Archive for May, 2009
Sorry I’m Late
Stop-motion never gets boring, especially since people keep finding new ways to make it even more compelling.
Take, for example, a short I found today on Laughing Squid made by Tomas Mankovsky that was shot from above using a still camera on the ceiling:
click here to see how it was made.
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Why is there buttock stabbing in Rome?
QUESTION: Why is there buttock stabbing in Rome?
Manchester United fans are in Rome for the Champions League final. When English teams have visited the Italian capital in recent years there have been a string of fans stabbed in the buttocks by hooligans. But why do they target the backside? Other than the fact that United plays dirty so why shouldn’t their fans?
It’s called the Eternal City by many, but Rome also has the sobriquet “Stab City” among football fans because of the level of knife attacks in the Italian capital.
There are fears tonight’s Champions League final, being held in the city’s Olympic Stadium, will be marred by such violence after several knife-related attacks on supporters from a number of English clubs over the last decade.
What is marked about the attacks is that victims are often stabbed in the buttocks. The practice even has its own slang name in the local Roman dialect – “puncicate”. But why is the backside targeted?
ANSWER: It is a painful, humiliating injury but not likely to be life threatening.
In medieval duels stabbing someone in the buttocks was considered the most skillful move
According to those who have researched the subject, a stab wound in the buttocks may be chosen as it is seen as not likely to be life-threatening, but is humiliating and painful for the victim.
Experts believe the cultural tradition may even be linked to medieval duelling where slashing an opponent’s buttocks was supposedly considered very skillful.
“Puncicate” is mainly about hurting rival fans but not killing them, says John Foot, a professor of modern Italian history at University College London and an author on Italian football.
Update: I’m happy to report there were no buttock-stabbings at Brits Pub while I was there watching the game.
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Tag to play on PBS
I make films under the moniker of thinfilms. My films are mostly fiction, but recently I completed a documentary about the game of tag, titled appropriately “Tag”. It was a long process as I did most of the work myself and kept the budget under $5000.
From thinfilms.net:
For three years I collected candid interviews with people from all over the world regarding the way they grew up playing “Tagâ€, the names they had for it and their stories surrounding this game that touches everything we do: identity, justice, success, relationships – everything.
Out of that experience, I have created this odyssey capturing the essence of a complex, yet simple and overlooked, part of who we are and how we come to be who we are.
Spend a few moments with experts from the Jane Goodall Institute, the Anthropology Department at the University of Minnesota and the International Play Association, who discuss the essential role play has in our development as a culture and as individuals, while “Tag†reconnects us with our capacity for play – the catalyst that leads to creation, discovery and innovation.
I couldn’t have accomplished this without the generous support of the kind faculty and students at the Anthropology Department of the University of Minnesota, Dr. Michael Wilson at the Jane Goodall Institute for Primate Studies, Dr. Joanna Seymore of the International Play Association and a small army of pals who opened doors for me left and right during the film’s production.
I just received news that the film is set to broadcast during the second week of June on 360 North, a new station broadcast via PBS in Alaska.
The screening times are:
June 10 – 9:00 pm, repeats in overnight schedule
June 11 – 11:00 am, 5:00 pm
June 14 – 10:00 am, 9:30 pm
360 North can be streamed via this link.
Cheers.
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Hero : James Burke
James Burke has the storytelling powers of the immortal. Here we can listen and see him discuss the thinking behind his work. Groovy, indeed.
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Nice bubble
Some friends and I debated over whether this is real or photoshopped. The consensus is that if this was photoshopped, then that would be even more of a feat.
The whimsical nature of this is great – even if it took the fella a few tries to nail it.
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Danny Wilcox Frazier
I give thanks to the gods for Danny Wilcox Frazier.
Responsible for chronicling the Midwestern way of life in multiple mediums, he is true to the cause of his homeland and to the powers that live here, unknown to those on the coasts who dare not venture out of their safely *cool* havens for parts much more obscure and full of possibilities, much like the places and oral histories captured in Danny’s latest, beautiful film, Driftless.
Danny, lately I am raising my glass to you and your work.
Cheers.
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On reducing pain and suffering
View Larger Map
Our pain and suffering can be greatly reduced by simple precautions.
On my bicycle yesterday, while cruising home from work, I was moving fast across a busy street and beginning to brake hard as I pointed the albatross [my bike's name] up over a curb onto the sidewalk just down the way from the restaurant in the map/picture above.
That’s when the handlebars gave way.
My entire weight was thrown over the bike and all I really remember is watching my wedding ring go flying off my finger, it’s gleam shooting across the street perpendicular to the one I was fortunate enough to make it out of before wrecking.
I laid there at first, wondering if my knee was dislocated [it has an unfortunate tendency to do this] and to make sure I was ok before moving. I could tell I was bleeding a lot on my knee because it stung very much and just had that “bleeding” feeling.
While lying there, the wonderful smells coming from Brasa [that's the place in the map above] across the street wafted over me and helped distract me from thinking the worst [now, the smell of the place is embedded in my brain and I will forever associate them with the incident. Smell is a powerful sense].
Next thing I realized was a fella standing over me asking if I was alright. He had stopped his giant truck in the street, hopped out and had been the buzzing sound in my ears. How long had he been standing there? I didn’t consider this at the time, I was just beginning to get my wits about me again. I was jubilant once I realized I had no major injuries, thanked him for stopping though he didn’t look too sure. I think he’d been standing there for awhile.
The bike is remarkably intact, however, last night by bedtime I could hardly walk – but I could walk! The infamous knee is quite swollen but in its proper place. For that I am joyous.
