Smiley Face: Bosnia

Seen in Portland, Maine. August 19, 2016. Man on the street, from Bosnia, with Smiley shirt on.

Photography by Loren Coleman.

Tom Mellett adds:

Your focus on the Smiley Face deserves a look at the history of its creation.

Harvey Ross Ball (July 10, 1921 – April 12, 2001) was an American commercial artist. He is recognized as the earliest known designer of the smiley, which became an enduring and notable international icon.

After World War II, Ball worked for a local advertising firm until he started his own business, Harvey Ball Advertising, in 1959. He designed the smiley in 1963.

[ . . . ]

The State Mutual Life Assurance Company of Worcester, Massachusetts (now known as Hanover Insurance) had purchased Guarantee Mutual Company of Ohio. The merger resulted in low employee morale. In an attempt to solve this, Ball was employed in 1963 as a freelance artist, to come up with an image to increase morale. What he created was a smiley face, with one eye bigger than the other. In less than ten minutes, Harvey Ball came up with the simple yet world-changing smiley face. The simplicity of the image brought smiles to the faces of the executives, who paid him $45 for his creation.

The use of the smiley face became part of the company's friendship campaign whereby State Mutual handed out 100 smiley pins to employees. The aim was to get employees to smile while using the phone and doing other tasks. The buttons became popular, with orders being taken in lots of 10,000. More than 50 million smiley face buttons had been sold by 1971, and the smiley has been described as an international icon.

Ball never applied for a trademark or copyright of the smiley and earned just $45 for his work (US $315 in 2010 inflation-adjusted dollars). State Mutual, similarly, did not make any money from the design. Ball's son, Charles, is reported to have said his father never regretted not registering the copyright. Telegram & Gazette reported Charles Ball as saying "he was not a money-driven guy, he used to say, 'Hey, I can only eat one steak at a time, drive one car at a time.'"

Plus

I should note the connection with the Watchmen face

On July 18, 1998, around the 35th anniversary of the design's inception, Ball appeared at That's Entertainment to meet fans and sign smiley pins and art. At this appearance Ball was shown copies of the graphic novel Watchmen issue #1, which featured a notorious image of a smiley face with a splatter of blood across it. Store Manager Ken Carson was quoted as saying Ball seemed amused to see it on the cover.

For more, see here.

And here.

As well as here and here.

Who Watches The Suicide Squad?

We are all living the graphic novel someone else wrote for us.

If you've seen Suicide Squad, you will notice there is a giant smiley face poster in the film that stares at Will Smith's character as he stares at a child's coat (that he, no doubt, imagines for his daughter -- produced by Watchmen's director. (The scene with the Flash, btw, was actually directed by the Watchmen's director, so it does get complex on the inside of this movie.)

I saw the movie on Sunday, and I thought it was entertaining, funny, had good character development, and much better than the Marvel vs DC infighting would have you believe.

What are the Watchmen watching? What are we watching? Who is watching Suicide Squad?

National Review published a thoughtful analysis of the movie in their piece, "The Modern Allegories of Suicide Squad The Squad's All Here " on August 5, 2015. I will quote from the examination, but you can find the entire article by clicking on the link directly above.

Cynicism and redemption in the comic-book wars. Think metaphorically. The war between fans of DC Comics and Marvel Comics is almost as vicious as that between Republicans and Democrats. The current controversy over Suicide Squad — Marvel kids are going on the Internet to attack any proposed DC narrative, with the intention of dooming its box-office prospects — makes a useful analogy to the fracas in our political arena.....

