Risi Competizione Track Record
World Sports Car Manufacturers Champion
24 Hours of LeMans Prototype Class Winner
3 Time 24 Hours of LeMans Class Winner
3 Time 12 Hours of Sebring Class Winner
2 Time ALMS GT Series Class Champion
3 Time Petit Le Mans Winner
220 race entries over 16 years
42% Podium Finishes
18% Winning Percentage
Looking Forward: 2016 IMSA WeatherTech Race Schedule
JANUARY 30-31
Rolex 24 at Daytona
Daytona International Raceway, Daytona Beach, Florida
MARCH 19
Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Fueled by Fresh From Florida
Sebring International Raceway
Sebring, Florida
APRIL 16
Tequila Patron Sports Car Showcase at Long Beach (P,PC,GTLM)
Long Beach Street Circuit
Long Beach, California
MAY 1
Continental Tire Monterey Grand Prix
Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca
Monterey, California
JUNE 4
Chevrolet Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix (P,PC,GTD)
Belle Isle Park
Detroit, Michigan
JULY 3
Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen
Watkins Glen International
Watkins Glen, New York
JULY 10
Mobil 1 Sports Car Grand Prix Presented by Hawk Performance
Canadian Tire Motorsports Park
Bowmanville, Ontario, Canada
JULY 23
Northeast Grand Prix (PC,GTLM,GTD)
Lime Rock Park
Lakeville, Connecticutt
AUGUST 7
Continental Tire Road Race Showcase
Road America
Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin
AUGUST 21
Oak Tree Grand Prix (GTLM, GTD)
Virginia International Raceway
Alton, Virginia
SEPTEMBER 17
Lone Star Le Mans
Circuit of the Americas
Austin, Texas
OCTOBER 1
Petit Le Mans Powered by Mazda
Road Atlanta
Braselton, Georgia
All races will be on Fox Sports….details to be released later.
ee cummings on life
“Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit…”
Loyalty
Paying Attention: Two years ago, late at night, restless, I was diving through an LL Bean catalog. I am a big LL Bean fan. I have a duffle bag from them is that is about thirty years old and, of course, I also have their famous “Duck Boots”, along with hiking and climbing shells, and one of their canoes and a set of paddles, and at least one small backpack. Oh, and a flannel shirt (or 2), a down vest, and a bunch of kayaking stuff ( a kayaking vest, a couple of kayak personal flotation devices, and a long-sleeve, fast-wicking, kayak shirt ). The point: I’m moderately invested in LL Bean gear and sensibilities. I’ve been to Maine. I’ve been to their open 24/7/365 store in Maine. While I don’t have them on speed dial yet, their CRM(Customer Relationship Management) is so good that anytime I call, they can immediately pull up my last order, delivery address, account info, etc, and we can get right down to business. When you call LL Bean, they get to the phone in a hurry unlike some other mail order or internet order companies. I like that. I grew up with them as a mail order company, but now they’re a telephone order company or an internet order company. I still like getting the little physical “mail it in” order forms, though, as well as the big catalogs. I typically order by phone with the catalog in front of me. Like having people handle this stuff.
One thing caught my eye on that night: LL Bean’s new (to me) wrinkle free Oxford Cloth button down shirts. I am a heavy consumer of Oxford Cloth shirts—this comes with being raised in the South and having a college wardrobe that was heavy on Khaki pants (five pairs) and Oxford Cloth Button Down long sleeve shirts (5 in light or “French “ blue, five in white; one blue stripe). For the past twenty years or so, the choice of Oxford Cloth shirts has been narrowed to either the Ralph Lauren models or the Brooks Brothers line (The East Coast Standard). Both excellent brands, great shirts, good cloth but they have one flaw: high maintenance.
