Cattle & Cane

Great performers in one of my favourite venues The Olde Young Tea House.

Stunning music with the power to transport the people in the room away from any cares at least for a little while. Hope these vids give you a taste of the atmosphere and make you want to come to the next gig William K.J. Anderson + Bob Fischer on June 3rd.

The talented Teesside Treats also took some great photos from the night.

As if the ability to thank an author who has given me a lot of joy, whose books I have read hundreds of times over many years, and receiving a tweet in return was not enough, this morning a colleague at work, who was a book giver, had extra copies and handed them out to half the department inspiring the idea of a work book group to take place every few months.

World Book Night is a powerful force.

Programme for Middlesbrough Literary Festival 2012 available here.

If you’re looking for a great story to read with strong and funny female heroines try The Hero and the Crown followed by The Blue Sword.

The covers I grew up with are below. The first, The Hero and the Crown was given to be for my 12th birthday. A classmate gave it to me, I think he may have bought it from a supermarket nearby with a rotating book rack, as a I saw another copy of it a few days later. I ended up reading this book hundreds of times, as comforting as any well worn, fuzzy, blanket.

The continuation of the story was actually released before its prehistory above. I read The Blue Sword, in a hardcover version, many times over taking it out of my school’s library. It may have confused any other students who took it out to see my name multiple times on the card slipped into the pocket glued to the inside of the back cover.

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Again impressed with them both, Emma takes great care to make every person feel welcome, makes introductions and in general keeps a constant eye out for incoming attendees.

Michael instills a sense of order even in the unconference format with a light touch.

An unconference has no set agenda, people suggest topics for conversation they are willing to lead. These are then organised into time slots. Pick the conversation you want to join or have a side chat, no worries.

There was also an art fair going on in the Arts Centre at the same time. Bought a few felt button pins from one of the traders – too cute!

As with the previous convo, people brought food to share. Thank you anonymous person who brought homemade cupcakes – the chocolate one was delicious!

Reconnected with someone from the first cultural convo I attended and met a few new folks.

Conversations on mayors, art made of books and Bar and Books and the potential for an art book project in the area, on money and the importance of art-y people having  business skills or access to people who do and the ability for the two tribes to converse in a common language – Art-biz-speranto? and where do we go from here on Teesside…

Projects I learned about yesterday in alphabetical order:

Cafe Create

Darlington for Culture

n0tice.com via Foodie Sarah

Openart Studio

Send a book to Mali

Vane Women

Hope a few people were intrigued enough with Bar and Books and #borotweetup to come on 4 May.

Thank you to the lovely and talented designer Amanda Bradley who gave me a lift home.

Thanks Mike for posting an RSA Animates video on your blog. Off to watch them all now! Though the playlist is embedded below these are worth watching in full-res on youtube.

FoodieSarah’s report from the event.

May have convinced Glen to get a Samsung Note too.

The HTC is running the latest version of Android and has a slightly faster chip.

The Galaxy Note has a gorgeous screen and a nice calendar app. Should have the new  Android at some point and additional apps to make use of the stylus it comes with. It is a bit large for a phone, future / retro a la old school mobile phones. Mostly use my phone for internet and tweetdeck so the size is a plus and the AMOLED screen is really nice.

While the HTC One X seems like it would be a great phone (a worthy successor to the desire), and have also had friends say great things about the Samsung Galaxy S,  in terms of my usage the Note potentially does away with a desire for a tablet, and stays highly portable.

Took notice of the Note because of this preview by Hugh MacLeod of Gaping Void [well done Samsung marketing people.]

One thing that bothers me a bit about rushing out to get one of these is though I like having new gadgets, I appreciate it’s not the greenest thing in the world. [interesting startup for dealing with small consumer electronics was recently featured on good - eco atm.]

It does seem that gadgets are designed to be replaced in cycles of contracts or less. [planned obsolescence.]

The HTC One X does not allow you to open the case. It comes with a good amount of internal storage but for additional storage it gives you a free dropbox account for 2 years. The length of most contracts for a pricey new gadget. I think they assume you will replace it in that window so you shouldn’t mind not getting storage that is yours to keep or it’s a continuation of a model where content, storage, etc. is accessed not owned and stored in THE CLOUD (there I’ve said it).

The Samsung Galaxy Note comes with less internal storage but with the ability to add up to a 32g micro sd card.

The note also comes with a stylus. I like the idea of being able to write over images. Though I am wondering how much of this is due to not thinking digitally a la Erin McKean of Wordnik’s talk at Thinking Digital. Making the pen electric, is it a skeuomorph? [see the video below]

Either way it might end up cost saving – make me stop buying journals and notepads with pretty designs and textures from TK Maxx. Saving money already! :o)

One small point of annoyance, the Note is not being offered by t-Mobile so in order to buy it have to go through phones4u or carphone warehouse to stick with a t-mobile contract.

Update: the folks in the T-mobile shop in Middlesbrough at the Hillstreet centre were awesome and they also stock the Note instore!!

Looking to buy your own new gadget?

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Just found out this book exists. Sad I didn’t get it in time for the holiday.

and Happy Easter

Enjoy Jesus Shaves by David Sedaris or this shorter live version

Had the idea for a while and loved the book swap at the Durham Book Festival.

20-something people turned up with hundreds of books. yay!

People swapped books for free and if they wanted additional books they paid £1 per book to go to charity. A lovely baker from the Vintage Fair, taking place next door, also dropped off some cupcakes to be sold for charity.

The first Bar and Books raised £13.80.

In the sign in book people were asked to name charities for any money raised to go to. Here’s the list:

• Shelter – http://www.shelter.org.uk/ – 2 votes
• C.A.P. – Christians Against Poverty – http://www.capuk.org/ – 1 vote
• TAP – UNICEF Tap Project – http://www.tapproject.org/ – 1 vote
• RSPCA – http://www.rspca.org.uk – 1 vote
• Marie Curie Cancer Care – http://www.mariecurie.org.uk/ – 1 vote
• Zoes Place – http://www.zoes-place.org.uk/middlesbrough/ – 3 votes
• Teesside Hospice – http://www.teessidehospice.org/ – 1 vote
• Butterwick Hospice – http://www.butterwick.org.uk/ – 1 vote

Huge thanks to Blu bar in Middlesbrough for having us. They were also kind enough to let us store the leftover books for the next Bar and Books event!

Questions for consideration for next time include whether there should be an admission charge / suggested donation to aid in marketing and make sure there’s money to go to the charities people nominate and also how to distribute to the charities.

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Setlist from November 1, 2011 at The Sage Gateshead, Hall 2.

Rosh Hashanah / New Year greeting card, originally uploaded by Center for Jewish History, NYC.

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• Kiddie Disco -
• How commercial airplanes SHOULD be laid out -
• High School Was A Lie -
• 3D Printer -
• Strunk and White -
• Russian Phrase Book -

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Had a great day yesterday with a visit to mima, Capaldis, the Southfield, the Hairy Lemon (which would be referenced by Morrissey later in the evening post a small powercut – “The Hairy Lemon was sucking all the juice out of Middlesbrough – disgusting!”) and at the Town Hall with an unofficial after-party at Medicine Bar.

The lovely friends I went with decided to get me a birthday present of one of the summer tour posters (Morrissey with the cat on his head) and a set of badges. Yay :o)

Links to some vids and photos on The Northern Line

Below, song that amused me with its Morrissey impression when I was younger:

The Sextants – 01 Morrissey – I Don’t Lie EP

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More on the song here.

Below are my photos used in the video and the locations and artists when I know them.

Found in Brooklyn from Gaia Street Art, on flickr

Ame 72 in Inside Out Exhibition at Tel Aviv Port

Resistance is Fertile sticker found in Amsterdam

Jerusalem Street Art / Stickers

We’re All Custom Made Tel Aviv Street Art / Stencil

Tel Aviv, Smiling Bag Productions, on flickr

C215 in Amsterdam

Tel Aviv Stencil

C215 in Amsterdam

C215 in Amsterdam

Amsterdam

C215 in Amsterdam

Inspire Collective in Jerusalem

Tel Aviv Street Art / Stencil

Postdesigner in Tel Aviv

Amsterdam

Tel Aviv

Hanna Skull Head by Dreck in Tel Aviv

Ame 72 in Inside Out Exhibition at Tel Aviv Port

Tel Aviv Street Art – Golda Meir and Theodor Herzl

Jerusalem Street Art – Dexter

Amsterdam – Black Money at Wolf & Pack Gallery

Inspire Collective in Tel Aviv

Amsterdam

Inspire Collective in Tel Aviv

Dreck in Tel Aviv

Amsterdam

Brooklyn

Tel Aviv

Kufsoshor by Kufsened in Tel Aviv

Warsaw

Ame 72 in Inside Out Exhibition at Tel Aviv Port

Jerusalem

Know Hope in Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv, Smiling Bag Productions, on flickr

Zero Cents in Tel Aviv

Know Hope in Tel Aviv

Amsterdam

Tel Aviv, Buy Nothing Day

via boingboing and waxy

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Inspiration for the lyrics from tacet

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From the folks at Donkey Products who had previously done Royal-tea with the Queen soaking in the cup. (available from Donkey Products, or from Pylones in the US). Both shops are a good source of fun gifts, the kind you couldn’t justify buying for yourself necessarily but can buy for other people.

Artist Lydia Leith made Royal Wedding sick bags. They are still available for purchase from here.

These may inspire you to go aww or make you want to get the sick bags above. A great craft idea for kids from Activity Village who had loads of Royal Wedding activities for kids.

Papa John’s pizza got in the royal wedding spirit and garnered int’l coverage.

Brewdog has 1000 bottles of Royal Virility Performance available. They include Herbal viagra.

Heritage condoms available from http://crownjewelscondoms.com/heritage.html

Royal wedding cock ring from Love Honey

Primark T-shirts photographed by flickr user glatisant

Alternative Royal Wedding Collector Plates featured in Londonist

Royal Wedding Tat posterous which features royal bed-ding sheets at Premier Inn, pez dispensers, nail transfers, lego and more!

William and Kate a pair of Great-crested Grebes at RSPB Saltholme

My tribute to the Princess Beatrice Hat

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Inspiration for the lyrics from tacet

The Sipping Seder

Plus an awesome link to  The Sipping Seder.

Chag Sameach!

Marble Cake, originally uploaded by Whistling in the Dark.

Recipe for my mom’s marble cake in Hebrew so translation below. Made this for the borotweetup on Friday.

Marble Cake

Ingredients

7 eggs separated
1 ½ cups of sugar
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
¾ cup orange juice
1/6 cup oil
1 tbsp vanilla sugar
—
2 tbsp cocoa powder
2 tsp instant coffee
1 tbsp vanilla sugar

1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, add sugar, add yolks at medium speed
2. then add flour, baking powder, juice and oil
3. grease up a rectangular pan with oil (I use a large rectangular glass pyrex dish)
4. pour in 3/4 of the mixture
5. to the remaining 1/4 of the mixture in the bowl add the cocoa, coffee and vanilla sugar mix well
6. then add into the mixture already in the dish, use a fork to make the marble swirls.
7. Preheat the oven to 350/190. Bake for 40-45 minutes until a toothpick or fork can be inserted into the middle and come out clean.

Tips:

My mom listed vanilla sugar twice when writing out the recipe, once in the first mixture and then again in the chocolate mixture. I have made it with it in both, in just one and without.

If you don’t leave enough batter in the bowl the chocolate becomes denser/heavier and may sink to the bottom so you have a layer of chocolate at the bottom.

If you’re baking powder is not fresh you may end up with a flatter cake.

It’s an easy cake to make and it will taste good no matter what you do to it.

