This animation (5 mins) amused me.
Tuesday 27 November 2007
Cyber sickoes
How do visitors find your site? Often it's via a search engine. And proper grown-up bloggers and webmasters seem to have a way of finding out exactly which search requests lured their punters in.
Do you envy them, or would you rather not know? Make up your mind at Disturbing Search Requests.
No sooner had I linked to this site than it disappeared. There's an archived version here which should give you an idea of it, though I note this ominous message from the webmaster threatening to shut down the site "about four months from now" unless traffic improves, which could easily have been written in July. Don't tell me I'm the last person ever to link to it…
And I should have mentioned that Betty and Geoff have their own personal version, Search Me.
Love Put Me Out Of My Head
A star at thirteen, dead at twenty-five, Frankie Lymon possessed a fine voice and barrels of impudent charm, exemplified in his close-ups here:
Monday 26 November 2007
Wednesday 21 November 2007
Good news indeed
Heartfelt congratulations to Peter of Naked Blog on learning this week that he doesn't have colorectal cancer.
Peter is one of the blogosphere's grizzled veterans, repeatedly shortlisted for a lifetime achievement award.
For more than ten years he's been writing an online journal in reverse chronological order, mixing details of his day-to-day life with reminiscence, opinion and humour.
In other words, he was blogging before blogging was invented.
He goes back even further than John Bailey of Journal of a Writing Man, which started in 1998.
Gawd bless yer, Yer Royal Peter-ness!
Peter is one of the blogosphere's grizzled veterans, repeatedly shortlisted for a lifetime achievement award.
For more than ten years he's been writing an online journal in reverse chronological order, mixing details of his day-to-day life with reminiscence, opinion and humour.
In other words, he was blogging before blogging was invented.
He goes back even further than John Bailey of Journal of a Writing Man, which started in 1998.
men who look like old lesbians
They've come for you.
_________________________
And they have the same problem with their template that I have with mine: the "Older Posts" link doesn't do its job correctly. Use the month-by-month links on the sidebar if you don't want to miss anything.
And they have the same problem with their template that I have with mine: the "Older Posts" link doesn't do its job correctly. Use the month-by-month links on the sidebar if you don't want to miss anything.
Lindsay Anderson's last splutter
He made This Sporting Life, If…, O Lucky Man!, Britannia Hospital, The Whales of August, and finally, in 1993, this curious self-portrait, Is That All There Is?. It's presented here in six instalments of about nine minutes each (apart from the sixth, a mere six minutes):
If Anderson himself leaves you cold, you may still be interested in the final part, which shows a gathering on a Thames riverboat, scattering the ashes of Jill Bennett and Rachel Roberts.
If Anderson himself leaves you cold, you may still be interested in the final part, which shows a gathering on a Thames riverboat, scattering the ashes of Jill Bennett and Rachel Roberts.
Our Man in Tashkent
Craig Murray is the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan whose preoccupation with human rights proved inconvenient to the War on Terror, and who was duly hung out to dry by the Foreign Office.
Sunday 18 November 2007
Best and worst Eighties videos
A contest Andrew Sullivan's running this week.
There are three categories, with ten candidates apiece. You can vote for the best pop video of the decade, and for the worst, and also - a fine twist - for the best/worst.
"You get to vote for one in each category, but you can vote an indefinite number of times. We've provided links for every video up for voting."So go for it, my pretties. Re-live those glorious heady years when the whole universe seemed composed of cheese - but what fabulous cheese!
There are three categories, with ten candidates apiece. You can vote for the best pop video of the decade, and for the worst, and also - a fine twist - for the best/worst.
"You get to vote for one in each category, but you can vote an indefinite number of times. We've provided links for every video up for voting."So go for it, my pretties. Re-live those glorious heady years when the whole universe seemed composed of cheese - but what fabulous cheese!
Who's the painter?
This brooding townscape with oppressive sky above is the work of Victor Hugo, creator of Les Miserables, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, etc., etc.
It comes from a revelatory exhibition of visual art by ninety-seven famous authors - Yeats, Huxley, D H Lawrence, Hesse, Lorca, Sylvia Plath, Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Derek Walcott, Hunter S Thompson, Douglas Coupland, all the lads.
