Deafened by the sound of my earphones playing "Billie Jean" on perpetual repeat, I didn't hear until today about the (totally overshadowed and unreported) death of Robert McNamara: Vietnam warmonger, killer of millions and (depending on how you see things) the star of the superb documentary The Fog Of War.
I wasn't alive or American during the Vietnam War, so that documentary was the first time I really encountered McNamara. By the end of the film I didn't know whether to hate him or admire him... so I decided the best I could do was to learn from him. The notion of Proportional Response (if your enemy shoots your tank, it's best not to A-bomb his capital) is one I've had to employ a couple too many time in my career.
Smashing
Just finished laughing my way through a brilliant list at the Vulture page at New York magazine's always-excellent website: Which Reunited Rock Bands Hate Each Other The Most?
They're all there, from Blink 182 and The Police to The Pixies and Rage Against The Machine - plus, of course, Billy Corgan And The Billy Corgan Band Featuring Some People Who Aren't As Famous Or As Gifted And Talented As Billy Corgan... or whatever Billy Corgan is calling The Smashing Pumpkins these days.
Secrets
Lifehacker has a brilliant suggestion for hiding a cluttered room and creating a secret lair in your own home: Turn a bookshelf into a secret passageway!
As they say: "Who hasn't dreamed of having a mystery-story-style secret passageway? While a trick bookshelf is pretty awesome in itself, this secret passage hides a home office with clever style."
Small Change?
The US dollar is in bad shape. And the lateral-thinking people at the Dollar ReDe$ign Project have a plan to get things bad on track. It's not a particularly good or practical or economically viable plan... but who cares? It looks great.
"We need to rebuild our country," they say. "Revive our economy." No arguments there. "Redesign the Dollar bill." Huh?
Actually, I kind of like the idea. And I love some of the design ideas that've been submitted.
Guilty Pleasure
I'm loving the new Pet Shop Boys song... For no real reason other than it's nice to have booming in the background. And the video - by animator Han Hoogerbrugge - is very cool.
Goes to show: They do still make 'em like they used to.
Goes to show: They do still make 'em like they used to.
Last Man Standing
I just watched an episode of the geek-a-liscious TV show Numb3rs, where the MacGuffin was a stolen comic book. That got me thinking about American comic books, and particularly the ones I've read and enjoyed.
Top of the list is Y: The Last Man. The premise is basic but brilliant: Yorick Brown is (copy/pasting from the DC webpage now...) "the only human survivor of a planet-wide plague that instantly kills every mammal possessing a Y chromosome". The girls - realistically but somewhat disappointingly - don't handle the collective death of the entire male gender very well at all.
The narrative is long (there are, like, 60 issues in the series), but it carries you along like nothing else - both visually and in terms of the plot and dialogue. One of the reviewers said it best: "This year's best movie is a comic book."
If you promise not to BitTorrent it (like I did, for shame), then I'll tell you that the first issue is available for free download from DC.
Top of the list is Y: The Last Man. The premise is basic but brilliant: Yorick Brown is (copy/pasting from the DC webpage now...) "the only human survivor of a planet-wide plague that instantly kills every mammal possessing a Y chromosome". The girls - realistically but somewhat disappointingly - don't handle the collective death of the entire male gender very well at all.
The narrative is long (there are, like, 60 issues in the series), but it carries you along like nothing else - both visually and in terms of the plot and dialogue. One of the reviewers said it best: "This year's best movie is a comic book."
If you promise not to BitTorrent it (like I did, for shame), then I'll tell you that the first issue is available for free download from DC.
White Flag
So my quick visit to the Artchive (two down) ended up - as usual - being longer than just a "quick visit"... and I stopped in for a look at their Jasper Johns collection. There's something about his White Flag that I really like...
Maybe it's the disconnect - in my eyes, at least - between the ideas of waving the Stars 'n Stripes of strength and waving the white flag of surrender. Especially on such a broad canvas.
Maybe it's the disconnect - in my eyes, at least - between the ideas of waving the Stars 'n Stripes of strength and waving the white flag of surrender. Especially on such a broad canvas.