The batter is yummy too if you end up with some left in the bowl * innocent whistle *

The addition to the borotweetup cake was chocolate buttercream frosting and m+ms.

The chocolate buttercream frosting recipe I use is from cooks.com.

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients

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Buy Queen of Denmark immediately (2 CD version – the extra tracks are worth it). He is backed by Midlake on it.

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Only 49 hours left! Watch the video – back it on kickstarter.

$1 will get you a pdf and a part in a completely brilliant plan. More will get you art,  robots and jewelery oh my!

Watch the video, really, to see why they’re doing this.

Yesterday morning, getting into our car we spotted the phone encased in ice on the ground right near where we usually park.

The last time I used the phone was Wedneday night so it must have been there since then.

We felt like paleontologists digging a fossil out of the ground. Kev used his keys to scrape it out of its icy casing that was just beginning to melt.

It had a white rubbery case on the back. The colour blended in with the ice. There were dark marks on the case, so we think it must have been run over too.

We let it dry out for the day and yesterday evening we put Kev’s battery in my phone and it worked!!

The only damage is a slight crack on the clear glass part over the camera lens – but the camera still works. And there seems to be slight damage to the top right corner of the touchscreen. But the phone works perfectly.

It was such a relief because I have over a year left on the contract and we weren’t sure if the HTC Desire would have damp sensors like the iphone. Thankfully not. The HTC Desire is one hardy phone!!

So here’s to a Happy Time Christmas miracle. Thank you HTC.

Feeding our garden birds is so important when the weather gets as bad as this. You could actually be saving lives everytime you top up your feeders or put another fatball out.

Last year in the snow we had a visit from a very shy bird.

ZAP! Oww!

My favourite photo was this pre-parade snap of Santa and his elves.

For more info on Christmas 2010 events in Middlesbrough see:

http://visitmiddlesbrough.com/christmas

My photos of the day below there are additional photos here.

TFM Radio was on hand to host the festivities. A bunch of families were out as well as groups of teenagers. There were sing-a-longs to popular songs and performers from the Middlesbrough Theatre Panto Jack and the Beanstalk revving up the crowd.

A giant snowman hung out by the Christmas Tree to promote the Middlesbrough Town Hall – Northern Sinfonia production of The Snowman. Kids were loving him!

Many people were wondering who the light switcher on would be. It was a young boy named Ethan whose dad is serving in Afghanistan and won’t be home for Christmas. It was quite sweet.

Wayne from TFM radio explained that he could get the excitable crowd to do whatever he wants – jump up and down, pick their noses so little Ethan asked them to jump up and down.

Wayne then told him he could ask them to pretend to be his favourite animal – what’s your favourite animal?

“A Chicken!!!!”

It was brilliant.

The weather wasn’t brilliant but the atmosphere was. Nice antithesis to celebrity culture, struck just the right note.

For info on Christmas 2010 in Middlesbrough see:

http://visitmiddlesbrough.com/christmas

The official description:

“Unsettling in its opinion and unflinching in its language IRON is inspired by Nigel Williams’ play ‘Class Enemy’, re-imagined and brought to life by Company TSU.

A group of pupils rail against their lives. Angry and disillusioned they wait for a teacher, some answers, some direction but mostly they just wait for the bell to go.”

The play was performed in the round and the performances were excellent. There were video bits integrated into the play that worked well and added to the performance. (Minor quibble is one of these pieces set to the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen, felt long in terms of the length of the play.)

Lizzie was distracted by some of the language in the play, (a fairly constant patter of among other words the “c” word).  I don’t know if I am desensitized as a native NYer – I find it easy to filter.

Would love to see these performers again as they gain experience – they did a great job and there was some great potential on offer.

It needs to be said, Venue 2 at Middlesbrough College is another awesome space to watch theatre (in addition to the larger Hazel Pearson Theatre at the College, where we went to see an excellent production of The Laramie Project.)

Iron was performed in the round and it made you want to see more theatre groups creating productions for this amazing space.

Mayor Ray Mallon attended the performance too and reviewed it here.

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Kev is in the background commenting “now that’s rock n’ roll!”

Sara Watkins was joined by her brother Sean Watkins so we had two thirds of Nickel Creek on the stage. She performed a bunch of songs off of her album including the cover of pony by Tom Waits solo on ukulele.

They also performed two really great Nickel Creek songs – Reasons Why and also Somebody More Like You.

Really fun relaxed evening.

MONDAY

Morning: Circuit 9.30-10.15 ••• Body Pump 10.15-11.15
Midday: Yoga Fit 11.30-12.00 ••• Aqua 12.15-13.00
Evening: Tone Zone 17.30-18.15 ••• Spinning 17.30-18.15 ••• Yoga 18.00-19.15 ••• Latino 18.15-19.00

Body Pump  19.00-20.00

TUESDAY

Morning: Spinning 09.15-10.00 ••• Step 09.30-10.15 ••• Body Pump 10.15-11.15
Midday: Pilates 11.15-12.00 ••• M&Ms 12.15-13.00
Evening: Step – 17.30-18.15 ••• Spinning 18.00-18.45 ••• Aqua 18.15-19.00

Body Pump 18.15-19.00 ; Pilates 19.15-20.00

WEDNESDAY

Morning: Step 09.30-10.15 ••• Body Pump 10.15-11.15
Midday: Pilates 11.30-12.15 ••• Latino 11.30 – 12.15 ••• M&Ms 12.15-13.00 ••• Water Mobility 13.15-14.00
Evening: Step 17.30-18.15 ••• Spinning 18.00-18.45

Body Pump 18.15 – 19.00 ; Pilates 19.30-20.15

THURSDAY

Morning: Body Pump 07.15-08.00 ••• Spinning 09.30-10.15 ••• Tai Chi 09.30-10.45 ••• Water Mobility 10.00- 11.00 ••• Pilates 10.45-11.30
Midday: Aqua 12.45-13.30
11-15yrs: Teen shadowing on gym floor only 16.00-19.00
Evening: Spinning 18.00-18.45 ••• Aqua 18.30-19.15

Body Pump 17.45-18.45

FRIDAY

Morning: Step Circuit 09.15-10.00 ••• Aqua 10.00-10.45 ••• Balance Challenge 10.15-11.00
11-15yrs: Teen shadowing on gym floor only 16.00-19.00
Evening: Spinning 17.30-18.15

Tai Chi  17.30-18.45

SATURDAY

Morning: Spinning 10.00-10.45 ••• Kids Swim 10.00-14.00 (£2 per child)
Midday: Body Pump 11.00-12.00
11-15yrs: Teen shadowing on gym floor only 10.00-17.00

SUNDAY

Morning: Body Pump 10.00-11.00 (Kids welcome, 1 child per member) ••• Kids Swim 10.00-14.00 (£2 per child)
11-15yrs: Teen shadowing on gym floor only 10.00-17.00
Evening: Aqua 17.45-18.30 ••• Yoga 19.00-20.15

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I took Tai Chi many years ago. 1999. It was at the Executive Fitness Center at the World Trade Center Marriott, which became the Fitness Company mid-membership. The nice thing about going to a pricey gym in the financial district was that most of the members were men. Men don’t like to take classes. If you went to a class it was nearly a personal training session with 6-10 people in the class (except for spinning which was popular, still more women but full.)

The instructor was a small  Asian women who had been teaching for many years and had been a champion of some sort. The first day she did a demo with a ceremonial sword that was completely mesmerizing. Her flexibility and stability and how low she got to the ground were amazing.

She did not speak English very well so every week there were one or two long-time students of hers to explain and describe what she needed to communicate to us. I remember we focused on arm movements and leg movements and then combined them slowly building on each form once we more or less understood them.

I got through the first 13 positions and then had to stop taking the class – It was right before I moved away the first time. A really clear memory I have is of the day when I felt like I finally got the moves. When I was shifting the balance of my weight and my arms and legs were connected in movement. It was a revelation.

I remember there being an Asian woman I would head to the subway with after class. I remember stopping with her in the middle of the concourse of the World Trade Center station to do the moves I was so excited/giddy to have knowledge of.

Right now 11 years later, I am back to learning from scratch and feeling all jumbled and confused. Not sure where my weight needs to shift to, not sure how to move my arms and legs and don’t feel the connection between them.

I am hopeful that I will feel that feeling again with time.

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There was no option for positive impact on motor skills, hand-eye coordination, literacy and I seem to recall a study of multi-player online games leading to transferable skills for management in the workplace. Yet all video games were being tarred by the same brush.

It seems what they’re really concerned about is clueless parenting. Consenting, responsible adults should not be penalized and required to consume strictly content sanitized for children’s protection. Not everyone draws the line in the same place, so there needs to be room for a multiplicity of community standards…none of this was discussed.

In better television news, I am thoroughly excited for the new series of Misfits to be starting.

After a bizarre day at work, went to the MFC shop to purchase a Boro Brick in honour of my friends coming to visit from Chicago. I’m taking them to a match and now we will have a permanent souvenir of the occasion. : )

Stopped off at the new Caffe Nero in Middlesbrough before heading to the train.

Getting home tonight was misery. Took my usual 5.32 train only to hear an announcement saying we would have to get off one stop later at Thornaby to transfer to a bus which was of course not waiting for us. A very cold over an hour later we finally got on a bus. We stood at the side of the road waiting as empty buses drove past mocking our misery. Finally made it home a little over 2 hours after I started. Good mass transit is really the thing I miss most about NY.

The sad part was my plans for the evening were back in Middlesbrough again!

All’s well that ends well. We missed the first few opening acts but caught a really good mellow set by Billy the Kid and then new band The Vaccines at the Westgarth Social Club in Middlesbrough. The Vaccines reminded me of James crossed with a bit of the Ramones and a random folk singer. Julie thought they sounded a bit like the Editors.

A nice way to end the day. Here’s a vid of them playing Wreckin’ Bar (Ra Ra Ra) on Jools Holland last week.

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As part of this getting fit stuff we are also cooking more. This week pulled a few recipes out of the South Beach Diet Cookbook.

Last night we had:
Grilled Tuna with Teriyaki Glaze and Sesame Snow Pea and Asparagus Salad

Today we had:

Baked Portobello Caps with Melted Goat’s Cheese with South Beach Tomato Sauce

Enjoy this Halloween special for Transylvania TV that I helped to fund via Kickstarter.

Andrew Marr getting really into it, Harriet Harman uncomfortably tapping along to the rhythm with her hand, William Hague who you could see from behind sitting completely still and possibly stonefaced.

Thank you Andrew Marr for that inspired bit of television.

My legs are still in a bit of agony from the Thursday night Body Pump class.

Watched some TV, did some painting (walls) and then watched Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

I am conflicted about Scott Pilgrim. Fun characters, fun effects, fun music – it felt long though. I’m wondering if the parts I liked (apart from the music) are out of the graphic novel which I haven’t read.

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The drive to the Sage was a bit dicey. At one point there were sheets of rain coming down with hardly any visibility. Many cars were stopping on the shoulder to wait it out.

We listened to the Cathy Davey CD from last night still really good.

I’d been listening to Ellipse for a good chunk of the day at work. Could have also been listening to Frou Frou’s Details - happy making she sang Let Go based on the crowd’s votes for 12 songs on the setlist via her website.

She was plugging her new DVD which was just released on the 1st. It sounds interesting Imogen Heap’s Everything In-Between: The Story of Ellipse [DVD].

The bright  lights on the stage meant I couldn’t take decent pics on my phone the way I did last night but couldn’t resist trying to capture her with the Keytar :) Also in cartoon format here.

