This Tuesday does not bring us any Saints, so we go in the Wayback Machine to 1520, when Pope Leo X issued the Papal Bull Exsurge Domine in response to the teachings of Martin Luther in his 95 theses from 1517 and subsequent writings which opposed the views of the papacy. The Latin title Exsurge Domine is translated into English as “Arise, O Lord”. While the bull did not directly condemn all the points of Luther’s doctrines, it did specifically demand that Luther retract 41 errors (some drawn from his 95 theses, some from other writings or sayings attributed to him) within sixty days of its publication in neighboring regions to Saxony. This time expired on December 20, 1520, which was the day on which Luther burned his copy of the Bull along with volumes of Canon law by the Elster Gate in Wittenberg. This book burning was in reaction to Johann Eck’s procedure of burning Luther’s books after he had published the bull in various places in Germany. As he burned his copy of the bull, Luther is reported to have said, “Because you have confounded the truth [or, the saints] of God, today the Lord confounds you. Into the fire with you!” reminiscent of Psalm 21:9. Because Luther refused to comply, the Pope issued the Papal Bull Decet Romanum Pontificem on January 3, 1521, excommunicating him. The Vatican’s copy of Exsurge Domine is still extant in the Vatican Library. (And no, even if you have a Vatican Library Card, you can’t take it out.)
Before we left for work today, I brought in the flag I had put out yesterday for Flag Day. After our first break, Richard signed the Early Out list on our behalf (forging my name, as associates are not supposed to sign the list for another associate). It didn’t do any good; because of one thing and another, they could only let one dealer out, and that wasn’t until 8:00 am. For my eight hours, I dealt blackjack; quite often during the day, I was without guests, so I had plenty of time to do nothing much but watch people at the dice table.
When we got home from work, I set the DVR for the program I wish to record on Thursday morning; then I read the morning paper while eating my lunch salad. I took a nap from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm; while I was sleeping, Richard did his laundry, mowed the lawn, and went out to get some stuff, including my bulletin from the church for this past weekend. (Thanks, Richard.) Once I woke up at 5:00 pm, I left the house for the bright lights of Lafayette; I arrived at Barnes & Noble at 6:00 pm, so I had some time to eat two Asiago Sourdough Pretzels from the Barnes & Noble Deli and to read my book before the other member of the Third Tuesday Book Club arrived. From 7:00 pm to about 8:15 pm we had our Book Club Meeting for Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances, and Home Remedies by Laura Esquivel (Translated by Carol Christensen and Thomas Christensen), and a very good meeting it was, too. I then came home, arriving at 9:15 pm.
And now, with Blackjack (aka BJ, aka Beej) enthroned upon my pillow on the bed, I will complete today’s Daily Update, do some reading, and then hit the hay.
Tomorrow I will be doing my casino laundry and going to Opelousas for my appointment with my counselor at 12:00 pm. I have nothing planned for the rest of tomorrow, save that I’d like to do stuff on the computer and to watch some Previously Recorded Television.
Our Parting Quote this evening comes to us from Stan Winston, American visual effects supervisor, make-up artist, and film director. Born in 1946 in Arlington, Virginia, he studied painting and sculpture at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville from which he graduated in 1968. In 1969, after attending California State University, Long Beach, Winston moved to Hollywood to pursue a career as an actor. Struggling to find an acting job, he began a makeup apprenticeship at Walt Disney Studios. In 1972 he established his own company, Stan Winston Studio, and won an Emmy Award for his effects work on the telefilm Gargoyles (1973). Over the next seven years he continued to receive Emmy nominations for work on projects and won another for 1974’s The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Winston also created the Wookie costumes for the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special. In 1982 he received his first Oscar nomination for Heartbeeps, but his ground-breaking work with Rob Bottin on the science fiction horror classic The Thing that year brought him to prominence in Hollywood. In 1983, Winston designed the Mr. Roboto facemask for the American rock group Styx. He reached a new level of fame in 1984 when James Cameron’s The Terminator premiered. The movie was a surprise hit, and Winston’s work in bringing the titular metallic killing machine to life led to many new projects and additional collaborations with Cameron. In fact, Winston won his first Oscar for Best Visual Effects in 1986 on James Cameron’s next movie, Aliens. Over the next few years, Winston and his company received more accolades for its work on many more Hollywood films, including John McTiernan’s Predator (1987), The Monster Squad (1987), Alien Nation (1988), Predator 2 (1990), and Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands (1990), In 1989, Winston made his directorial debut with the horror movie Pumpkinhead, and won Best First Time Director at the Paris Film Festival. Although the movie was released to limited theatrical release, Pumpkinhead has since become classic of the genre. His next directing project was the child-friendly A Gnome Named Gnorm (1990), starring Anthony Michael Hall. James Cameron drafted Winston and his team once again in 1990, this time for the groundbreaking Terminator 2: Judgment Day. T2 premiered in the summer of 1991, and Winston’s work on this box office hit won him two more Oscars for Best Makeup Effects and Best Visual Effects. In 1992, he was nominated with yet another Tim Burton film, this time for Burton’s superhero sequel, Batman Returns, where his effects on Danny DeVito as The Penguin, Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman, and in delivering Burton’s general vision for what was an increasingly Gothic Gotham City earned him more recognition for his work ethic and loyalty to what was an intrinsic ability to bring different directors’ ideas to life. Winston turned his attention from super villains and cyborgs to dinosaurs when Steven Spielberg enlisted his help to bring Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park to the cinema screen. In 1993, the movie became a blockbuster and Winston won another Oscar for Best Visual Effects. In 1993, Winston, Cameron and ex-ILM General Manager Scott Ross co-founded Digital Domain, one of the foremost digital and visual effects studios in the world. In 1998, after the box office success of Titanic, Cameron and Winston severed their working relationship with the company and resigned from its board of directors. Winston and his team continued to provide effects work for many more films and expanded their work into animatronics. Some of his notable animatronics work can be found in The Ghost and the Darkness (1996) and T2 3-D: Battle Across Time (1996), James Cameron’s 3-D continuation of the Terminator series for the Universal Studios theme park. In 1996, Winston directed and co-produced the longest and the most expensive music video of all time, Ghosts, which was based on an original concept of Michael Jackson and Stephen King. The long-form music video presented a number of never before seen visual effects, and promoted music from two consecutive Jackson albums, HIStory (1995) and Blood on the Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix (1997). One of his most ambitious animatronics projects was Steven Spielberg’s AI: Artificial Intelligence (2001), which earned Winston another Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects. In 2001, Winston, together with Lou Arkoff (Sam Arkoff’s son) and Colleen Camp, produced a series of made-for-cable films for Cinemax and HBO. The five films, referred to as Creature Features, were inspired by the titles of AIP monster movies from the 1950s (i.e., Earth vs. the Spider (1958), How to Make a Monster (1958), Day the World Ended (1955), The She-Creature (1956), and Teenage Caveman (1958)) but had completely different plots. In 2003 Winston was invited by the Smithsonian Institution to speak about his life and career in a public presentation sponsored by The Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. The presentation took place on November 15, 2003, at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. In 2004, he expressed great disappointment when director Paul W.S. Anderson did not come to him for the creature effects for Alien vs. Predator, seeing as he designed the Predator and the Alien Queen (died 2008): “People who are afraid to go to horror movies are generally afraid their whole lives. People say to me, ‘Do you have nightmares?’ I never have nightmares! And I go to movies and see the most bizarre things in the world, and go… Wow that is really sick, how fun is that! And I don’t have to carry it around. I think that’s very healthy.”
From The Recamier 