Girl Power
The New Yorker magazine has an excellent piece about the 17th century Dutch artist Judith Leyster. She's one of the few female painters to have emerged from the mannishly mannish world of art history – and even then, she's barely known today. I hadn't heard of her til I read the story – and the usually brilliant Artchive has a very, very short entry on her.
Check out the New Yorker's audio slideshow for more on her and her work.
Check out the New Yorker's audio slideshow for more on her and her work.
Heroes
Three years ago I was scarred by Slate's infamous "Rediscovering He-Man" story (which is, I have to tell you, one of the funniest pieces I've read anywhere ever), in which the author discovered a (possibly unintentional, but still hilarious) gay subtext to my favourite childhood hero.
Now the jokesters at Cracked have published a list of The 7 Most Pathetic GI Joe Characters...
And now I am left with a shattering reassessment of almost all my childhood TV heroes. All, that is, except for the Thundercats. Any moment now somebody's going to go and make a fake movie trailer about them, using CGI-enhanced footage of Brad Pitt, Vin Diesel and Hugh Jackman.
Oh. Looks like that already happened.
Now the jokesters at Cracked have published a list of The 7 Most Pathetic GI Joe Characters...
And now I am left with a shattering reassessment of almost all my childhood TV heroes. All, that is, except for the Thundercats. Any moment now somebody's going to go and make a fake movie trailer about them, using CGI-enhanced footage of Brad Pitt, Vin Diesel and Hugh Jackman.
Oh. Looks like that already happened.
Proust
While we're on the topic of Vanity Fair, here's an archive of their famous Proust Questionnaire. My favourite is the one with Jasper Johns.
Oscar + Oscar
I've been looking for an excuse to link to this for ages... and today I decided I don't need any excuses at all. It's Annie Leibovitz's Hollywood Portfolio for Vanity Fair, and it's a collection of her portraits of Oscar-nominated actor-director teams.
Editorially, some of the combos don't work (many of the 'famous duos' listed have only made one movie together) while others do (Clint Eastwood + Clint Eastwood)... but Annie Leibovitz could take a picture of a dustbin and it'd look like high art to my eyes.
Fore!
I have yet to score anywhere near par (Par = 27. My best so far = 39) at my local mashie course, yet I'm still fascinated by golf. Which is why I enjoyed reading these two pieces:
The first is from Time magazine – it's a list/gallery of the 10 toughest golf courses in the world. Scary stuff. Makes my mashie course seem like... well... a mashie course. Consider this story to be a companion piece to the 10 Toughest Majors some dude wrote for SA Sports Illustrated a while back, and you have a yips-inducing package.
Then the second story is another classic from Rick Reilly, who recently moved from SI to ESPN (sensible fella). It's about Lucas Glover's reaction (or non-reaction) to winning the US Open.
I have to say: I agree with Reilly. If the team I'm supporting loses, I expect them to be as gutted as I am (tears, recriminations, the works); and similarly if they win, I expect them to express boundless joy and jubilation. I remember after Liverpool's 2005 Champions League triumph, Jon Arne Riise ran around the stadium in his nasty grey underpants in rapturous celebration.
And then you get a guy who barely cracks a smile after winning a golf Major.
Mutts
Where would we be without Time's in-depth news coverage... of the World's Ugliest Dog show? Be warned, there are some real mutts in this litter.
Names
I just blew the dust off this Cracked classic: The 9 Manliest Names In The World. I'll never watch Australian rugby with the same eyes again.
My favourite random quote: "This one almost defies analysis, because what kind of parents call their kid "Flex?" Awesome ones, that's what kind."
My favourite random quote: "This one almost defies analysis, because what kind of parents call their kid "Flex?" Awesome ones, that's what kind."
Happy
I didn't want the previous link at the top of my page, bringing down my day... So I went through the Foreign Policy Photo Essay Archives to try find something a bit more cheerful.
Let's see... China’s Tragic Aftershocks... Legacy of a War... Five Years of Fighting... There's gotta be something here...