The tree in the set was beautiful, lighting up in different colours with instruments hanging in the branches. She uses a head mic plus mics on her wrists so she can brush up against random instruments and also briefly used wine glasses as in Miss Congeniality.

On of the best bits of the gig was three part harmonies with the crowd on Just for Now. We were in the middle section and I got to hear Kev sing * swoon* . Video below is of a sing along at Webster Hall in NY.

Setlist for the Sage Gateshead is available on Imogen Heap’s website »

As a way to get back into some creative activity will be posting throughout November.

Going to some great gigs so those will feature and hoping to write some long-form posts as well.

Greg Liszt mentioned that the new CD for his side project The Deadly Gentlemen is available for free download from their bandcamp site up until the official release. I’m really enjoying it. Try it below.

For video of The Deadly Gentlemen gig from January see Gregory Liszt’s Deadly Gentlemen at the Cluny2 in Newcastle

On a completely unrelated note the Old Town Hall sells yummy pirate and parrot cookies.  Still waiting for someone in Middlesbrough to open a bakery that sells Capt. Cook – ies.

Spending Rosh Hashana with family and friends, wishing you the above and more…

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His vimeo stream is here. Most recent Record Club is actually covering Yanni but Michael Hutchence-era INXS has a special place in my heart. Enjoy!

Record Club: INXS “Guns In The Sky” from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

Record Club: INXS “New Sensation” from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

Record Club: INXS “Devil Inside” from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

Record Club: INXS “Need You Tonight” from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

Record Club: INXS “Mediate” from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

Record Club: INXS “Loved One” from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

Record Club: INXS “Wild Life” from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

Record Club: INXS “Never Tear Us Apart” from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

Record Club: INXS “Mystify” from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

Record Club: INXS “Kick” from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

Record Club: INXS “Calling All Nations” from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

Record Club: INXS “Tiny Daggers” from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

Add a bagel with cream cheese and lox and we’re golden.

A neat website I hadn’t looked at in ages is oneword.com. You get a word and sixty seconds….start writing and don’t think to hard about it. When you’re done you can get what you’ve written emailed to you or just try another word.

Today’s attempt:

word: miles

miles and miles to go before I sleep…anagram for slime…or limes which smells better…

Think I need more practice : )

new mission should I choose to accept it: creation over consumption

Robin Ince – Stand-up plus host

Martin White – Did the attempt at a random catchy tune – DaNgErous! (Helen Arney helped with keyboard)
Helen Arney – Also performed songs on ukulele
Marcus Chown – Did awards show for scientists (author of We need to Talk about Kelvin)
Matt Parker – Standup maths on homeopathy and ancient civ of Woolworths
Joanna Neary – Did the two characters (olde worlde housewife diary and psycho children’s entertainer)
Darren Hayman – Did the protons and neutrons song
Simon Singh – Bit on Katie Melua song
Helen Keen – It is Rocket Science – satanists andnazis oh my!
Baba Brinkman – Rap on creationists….for the people in the room who couldn’t understand what he was wanting you to respond with (like someone I was with) – it was “We off that”

Is there anyone I missed?

This is the program we caught one late night on TV that made us want to go:

First, Middlesbrough Theatre was easy to get to (Laurie served as satnav) with free parking available right near the theatre. The seats were surprisingly comfortable. Appropriately enough to the evening’s performance, Middlesbrough Theatre was the first architect-designed theatre to be built after the Second World War.

The concession stand sells delicious ice cream from Jersey – we had chocolate and a toffee caramel flavour.  I need to find out the brand it was -  delicious (even better than the ice cream at the Sage). I definitely want to return, which is good since some people from work want to go see Alfie. It’s a reasonably priced night out.

I realised on the way over that it was actually my first time visiting a small regional theatre.

Now for the play.  Lotty’s War is by By Giuliano Crispini. Directed by Iain Davie. Set design by David Crisp. Costume Design by Susannah Tidy. Produced by Giddy Ox. Katie Howell as Lotty, not sure the names of the actors who played General-Major Rolf Bernburg and Ben.

Lotty is 17 at the start of the play, we meet her and her best friend and romantic interest Ben as carefree and playful youths. Her mother and sister leave to England before the occupation and when Guernsey is attacked and her father is killed, she is left alone in her house which is taken over by Nazi General-Major Rolf Bernburg. While other people are referenced by the characters these are the only people in the play.  All the action takes place in Lotty’s kitchen.

My companions were amazed by three actors being able to hold their attention for that long and tell a complicated story. There are loads of positive reviews kicking about, calling this a brave play at a time when Britain is occupying two countries and also commending it for exploring a little-known part of history…I wanted it to be better.

This review pretty much sums it up for me though I would blame the writer and the director more than the actors who do what they can with what they’re given.

The first half feels long. At the end of the play it made me question whether, in a meta way, they were trying to give me a little taste of the long years of occupation. There are some interesting ideas in the play about the psychological toll of long term occupation, the ability to identify or understand or love one’s captor, the requirements placed by one’s people or country, and just rewards in the face of survival.

Time going by is marked by the radio news. Unfortunately there are no visuals to back up the sense of time passing so the transformations in the characters can sometimes seem abrupt.

I was concerned that this would be another warm fuzzy Nazi story. While I don’t require that stories about WWII should resemble old school Westerns with a villain in a Black hat and a hero in a White ten gallon hat, and I accept that many Nazis were people in difficult situations, who compartmentalised their lives, I don’t want to ever forget their victims or turn them into bigger victims by the stories that get told.

I also felt that the power difference between a 17 year old girl and a Nazi general in his 40s/50s or so was not written sharply enough. He is civilised and they are portrayed as near equals with equivalent power. (Though in a discussion with a friend he pointed out that in those years that may have been a more reasonable age gap between men and women.)

Overall, I felt there were some interesting ideas and in Neil McEwan’s words in his review they “failed to match ambition to delivery.” I was left wanting a strong editor / director to shape it.

On an amusing note, the Nazi and I, as foreigners shared something in common in the middle of the play.  Neither one of us had seen a panto.

Promo video of stills from the play below:

If you watch the second half though you will see what they say are videos by viewers indicative of the repsonses they received. Get the feeling the producers of Click don’t use/like Explorer? Though they have the Microsoft guy on first in the execs portion – check out the viewer representing Explorer. roflol

Developers doing extra coding to make something work in Explorer 6 – Consider the Naked Man!

Question: Is the Mozilla/firefox woman attempting to recreate the firefox on her head?!

Click on the image to open the video.

He was thankful for being able to do what he does for a living, trying to learn this same life lesson.

We only caught the last song of the opening act Floe. We didn’t mind… they rhymed love with glove…shades of Phil Collins…when I’m feeling blue…all I have to do…is take a look at you…then I’m not so blue.

The annoying thing is we wanted to like them. Right before they performed their last song they told the crowd that anyone who really wants their CD should get one from the merch table…there is a suggested price but they want their music out there so if someone can’t afford it they should get one anyway. Enlightened sales policy, crappy, lazy rhyme.

She is young and has a gorgeous voice, is very cute and very creative.  What’s the problem?

Part of her persona is giggling through a bunch of messing up.  She is from the area and the crowd is supportive but it is annoying when you pay money to see someone in a fantastic venue and it doesn’t seem like they have bothered to rehearse very much and have possibly spent more time planning outfits.

I highly recommmend her EP and hope she gets her sh*t together for future gigs.

lyrics of zorbing

Conkers shining on the ground,
The air is cooler
And i feel like i just started uni
Walking backwards to my van
You’re at your window,
And I’m tripping every time i think of

Lying in your attic
I can feel the static
The storm has broken, Heavens open

Send my body out to work
But leave my senses
In orbit over south east London
Wind the window down and pinch
Me on the shoulder
Whilst i’ll be driving off to dream of

Lying in your attic
I can feel the static
The storm has broken, Heavens open
So electrifying, Oh I’m nearly flying
Lost my heart between the sheets of lightning

I’ve been singing you this song,
Inside a bubble,
Been Zorbing through the streets of Cowley,
We were always meant to be,
Zorbing together, And i think its high time we started

Lying in your attic
I can feel the static
The storm is breaking, windows shaking
So electrifying, Oh I’m nearly flying
Lost my heart between the sheets of lightning

Lying in your attic
I can feel the static
The storm has broken, Heavens open
So electrifying, Oh im nearly flying
Lost my heart between the sheets of lightning

conkers on wikipedia

zorbing on wikipedia

Kev’s new favourite song (even if it’s a bit folky for him) because it involves disconnecting…one day we both will:

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Then we went to Angelo’s Ristorante for excellent Italian food which  Richard got to order with a silly Italian accent – good fun.  For appetizers we had Formaggio di Capra e Rosti di Patate Croccante and Camembert. The main event was Ravioli alla Pizzaiola and Tagliatelle con Vedura e Zafferano.

For desert we went to Stardust which has a cute and crafty gift shop downstairs and a pretty cafe upstairs. Picked up the ring at left from the gift shop. Under £4 and a bit of fun. Upstairs, it’s a shame there weren’t more people there – the couches are the kind you sink into and the coffee and lemon cake were yummy. It seems like a perfect spot for students to camp out in with laptops and to just hang out.

I then attempted to recreate the artwork on the wall of Stardust, a photograph of a sculpture just outside.  It is a 2008 sculpture called Seachange by Laura Johnston.  It is meant to recall the hull of a ship and the shipbuilding heritage of the area as it transforms into something new. [Part of the Sunderland City Centre Public Art Trail]

Unfortunately it was raining so we didn’t want to spend too much time attempting to get the shot. You can see my few attempts on flickr.

I got distracted from the original mission of recreating the photo in the cafe because I loved the trees being reflected in the steel:

Seachange sculpture in Sunderland

To get out of the rain we headed into Primark and picked up some cheap and cheerful shiny, pretty things – a sparkly bracelet for £2 and some pillar candles for £1.75 each. The little charge you get from picking something up for £2 and £10 is really the same and lasts about the same amount of time (and £100 doesn’t really last ten times as long) – it’s a good thing to remember. We then stopped off at Richard’s to pick up the cute and stinky Florence and set off for Hartlepool.

I am a terrible navigator. Hopefully this will change when I learn how to drive. After a number of phone calls to Kev to set us back in the right direction we had a nice relaxed evening with some gewurztraminer from Chile via Morrisons and a quick sweet and sour chickeny bits with rice dish a la Kev.

Mostly it’s just the two of us but it was nice to have company too.  It’s easy to forget when you get into you routine.

Serious Sam Barrett opened. A guy from Leeds singing country…I had an amusing misheard lyric moment on one of his songs.  ”She’s as pretty as the hair on the mossad? what?!!…spoke to him between sets to ask him what he was singing…She’s as pretty as the heather on the moorside  - makes a lot more sense. : )

Gregory Liszt is the banjo player from Crooked Still. We saw them at the Cluny 2 also. They are amazing and the venue was packed that night. Greg Liszt was very entertaining and as soon as I saw this new project he was doing was coming I immediately bought tickets. I was stunned that there weren’t more people at the gig, maybe people were scared of winter weather.

Happy to document a very fun gig (their first ever in England). First off they are really talented musicians – Mike Barnett on fiddle, Stash Wyslouch on guitar, Sam Grisman on bass, and Greg Liszt on vocals and banjo. They bring to mind a cross between Chris Thile and Mike Ford from Moxy Früvous bluegrass mixed with speed, the ability to communicate lyrics that are super-quick and clever. See for yourself.

Love Hobo Rockstar cause it reminds me of Kitteh and Pip.

Kitteh and Pip the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats

Shot videos while my battery lasted with Greg’s blessing (I asked before they went on stage).  Shot it with my new Kodak Zi8 with the internal microphone. The neat thing about the Zi8 is that it can also take an external mic (though I didn’t bring one).

