Far back in the day, when I was no more than a strapping young lad in high school, my family got caught up in the Magnetic Poetry fad. For those of you who have been blessed and have forgotten this particularly insipid little fad, it involved many words printed on small magnets that you could then place on your refrigerator (in our case, a flat radiator) and then arrange the words as you saw fit. As is human nature, most of illuminating sonnets that were produced consisted of nothing more than dirty phrases about "boobs" and various bodily functions. Occasionally someone would be struck by the pretentiousness virus and try to put up something deep and meaningful, but thankfully that was a rare occasion.
Luckily, as it always is with such gimmicks, our interest waned. We left the magnets on the radiator because frankly, we couldn't be arsed to take them down. My mother started using them to hold several of her favorite pictures in place. The majority were severely pixelated print outs of our dog. One day I came back to my parents house, was surprised to find it had all disappeared. Magnets and pictures seemed to have evaporated. Only one word seemed to have survived this mysterious purge. Now, every time I walk past it I can't help but think that the cosmos is somehow trying to tell me something.
A long time ago, on an island not too far away, but it would still be questionable if you would want to go there, a trio of unbelievably geeks (though not the original, only one of those) were granted permission to apply their unique brand of comedy/faffing about to the works of one George "The Bearded Hutt" Lucas. Thus shielded from the dark legions of the LucasArts Legal department, the went on a bit of a tear and produced for our viewing pleasure Star War Shortened!!
Should be viewed for many reasons but foremost among them:
"Hi, this is my student Obi Wan Kenobi and I'm Liam Neeson!"
Episode II presented entire with acoustic guitar
Flow charts
A tent standing in as Jabba the Hutt
Rotating tassels
PLUS the entire series broken down in less than 60 seconds!
Oh Reduced Shakespeare Company. You make life bearable.
I have been on a bit of a music binge as of recently, and my obsession has been fixed in two oxymoronic directions. First we have the group The Glitch Mob.
A electronic trio hailing from the West Coast of the United States, ediT, Boreta and Ooah mix some seriously sick beats. I first stumbled upon their music when I found a video one of their fans had created in homage of the group, mixing together snippets of dozens of movie trailers. (I included the vid below.) After watching the thing once I went and checked out their website and was delighted to find that they offer a bunch of music for free. This includes several remixes and half hour mash ups. I also downloaded their debut album Drink The Sea from Amazon and I heartily recommend it to anyone who likes music like Daft Punk.
My second musical obsession of the moment is a french soul & funk prodigy Ben L'Oncle Soul. A frenchman from Tours, Ben L'Onkel actually wanted to call himself Uncle Ben, but changed his nome de plume due to fears of copyright infringement and possibly lawyers.
Taken under contract by Motown France ( I know! O_o), Ben L'Oncle has made it his thing to bring that old school Motown feel back. His music, his clothing even the artwork on his album cover, all of it screams Motown. The music is a mix of French and English, covers and original work. Some of the choices for covers seem odd (Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes, Red Hot Chili Peppers The Other Side) but the guy manages to pull it off, giving each rendition something new and making it fit. I included his Seven Nation Army cover to give you a taste.
So, I was a little caught off guard when it was announced that Qatar would be hosting the the 2022 World Cup. Now I believe I was ahead of roughly 70% of the Earth's population, given that I knew that Qatar was a country, one of those small oil rich Arab peninsula countries . Oh, and conservative in a way that would give the right wing of the Republican party a three hour erection.
As I am always at least making a token effort to expand my admittedly pitiful base of knowledge before I am flung from this life with the force and disgust of French chef disposing of some low grade American hot dogs that had recently turned, I ventured onto the Wikipedia page for Qatar to give myself at least a superficial idea of what the country is all about.
