Hypnotic.

Love how the internet can sometimes be like those Matryoshka dolls - you open one up to find another little treat within, &c, &c. Anyway, came upon this little video of some Arab IDF soldiers engaging in a traditional sort of poetry 'slam' and was really taken in by it:



Found it via Solomon, who linked to this site, an interesting one in its own right - and not just for the "explicit sexual language or innuendo found in most posts," either! Definitely take a look at Nizo's post on the subject - he gives an explanation of what the guys are doing along with a bit of a translation. (Honestly have to agree with him - the Druze guy is *awfully* cute. Love his voice, too.)


***

Sweet that the Bedouin guy calls himself 'Bulbul,' a kind of songbird found all over Africa and in the Middle East.

Oh Dear.



Don't know if I should be laughing or be crouched in a corner rocking myself calm after this.

Last FM

Wow.



Was totally unaware of their existence. (Appears to be the audio equivalent to Youtube.) Enjoy.

Malcolm McLaren has died.

Guess he was best known for managing the Sex Pistols and Bow Wow Wow (one of Boy George's early efforts).

I'll always remember him for bringing Elitist Music to the Masses, though:



Gerome meets Cinemax after the kids have been put to bed.

Not to mention fusing The Urban Culture with the Cowboy Way.

Say what one wants, will maintain that he was one heck of a Bridge Builder.

Kind of Romaticized

But lovely account of low-frequency radio stations in London. Interesting that the internet hasn't completely stamped these out; we even still have a handful of them here.

Dad posted
something kind of sweet last night.



Loved him in his tight leather pants phase; love him even more nowadays. (Words in English; Traduction a venir, bien sur!)

I'm Getting/I've Got This Year's Hit:



A blast from the past, ca. 2002. Don't think that much of this is happening in Iceland nowadays.

Eg = ich (ego)
kaupi/th/i = kaufe
ploetu = plat/plate/disk
arsins = jahr/year, sins/dieses = this

***

Neither Pavel nor I speak Icelandic. He seems to think that Kau/pi/thi is the imperative and that the title's exhorting us to buy the record. Have no idea. Fun to lazily conjecture after a good, warm meal on a cold night, though.

Read about this last night in the Yahoo headlines* and thought, oh how ironic. Here's a guy caught lying about his copyright violation who has a history of suing other people for the same thing himself.** Guess the chickens are coming home to roost.

As I'd mentioned earlier, I find some of his work amusing and interesting, but think that he's a somewhat unsavory character. As for the AP, well, they have their own problems, too, with creative depiction of current events. Don't find either of them to be particularly sympathetic, so guess will just sit back and enjoy the spectacle of one purveyor of sketchy media eating its young.

***

*To be read to be believed - funny how they were tying themselves in knots rhetorically to make both Fairey sound like a sort of Robin Hood, but also to make the AP a "legitimate" victim (to those who scan Yahoo news articles) by referring at least three times to the AP as 'the not-for-profit' news agency. Wish I'd have saved it in fact, but it was like 3:00 am and I was not thinking clearly

**Yes, it's Wikipedia, but it's sourced (Take a look at notes 37-40).

Musique Trouvee.

* There's been a lot of construction work going on in my neighborhood; I think they're replacing a lot of the guts under Somerville Avenue, mainly. This has been going on since (at least) the Summer. Recently, as in the last two weeks or so, they changed the wonderfully reliable pedestrian walk light at Lowell Street to one that, instead of changing the light right off, tells you to "wait...wait." And wait we do now. The nice thing about it, though, is that when we finally get to walk, we're accompanied by the cowbell from Masekela's Grazing in the Grass:



Yes, we do actually sway a bit when we cross the street now. Can't help it.

* Last night, don't know how I positioned the glassware, pots and pans in the dishwasher, but while it was running, started sounding an awful lot like something by Steve Reich:



There was a copy of Clapping Music at the music store that, when it was slow, we'd occasionally pick up to noodle around with. That was my first experience with Reich, who gradually turned into an obsession for me. When I was younger, my brain would always, infernally, be working. Following individual lines in whatever pieces I could find scores for was a source of meditation, a calmant for me. Now, I don't go at it with a seam ripper; rather, it sort of washes over me, the different parts appearing coming into my field of vision like little fish swimming about in a coral reef.

Just found the manual to Pavel's grandfather clock and found that I could change the chime melodies. Since I'd been sick of the Westminster Abbey chime for sometime now, decided to give something else a try. In honor of August's trip to Normandy, set the lever to "St Michel."



