Marcel The Shell with Shoes On

Happy New Year!

This will make you smile (not a typical post for me).

Marcel's been around a while, but he seems to be more and more popular lately, like the year when ironic, spastic, bizarre t.v. commercials became accepted as "oddvertizing".  Like that but way more clever and adorable. The voice makes it, as does the quixotic dialogue, all provided by Jenny Slate with husband Dean Fleischer-Camp.  Enjoy!

Like, The Grand Budapest Hotel

Like most folks, I like Wes Anderson--at least enough to post this trailer. I've even posted about him in the past. Like, surely, his next film will be something I'll also like.

 

The Grand Budapest Hotel

I'm Glad Krulwich Wonders

These two little oddities come from a great NPR blog called Krulwich Wonders.  The author and radio host is better recognized as one half of the team, along with Jad Abumrad, responsible for the always enthralling WNYC show and podcast series called Radiolab.  A good while ago, I lumped Radiolab in with a few other podcasts I still enjoy when I can (mostly while walking the poochie), so check those out here.

In the meantime, enjoy this optical illusion from Krulwich's cool post on visual trickery -- "This Can't Be Happening" -- followed by a hypnotizing video from some clever geeks at Harvard.

Here are Krulwich's directions for this first image:

Below, you will see two circles composed of parallelograms. There's a dot in the middle of the image. Focus on the dot. Move your head in, then move it out.

image by B. Pinna



Kerouac to Brando: "...put up your dukes and write!"

The following letter was a plea from a counter-culture idol to a budding star of the gritty, NYC film culture to get something done, to get (more) famous, to get rich. Kerouac uses words like "wanta" and calls the American movie industry an "outmoded dinosaur" as he goads Marlon Brando into turning On The Road into a feature.

letter hosted on boingboing.net

Thanks to legend-in-the-making, singer/songwriter/producer/bizarro West Coaster Chuck Prophet for posting this via Twitter or Facebook or some such socio-digital vehicle. Cheers, Chuck!

Listen: It's Unwinese

Ever hear of Stanley Unwin (1911-2002) and his invented, modified English gibberish called Unwinese? Well, neither had I until a friend (a Brit and a Burger -- from Luxembourg, that is) shared with me this golden folly of yesteryear. Remarkabold!

The fact is this Unwin, a workingman and a family man prior to achieving comedic fame in the 1950's , was a natural voice actor awaiting discovery. Just have a listen to any of these tracks from StanleyUnwin.com. His sound effects, too, are perfectly timed and you'll wish his stories would never end.

photo courtesy of LiberalEngland

It all started at the request of his children around bed time. Just like any good dad, he obliged nightly, but in doing so he began to entertain even himself by telling his stories in a fanciful, rollicking, mixed-up language. The mystery is that Unwinese is completely 'understandabold' because the changes in each word seem to preserve the original just enough. Imagine falling asleep to this!

To see this Unwinese in print is another way to appreciate its complexity. The word combinations, although sometimes befuddling, seem to make sense after some cursory consideration. Open your ears to the sound of your own voice with this 'politito' analysis, again from LiberalEngland:

Fundamold to this new Europe is the swap and trade it. At first we have it all back and forward across the borders with “please have your passy portit open for inspection”.

And this is of a great waste of time, with estimate have it and 20 billion Euro a year – and that’s without the countit and the declimly point in the wrong place!

Unfortumost – all shame and sobit – the Britly people are not keen and soldy. What they ask of the Britly passport? What of the pound and perch and of the Queen and reignit herself?

Hear their cryimost: give me bendy bananas or death and end it!

Find out plenty more about Stanley Unwin, his rocky beginnings, and his unconventional path to English comedy legend in this obituary from the Guardian. Or, as a final throwback, enjoy this clip of dear, dear Prof. Unwin advertising a fancy little piece of technology in its day:

Ward Shelley Walks the Timeline

Sometimes art can convey a message in such a way that it's hard not to react. The following is art that needs to be engaged with, examined, studied, pondered, and digested; it's not going to simply hang on a wall and look pretty.

Ward Shelley is an artist who presents material in a very specifically framed manner; the pieces I've been drawn to are his unique timelines with their extravagant detailing and vast yet pidgeon-holed content. I'll let an excerpt from the artist's own "mission statement" do the explaining:

My paintings/drawings are attempts to use real information to depict our understandings of how things evolve and relate to one another, and how this develops over time. More to the point, they are about how we form these understandings in our minds and if they can have, in our culture, some kind of shape. Usually I choose topics from art or cultural history, such as the arc of an artist's career and its influences, or the effect of particular ideas in an aesthetic or political movement. They are "wide-screen", with all information available to the interacting eye at every moment.