This morning the black and blue inside my thigh, on the outside of my thigh, the two center ribs on my left side and a baseball-sized patch above my stomach have emerged, though the cuts and scrapes on my legs and knee have already begun to heal.
Lesson : periodically go over and tighten EVERYTHING on your bicycle, whether it needs it or not. It could greatly reduce our pain and suffering.
Reducing our pain and suffering is a very good thing, indeed.
Perhaps, I will celebrate my full recovery with some *premium rotisserie*
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Reading List : The Black Swan
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable is a book about randomness and uncertainty by epistemologist Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
The Black Swan theory refers to a large-impact, hard-to-predict and rare event beyond the realm of *normal* expectations or logic. His theory refers to events of large consequence and their dominant role in history. Black Swan events are a special category of outliers.
From the prologue:
I am drawn to his book so much these days that, DURING the days, while often spending thought energy on the arbitrary, I crave returning to read more of Nassim’s words in the wonderful and whimsical evening to help balance against, as he writes so eloquently, naive empiricism.
That’s the trouble with good work like this : such ideas find us re-examining our immediate environment, our time-investments, priorities, the whole can of worms, all-the-while identifying every detail both aligned and misaligned with our freshly-evolved perspective and motivation.
Tough? Sometimes.
Highly recommended? Indefatigably.
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Garage Sale Jukebox
Dave the Grinch
Here we see a picture of David Browne posing for his pseudo-wedding portrait [long story] back in 2006. He and his bride, Sarah Lukacs, are old pals of ours from our days living in Seattle, where these two still live and are always up to one scheme or another.
His latest is Garage Sale Jukebox.
There’s a story. It’s long but I’ll see if I can make it palatable: As a young whippersnapper of a lad, Dave was given a chance to be a DJ on a UK based local community radio station by Ray Darrel. So he did it. But, because he was a young whippersnapper of a lad far more interested in being out on a Saturday night than in presenting a radio show, he quit. Fast forward twenty years and Ray tracks him down on the other side of the world and they hatch this diabolical scheme to use technology to put Dave back on the airwaves on a Saturday night. A radio show within a radio show or, as he likes to call it – A radio showlette.
So, this is a series that takes the notion of DIY music and gives you, the listener, the stories behind some rare and long forgotten cuts from the 50’s and 60’s that were recorded in a garage, sound like they were recorded in a garage or Dave bought from a garage sale. If you want to sound all hip and cool at your next house party or impress the nerdy guy working behind the counter of your local record store then this is the series for you.
I’ve been enjoying these, listening to them over and over as my music history knowledge needs guys like Dave. He’s one clever bloke and has a hell of a radio voice, to boot : all the ladies agree.
Check out Episode 1: The Pioneers and board the train to rock and roll enlightenment.
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Driftless: Stories from Iowa
Received this from MediaStorm today:
We are excited to announce a special premiere of our soon-to-be released documentary Driftless: Stories from Iowa by Danny Wilcox Frazier on Monday, May 18, at Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO, Brooklyn.
The screening of the film will be followed by a Q&A with Danny and the team from MediaStorm. Books and DVDs will be available for purchase, with signings both before and after the film.
Where: Galapagos Art Space
When: May 18, 2009
Time: Doors open at 7pm, the film will start at 8pm.For guaranteed seating, RSVP to rsvp@mediastorm.org.
About the Project:
Life in Iowa can be punishing. Many Iowans expend their lives sweating over soil and spilling the blood of livestock; they endure the hardships associated with a life inextricably bound to the ups and downs of nature. Today, those challenges and a shift in our nation’s economy have pushed the youth of rural communities to migrate to the metropolises of America. Those left in the wake of this out-migration continue their lives, seemingly unchanged from the generations that preceded them.
The tension of contemporary rural life plays out: the struggle of a family farm to continue, disenfranchised youth, migrant labor, the country butcher’s role, and the aged fading from Iowa’s mythical landscape. Through their stories we gain insight to a way of life that is disappearing, a culture that could be lost forever. As “community” continues to be homogenized in zones of urban sprawl across the globe, we must consider all that we are losing—development should not come at the expense of more fragile communities.
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Searching for a Heart of Gold
My new pal, David Cevoli, wrote earlier this week about the influence Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and others of that era have had and continue to have on him. He’s a gifted musician and though I’ve not had a chance to listen to him in person, I’ve listened to the demos he’s posted on ReverbNation and I’m looking forward to his first full-length album – it’s currently in progress.
Meanwhile, I began thinking of the first time I ever heard/saw Neil Young, which happened to be on the same night at the Beacon Theatre in 1990.
Two of my housemates scored some last minute tickets street-side as we were walking past the venue after dinner and next thing I knew I was listening to Victoria Williams getting booed off the stage to chants of “Neil, Neil, Neil”
Something about that weird, negative vibe got to me, BIG TIME. That, plus the seemingly extreme incline of the Beacon’s balcony made me just get up and leave for awhile – I rushed out and ended up somewhere else, halfway up a stairwell, where I found some space and which I realized later led up to some sort of room for media VIPs. I sat on the stairs for a good hour at least, well into Young’s set, trying to calm down enough to return to my seat and the rest of the show.
That’s when Neil started to play “Heart of Gold” and immediately I knew I’d heard this music somewhere before. It instantly calmed and reassured me and I returned to my pals and enjoyed the next 2 hours before we were dumped back out into the breezy summer night with that tune stuck in my head like glue for the next few days.
Thanks for jarring the memory, Cev. Cheers.
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