I was pretty close (2nd row) and there was an empty seat in front of me that I could lean the camera on as a makeshift stabilizer. The Zi8 is pocketsize and many people mistake it for a largish smartphone. Nope, just a decent pocket video camera that shoots HD.  Should have also brought another recent purchase a portable, rechargeable power supply for when your battery runs out…oh well.

Shot the videos up until the battery went dead which to be fair I didn’t charge it before I left the house so it was on half strength from shooting random stuff.

Wish it would have lasted to the end. The encore was especially great. The small but enthusiastic crowd cheered them on to get back on the stage. They agreed to play another song but did it unplugged, off the stage – near the door with the crowd on their feet. I was not even 2 feet away from them. It was in the dark and awesome.

It would be great to see them in a festival setting like the Cambridge Folk Festival; they’d be loads of fun in one of the tents.  The next night they were going to be at Celtic Connections in Glasgow. Check out their myspace page for upcoming gigs.

Random extra info: At one point during the gig, Greg asked if anyone in the crowd or the band plays a banjo. He thinks they’re cool and that people should pick it up. Just don’t give one to a beautiful woman anonymously according to this ask.mefi thread.  The consensus is it’s creepy.

The video is shot by Kev from our living room window.  I looked out the window and asked him what it was, he had no idea. Turns out the woodcock is a shy, nocturnal bird so it is rare to see one. We used the excellent RSPB bird identifier to figure out what it was.

One of the things I have enjoyed about living in Hartlepool and having a garden is learning the names of birds. Our garden gets visits from starlings and blackbirds, woodpigeons, robins and sparrows. We get loads of seagulls too.  This past year we had a bunch of baby seagulls on the roof. Growing up in Brooklyn and reading a lot I could tell you that robins and sparrows are small birds…I couldn’t pick them out of a birdy line-up.

We have a friend who is really into birds.  When we go out with him and his wife we look to him to help identify birds. He asks us questions like what did it look  like and what did it sound like…we respond (like Mrs. Swan on Mad TV’s “he looka like a man”) it looked like a bird, it sounded like a bird.

We’re getting a bit better.  I bought a great book for kids about identifying birds in your garden. It’s meant for kids to keep a log of the birds they see and includes stickers. : ) And, it seems like I am enjoying part of a trend.  A comedian we love Bill Bailey (from the brilliant Black Books and his own standup) now has a show about Bird Watching.

Other birds from our garden:

Beat the Reaper: A Novel by Josh Bazell – Super quick read, set in NYC which gives me the warm fuzzies when it’s done well ever since I’ve moved away, involves mafia and medicine with awesome  footnotes. A great first novel – can’t wait for the next one.

The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff – Story set amid polygamy in the US, intense to read.

Juliet, Naked: A Novel by Nick Hornby – Nick Hornby back to writing about relationships and fandom – yay!

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova – Vampire novel for bibliophiles with action taking place in beautiful libraries.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows – Tells the story of WWII occupation of Guernsey via letters. Each character has a unique voice – it works and also involves love of books.

Ten Storey Love Song: a Novel by Richard Milward – Set in the north east of England, saw him do a reading from this and you can too. (Not the reading I was at but enjoy!)

I’ve also included Her Fearful Symmetry: a Novel by Audrey Niffenegger. I haven’t read it yet. It is waiting on my bookshelf. I am including it based on how much I loved The Time Traveller’s Wife.

I was wearing:

Would have been just as happy wearing:

Some photos from the evening:

The show was good fun.  Multi-generational audience. Our only lament was that we weren’t seeing it in the US or Japan where it would have been sure to sell out and more people would have been dressed up.

Jack Wall was the conductor, Tommy Tallarico was the MC. It turns out he composed the music to one of the games I used to play Earthworm Jim (also loved the cartoon). Martin Leung the video game pianist also performed including a rendition of Super Mario blindfolded. There was also a skype video chat with Marty O’Donnell.

You can watch a good chunk of it with the youtube playlist below.

There are neat photos – old and new, sculptures made out of car parts and paintings made using remote control cars. There are design drawings for cars up as well as some actual cars in the gallery including an F1 car covered in UV Paint to illustrate the air flow on race cars and loads more items.

Some of the items mock  high concept “Modern Art” or the presenters or the show. It is a good mix of items and a fun way to spend an hour. It’s a shame there isn’t a program for this exhibition : )

If you do go be aware that mima has a ground floor gallery, go up two flights for another gallery and then up one more flight for a peak into the mind of the Stig.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Missing that last 1/2 a star because of the noise accompanying what’s in the mind of the Stig.

Top Gear, the BBC and Middlesbrough Council and mima have been working on this for a while – apparently the footage they filmed in Middlesbrough will air on December 20 in this new Top Gear season according to the Middlesbrough Football Club website. The presenters were around this past Saturday and Sunday – 7,000 tickets were snapped up in less than a day and an additional few thousand were given away by the presenters in Riverside Stadium – Middlesbrough’s Football Ground.

—-

Translation for my American friends:

Top Gear is a funny series about cars on the BBC with 3 presenters Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May (who is also doing an awesome series about toys at the moment). It is also on BBC America I believe.

mima is the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art , Middlesbrough is where I work – it is in the north east of England in Tees Valley. It is a half hour from Durham-Tees Valley airport, two hours by train from Newcastle. It is also about to be the latest home of a Big Wheel in centre square, if you go to mima you can go see it being constructed.

“I need your love
I need you in the morning
To make me tea
To kiss me when I’m yawning
I can see you’re head over heels for me
I can see you’re head over heels for me

From Head Over Heels by James Yuill

Original version on amazon.com, Remix version on amazon.com

Kev’s favourite because it involves making a cup of tea!

Highly recommend checking out James Yuill.

In the UK they call USB keys / thumb drives – pen drives…I was referring to the USB key sticking out of the DVD player thinking that’s what he needed….um he was looking for an actual pen :)

Does this mean I spend too much time in front of a computer?

Gave him a visitmiddlesbrough.com pen from my desk.

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Had fun playing with it the only thing that pissed me off about it was that there is still a difference in price between buying a gadget here vs. in the US. It is called Active Life Outdoor Challenge in the US and is a bit cheaper for the exact same game and mat. The only differences as far as I know are the box artwork and the ratings systems used in the US vs. Europe.

Artwork:

UK edition features visuals of a whole family – mom, dad and a boy and girl.  Boy and girl are playing – parents are on the couch behind them. The mom has a evry traditional crossed-legs pose. The U.S. version features only a boy.

The evolution of the artwork in the 2 regions via  Extreme Challenge (the next game from this series) UK version has a whole family again but this time mom is moving rather than having her legs crossed. The U.S. version now features a boy and girl and still not targeting adults.

Wii Family Trainer

Wii Active Life

We should get to my mom’ s house by 8.30-9.00pm on the Wed. feel free to call us.

Thursday the 10th is pretty open at this point. It will possibly be a shopping day and the China Institute is free  from 6-8 and has a neat looking photography exhibition on. They are located on 65th betw. Lex and Park.  We may do that plus dinner with people or there’s the option of free talk/signing by Malcolm Gladwell at 7pm at the Union Square Barnes and Noble…or a talk on Comic Books after WWII at 7pm at the 92YTribeca, 200 Hudson Street with Arie Kaplan – $12.

Friday the 11th want to take advantage of free hours at MOMA for the Tim Burton exhibition. May also pop into The American Folk Art Museum …also the first night of Hanukkah.

Saturday the 12th the Jewish Museum is free (shop and cafe are closed) 11.00-5.45 – Fifth Avenue at 92nd and then the Guggenheim is Pay What you Wish 5.45-7.45 – Fifth Avenue at 89th. Then I got us tickets to see SonicVision at 8.30 at the Hayden Planetarium. The other option was Major League Dreidel at the Brooklyn Knitting Factory which will have to be a pass.

Sunday the 13th is a packed day. We will be heading to the NY Hall of Science in Queens (which means an early start for us) and meeting Barbara before seeing They Might Be Giants there then we will head into Manhattan to City Winery for a Keren Ann performance.

Monday the 14 – From 10am to noon there are free tours of the Eldridge Street Synagogue then Beyond the Pale are performing for free at the Winter Garden in the World Financal Centre at 12.30. Since we will be downtown we may go see the Magna Carta at the Fraunces Tavern Museum or go to the Museum of Jewish Heritage they have an exhibition on called Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow about Jewish refugee scholars at black colleges.

Nothing is set so far for Tuesday and Wednesday. (We leave Wednesday night). Some options include:

Brooklyn Botanic Garden free on weekdays. NY Aquarium which is just a walk from my mom’s house – $13. Attempting to get standby tickets for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon or the Colbert Report. Going to the top of Rockefeller Plaza for the view and/or TKTS.

Really the only firm plans are things we have bought tickets for in advance: SonicVision, They Might Be Giants and Keren Ann and MOMA on Friday to try and save money.

Hope people can join us on some of these adventures and are available to get together.

http://whistlinginthedark.com/feed

I have redirected the old feed to point to this but there it is in case you want it direct. I have also started to redirect old links to new entries as I put them in.  This should help with broken links on your sites.

So far, two rings and a pair of earrings….

The spelling is jewellery in the UK.  There’s a nice wikipedia article on American and British English spelling differences.

When I was a kid growing up  in Brooklyn I liked the British u added to colour and labour. I found it aesthetically pleasing or something. I wrote colour on a spelling test which was marked wrong. Being a nerd I brought in a dictionary and pointed out to my teacher that it was an acceptable alternate spelling.

I don’t know what year these photos were taken. I have no idea if these were considered high end intellectual newspapers and if this was a style at the time. Would be happy to know if anyone can translate anything from the photos.

Also love the casual reading a newspaper on a hillside photo.

I hope to scan all of my old family photos.

my grandfather posed reading newspapers with friends bottom right corner reads E. LIEPINS TUKUMA

my grandfather posed reading magazines with a friend reverse side has the word Argenta

my grandfather posed reading a newspaper

Stuff White People Like

Someone left a newspaper on the train I took this morning (the Daily Mail) and I had a flip through it and came across this article…the content seemed familiar. The end of the article points out that Stuff White People Like: The Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions is now available in the UK.

This is a book based on the popular website.

Interesting difference is it talks about “middle class people” instead of White people. Class as opposed to race.

Possibly because over 90% of the UK population is White (according to the 2001 census) vs. 74% in the US (according to 2006 American Community Survey)…people just aren’t faced with race as an issue so much outside of London.

According to the 2001 census 45% of all ethnic minority people live in the London area, where they form nearly one-third of the population (29%).

The only reason I knew these stats exist is from studying random statistics for the Life in the UK test.

I passed by the way  : )

new status message – 1417   7:18 PM
new status message – 1515   7:23 PM
new status message – 1540   7:41 PM
new status message – 1707   7:51 PM
new status message – 1772   8:37 PM
new status message – 1889   8:46 PM
new status message – 1924   9:06 PM
new status message – 2074   9:20 PM

My response: they look like years at this point you’re going from historical fiction to sci fi before my very eyes  : )

Whatever your style, good luck to all my friends participating in NaNoWriMo.  I will be cheering you on from the sidelines. Still uncertain as to whether I am participating in NaBloPoMo. I did last year but currently I am focused on repopulating my blog with old posts. Still November 1 is done in the nick of time.

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I could relate to this trailer.  I desparately wanted straight hair when I was a kid because it was shiny. Can’t wait to see this movie.

NY Post screengrab - Click on the image and click on all sizes to view it larger for yourself.

