Showing posts with label moments of bliss. Show all posts
Showing posts with label moments of bliss. Show all posts
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Friday, March 23, 2012
Galactic: Hey Na Na
Seeing this live at The Park West with B was one of the most euphoric live concert moments of my life. A vast room of people losing their freaking minds. Wow. I just got goosebumps remembering it. They are. Just. Too. Damn. Good.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Friday, July 22, 2011
Grover + Beastie Boys = The Beastie Beasts!
I feel like my video skills are gonna need an upgrade so I can do cool stuff like this.
Sesame Street breaks it down from Wonderful Creative on Vimeo.
Sesame Street breaks it down from Wonderful Creative on Vimeo.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Ai Weiwei + MOMA + Beastie Boys = Cosmic Bouyancy
I was lucky enough to be in NY for the one of the late Thursday events this spring. Spring night, Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys spinner platters, and Art!
The most affecting thing I saw was a series of photographs take at famous locations around the world by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. The series includes the White House, the Eiffel Tower, and, below, Tienanmen Square. Ai was detained by the Chinese authorities this spring and released last week. The conditions of his release are still fairly restrictive.
A good write up on the Chinese government and Ai is here.
Other great things were the design exhibit and of course getting to visit "my Duchamps."
The most affecting thing I saw was a series of photographs take at famous locations around the world by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. The series includes the White House, the Eiffel Tower, and, below, Tienanmen Square. Ai was detained by the Chinese authorities this spring and released last week. The conditions of his release are still fairly restrictive.
A good write up on the Chinese government and Ai is here.
Other great things were the design exhibit and of course getting to visit "my Duchamps."
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Animated Language
As a person who loved language (not wisely, but too well) to ever pay much attention to grammar, I quite enjoyed this. Ah, Stephen Fry, is there anything you can't do?
Watching the above reminded me of an animation of a Dadaist poem (by Kurt Schwitters) I saw years ago. This makes me happy.
Talk about defying the constraints of grammar. Dude.
Watching the above reminded me of an animation of a Dadaist poem (by Kurt Schwitters) I saw years ago. This makes me happy.
Talk about defying the constraints of grammar. Dude.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Moments of Bliss: Finding a Source of My Beliefs In a 1970s British Sitcom
As cultural artifacts from my formative years continue to surface via the Long Tail of the internet and through remastering and digitizing of analog content, I am getting a fresh exposure and a new view into possible seeds of ideas that I have carried with me for a long time.
For several years I've been looking for a DVD compilation of the BBC sitcom The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin which aired between 1976 and 1979, so I would have watched this pretty much as it appeared, in my early teens. (Between Perrin, Monty Python, and Soccer Made in Germany, I have to wonder who I would be today if the programmers of the central Arkansas PBS affiliate had not taken such a worldly view of its programming dollars.)
Perrin is, in BBC style, a series with a closed narrative arc, completed in 3 seasons. It concerns Reginald Iolanthe Perrin (R.I.P.) who, in mid-life crisis (46 years old!), fakes his death. The rest of the series is the long and bitingly satirical tale of how he rises back into his life by making completely counter-intuitive choices. (Such as opening a shop selling items to give to people you hate--a shop that turns into an empire.) It is a sitcom sui generis--more savage in its critique, and yet more humane than any other I can think of. (If you have counter-examples, please share them. All those Norman Lear sitcoms from the same era tried for a similar balance but were less smart in their anger and more maudlin in their sentiment.)
I was thrilled to finally find Perrin on Nextflix, and have been slowly making my way through season 1. And then I got to the scene below, in episode 4. As I watched Reggie's speech, I was struck by how closely his argument parallels my recent post on certainty and doubt.
Although all of the clip is worth watching to understand his state of mind as he gets to the podium, at 6:45 into this clip, he gets to the meat of things (transcribed here without attempting to catch all of the asides, stuttering and misspeaking):
So that's where it started, I thought. And that seed was nurtured by the Taoist writings of Chuang Tzu, the common sense and skepticism of Wittegnstein and William James, and experience. I encourage you to start your own campaign against belief by renting the series from Netflix.
For several years I've been looking for a DVD compilation of the BBC sitcom The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin which aired between 1976 and 1979, so I would have watched this pretty much as it appeared, in my early teens. (Between Perrin, Monty Python, and Soccer Made in Germany, I have to wonder who I would be today if the programmers of the central Arkansas PBS affiliate had not taken such a worldly view of its programming dollars.)
Perrin is, in BBC style, a series with a closed narrative arc, completed in 3 seasons. It concerns Reginald Iolanthe Perrin (R.I.P.) who, in mid-life crisis (46 years old!), fakes his death. The rest of the series is the long and bitingly satirical tale of how he rises back into his life by making completely counter-intuitive choices. (Such as opening a shop selling items to give to people you hate--a shop that turns into an empire.) It is a sitcom sui generis--more savage in its critique, and yet more humane than any other I can think of. (If you have counter-examples, please share them. All those Norman Lear sitcoms from the same era tried for a similar balance but were less smart in their anger and more maudlin in their sentiment.)
I was thrilled to finally find Perrin on Nextflix, and have been slowly making my way through season 1. And then I got to the scene below, in episode 4. As I watched Reggie's speech, I was struck by how closely his argument parallels my recent post on certainty and doubt.
Although all of the clip is worth watching to understand his state of mind as he gets to the podium, at 6:45 into this clip, he gets to the meat of things (transcribed here without attempting to catch all of the asides, stuttering and misspeaking):
“’What do you believe in?’ I hear you ask. I'll tell you. I know...that I don’t know. I believe in not believing. For every man who believes something, there is somebody who believes the opposite. What’s the point? How many wars--how many wars-would have been fought, how many people would have been tortured if nobody had ever believed in anything? I’ve never heard--have you ever heard?--of the wars of the apathetic, or the persecution of the apathetic by the bone idle?”Of course to get the full effect you have to watch it delivered in the rubbery-lipped rapidfire stream of consciousness that Leonard Rossiter perfected.
So that's where it started, I thought. And that seed was nurtured by the Taoist writings of Chuang Tzu, the common sense and skepticism of Wittegnstein and William James, and experience. I encourage you to start your own campaign against belief by renting the series from Netflix.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Moment of Bliss: Soccamatic!
Two of my favorite things together: Wallace and Gromit and soccer! Who could ask for more. (Well, maybe a full-length soccer feature with the Preston North End Soccamatic...). Extra credit for catching all the name-drops: Nobby Stiles, Geoff Hurst, Stanley Matthews...use both sides of the paper if necessary.
Friday, December 18, 2009
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