My existing stock of Oxford Cloth shirts required constant trips to the cleaners. They have to be washed, starched lightly, put on hangers (it’s an extra fifty cents to have them folded, which is good for storage or trips, but otherwise is not so great because folding leaves creases in the shirt when you unfold it to wear). My neighborhood cleaners is just a few blocks from my house, so I could walk there if I really needed to and it’s run by a Korean family that emigrated from Peru. They speak fluent—if halting—English along with Spanish and Korean. Their dry cleaning/laundry shop is pin neat, nothing fancy, and I can expect a calendar with their name on it every December. As a heavy user of their services, I received not one but two official laundry bags, into which I would deposit my Brooks Brothers and Ralph Lauren Oxford Cloth button downs, along with the occasional Turnbull & Asser (Jermyn Street, London) English Spread Collar striped shirt (magnificent material and for about $200 a shirt they should be….you don’t buy Oxford Cloth shirts from T&A…a rather unfortunate set of initials but that’s another story..but striped shirts, of which they have perhaps the world’s greatest variety…men on best-dressed lists all over the world shop there and so do I, even though I’m only on the acceptably well-dressed list). Of course, I also toss into the special laundry bag other items besides shirts; a suit once in a while, sweaters, dress slacks, and the latest tie to fail in dodging an errant spoonful of soup at lunch.
I’m a good client at the cleaners and certainly spend more money there in a year than at LL Bean. About $1500 last year, according to my accountant, who tracks such things with a gleam in his eye. That makes me , in my own small cleaning world, a big hitter, a rainmaker in the local dry cleaning industry and it’s a small but useful status.
I was thinking about that rather large cleaning bill while I was working my way through the LL Bean catalog, and also the associated personal time required to have an up-close-and-personal relationship with my cleaners (gather up the goods, drop them off, then return to pick everything up) and decided that, just as an experiment, I would “go off the reservation” and give the LL Bean wrinkle free shirts a try. I had owned some LL Bean Oxford Cloth shirts years ago—still own them in fact, as they have transitioned from daily business/social wear to casual, under-a-sweater use, to work-on-the-boat shirts.
Now, obviously at the later stages in their working career, these shirts were no longer sent regularly to the cleaners, rumpled and sometimes spotted with dip sauce only to return starched and shiny and hanging at attention on a wire hanger (which, recycling guy that I am, I always return to the cleaners because…I don’t need them anymore and they take up a lot of room). The older LL Bean Oxford Cloth shirts, while lacking the fancy branding of the Ralph Lauren and Brooks Brothers shirts, were just as serviceable and lasted just as long—maybe longer. It had, however, been a while since I was heavily invested in LL Bean Oxford Cloth shirts and so I decided to order a few of their new-to-me wrinkle free shirts, in the expectation that maybe they would remain somewhat crisp during the working day—no small consideration since my day job requires constant inside–outside activities in Houston’s often sweltering heat and humidity.
On the internet, I ordered up a test sample: one white and one French Blue LL Bean Oxford Cloth Button Down. I ordered each shirt in a slightly different size, ½ size increments to be exact, because different manufacturers size differently and in this shopping experiment the goal was to find the right size and how well they fit, not just how they held up under the daily grind.
The two shirts, one white, one blue, arrived about four days later. I pulled them from the packaging and hung them up. No wrinkles. Hmmmm. I wore them to work and, as with all my other Oxford Cloth shirts, after I was finished with a day at the office I tossed them into the laundry bag to go the cleaners.
They came back clean and perfectly pressed with just a little starch. Ooops. And then I looked at the care label on one of the shirts before I put it on. It said nothing about sending the shirt to the cleaners. It did say to just wash it, tumble dry, and hang it up. No trips to the cleaner involved, no need for starch, no need for pressing. Typically, I had totally circumvented the value of wrinkle free shirts, thinking that the wrinkle free part only applied to daily wear when, in actuality, it was built in, from wash cycle to wear. In short: these shirts should never need to see the inside of my cleaners again.
After another week or so of tests, I committed to the LL Bean Oxford Cloth wrinkle free shirts, ordering more in blue and another set in white. I was all-in now. It was showtime.
One year into the new wrinkle free era, I can report back that the shirts work like a charm and that the daily wear cycle has never been easier. Grab a suit, a white or blue button down, a tie, shoes, socks if you’re in the mood or seeing very stiff people, and you’re done. Instead of the dedicated cleaners laundry bag shuffle, I now just grab a handful of shirts, put them through the washer/dryer process, and then hang them back up (on wooden hangers—no more wire hangers ) and they’re ready for the next day or night. Couldn’t be easier.
