alice is rose. When Renoir completed the canvases the Cahen d'Anvers hated them passionately and relegated them to the service area of the private hotel in Paris they called home. To add insult to injury they were late in paying Renoir for his services. A price had not been agreed upon before the work was completed and Renoir received 1,500 francs for the portraits. Even though it was more money than he had ever seen, it was significantly less than normally paid by this class of client for such services.

Irene's 1st husband  Moïse de Camondo

Irene grew up in that wealthy aristocratic environment and when she was 19, on October 15, 1891 she married Moïse de Camondo. Who had arrived in Paris from the Ottoman Empire (Trurkey) at the age of 9 with his father (Nissim) and uncle (Abraham-Behor) who came to develop the family’s financial affairs in Europe. They were extremely wealthy bankers. Camondo was an avid 18 century French art collector, a style very much in vogue which probably explains the Irene’s family’s disdain for Renoir’s work.

Irene and her husband have two children. Nissim, named after his grandfather, is born in 1892, and Beatrice, born in 1894. Irene leaves her husband in 1902 and he keeps the children. She converts to Christianity and marries Count Charles Sampieri in 1903, who apparently headed her husband’s stables. That marriage also ends in 1924.

Beatrice and her brother Nissim the year he died

Irene’s son is a fighter pilot in WWI, and in September 1917, at the age of 25, he dies in an air combat at Meurthe-et-Moselle. When her ex-husband dies in 1935, most of his fortune goes to his (and Irene’s) daughter, Beatrice. He also bequeaths his Paris home and all of his art collection to establish the Musée Nassim de Camondo in honor of his son. Beatrice, Irene’s only surviving child marries Léon Reinach and has two children Fanny born in 1920 and Bertrand, born in 1923.

WWII starts and Europe is no longer safe for Jews. Irene’s sister Elizabeth (the one in the blue ribbon) had converted to Christianity 50 years prior, but her Jewish roots are discovered and she dies somewhere on her way to Auschwitz. Irene’s daughter, Beatrice and her two grandchildren die in Auschwitz in 1943, as does Beatrice’s husband. The Camondos, or the Reincach as they were, arrived in Auschwitz on November 25, 1944 and were immediately gassed along with 914 other people. Irene’s marriage to Charles Sampieri, her name change in 1903 and early conversion to Christianity apparently kept her safe from the Nazis and spared her the fate of her family. She spent the war years living very simply and quietly in a Parisian apartment.


In 1946, Renoir’s painting’ La petite fille au ruban bleu’ (little girl in a blue ribbon) is recognized by the model who sat for it. Irene manages to reclaim the stolen painting she hated and in 1949 she sells it at a Parisian gallery to Georg Bürhle. Today it can be seen at the Bürhle Foundation in Zurich.

Irene was the sole heir of her daughter’s estate. She inherited the Camondo fortune. She lived to be 91 and some say she squandered the entire fortune. I say that she simply discovered early in her life that money isn’t worth much and she spent the rest of her days spending it in search of some measure of happiness. She died in 1963.

p.s Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born 25 February 1841 and died 3 December 1919

Irene's family

the udder ring

The Cow Parade is in Porto Alegre. Whenever I walk past a cow I stop to take a gander. Apparently a significant number of the cows has been vandalized. One was even stolen and returned the next day. It’s a sad reality in Brazil that there is no pride of ownership of public property: “If it’s public, it belongs to no one and I’m entitled to deface it.” Or perhaps there is too much pride of ownership of public property: “if it’s public, it is also mine and I’m entitled to deface it.” It depends on your point of view. But the result is always the same.

Walking by praça Julio de Castilho this weekend I stopped to look at the cow displayed there (pictured). It was a hip, modern sort of cow, it wore glasses, leg warmers and a nipple ring. - well, for the sake of accuracy, let’s call it an udder ring - The cow was intact except for the udder ring, which had been pried off and tossed on the pavement. I replaced the ring because first, it seemed like the proper thing to do and second, because how often do you get to say you replaced an udder ring?

But I walked away with two questions: what sort of person puts an udder ring on a cow? And the infinitely more disturbing question, what sort of person pulls it off?



The work is called: A Vaca Foi pro Beco by: Andrey Damo, sponsored by: Mumu, on display at Praça Julio de Caslilho in Porto Alegre. Here is a link to all the cows http://www.cowparade.com.br/poa/galeria.php

hanging out in Brazil

It’s a foregone conclusion that Brazilian women wear bras and that lingerie stores in Brazil sell bras. It’s an obvious assumption that you can come to Brazil and purchase a bra. You shouldn’t even have to speak Portuguese to purchase a bra, you simply enter the store find a bra you like, find your size and… Well that’s where it gets complicated. In order to actually find a bra your size you must, without exception or deviation, be a cup size B. Only B cup sized bras are sold in Brazil. You probably think I exaggerate. But I don’t mean that most bras sold in Brazil are B cups, I actually mean that ONLY B cups are available for sale in Brazil, exclusively! If you are a 44C you have to buy a 46B or 48B and make do. In fact, if you are Brazilian, not knowing any better, you will naturally think that 48B is your bra size. If you are a 46D you are doomed to live your entire life stuffed into a B cup. If you are a DD your only option is a B cup! I kid you not!

