Today is Sunday, May 18, 2024. In addition to being served birthday cake, today disgraced former Drumpf consigliere Rudy “Ghoul”iani was served with notice of his indictment related to an alleged scheme to overturn the 2020 election results in Arizona, according to Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes. This occurred as he was celebrating his 80th birthday in Palm Beach, Florida, Friday evening when the former New York mayor was served. This incident is fully covered in an online CNN article by Paradise Afshar, Kyung Lah, and Shania Shelton entitled “Rudy Giuliani served with Arizona indictment at 80th birthday bash.”

Mayes, a Democrat, said in a post on X in which Giuliani is tagged, “The final defendant was served moments ago.” He added, “Nobody is above the law.”

The summons is a formal notice that a defendant has been criminally charged and must appear before a judge. A spokesperson for Mayes, Richie Taylor, previously informed CNN that the attorney general’s office had tried for weeks to locate the pugnacious ex-mayor.

Caroline Wren, a GOP operative and adviser to Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake (Ugh!) told CNN she was hosting Giuliani’s landmark birthday party in Palm Beach when the former personal attorney to Drumpf was served.

An attendee at the party told CNN that Guiliani was served papers by two agents of the Arizona attorney general’s office in the late hours of the birthday celebration. “They stormed him on his way out,” the guest said, adding that “many of the guests were visibly upset.”

The 9/11 former mayor is expected to appear Tuesday for an arraignment in Phoenix unless he is granted a delay by the court.

The embattled attorney to Drumpf is among a group of former President Donald Drumpf’s allies indicted last month in Arizona alongside the 11 individuals who acted as fake GOP electors from the state in the 2020 presidential election.

In the indictment, it is Giuliani who is described as the individual who spread false claims of voter fraud across the country after the 2020 election, falsely claiming Arizona officials “made no effort to find out” whether the vote was accurate, and encouraging “Republican electors in Arizona and in six other contested states to vote for Trump-Pence on December 14, 2020.”

This indictment is the latest legal woe for Ghoul-iani stemming from his time as Drumpf’s lawyer after the 2020 presidential election. He filed for bankruptcy in federal court in New York in December days after a jury ordered him to pay nearly $150 million to two former Georgia election workers for making defamatory statements about them.

The former politician is also an unindicted coconspirator in Dump’s federal election subversion case, faces 13 charges in the Georgia election subversion case, and is being sued for defamation by both Dominion and Smartmatic, voting technology companies that he falsely said rigged the 2020 election. And all of this attaches to him because of his undying loyalty to a thug!! Let’s hope he doesn’t die in prison for his Orange Leader! Actually, let’s amend that to let’s hope he does die in prison for debasing himself in his latter years for hitching his wagon to a harbinger of chaos and destruction.

As time slips by, I’ll just mention that I had an intriguing time yesterday at the Museum of the Moving Image, here in Astoria, without Elliot who went to see a Japanese film at the Kew Gardens Cinema. For those who are not aware of this great institution, it’s a comprehensive museum dedicated to the art, technology, and social impact of film, including many interactive exhibits geared toward children.

Some of the new exhibitions included an installation devoted to the works of Auriea Harvey, a pioneering net-artist and sculptor who has been active close to four decades developing net-based interactive, video games, and augmented-reality sculptures. You probably are saying to yourself, “Who is this woman?” Don’t worry! I never heard of her either.

According to an article in Artnews from February 16, 2024, Harvey “began her foray into digital art as the internet was developing in the early 90s, right before it boomed.” Even though she studied sculpture at the Parsons School of Design in New York, she was drawn to all things digital, a self-described “obsession” that drove her to experiment with a number of digital formats that span photography, sculpture, drawing, and video.

Her installation is titled “My Veins are the Wires, Your Body Is the Keyboard,” and it runs until July 7, which showcases 40 works from the past nearly four decades in which she’s been active. Unfortunately, this was not my metier, so I was not so impressed with her efforts. But maybe you might be.

One new exhibit I was attracted to was a short installation on the art and form of filmmaker Todd Haynes called “Reflected Forms: Story and Character in the Films of Todd Haynes,” whose last film was May-December starring Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman which focuses on the strained relationship between a much older woman and her younger husband. The scope of the film takes its inspiration from the 1990s scandal involving elementary school teacher Mary Kay Letourneau who pleaded guilty and was convicted of second-degree child rape of 13-year-old student Vili Fualaau. Letourneau served seven years in prison and eventually married her Samoan lover after she got out of jail. The 2023 film is based on this case.

The exhibit has other memorabilia from the many films directed by Haynes, including another Moore film, Far From Heaven, from 2002, in which she plays a privileged suburban wife whose husband comes out as gay and almost has an interracial affair with a Black gardener. Haynes took his inspiration for making this film from the lush, technicolor films of Douglas Sirk from the 1950s. Another early Haynes effort was 1998 Velvet Goldmine which was set in Britain during the glam rock days of the early 1970s and tells the story of fictional bisexual pop star Brian Slade, who faked his own death. It stars Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Ewan McGregor, and Christian Bale, in an early role.

The only other new exhibit is called “Horrible Sites: Makeup and Production Design for The Exorcist” which needs no introduction – unless you haven’t seen this groundbreaking horror film released in 1973. Even to this day, I still recall the hysteria that was created with the release of this story of demonic possession. Patrons supposedly fainted or threw up in their seats while watching this film. So this exhibit explores the film’s production and makeup design, detailing how a stylish townhouse in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., and an innocent young girl were transformed into sites of horror. There are storyboards from the film on view in this exhibit and other artifacts, including a life-size mannequin of the actress Linda Blair as her character Regan MacNeil in the terrifying film. Looking her up, I’m floored to see that she’s now 65 years old. To me, that’s scary!

Stay safe and be well.

Here are some early moving picture cameras.

Here is an example of an early television set, I believe, from the 40s.

Here is Orson Welles being made up for his role as Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane. For your information, I think he was only 25 when the film was made. Toward the end of the film, he’s aged as the ruthless Kane.

Here are the first edition of The Exorcist as a book by William Peter Blatty and the screenplay from the film.

Here she is, the demonic Regan MacNeil!

Here are covers from old screen magazines that no longer exist.

This is a replica of an Egyptian-style movie house that still shows various short films. Yesterday a Muppets episode from the TV show was broadcast, starring the late country-western star Roy Clark as their guest.