Elizabeth Holmes: this thing just got weirder

WAAAAAAAYYY weirder.

At first it was one of those "oh come ONNNN" things, rumor piled on top of innuendo, and I didn't believe a word of it, until I saw some recent photographs taken at that weird, avant-garde, only-the-cool-people-can-afford-it Burning Man festival. It's the kind of thing Elizabeth Holmes would go to these days, since she seems to be on some sort of delirous, careening manic high.

With her world crashing down around her ears, everything she built over ten years in a smoking ruin, facing up to twenty years in prison for fraud and endangerment of human life, WHEEEEEE! She's off with her hunky new boy friend (and to tell you the honest truth, he looks a bit like a prop, sort of like Balto, that poor wolf/dog she's dragging around with her) to get her man burned or whatever they do there, stand around with drinks and listen to techno while waving their arms in the air. Word on the street is that she is positively jubilant.

Meanwhile, and even more alarmingly, more has been revealed about the original Balto, her wolf-dog's namesake, the "hero" husky who ran through snow and sleet and dark of night to deliver antibiotics to Nome, or tea to China, or something. Turns out that Balto was just the dog who ran the last couple of miles of the arduous journey, so the press quickly caught on - his name was so catchy, you know? Never mind that he was just one of a dozen dogs who made the trip, and never mind that it was all set up so that the dog with the nicest fur should get there with the drugs in a keg around his neck. Hardly winded - wasn't that a miracle? Yes, since he'd only run about a hundred and fifty yards.

It's all just SOOOOO appropriately fraudulent for this fraudulent freak show that just gets weirder with each passing day. Now that the photos are all over the internet, I think the top is about to blow right off this thing. But then, I thought that when I read Carreyrou's book. Carreyrou's book has nothing in it about dogs, or dishy boy friends, or Burning Men. It's all moving so fast, I can't keep up.

These photos were apparently taken about half a year ago, if you're to believe they're on the level - well, it really does LOOK like Elizabeth, though my first thought was, naaaaahhhh. . . 

Can you blame me for thinking it just might be another fraud?

UPDATE. Another one. Or several! Every day, new photos are dredged up, and since they are on social media, it's plain Elizabeth wants the world to know what she's up to. She's still posing with her magazine-cover (mail order?) boy friend at some green event, and doing some soulful camera trick with yellow light.

There is a whole series of these, mostly boring, of Elizabeth out in the snow. The Daily Mail article was aghast that she was toting her own suitcase. Maybe it's a Fendi or something. But - out in the snow? Her??

POST-BLOG REVELATIONS. Even more is coming out about Elizabeth's new fiance, William "Billy" Evans. He's a rich kid like her, a hotel heir who works for some sort of Silicon Valley startup (!), so they sort of gravitated to each other. I wonder what his family thinks of this. But I sense that things are ricocheting Elizabeth back into the public's favor, if only because of its obsessive need to stalk celebrities, whether they're genuine or not.

So here's some bumph about Evans, which may or may not be true. It may be just a memorizing-Jane-Austen-fluent-in-Mandarin-reading-Moby-Dick-in-a-single-sitting-at-age-nine type of deal, meaning it's all hype. He may even, like the technology at Theranos, merely be a figment of Elizabeth's imagination. But here goes:

He attended prep school in Chicago from an early age, enrolling at Francis W Parker when he was in kindergarten and remaining there until he went off to college.

Evans chose MIT for college, and was able to also spend time in China at Fudan University.

He graduated in 2015 with a Bachelor's Degree in Science and Economics, at which point he took a post at LinkedIn before making the move in 2017 to Luminar Technologies.

That is the company which is currently hard at work attempting to create and then mass market driverless cars.

Evans is one of three children born to William and Susan Evans. 

#EveryWomanCan   Change the World    Elizabeth Holmes     Glamour

The family grew up in the San Diego area, which is where Evans' grandparents, William and Anne, started the Evans Hotel Group in 1953.

The hotel group now owns three major resort properties on the west coast: the Catamaran, the Baha and The Lodge at Torrey Pines.

Anne remains the chairman emeritus of the company, and when her husband passed away in 1984 her children William and Grace joined the company.

They were soon followed by their spouses, and those five now comprise the leadership team for the hotel group.

On the company website, Evans' father is described as 'a passionate collector of California Impressionist art, rare specimen palm trees and subtropical plants, and antique racing automobiles'.

Evans' mother, it is noted, 'made the commitment to dedicate herself to raising their three children – Billy, Rex, and Gracie—before accepting her current position.'

Banana phone incident

Elizabeth Holmes: who's smiling now?

BA-BA-LOOOOOOOO!

