Golden Globes

MOVIES

Best Picture – Drama
“The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King”

Best Actress – Drama
Charlize Theron, “Monster”

Best Actor – Drama
Sean Penn, “Mystic River”

Best Picture – Musical or Comedy
“Lost in Translation”

Best Actress – Musical or Comedy
Diane Keaton, “Something’s Gotta Give”

Best Actor – Musical or Comedy
Bill Murray, “Lost in Translation”

Best Actor in a Supporting Role
Tim Robbins, “Mystic River”

Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Renee Zellweger, “Cold Mountain”

Best Foreign Language Film
“Osama,” Afghanistan

Best Director
Peter Jackson, “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King”

Best Screenplay
Sofia Coppola, “Lost in Translation”

Best Original Score
Howard Shore, “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King”

Best Original Song
“Into the West” from “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,”
by Howard Shore, Fran Walsh and Annie Lennox

TELEVISION

Best Series – Drama
“24,” Fox

Best Actress – Drama
Frances Conroy, “Six Feet Under”

Best Actor – Drama
Anthony LaPaglia, “Without a Trace”

Best Series – Musical or Comedy
“The Office,” BBC America

Best Actress – Comedy
Sarah Jessica Parker, “Sex and the City”

Best Actor – Comedy
Ricky Gervais, “The Office”

Best Mini-Series or Made for TV Movie
“Angels in America,” HBO

Best Actress – Mini-Series or Made for TV Movie
Meryl Streep, “Angels in America”

Best Actor – Mini-Series or Made for TV Movie
Al Pacino, “Angels in America”

Best Actress in a Supporting Role
Mary-Louise Parker, “Angels in America”

Best Actor in a Supporting Role
Jeffrey Wright, “Angels in America”

The Cathedral of the Resurrection

Built from 1883-1907 on the site of an attempt on the life of Czar Alexander II, the Cathedral of the Resurrection is one of St. Petersburg’s many beautiful churches.

NewMexiKen photo, 1992

Robert Burns…

Scotland’s bard and most famous son, was born on this date in 1759.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o’ auld lang syne.

NewMexiKen, undereducated that I am, couldn’t have told you much about Burns before today. Thanks to The Columbia Encyclopedia courtesy of Bartleby.com (truly one of the web’s great resources) I can tell you this:

Burns’s art is at its best in songs such as “Flow Gently, Sweet Afton,” “My Heart’s in the Highlands,” and “John Anderson My Jo.” Two collections contain 268 of his songs—George Thomson’s Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for the Voice (6 vol., 1793 –1811) and James Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum (5 vol., 1787 –1803). Some of these, such as “Auld Lang Syne” and “Comin’ thro’ the Rye,” are among the most familiar and best-loved poems in the English language. But his talent was not confined to song; two descriptive pieces, “Tam o’ Shanter” and “The Jolly Beggars,” are among his masterpieces.

Burns had a fine sense of humor, which was reflected in his satirical, descriptive, and playful verse. His great popularity with the Scots lies in his ability to depict with loving accuracy the life of his fellow rural Scots, as he did in “The Cotter’s Saturday Night.” His use of dialect brought a stimulating, much-needed freshness and raciness into English poetry, but Burns’s greatness extends beyond the limits of dialect. His poems are written about Scots, but, in tune with the rising humanitarianism of his day, they apply to a multitude of universal problems.

Taking a whack at Rose

From the Morning Briefing in the Los Angeles Times

Bernie Lincicome of the Rocky Mountain News notes that Rose once said: “I am the best ambassador baseball has. My name is synonymous with the game.”

Adds Lincicome: “In the way that Lizzie Borden’s name is connected with hand tools, maybe.”

Charles Curtis…

was born in Kansas on this date in 1860. Curtis was the 31st vice president of the United States, serving under President Herbert Hoover, 1929-1933. Curtis is the only person with non-European ancestry to ever serve as President or Vice President. His mother was part Kansa or Kaw, Osage and Potawatomi and part French. Curtis had a one-eighth Indian blood quantum.

Curtis served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1893 to 1907, and in the U.S. Senate from 1907 to 1913 and 1915 to 1929. He was Republican whip from 1915-1924 and majority leader from 1925-1929.

A description of the book Mixed-Bloods and Tribal Dissolution: Charles Curtis and the Quest for Indian Identity (1989) provides this background on Curtis.

A successful lawyer and Republican politician, Curtis had spent his early years on a reservation but grew up comfortably and fully integrated into the white world. By virtue of his celebrated status, he became the most important figure in the debate over federal Indian policy during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

As the Indian expert in Congress, Curtis had significant power in formulating and carrying out the assimilationist program that had been instituted, particularly by the Dawes Act, in the 1880s. The strategy was to encourage reservation Indians to reject communal life and reap the rewards of individual enterprise. Central to these developments were questions of ownership, land claims, allotments, tribal inheritance laws, and what constituted the public domain. The underlying issues, however, were Indian identification and assimilation. The government’s actions–affecting schools, the federal courts, Indian Office personnel, allotment and inheritance laws, mineral leases, and the absorption of the Indian Territory into the state of Oklahoma–all bore the mark of Curtis’s hand.

Daddy Wags

From the Los Angeles Times, Bitter Ending

The obituary said he died at home. His good neighbors of Leimert Park smiled sadly when they read it.

Yes, of course, that electrical shed next to the dumpster behind the video store was Leon Wagner’s home.

“The more I thought about it, the more it made sense,” said Brian Breye, a local merchant. “Because the streets were his home.”

Leon Wagner was the first great slugger in Angel history, a 1962 All-Star game MVP, an engaging prince to kings Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle.

With his huge smile, loopy swing and funky throwing motion, the man known as “Daddy Wags” once held the Southern California baseball world in his giant palms.

Yet on Jan. 3, at age 69, he died with nothing.

He had no address, no car, little money. His final days were spent wandering the streets in what acquaintances say was a drug-induced haze.

Take time to read about the first Angels hero.

NewMexiKen…

had 52 visits Saturday.