Also economic. The LL Bean Oxford Cloth wrinkle shirts are about $29.00/shirt. They could have gone up since I wrote the first draft of this post. It costs $1.50 to have a shirt washed, starched, pressed, and placed on a hanger. After I’ve worn the shirt 19.3 times, it has paid for itself in saved laundry charges. The expense of owning one of LL Bean’s wrinkle free wonders is thus capped at $29.00.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, an Oxford Cloth shirt from Brooks Brothers is about $60.00. And it must go to the cleaners to be useful again after it’s worn. That part of the ownership cycle goes on and on and so the expense of owning a Brooks Brother or any other type of shirt that requires weekly trips to the cleaners is open ended, not capped. It’s a small thing but it adds up (in my case to $1500 a year). If our government thought like this, our taxes might be lower, but that’s another story.
All of the preceding is leading to this one point: I now feel guilty about my relationship with my cleaners. For years, I had been their go-to guy on a weekly basis, wracking up rather imposing cleaning bills, sometimes hitting triple digits. There’s a loyalty thing. Now, I hardly stop by—my new LL Bean Oxford Cloth wrinkle free shirts don’t need a visit but occasionally, the other items in my wardrobe do—and when I do visit, I get this comment from my cleaners; “Where have you been? We haven’t seen you in a while? “
My response, always the same, and shaded with a certain type of commercial guilt:”I’ve been traveling”. I always include one of my racing team shirts—or two—so the fiction that I’ve been traveling seems plausible, but I know, and maybe they do as well, that another shirt has come between us: an LL Bean Oxford Cloth wrinkle free shirt.
Guess I’ll have to look elsewhere for my 2016 handout calendar. Just hope I don’t get asked to return one (or both) of the laundry bags. Those are very useful.
Faster faster
“..faster, faster, the lights are turning red…”
Lost Friends: Brad Olsen-Ecker
The Nightshift, our daily international newsite with links to the major English language newspapers throughout the world, follow the Olsen-Ecker post. Please scroll down to access it.
Editor’s Note: Three years ago, we lost a great friend and massive creative spirit. Brad Olsen-Ecker left far too soon. But he’s still here in the hearts and minds of his friends and family. We don’t forget those who had an impact and so, this week, we’re re-publishing the tribute to Olsen-Ecker that was created and posted in his memory in 2015. Read and enjoy it. It’s worth your time and filled with some very, very good work from a very, very good man. We never forget the good ones.
Transitions: Brad Olsen-Ecker (1945-2015). This weekend, the entire website will be devoted to the work and life–because Brad’s life was actually his art–of Brad Olsen-Ecker, a great friend and magnificent, courageous artist who died on Monday, 2 November 2015. He had many visible gifts: he was a great looking guy with slim, classic Scandinavian looks, bright blue eyes, an effortless way of being and a certain, easy grace in his movements. But it was his invisible gifts–his sense of humor, his creative courage, his risk-taking ability, the lovely, positive manner in which he approached life and work, and his pure, clean, happy spirit–that made him so special.
He was one of the most talented people I have ever met–and I have met some very talented people–and also one of the most productive. He was an artist and he worked in any medium he could find, from film to canvas to turquoise. We worked together across multiple industries and decades: publishing, advertising, marketing, television, design and the work was always good, many times great, often ground breaking and dangerous. He pushed me and I pushed him and in the moments when we were both in the zone and rolling, it was absolute magic. The work process was quick, fast, and funny….many times, we would laugh so hard that we couldn’t see well enough to draw or write. There was an interchangeable quality to the process: it didn’t matter who came up with the art concept or the headline, because each of us could do both. It was a perfect way to work because twice as many ideas could be created. There was no editing: we just generated as much material as possible and then selected the very best of the very best for development. We could produce ten or twenty campaigns in the time it would take a top pro creative team to produce one because it all just flowed out, nothing was held back. It was amazing, intoxicating, inflammatory. At the time we worked together, I always wondered how long we would last, because we were pushing every single part of our lives so hard and fast. Amazingly, despite the high wire act of high visibility creative work, there was never a single moment of worry, anger, distrust, or any of the other emotions that can make life such a pain. We just figured that everything would always work out and it always did.