Of course I had questions for the poor, blameless, unwitting sales ladies. In the first store she told me that she had, in the past, seen a few bras that had the letter C instead of the normal B, but she didn’t have any of those in the store. She had a hidden talent for expression and managed to verbally italicize the word ‘those’. In the next store the sales lady didn’t know bras came with any other letter than B, she didn’t know B was the cup size, she simply thought it was a letter they put on bra tags. Mind you, the word for bra in Portuguese does not start with the letter ‘b’.

There was a quick piece on a variety show about Brazilian women wearing the wrong bras. What do you think the show was about? Did you guess wrong bra sizes? You guessed wrong. Apparently Brazilian women wear the wrong bras not because they all wear B cups, but because when they dress they choose strapped bras when they should have gone strapless, or regular when they should have gone push up, colors, textures etc. Nothing about cup sizes! Cup sizes are simply nonexistent in Brazil, no one has ever heard of the concept.

I miss California at a whole different level now.

This blog was brought to you by the letters A, C, and D, and by the number zero.

Everyone's gone batty

Living in downtown Porto Alegre is not for the faint hearted. I refer to you to the “human sausage” post for more evidence, and if that is not enough by all means read on. One evening sitting in the living room I heard a high pitched squeak sound from the service area. After much searching I discovered it was coming from outside. Just outside the window, flying between the buildings were hundreds of small insect eating bats. They were making the high pitched noise. I stood at the window and watched them for some time, they were very beautiful. Apparently some high ranking official also thought they were beautiful sometime in the past because there is a law against killing them. At first it sounds like a great law, it keeps the insect population under control and preserves nature. And I love nature. More precisely: I love nature outside my house, nature inside my house, not so much.

Here is how the Great Bat Alarm of 2010 went down:
Me: there are bats in the air conditioner in your room.
Mom: there are no bats.
Me: there are bats in the air conditioner.
Mom: there are no bats! Stop that.
Me: there are bats in the air conditioner.
Mom: that’s nice dear, off you go.
Saskia: Sniff Sniff. Bark Bark Bark!! Can I please, pleeeaaase have the bats in the air conditioner? Please? Just one?
Mom: What do you mean there are bats in the air conditioner? That’s awful, why didn’t you say something? We have to do something about that!
Me: *sigh*

There really is no point in killing a bat that has nested in your air-conditioning unit, if you kill the current resident, someone else will soon move in. And there is really not much point in killing bats that move into the box that houses the mechanism for your roll-up shades, another solution had to be found. The bats moved in, partied all night and apparently were all male because they drank lots of beer and peed indiscriminately all over the place. Or so it seemed based on the smell emanating from the roll-up shade mechanism.

The air conditioning manufacturer had an off the shelf solution for bats inside the units. They came out, cleaned the units, installed an external housing around each unit and presto. Bats-be-gone. By the way, the housing was installed by dangling a man by his ankles out the window. Harnesses? We don’t need no stinking harnesses!

(This is the second time he dangled, he was further out of the window the first time around, but I didn’t have a camera.)

The roll up shade manufacturer said: “Bats? Yes, that’s a common problem downtown. Learn to live with it, have a nice day, call us if you need anything else. On second thought, don’t call us, we don’t really care.”

I devised, what I think is an ingenious solution to the problem. Mom found a guy who was willing to build it and install it for an enormous amount of money and some prevarication that apparently passes for normal in Brazil. The nifty gadget keeps the bats out and allows the shade to roll up and down.
The man installed the gadget and cleaned out the roll-up shade boxes, this is what he found: (insert imaginary psycho music here)That was in the library. Here's what he found in the living room!

YIKES!!!

Everyone has heard of samba and Carnaval, but a little examined aspect of Brazilian culture is the annoying complacency that is endemic to the country. Most apartments downtown Porto Alegre have this type of roll-up shades. My gadget is of my own invention, there is nothing in the market that will keep bats out of the roll-up boxes…. people here have bats in their houses, have been told to live with them and seem to be happy to do so!!! It’s an extreme expression of the cultural complaisance found here. If something is not working, first you look for a way around it, if you can’t find a way around it, learn to live with it! i.e. dangling a man out of a window with no safety precautions is something you live with. God forbid anyone should suggest that a thing be changed or fixed so that it works properly. For decades the Brazilian motto was: “if you are up to your neck in shit, don’t make waves!” and the country resembled Elbonia.

The thing is: in the 90’s most of the shit was drained out of the country, it is now only waist deep and we have to make waves in order to drain the rest out! START COMPLAINING PEOPLE.