Man, Foreign Policy magazine has to be the most soul-destroying place to work at.
Aha! There! It's from a year and a half ago, but it'll do.
Africa
I consume a lot of media in any given day: magazine articles, web stuff, books, music, movie clips, blah blah blah... It's my day job, and it's what keeps me up at night. So in any given day I'll read a funny article on Cracked.com, listen to a history podcast by Dan Carlin, and work through a pile of proof-reading, copy editing and, occasionally, even some actual writing.
So I'm used to a blend of media. And my intention with this blog is to share some of the things I stumble upon with you – whether those things are funny or serious or stupid or clever or whatever.
Which explains this rather depressing link.
Foreign Policy magazine have posted a photo essay called Portraits of Instability, where they highlight the 20 most unstable countries in the world. As someone who lives in Africa, it was seriously depressing stuff. As I was flipping through the gallery, I started wondering – Zimbabwe... Sudan... DRC... – if all 20 countries were going to be African.
It took Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and North Korea to fill the rest of the list.
Man, that's depressing. I guess I'll have to post something happy this afternoon.
So I'm used to a blend of media. And my intention with this blog is to share some of the things I stumble upon with you – whether those things are funny or serious or stupid or clever or whatever.
Which explains this rather depressing link.
Foreign Policy magazine have posted a photo essay called Portraits of Instability, where they highlight the 20 most unstable countries in the world. As someone who lives in Africa, it was seriously depressing stuff. As I was flipping through the gallery, I started wondering – Zimbabwe... Sudan... DRC... – if all 20 countries were going to be African.
It took Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and North Korea to fill the rest of the list.
Man, that's depressing. I guess I'll have to post something happy this afternoon.
100
I'm only a casual MotoGP fan (not nearly as passionate about it as my motorhead sister), but that hasn't stopped me spending the past half-hour on the official MotoGP site reading up on Valentino Rossi's recent win.
Rossi's win at Assen last weekend was his 100th in MotoGP, and to celebrate he got a group of fans to roll out a massive banner with pictures of every
single
one
of those victories. Very, very cool indeed.
Rossi's win at Assen last weekend was his 100th in MotoGP, and to celebrate he got a group of fans to roll out a massive banner with pictures of every
single
one
of those victories. Very, very cool indeed.
Glasto
This year's Glastonbury music festival has only just finished, and The Big Picture already has a gallery up. And, in standard operating procedure for my favourite photo site, it's a brilliant, brilliant gallery. I could've used any of the pics to illustrate it... but I eventually settled on this one.
Tony!
Hollywood has the Oscars, and Broadway has the Tonys. And this year's American theatre awards ceremony was broadcast on American TV, with Doogie Howser himself doing the MC duties. The best part was the surprise closing number (hey, every Broadway show's gotta have one), where Doogie (Neil Patrick Harris) sang about the night's winners.
For a full explanation of all the jokes, check out the very funny New York Times blog post.
For a full explanation of all the jokes, check out the very funny New York Times blog post.
Oscars
Breaking news from the Academy Awards people (henceforth to be known as the Oscar Academy): according to the BBC, the Oscar for Best Song will only be awarded if there's actually a song that's good enough to deserve an Oscar.
Only question I have is: will Three 6 Mafia (2005) and have to hand their Oscar back now?
Oh, and then they're also un-shortening the shortlist of Best Picture Nominees from five to 10, in a move New York magazine seems quite happy about.
Speaking of the Oscars, here's a charming little tale from the LA Times magazine of the time a python went missing at the 1993 Oscar ceremony...
Only question I have is: will Three 6 Mafia (2005) and have to hand their Oscar back now?
Oh, and then they're also un-shortening the shortlist of Best Picture Nominees from five to 10, in a move New York magazine seems quite happy about.
Speaking of the Oscars, here's a charming little tale from the LA Times magazine of the time a python went missing at the 1993 Oscar ceremony...
Laduuuma!
Get out your vuvuzelas, people! The Big Picture has a gallery/portfolio/whatever of photographs of soccer in South Africa. It's brilliant stuff, and – unlike so many other faux-safari international features – it really captures the essence of soccer in Mzansi.
