Funny Stuff – xkcd

I discovered something today on the interwebs and I had to share it with you all.  When I was younger my favorite comic strip was Calvin and Hobbes.  Part of the reason I liked it so much was that a lot of its humor was intelligent in a way that belied the fact that the main characters were a six-year-old boy and his stuffed tiger.  I’ve always appreciated that sort of smart humor.

Well, today I stumbled across a webcomic called xkcd that has a wonderful mix of the ridiculous and the intellectual.  Feel free to check it out for yourself, but in the meantime here are a few comics for your enjoyment.

Go Canada!

The Olympic Song for the Vancouver games:

Sand Painting – Kseniya Simonova

Every week in Time magazine they include a little piece near the end where they get some celebrity’s list of things they’re in to right now.  This last week it was Sir Ian McKellen and the first item on his list was sand painting and he mentions Simonova’s name.  Until that moment I had no idea what sand painting was.  Maybe you’ve heard of it already.  Apparently, this kind of sand painting is when sand is spread on an opaque surface that is lit from underneath and the artist creates images in the sand with her fingertips.  Well, I had to satiate my curiosity and I instantly went to YouTube to see for myself.

Kseniya Simonova was 2009′s Ukraine’s Got Talent winner.  It only took one video to make me an instant fan.  I have embedded the video that I first saw.  Apparently, it depicts life during the Great Patriotic War of the USSR against the Third Reich during World War II.  I think there was a lot of cultural significance that was lost on me in the depiction, but I was incredibly moved nonetheless.  It had the audience of Ukraine’s Got Talent in tears.  I highly recommend this.  Beautiful.

I also discovered that this kind of sand painting has been around for years and Simonova is certainly not the first to turn heads with this medium.  Another artist whose work appears on YouTube is Ferenc Cako.  Check it out.

Review of Where The Wild Things Are

I blogged a little while back about how much I was looking forward to this movie.  Well, I finally saw it and was very pleased with it.  I think that the film version of Where The Wild Things Are is the best possible movie that could have been created from the book.  That being said, you have to remember that the book had only 48 pages and somewhere around 330 words.  A feature-length film adaptation is bound to have an effect on the essence of a book that takes less than 5 minutes to read.

The thing about such a short book is that it leaves a lot of room for each individual to imagine and elaborate on the story.  The film is Spike Jonze’s imagination and elaboration of the book and, as such, it will not match up with everyone else’s imaginations.

As it turns out, my siblings, with whom I shared the experience of reading the book as a child, were hoping for a much happier product than Jonze provided.  I agree that it wasn’t an overly happy film and it focused a lot on negative emotions.  But I think that is part of what made the movie so impressive to me.  It shined a light on what I see as the simple and limited worldview of a child – not every child, but many children – of a striving for pleasure and avoidance of punishment.  Max’s interactions with each character in his imaginary world symbolized his interactions with himself or someone else in the real world.  It was not always a pleasant result for the viewer, but for me it was often poignant and meaningful.  And for me that’s where the power of the film was.

Another important result I perceived of the room for elaboration within the book is that I enjoyed the book, the movie and the trailer for the movie more or less equally.  Each was different in important ways and provided different, yet similar, ways of understanding the story.  The book is endearing in its simplicity and nostalgic of childhood, the film is symbolic and meaningful, and the trailer provides an image of a real world in which Max and the monsters exist without interpreting the story for me, all while The Arcade Fire’s song, “Wake Up” inspires me and enlivens my imagination.

Ultimately, I don’t blame anyone who read the book as a child for disliking the movie.  It should be unsurprising that not everyone would envision the story of Where of the Wild Things Are in the same way as Spike Jonze.  But as I said, I think it was the best kind of movie that could have been made from the book while still being, unavoidably, different from the book.

My New Obsession

Some of you might know this about me: I love trivia and I love memorizing things.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Ken Jennings, but I certainly enjoy the feeling of just knowing things.  When I was about eleven years old and had dreams of becoming a world famous chemist I came across the periodic table of the elements in my parents set of encyclopedia that I just happened to be browsing through and I thought to myself, “How great would it be if I could memorize all these elements?”  So by age twelve I could name all the elements by symbol.  And speaking of trivia, the only magazine that I’ve ever read every article, cover to cover, is Mental Floss, a magazine of pure trivia.  It’s such a fascinating publication.  I would recommend it to everyone.