This screengrab is from today. A story about an ex-professor getting prison time for possessing child porn ends with, “Some of the photos found on the 62-year-old’s computer depicted infants being sexually abused.” It is followed by the question: “Do you know someone who has made New York a better place? Nominate your hero for the 8th Annual New York Post Liberty Medals.” [link to story here]

The New York Post has sometimes been known for fun wordplay Headless Body in Topless Bar: The Best Headlines from America’s Favorite Newspaper in this case an editor should have picked up on this. It makes it seem like the Internet is an afterthought and the staff doesn’t bother to find the time to check what will end up on the screen. Big mistake: I would guess more people are reading the story this way than in print. Can anyone help me get the numbers to back this up?

You get another NY-based paper going through a web redesign [via: via] that prioritizes the display over content. The paper is a ditz with a status update and shiny pictures.

On the other hand the NY Times is doing neat things with their website – data visualizations, game, ads, facebook, facebook app, twitter, global edition, NY Times Reader.

Twilight-style Wuthering Heights Book

Saw this at Tesco tonight. Wuthering Heights being marketed to teens on the basis that their fave fictional characters like the book.

The red seal/sticker/stamp reads “Bella & Edward’s Favourite Book” and the cover design is similar to the Twilight series covers.

Marketing reading as sexy is good. Ugly visions of cynical marketers trying to make a few bucks off the back catalog also maybe not bad if it allows them to keep publishing in tough economic times.

I have one question – Is this actually working?

Buy it on amazon.co.uk if you want it to match your set of Twilight books from here »

Photos include a reenactment of the Hartlepool Monkey Hanging Legend (Read more: 1, 2, 3).

Some of my favorites are below:

Hartlepool Dockfest - Natural England

Hartlepool Dockfest - Monkey Legend

Kev fave - Hartlepool Dockfest - Break Static - Turbo Jones

Hartlepool Dockfest - Break Static - Turbo Jones
I want to be the woman in the flowered skirt when I grow up.

Hartlepool Dockfest - The Lightning Seeds - Ian Broudie

Morrissey, photo taken on Kevin's G1 phone. He made it look as good as possible. It is not a good camera on the G1.

1/ CHARMAN
2/ IRISH
3/ B CLOUD
4/ HSIN?
5/ ALL YOU NEED IS ME
6/ HOW CAN?
7/ COMA
8/ PARIS
9/ LEMME KY
10/ ASK
11/ SKULL
12/ ONE DAY GOOD
13/ WHY DON’T YOU F?
14/ BORES
15/ HIDDEN
16/ CAROL
17/ BEST F ON P
18/ SORRY DOESN’T
19/ SOME GRILLS
20/ LOOP
21/ I’M OK BY
enc: NEARER MY GOD TO THEE AM I

]]> http://whistlinginthedark.com/2009/05/20/morrissey-at-hartlepool-borough-hall-setlist-41/feed 0 http://whistlinginthedark.com/2009/05/06/crossword-puzzles-on-kickstarter-865 http://whistlinginthedark.com/2009/05/06/crossword-puzzles-on-kickstarter-865#comments Wed, 06 May 2009 11:14:27 +0000 Yaffa http://whistlinginthedark.com/?p=865 Kickstarter is a way for creative people to get their dream projects, big or small, funded by the general public through microfinance as opposed to big massive sponsorship deals. These can be events, art projects, documentaries.

Similar to PBS / NPR funding drives there are donation levels and rewards, decided on by the creative people.

Many post videos to peak interest that are fantastic and status updates can be really creative too.

I found out about kickstarter via Ken Jennings (highly recommend his book) when he linked to Eric Berlin’s crossword puzzles.

Eric Berlin creates crossword puzzles. He wanted to create a suite of puzzles that interlink. To generate interest he linked to a pdf of a previous suite of puzzles on Brooklyn as a theme. They’re quite good. Just donating$1 gave you access to the puzzles and helped them to get made. For $5 people could participate in a competition. Reward levels above that included copies of his book.

Going to see Waiting for Godot with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan in Newcastle.

Have previously seen it at the Classic Stage Company in NYC starring John Turturro, Tony Shalhoub and Christopher Lloyd.

• Scanwiches – Blog of bizarre and cool scans of sandwiches.
• Story on the Obamas planting a vegetable garden at the White House – This is the first time since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden in World War II.
• 1943 Pamphlet on Victory Gardens – Scans.
• Top 10 Bizarre Food Festivals
• Mona Lisa made of Hamburger Grease Video – This is an Arby’s ad.
• This Is Why You’re Fat – Blog of some super-fatty foods people eat.
• Sudoku Pizza

Facebook statuses let me know that a bunch of people I know are cleaning their homes for Passover. I will be hosting my first Passover Seder this year on April 8th. I’m looking for vegetarian seder ideas. Finding stuff here, here, here and here.

Instead of a shankbone for the seder plate, there are some interesting ideas in this article.

Posted belatedly.

• 100g Spinach
• 100g Broccoli
• 3 Eggs
• 3 Tablespoons of OSEM onion soup mix (You can probably substitute any other soup mix / powder or even stock cubes.)
• 1/2 Cup Mayonnaise
• Bread crumbs (or corn flake crumbs)
• Flour

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees. In a slightly greased pie dish scatter a light dusting of bread (or corn flake) crumbs. Quite thin, it just needs to stick.
2. In a large bowl combine all of the other ingredients. You can use a food processor to make it easy. If you are using frozen vegetables, soak them in some hot water and drain, before adding them to the mixture.
3. Bake 45 minutes or until a fork poked through the middle comes out dry.

Sarit, this is the recipe I promised you ages ago. Five minutes of work and then you stick it in the oven.

I love playwright David Hare. One of my all-time favorite theatre experiences was written by him – Dame Judi Dench starring in “Amy’s View,” from the third row center on Broadway. At the end of the first act I actually gasped. I also thoroughly enjoyed his “The Vertical Hour.” His ability to write emotional dynamics for brilliant actors makes for thrilling theater. (Andrew Scott was my discovery for that production.)

“Gethsemane,” deals with recent British political scandals and the brutal compromises people at all levels make. Reviews: Ion Oxford Tube (I like this one’s description of the set.), Guardian, Telegraph, Evening Standard, Independent, BBC Newsnight panel discussion (I don’t agree with what the panel says but the intro features a good synopsis of the play.). The reviews are mixed, glowing or unnecessarily harsh.

Tamsin Grieg is flawless as a beleaguered politician. Amusingly, I had to point out to Kevin where he knew her from – the very awesome Black Books (Booklovers, misanthropes, Dylan Moran and Bill Bailey fans all should see this immediately.).

Stanley Townsend plays shady fundraiser Otto as a cross between Boss Hog from the Dukes of Hazzard and a mobster from a Guy Ritchie movie – it works. One of the people on the BBC Newsnight panel called the character anti-Semitic, as does the article here. He is a sleazy character in the play and for those playing guess the political figure he is based on – he would seem to be based on Lord Levy, a Jewish, former fundraiser for the Labour party. There is nothing in the play to suggest he is Jewish. The only connection is in the minds of those watching associating the character with a real person. There is nothing to suggest this character represents the Jewish people. I find it dumb and offensive for it to be labeled anti-Semitic.

The rest of the cast are as follows: Jessica Raine plays the troubled daughter of Tamsin Greig’s character Meredith. Gugu Mbatha-Raw is Meredith’s adviser. Nicola Walker is the idealist teacher Lori, Daniel Ryan plays her highly-educated and simple husband who works for Otto. Pip Carter is Otto’s world-weary assistant Frank. Anthony Calf plays the prime minister (Kevin hated his performance, I didn’t mind it.). Adam James plays a sleazy journalist.

The set by Bob Crowley is well done, a modern-looking white box which serves convincingly as a number of different settings with the addition of a few props and at times the use of it as a projection screen. Fast-paced videos to music are also projected onto it to serve as transitions between scenes. See this review for a nice description or another more detailed description can be found at Vocal Eyes (See the Show Notes downloads.). They do audio-descriptions at performances for blind and partially sighted people. They will be at Saturday’s upcoming matinee in Newcastle and in Cambridge on Saturday the 21st.

The criticism I would levy against the play is it seems to still be rough. It seems at times like the outline for an outstanding play / story with the plot elements in place but the nuanced emotional dynamics that I like in his plays are just not fully there.

Learned a new word from the play – Gesthemane. Gesthemane is a garden at the foot of the Mount of Olives (Gat Shmanim in Hebrew) believed to be the place where Jesus spent the night before the crucifixion in great anguish / doubt. Religion is brought up a few times in the play. In addition to the emotional dynamics this is another place where I think it could have had more meat.

Gateshead Millenium Bridge

The weather was not too cold. We parked on the Gateshead side of the river and walked across the Millennium Bridge to the Theatre Royal. This way we didn’t have to navigate Newcastle’s many one-way streets. It was a really pleasant walk. On the way back the water in the river was so still the reflections of the lights from the bridges and buildings were amazing. We definitely want to go back for an evening to take photos on long exposures with a tripod.

We invited the family over for dinner on Monday night to celebrate Purim. Everyone was awesome and came in costume. We had pirates, a bunny, Ali G., Pocahantas, a surfer, a lollypop lady, a monkey and a teletubby. Full set of pictures here.

Food was mushroom soup with bread, salad, lasagna (also plain pizza for young fussy eaters) and oznei haman with ice cream and a bit of golden syrup. Usually when we have people over we are still making the food when they arrive. This time we stayed up till 1:30 AM making it the night before so it just had to be heated up on the evening. The only reason it took this long was the mystery of never-ending oznei haman dough.

Made Mishloach Manot deliveries today and am off to see Gesthemane at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle.

Posted belatedly.

Ingredients:

Pastry:

• 6-7 cups of flour
• 3 sticks of margarine (approximately 300gr)
• 2 cups of sugar
• 3 yolks
• 1 whole egg
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• Rind of 1 lemon
• Juice from 1/2 a lemon
• 1 tablespoon Vanilla Sugar
• 21/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 whole egg

Filling:

• Jelly / Jam – strawberry or apricot flavor
• Ground walnuts (or almonds)
• Sugar
• Sweet red wine
• Fine bread crumbs

Preparation:

1. Mix all of the ingredients for the pastry together. I put them all in a massive bowl, mixed briefly with the dough hooks on a hand mixer and then kept going with my hands.
2. In a separate, small bowl, mix all the ingredients for the filling together. There are no exact amounts, I tried getting my mother to be specific for each of the ingredients and she said “a little.” I don’t like walnuts in general, except for ground walnuts in cakes. I couldn’t find ground walnuts here, and didn’t want to take the time to bash whole ones so I used ground almonds and it worked fine.
2. Cover your work area with a light dusting of flour and take a bit under half the dough and roll flat with a flour covered rolling pin.
3. Cut out circles. I used a cup that had an approximately 3-inch diameter at the top to make the circles. Knead the scraps of dough from around the circles back into the larger batch still in the bowl.
4. Put about a teaspoon of filling in the center of each circle. Fold the circle down on three sides to make a triangle, pinching the corners to seal it.
5. Bake on a greased cookie tray at 190 degrees between 10 and 20 minutes (varies with the oven), until they start to brown up.
6. Keep doing this until you run out of dough. While you are in the middle it will seem like the dough is multiplying because every time you separate half you still end up with more in the bowl. It does run out eventually – makes 50-60 Oznei Haman.

Posted belatedly, but useful for next year.

I brought back an external hard drive with me from my recent trip to NY. It is filled with all sorts of randomness including scans of assorted ephemera including this recipe for shakshouka written in Hebrew from my time living in Tel Aviv.

