I’ve decided I’m going to do a series of posts on serial killers. Serial posts, if you will. Does that work? First: Albert Fish!
Hamilton “Hamy” Fish was born in 1870 to a family with a long history of mental illness and religious fanaticism.
After his father’s death, Fish’s mother put him into an orphanage.
Taunted by the fellow orphans who called him “Ham and Eggs,” Hamy changed his name to Albert, after a dead sibling.
Whipped and beaten by the orphan master, Albert Fish discovered that he liked pain.
Sorry I’m about to post all this disturbing stuff, Mom, but I can’t tell the story without these facts.
Fish left the orphanage only to discover a love of homosexual relationships, watching young boys undress, drinking urine, and coprophagia.
In 1890, Fish relocated to New York City, where he became a male prostitute and began raping young boys.
His mother arranged for Albert to wed a bride 9 years his junior, and together they had 6 children. Is that a case against arranged marriages, or what?
Albert Fish: house painter and child molester.
He became fascinated with castration after visiting a wax museum and tried to castrate a mentally retarded man.
In 1917 his wife left him for a handyman.
Fish was crushed over the breakup. He began hearing voices.
In 1910, Fish stabbed his first victim, a young boy in Wilmington, Delaware.
He continued his attacks, focusing on the mentally handicapped and African Americans, as he felt “they would not be missed.”
In May of 1928, 58-year-old Fish noticed an ad in the classified section of the New York World: “Young man, 18, wishes position in country.”
Fish traveled to Manhattan to visit Edward Budd, who placed the article, under the pretense of hiring him.
Going under the alias “Frank Howard, Farmer from Farmingdale,” he hired Edward and convinced the Budds to let Edward’s 10 year old sister, Grace, accompany him to a birthday party that evening. They complied.
Neither Grace nor Fish returned, and the house superintendent was arrested under suspect of kidnapping.
SEVEN YEARS LATER a letter arrived at the Budd household. Police traced it back to Fish.
Full of grammatical and spelling errors, the letter told the story of a man who sailed from San Francisco to Hong Kong, where there was such a lack of food that young children began to be butchered and sold as meat.
“John,” the protagonist of this tale, returned to the States with a taste for childrens’ flesh and proceeded to steal 2 boys, torture them…
You know what? I’m not going to go on with this post. I feel bad. I feel offensive. I feel like I’m writing things that I don’t want permanently posted on my blog. I feel like this is one of those things that you read about once, have in your head, and don’t necessarily need to revisit. I’ll leave this here as it is to show that I was working on a post today and to show how my mind changed in a mere 20 minutes’ time. Who wants to read this, anyhow? Not my mom, not Dan Samiljan, not the one person in Iran who reads my blog…I’m done with this post, and you know what? I might even be done with the whole series of serial killer posts.
I used to chew a pack of gum a day. My favorite brand and flavor is Dentyne Ice, Artic Chill. I used to like Extra, Polar Ice a whole lot, but I stopped liking that sort of gum (sticks of gum, Orbit included) and began instead liking the smaller, rectangular pieces of gum. I used to think one of those was insufficient and so I chewed two pieces at a time, but now I’m okay with one. I really like Orbit White and Trident White, but the flavors are kind of generic and don’t really appeal to me. If I do purchase those brands, I usually get Peppermint. Spearmint is great, but not as a flavor of gum. It makes for a better scent. I swallow gum all the time. Let’s talk about that.
If swallowed, gum does not stay in your system for 7 years.
Chewing gum passes through the digestive system at the same rate as does anything else we consume.
I chew gum after eating because dentists recommend it. Furthermore, gum aids in digestion when taken post-eating.
Chewing gum on an empty stomach is bad for you, and I can attest to this, as when I was up to a pack a day, I’d get the absolute worst stomachaches.
Here’s why: the fact that you’re chewing something tricks your brain and stomach into thinking that you’re eating. Digestive acid is generated, but with no food to absorb it, all it does is make you feel ill and increase your risk of developing gastritis.
Did I mention that I only chew sugar free gum? I do.
Chewing gum with sugar is pointless. It doesn’t help your teeth any and apparently it just isn’t good for you. It’s basically nothing more than candy. It is nothing more than candy, an ex-favorite “food” of mine.
Chewing gum too much can lead to temporomandibular joint inflammation. Bu-mmer.
Chewing gum too often can also lead to well-developed jaw muscles, which widens your smile. No wonder my smile is lame and I don’t have enough teeth to fill it.