It was not Olsen-Ecker’s talent that was his great gift, however; it was his spirit and his sense of humor. Everyone has one person who can crack them up, the one person whose sense of humor can reduce you to tears, and for me, that person was Brad Olsen-Ecker. People who are funny are funny all the time. It can be a problem in very serious businesses but…..Brad was funny all the time. He was funny when he sent letters or cards, funny in emails, funny on the phone, funny in person and funny when he went out for lunch. It was something he did; it was who he was. Funny.
Brad died on Monday, 2 November 2015. He had been sick for some time, maybe 15 months, maybe more. I am not certain how many of his friends knew that he was so ill. Makes no difference except for this fact: he didn’t want his friends to know.
He didn’t tell anyone, would not let anyone in his family tell anyone. He was intensely private and he was always optimistic. He was hospitalized for eight months due to complications from Rheumatoid Arthritis. Never heard a word about it. That was Brad….he just didn’t believe in negative anything.
I talked with one of his good friends, Steve Prezant, a New York Photographer, just a day ago, and Steve didn’t know. What we both knew was that there was–to use a phrase that sums it up perfectly–a “disturbance in the force”. Brad was not as visible or present as in the past. Because he traveled a lot ( he loved to travel, especially to the tropics, and he’s the only guy besides a banana republic dictator who could look good in a straw plantation owner hat) I didn’t think anything was out of balance. And anyway, I knew I’d talk with him in December, when I traditionally send out Christmas CDs to my friends.
It was not to be.
Brad had started having issues with his hands a few years earlier. He contracted arthritis. The irony of an artist who worked with his hands contracting arthritis is crushing. It’s possible to be an art director or a designer and work past the limitations caused by limited facility of your hands, but for what Brad did–the drawings, paintings, carving, scrimshaw–handwork is necessary. Understanding what happened to Brad requires a bit of a reset in your profile of that disease. If you think of Arthritis as something that affects old or older people, you’re right, but it can be much more insidious–and in Brad’s case–deadly, than that. Rheumatoid Arthritis is an auto-immune system disease; if it gets out of control–as with Brad–it affects your entire immune system. And so, the consequences are not just creaky joints and stiff movements, but immune system cascade infections–to the lungs (which got Brad), the heart, the entire internal plumbing and chemistry of a body. Please remember that the immune system is the key to health and that’s why increasingly, the top scientists around the world are focusing research efforts on how to optimize and utilize the immune system to take out the diseases that affect man. The immune system is the silver bullet of health–when it works, you’re golden, nothing can touch you. When it doesn’t–a cold can kill you.
Olsen-Ecker and I first met in New York in the very early sixties. He was friends with another pal of mine, Niles Siegel, a young photographer who transitioned into a big-time record promotor, video producer, and talent manager. We were on the same wavelength immediately and became close. I think at the time, he was working at CBS Records. I was working in Peter Max’s studio as his personal assistant. Then I left New York and a few years later, landed in Chicago in the mid-seventies at Playboy. Somehow Brad ended up in Chicago. I was an editor. He was an art director. We shared a common interests in creative work and indulgent lifestyles. It was a combustible relationship. After we both left Playboy, Olsen-Ecker and I worked together in Houston as an advertising creative team. In our first year in the city, we entered a creative contest that had 30 categories. We won 28 of them. We had been in town less than 8 months. We were creative gypsies. We did not know any of the other people up for awards in room that night; in fact we didn’t even know the presenters. No one knew us when we entered the room, but we had a lot of new friends at the end of the evening.
A few months after that show, we both took a look around and found the landscape non-conducive to a pair of East-Coast trained creatives and decided that without the right working situation (bigger clients with bigger budgets who would take bigger risks), it was time to call a halt to a great, even brilliant at times, creative partnership in Texas. If we couldn’t do it our way and on a bigger scale, we simply would not do it and so we broke the band up. Stopping on top is hard but it leaves the legacy pure.
Brad was restless (always) and he wanted to be in the energy and flow of New York. He’d grown up in and near the City. I was a Southern boy who had spent my time in New York and did not particularly want to go back. He left. I didn’t. But we never lost touch and I have always felt his spirit around me when I started some very challenging project. That’s quite an impact and it’s also a tribute.