On Ibn Gvirol Street, where I lived, every other shopfront seemed to belong to hairdresser. Among these was Yossi, a sweetheart, who I would drop in on from time to time. One day while I was hanging out, he made the most amazing shakshouka. The owner of the kiosk nearby brought some fresh bread and the group of us had a great meal dipping the bread into a communal shakshouka.

If you happen to be in Israel, you can always go to Dr. Shakshouka in Yafo for a nice meal. Or if you come across a Hebrew recipe you want to try here is a link for translating Hebrew or Yiddish spice names.

Ingredients:

• Olive Oil
• Sliced Chilli Pepper
• 3 Garlic Cloves (however you like them)
• Salt
• 1 Cup Water
• Tablespoon of ground paprika
• 4 Grated tomatoes
• Eggs (2-6)
• Additional Chilli Pepper (optional)
• Red and/or Green Bell Peppers (optional)

Preparation:
1. Fry oil, chili pepper, garlic, salt, 1/2 cup of water, ground paprika for 10-15 minutes.
2. Add 1/2 a cup of water and the grated tomatoes.
3. Cook on large flame for 5 minutes.
4. Turn down the flame and break the eggs over the mixture.
5. Cover the pan and let cook for a bit.
6. If you want it super spicy you can add an additional chilli pepper. This dish also works with red and green bell pepper strips or pieces thrown in.
7. Serve in the frying pan with a thick white bread for dipping.

For thos of you who can read the recipe you will see it is not very specific. I find it hard to tie people down to specific amounts when they are dictating a recipe they have made for years. This is the case with the next recipe I will post, an Oznei Haman recipe from my mom. Posted belatedly, but I do want to have a Food Friday post written for every Friday of this year.

Original cover

Links to new TV ad

After Alexandra Burke won X Factor (UK singing competition with Simon Cowell as a judge/producer) and the winner’s song was announced as a cover version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah a grassroots effort was made by the UK public (facebook group) to bring Jeff Buckley’s single to Xmas number 1 instead.

For fans, Alexandra Burke’s gospel-ly version just seemed to miss the point unless it’s ironic but according to this article that does not appear to be the case.

A cheap attempt to capitalize on this fervor came in the form of a new TV ad and CD cover being released.

The new advertisement attempts to capitalize on the X Factor tie-in by increasing the font on “Hallelujah” obscenely, larger than the artist’s name. It also appeals to the same maudlin tactics the television show is skewered for by focusing on the tragedy of his death (in a new print ad and tv ad). On this season’s X Factor, what should have been the personal tragedies and triumphs of the contestants, was spun in an endless parade of PR and airtime, there was a contestant with a dead wife, one with a dead mother, a new baby sister, a dead almost grandmother, etc.

Just thought the bad taste should be documented. When I saw the new ad it made me want to throw up and throw something at the TV. Instead I ranted at Kevin and now I bring the joy to you.

And now for my cheap attempt to capitalize: Amazon Jeff Buckley Store.

Ivri Lider

Went to see Ivri Lider perform at Ivri Lider at Avalon in NYC 2006-11-11. Photo set here.
Video from that gig on youtube.

Ivri Lider performing I Kissed a Girl. (I prefer his version of Barbie Girl. Leave a comment if you want an mp3 of him performing Barbie Girl.)

Rita’s “Bo” performed in English as “Your Soul” accompanied by footage from Yossi and Jagger. Two guys kiss in the video so you have to confirm you are over 18 to youtube to watch it.

Link to a short radio show he did on Galei Tzahal 13-November-2008 with the band as it is on the album and touring: Gilad Shmueli – Drums, Amir Rosiano aka Jango – Bass, Yehonatan Fridge – Guitar, Adi Goldstein – keyboard. Songs only download of the radio show here.

Setlist:
Beketzev Ahid Betnuot Shel HaGuf – בקצב אחיד בתנועות של הגוף
Mitorer – מתעורר
Metayel Australi – מטייל אוסטרלי
Yoter Tov Klum – יותר טוב כלום
Hadrachim Ha’arukot – הדרכים הארוכות
VeUlay – ואולי
Hakos Hakhula – הכוס הכחולה
Aluf Haolam – אלוף העולם.

More Ivri Lider on Israboot here.

Ivri Lider online – official site, myspace, facebook, youtube, wikipedia, emusic, amazon mp3.

Recommended books for 2008:

The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver – One of my favourite authors. One moment, one choice in a person’s life – this book explores two parallel timelines in alternating chapters and does it well!

Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human by Elizabeth Hess – Really interesting non-fiction book about a 70s experiment to have a chimp raised in a human family and be taught to communicate.

The Host: A Novel by Stephenie Meyer – Enjoyed it but she is wordy and that doesn’t change here.

Apples: A Novel by Richard Milward – First novel set in Middlesbrough in the North east of England. Depiction of teen life is harsh but engrossing and funny at times too.

Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages by Ammon Shea – Experience novel, but well-written and funny.

Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughan – Graphic novel. Sent to me by a secret santa on librarything.

Plus 3 internet memes turned books + 1 book based on TV:

Pop Charts by Paul Copperwaite
Indexed by Jessica Hagy
Sleeveface by John Rostron, Carl Morris
Mock the Week: Scenes We’d Like to See by Dan Patterson

These are fun books to have laying around when people are over.

While I was scanning I took the opportunity to finally scan some fantastic photos I have of my mom’s parents visiting California. They have so much style. Even though the photos were taken in October 1977 – the photos were printed in November 1977 – so they make a perfect NaBloPoMo post.

I love the slightly-out-of-focus photo of my grandparents with 1977 Pooh at Disneyland in California. I added it to the Vintage Disneyland group on flickr.

The following links are Pooh at various theme parks through the ages in snapshots. Many features change over time. 1970, 1971, 1976, 1977, 1980, 1981, 1981b, 1998, 1998b, 1999, 1999b, 1999c, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2003b, 2004, 2004b, 2005, 2005b, 2005c, 2006, 2006b, 2006c, 2006d, 2007, 2008. Here are a few more without an exact year: 1, 2 , 3, 4, 5, 6.

Winnie the Pooh in costume also featured on Disney postcards: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.

Pooh also ran for president in 1976. Happy Election Day! US people go out and vote. There are perks beside making sure the person you want gets elected – there’s free coffee at Starbucks, free Krispy Kreme star-shaped Election Day donuts, and a free scoop of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (between 5 and 8 p.m.). As usual with these kinds of things – participating locations only. via. If you’re in NY or Seattle you can also get a free sex toy from Babeland. The Babeland offer is good until the 11th.

My grandparents visiting California in 1977 (top two photos)
and holding me in Israel in 1976 (bottom photo).

My grandparents visiting California in 1977.
In all their 70s glory.

Happy Election Day!

Whistling in the Dark was a 1931 Hit of the Week. These were cardboard records sold via newsstands for 15 cents during the Great Depression.

Hit of the Week records were promoted in 1929 with the following:

“This is the new Hit-of-the-week record. It is made of Durium, the great invention of a Columbia university professor. Its tone is as rich as the costliest record made. It is guaranteed to play perfectly longer than any other record. It won’t break if you drop it. It brings you the latest dance hits each week played by Broadway’s best orchestras, at the sensationally low price of fifteen cents! Each week our music jury, composed of Florenz Ziegfeld, Eddie Cantor and Vincent Lopez, selects the outstanding dance hits of the hour for the Hit-of-the-week recording. A new Hit-of-the-week record is on sale each Thursday at all news-stands in this city. Fifteen cents!” (source)

Digital Sheet Music Download for sale here (unless you are in U.S., Canada or Venezuela).
Shirts, posters, greeting cards and mugs with an image of sheet music for the song available here.

Radio Dismuke – Online station of 1920s & 1930s Popular Music and Jazz

They Might Be Giants’ Whistling in the Dark here

“Eunoia is the shortest word in English containing all five vowels – and it means “beautiful thinking”. It is also the title of Canadian poet Christian Bök’s book of fiction in which each chapter uses only one vowel.”

This came up on my feed reader today. Click on the quote above to get to the BBC article with excerpts from the book – it’s really poetry. There was a great bio of him online with the full text of eunoia but the link is broken now. There’s a pretty flash version of chapter E here. You can hear readings of it here or watch a video of Christian Bök reading excerpts here. Christian Bök also created artificial languages for Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict and Peter Benchley’s Amazon. You can hear an interview with him on CBC here and more at PennSound here. There are links to other works here.

Learned a great new word and began a random search for other examples of arbitrary restrictions in book writing and ended up finding all kinds of neat examples of constrained writing. Whoo hoo wikipedia (and google).

There are additional lipograms. A lipogram is constrained writing consisting of writing in which a particular letter or group of letters is missing. See the wikipedia entry for a number of examples including Gadsby, a novel written without the use of the letter E, which can be read online here and here. (Letter frequencies here; E is the most frequent letter in the English language.)

Another novel that didn’t the letter E is Georges Perec‘s French novel A Void (La Disparition) (1969). E is the most common letter in French as well as English. The neat thing with this one is that the English translation titled “A Void,” also did not use the letter E, and a Spanish translation instead omits the letter A, since it is the most common letter in Spanish. The wikipedia entry includes a summary of the book – it looks like an interesting read.

Perec was a member of group of French authors called Oulipo who used a variety of constraints in their work. Lipograms, Palindromes, N+7 and the Snowball.

Never Again is a novel by Doug Nufer in which no word is used more than once. From amazon.com “it is the story of a gambler who narrates how he set out to avoid the mistakes of his past by doing (and saying) nothing he ever did (or said) before.” He also wrote Negativeland, a novel where every sentence contains a negative. There is a good interview with him here.

Alphabetical Africa by Walter Abish is constrained in the following way – “the first chapter contains only words starting with the letter a, the second chapter only words starting with a or b, etc.; each subsequent chapter adds the next letter in the alphabet to the set of allowed word beginnings. This continues for the first 26 chapters…In the second half of the book, chapters 27 through 52, letters are removed in the reverse order that they were added. Thus, z words disappear in chapter 28, y, in chapter 29, etc.”

Here is an article about a french novel with no verbs. The author sounds like an ass but it might be fun to read in translation.

Dr. Seuss wrote Green Eggs and Ham when his publisher challenged him to write a story with fewer than 50 words. At fiftywords.com a new fifty-word story is posted Monday through Friday.

Haiku, Limericks and Acrostics are examples of constrained writing in poetry which isn’t really focused on in this post because it is standard for established forms of poetry to have constraints. I bring them up because I wanted to post an online dictionary that uses limericks to illustrate definitions.

There’s also this interesting poetry example – an Italian poem and a Hebrew poem that sound identical and both make sense in their respective languages done by Dr. Ghil’ad Zuckermann. He has a fantastic quote by Thomas Paine on the page that could describe this whole post “The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous; and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.” (The Age of Reason, Part 2: Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology, London: Daniel Isaac Eaton, 1796, p. 20).

Some writing experiments you can try can be found here and here and here. Confiction.org is an online community for people interested in constrained writing. Their challenges can be found here.

Ernest Hemingway once said his best work was a story he wrote in just six words: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” The Guardian challenged famous authors to write six-word stories in this article. There is a website where you can submit your own started by Smith magazine. There is an interview with the editor here. You can also join the Six Word Story group on flickr by posting photos with a six-word-story title. (Does the photo count as 1000 additional words?). There is also onesentence.org where you can submit true stories told in one sentence.

Another pretty site to get you going is oneword.com. You see one word at the top of the site and you get sixty seconds to write about it. There is a progress bar to illustrate time passing that starts off green and becomes red. There is a ding at the end of the minute. You can have your writing emailed to you or you can just have it deleted. More about the purpose of the site here. There is also a related flickr group that uses the one word as a prompt for taking a picture within 24 hours. I couldn’t remember this site and the fantastic ask.mefi got me a response in 11 minutes.