Sorry no melody. The views are pretty impressive, though. Wish I'd have gotten to see the abbey up close like this; was too crowded to bother, though, when I was there.

The new melody is so jarring. Very French, too (hard to describe). Funny to think that that aesthetic has been around for nearly 1,000 years.

Pattern Recognition III



House Sparrow mating dance.



Pavel's impression of the House Sparrow mating dance. The hand striking out from the left is my impression of what an uninterested girl sparrow will do to get rid of the unwanted suitor.

Two reasons why Pavel's line would die out if he were a male house sparrow:

1.) He's doing the dance during the wrong season.
2.) He's not persevering enough. I didn't even touch him. Have seen girl sparrows peck the bejeezus out of the males they weren't interested in.

Better luck next year. Or with a different species, perhaps.

Pattern Recognition II

On the last trip to France, got to visit both the ocean and castle country. To keep my hands busy evenings when I didn't feel like reading and in the car, I brought along some yarn for doodling. Since the Frenchie had asked for a new pair of socks, I started messing with a tube in a machine washable medium:



Was going to give up and frog this until I realized that I'd actually incorporated two major elements of our road trip into the pattern: the undulating blue of both the Channel and the Loire and a particularly impressive architectural detail found in the majority of the chateaux we'd visited:



Blois.



Chambord.

Just read that Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary passed away the other day. Remembered hearing this song as a kid and wanting to learn how to sing (and dance, laugh, have fun...all while keeping the beat):

I dig rock n roll music
Uploaded by dcck105. - See the latest featured music videos.

(Sad.)

Revolutionary Color.


Pavel sent me this link to some Russian color photography from the beginning of the last century, including the only known picture of Leo Tolstoy.

Though these images were made at about the time when my grandparents were born, they look as though they could have been taken yesterday. Amazing.

There were so many thing in the Eighties that were so wrong; aesthetically and otherwise.

Patrick Swayze was something right.

(click here. Embedding's disabled.)

Rest in Peace.

Remember that scene between Orson Welles and Marlene Dietrich in "A Touch of Evil," where they see one another for the first time in years?


"You're a mess, honey. (7:55)"

Last night while making dinner, managed to cut my finger pretty badly on a tin, then drop said tin on my big toe. Am really lucky I didn't break anything.

Tossing and turning in bed, as I was was pretty uncomfortable, wrenched my neck.

Kind of feel like Orson Welles's character (or Ampersand) looks right now. (Cuss.)

Icon.

We had The Poster in the basement (my stepfather was really into her. My brother, later on, as well). Is amazing to see her at the beginning of her career. (Her choice is interesting, too.)

Happy First Day of Summer!



(Pavel reveling at America's Stonehenge.)

Since am solo for now, decided to try out the new Vietnamese place that just opened up nearby. Had a bowl of fisherman's soup, a crepe and a papaya salad - standard stuff, but nicely done. Was particularly impressed with the crepe, as it was neither too greasy nor soggy in spite of my showing up late to pick it up. Loved the filling, too. The sprouts were perfect.

Figured that I'd just eat, then turn in with a book (long day, plus the floor guys are coming early tomorrow). That was before I noted that someone put Baisers Volés up on Youtube. (Missed the entire series of Antoine Doinel stories at the Brattle last month, could have kicked myself for that.) Charming, but a little sad. Doesn't help when one recognizes more than a few of the locations and starts feeling the Sehnsucht welling up as a result.

Still, not a bad way to spend a Friday night.

I'm sure that the sparrows're probably crowding out all the other species who might come to visit the feeders. Oh well, they're cute anyway.



This morning we must've had a good 40 of them in the yew along another 8-10 on the patio where I put a plate of corn. Though most still have their juvenile plumage (when does that change?), all seem to be able to get food from the feeders and crack the seed hulls on their own. It's only relatively rarely now that
we see the frantic wing flapping and gaping mouths pointed upward (this happens on occasion at the suet feeder, though).

What really gets us now is naptime.



Amid the din we'll always find a few downy little ones with their heads tucked under the wings. Occasionally, if we've not been discreet enough in our approaches, heads will come up, eyes will blink a few times in a fight between alertness and sleep-weight, and when they see that it's only the big things behind the shiny stuff that hurts when one bumps into it, sleep will win out again.

Who could ever forget that laugh?



One of my favorite movies as a kid; must have seen it like a dozen times.

Rest in Peace, Dom DeLuise.