How to Stuff...

This YouTube video has surfing, day-glo bikinis, bikinied girls shimmying, and awesomely big hair. Not to mention infectious tweepop to brighten everyone's day. What more could one ask for?

'Wild Bikini' Tullycraft

Birthday Stuff

It's my nephew's birthday today. He's all of seven, which simply flabbers my gast. I don't see him often, which upsets me profoundly. He's such  a sweet and interesting and fun boy that I wish I could see him more. Time's passing much too quickly, and it's really disturbing. So happy birthday and have a wonderful day, you. 

'Happy Birthday' Röyksopp

Too, Too Sick-making

Ugh! Am I the only one who finds the Evian babies commercial repulsive (and disturbing and exploitative)? Who finds this sort of grotesquerie adorable? This, my friends, is an omen of worse things yet to come. So go read some Waugh to while away your remaining time on this ailing planet of ours. 

'A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturdays' De La Soul

Books Are Too Fun

So we've reached the midpoint of the year, and I've been ruminating (perhaps sympathetically, since I've been reading about ruminants - becoming meat, alas - in The Compassionate Carnivore). I read a lot (it's been suggested possibly more than is wise or safe for a mens sana), usually discriminatingly, but, even so, nearly everything I read in the course of the year is thereafter expelled from my library, mostly as a matter of practicality, since we haven't the space for everything I - or my wife - has ever read, but also because  I simply won't reread much from the year's list. I read about fifty to sixty books each year (much of which is poetry, as my wife will quickly point out), and, often, what I read, while enough to hold my interest while reading, and generally entertaining to a greater or lesser degree, simply doesn't meet Kafka's criterion of being that axe. But here are ten books, that I've read in the past six months, that do ( I feel) merit retention. 

1 Rumor Verified - Robert Penn Warren (which I haven't, in fact, kept, but I replaced with Warren's Collected Poems - he's a fine poet, and I don't know why we haven't met before now)

2 The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines - John Crowley  (one of my favourite writers, author of my favourite novel, Little, Big, I'm currently (re)reading his Ægypt cycle)

3 Mother Love - Rita Dove (the more I read of Dove, the more I find myself thinking she's the best American poet living today)

4 Map of Dreams - M. Rickert (a recent discovery; lovely and literate fabulisms that haunt me still)

5 Thousand Cranes - Yasunari Kawabata (short and also haunting)

6 Shadow of Ashland - Terence M. Green (ditto)

7 The Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein (not exactly a fun read, but probably the most important book I've read this year)

8 The Road - Cormac McCarthy (simply gorgeous prose, and says more about the human condition in one sentence than many others can hope to with their entire œuvre - okay, so I'm guilty of gross hyperbole)

9 The Best of the Best American Poetry - Harold Bloom, editor (I'm a Bloomsian through and through, and this volume contains so much wonderful poetry)

10 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (reread after watching the BBC version, and it's still incomparable, despite lacking zombies)

'Wrapped Up in Books' Belle & Sebastian

Sometimes You Just Need to Run Amok (or in Circles)

From Harper's Weekly Review: Tasmanian wallabies were eating opium poppies, getting high, and running around, causing crop circles (reminding me of this, from Boing Boing). 

'Perfect Circle' R.E.M. 

I Am Afraid

Earlier this spring I began watching the films of The Criterion Collection, inspired to do so partly by a post from This Recording (in turn inspired by Diablo Cody, writer and erstwhile stripping sensation, responsible for Juno, the best movie yet about unplanned teenage pregnancy and fatherhood ambivalence) and partly by the realization (arrived at while compiling my list of favourite movies) that I really ought to expose myself to the work of the great auteurs of cinema, and who better than The Criterion to educate me (of course, I later found that Michael Bay has two films in the collection, so every theory is flawed). 

I've since watched Beauty and the Beast (Cocteau's fairytale), Casque d'Or (tarts and gangsters and love), A Generation (coming-of-age tale and the rightness of communism), Grand Illusion (war is hell, even for aristocrats), The Ice Storm (Nixon-era anomie), The Lady Vanishes (great Hitchcockian escapist fun), The Most Dangerous Game (Leslie Banks is deliciously wicked as a Russian nobleman who enjoys the hunt), The Rules of the Game (satire of the French upper-class - and I can't believe how many animals died during the filming), and Solaris (the alienness of the alien - if you think this is difficult viewing, try watching Stalker). Pretty heady stuff, I think you'll agree.

And in June I watched two classics from Japanese cinema: Kwaidan (ghosts and demons, with lovely cinematography) and Onibaba (especially horrific, with the main female protagonist suffering a grisly fate), both from 1964, and both clearly (I think) influences on Ringu (which still gives me the occasional nightmare) and hence the horror genre of the last decade (all three are based on Japanese folktales, which may explain the similarity in sensibility). Which is the real reason for this post: this Italian poster of Onibaba, which is absurdly salacious (granted, there's a lot of naked flesh in the movie, especially for 1964, but still). 

'I'm Afraid of Japan' Final Fantasy

Canada, We Love You

Happy Fête du Canada everyone! Just a little expat longing for home today. But my morning began with my wife serenading me with Oh Canada (or her version, anyway, which is considerably shorter - I've got to teach her the French version, because it's way sexier, with its foyers and épopées, and its valeur trempée).

'Love Song to Canada' Jason Collett

'Home As a Romanticized Concept Where Everyone Loves You Always and Forever' Woodpigeon