Float On - Or, On Second Thought...

Here's another video I saw at the gym - early AM MuchMoreMusic can be one kickin' soundtrack. Normally I would not be near cool enough to know who or what Modest Mouse even is, but this inventive, distressing piece sure caught my eye.

(Image: atlantamusicguide.com.)

Fashion Inspiration From the 1950s

A theatre project has me thinking of the 1950s, especially the fashions - car coats, Grace Kelly's charm bracelet and Mark Cross overnight case in Rear Window, A-lines and sack dresses, structured handbags and elbow length gloves. All stunningly worn by Suzy Parker.

(Image: bdbphotos.com.)

Betcha Never Saw Musicians With Balloon-Heads Roller Skating Before

Neither did I. Saw this arresting video this morning - the band is The Gossip, the lead singer's voice is enthralling, and the balloon heads are I guess their own artistic take on the situation.

We Have to Praise Spike Jonze Like We Should

Lucked into a matinee of Where The Wild Things Are on Sunday; I was fascinated. But then who isn't beguiled by Spike Jonze's work? Starting from that first entrancing, is-it-verite-or-is-it-something-else? video.

(Image: theinspirationroom.com)

PS - I will be working away from the office tomorrow, but should be back in this space on Wed.

Protocol - not just a Goldie Hawn movie

The Prince of Wales and Lady Cornwall will be here in two weeks, so you may want to brush up on your etiquette. Protocol for socializing with Royalty is often ancient and quite specific; lots of tips here and remember: if Royalty invites you, you must go; details of Her Majesty's or the Princess Royal's dress are never released in advance, so you'll have to chance showing up in the same rig; "Ma'am" rhymes with "jam."

(Image: rootsweb.)

A Total Eclipse of the Pathological Heart

Leonard Cohen recently pleaded with fellow musicians and fans to stop covering Hallelujah. It's hard to know what attracts an artist or group to make a cover; according to this list, it might just have to be something by The Beatles. A friend mentioned this excellent cover, the Pathological Lovers absolutely owning Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart. I don't know what's more fun - the fab band, the fact that it's apparently shot on someone's cellphone, or buddy at the end going 'Best song ever!'

(Image: facebook.)

Weather Patterns

I attended a philosophy colloquium yesterday, and before it started some audience members were attempting to explain to the visiting scholar (Dr. John Ashton, a biblical historian and "expert on Heaven", what a great job! - he's speaking tomorrow night at the INCO Centre, 7pm as well) the meaning of the term "weather bomb", aka the system that blasted us last Wednesday. He quickly grasped the concept - no doubt some Old Testament imagery came handy. Such was its force that the provincial government has been moved to back up the installation of studded tires by two weeks. Maybe we'll need to add a new saying to our weather lore: studded tires early, winter be hurlyburly.

(Image: www.sailingbreezes.com.)

A new bio-pic of Amelia Earhart opens this weekend. No doubt it will be fabulous, and let us not forget that the gallant aviatrix was in Newfoundland, not once but twice, embarking from Trepassey as the first female Trans-Atlantic passenger, and from Harbour Grace as the first woman to fly solo across the pond. Hey, I bet this means we're mentioned in the film and everything! We should all go see the film and then go to Harbour Grace. There are still people there who met and remember her.

(Image: www.heritage.nf.ca.)

Goya's Black Dog

I've posted about this painting, considered among the most beautiful in the world, but just re-encountered it while reading David Lodge's Deaf Sentence - which is hilarious and poignant, etc. The protagonist, a retired linguist*, is going deaf. Trying to deal, he studies some artists who completed some of their greatest work after they suffered profound or total deafness: Beethoven and Goya. Some see this art work, one of his Black Paintings, as Goya's response to his condition.

(Image: www.owlnet.rice.edu.)

*and there I was fresh from my semiotics course and totally up on my Austen.