"Call me Balto": Elizabeth Holmes' talking wolf

Though he may look and act like a Siberian husky, Elizabeth Holmes' new dog, Balto, is actually a wolf. How do we know? Because she told us he's a wolf. Just like she told us we could run 200 diagnostic tests on a single drop of blood. So it must be so!

This weird little collage represents images of Elizabeth's most extreme blue-eyed stares, Balto the wolf-dog, huskies in general, actual wolves (which Balto is), and Sgt. Preston of the Yukon, who had the best husky ever, Yukon King. "On, King! On, you huskies," was the cry I remember from my very early childhood (Sgt. Preston was on in about 1957, when I was three years old. By that age, Elizabeth was working for NASA full-time, teaching graduate-level courses on the complete works of Jane Austen, and winning the Nobel Prize for Most Convincing Bullshit Artist of the 21st Century).

Because Elizabeth is newly-enamoured, her dishy young beau William ("Billy") Evans is here, too, he of the very white smile and perfect 2-day stubble. I think she pulled the guy off a magazine cover or called an escort service or something. Or maybe we're just mad that she's so dang happy when she should be miserable! This IS something like dancing on your Mom's grave, completely inappropriate, though we know from the past that nothing touches Elizabeth (except maybe William "Billy" Evans). 

But what worries me most is a certain underlying fear that one of her more heavy-duty sugar Daddies (Henry Kissinger,  maybe?) will pull out a few billion at the last minute and bail her out. It could happen. She may have one more ace up  her sleeve. Mad about the boy! Mad about the dog (who is really a wolf)! Don't count her out just yet.

P. S. When quizzed on the first three words of Moby Dick (the immortal phrase "Call me Ishmael"), a book she professed to read at age nine, she didn't miss a beat. 

"Look! A whale!" 

And do you know what? She's right! It says so, right in the book.

THE CURE IS IMMEDIATE: patent medicine in the 1800s

Birthday at The Keg!

Elizabeth Holmes: She-wolf of Wall Street

ELIZABETH HOLMES HAS A HUSKY NAMED BALTO AND TELLS EVERYONE HE IS A WOLF 

Elizabeth Holmes, a blonde woman with an army of black turtlenecks who at least one person has described as someone who “absolutely has sociopathic tendencies,” has been known to lie. Her company Theranos—which she claimed was capable of running hundreds, if not thousands, of diagnostic medical tests with a single drop of blood—gave patients fake test results for years. Holmes deceived investors to drum up a $9 billion valuation for the company. She could not answer a number of questions in her 2017 deposition, as she was being investigated by the SEC for fraud.

She also reportedly likes to lie about what kind of dog she has. Holmes bought her Siberian husky in 2017, according to Vanity Fair, when things were really bad at Theranos. She named him Balto, as in, yes, the beloved sweet boy who saved lives during a 1925 diptheria outbreak by delivering antitoxins to a small town in Alaska. The dog was more of a brand-building exercise for Holmes than a four-legged best friend:

The metaphorical connection was obvious. In Holmes’s telling, Balto’s perseverance mirrored her own. His voyage with the life-changing drug was not so different from her ambition.

Which was extremely useful to Holmes:

In an industry full of oddballs, Holmes—a blonde WASP from the D.C. area—seemed hell-bent on cultivating a reputation as an iconoclastic weirdo. Having Balto seemed to help fortify the image.

And was even more helpful when she lied and told anyone who’d listen that Balto was a wolf:

Around this same time, Holmes says that she discovered that Balto—like most huskies—had a tiny trace of wolf origin. Henceforth, she decided that Balto wasn’t really a dog, but rather a wolf. In meetings, at cafés, whenever anyone stopped to pet the pup and ask his breed, Holmes soberly replied, “He’s a wolf.”

But we mustn’t look down on Balto for the actions of his owner, for he had no control over what Holmes said or did. He did, however, poop all over the Theranos office, and for that, we can say Balto really is a true American hero and has a nose for the morally right thing to do:

Holmes brushed it off when the scientists protested that the dog hair could contaminate samples [...] Accustomed to the undomesticated life, Balto frequently urinated and defecated at will throughout Theranos headquarters.

I hope Balto has a nice life, whether that’s with Holmes (who still tells people he’s a wolf), or perhaps, I don’t know, with me, a person who would love a dog and would never dramatize aspects of their genetic background to make myself look cooler. Just saying! Godspeed, Balto.

- Frida Garza, Jezebel

At home with the unhappy bride

Harold Lloyd and Mildred Davis at HOME 

(transcript of article)

Intimate glimpse of the Lloyds at their new and ornamental home which Harold built especially for Mildred, his bride

by Grace Kingsley

I was dashed up to the house in Annie.

If there is anything I do love, it is being dashed up.