(I would post all their pictures, but I want you to go check out their page for yourself.)
Should've Been Red
When The Love Guru came out, it was so bad – so horribly, horribly unfunny – that it made at least one reviewer stop and reassess Mike Myers' entire body of work. Suddenly, the fart gags in the Austin Powers movies seemed not funny by puerile. Suddenly his other characters (I'm talking to you, Fat Bastard) seemed funny for five minutes, but stupid for two full-length features. And suddenly Mike Myers seemed like he'd never ever been funny.
Yup, The Love Guru was that bad.
I'm feeling the same now about Schalk Burger. Since he made his Springbok debut in 2003, I've dismissed his bad tackles and perpetual sin-bin visits as over-enthusiasm at best and clumsiness at worst. Malice? No way. Not Schalkie. He's just a big, lovable doofus.
And then he tried – accidentally, they'll tell you – to gouge Lions winger Luke Fitzgerald's eyes out.
That's not clumsy, nor is it over-enthusiastic. That's mean-spirited, and it makes him less of a doofus and more of a schoolyard bully. He's been banned for eight weeks. I'll be spending those eight weeks reassessing every "clumsy" tackle he's made since 2003.
Yup, The Love Guru was that bad.
I'm feeling the same now about Schalk Burger. Since he made his Springbok debut in 2003, I've dismissed his bad tackles and perpetual sin-bin visits as over-enthusiasm at best and clumsiness at worst. Malice? No way. Not Schalkie. He's just a big, lovable doofus.
And then he tried – accidentally, they'll tell you – to gouge Lions winger Luke Fitzgerald's eyes out.
That's not clumsy, nor is it over-enthusiastic. That's mean-spirited, and it makes him less of a doofus and more of a schoolyard bully. He's been banned for eight weeks. I'll be spending those eight weeks reassessing every "clumsy" tackle he's made since 2003.
Them Too
New York magazine has a left-handed tribute to the Farrah Fawcett, wherein they name some other celebs whose deaths were overshadowed by the deaths of a brighter star.
And honestly, you've got to feel sorry for Aldous Huxley and CS Lewis...
Them's The Brakes
I've never really been much of a car guy. I know it's not something that, as Dr Evil said, one dude should say to another dude... but it's true. I (sort of) know what torque is, and I (more or less) know where to locate the engine, but drive any distance beyond that and I'm lost.
But I still know a cool car from a lemon. And - Prius-driving petrol-pumpers be damned! - I still love those gas-guzzlin' big bangers from days of yore. I wish, wish, I could've lived in the lead-paint world of the old Pontiac Bonneville, before some idiot decided that we should all drive bollocksy, cardboard-cutout, run-of-the-mill, mass-produced plastic autos like the Citi Golf or the Toyota Tazz. Give me a 5-litre engine and an impossible fuel bill over these new 1300 runabouts any day.
PJ O'Rourke - who's one of my favourite writers and should be one of yours - agrees. And with General Motors about to drive itself off a cliff, he's written a piece for the Wall Street Journal about the American love affair with cars. It's less of a newspaper article and more of a love letter:
"Thus cars usurped the place of horses in our hearts. Once we’d caught a glimpse of a well-turned Goodyear, checked out the curves of the bodywork and gaped at that swell pair of headlights, well, the old gray mare was not what she used to be. We embarked upon life in the fast lane with our new paramour. It was a great love story of man and machine. The road to the future was paved with bliss."
It's enough to make even an automotive ignoramus like me cry.
Off The Wall
There's a nice (but short, and not as funny as the stuff at Cracked) story at DesignCrave about the 10 Most Stunning Art Thefts In World History. Now I can see why someone might want, say, the original The Scream on their walls... but mental Dutch dude Hans Memling's Last Judgment is just scary.
Those polyptychs (like cupboards, just without the packing space, and with over-the-top religious stuff painted on every panel) give me the heebs.