....Suicide Squad (its members risk death on an unpromising mission) can be feared, admired, and rooted for — but only in juvenile terms. Those are the terms that rule contemporary Hollywood, just as they define the schoolyard bullying of contemporary political discourse. A lack of moral precept distinguishes Suicide Squad from previous depictions of patriotism and heroism. These comic-book characters emphasize snarky egotism (“political prisoner” Smith and “jail-bait” Robbie show the most swagger and sass). But the Marvel kids aren’t railing against DC because Suicide Squad gets the genre wrong; they object to the opposition’s very existence — and to its ideology. Yes, even comic-book franchises promote ideology. This may come as a shock to consumers still stuck on the idea that Hollywood wants to entertain more than indoctrinate. Even normally sophisticated folks who are unschooled in recognizing hegemony or realizing how the culture system functions today prove susceptible to the lure of apparently innocuous entertainment. They hold onto adolescent consumerist gullibility, and this is the ideology that Suicide Squad’s producer, Zack Snyder, is up against. Snyder, who directed the reboots Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman, confounds comic-book fans with his voluptuous, dramatic visual style, which is so unlike Marvel’s trashy, violent sarcasm. He’s a fantasist, but he’s also a moralist, and this comes through in Suicide Squad, produced by Snyder but directed by David Ayer. Ayer’s social sensibility (seen in Brad Pitt’s World War II movie, Fury, and in End of Watch, a rare cop movie with a credible sense of ethnic camaraderie) is compatible with Snyder’s. They both approach a childish genre like adults — and that’s what annoys the Marvel kids, whose bad rap on Suicide Squad has already gone viral. If DC is the conservative comic-book universe to Marvel’s pseudo-progressivism, it couldn’t be more unpopular among kids who enjoyed the ludicrous platitudes of Avengers: Age of Ultron....

...Snyder...inserts the Smiley Face motif from his Watchmen film as a comment on comic anarchy (the perversion of noir). Plus, when June Moone is transformed into the Enchantress and turns her brother into a superfiend, it resembles the sibling tragedy in Snyder’s superb production 300: Rise of an Empire. Snyder and Ayer are like presidential and vice-presidential candidates attempting to synthesize popular sentiment with their own feeling for aesthetic reform. Their message seems deliberately misunderstood by those who favor conventional Hollywood formula.

Surely, it’s a joke to complain that one superhero sci-fi fantasy plot makes less sense than another. (Or that Leto’s wily Joker is not as repugnant as Heath Ledger’s. Blessedly, the Joker has less screen time, less validation.)...

....the Squad, facing supernatural evil, gets gung-ho and promises, “We’re gonna be a chapter in the Bible! Everybody will know what we do!” Snyder and Ayer pursue an interest in redemption and sacrifice using the comic-book and blockbuster genres that have replaced the universality of the Bible and classical texts. More is at stake in Suicide Squad than comic-book fun. Think metaphorically again, and see that Suicide Squad entangles post-Vietnam and post-9/11 notions about heroism and citizenship....Suicide Squad is The Dirty Dozen for millennial viewers (and voters), who think their patriotic moral conflict is new. 

Armond White, a film critic who writes about movies for National Review Online, received the American Book Awards’ Anti-Censorship Award in 2014. He is the author of The Resistance: Ten Years of Pop Culture That Shook the World and the forthcoming What We Don’t Talk about When We Talk about the Movies.

Thanks Steve L.

See also other important material, here, here, and here.

Mehr Amokläufe: More Rampages

Germany again! What is the central problem? One event appears to be triggering others - it is the copycat effect on steroids.

Over the weekend, there have been Mehr Amokläufe (more rampages) in Deutschland.

Europe was rocked on 14 July 2016, Bastille Day, on the "Promenade des Anglais: 84 Dead in Nice," France. The location, Promenade des Anglais means "Avenue of the English."

Then the series of German Amokläufe (plural of Amokläuf, rampages) began.

18 July 2016: A 17-year-old Afghan refugee [Riaz Khan Ahmadzai (also known as Muhammad Riyad)] injured four people seriously, two critically, with a knife and hatchet on a train near Würzburg in Germany. See "Amoklauf Würzburg Axe Attack."

22 July 2016: On the the 5th anniversary of the Norway: 7.22.11 Breivik Attacks, a mass shooting took place at the Olympia Mall's McDonald's in Munich, Germany. Ten were killed (including the gunman) and 35 injured. Ali David Sonboly (Persian: علی داوید سنبلی‎‎; called David S. by the police) was identified as the assailant. He was an 18-year-old Iranian-German with dual nationality. Police in Munich said the gunman had Amok Im Kopf a German translation of a book on mass school shootings, along with materials related to the 2009 Winnenden school shooting in Germany and the bomb-and-gun attacks in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people. See also "Amoklauf Munich Olympia Mall: Nine Dead."

