To make the concept clearer to our content providers, the Publications department is assembling a list of ledes that may serve as models of the form. We’ll start with one by the Chronicle’s John Crumpacker and add more here as they catch our eye:

• Discovery News, “Spittlebug Beats Flea to Become High Jump Champ”
  “The spittlebug’s only claim to fame has been that it can blow bubbles out of its backside….”
  (We are going to learn about spittlebugs!)
• Rebecca Kelley, SEOMoz, “Are You Forcing Your Users to Superfluously Click?”
  “Unnecessary clicks really put the ’super’ in ’superfluous,’ yet we run into them all the time….”
  (No translation available.)
• Susan Valot, The California Report, heard on KQED San Francisco, 10/20/2008
  “Warm, summertime air lays over Sycamore Trails Stables in San Juan Capistrano like a saddle hugs its favorite stallion….”
  (It was hot.)
• John Crumpacker, San Francisco Chronicle, 9/26/2008:
  “Symbiosis” is not a word commonly heard in NFL locker rooms, and indeed, it wasn’t this week as the 49ers prepared to play the Saints on Sunday in the Superdome….
  (Let’s discuss reciprocal benefits.)

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Post from: the Museum of Folly (MoFo), internationally acclaimed museum of foolishness. Catch breaking news on twitter.

By Thomas Christensen, based on historical photos by Nadar and Etienne Carjat
Digital image, colored pixels
Via the Sleep of Reason

This image of nineteenth-century French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) is part of a set of contemporary hagioagraphic portraits of historical figures that occupies a wing in MoFo’s historical galleries. Known among MoFo staff as St. Stupid’s Corridor, the wing is often recommended to visitors who are agonized by convulsions of laughter, because of its sobering effects.

Baudelaire is best known as the author of Les Fleurs du Mal (variously translated as “Flowers of Evil” or “Crummy Flowers”) and other splenetic and synesthetic collections of verse, but he is also the author of an essay entitled “On Laughter.” In this essay he contrasts satire and farce (which he calls the “significant” and “absolute” forms of comedy).

According to Baudelaire, laughter is commonly linked to the ancient fall of humankind from paradise. Therefore, he says, laughter must express debasement, and consequently it must be satanic. Since it is satanic, it must be human. Since it is human, it must be contradictory.

In short, laughter is “at once a token of an infinite grandeur and an infinite misery,” and the artist who elicits such laughter is a doubled person. This, no doubt, explains the doubled portrait shown here.

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Post from: the Museum of Folly (MoFo), internationally acclaimed museum of foolishness. Catch breaking news on twitter.

This view of the Museum of Folly bookstore comes from loungerie’s photostream.

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Post from: the Museum of Folly (MoFo), internationally acclaimed museum of foolishness. Catch breaking news on twitter.

Mofo Store Manager Kenneth  Whirlow is pleased to announce the acquisition of a special addition to our store’s rare books selection. The book is a rare signed first edition of Plato’s Republic. Whirlow (acting on a tip from famous book scout Nico) was able to acquire the book from EBay of all places; the original listing follows:

In case you have trouble reading the text, it says “1st edition of The Republic signed by its author. There is of course a reasonable amount of wear and tear, (light highlighting and underlining, dog-eared pages, back cover missing, etc.), but it is in overall good condition considering its age.” We are pleased to have been the lucky purchasers of this unique item.

Shown below, Whirlow inspects the book, from pioforsky’s photostream.

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ms page shown at top from euclides

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Post from: the Museum of Folly (MoFo), internationally acclaimed museum of foolishness. Catch breaking news on twitter.

Indonesia, Tegal, Central Java
Wood, cloth, and mixed media
via Asian Art Museum; From the Mimi and John Herbert Collection

Jesters or clowns are among the most popular figures in the folk puppet traditions of Java, Indonesia. The rod puppets (wanage golek) — not to be confused with the more aristocratic shadow puppets (wayang kulit) — are made of brightly painted, carved wood, and are often dressed in batik clothing and bedecked with sequins and beads.

A singled puppeteer manipulates all of the puppets in a performance (most often stories from the Ramayana or Mahabarata), turning their heads and using rods to deploy their long arms, which are hinged at shoulders, elbows, and wrists, in dramatic gestures.

The appearance of jesters is keenly awaited by the audience, which delights in their antics. The jesters provide comic relief and sometimes biting social commentary. Unlike other figures, they tend to speak in the argot of the villages rather than the elevated language employed by other characters.

