From the Guardian’s Photo Blog:
Quack Attack! A woman and her daughter prepare to take evasive action at an amusement park in Beijing, China. Photograph: Alexander F. Yuan/AP
Remember: Ducks are dangerous.
Patience Is A Difficult Thing Indeed
I’m sure that I’ve written before about my frustration and dislike for waiting for phone calls that I know are coming. Now, it turns out, it might just be waiting for communications of any sort; I submitted my first piece of work for a new-to-me (print) outlet via email yesterday, and have spent the past couple of days just avidly watching my email inbox for some kind of confirmation of receipt, and – in my fantasy world – a “It’s great!” or “it needs these minor edits” (Basically, anything that isn’t “We’re killing it outright, here’s our kill fee”).
I am finding myself supernaturally distracted by the waiting, and the lack of email. Despite the fact that I was surprisingly productive today even when I shouldn’t have been, I’m thinking less about the work and more about the email that just hasn’t arrived yet.
And I want to send a second email to say “I know I’m being paranoid, but did you get it? Because I sent it, and I’d even be okay with you saying that you hated it instead of thinking that I didn’t send it and screwed the deadline,” but I also don’t want to send that email, because then I’m crazy paranoid guy who can’t wait three days for Busy Editor for A National (International, jeez) Publication to check his email, have a chance to read the story and then write back to me.
So, instead, I write this as some kind of message out to the ether and the potential coincidence and magic therein. May whatever potential coincidences may be at play out there lead that email to have been received, to be opened and appreciated and responded to. Pretty, pretty please with sugar on top.
One of The Most Important Movies in The World (YMMV Edition)
Three Colors Red – and Three Colors Blue, as well, although Three Colors White left me somewhat cold – rewrote my brain when I first saw it as a teenager in the U.K. There was such precision in the filmmaking, such humanity and affection and empathy in the writing, but also such ambiguity and uncertainty. It’s not just that the characters were flawed, or whatever would be the traditional way to describe them in American movie terms, but that they were also clearly lost and confused and didn’t have all (or, at times, any) of the answers. Blue and Red hit me like a brick to the head when I most needed it, and changed what I thought movies, and mainstream pop narratives in general, could do.
“That Means It’s Up to Me!”
BOOM
From the Guardian’s Photo Blog:
A 130mm artillery round is fired during a live fire drill at a military base in Kampong Speu province, about 40 miles west of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Photograph: Xinhua/Sipa USA/Rex Features
Yesterday, I started off the day with the attitude “It’s a new month! Okay! I’m going to kick April’s ass!” purely because, well, for whatever reason, March kicked my ass and good. By the end of the day, though, I felt mired in the sludge of my brain, entirely unenthusiastic on what I was working on and frustrated by a million things that I had no name for. So, today, I’m using this particular image as a visual key: April. I am coming for you.
Maybe Maybe It’s The
From the Guardian:
Taiz, Yemen: Two girls make their way across a rubbish dump. Photograph: Mohamed Al-Sayaghi/Reuters
We’re tra-ah-ash, you and me/We’re the litter on the breeze…
What’s So Good About This Friday, Anyway?
From the Guardian:
Duisburg, Germany: A hare rests in a field. Photograph: Frank Augstein/AP
Let’s just call this guy the Easter bunny, shall we? Happy Egg Holiday/Jesus Coming Back From The Dead (Delete as applicable), everybody!
Nature, Everybody
From the Guardian’s Photo Blog:
A bee collects nectar from a sunflower in a field near in Leibstadt, Switzerland. Pesticides have been found to make bees forget the scent for food. Read more on the bees’ plight. Photograph: Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters
Spring has sprung, the grass is ris, I wonders where the boidies is. The boid is on the wing, they say, but that’s absoid, the wing is on the boid.
…I’m the only person who was raised by parents who recited that every Spring, aren’t I? The only person in the world.
The Egg! A Symbol of Life!
From the Guardian’s Photo Blog:
That’s gotta hurt! James Hyslop, scientific specialist for Christie’s auction house, holds up an extremely rare and complete sub-fossilised elephant bird egg at in London. The egg which is over a hundred times larger than an average chicken egg is native to Madagascar. The poor bird that laid it was the largest bird ever to have lived. Resembling a heavily built ostrich it grew to over three meters in height. It’s thought to have been hunted to extinction in Madagascar between the 14th and 17th centuries. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA
Why, yes, I do have “Egg Man” by the Beastie Boys going through my head right now. How did you know?
Unfinished and Unclear
The following is an abandoned (because I didn’t really believe in it, and especially not where it was going) piece for Time. Yes, it stops mid-sentence; that’s how clear it was that this was getting away from me.
Listening to the new David Bowie album the other day, my thoughts wandered to another recent comeback of a legitimate Pop Culture Icon, Prince. For those who are unaware, Prince has formed a new band, recorded new songs and will be touring both later this year. Like Bowie, Prince is one of those artists whose earlier work defined generations and changed pop music as we knew it. And, like the new Bowie album, the new Prince material really doesn’t hold a candle to the old stuff. It got me thinking: Wouldn’t it be great if there was a mandatory retirement age for pop icons?
I should immediately clarify: I’m not suggesting that there is a set age at which musicians are forbidden from making music, or that the music industry comes up with some arbitrary number above which no musician gets to have any music released or promoted. Instead, I’m really addressing the way with which the music is received by the audience and, more importantly, the critics and media.
Consider the build-up the Bowie album was given, pre-release. The first two songs were released with little fanfare via Bowie’s VEVO account on YouTube, but the Internet quickly filled up whatever hyperbole void was left by the artist’s lack of promotion, declaring it the “perfect comeback” that put him “right back at the center of the whole shebang.”
The buzz quickly grew. “The Next Day,” the comeback album, would be his best in decades, with the presence of former collaborator Tony Visconti meaning it was a return to the sound and atmosphere of their famous 1970s work together, it was decided before anyone had heard it. When the album actually arrived, the response wasn’t exactly what everyone had been hoping for, with the result described as “an ordeal and a struggle of initial indifference,” if ultimately rewarding.
All of this is more positive than response to the new Prince material, which can best be described as… workmanlike, perhaps, or professional. Such polite terms are ways to get around saying “Kind of dull and sounding like a Prince tribute band,” which remains the worst-case scenario for any kind of musician, but especially one who was at one point as vibrant and compelling – if not exactly original, per se – as Prince.
I suspect the fault with both of these comebacks lies less with the musicians themselves than with the expectations surrounding them. It’s a failure of promotion as much as