24 July 2016: A Syrian asylum seeker armed with a knife attacked pedestrians in Reutlingen, Germany, killing a pregnant woman and wounding two other people.

24 July 2016: Twelve people were injured, three seriously, in a suicide bombing outside a wine bar. At 22:12 CEST (20:12 UTC), a bomb exploded outside Eugene's Wine Bar (German: Eugens Weinstube) in Ansbach, Germany. The bomber, the only fatality, was a 27-year-old Syrian man who had been denied asylum. The actual target of the bombing may have been the Ansbach Open music festival with around 2,500 people in attendance. The explosion occurred near the entrance to the festival. The suicide bomber, known to police after trying to die by suicide twice prior to the bombing, carried a backpack filled with screws, nails, and miscellaneous metal parts used in wood manufacturing and was denied entry into the music festival due to the lack of a ticket shortly before the blast. German authorities have found a video showing the bomber pledging allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on his phone. Joachim Herrmann, the Bavarian interior minister, said "it is unquestionable that it is a terror attack with corresponding Islamist convictions of the perpetrator."

Thus, from the 18th through the 24th, there have been four Amoklauf events in Germany. More is expected.

Enki King observes:

Batman: The Killing Joke will be shown in theaters across the country [only] on July 25 [and July 26, 2016]. It is based on a graphic novel by occultist Alan Moore.

As we enter the week and a half period bookmarked by the appearance of Joker films in cinemas, it is worth recalling that the Joker's appearance was based on German actor Conrad Veidt's portrayal of Gwynplaine in the expressionist film The Man Who Laughs.

The end date, August 5, 2016, is capped by the first appearance of the Suicide Squad and its new Joker.

+++ 

In the early morning hours of July 25, 2016, there was a shooting at the closing hour of a nightclub in Florida, giving people flashbacks to the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting of June 12, 2016.

25 July 2016: A shooting occurred inside the Club Blu Bar and Grill nightclub in Fort Myers, Florida. Preliminary reports indicate at least two individuals, both teenagers, are dead with 20 injured. The deceased have been identified as 14-year-old Sean Archilles and 18-year-old Stefan Strawder. Two suspects and a person of interest have been detained in connection with the shooting. The venue was reportedly hosting an all ages event for teenagers and ID was not required. The shooters apparently involved not teenagers, but those who were there to pick up the adolescents at closing.

A Date to Watch: August 5, 2016

Update on 7.27.16: Various items in the universe are aligning for August 5, 2016.

It is the 300th anniversary of the Battle of Petrovaradin or Peterwardein, a decisive victory for Austrian forces in the war between Habsburg Monarchy of Austria and the Ottoman Empire of August 5, 1716, at Petrovaradin (then part of Military Frontier, Habsburg Monarchy; today part of Novi Sad, Vojvodina, Serbia). This was the beginning of the end of the Ottomans. After the war, a church commemorating this event was built on Tekije, on the hill over battlefield, and is dedicated to Our Lady of Tekije, also known as Our Lady of the Snows. The church is special, because it has both Catholic and Orthodox altars and both Christian denominations use it. The site is a place of pilgrimage on every August 5.

After the battles that defeated the Ottomans, they had lost most of their European domains 300 years ago. Viennese bakers celebrated their deliverance with what came to be called the croissant, a pastry in the shape of the Muslim crescent. Take a bite out of Islam?

The 100th anniversary of the August 5, 1916, World War I, Battle of Romani, in which the Allied forces, under the command of Archibald Murray, defeat an attacking Ottoman army under the command of Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein, securing the Suez Canal and beginning the Ottoman retreat from the Sinai Peninsula.

It is the 50th anniversary of the groundbreaking ceremony of The World Trade Center of August 5, 1966.

The 2016 Olympics opens in Brazil on August 5, 2016.

John Hinkely, Jr., who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan, appears scheduled to be released on August 5, 2016.

The film Suicide Squad will be opening in wide release on August 5, 2016.

Even close to my home, the Lumineers will be giving the summer's biggest sold-out concert (thousands of people) at Thompson's Point, Portland, Maine, on August 5, 2016.

It will be the first anniversary of the Antioch movie theater shooting of 2015, and the 4th anniversary of the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin shooting of August 5, 2012.