As you can see, I’m experimenting with the look of my blog. I’ve not yet found something that I’m entirely happy with. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Get out of town with this guy (and get a load of him while you’re at it). How sad, though, that this little picture is the best photograph I can find of him. I’ve been in such a writing mood recently. I’ve been so “in the zone” that I haven’t even felt like swapping out my 1 GB memory cards for the 500 GB cards that may save my computer’s life. Long story. Whatever.
Okay, okay. I’ll blog. You can thank Richard for this one.
Harold Smith was a detective.
Come again?
Harold Smith was an art detective.
Is that all?
Harold Smith was an art detective and investigator.
Much better.
Harold Smith was an art detective who, among other things, was assigned to the Isabella Stewart Gardner theft, about which i blogged two posts ago.
Not only was Smith a art detective, he also looked into the cases of missing jewels.
Smith worked on the case of the largest gold theft in American history, about which I can give you no further information, as it is off topic and I don’t dabble in tangents.
He worked for Lloyds of London and was a security consultant for the Getty, Sotheby’s, Christie’s and the Smithsonian.
What about the eye patch?
What about it?
Well…what about it?
Harold Smith wore the eye patch due to cancer.
He died in February 2005.
There is a film called Stolen that is about Harold Smith.
I’ll delve into this world (this man) much further, but now is not the time. Is that all right? I hope so.
Tomorrow may not be the time either, as it is hard to find information on this subject.
Remember that time I posted about tire size and mpg? In this post, I’m setting out to chronicle the many faces of Bibendum aka Bibelobis aka Bib the Michelin Man. Great article I linked to right there. Great article.
Bibendum, of Latin origin, translates to mean “drinking to be done.”
Created by French artist O’Galop in 1898.
Andre Michelin commissioned the drawing after his brother Edouard noted that a stack of tires resembled a human figure – “Add some arms, and you’d say they were men.”
The original Bib was based on a bicycle tire – he smoked cigars and wore pince-nez glasses with a lanyard.
In print advertisements, he was portrayed as an “incorrigible ladies’ man,” a ballroom dancer, a kickboxer.
Bib was shown with meek, disheveled rivals toasting a glass filled with broken glass, nails and a horseshoe. Why? “Michelin tires drink up obstacles!” What? They won’t easily pop.
At a bicycle show in Paris in 1898, the Michelin brothers hired a cabaret comedian to hide behind a large cutout of Bibendum and spout witty banter. People were so into it (and other vendors so annoyed by it) that fights broke out.
Bib wrote a column for an Italian travel magazine in 1907.
1998 saw a slimmer Bib.
Slimmer Bib found a friend in a CG puppy that appeared in television commercials with him.
Slimmer Bib reflected not only the whole fitness craze that took the United States by storm but also the slimmer, lower-profile tires different sorts of vehicles began sporting.
THE END
“But wait!” you protest. “Why is he white?”
Ah – good question, my friend! I answer: “Tires weren’t black until 1912!!”
“Go on,” you urge.
I go on. “Manufacturers started adding carbon black as a preservative.”
“And?”
“And…up until then, tires were a greyish or beige color.”
“How do you know all this?!?” you wonder.
I shake my head and chuckle to myself. “I know all this…” I begin, then I stop.”No, no. Nevermind.”
“Please,” you beg. “I need to know!”
“I know all this,” I say, “because I invented knowledge!!”
Shocked, you do nothing but stare at me, eyes wide with awe and amazement.
“No, I’m just kidding!” I exclaim. “How could you have believed me? I know all this because I researched it for my blog. Joe Blog. http://www.joeblog.tumblr.com. I’m surprised you didn’t figure this out for yourself, as you’re reading my blog right now.”
You process the information. I see a wave of understanding wash over your face.
What a downright dapper bunch of gentlemen some of these art thieves are! This guy, Robert Mang, was an Austrian alarm-systems specialist with no prior criminal record. He stole a $60 million sculpture, which he stored under his bed for 2 years then decided to try to ransom. He was, obviously, arrested.