These puppets are on temporary loan to the Museum of Folly from the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (where there is a large and constantly rotating selection of such puppets on permanent display). The Asian’s curators report that puppet performances “continue for many hours, and must not be interrupted for fear of causing disruptions in the everyday world, which the puppet world is seen as paralleling. Because the puppet theater, in addition to portraying furious battles and raucous comedy, examines the most serious issues facing society, in the old days a master puppeteer was thought to possess great spiritual power.”

Clockwise from upper left: The jesters Petruk (F2000.85.31), Togog (F2000.85.33), Semar (F2000.85.29), and Cepot (F2000.85.30).

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Post from: the Museum of Folly (MoFo), internationally acclaimed museum of foolishness. Catch breaking news on twitter.

New York City (publisher), Hong Kong (printer)
Fragment of a page from a book; ink and colors on paper
Via the New York Times

The Museum of Folly was, regrettably, unable to purchase the original painting by Pablo Picasso of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907). This reproduction was torn out of an art history textbook.

David Galenson, an economist at the University of Chicago, has proposed an exquisitely stupid method of determining the greatest artworks of the twentieth century. He simply counts how often a work is reproduced in textbooks. “Quantification,” Galenson complains, “has been almost totally absent from art history.” Using this method, Galenson has definitively determined that the top five most important artworks of the twentieth century, in order, are:

1. Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907
2. Vladimir Tatlin, The Monument to the Third International, 1919-1920
3. Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970
4. Richard Hamilton, Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?, 1956
5. Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937

MoFo applauds this marvelously simpleminded approach. By applying the quantification approach to literature, for example, we can also determine the most important works of U.S. literature, simply by referring to best-seller lists. Such a list of great literature would include the following works, all number one best-sellers (one best-seller has been chosen from each decade of the twentieth century):

• 1900s: Frances Little, The Lady of the Decoration
• 1910s: Zane Grey, The U. P. Trail
• 1920s: Zane Grey, The Man of the Forest
• 1930s: Grand Duchess Marie, Education of a Princess
• 1940s: Bob Hope, I Never Left Home
• 1950s: William Brinkley, Don’t Go Near the Water
• 1950s: Pat Boone, ‘Twixt Twelve and Twenty
• 1960s: Jacqueline Susann, Valley of the Dolls
• 1970s: Erich Segal, Love Story
• 1980s: Joan D. Vinge, adapt., Return of the Jedi Storybook
• 1990s: Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett: The Sequel to Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind”

Museum visitors wishing to explore the twentieth century’s greatest works of literature are advised to begin with this remarkable list.

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Post from: the Museum of Folly (MoFo), internationally acclaimed museum of foolishness. Catch breaking news on twitter.

Lake George, Minnesota
Digital photograph; colored pixels
Via Mail Online

This unfortunate Ursus arctos recalls the fictional bear of A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh series, who got his head stuck in a honey jar.

While Mr. Milne’s Pooh was, admittedly, a bear of very little brain, our curators do not feel that there is a compelling reason to make a space for him in our already crowded MoFo galleries. Rather, the fools this image evokes are the Lake George police, who shot and killed the bear out of a conern for public safety.

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Post from: the Museum of Folly (MoFo), internationally acclaimed museum of foolishness. Catch breaking news on twitter.

If you came in through the employee entrance you can, if you wish, exit and view our front facade and public entrance.

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Post from: the Museum of Folly (MoFo), internationally acclaimed museum of foolishness. Catch breaking news on twitter.

Dr. Thom:

As you know, we have begun providing comment cards for visitors to fill out when they leave the museum. So far we have accumulated 33 cards. I thought you might like to review the comments, which I have sorted by department in the attached spreadsheet. We will continue to monitor this.

AG

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Post from: the Museum of Folly (MoFo), internationally acclaimed museum of foolishness. Catch breaking news on twitter.

Durham, North Carolina
Titanium compounds, urethane, and other synthetic materials
Via SFGate

The Museum of Folly is pleased to have in its collection this golf ball, believed to have been struck by Andrew Giuliani, the son of former New York City mayor Rudi Giuliani, during his attempt to secure a position on the Duke University golf team. The ball was located deep in the rough by a teenage boy, who generously donated it to the museum; it has been marvelously restored by the museum’s conservators.

Errant shots such as the one that caused this ball to become lost may have contributed to Mr. Giuliani failing to make the team. Upon being notified of this decision, Mr. Giuliani filed a 198-page lawsuit, which “claims the coach has interferred with Giuliani’s efforts toward becoming a professional golfer.” The museum’s curators hope someday to add the would-be golf pro’s legal brief to our collection.

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Post from: the Museum of Folly (MoFo), internationally acclaimed museum of foolishness. Catch breaking news on twitter.