John Gushue . . . Dot Dot Dot

I Will Wait

Mumford and Sons released Babel earlier in the week; we've been enjoying the album in the house and car. This is the lead single (although I doubt anyone would consider M&S a singles band!)

Yes, but maybe it's sinful

"Ice cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn't illegal."
- Voltaire

Wide awake

"Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep."
- Fran Lebowitz

Gangnam Style (minus the tune)

You're going to chuckle. It's the Psy music video, but without the music.

 

Skinny Love

Bon Iver performed this version on the Later ... with Jools Holland show about four years ago.

What if Blade Runner was a cartoon?

Actually, the above is a part of a series of cartoon posters for cult movies, from Creature from the Black Lagoon to Beetlejuice ... and, of course, Blade Runner. They're by Ïve Bastrash, a Canadian illustrator, and they have such a charm of their own, you wonder about what the movies themselves might have been like with such a style.

 

 

The exquisite existential agony of Henri, the black cat

A friend of mine shared one of the Henri, Le Chat Noir videos the other day, and it was just what I needed. 

Here are three videos ... and a link to Henri's ennui-laden Twitter feed. 

While other cats dream of cheeseburgers, Henri just ... is. (And sleeps, too.) 

The first: 

 

The second, Paw de Doux, featuring the cheeseburger-loving idiot: 

 

And the third, in which Henri contemplates his internet fame ... and the vet. 

Destroyer

I haven't heard this song in ages, but it takes me right back to when I wore a skinny tie and a thousand tiny buttons on my jacket. That was the time, I guess.

Ray Davies revisited Lola and a riff and lyric or two from previous songs for this 1981 ode to paranoia.

Who

I bought the new collaboration between David Byrne and St. Vincent (a.k.a., Annie Clark) earlier this week. It's really creative, which I kind of expected, and filled with inventive brass and sax arrangements, which I wasn't quite expecting. They're playing in Toronto on Thursday night.

Who is the first single.

It was in Bobcaygeon

Like many Canadians, I know Bobcaygeon more as a Tragically Hip song than as a small town in Ontario. For my money, Bobcaygeon is one of their best songs, weaving together constellations, bar violence, Willie Nelson and who knows what else. (The Men They Couldn't Hang? My money's on the band, not the personality type.) 

Last year, the clever idea emerged to have a Hip concert in Bobcaygeon itself, with the town's population growing by 10fold for the event. 

And they filmed it. Bobcaygeon, the movie, is coming soon; here's a trailer. 

Opportunities, and risks

"Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent." 
- Laurence J. Peter 

 

My PVR is booked

Ken Burns' next film is called The Dust Bowl; it will air on PBS on Nov. 18 and 19. A brief taste, posted to YouTube earlier this week:

 

Spiderweb

I walked right into not one but two spiderwebs this morning while I was clearing up some deadwood around the property and tossing it on the pile of tropical storm Leslie remnants. The spiderweb above, though, was one I spotted a few days ago, growing on the pole by the fire hydrant near our house. It was too remarkable not to stop and admire. 

The image above was run through an Instagram filter to bring out the detail of the webbing. 

The best of Woody Allen's characters

 

Duane Hall, the brother with violently disturbing dreams and the hush-quiet voice made creepier by Christopher Walken's deadpan delivery, is here. So is Cheech, above, the gangster who finds he has a natural gift for dialogue. There's Fielding Mellish: he goes in for his name alone, but the fact that everything he does is hilarious certainly helps.

It's a list from Total Film of the 50 greatest Woody Allen characters - most of them played by the very fine actors (and unusual cases, like Marshall McLuhan) who have lined up to be in his films. It's a good list, not to mention a decent prod for picking a movie for an autumn night.

Digital architecture

"We build our computers the way we build our cities: over time, without a plan, on top of ruins."
- Ellen Ullman

This is what a 12,500-foot freefall looks like (for a camera)

This video was a bit of an accident. The fellow who intended to shoot his own skydiving experience instead accidentally knocked the GoPro camera off his helmet, and then watch it soar to the ground.

Remarkably, the camera landed fine, even without a case. The recording on the way down brings a new meaning to dizzy!

 

Coming Around Again

Not the Carly Simon song from Heartburn, but something else. I heard this tune a few weeks ago in the car during a longer drive; I don't recall having heard it before. A little research turned up that it's by Simon Webbe, an English singer (didn't know the name) a member of the U.K. boyband Blue (them I've heard of).

I shrugged off the boyband connection. The song cheered me up when I heard it, and that can't be too bad.

When message track goes off the rails

The photo above shows Tom Osborne and Kathy Dunderdale in ostensibly happier times, on election night in October 2011, when the PCs won their third straight mandate in Newfoundland and Labrador. They actually weren't that close at the time, as both have confirme in the last few days, following Osborne's defection on Thursday to sit as an Independent in the house of assembly.

One of the things we've learned over the last few days is a bit about the communcations strategy inside the provincial government, including the government's move to screen and decide when an MHA can speak publicly on what topic. Osborne cited it as one of the reasons why he's disillusioned with the party to which he had belonged through his adult life.

I wrote a piece for the CBC Newfoundland and Labrador site that was published today, on this and other elements of message track and politics, and the conflicts that come up. Hope you can take the time to have a look.

Don't Make Me Over

Hal David died earlier today, of complications of a stroke. He was 91. He wrote many, many hits with Burt Bacharach (and less frequently with other collaborators), with the pair pretty much scoring a good chunk of the soundtrack of the Mad Men era.

You can't do much better than Make Me Over, recorded by the voice of many of their songs, Dionne Warwick.

Wasn't tomorrow wonderful

A new meaning of air mail, non?

This is from a collection of images made in France, largely in the first decade of the 20th century, about what life would be like in the year 2000. The image above imagines what mail delivery might be like in small towns. There are many more to seen here.  Pretty illuminating!