I’ve been meaning to blog about art theft for weeks – maybe even a month! I’m not going to post about art theft in general, though. I’m going to write about the theft that occurred at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (as you can see in the picture above, the empty frames still hang in their original positions). I will, however, grant a brief mention (I think I made that phrase up, btw) to the robbery that happened at NYC’s MofAA. From mofaa.org:
“Three masked men entered the MofAA’s Emil Buerhrle gallery yesterday and made off with portions of the Turnley Collection - without the appropriate rights. Lifting over $6MM in politically important pieces through a skylight via helicopter. ”
How does that go unnoticed? (Also, how does the grammatical incorrectness of those 2 sentences go unnoticed?) The Isabella Stewart Gardner theft is “the biggest art theft in American history,” and if you recover the priceless paintings about which I’m going to write, you’ll win a handsome $5 million.
On March 18, 1990, two white males posing as Boston police officers gained admittance into the museum.
The men told security they were there responding to a “call of disturbance within the compound.”
Security let the men in, though it was against museum policy. (That easy, eh?)
Once inside, the unarmed men “abducted” the 2 security guards: handcuffed and bound with duct tape, they were placed in separate parts of the basement.
From my understanding, since the men didn’t break in from the outside, no security alarm was activated, and they took the surveillance footage on their way out.
Between 1:24 am and 2:45 am the men stole twelve works whose estimated worth is around $300 million.
Works thefted: 6 Degas pieces, 1 Manet painting, 3 works by Rembrant, 1 Vemeer, 1 Flinck painting, a Chinese Bronze Beaker.
Here’s where it gets ridiculous:
Suspect #1: “wearing a dark, shiny mustache, appearing the be false”
Suspect #2: “black [hair], medium length, puffy with additional length in back, rounded off just over the collar” (what does that even mean?), “black shiny mustache appearing to be false”
I got all this from the FBI official report on the theft. Isn’t the whole thing crazy, though? After the Beastie Boys finished filming the music video for “Sabotage,” they did a quick change into BPD uniforms and pulled off one the greatest unsolved art heists of the 20th century!
Armed with an iced Americano (soy milk and 3 packets of Sugar in the Raw), I stare out into a sea of bloggers arranged handsomely in front of their sleek MacBook Pros and think, “Life is good.” Just kidding. I would never say anything like that, let alone write it (not in jest) on my blog. Gross. I almost want to take it down. Seriously, though. I am sitting with an iced Americano and I am blogging. I am looking at other people who have the same exact computer as me, and I’m embarrassed to have given into this world of technology and coffee-shop blogging that I would more than gladly do without. The fact of the matter is, I love my blog. I love writing it, I love researching it and I love checking google analytics every night at midnight to see how many people share my love. Shut up! What am I talking about? Get me out of here. I have a headache.
“Hypnic jerks” aka “hypnogogic jerks” aka “hypnagogic myoclonic twitches” are that falling sensation/ jerking awake thing that happens.
About 70% of people experience this just after dozing. (Have you seen that “DOZER” tag all over LA? How about “FUMAS”?)
Cause? From wikipedia: “The brain misinterprets relaxation as the sleeping primate falling out of a tree.”
Let’s clarify: Muscles slacken, the body enters a state of total relaxation, which happens more quickly than anticipated, throwing the brain off guard and causing it to misinterpret and send signals to the arms and legs, causing them to attempt to jerk you upright.
This misinterpretation usually coincides with one being extremely exhausted, fighting the urge to sleep or lying uncomfortably.
I’m going to end this section with an awful quote that ends an article on the subject: “It doesn’t appear to cause damage to body and poses no danger to our physical wellbeing. That may be true, but it could pose a significant danger to my bed when I mess my pants next time I wake up thinking I just fell off of a building.”
Right.
On to sleep paralysis, something that has happened more than once to me, and what terrible hallucinations I’ve had during such instances!
Brain awakens from REM state but thinks it’s still dreaming, so the body remains paralyzed.
The brain paralyzes the body during REM to prevent the person from acting out bodily motions called for in the dream, possibly resulting in real bodily injury.
Thus, the person is conscious but unable to move.
Add onto this the fact that hallucinations may come into play, and you’re in for a terrifying episode of How I Met Your Mother.
Does this make sense? Let me break it down a little further: You think you wake up, and you see your immediate, actual surroundings. However, things are happening in that real space (sounds, abnormal visions, sensations, etc.) that the brain interprets as being real but are, in actuality, hallucinations. You cannot move, speak or blink, yet are fully aware of these things “happening.” You’re completely helpless!
A common sensation is a feeling of weight on one’s chest.
Common among African Americans (and me) and referred to in those communities as “the devil riding your back.”
What causes such terrors? Lying supine, stress, irregular sleep schedules, etc.