+++

San Bernardino, Orlando, Dallas, Nice. It is a regular happening, mass deaths. The line of events is now long. It goes back for years. Lone gunmen, terrorist attacks, mass shootings, and even cars & trucks into crowds. What is next on the horizon?

Remember Friday, July 20, 2012? James Holmes opened fire on the patrons at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, just as The Dark Knight Rises began, killing 12 and injuring 70 others. The night was the premiere evening for the film. (See also here, here, and here.)

Do you recall the trailer that ran before the movie that night in Aurora? It was Gangster Squad, and it showed a movie theater being shot up with machine guns. That scene was later taken out of the actual film before it was released.

But the Aurora shooting did not happen in a vacuum. There were precursors. As I wrote a year ago, will the "Next Movie Shooting: August 5, 2016?"

What quickly followed was rather remarkable.

On Thursday, July 23, 2015, at the Grand 16, in Lafayette, Louisiana, an unidentified 59-year-old male opened fire on a crowd of viewers at Trainwreck. On July 24, 2015, I wrote about that in "Fayette Factor Hits Movie Theater."

On August 4, 2015, I warned of the anniversary syndrome with regard to the Lafayette shooting. 

We are coming up to the two-week anniversary for the Trainwreck/Lafayette shooting, always a dangerous window. The date for that anniversary - Wednesday, August 5, 2015.
People should watch out.

Besides Lafayette/Fayette, should we look to other "power name" locations or people*?

My 2015 prediction came to pass for August 5, 2015. I wrote:

On August 5, 2015, my recent forecast came true. Two-week anniversaries are significant. (And four-week, one month cycles, are, as well. That upcoming date is Wednesday, August 19, 2015. Predictive future forecasting is simple. What people do with it, remains problematic. At least, the copycat effect is now not disbelieved, as it was a mere dozen years ago when I wrote my book.)...
The predicted theater incident occurred exactly two weeks after a shooting at a showing of Trainwreck in Lafayette, Louisiana. The hatchet attack and air pistol shooting resulted in the death of the attacker and the injury of three patrons of the theater.

The movie that was playing at the time was Mad Max: Fury Road....

The 2015 event took place at the Carmike Hickory 8 Cinema in Antioch, Tennessee, around 1:15 p.m. The gunman at the Hickory Hollow Cinema, Vincente David Montano was allegedly armed with a hatchet, pepper spray, an Airsoft gun, and a fake bomb. He reportedly was wearing a surgical mask. He was shot dead by a SWAT team as he exited through the theater's rear door.
It happened on Bell Road, a power name mentioned here often. See also here and here....

The Carmike Hickory 8 Cinema and Hickory Hollow Cinema are references to Andrew Jackson. See more here.

And Antioch is dissected too.

But now, the one year anniversary will soon be upon us.

This is not "fear porn." This is using forecast to heighten awareness.

As I said on a recent 42 Minutes podcast interview with Sync Book's William Morgan (7.14.16 #235), people walk around in a fog. I am here to splash some water in some faces to attempt to prevent disasters. 

The movie Suicide Squad opens on Friday, August 5, 2016. Is it subconsciously broadcasting the kinds of messages to those who might shoot up a movie theater? Will it trigger the kind of shooting that we have come to almost (but not really) take for granted in the climate of violence today?

Suicide Squad takes place in a post-Superman world, following the events of Dawn of Justice, as the government grapples with how to respond the next time an alien visits Earth with less noble intentions than the Man of Steel. The answer, according to ruthless intelligence officer Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), is to recruit society’s most vile criminals, armed with lethal skills and superhuman powers. Her first target is possessed archaeologist June Moone/Enchantress (Cara Delevingne).
Waller’s program doesn’t get a green light, though, until Midway City is threatened by a powerful mystical enemy, and Waller needs to activate the whole squad of prisoners. The baddies get a break. Deadshot (Will Smith) has his Second Amendment rights reinstated, Harley (Margot Robbie) is carefully excised from her birdcage, Diablo (Jay Hernandez) is released from his own fireproof fortress of solitude, Boomerang (Jai Courtney) and Slipknot (Adam Beach) strap their weapons back on, and Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) is popped from his swamp. The one condition for their restricted freedom: Obey orders or die, a rule strictly enforced by squad leader Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), his samurai Katana (Karen Fukuhara), and the explosive devices inserted into their necks courtesy of Wayne Enterprises. (Thanks, Batman!) Throwing a wrench into all these plans is the tatted Gotham City arch-criminal, the Joker (Jared Leto), and his laser-like plan to reunite with his true love, Harley, mission be damned.
But a funny thing happens while these scumbags try to become heroes – they each must absolve themselves of their crimes even if society won’t. And that’s where it gets interesting. A layer of humanity – and sadness – resides underneath these characters’ stories as they each grapple with whether they can be redeemed.