This write-up catches the flavour. The show's over but you can still buy the book (UK price £25).
It comes from a revelatory exhibition of visual art by ninety-seven famous authors - Yeats, Huxley, D H Lawrence, Hesse, Lorca, Sylvia Plath, Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Derek Walcott, Hunter S Thompson, Douglas Coupland, all the lads.
This write-up catches the flavour. The show's over but you can still buy the book (UK price £25).
Laughing at silence
I recommend Paul Merton's Silent Clowns, currently being shown on BBC2.
The first hour-long programme was about Buster Keaton and left me agog for more of him.
This week it's Chaplin (never been a fan, but perhaps Merton can convert me) and next week specifically the silent work of Laurel and Hardy.
The series concludes with Harold Lloyd (above).
A troubling fact thrown up by the show: there are no known copies of nearly 80% of the silent films ever made. But Merton draws heavily on the work of present-day restorers who're bringing nearly-lost movies back from the brink.
_________________________
Irritating footnote: here in Scotland the series began last week and is shown on Wednesdays, but I get the impression that in England it's screened on Saturdays, four days ahead of us. If so, readers in England have already missed the Chaplin programme. Sorry, chaps.Paul Merton's Silent Clowns, BBC2 Scotland, early Wednesday evenings.
The first hour-long programme was about Buster Keaton and left me agog for more of him.
This week it's Chaplin (never been a fan, but perhaps Merton can convert me) and next week specifically the silent work of Laurel and Hardy.
The series concludes with Harold Lloyd (above).
A troubling fact thrown up by the show: there are no known copies of nearly 80% of the silent films ever made. But Merton draws heavily on the work of present-day restorers who're bringing nearly-lost movies back from the brink.
Irritating footnote: here in Scotland the series began last week and is shown on Wednesdays, but I get the impression that in England it's screened on Saturdays, four days ahead of us. If so, readers in England have already missed the Chaplin programme. Sorry, chaps.Paul Merton's Silent Clowns, BBC2 Scotland, early Wednesday evenings.
Friday 16 November 2007
All for your benefit
The newly published Telegraph obit of Churchill's secretary has more and better anecdotes than the Times one, so I've altered the link for Nose, meet grindstone.
Wednesday 14 November 2007
Dinner for One
…alias The Ninetieth Birthday. In Germany, Norway, Sweden and Austria this eleven-minute sketch is shown on TV every New Year's Eve. The little old lady is May Warden and her butler is Freddie Frinton, the accomplished comic drunk who gave the world the phrase "Good evening, ossifer." Bear with them - the comedy is cumulative:
Neighbourhood Rebel
Kevin Williamson of Rebel Inc fame seems to live in the same small network of streets as myself, and drinks in at least one of the same bars. Yet I've never knowingly clapped eyes on him, so bad am I at recognising faces, or so adept is he at dodging behind wheelie-bins when he sees a loony coming.
His blog The Scottish Patient is a daily dose of fierce opinion and often infectious pleasures, plus tons of snaps of national monuments (e.g. Alasdair Gray in a pub). Read some of his poems here.
His blog The Scottish Patient is a daily dose of fierce opinion and often infectious pleasures, plus tons of snaps of national monuments (e.g. Alasdair Gray in a pub). Read some of his poems here.
Kipling away frenziedly
A properly full-blooded review by Ferdinand Mount of a new and rewarding-sounding book on Uncle Rudyard.
Joys of Spring
Four strangely assorted male dancers go through their routine in the dressing room before the show - without the women they're meant to be dancing with, and with less than total recall of what their moves are supposed to be:
Clunk, click
Reluctant to link to a story about Sir Jimmy Savile getting mugged - even if he does claim he enjoyed it - but couldn't help noticing he lives in Roundhay.
Given that he is at least two hundred years old, can we be certain he isn't the elderly gent preserved for posterity in Roundhay Garden Scene?
Given that he is at least two hundred years old, can we be certain he isn't the elderly gent preserved for posterity in Roundhay Garden Scene?