We stayed in touch. I followed his advertising work (he worked extensively in advertising until he got caught in the thing that catches most people in advertising–age–and then he moved into fine art, first with prints, and then scrimshaw, finally painting). Brad did major league advertising work–in fact, he actually did advertising for Major League Baseball. He also worked with Polo/Ralph Lauren, Mead, Bonne Belle, Sony, Ryder Trucks, Reebok, American Express, Bulgari, Clairol, Kodak, Bausch & Lomb, Ford, Max Factor, Centrum. The agencies he worked for were the very best in the world: Wells Rich Greene, Leber Katz Partners, J.Walter Thompson (the film director’s series he created there for Kodak was so great it ran for 20 years), Saatchi & Saatchi, Marshalk. Brad loved music and when I met him, he was at CBS records, where he helped launch artist like The Clash, Nick Lowe, Meatloaf, and Earth, Wind, and Fire and produced promotional campaigns for Bob Dylan, Barbara Streisand, Paul Simon, Aerosmith, and Billy Joel. Everyone of these artists are top of the food chain. He was the right man for the job.
Brad was always an artist first and he loved to paint. A selection of the books that he produced about his paintings are a part of this extended Brad Olsen-Ecker weekend. As are postcards that he created featuring his prints and scrimshaw carvings. He loved scrimshaw. There are probably only ten people left on earth–nine of them Eskimos–who appreciate scrimshaw, but Olsen-Ecker was not only into it, but good at it. He did some major pieces. He had shows. He continued to travel to paint and to produce. You can get an idea of his range by visiting his website or just looking around here.
Brad was an important, pivotal, influential, spirit in my life, and in my mind, I always thought he would live forever.
It is now my obligation to insure that he remains here, present in spirit, visible in his art and drawings and paintings.
So…..this is Brad Olsen-Ecker’s weekend. I am turning the website over to his memory and his work.
As we get older, typically we have fewer friends but the ones that remain our friends through the decades…wow, those are very special people.
Always, there are too few of them.
Always, they leave too soon.
Always, we wish for one more email, one more drink, one more phone conversation with them.
Always, there will be one empty place in our soul.
Exhibition
What follows is a selection of work, objects, and communications from the life of Brad Olsen-Ecker. Some of it may be familiar to you. Some of it may be new. New pieces will be added to this exhibition as they become available (i.e. when I can find it… and get it scanned and posted). In the meantime, enjoy. You are strongly encouraged to click through to links where they are available, to see/download the original PDFs….the variety of items is tied together by the consistency of the humor and artistry. There are two key links for Brad’s work, one is for his fine art, and another for his commercial art. You are strongly encouraged to visit both sites.
From Brad Olsen-Ecker’s Linked-In Profile.
A five panel cartoon sent with some other correspondence…
Product Brochures
We had some great projects…..one of the best was producing this brochure for some friends who had a new ski company. They were all expert skiers and spent most of their time on the backside of the mountain, skiing through trees (the ne plus ultra of skiing, but no mistakes or you’re outta here) and not on the groomed trails like everyone else. We flew into Aspen, drove to the top of Aspen mountain in late afternoon to watch the sunset and get some mountain karma (and later came down a rocky mountain trail with huge drop offs at night, in a jeep with marginal lights ) and shot, wrote, designed everything in one weekend (we loved to work fast…it was always pure). It was just another time he made something happen out of thin air.
Etchings and Drawings
When you see those zany cartoons that he loved to draw, you might forget that he possessed huge bandwidth as an artist. His realistic art is superb. His a drawing of Lincoln that he produced. Notice the detail in the eyes.
From one of his frequent painting expeditions. A palm tree..with the reference palm tree also on the same page. Simple, lovely, direct, elegant.
Paintings
Brad produced PDF books of all of his painting expeditions. In each book, he not only showed the painting, but also, typical Olsen-Ecker observations on the place and time. This is from one of the books he produced on a his series of Florida coastal paintings (he loved Florida). Olsen-Ecker loved to make these painting expeditions. He’d pick a place(almost always by a coast) and go, setting up his easel and paints and do a painting. And then…repeat. It was part pilgrimage, part artistic journey, part Brad absorbing life.
