Who saw the first
green light of the sun?
"I," said the `art surfer'
The only one. -Margaret Wise Brown

• QUOTE: "The humanities are a foundation for getting along in the world, for thinking, for learning, to reflect on the world instead of just reacting to whatever force is turned against you." - John Spayde
• MINI QUIZ: In our main feature we listed the 7 wonders of the ancient world. Can you name the 7 wonders of the Middle Ages? (answer below)
• MUSIC: The TEXAS Country Music Hall Of Fame is now open in Carthage, Texas. And they have named their first 6 inductees: songwriter Joe Allison; singing cowboy star (Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Back in the Saddle Again, etc) Gene Autry; redneck cowboy, Willie Nelson, country Gentleman Jim Reeves~ singer Tex Ritter; and songwriter Cindy Walker. We salute all the inductees.
• MUCH IMPROVED DEPT: Art: One of the most important paintings of the 16th century, the most important work by Hieronymus Bosch, and one of the greatest surrealist paintings of all time, The Garden of Earthly Delights (the central panel of a triptych), is now being restored by sisters Maite and Rocio Davila at the Prado Museum, Madrid. The two other panels~ Hell to the right, and the Garden of Eden to the left have yet to be cleaned. Corporate donations have made it possible for this work to be restored. Unfortunately, other museum works wait their turn. The impetus for restoration has been Robert Vurm, a Czech entrepreneur who is a big fan of Bosch's work. We salute all those involved and encourage those concerned to help with the other necessary restorations on the worlds great works of art. (B. Grauman) And speaking of much improved: After a recent trip to the Dallas Museum Of Art (a museum we gave low marks to before), we have to admit things have changed for the better. Specifically, more Texas artists represented; the Reeves exhibit is now free and it's now easier to see the paintings; there are more graphics on the wall; Rembrandt and Durer, plus a couple of the series of etchings by Hogarth; plus more new works (2 discoveries that I especially enjoyed were a head of a beautiful woman by Bouguereau considered cloyingly sweet by many but I love Murillo too - and an American impressionist work of a woman, full length, by Freiske. Both by themselves worth the visit) These, a better souvenir shop, and new restaurant make it worth a second look for our readers.
• FILM: "Now let me get this straight: Hollywood can spend a $100 million production, $80 million on promotion but won't give a free screening to a class of film majors to save it from gaping plot holes, obvious absurdities, and laugh-out-loud crowd reactions; and this is good business?? - Art 5 Rev. .. .Musea recommends, for the light hearted romantic in you, the indie film Next Stop Wonderland. If the Ally McBeal-type lead character doesn't win you over, then the great Bossa Nova soundtrack will.. . Egypt is all a-buzz about a new hit comedy that pokes fun at westernized Egyptians. Saidi at the American University is about Khalaf, a bumpkin who wins a scholarship to study at the university where all the students ape the American ways. And though Khalaf looks out of place, many feel the satire is on the westernized world not the conservative Muslim Khalaf. More controversy surrounds the film in a scene where the Israeli flag is burned. The film is hot with a hit song Casuawilouh (make him dress casual) and tickets must be bought days in advance at any of the 25 theaters that it's playing at. (AP/B Mroue)
• MUSEA remembers the passing of one of the worlds greatest directors, Akira Kurowasw. His 30 films include such classics as Rashomon (l950), Seven Samarai (1954), Yojimbo (1961) and Ran (1985). We consider him as in the same class as Ingmar Bergman or Federico Fellini. We salute his lifetime achievement. (DMN/C. Vognar)
• RADIO: Our Camp Champ this month is each and every community radio station across the US Example: KNGT in Jackson, CA ,with Pet Patrol, which announces lost or found animals; school lunch menus; obits; "Best Buys," an on-air flea market; high school football games; and even on-air time for school newscasters telling school news; and all this live, day after day. We salute!
• TV: THE NEW FALL (DOWN) SEASON: Whether there will be more than last years 2 hit shows (Dharma & Greg and Ally McBeal) only time will tell, but one thing is sure, look for more news magazine shows, a lot more - last year's 26 hours in July was bumped up to 63 hours at ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, & Fox... Musea recommends two British classic TV sitcoms: The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, a cog in the wheel of industry that doesn't take it anymore. One additional plus is that each episode leads to the next to form a massive comic novel; and Red Dwarf the sci-fi comedy for the thinking sci-fier. Both PBS. Also in a recent People mag. Economist Juliet Schor was asked, "Do commercials encourage overspending?" She said: "It's not the ads so much; people are conditioned to resist them. It's the programs. With few exceptions, programs today tend to show characters who lead incredibly affluent lifestyles they would never be able to afford in reality. Ordinary sit-com families own million dollar houses. That's a big difference from "The Dick Van Dyke Show" where the Petries lived much more modestly... TV's "Friends" live in huge apartments they could never afford in real life. Research shows that the more TV people watch, the more likely they are to overestimate what the average American has."
• Answer to our miniQUIZ is: 1. The Coliseum of Rome, 2. The catacombs of Alexandria. 3. The Great Wall Of China, 4. Stonehenge 5. The Leaning Tower of Pisa 6. The Porcelain Tower of Nankin and 7. The Mosque of St. Sophia at Constantinople.
• MORE STOLEN ART RECOVERED- After a rash of recent thefts, these thieves have been caught: 8 Italians, including a security guard at Rome's National Gallery of Modern Art were captured and the stolen paintings, 2 by Van Gogh and 1 by Cezanne, recovered. "This was a bleeding wound that Italy didn't deserve. Today it is closed." - Deputy Premier Walter Veltroni. Also in New Zealand, a bandit dressed in black and carrying a sawed off shotgun and a crowbar, stole a $1 million dollar painting by Jacques Joseph Tisso . In front of guards and patrons, he fired a shot and left with the booty. The 1874 oil "Still on Top" has been recovered and a suspect has been arrested. (USA Today/AP)
• AN AMAZONIALLY BIG BOOK LIST: Amazon.com, the biggest-on-the-net bookstore decided it'd do the top-ten list a bit differently. Because everything is on a computer they tallied up their list of the 1,087,203 top sellers. And too, because it is computer data, it can be updated every hour - at least for the top 10,000. As I read this article from WSJ, the 1st thing that came to my mind as an author myself was, a few sales could move your book up a lot of numbers. And sure enough I wasn't the first to think of it. The article states that author Lew McCreary The Minus Man ranked at 680.281, called up his friends and had them order a copy - he'd reimburse them later. 10 sales later and his novel moved up to 368! . .37 years after his death, Hemingway's last full length manuscript will be published called True First Light, edited by his son Patrick from 850 pages down to 300. It tells of a fictionalized account of the author's 1953 safari to Africa (AP).
• MY CURRENT READING STACK IS DEPT: Dombey & Son/Dickens; Mr. Pinkerton: Passage For One/Fromme and Death And The Pleasant Voices/Fitt (both mysteries); Home of the Gentry/Turgenev; The Master Mind Of Mars/Burroughs; and The Best short Stories of Ring Lardner. Hey reader, what are you reading? Let us hear from you Art S. Rev has this advice for those writers who want to write Children's lit: (clever or silly)

  Instead of hit or miss-erary
  When writing kinder lit-erary
  Mix some clever with the naive
  Or go whole hog and holler soueee!

• ENDER: From a letter to Musea by Ruel Gaviola. editor of the zine review zine, Amusing Yourself to Death "On behalf of the ATYD crew, I'd like to thank you for inducting AYTD into the zine Hall Of Fame. When I opened the envelope at the post office and saw the official certificate from the Hall, I couldn't contain my excitement and showed it to the old lady next to me.
  

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