Let's just lose him at sea
April 18, 2012 12:02 PM   Subscribe

The harrowing tale of Ensign Chuck Hord, lost at sea in 1908.
posted by griphus (25 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
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posted by R. Schlock at 12:05 PM on April 18, 2012


Well, to quote Marge Simpson: "I guess it was a pretty funny prank! I like the ones where nothing catches on fire."
posted by jabberjaw at 12:08 PM on April 18, 2012 [5 favorites]


And they would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for those meddling kids The Wall Street Journal!
posted by pupdog at 12:11 PM on April 18, 2012 [3 favorites]


Or: How the Wall Street Journal ruined a great prank.
posted by smitt at 12:12 PM on April 18, 2012 [6 favorites]


Pentagon officials use smilies in official media correspondance?
posted by ardgedee at 12:14 PM on April 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


But yeah, this article was about 20 years too early. The portrait had to hang their long enough for a full generation of staff to have come in and out and grown accustomed to the thing, before inertia would be sufficient to keep the portrait up when publicized.
posted by ardgedee at 12:16 PM on April 18, 2012


Leave it to the Wall Street Journal to fuck up a perfectly good prank.
posted by zarq at 12:18 PM on April 18, 2012 [2 favorites]


They had their reasons.
posted by griphus at 12:22 PM on April 18, 2012 [4 favorites]


The portrait, ....... now sits on the floor of the office where Capt. Hord once worked, leaning against a cubicle wall.


Almost makes being lost at sea sound like a much better way to end up
posted by Redhush at 12:23 PM on April 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


Thanks a lot, WSJ. This is why we can't have nice things.
posted by Mchelly at 12:33 PM on April 18, 2012 [2 favorites]


So I take it no one there had a passing background in oil paintings cause uh, a textured photograph does look like an oil painting. At all. I'd be wondering why a masterful photorealist who could blend skin tones better than Ingre was doing officer portraits.
posted by The Whelk at 12:50 PM on April 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


All Things Considered on the story.
posted by cjorgensen at 12:50 PM on April 18, 2012


Also in no way could that be mistaken for a painting from the early 20th century - the colors alone all are wrong for the very conservative and formalized portrait genre and you'd be brush strokes under the lacquer and Edwardians did not have hair like that I just-just having an Art History Geek fit over here
posted by The Whelk at 12:53 PM on April 18, 2012 [3 favorites]


A group of Pentagon officials march briskly through a series of basement corridors in the Pentagon. They stop at an door marked "BUREAU OF AESTHETICS," knock, and it opens. The room behind the door is an artists' studio, with a number of men wearing paint-flecked smocks over crisp suits. They are working on numerous easels, painting Expressionist recreations of satellite imagery, Cubist portraits of spy photos of foreign officials, and so on. There is a brief silence.

"Gentlemen," states the head official, "please follow me. We need you to take a look at something."
posted by griphus at 12:59 PM on April 18, 2012 [6 favorites]


Now I've hord it all.
posted by Capt. Renault at 12:59 PM on April 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


The best of investigative journalism!
posted by vidur at 1:11 PM on April 18, 2012


A group of Pentagon officials march briskly through a series of basement corridors in the Pentagon. They stop at an door marked "BUREAU OF AESTHETICS,"...

That's ridiculous. Everyone knows that the Institute of Heraldry is at Fr. Belvoir! (despite the huge picture of the Pentagon on that page.)
posted by ThisIsNotMe at 1:21 PM on April 18, 2012


We have a "Hall of Former Officials" here, and one of them looks exactly like the 1970s version of Betty Crocker. I've long wanted to swap out that portrait...
posted by JoanArkham at 1:27 PM on April 18, 2012


He was well hung
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:28 PM on April 18, 2012 [2 favorites]


Well, that was worthwhile.
posted by bicyclefish at 1:38 PM on April 18, 2012


"Look Like You Belong There" is the prime directive for anyone sneaking into something, past something, and apparently also mounted onto something.
posted by Blue Meanie at 2:00 PM on April 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


At the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, UK, in an old corridor, there is a black and white photo of a WWI general. But it's actually General Melchett, from the TV series Blackadder, played by Stephen Fry.
posted by Petrot at 3:38 PM on April 18, 2012 [4 favorites]


The Whelk, I'm seconding your Art History Geek fit over here. It is so unnerving to get evidence that "normal" people cannot see how wrong something fake-old looks. (Remember Titanic, with the Nagel-style nude of Kate Winslet? A James Cameron original, even.)
posted by Scram at 4:53 PM on April 18, 2012


It is so unnerving to get evidence that "normal" people cannot see how wrong something fake-old looks.

This assumes anyone actually bothered to look at it. Unlike, say, the experts failed to see how wrong Van Meegeren was.
posted by IndigoJones at 12:31 PM on April 19, 2012


Van Meegeren painted like Vermeer so well it fooled everyone. That's hardly the same thing.
posted by The Whelk at 12:34 PM on April 19, 2012


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