A painting from that same trip. Notice the size (8 x 10)….typical Olsen-Ecker: understated, elegant. His color field painting is very expressive, a bit like what Mark Rothko would have produced if he had a good sense of humor. Olsen-Ecker was cheerful and happy. It showed.
Below is a series of paintings by Brad produced on one of his frequent trips. He was a surprisingly traditional guy: he wanted to go to the place, soak up the atmosphere, paint it and pack up and go to another place. What you see in his paintings is what he saw over the time it took to paint the canvas. And always..the side story about the experience, the culture, the people. You can see more, on Brad’s site.
Research
People are going to talk. A series of drawings about the real life world of “focus group” research, in which people you do not know tell you what you don’t want to hear. The dialogue is real. The observations are classic Olsen-Ecker.
The front cover of Brad’s background info on the Focus Group piece….and his take on the piece..
Pure Olsen-Ecker….only he could imagine someone breaking into yodeling during a focus group.
Another page from the same book…..the closer you look, the funnier it gets.
A sketch from the book on Focus Groups. This focus group was on deodorant….trying to find the original PDF on one of Brad’s servers, but if I don’t…email me and I’ll send it to you. It’s classic Olsen-Ecker humor.
And, finally, below is his take on his own focus group project….
Scrimshaw.
I never knew anyone who did scrimshaw until I met Brad. I knew he had Scandinavian background, but didn’t think there was an Eskimo in the family blood line. Apparently, I was wrong. And maybe someone from Japan who emigrated to Norway. Who knows..
Brad was (maybe) the greatest modern American scrimshaw artists….maybe because he was the ONLY modern American scrimshaw artists. Who knows. It’s my story and I’m sticking with it. This type of work is expensive (Notice the jewels and the tusks on which the drawings are carved), precise and time consuming. He was very good at it. I have no explanation for his Japanese orientation. Never once saw him eat sushi.
A knife envisioned by Brad Olsen-Ecker. The scrimshaw handle goes back to a time when weapons were pieces of art as well as instruments of destruction.
Another jewel encrusted scrimshaw piece. This type of art is going to be increasingly difficult to create, collect, or even see. Two reasons why: a PC culture and the skill level required to create it. This piece, “Legend of Shin Tao”, scrimshaw on whale’s tooth with diamonds, emeralds, rubies. It’s 4 1/2″ inches high and is in a private collection in New York.
Advertising
One of a series of ads for Mikimoto pearls…the campaign established the brand. The elegance and simplicity is typical of Brad’s work and the execution is flawless.Check out more of Brad’s advertising work( and in fact, his entire professional advertising career) by going to his website.
One of the ads for the Mikimoto Campaign that Brad created. Contrast this vision with all that’s gone before, and you’ll get a very good idea of Brad’s range of talent The entire campaign and a lot more advertising is on his commercial site.
Correspondence:
A selection of emails from Brad. NSFW. But funny.
This email, from Brad, on one of his trips. More correspondence is below. This one after a huge storm in Texas.
And this one, about his paintings and gallery showings……
Advice about the dangers of hanging Christmas lights and using chain saws on ladders.
In Arizona to paint…..
In Egypt…all in white (except for the horse)…
.
More correspondence…
The last scrimshaw artist, with one of his pieces.
Other Artwork
One of Brad’s most iconic (and favorite) pieces: “Terminal Bar”, Acrylic on canvas, 8″ x 14 7/8″ (1986). The scan doesn’t do it justice.
“Tres Dragonas” (1997), an etching on an Emu Egg. Who etches on Emu eggs? Three dragons climbing over and around the egg, inlaid with rubies, 1 emerald and 1 sapphire. The presentation stand is brass with three griffins.
One of Brad’s Etchings, “The Rose Eater”. Don’t know how many of these he produced, but one of them is hanging in my house and it looks freaking great.
The Books
Brad produced his paintings on journeys and expeditions. He archived and memorialized them in a series of PDF books. The covers of these books are below. You are also invited to see these works in full at the following links:
http://www.olsen-ecker.com/key-west-to-f-lauderdale-plein-air-seascapes/1
http://www.olsen-ecker.com/the-suncoast-plein-air-seascapes/1
http://www.olsen-ecker.com/chasing-the-lght/1
http://www.olsen-ecker.com/california-plein-air-paintings/1
The Ocean to the Desert series of paintings. Click here to see the entire series. This site has his fine art collection (there is separate site, already listed, for his commercial work).