Annie is short for anniversary, She is a new sport model roadster given by Harold Lloyd to his bride, Mildred, three months from the day they were married. They give each other presents every month, and call the day their "anniversary". Next anniversary, Harold is to give Mildred a solid gold vanity case.

"What do you give Harold?" I asked Mildred, after I was inside the house, and everything was explained to me.

"Oh, things I want for the house!" explained Mildred with her airy little laugh.

Mildred is looking lovely these days - a fit gem for that beautiful big house of theirs - built for Mildred especially, and according to the plans she selected. So if the sideboard and the closets aren't just right, she has no one to blame but herself.

It is a very big house for such a little girl - but bright, high, airy, luxurious without being heavy is the way - and so homey, somehow!

If there are any such things as human vibrations, they surely exist in this love nest. You feel just that sort of exhilaration suitable to a honeymoon house, the moment you enter the place.

Mildred welcomed me. Harold is a hard-working husband, and hadn't come home yet.

"Why, Harold gets up at five in the morning, and doesn't get home until six at night!" exclaimed Mildred.

"And are artists really temperamental to live with?" I asked.

Mildred looked awfully earnest - for her.

"Oh, nobody can know how untemperamental and kind and thoughtful Harold is who hasn't lived with him," she answered fervently.

But with all her happiness - Mildred wants to go back to the films.

"I see all the other girls getting ahead," she said, "and I want to, too, I'm getting way behind. Don't you think that if a woman has ever used her brains and her talents, it is hard to give up her work?" she asked wistfully. I agreed with her, even though way down deep in my heart, I felt just a wee bit of sympathy, too, with Harold in his desire that Mildred should be content as a housewife.

"You see, Harold tries to tempt me with boxes of candy," laughed Mildred, "but I've gone on my diet," she added resolutely, "just a lamb chop and a bit of pineapple three times a day. Oh, I can't look a little lamb in the face these days, and I begin to pine the moment I look at a pineapple. I'm taking more slimming baths, too."

"And Harold is going to give his consent to you going into pictures?" I asked.

"Yes! I don't know what happened to Harold. I think somebody must have been talking to him. Maybe it was Douglas Fairbanks. Anyway, Harold came home one day and said he wouldn't stand in my way - that in after years I might blame him if he hadn't given me my chance. 'Dearie,'  he said, 'I don't want you to feel, when we get older, that I have stood in your way.' That was awfully nice of him, wasn't it?"

Still, it would appear that while Harold is quite in sympathy in general with Mildred's film aspirations, when any particular offer comes it is wrong, in one way or another. So I have my suspicions - just suspicions, mind you - that Harold is playing a very canny game - telling Mildred she may return to the screen, but sort of waiting until he can take her to Europe and get her mind off her career.

But goodness knows, I wouldn't crimp his game for anything!

They are going ahead, Harold and Mildred, next April, you know. It is all quite thoroughly settled about that. They are going merely to Europe however, and are reserving Asia and  Africa for a later date.

It was just as Mildred was telling me all about it, that Harold came in after his day's work.

Mildred is still a new enough bride to fling herself into her husband's arms when he comes home at night, and Harold is a (end of page).

BLOGGER'S NOTES.  When I first saw this page from a 1923 magazine story about Harold Lloyd and Mildred Davis, blissfully cohabiting in their new "honeymoon" home, I thought: OK then, can I blow it up? Will this flyspeck type yield anything useful? Meaning: if I enlarged it enough, could I get a transcript? Turned out I could (though it took forever, and I had to guess at some words).

At first it just seemed like the normal Hollywood promotional piece, the two newlyweds settling into their elegant-but-"homey" new home - but then I thought, wait. Mildred was being portrayed as some sort of featherbrained, breathless little girl, with some truly insulting phrases being used to describe her: "Mildred looked awfully earnest - for her." "It is a very big house for such a little girl." "So if the sideboards and closets aren't just right, she has no one to blame but herself." And as for the two "lovebirds", Harold, as it turns out, isn't even home. He gets up for work at 5:00 a.m., then disappears until he comes home at 6:00 p.m. (presumably to have his dinner). In this story he's a no-show, a non-entity, though Mildred refers to him constantly.

While assuring us all that Mildred is perfectly happy in her new home, the writer of the piece reveals something kind of heartbreaking: Mildred says she misses being in films, is afraid she's falling behind, and wants to ask Harold for permission to jump back in. Harold has sneakily appeared to give his consent (which, of course, she needs to do anything at all), all the while planning to whisk her off to Europe to take her mind off the whole thing.

And that's not counting the boxes of candy he plies her with to ruin her actress's figure. But the truly ridiculous line in this phony-baloney puff piece is her "diet" of lamb with pineapple. "Oh, I can't look a little lamb in the face these days, and I begin to pine the moment I look at a pineapple."