As for November, National Novel Writing Month starts in two days. I’ll be taking part in National Blog Posting Month instead. For people who can’t commit to writing a 50,000 word novel, you just have to write a blog post every day for a month.

Based in Paris, Patrick Zachmann has been a freelance photographer since 1976 and focuses on “long-term projects on the cultural identity, memory and immigration of different communities.” The exhibition at the Hartlepool Art Gallery focuses on China from within and in its diaspora.

There are larger, moody, black and white photographs inspired by Chinese cinema of the 30s. There are also smaller postcard-like color photos full of smiles. As he described it last night, one set (the black and white) exposes the seedier face of China that which they do not want shown. The mafia, prostitutes and drug dealers, protesters in 1989 Tiananmen Square all feature in eye-opening, visually stunning photographs. The other set (color photos) feature the public face of China and it’s communities in the diaspora. These are glossy photos of proud moments and cultural celebrations. They are his vision as a “Long Nose” an old nickname for Westerners in the region.

He seemed pleased and somewhat bemused that the exhibition was hung in a (former) church. His work deals with reality and illusions and facades and he felt it appropriate to the setting.

He shared that he worked on this project from 1987-1995. He spent 6 years shooting the photographs and 2 years working on the book of the exhibition and the show. It was shown in 10 countries in Asia, though not in China.

He traveled to China for the first time as a journalist wanting to write a story on 1930s Chinese cinema. During that visit his interest in the region grew. He was determined to return through unofficial channels in a private exploration of what lay to the side of the spotlight the country shines on it’s achievements and was able to do so with the assistance of a man with underworld ties whom he refers to as W.

I asked him if he ever felt in danger while taking some of the photos. At first he responded in the negative but after giving it a few moments of consideration could think of at least 4 or 5 dicey situations he had been in that should be classed as dangerous. The resulting photos are an amazing document.

He is currently working on another project dealing with China called Chinese Confusions. He feels that people feel lost at this moment. Older people feel lost as older districts are razed to make way for modernity. Younger people feel lost as society moves so very quickly, and while feeling an attraction toward Western models, still maintaining a Chinese identity and a duty to their traditions.

Ying Zhu, Ph.D describes the cinema that intrigued him initially as follows, “If China today is in the midst of a massive and massively ambivalent transformation, it is not the first time. In the 1920s and 30s, China was similarly engaged in a great identity crisis, and Shanghai was at its forefront. Shanghai was the city where Western influences were most keenly felt even as anti-Western (anti-imperialist) nationalism also thrived, and where China’s richest and poorest people lived side by side…Shanghai came to symbolize the allure of modernity and cosmopolism [sic]… Shanghai ushered in Chinese cinema’s first golden era, producing many of the Chinese classics, including Goddess (1934), Song of the Fishermen (1934), Street Angel (1937), and New Women (1934). The Shanghai depicted in these films was corrupt and promising at the same time.”

The China and Chinese depicted in Patrick Zachmann’s photographs can be described similarly.

I asked him what he thought of the Olympics. He was very against China hosting the Olympics. It seems to him like China has won in every respect. Not only is China an economic superpower the Olympics has allowed them to win hearts and minds in the international community. Additionally, with support from Asia Societies in the U.S. many schools, from elementary schools to universities, are now teaching Chinese in language curricula (1, 2, 3) Also see this Beijing Evening News summary of a NY Times article on the Olympics. As the blogger who did the side-by-side comparisons of the article puts it, “every single statement that could possibly be seen as negative – and there’s quite a lot – has been expunged from the Beijing Evening News article, and almost every nuanced phrase that carries any negative connotations has been turned into one of unqualified praise.” It would be the equivalent of looking at only the glossy photos in Patrick Zachmann’s exhibition.

While walking through the exhibit my overwhelming sense was of the universality of the issues he is dealing with in his photography. Migration, wanting to build better lives for families and how we are perceived as individuals and communities are struggles common to the human endeavor. If you are in the Northeast this exhibition is definitely worth a special trip.

Patrick Zachmann‘s Eye of the Long Nose is on at the Hartlepool Art Gallery 13 September – 9 November, 2008.

Anais Mitchell opened for them. She was pretty good…best song of the set Cosmic American from her 2004 CD “Hymns for the Exiled”. Her latest CD is “The Brightness” released on Ani DiFranco’s Riteous Babe records.

The main event was Bon Iver (pronounced: bohn eevair, though when I heard Anais Mitchell say it it kind of sounded like bonnie bear) is mainly Justin Vernon plus Mike Noyce and Sean Carey and a bass player who I can’t find the name of for the life of me.

Justin Vernon has a gorgeous voice and a wicked collection of guitars and the four musicians on stage work together tightly for a really rich sound. You can hear the album (there’s only the one) on their virb.com page. They also have a myspace page and an official site.

Mike Noyce was stunning as he sang a beautiful cover of Graham Nash’s “Simple Man,” and the whole group sang a cover of Sarah Siskind’s “Lovin’s For Fools” after it was requested by an audience member. The video to the right is the same cover, different night.

Justin Vernon kept commenting on what a nice, professional venue the Sage is and the caliber of the crowd…he seemed a bit surprised and bewildered to be there at times. For me I can’t imagine hearing Bon Iver in a place with flawed sound – what a travesty it would be not to get the full range of emotion and beauty in the songs.

All well and good, the part that kicked my ass – the song that came on after the encore song when the lights came on: “Love Me Sexy” by Jackie Moon aka Will Ferrell in Semi-Pro (one of the many movies I saw on flights on this summer, surprisingly entertaining).

I have been away working in NY, Poland and Israel and am now back home with Kevin. Today is our one year wedding anniversary. The photo was taken a year ago today by the amazing Chris Armstrong. This year went by really quickly and it seems strange that we have been married for a year. A wonderful year, looking forward to many more without so much time away.

We who have lost our sense and our senses – our touch, our smell, our vision of who we are; we who frantically force and press all things, without rest for body or spirit, hurting our earth and injuring ourselves: we call a halt.

We want to rest. We need to rest and allow the earth to rest. We need to reflect and to rediscover the mystery that lives in us, that is the ground of every unique expression of life, the source of the fascination that calls all things to communion.

We declare a Sabbath, a space of quiet: for simple being and letting be; for recovering the great, forgotten truths; for learning how to live again.

May the brightness of these candles banish all gloom, anxiety, and care from my heart and from the hearts of my loved ones.

May this Shabbat festival bring us peace and serenity, joy and rest. Keep aglow within us, O God, the spirit of gratitude for Your many blessings, so that we may know the sweet taste of contentment and the rich harvest of sharing.

Kindle in our home and temple a deeper love for one another, for our people, and for all Your children.

Amen

The quoted bit in the middle is from “Only One Earth,” a United Nations Environment Programme publication for “Environmental Sabbath/Earth Rest Day,” June 1990; UN Environment Programme, DC2-803 United Nations, New York, NY 10017.

The full text was given to me by a colleague on a Taglit-birthright israel program as a reading before lighting Friday night candles. I am looking at different texts as I create my own traditions for my home. Please comment with any additional texts, links or traditions you find or practice.

Links
Traditional Candle Lighting Blessing in Song with text
Shabbat Blessings on the Union for Reform Judaism Site (sound files)
Candle Lighting Blessing in Feminine and Masculine God/dess forms
How to Light Shabbat Candles Flash Presentation
Ladino Women’s Prayer for before candlelighting with translation
Yiddish Prayer in translation for before candllelighting
Traditional Yehi Ratzon prayer for after candlelighting FAQ on Shabbat blessings and rituals
Find out Candle Lighting Times and print out Jewish Calendars at HebCal
Find out candle lighting times in additional cities all over the world on the Chabad website

Confirmed on Bezeq’s website it is the standard 4G that have been the first releases.

The prices in Israel are terrible – They will be sold for 1436 ILS (approx. $400) including Windows XP for new Bezeq ADSL customers.

Existing Bezeq customers who upgrade their speeds will have to pay 1796 ILS (approx. $500) and the ones released later with Linux will cost 1800 NIS (approx. $500).

So Windows is being subsidized by a telecom – it’s not even Widnows XP (misreported in the article) – According to the Bezeq site it is Microsoft Windows Home. This seems like a poor man’s google distro gone wrong, and Israelis are getting screwed on the price of a 4G.

I would hope most Israelis who would be interested in the machine won’t be “friars” and will find some way to get this from the US.

UPDATE: VJ wins.

AMSM ep01: Gaston and Victoria, like the legbones of a cetacean mammal, you are now vestigal.

AMSM ep02: Like the conventional paradigm in the pre-Copernican era of geocentric cosmology, Erika you have been invalidated.

AMSM ep03: Like Hannibal at the Battle of Zama, Mandy Lynn you have been vanquished.

AMSM ep04: Like the audience who witnessed the swan song of the corpulent soprano Leontyne Price in 1997, Jessie the fat lady has sung.

AMSM ep05: Like the Articles of Confederation after the ratification of the Constitution you are now historical arcana. [Lisa]

AMSM ep06: [blonde] Rachel eliminated without a line from Ben Stein.

Like the 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, [Aussie] Rachael you have avoided being annihilated.

AMSM ep07: Like involuntary servitude after the enactment of the 13th ammendment, Daniel, you are abolished.

AMSM ep08: Like the Soviet Space Station Mir upon its reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, Pickel, you have been obliterated.

AMSM ep09: Like the long-extinct Australopithecus afarensis you [Aussie] Rachael must vanish into oblivion.

Like discoloration of the tooth enamel after the application of a whitening dentifrice, you Brett, must now disappear into history.

AMSM ep10: Angela eliminated without a line from Ben Stein.

AMSM ep11: Like the Red Army in the Battle of Stalingrad in February of 1943, VJ, you have staved off defeat and vanquished your enemy. You are America’s Most Smartest Model.

There’s a great conversation about the show here with links to modeling done by the contestants and fun dialogue from the show.

King Creosote

The opening act King Creosote was really good. The reason there are more pictures of them is because a dumb usher thought my camera was a DSLR because it had a zoom on it, I tried to explain but he threatened to take my camera away so I could only take pictures of Squeeze during the first song.

Never mind that my picture-taking is way less disruptive than other people around me since I don’t use flash and I don’t use the LCD display. All the cell phones and small cameras taking videos and pictures are way more annoying.

It was a great show. My husband, while he loves my photos, was happy I was free to dance with him.

Glenn Tilbrook

Chris Difford

Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford will each be on UK tours in 2008. I kind of enjoy them more separately and hope to see them again then. I would also enjoy seeing King Creosote again. Live performance is one of my favorite ways to be exposed to music I don’t know so I try to make it to shows in time for the opening acts.

Squeeze Setlist:

Stephen Large

Take Me I’m Yours
Up The Junction
Piccadilly
I Think I’m Go-Go
Love Circles
Is That Love?
Third Rail
Electric Trains
Slightly Drunk
In Quintessence
Maidstone
Some Fantastic Place
Labeled with Love
Messed Around
Melody Motel
Slaughtered, Gutted and Heartbroken

Setlist

My attempt to sort the various LOL links. XKCD take on it above.

History of LOLCats

The Wall Street Journal published an article by Aaron Rutkoff summarizing the LOLcats phenomenon.

David Mcraney article on the memes

Anil Dash article on the language

Faux History of LOL Cats as 1920′s Comic Strip by Apelad – This is my favorite LOL derivative that I subscribe to by RSS. Now available in book form.

on boingboing.tv – more from the comic strip.

as a Ken Burns documentary:

The History of LOLCats – Watch more free videos

Animals

I Can Has Cheezburger, main LOL Cats site that also features an lolcat builder.