Another of his books covering a painting trip. This one to Florida.
A piece on his painting expedition to Arizona.
Post Cards (made from Prints)
One of several prints he made of Marilyn Monroe. This one, “Norma Jean” (1988), a two-color serigraph 12 5/16″ x 10 1/8″ on museum paper. It’s SFW.The others in this series are not…
One last thing.
Brad Olsen-Ecker was a very special person with a lot of talent. He made the world better and made it a whole lot of fun for his friends. He cannot be replaced, but he will be always be with those who lived with him, worked with him, partied with him, or knew him.
Bond. James Bond (by the numbers)
mPaying Attention. I was in junior high school, looking for something to read on a beach trip, when I ran across Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale in the paperback section of a Walgreen’s Drug Store in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It seem interesting and so, for about a dollar and change, I bought it. Hours later I was finished and back at Walgreen’s looking for another installment of James Bond. I read on that trip every one of the Fleming novels that were published at the time, one after the other, in a mood that can only be described as “binge reading”. I was hooked because Fleming’s combination of brand-name character development coupled with spy novelist intrigue was perfect for those (and these) times. Fleming, as it turned out, was one of the best–if not the very best–writers of spy novels and his creation, an English secret agent named Bond, James Bond, (named after a rather famous ornithologist and whose life/lifestyle were modeled, loosely, on Fleming’s own life) ultimately became not just a world-wide literary sensation but the centerpiece of one of the most profitable, successful, movie franchises in history. To date, there have been a total of 26 James Bond movies, (all but two produced by EON Productions) with Bond played by 6 different actors (7 different actors if you include the non-EON produced films). Great details on all the Bond films can be found on this Wikipedia site. You probably have your own list of top James Bond films, but since the franchise has been around for 50+ years, it’s always interesting to see how the films stack up over time. As Bond’s popularity and cultural reach have expanded, he has influenced everything from movie title design to automobile sales (admit it: you didn’t know much about Aston Martin until James Bond started driving an Aston DB5 on the screen). With the latest James Bond film, Spectre, scheduled for release on 6 November 2015 (this coming Friday), it seems like a good time to take a look the impact that James Bond and the James Bond films have had on modern cultural. Start with this Nifty piece on the James Bond series and it’s success , by the numbers, over the decades, all done with graphics. From The Economist, a British publication that’s really, really, good with numbers (and economics). Click back to this blog when you’re finished with the Economist link and get Roger Moore’s tips on how to make the perfect Vodka Martini (even though he personally prefers gin). James Bond has always been a character defined by brands and increasingly they are very exclusive ones. For a terrific breakdown of the brands/items/cost of the things in James Bond’s life, read this nice piece from Bloomberg.Com, which followed that post with an analysis of Bond’s characteristic by screen time. If you’re interested in investing in Bonds, James Bonds, consider the movie posters. They’re bringing very good money during an auction in progress, right now, at Christie’s. You can bid from the comfort of your chair at the club, since the auction is online. Because it’s Bond, there is, of course, some interesting maneuvers going on behind the release of Spectre; the most interesting business question is will SONY, who has worked with EON and MGM to distribute the film series, maintain distribution rights. It’s the big movie time of the year and Bond is back. What could be more fun.
The Fine Print: Photo (C) Raoul Luoar from Goldfinger (1974) starring Sean Connery as James Bond. Photo via Flickr. Used under Creative Commons license. The photo has not been altered. The car Connery is standing in front of is an Aston Martin DB5 (they made two for the film, one very tricked out, the other not).
ee cummings on laughter
“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter…”
Life quote
“I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I have only lived the length of it…I want to live the width of it as well”
How Much Is A Free Taco?
Paying Attention: Taco Bell’s free breakfast taco promotion, built around the 2015 just-completed World Series, is a rather expensive promotion…but not when you consider the attention it’s bringing to Taco Bell. Here’s the whole story, on the cost of a free taco. This from Bloomberg.Com (highly recommended as one of your morning daily start-the-day reads).