Directed and written by David Ayer, the movie stars Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Jared Leto, Jai Courtney, Joel Kinnaman, Cara Delevingne, Viola Davis, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Adam Beach, Jay Hernandez, and Karen Fukahara.

Suicide Squad will open August 5, 2016.

++++

*What names to watch?

In Jim Brandon's 1983 book, The Rebirth of Pan: Hidden Faces of the American Earth Spirit, he wrote, regarding the "name game":

I'm not talking here of such spooky tongue-twisters as H.P. Lovecraft's Yog-Sothoth or Arthur Machen's Ishakshar, but of quite ordinary names like Bell, Beall and variants, Crowley, Francis, Grafton, Grubb, Magee/McGee, Mason, McKinney, Montpelier, Parsons, Pike, Shelby, Vernon, Watson/Watt, Williams/Williamson. I have others on file, but these are the ones which I have accumulated the most instances.

In my 1983 Mysterious America, I observed, besides John A. Keel and Charles Fort:

Cryptologic or coincidence? Jim Brandon should be credited with calling attention to the name Watts/Watkins/Watson, and its entanglement with inexplicable things. Some other names involved in mysterious events pinpointed by Brandon are Bell, Mason, Parsons, Pike, Vernon, and Warren. The influence of such names as Mason, Pike, Warren, and Lafayette, for example, issues, in some cryptopolitical and occult way, from their ties to the Masonic tradition.

Next Movie Shooting: August 5, 2016?

Could the next major theatrical mass shooting occur on August 5, 2016?

Remember Friday, July 20, 2012? James Holmes opened fire on the patrons at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, just as The Dark Knight Rises began, killing 12 and injuring 70 others. The night was the premiere evening for the film. (See also here, here, and here.)

Do you recall what occurred a year before that event? Early on Friday, July 22, 2011, a person dressed as a policeman (Anders Behring Breivik, a 32-year-old Norwegian right-wing extremist) fired shots at Norway's Labour Party Youth Camp on the island of Utøya, injuring and killing over 90 people, mostly young people. There were about 700 people at the camp. The death toll for the shootings at the camp plus the bombings was set at 77. The same day, on Friday, July 22, 2011, Captain America: The First Avenger was widely released in the United States, which began with a battle between Nazis and the film's hero - in Norway. (See also here.)
The movie Suicide Squad opens on Friday, August 5, 2016. Is it subconsciously broadcasting the kinds of messages to those who might shoot up a movie theater?

I hope not, but stay tuned. And be forewarned.

What has happened on August 5ths in the past?

642 - Battle of Maserfield - Penda of Mercia defeats and kills Oswald of Bernicia.
910 - The last major Viking army to raid England is defeated at the Battle of Tettenhall by the allied forces of Mercia and Wessex, led by King Edward and Earl Aethelred.
1071 - Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes captured/Islam advances through Europe.
1305 - William Wallace, who led Scottish resistance to England, is captured by the English near Glasgow and transported to London for trial and execution.
1812 - War of 1812: Tecumseh's Native American force ambushes Thomas Van Horne's 200 Americans at Brownstone Creek, causing them to flee and retreat.
1973 - Arab terrorists open fire at Athens airport, kills 3 injures 55.
1997 - Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of World Trade Center bombing goes on trial.
2003 - A car bomb explodes in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta outside the Marriott Hotel killing 12 and injuring 150.
2012 - Gunman opens fire on Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin killing six people and committing suicide.

The Joker returns.

The Hanging Woman: Harley Quinn hangs upside down in her prison cell.