The Pot Called It Black
While trawling through the community section at Dan Carlin's Hardcore History site (mandatory viewing – and listening! – for history geeks), I found a reference to the little-known Kettle War.
What a great story.
In the late 1700s, the Holy Roman Empire declared war on the States of Holland. The Empire used the great might of the Belgian Navy (two warships and a merchant vessel). The States of Holland would have had the help of the Admiralty of Friesland (oh land of my fathers), but my ancestors' warships got stuck in the harbour at Harlingen and had to be dismantled. (Frisians: we are a proud bu simple people.)
Reason it's called the Kettle War is this: When the Dutch caught sight of the Belgian "navy", they fired off a shot, which flew across the Scheldt delta, ricocheted off a kettle the Belgians had boiling on a stove, and plopped harmlessly into the polderwaters. The Belgians immediately surrendered.
Required Reading
I just finished reading probably the single most crappiest book ever to have insinuated its way onto my otherwise illustrious reading list. It's called "The Gaudí Key", and it's by a couple of Spaniards who tried to jump onto the "Da Vinci Code" bus back in 2006.
The plot (I think – it's all over the place) goes like this: Catalan artist Antoni Gaudí protects a great religious secret by leaving a string of clues in his artworks in Barcelona. Now I'm a huge Gaudí fan, and I love the city of Barcelona. So I had reasonably high hopes for the book – even though I knew it was a Dan Brown knockoff.
I couldn't wait to see what secret symbols were hidden (fictionally or not) in the gorgeous Sagrada Familia cathedral. As a work of architecture, it's a breath-taking combination of science, mathematics, art, religion, construction and history.
Too bad the book was such a pile of poo.
What irritates me most is not the stinking craptitude of the book. No, what makes me really mad about the book is that I cannot start reading a book and then not finish it. For some reason I've convinced myself that every book is great (by virtue of its printed pages alone), and that if I cannot read a book until the very last page, then there's something wrong with me. Crap movies I can walk out of. Crap TV shows I can switch off. Crap books? I feel compelled to sit through them, no matter how bad they are. There's something about the whole paper/ink combination that makes me think that books carry greater cultural gravitas.
The writers of "The Gaudí Key" must have known this about me.
Two Turntables And A Microphone
Now for some unfathomable reason I have "Where It's At" by Beck stuck in my head.
How funny is the VeeJay? "Dat is de groovy way of Back Han San." Love it.
How funny is the VeeJay? "Dat is de groovy way of Back Han San." Love it.
Totally Saw It Coming
¡Ay, caramba! The United States just beat Spain in the Confed Cup Semifinal – a game the USA barely sneaked into after pulling off an impossible six-goal swing against Italy and Egypt.
Having donned my special Magic Hindsight Sunglasses, allow me to reveal to you shocked masses that I am not at all shocked by this shock result. I recall, in my misty, watercoloured memories of 1993, that the same US of Underdogs beat England 2-0 in what was a not-at-all-shocking result. In hindsight. (Seriously, though, I was an England fan at the time and England were completely toilet. The mid-1990s were a hard time.)
And then in 2002, the States marched into the World Cup Quarterfinal against Germant, only to be robbed - robbed, I say! - by a blind Scottish referee (named, ironically, Hugh Dallas) who ignored a German blatantly hand-balling the ball behind the goalline. Had the US been awarded that penalty (or the goal; I'd have settled for the goal), they would have scored, equalised, then won, beaten South Korea in the Semifinal (OK, no, they'd have probably lost that one), and then beaten Brazil in the World Cup Final.
See? Blatant. The laws of Karma dictate that the United States should for ever more be able to overturn six-goal deficits and beat the world's Number 1-ranked team with only 10 men in a Fifa Semifinal. It's only fair.
(I've been carrying the rage about that 2002 game with me for the past seven years. Feels good to finally get it off my chest.)
White Fever
Discovered this little gem on ESPN: it's an excerpt from SI writer L Jon Wertheim's new book, where he describes the pre-match rituals of Federer and Nadal prior to their epic Wimbledon Final last year. Makes for a great read. Wonder what the rest of the book's like...?