Now that you know this about me, I’m ready for you to know what I’m obsessed with these days: Sporcle.com.  I think I might have mentioned it briefly earlier in my blog.  But if you haven’t heard of this website please go ahead and check it out.  It’s a website full of little quizzes.  Everything from naming all the presidents of the US to naming VH1′s top 100 songs of the 90s.  Even if you’re not a trivia buff and even if you don’t fancy yourself very good at remembering things it’s a great pastime and a great way to hone your geography or history skills and so much more.  Maren and I will often do quizzes together.  We compete on some and cooperate on others.  Since I’ve started my Sporcle habit I can now name all the US states and their capitals, I can name all the countries of the world (with a blank map in front of me) and all the flags of Europe.

So go check it out.  In addition to the ones I’ve already linked to above here are some quizzes that you might enjoy:

Car Logos. 90s Video Games. Guess The Language.   The “A” Game. Time’s Top 100 Novels.

Happy Canada Day!

I just wanted to say to everyone who reads my blog, Happy Canada Day!  I’ve been in the States for a while and in general I’m trying not to be too much of an over-bearing Canadian-in-America but today is the one day of the year when I feel justified being completely and unabashedly Canadian and bragging about it.

I think Canada is great!  And I’m glad to be Canadian!

And I am a huge fan of my friend Randal’s annual Canada Day Quiz.  You should definitely check it out.  And because I want to be like Randal but I’m not as smart or creative as him, I was just going to give you all a link to a Canadian quiz on Sporcle.com (if you haven’t already heard of sporcle, that’s another thing you really need to check out) but upon searching for the quiz today I could not find it anymore.  Sad.  It’s the thought that counts, right?

Psych!  I found the link I wanted to give you.  http://www.sporcle.com/games/famouscanadians.php

Let me know how you do!

Happy Canada Day!

April Review: Dear Science

 

Dear Science

 

So some of you might know that I’ve always had a bit of a love affair with rock music from the 90s.  And sometimes it’s hard for me to get over that music and give modern rock the credit it deserves.  Well, this month I discovered that TV on the Radio is a perfect example of what’s great about modern rock!  I loved every second of their album Dear Science.

Beginning with the very first track, they hooked me.  What’s evident from the very start is that the percussion/rhythm is unique and is a major part of what makes this album so catchy and memorable.  And every song that follows confirms what you suspected after listening to only the first song.  Every song promises a beat that grabs you and pulls you into the song in a way not many songs can do.

Another thing that is immediately evident is the vocal skill of the band.  Solid vocals all around, from high falsettos in many songs to some surprisingly pleasant bass in the song Family Tree.  I was impressed.

I was sitting contemplating what else about this album made it so enjoyable and I decided that it’s because Dear Science makes excellent use of dynamics and instrumentation to guide their songs from start to climactic finish.  Every musician tries to do that but there’s something about TVOTR’s efforts here that stand out to me.  In many of their songs they make it seem like it’s a departure from the standard verse-chorus-verse-chorus pattern.  I’m probably not doing well at explaining myself here, but I know that Dear Science took its songs seriously and produced some high quality music as a result.

Overall, a great album!  Songs like Dancing Choose, Golden Age, Halfway Home and DLZ continue to get a lot of attention on my music players.  I could listen to the beginning of Red Dress over and over, just cause I want to yell along with it.

High points of the album are the great rhythm and beats, catchy melodies, skillful instrumentation and song construction which, all together, makes for some very unique and memorable songs.

Low points are few but I will mention this, some of the slower tempo songs, while still beautifully showcasing the musical talent of TVOTR, I felt detracted from the upbeat feel of the album that was introduced by its first song and that I felt should have made up a better portion of the album.  But that’s just a selfish desire of mine.

Great album!  4.5 stars out of 5.

Peter Recommends…

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly – I had heard great things about this film and it didn’t disappoint.  Very well-made, sincere and moving.  The combination of music and imagery in some parts was particularly meaningful.  And the whole thing is made even more remarkable by the fact that it is a true story, based on the book written by the protagonist.  It really made me reflect on my own life and joie de vivre.  I shed a tear in this one.  See it.  Read it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lars and the Real Girl – This one surprised me.  I had heard good things about it but I had the impression that it was going to be funnier than it was.  Don’t get me wrong, it was funny, but not in the way I expected.  And the humor was definitely not the center of the film for me.  It was remarkable to me how they could make a movie with such a ridiculous premise and turn it into one of the most endearing and heartfelt films I’ve seen recently.  I remember feeling a little ridiculous as I shed a tear in a movie about a man who falls in love with a sex doll.  See this movie.