OH. . . COME. . . ON.

This is not a real interview. This person, this "Grace Kingsley", has never been anywhere near the huge, pretentious, elegantly excessive sprawl known as Greenacres (and you'll notice Kingsley never even mentions it by name, or gives more than the sketchiest of generic descriptions). 

The only part that seems to ring true is the saddest part: "Don't you think that if a woman has ever used her brains and her talents, it is hard to give up her work?" The interviewer ponders what she has said. "I agreed with her, even though way down deep in my heart, I felt just a wee bit of sympathy, too, with Harold in his desire that Mildred should be content as a housewife."

Should. Content. Housewife. 

Worst of all is that Mildred is given absolutely no credit for the amazing career she built for herself pre-Harold. Her well-established performing talent and luminous camera presence explain why he purposely approached her to be his next leading lady. That sort of stellar opportunity doesn't come along unless you are well prepared for it.

After I had transcribed this, the whole thing began to clang.  "Grace Kingsley" could be anyone, because I do not believe for one minute that he or she ever TALKED to Mildred Davis (whom no one ever called Mildred - she was always Mid or Molly). This person, whom I suspect was male, never took the trouble to drive up that monstrous hill to Greenacres, but just cobbled together bits of information from "sources" such as rumor, hearsay and other magazines. Photos of the couple at Greenacres were ubiquitous. As for Mildred's "contentment" and willingness to give up a brilliant film career, all that was soon to be taken out of her hands. In their innermost circle, it was known that the two "had to get married": Harold had knocked up his co-star and was required to marry her to save face.  Mostly his.

I don't know what to say about all this, and I don't want to say anything at all about the worst of it. Just that the truth seems to be too harsh for fans to take, then as now. Who was there to blow the whistle on Grace Kingsley? He or she was just doing his/her job. For all I know, this person DID go to Greenacres and hear Mildred prattle on about a little lamb. But somehow, the whole thing just seems too contrived to be believable.   

Choo Choo via Louis Wain

Some favorite images of my beloved Choo Choo from Top Cat, 

magically melded together with paintings by Louis Wain.

Camel chase

The greatest flesh producer of the age

I have nothing to say about this, except that if this pill were available now and did the OPPOSITE of what it was supposed to do, it would be selling millions, if not billions of bottles online. There must have been a lot of skinny people back in the days of patent medicine. Being beefy (forgive the pun) and filled-out was the desirable thing, perhaps to dispel the horror of an untreatable, wasting sickness like cancer or tuberculosis. Then you'd at least have "flesh" to live on. 
"Rounds out the figure and gives strength to the whole system" is the giveaway.

Having said all that. . . (Further thoughts on Louis Wain)

Having said all that about Louis Wain and his genius cat paintings, I have to confess that there is one that truly scares the hell out of me.

It's this one.

Maybe it's the vaguely "cattiform" nature of it - just barely - and the expression, most uncatlike, like some hideous grinning clown from hell with gaping mouth and pinwheel eyes. Or is it something else?

If you look at this painting closely, it's incredible. Each detail is wrought with extreme care. The colours are glorious, the pattern full of motion as the golden sprays splash upwards. Taken as an abstract with no natural reference, it's amazing. It's only when you pull back to look at the whole that it becomes disturbing. 

Had Wain not been chiefly a painter of cats, this might have been seen very differently. But he DID paint cats, and at some point this painting represented - I think - a cat, or was it merely some bizarre "cattiform" fractal a century ahead of its time?

We'll never know, but one thing that REALLY disturbed me was that, not once but twice, I saw this painting displayed on the internet THE WRONG WAY. In one of those godawful cubic sequential things, with this one near "the end" (when he went crazy, which meant his life was, of course, over), this painting was displayed UPSIDE-DOWN. I could not believe what I was seeing, because even with its extreme abstractness, it definitely has the general features of his cats. The ears are the ears, the eyes are the eyes, disturbing or not. The mouth does suggest the fierceness of a cat's wide-open mouth when all the teeth show.  But someone put together a sequence of his work, which was probably not even a sequence at all, with this painting upside-down, like that famous Matisse in the Museum of Modern Art which hung that way for years.


  

                                   Right way.


  

                               Wrong way. I think.

But that wasn't the end of it. Looking for a good example of a print, I found the same painting displayed SIDEWAYS. No, I am not kidding! This was on a site offering pristine Wain prints, and even a few originals. And they let it fall on its ear.

If I ever needed proof that no one understands Wain and his cats, I have it, but it's so sad. Revile him if you will, be afraid or scornful of his "madness" and write him off as a whack job, but for God's sake, please, display his paintings right-side-up. Really, is that so much to ask?