Doncha hate it when...

this happens (in France);

The mayor's office in Yvrac said Wednesday that workers who were hired to renovate the grand 13,000-square-meter (140,000-square-foot) manor and raze a small building on the same estate in southwest France mixed them up.

"The Chateau de Bellevue was Yvrac's pride and joy," said former owner Juliette Marmie. "The whole village is in shock. How can this construction firm make such a mistake?"

Local media reported that the construction company misunderstood the renovation plans of the current owner, Russian businessman Dmitry Stroskin, to clean up the manor and restore it to its former baroque glory.

Stroskin was away when the calamity occurred and returned home to discover his chateau, a local treasure boasting a grand hall that could host some 200 people, as well as a sweeping stone staircase — was nothing but rubble.

Worse than a crime....?

Time Out

Pianist and composer Dave Brubeck has his final Take Five;

Brubeck died Wednesday morning of heart failure after being stricken while on his way to a cardiology appointment with his son Darius, said his manager Russell Gloyd. Brubeck would have turned 92 on Thursday.

Brubeck had a career that spanned almost all American jazz since World War II. He formed The Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1951 and was the first modern jazz musician to be pictured on the cover of Time magazine — on Nov. 8, 1954 — and he helped define the swinging, smoky rhythms of 1950s and '60s club jazz.

The seminal album "Time Out," released by the quartet in 1959, was the first ever million-selling jazz LP, and is still among the best-selling jazz albums of all time. 

One may smile, and smile, and be a villain

I fight against fascism. That is my trade. 

So says the character Kurt Muller (Paul Lukas, reprising his Broadway role) in the 1943 Oscar nominated Watch on the Rhine.  In this clunkily plotted film--written by Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett--Muller does this by raising money in the United States for his anti-Nazi activities.  In this case, $20,000 in cash in his briefcase.

Now let's turn to Marlene Dietrich's 1987 'autobiography', Marlene;

The "Hollywood Committee," which had been founded when the Nazis seized power, was all ready for action on the day of the mobilization [Hitler's declaration of war against the US, December 11, 1941].  Its chief organizers were Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder.

We sent sums of money to a contact man in Switzerland, a certain "Engel" for the purpose of liberating hundreds of prisoners from the German concentration camps and bringing them to America.  I never got to know this Mr. Engel, but he must have been a wonderful person.  He undertook this service to humanity regardless of the risks such activity involved.

Not exactly. The "Hollywood Committee" would have been The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League for the Defense of Democracy, founded in the summer of 1936.  Thanks to a Czech Jew using the name Rudolph Breda when speaking to a crowd of celebrities at the Victor Hugo restaurant.  Though Wilder and Lubitsch knew him as Otto Katz, in Berlin in the 1920s.

So did Dietrich.  In the biblical sense.  Before she became famous for The Blue Angel, made by the director Josef von Sternberg, who later brought Dietrich to Hollywood in 1931, and made her a star.

The left-wing journalist Claud Cockburn wrote that Katz adamantly claimed to have been Dietrich's first husband--no record of any such marriage exists--and there is a rumor that Katz was the actual father of Dietrich's only daughter, Maria Riva.  Though Dietrich was married to Rudolph Sieber in 1923, over a year before the child was born in December 1924.

Nonetheless, Lillian Hellman also clearly knew who Otto Katz really was; a Communist and an agent of Joseph Stalin.  One who wasn't too modest to tell tales of his own daring to impressionable movie people.  As he clearly did that night at the Victor Hugo restaurant (as Breda).

No record of his speech exists, but some remembered it as filled with stories of claim checks, for bundled secret documents, surreptitiously passed to him at European train station cafes. Of  border crossings with forged passports under the eyes of armed and suspicious German soldiers.  Swims to safety with rifle bullets whizzing past his head.

Anything to rouse the movie millionaires to contribute their money and their time to Katz's cause.  Even genuflecting and kissing the ring of an astonished Archbishop of Los Angeles, according to witnesses.

