Friday Ephemera
Webcam and volcano. // The Yellow Treehouse Restaurant. // How to make giant fruit pastilles. // Matchboxes from the Subcontinent. (h/t, Coudal) // Movie title screengrabs. // Opening titles of The Conversation. (1974) // Everything you should know about speech balloons. // Voice-based drawing. More. // Lovely bunkers. // It’s bacon, man, and the 5000 calorie bacon explosion. (h/t, Franklin) // Baby elephant and ball. // The Rubik’s 360. // Snow and ice. // Transformers! // Zoybar! // Taking pencils seriously. // More anamorphic pavement art. // The future of newspapers, 1981. // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Mr Jimmy Smith & Mr Elmer Bernstein.
Love the giant fruit pastilles. I’m tempted to try that.
http://www.pimpthatsnack.com/images/projects/giantfruitpastille/DSC00955.jpg
And who knew beer cans make pretty good jelly molds?
Dig that ‘Money Programme’ music. 🙂
And ‘The Conversation’ too. Brilliant film.
“Dig that ‘Money Programme’ music.”
That’s where I first heard it. It’s one of the grooviest TV themes I can think of. It’s originally from the soundtrack to the film “The Carpetbaggers,” released in 1964. And, yes, “The Conversation” is one of my favourites.
Damn, that’s groovy. Man.
I think that’s not the original version of the theme from The Carpetbaggers. It sounds like Jimmy Smith. I think the track can be found on the album, “The Cat”. It’s a much more swinging version than the original.
rg,
It is indeed. I’ve updated the credit for clarity.
http://www.vervemusicgroup.com/artist/releases/default.aspx?pid=10255&aid=2740
But David, you’ve got a link to a Michael Bay film… A Michael Bay film.
I’m going to build a life-size version of the bacon Wicker Man.
“But David, you’ve got a link to a Michael Bay film…”
I know, I know. You don’t need to list all those terrible, terrible films. But this is a Michael Bay film with giant robots from outer space. Giant robots that transform into cars, trucks and helicopters. What’s not to like?
Urban Dictionary on Michael Bay:
1. An untalented director.
2. A person who is incapable of complex and/or abstract thought, and focuses on pure visual and tactile stimulation.
3. (adj) A movie that is profitable, but at the same time painful to watch.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=michael+bay
Clearly, you’ve never been a 10-year-old boy.
4. The God of Explosions.
5. Master of Autistic Pleasure.
Exactly. I saw the first “Transformers” film with my young nephew and his schoolmate. It was incredibly loud, somewhat psychedelic and utterly dumb. But it did exactly what it said on the tin and, needless to say, the kids left the cinema very excited. There’s something to be said for well-made trash, especially if it features giant transforming robots creeping around suburbia.
In contrast, at around the same time I saw “The Simpsons Movie,” which promised to be clever and funny, but wasn’t.
“Clearly, you’ve never been a 10-year-old boy.”
So basically this is a guy thing? 🙂
“So basically this is a guy thing?”
I’ve no idea whether it’s a general ‘guy thing’ like that whole toilet seat business. Doubtless there are men out there who don’t appreciate the finer points of giant alien robots that transform into expensive sports cars. But I’m pretty sure it’s a ‘guy-who-was-once-a-10-year-old-boy-and-fascinated-by-robots-as-10-year-old-boys-often-are’ thing.
Re: Matchboxes from the Subcontinent:
“The random and disparate juxtapositions of the imagery encapsulate the mix of historic, mythological and contemporary visual culture in India.”
Or he just couldn’t be arsed to sort and caption the photos.
Maybe I’m grumpy this morning, but I could do without pretentious art-talk from a matchbox hobbyist. What next? “My Beer Can Collection: Transducing the Infiltrated Hegemony of Mythopoetical Narrative in Grain-based Beverages?”
Can’t they just show us the pretty pictures with a little info? “I found this one in Madras.” Now that would be useful. He should have asked Michael Bay to design the site for him.
Dutch,
From where I stand, it’s a perfectly reasonable reaction. I’ve lost count of how many items I find for possible inclusion in the ephemera round-ups, only to be aggravated by the near-obligatory written guff. For example, I spotted these photos of stuffed animals by Kim Boske:
http://www.kimboske.com/pag10.html
They’re not exactly beautiful or particularly remarkable, but they’re mildly diverting if you like that kind of thing. But, inevitably, Ms Boske has to talk bollocks about it, to justify their (and her) importance:
“My work can be described as a body of research in which different moments in time and space run together in a field that seems to embody a determination of time to present proof of it’s discrete, unique moments. I create stories that rise around the system of time and space… I portray these different layers of time by carefully assembling visual fragments of narrative elements to create a structure of connections and unity, which I translate into an image. I view my work as constructions in which layers upon layers of ideas take on a meaning of their own.”
http://www.kimboske.com/about.html
The effect of this is to repel my interest and make me *less* engaged with what I’m seeing. So, no, you’re not alone.