2007 August 23 archive at eternallycool.net

Archive for August 23rd, 2007

Aug

Don’t Play With Your Food

By idcrome 0 Comments

Categories: Film & TV and Food & Wine

Oedipus performed by vegetables

Not really Roman, but it too eternally cool to be true. So, here we embrace the whole of our classical heritage:

In 2005, filmmaker Jason Wishnow released an eight and one-half minute film version of the Greek tragedy, Oedipus, in which the only actors are vegetables. Aeschylus rolled over in his grave as the ill-fated and potato-headed Oedipus won the hearts of film festival organizers around the world.

Oedipus played by vegetables

What would induce such an undertaking? In talking to Ish Magazine, Wishnow explained his motivations:

I figured the Oedipus story was always kind of funny, you know…incest, patricide, eye-gouging…I always thought vegetables offered another one of those ways that [the story of] Oedipus had not been told, but [had] been begging to be done for thousands of years (*grins*)

But really I have not been able to come up with a legitimately funny answer to this question after two years, and I still do not have the right sound bite quality answer to this question. The embarrassing thing is I guess I just thought it would be a funny way to tell the story.

Oedipus played by vegetables

In the same interview, Wishnow also explained the casting of the film:

…since Oedipus has to poke out his eyes…He needed to be a potato. The mum is supposed to be a real tomato – that goes without saying…and then, when the potato and the tomato have sex, obviously their offspring is a cherry tomato.

I was generally trying to go with vegetables you might find more commonly in European cuisine, so it would be appropriate to have potatoes and that kind of stuff. Even though halfway through the production we had this total catastrophe where I walked into the studio one morning after looking at vegetables on the internet until 3am, and I read that the potato and the tomato are both new world vegetables, so they come from the Americas. And I had one of those directing panic attacks. I thought, “Oh my God, I am going to have to recast the entire movie!” But everyone was like, “We are halfway through the film. We are going to keep going.” So, yup. I got over it.

Oedipus played by vegetables

We love, love, love the cauliflower sheep and the tomato queen!

Aug

This is Some Kind of Erector Set

By idcrome 1 Comment

Categories: Architecture and Historic Sites

These stunning illustrations were done by Natale Bonifacio for Domenico Fontana’s 1590 manuscript Della Trasportatione dell’Obelisco Vaticano.

Raising the Vatican Obelisk

In the first century AD, the Roman Emperor Nero often entertained himself at his suburban retreat in Rome’s Ager Vaticanus. There, he had a luxury villa that included a circus, or athletic stadium, with an obelisk at its center. The obelisk had been carved in Egypt during the reign of Nebkaure Amenemhet II (1992-1985 BCE), and had originally stood in the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis. It was brought to Rome by the emperor Caligula in 37 AD and erected as a symbol of the Roman conquest of Egypt.

It in Nero’s obelisk-embellished circus in the Ager Vaticanus that Saint Peter is said to have been martyred in the 60s AD. His body was then claimed by Rome’s growing Christian community and was buried in a nearby cemetery. Centuries later, when Christianity was legalized by the Roman Emperor Constantine (AD 313), a church that came to be known as Saint Peter’s Basilica was built over the grave of Peter and quite near the Circus of Nero.

The legalization of Christianity in Rome coincided with a turn of fortune in the Roman Empire. As Christianity grew in popularity, the power of the Roman Empire waned, but at the same time, Rome became depopulated and economically troubled. Ancient monuments fell into disrepair and some, like the obelisk in the Circus of Nero, simply fell to the ground.

Raising of the Vatican Obelisk

In the sixteenth century, another reversal of fortune saw Rome reborn. Renaissance Popes and nobles envisioned a Christian Rome that would rival the splendor and grandeur that had been the hallmark of ancient the ancient city and so they began to commission works of art and architecture that would embellish and enhance the Eternal City. One of the most important protagonists in this revival of Rome was Pope Julius II, who in 1506 commissioned the construction of a new Saint Peter’s Basilica, tearing down the fourth century church to begin building today’s splendid building – the project would take about 120 years to complete.

At the end of the sixteenth century, as construction on New Saint Peter’s was underway, Pope Sixtus V decided that the obelisk from Nero’s Circus (then laying on the ground near the construction site) should be displayed in front of the new basilica. In 1585, he gave the commission for moving and erecting the the 330-ton Aswan granite obelisk to architect Domenico Fontana. Though the monument only had to be moved about a quarter of a mile or so, the task was a colossal one, for no one had raised an obelisk since antiquity. The operation was carried out using hemp ropes and iron bars weighing 40,000 pounds, as well as 900 men and 72 horses, and the entire procedure took about 5 months to complete.

Raising the Vatican Obelisk