Ward Shelley, Who Invented the Avant Garde, ver. 3. Oil and toner on mylar, 159 x 72 cm.

The format of the work seems to be inspired by botanical diagrams, scientific manuals, biological illustrations, and the long tradition of charts and mapping. From the outset, Shelley appears to be an engineer at heart, one who refused to choose the cubicle.

The connectivity of all the distinct bubbles and bits of information is the fascinating part. By showing us a macro view of a topic, Shelley let's the viewer filter out distractions and zoom in on the facts that propel the eye (and the mind) forward in time and in two-dimensional space while never quite letting us escape the weight of the "whole".

The very best examples I could find (with the finest resolution) are at the artist's webiste. The piece above, among others, is discussed in full in a press release issued by the Pierogi Gallery.

I came across post about Ward Shelley's timelines at kottke.org and that piqued my curiosity. There's plenty else to be interested about on that blog, as well, so give it a look.

Find out more at the Lawrimore Project with its close-ups of timeline details.

Read an interview by Chen Tamir found at TreviFlashArtMuseum.org

Visit Ward Shelley's official site at WardShelley.com

Wave Action

The scientific principle behind these videos captured my attention as I was exploring the Objectified blog (a recent documentary film by Gary Hustwit). The images do a far better job expressing the wave phenomenon than I ever could.

Enjoy...but before you do, turn down the volume because the frequencies used to create these patterns are somewhat obnoxious!

This next one is a cool, practical application for the same resonant effect.

One Slick Compound

Yesterday I finally got around to applying an aquaphobic coating to my windshield (let's call it Rain "Y" for trademark purposes). The timing, as it turns out, was excellent; the rain poured down starting at about midnight last night and it is forecasted to continue steadily throughout the week.

Normally, I wouldn't be lauding a chemical product so enthusiatically, but I found that the transparent but greasy stuff worked amazingly well. This morning's drive to work, one that could have been anywhere from somewhat frustrating to downright perilous, was instead typical as ever thanks to my crystalline perspective.

The heavy rain drops beaded, gathered together, and at highway speeds made their way up the windscreen and over the top of the car with haste. In the diffused light of mid-morning, the droplets of water sparkled into my eyes as they moved swiftly across my field of vision, like little mercury marbles racing up the glass. If I focused too long on the sheeting action, sucddenly the rain seemed not to fall but to rise up in waves as though gravity had been locally and momentarily inverted.

Had I not been operating a vehicle, I would have been mesmerized by the flow of the shimmering spheres, letting them lull me into a drizzly trance. As it was, I arrived at work and found myself oddly appreciative of Minnesotan chemical engineers and myriad factory workers I'd never even met.

One Brand of Philanthropy

Disclaimer: By no means is this an endorsement of the work of Russell Brand.

In his recent Comedy Central special, the crass British comedian Russell Brand made one point that I found rather astute. The joke he framed as "Reciprocal Altruism" or thereabouts.

He commented on giving to the homeless and how that generosity is generally not the end of the action but is instead meant to garner a type of cosmic reaction. More correctly, the kindness of giving a dollar or two to a homeless person is, for some, more a form of "karmic" insurance, where one good deed might sort of cover the giver for the rest of the day, thus bestowing a reciprocal amount of good luck for the remainder of the day.

I thought that idea was clever and amusing, but also farily poignant. Is that the only reason we give, to feel good about ourselves? This notion may even apply to large scale philanthropy. You can be sure that Bill and Melinda Gates are feeling pretty lucky considering what they give to the world's impoverished and underserved communities, and they rightly should feel pretty good about it. He's the epitome of extreme dorkiness in most circles, but in the karmic sense, he's like an ancient repository of good luck waiting for the right juncture to be used to the greatest effect.

Indeed, it's a cynical view of doing good deeds, but I did get "a bit of a laaff" out of it.

The True Originals at Improv Everywhere...

If you've never heard of Improv Everywhere, you'll be pleasantly surprised and amused after a visit to their extensive site full of links to ingenious & creative social projects
(some would came them 'pranks'). These folks incorporate modern technology, social networking, and group dynamics to engineer some very unique and entertaining 'events' mostly in urban areas around the U.S. All of the content is better to see than to read about, clearly, so it's a must to check out their site at http://improveverywhere.com/ . Enjoy the evidence that in the masses, there is plenty of room for fun and infinite power for change.

Some of my favorite participatory works are:

Slo-Mo Home Depot
Sychronized Swimming in Washington Square Park
Cellphone Symphony
No Pants 2K6

Check these out; you'll surely smile!