A fascinating, brazen character, but hardly 'a wonderful person'.  In fact he was a cold-blooded, calculating murderer.  Responsible for many killings in Spain during that country's civil war (where he met Ernest Hemingway, and likely, George Orwell), possibly having a hand in Trotsky's death in Mexico in 1940 and Czech Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk's defenestration in Prague in 1948.

One deserving of a movie that is faithful to the facts.  Unlike the Hellman/Hammett paean to him.  Or, the other Oscar nominated film of 1943--and winner of Best Picture--that also has a character, Victor Lazlo, recognizable as Katz.

The weather outside is Napoleonic

And today's comrades aren't up to the challenge;

The snow came down hard Friday, more than 2 feet in places, the first big storm of the year. But in Russia, where the winters are long and hard, it was nothing out of the ordinary, it seemed.

Then some localities apparently decided on their own to close the exits on the M10 highway between Moscow and St. Petersburg, a 400-mile stretch.

The ensuing traffic jam — 100 miles long by some estimates and involving 10,000 vehicles — trapped some motorists for three days and forced senior Russian officials to go on television Monday to mollify the thousands of angry drivers.

Back in the good old days no one had a car, so maybe that explains why they can't snow-plowski their main highway.  Where was Putin, out hunting panthers bare handed? 

Curioser

From an AP story on the death by suicide of the author of Three Cups of Tea;

[David Oliver] Relin killed himself in the rural community of Corbett near Portland [OR] last month, according to the deputy Multnomah County medical examiner, Peter Bellant, who confirmed the death on Sunday. He was 49.

Relin died of a blunt force head injury on Nov. 14, Bellant said. Neither he nor Relin's family would provide details of his death.

Shoeless Jeff from...

You Tube fame, via NYC, wants a piece of the action;

His name is Jeffrey Hillman, and on Sunday night, he was once again wandering the streets — this time on the Upper West Side — with no shoes.

The $100 pair of boots that [police officer] DePrimo had bought for him at a Sketchers store on Nov. 14 were nowhere to be seen.

"Those shoes are hidden. They are worth a lot of money," Hillman said in an interview on Broadway. "I could lose my life."

Hillman, 54, was by turns aggrieved, grateful and taken aback by all the attention that had come his way — even as he struggled to figure out what to do about it.

"I was put on YouTube, I was put on everything without permission. What do I get?" he said. "This went around the world, and I want a piece of the pie."

Get an agent. 

Puttin' on the Watts

Edmonds.com says, it's not that simple when it comes to figuring the cost of powering your electric vehicle.  Electric rates vary from state to state (and even within states), and some places from time to time;

Because of the variety of utility rates in the U.S., a 2011 Nissan Leaf that's a bargain to drive in Washington [state] — $28.29 for 1,000 miles — is pricey in Hawaii, where those 1,000 miles would cost $97.21. A conventional car getting 36 mpg would make that trip for the same money. For consumers primarily interested in driving an EV to save money, it's critical to know actual electric rates (and the current cost of gasoline, for comparison purposes) instead of relying on national averages.

To figure out the cost of fueling an EV, start with the electric car's energy consumption rate, which is expressed as kWh per 100 miles (kWh/100m). This figure will be listed on the EPA's upcoming EV fuel economy label .... The next figure is your home electric rate, assuming that's the primary charging site. Multiply the kWh/100m figure by the electric rate to get the cost per 100 miles. For instance, the Leaf's kWh/100m figure is 34. If electricity is 11 cents per kWh — the national average — it would cost $3.74 to go 100 miles.

Which is only the cost of the power, and that varies during different (peak v. off-peak) times in a lot of places.  

To evaluate the true cost of the vehicle one would have to know the premium paid for the vehicle (minus the tax advantages), as well as all the maintenance and insurance costs.  Also, don't forget to estimate its resale value.

Then one can work on an estimate of the cost of the aggravation of being unable to use the vehicle while it's recharging. Happy motoring.