Pitch Or Putt?
Great photo from ESPN (actually from Getty Images, but you get the idea...) of the atrocious weather conditions at the weekend's US Open. Lucky for me, it was all sunshine at my Mashie course on Saturday.
Sneakers
I'm watching a documentary called Just For Kicks, about the sneaker phenomenon and its influence on hip-hop culture. It's seriously cool.
Total Eclipse
And now presenting... Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" music video. The literal version.
There's a whole bunch of literal music videos on YouTube (REM, Billy Idol... no-one's safe), but this one's my favourite.
There's a whole bunch of literal music videos on YouTube (REM, Billy Idol... no-one's safe), but this one's my favourite.
Summer Holiday
It's a pretty miz day today, so I'm goofing off work and taking a virtual vacation. The world map at Whoopy lets you check out geocached photos from anywhere on Earth – so that's my first stop.
And today's destination of choice is... the Faroe Islands. Check out this amazing photo of Kirkjubøargarður, one of the oldest still-inhabited wooden houses in the world.
And today's destination of choice is... the Faroe Islands. Check out this amazing photo of Kirkjubøargarður, one of the oldest still-inhabited wooden houses in the world.
Whatev
William Safire has a brilliant column – called On Language – in the New York Times. This one from late May is props one of my faves.
Bust A Move
There's a great collection at The Big Picture called "Dance Around The World". Nice to see some happy snaps for once – the news has been pretty gloomy recently.
Except, of course, for soccer fans, who've been treated to a Confed Cup that's been one of the most exciting mini-tournaments I've seen in a long time. Herewith a few points for the haters:
• Iraq were not "unlucky" to be knocked out. They didn't score a single goal, and didn't look like they particularly wanted to either.
• South Africa were not "lucky" to progress. Even if Iraq had beaten New Zealand 1-0, South Africa would still have progressed, despite losing to Spain.
• South Africa need a decent striker.
• So do Brazil. They're missing a target man like Ronaldo, Romario, Adriano, Bebeto... you get the picture.
• The vuvuzela is loud, and it makes my TV sound like there's a mosquito in the house. But it's part of watching soccer in South Africa – much like racist chants in Spanish soccer, and much like stabbing children in Italian soccer.
Except, of course, for soccer fans, who've been treated to a Confed Cup that's been one of the most exciting mini-tournaments I've seen in a long time. Herewith a few points for the haters:
• Iraq were not "unlucky" to be knocked out. They didn't score a single goal, and didn't look like they particularly wanted to either.
• South Africa were not "lucky" to progress. Even if Iraq had beaten New Zealand 1-0, South Africa would still have progressed, despite losing to Spain.
• South Africa need a decent striker.
• So do Brazil. They're missing a target man like Ronaldo, Romario, Adriano, Bebeto... you get the picture.
• The vuvuzela is loud, and it makes my TV sound like there's a mosquito in the house. But it's part of watching soccer in South Africa – much like racist chants in Spanish soccer, and much like stabbing children in Italian soccer.
Very Sharp
It's offensive. It's obscene. It's profane. It's perverted. It is, of course, the latest feature on Cracked.com - Closeted Badasses: 6 Famous Wusses That Would Own You. It contains the funniest sentence I've read all week - and that's saying something, because I've just read the brilliant second page of William Shatner's autobiography (more on that later) - which is:
"Michael Flatley is the fancy-footed Irish-American step dancer behind beloved prance fests like "River Dance," "Lord of the Dance," "Feet of Flames" and "The Celtic Tiger." This is where we'd normally insert a joke about how we made one of those names up. Not this time."
Pure comic genius. Much like James Blunt's appearance on Sesame Street, which is here for you to enjoy:
"Michael Flatley is the fancy-footed Irish-American step dancer behind beloved prance fests like "River Dance," "Lord of the Dance," "Feet of Flames" and "The Celtic Tiger." This is where we'd normally insert a joke about how we made one of those names up. Not this time."
Pure comic genius. Much like James Blunt's appearance on Sesame Street, which is here for you to enjoy:
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