Future blocking

A couple of issues ago, I managed to miss my own deadline. I knew the NQ copy had to be edited, designed and proofed by a certain time, but for some reason the calendar date never meshed with whatever time span my head was in - result; one mad rush to the printers. Which could have been avoided by a) at least getting the cover in on time, as it is the most complicated to run, or b) taking the printer's time needs into account as well as the writers', advertisers' etc. With that in mind we are now, this very day, setting the deadlines for next year. And I'm marking them out in different, theme-coded colours, one of the many useful tips found in Mark MacGuiness's right on Time Management for Creative People.

(Image: New Yorker.)

A Dogberry by Another Name Still Means a Heck of a Winter

Dogberry trees, aka rowan trees, aka the mountain ash, have a much cited role in Newfoundland weather lore: big bunches of dogberries herald a hard winter. (Dogberries also keep witches from hanging around your garden.) Who knows the truth of that, but the dogberries are just wild this season, and, after yesterday's storm, they seem to pebble much of the city sidewalks in orange-red. And - just because you can never know enough about dogberries - Quickbeam, the "hasty" Ent in Lord of the Rings, was a dogberry tree.

(Image: www.heritage.nf.ca.)

Where The Wild Things Are

Yes - it's confirmed. It opens here this weekend, the film adaptation of Maurice Sendak's wonderful novel, only three hundred-odd words long and first published in 1963 (same as me!). Great soundtrack too, with works from the likes of Arcade Fire, Dashboard Confessional.

(Image: blog.spout.com.)

The trick of writing is often to simply trick yourself into writing. Two things that can work well: 1. Tell yourself you'll try for 10 minutes, and if it's not working, you'll stop. 2. Leave the desk, take the laptop, and head to a cafe. Hava Java being the prime spot around here. No time limits (handy even if you start out believing you'll just need 10 minutes), great music, cool staff. (Also a good spot to hang out if you need your passport photo verified, as you are guaranteed to see some lawyers you know. Also works well for casting plays, short films.)

(Image: farm4static.flickr.)

Jane Campion's film Bright Star is sparkling on silver screens. It's about John Keats, considered to have published three volumes of remarkable poetry in his short life (he was only 26 when he died).

Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

(Image: englishhistory.net)

A Well Respected Premier

Some time ago, CBC Radio's Ted Blades tagged a story about our fine Premier Williams with this song. For some reason it's stayed in my mind...so now I'm sharing.

(Image: www.raw-tcsd.com.)

A Recipe for Good Health

Had a low energy day last week and wondered if I might be coming down with a touch of whatever. Someone reminded me of the first step towards recovering good health - no, not a flu shot (whichever one we're supposed to get?), but the real essentials for autumn well-being: tea and ginger cookies.

(Image: www.allcookierecipes.com)

Surreal is a word that tends to get misused - "man, it was so foggy last night the city looked surreal" - but it means something quite specific. Had this in mind after previewing some works by Michael Pittman and Rhonda Pelley, whose exhibit opens at the Leyton Gallery this Friday evening. You might be tempted to call Pittman's abstract forms and arrangements surreal, but that's not quite right; it's kind of dreamy stuff, like Pelley's (they show well together); like the city in the fog, a gray dream of itself.

(Image: www.linesandcolors.com.)

Came across this Entertainment Weekly interview with actress Juliette Lewis, who appears in the very fine Whip It, which a) is Drew Barrymore's debut as a director b) has a fabulous cast c) and who doesn't wish they had spent part of their youth hip-checking a rival over a guardrail in an Austin, Texas arena? Nobody, that's who. Anyway, Ms. Lewis as always is pretty engaging, as we can see by these inspiring words:

Q: So you had to practice skating for the audition?

A: Yeah. You know, I can pick up anything really if you give me enough time and good teaching. I hadn’t put on skates in eight years. But I have the ability to fear not (emphasis added). So that was what I pushed forward.

(Image: filmofilia.)

I'm out of the office much of tomorrow - off doing research. So here's an early tip for some weekend fun.

(Image: pixages.com.)