Yester-Me Yester-You Yesterday

Saturday, May 16, 2015 10:56 PM

Overcast, sprinkly day—our neighbor hurt his hand on a power tool, but Bear had just bought some first aid supplies—now his fingers look like gauzy sausages. If it ain’t one thing, it’s another. But my day went alright—up until now, when I’m finally posting the videos—the Stevie Wonder Covers video is like eighteen minutes long—and I’ve got a splitting headache from all this video editing. Not that my performance wouldn’t make Mr. Wonder cringe to hear it, but he’s on his level, and I’m down here on mine. With some more practice, I may be able to post better attempts in future videos—I love his music. I hope that, at least, can be heard.

The improv is silly—on purpose. I felt it was high time I did something silly and this improv qualifies.

The Artworks for both videos, by Caspar Luyken and Carel Allard, are, once again, provided (for non-commercial use only) by the wonderful Rejksmuseum (State Museum) in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

“Verzamelen van het manna in de woestijn”, Caspar Luyken, 1712

(“Gathering Manna in the Desert”)

Source Graphic courtesy of : The Rijksmuseum Website

“Sterrenkaart van de noordelijke sterrenhemel”, Carel Allard,

Johannes Covens en Cornelis Mortier, Anonymous, c. 1722 – c. 1750

(“Star-Chart of the Northern Hemisphere”)

Source Graphic courtesy of : The Rijksmuseum Website

Tuesday, April 21, 2015 6:56 PM

It’s been kind of a scatter-shot day. Didn’t rain much, but the sun didn’t shine much either. We’re all up in the air, living off take-out, waiting for the clock to run out on the big game. Shouldn’t be long now.

The new movies came out on VOD—or, I think they did—I didn’t see anything that really pleased me. Lotta stuff coming out recently in genres I don’t go for—horror, suspense—anything that raises my stress level, basically. I’ll go for a straight Action flick, but anything where the director’s goal is to manipulate the audience’s fear, or to go for shock-value—like those scenes where a truck comes out of nowhere and hits the car the people are in—I can’t take a rollercoaster ride anymore, not even a vicarious one. Shocking scenes crop up often enough in other movies these days—I don’t care for a movie that focuses on just that aspect of cinema.

It makes sense—I can’t expect Hollywood to crank out a new sci-fi or superhero film every day. Besides, if they dumped eight of them onto the VOD menu in one day, my head would explode and I wouldn’t enjoy the movies because of all the hurry. So, ‘every once in a while’ will have to do.

Here’s a couple of videos and some pictures from the yard: