Comments on: Let's just lose him at sea

Let's just lose him at sea

griphus — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:02:20 -0800

The harrowing tale of Ensign Chuck Hord, lost at sea in 1908.

By: R. Schlock

R. Schlock — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:05:23 -0800

By: jabberjaw

jabberjaw — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:08:30 -0800

Well, to quote Marge Simpson: "I guess it was a pretty funny prank! I like the ones where nothing catches on fire."

By: pupdog

pupdog — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:11:10 -0800

And they would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for ~~those meddling kids~~ The Wall Street Journal!

By: smitt

smitt — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:12:57 -0800

Or: How the Wall Street Journal ruined a great prank.

By: ardgedee

ardgedee — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:14:37 -0800

Pentagon officials use smilies in official media correspondance?

By: ardgedee

ardgedee — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:16:30 -0800

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.

By: zarq

zarq — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:18:06 -0800

Leave it to the Wall Street Journal to fuck up a perfectly good prank.

By: griphus

griphus — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:22:21 -0800

They had their reasons.

By: Redhush

Redhush — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:23:29 -0800

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

By: Mchelly

Mchelly — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:33:07 -0800

Thanks a lot, WSJ. This is why we can't have nice things.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:50:23 -0800

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.

By: cjorgensen

cjorgensen — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:50:29 -0800

All Things Considered on the story.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:53:19 -0800

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

By: griphus

griphus — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:59:49 -0800

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."

By: Capt. Renault

Capt. Renault — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:59:58 -0800

Now I've hord it all.

By: vidur

vidur — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:11:16 -0800

The best of investigative journalism!

By: ThisIsNotMe

ThisIsNotMe — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:21:24 -0800

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.)

By: JoanArkham

JoanArkham — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:27:41 -0800

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...

By: fearfulsymmetry

fearfulsymmetry — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:28:45 -0800

He was well hung

By: bicyclefish

bicyclefish — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:38:01 -0800

Well, that was worthwhile.

By: Blue Meanie

Blue Meanie — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:00:45 -0800

"Look Like You Belong There" is the prime directive for anyone sneaking into something, past something, and apparently also mounted onto something.

By: Petrot

Petrot — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:38:34 -0800

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.

By: Scram

Scram — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:53:06 -0800

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.)

By: IndigoJones

IndigoJones — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 12:31:28 -0800

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.

By: The Whelk

The Whelk — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 12:34:27 -0800

Van Meegeren painted like Vermeer so well it fooled everyone. That's hardly the same thing.