I used the same image as wikipedia. Sue me. Hear that, wikipedia? Sue me!! I bite your s**t all the time.
Holy smokes, it’s hot. I got the greatest thing today - it’s a scrapbook from the late 1930s/ early 1940s made by a short wave radio operator named Ralph E. Henry. It contains postcards from people he reached using his radio (it seems like that was standard practice), listing their name, comments and station call number (or whatever). The cards are from all over the United States and some are even from overseas. I liken it to talking to pre-internet AIM (getting in contact with people one doesn’t know and using abbreviations for “thanks,” “see you,” etc.). Anyway, from what I gather, Ralph’s hobby of being an operator turned into something quite serious when WWII rolled around. He helped track enemy planes and such and spread the word about potential attacks. I know if I read the articles included in the scrapbook I’d gain more insight, but…I’ve not yet done that. There are these really great black and white photos (8.5” x 11”) in the back, and the front of the book bears an embossed German Shepherd. It’s awesome. I love it and I hope that one day you can see it. I was going to post about short wave radio operators and all that when I remembered a man called Bill Porter and a 20/20 feature I saw years and years back about him. A made-for-TV movie was made on this subject, with William H. Macy playing the lead, but don’t let that make you think Bill Porter isn’t worth knowing about. It’s a heart-warming story and is one of the things that helped fuel my love for old men.
Consider this, the tagline that prefaces a Bill Porter article:
“Betrayed by a crippled body that leaves him in continual pain, betrayed by a changing world that no longer needs him, Bill Porter each day trudges his door-to-door sales territory, set on making his way in the world.”
Bill Porter was born with cerebral palsy in 1932.
His disability was caused by a difficult delivery and a doctor who, in trying to get Bill out, crushed part of his brain with the instrument he was using.
Bill moved to Portland with is mother and when it came time for him to begin working, had difficulty finding a job because of his disability but refused to go on disability.
Encouraged by his mother, Porter finally found work at the Watkins Company (more like he convinced them to let him work) as a door-to-door salesman.
He became the company’s top seller with his persistance and I-won’t-take-no-for-an-answer attitude.
Each day, Bill wore black wingtip shoes, a tan raincoat and a brown fedora (among other things).
He has difficulty walking and doing other everyday tasks, has someone help with his deliveries, and eats frozen dinners, as they’re easy to prepare.
No longer a salesman due to a broken hip suffered from an accident in 1998, Porter is still involved with Watkins and sells the wares online.
HOLY SHIT! I cannot believe this next fact. Let me work it into a short story: the other day, Andrew and I were at Target and came across this “natural” or “environmentally-friendly” or whatever line of products called “J.R. Watkins” that had this old fashioned packaging design. I thought it was probably just a ripoff of the packaging at H.O. Bigelow. Whether it is or not is still a matter of question, but not only is J.R. Watkins a legit brand, but it’s the brand Bill Porter sells!!!!
I’ll do a short post and let his performance (see video above) speak for itself.
Born 1929 in Brooklyn.
Lied his way into the Marines at age 15, though I’m not sure how or why.
Acted in a few Kubrick films, a couple of Cassavetes films, Head, East of Eden, Echo Park, etc.
Scaled a wall at Fox wearing a full suit of armor in an attempt to be cast in Prince Valiant.
Stabbed with a pen by Marlon Brando while shooting One-Eyed Jacks.
Faked his own kidnapping (ransom note an all) during the production of Paths of Glory (to get press). Kirk Douglas was already angered by Carey’s performance (which he felt overshadowed his own (it did)), and I’m sure this didn’t help matters any. Kubrick loved the anger this aroused in Douglas and encouraged Carey, as Kubrick wasn’t thrilled on working with Douglas.
Wrote, produced, directed and starred in 1962’s The World’s Greatest Sinner, which, I must add, is narrated by a snake (who represents the Devil).
Invited Cassavetes to his house, dressed him in a dog attack suit and unleashed 3 angry rottweilers on him, shouting (from the next room), “It’s not you they hate, it’s the suit!”
Turned down a part in The Godfather. While reading for The Godfather: Part II, Carey pulled a gun from a lunch box he had and shot Coppola (with blanks). Coppola loved him, though he didn’t act in that film.
Planned a film called Tweet’s Ladies of Pasadena in which he’s a “giant manchild who rollerskates everywhere he goes,” and who, among other other things, wishes “to clothe all the naked and homeless animals in the world.”