The elusive Great American Novel
Best response I've seen to Norman Mailer's death, by John Walsh.
Young Mr Hari adds a necessary indictment.
Going without
Chastity achieved through "indolence, or mere inattention": Froog waves a flag for Asexualismo.
Sunday 11 November 2007
Tuesday 6 November 2007
Salvador Dali on What's My Line?
Not a hoax, not a spoof: the great surrealist takes part in a TV game show (9 minutes). Trouble is, he sees himself as a universal genius, and therefore replies "Yes" to whatever the panellists suggest he may be doing for a living…
RIP Hilda Braid
…who was Peter Vaughan’s charmingly out-of-it and dim-wittedly benign wife in Citizen Smith.
BBC news report
Guardian / Independent / Telegraph / Times
Guardian / Independent / Telegraph / Times
Friday 2 November 2007
Back from the dead
This news story about a mother who mistakenly identified the dead body of a stranger as that of her missing son, only to have the real son turn up alive and well after the funeral, echoes an episode in the life of Ellen Terry.
Bryan Forbes tells us in his entertaining history of the British acting tradition, That Despicable Race, that at one point in the late 1860s the actress disappeared. Separated from her husband G F Watts, she'd got together with the architect Edward Godwin and they were keeping it quiet, not just on account of the social risks but because her allowance from Watts was hers only "so long as she shall live a chaste life".
What she hadn't bargained for was the discovery in the Thames of the corpse of a girl who so much resembled her that Ellen's father identified it as his daughter's.
Fortunately, word of this reached her and she went hurtling back to the family home to find everyone wearing mourning for her. It was, says Forbes, "surely an incident that Dickens would have savoured."
Bryan Forbes tells us in his entertaining history of the British acting tradition, That Despicable Race, that at one point in the late 1860s the actress disappeared. Separated from her husband G F Watts, she'd got together with the architect Edward Godwin and they were keeping it quiet, not just on account of the social risks but because her allowance from Watts was hers only "so long as she shall live a chaste life".
What she hadn't bargained for was the discovery in the Thames of the corpse of a girl who so much resembled her that Ellen's father identified it as his daughter's.
Fortunately, word of this reached her and she went hurtling back to the family home to find everyone wearing mourning for her. It was, says Forbes, "surely an incident that Dickens would have savoured."
One or two columnists may revive this tale in the Sunday papers, so don't forget, you read it here first.
Tumbleweed
In the wake of Derelict London, another treat for decay'n'desolation fans: Lost America: Night Photography of the Abandoned West.
Ugh, nasty
We have thankfully stopped seeing ethnic minorities as the Not-Us, the Thank-God-We're-Not-Them - and have neatly slotted the white working class into their place.
Johann Hari, defending Jeremy Kyle.
Thursday 1 November 2007
Birth of the movies
You thought they started in France with the Lumière brothers in the mid-1890s? So did I.
In fact they began in 1888 in, of all places, Leeds, and here's the evidence: two films shot by Louis Le Prince, each of which runs for two (2) seconds.
This one shows traffic crossing Leeds Bridge:
This one captures four folk milling about in a garden in the Leeds suburb of Roundhay:
Some of the scenes that didn't made it into the final cut:
A sombre postscript
• The lady walking backwards in the garden scene, Sarah Whitley, died ten days later.
• Louis Le Prince himself mysteriously vanished from a train in France in 1890.
• His son Adolphe Le Prince - the young man in the garden scene - was shot dead on Fire Island, New York, in 1902.
In fact they began in 1888 in, of all places, Leeds, and here's the evidence: two films shot by Louis Le Prince, each of which runs for two (2) seconds.
This one shows traffic crossing Leeds Bridge:
This one captures four folk milling about in a garden in the Leeds suburb of Roundhay:
Some of the scenes that didn't made it into the final cut:
A sombre postscript
• The lady walking backwards in the garden scene, Sarah Whitley, died ten days later.
• Louis Le Prince himself mysteriously vanished from a train in France in 1890.
• His son Adolphe Le Prince - the young man in the garden scene - was shot dead on Fire Island, New York, in 1902.
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