It is also the home of:
lolrus
loldogs
lolama
lolbear
lolbird
lolbunny
lolchilla
lolferret, lolferrets, erudite ferrets
lolfox
lolfrog
lolgerbil
lolhamster
lolhog
lolhuman (featuring cats)
lolmouse
lolotter
lolpig
lolrabbit
lolraccoon
lolsloth
lolsquirrel
lolturtle
lolusc
lolwl

—

Katurday

lolcats

cats

lolsaur

lolrats

lolbees

loltapirs

lolraccoons (they speak Latin)

Babies, Robots and Celebrities

lolbabies

lolbots (a fave)

lolohan

loljocks

Inanimate Objects

lolshoppincartz

loltoasters

lolmacs

lolmaps

Internet Parodies

lolsecrets, a mashup/parody of lolcats and postsecret.

fakecat, lolcats with stuffed animals.

loltwitter

lolspace

Parody of the Tom Cruise Scientology video:

Movies and Television

loltrek

the lolcky horror picture show

Pink Floyd lolwall

lolbuffy and lolscooby

lollost

lolheroes

lolfirefly

lolxena

lol-televangelists

lolfonz

and Ken Burns parody above

Books, Authors and Comics

lolcthulu

lolbats

lolyas – Young Adult Book Covers.

lolchaucer

lolGaimins

Music

lolmetal (a fave)

lolnin

lol80s

lolrapz

lolbeatlz

Pink Floyd lolwall

lolcorgan

lolwucu

Geeks and Code, Science and Technology

lolgeeks (a fave)

lolcode, and the attempt to make lolcode a real programming language

lolscience

lolbots (a fave)

lolKottke

lolnptech

lolsingularity

Professions and Subcultures

lolbrarians

lolcopz

lolgoth

lolburningman

lolwigger

lolbandes – historical reenactors

lolsports

loljocks

Sex and Sexuality

lolgays [one , two]

lolpr0n [NSFW - Not Safe For Work]

lolbabes

Thinkers

philolsophers (flickr group ; tumblelog]

loltheorists

News and Politics

lolpresident

lolpresidents on Fark

lolpresidents

loliticz

lolthenews

lolbush

Lolsheviks

History

lolhistory

lol-history

lolchaucer

lolgrims

Lolsheviks

Religion

lolbible

lolgod

lol-televangelists

loljesus (possibly offensive and not all images are lol macros)

Create Your Own

How to make a good lolcat guidelines

lolcat builder

Turning any website into lolcat fun with lolfeeds [example]

or with lolinator

roflbot – another image macro builder

lolcat buildr

lolcatr – Social networking through lolcats and competing head to head.

Singularity

lolsingularity

[via laughing squid, boingboing , waxy, neatorama, and lolbuffy]

INVITATIONS

Figure out when you want people to have their invitations. Don’t give in to pressure and send out invites as they get made. This can lead to people wondering if they are invited if they have heard that someone else has received their invitation already.

For a traditional invite, Wilton make pretty do-it-yourself kits. They have a full range that includes Save-the-Date, Thank you cards, place settings, favors and more. In NYC, Jack’s World [110 W. 32nd (between 6th & 7th Avenues) and 45 W. 45th (between 5th & 6th)] sometimes has their products at highly discounted prices.

My husband was dead-set against a traditional invite and lucky for me he is talented enough to design us something different. He wanted an invite that would reflect our personalities as opposed to something stuffy and boring. [His reaction, I don't mind the traditional invites but love what he came up with instead.]

The cover:

We took A4 sheets of black card stock (from Kid’s section of Staples) and cut them in half length-wise. Our cards are an A6 landscape design. We did this with a paper trimmer from staples. It was then given an edge in the middle with the same trimmer, different attachment.

On the cover we pasted a mosaic photo design printed on a Canon Selphy printer & paper. The mosaic of a photo from our engagement party is composed of pictures from a vacation we took last summer. If one looks at it with a magnifying glass you can make out the individual pictures. (If we were to do this again we would slip in flat, business card size magnifiers with an explanatory note.) I like the idea that our invite reflects us being composed of our previous experiences. We used a photosafe gluestick to attach it and it gives the card a bit more heft.

We tried a few different options for paper supplies that didn’t work out. Printing directly on white card stock (from Kid’s section of Staples) with a laser printer did not look good. It came out very flat and not interesting. The same was true for Tesco Photo Greeting Card papers. It came out very amateurish. Fine for a little kid’s party but not a wedding.

The inside:

We printed the inside on white tracing paper (from Kid’s section of Staples) with a laser printer and stapled it inside the black card. It is a cheaper take on the vellum idea. It looked great. The left side features Hebrew with English translation and a picture of the bride as a child. The right side features English with a picture of the groom as a child. RSVP is by phone, web, email or snailmail. The website we put up included useful, local information for people who were traveling and contact information for us. There was also the cover photo from the invite, clickable to a larger size so you could see the individual photos.

I really like the way it came out. Be advised if you’re going to go with pictures of yourself as children, people will hound you even more so about when you will start working on children that look as cute as that….sheesh! :-)

The night-do:

There was also a separate card that served as an invitation for the night-do. Four cards printed on the A4 white card stock we didn’t end up using for the invites. They were cut with the paper trimmer and had the same theme as the inside of the invite.

For envelopes we used Tesco Finest C6 envelopes. They have a different color lining inside (like pricier options), but overall they are pretty thin if you are using a thin-tipped marker to address them. We weren’t really bothered about the envelopes since they go straight in the trash, these were a step up from C6 brown envelopes, or security envelopes that look like it should enclose a check or a PIN.

We got great feedback on these invites. People enjoyed that they weren’t the same old thing…so if people [parents, friends] raise objections to trying something different stick to your instincts and do what you want. Remember at all times that it is YOUR day.

FAVORS or FAVOURS

Placecards:

Placecards were made by my amazing husband until 2:00 AM the night before the wedding. This is a leftover stack. A4 white card stock was printed with 8 placecards, then cut and given a crease with the paper trimmer, then folded and handwritten with names. The names could also have been printed. They looked great and we didn’t buy expensive frames or holders for them at a $1 a pop.

Poems:

The two poems were an amazing surprise for us. Laurie Giles, a former Northeast radio presenter and current chair of the Sunderland Pianoforte Society, read the Shakespeare as part of our ceremony in the morning. He and his wife Nora were spot-on in finding poems we really liked. They printed and laminated the poems on A6 cards and made enough to put one at each place setting.

Chocolate:

Does anyone like the stale coated almonds that are usually given as wedding favors? We decided to make our own. We made 75 out of plain Tulle White Circles from Party City in Brooklyn NY. It is $6.99 for a pack of 75. We bought some ribbon to tie it up and some slightly snazzier netting for the bundles on the head table as in the photo above from a shop in Hartlepool [Cake Decorating Workshop, part of The Arches complex on Park Road]. They were about 20 pence each. We also rented our cake stand from them and bought the silver platters for the cakes there as well.

There are tons of expensive boxes for these kind of things and I personally think they are a waste of money, even the slightly more expensive tulle pouches are a waste. These looked great and they were a lot cheaper. For a personal spin we put in American (3 Hershey Kisses) and British chocolate (1 Cadbury Hero – mini-Cadbury chocolates) to symbolize our union.

Buy on Amazon »

I am baking challahs for the first time for the Jewish New Year – Rosh Hashana which starts tonight. I am using a great book, The Secret of Challah by Shira Wiener and Ayelet Yifrach.

Many of of the recipes are for baking multiple challot (plural of challah) so some of them call for 2 kilos of flour! I found a nice recipe calling for 1 kilo of flour that should make 10 small rolls. It doesn’t have any sugar in it, instead calling for 2/3 cups of honey. I am waiting for the dough to rise and I hope it will come out ok – I forgot to put the honey in with the liquids at the beginning and only added it after the flour bit :-)

At the end of a chapter on the art of braiding challahs, is a list of various customs for assorted shapes for holidays. The Rosh Hashana list is also on their website (which also has some of the recipes):

* Rosh Hashana round challah: It has become the widespread custom in many communities to bake round challahs in honor of Rosh Hashanah. The round shape symbolizes the yearly cycle and the “wheel of time,” the ascents and descents that a person experiences during his life. It also symbolizes perfection and infinity, expressing our hope for a perfect year, free of troubles and tribulations, a year of unlimited blessings.

* The traditionaly round challah of Rosh Hashanah is sometimes adorned with a “crown” made of a small braided ring of dough, commemorating the prayers of Rosh Hashanah proclaiming G-d King over the universe.

* Eastern European Jews used to bake challah in the shape of a ladder to symbolize that on Rosh Hashanah G-d decides “Who will be humbled and who will be elevated,” as is stated in the prayers of Rosh Hashanah.

* In some European communities, the custom was to bake round challah reminiscent of a bird peeking out of a nest (known as “foigel challah,” bird challah, in Yiddish). The reason for the custom: Just as G-d shows mercy to birds, so should He have mercy on us.

* Lithuanian Jews had the custom to bake challah shaped like outstretched palms of the hand. The shape was meant to symbolize the hands of the kohens raised to bless the people during the Priestly Blessing (Birkat Kohanim).

* The Jews of North Africa used to bake challah in the shape of a fish or a “chamsah,” a five-fingered hand, symbolizing good luck.

I will try making a few of the shapes…pictures to follow if I am not ashamed of the results. Wishing you and yours a healthy, happy, joyous year filled with love and laughter.

Challah dough

Freshly baked challah out of the oven

It’s not a British vs. American difference according to google.

“+at +the +moment” = 88,700,000 entries generally; 2,490,000 on sites from the UK

“at +the +minute” = 566,000 entries generally; 196,000 on sites from the UK

A large proportion of the total “+at +the +minute”s are coming from the UK. I wonder if it’s a city vs. town divide with people from [small] towns in the UK being online more than their American counterparts.

We still say “Up to the minute” [for breaking news], and “up to the moment” doesn’t sound right…I think I use “at the moment” for personal thoughts and individual actions, minutes for something external that requires some time.

Interesting Language Blogs:

Separated By a Common Language

Language Log

Languagehat

I had the privilege to meet Chris Schwarz through my work. He was an extraordinary human being. If you are ever in Krakow, go to the Galicia Jewish Museum to see his amazing, life’s work.

From the Galicia Jewish Museum website, a description of the museum and their permanent exhibition. [The catalogue of the permanent exhibition Photographing Traces of Memory is beautifully produced in English and Polish and is highly recommended.] :

The Galicia Jewish Museum exists to celebrate the Jewish culture of Galicia and to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust, presenting Jewish history from a new perspective.

The permanent exhibition, Traces of Memory, is a contemporary look at the Jewish past in Poland.

The exhibition features the work of photographer Chris Schwarz, with texts by Prof. Jonathan Webber (UNESCO Chair of Jewish and Interfaith Studies, University of Birmingham, UK). Over a period of twelve years, they traveled together town by town and village by village, gathering material that offers a completely new way of looking at the Jewish past that was destroyed in Poland. The exhibition pieces together a picture of the relics of Jewish life and culture in Polish Galicia that can still be seen today, interpreting these traces in a manner which is informative, accessible, and thought-provoking.

The exhibition is divided into five sections, corresponding to the different ways in which the subject can be approached:

Section 1 is entitled Jewish Life in Ruins, with all the sadness of confronting the past.
Section 2, Jewish Culture as it Once Was , displays remaining signs of the original culture.
Section 3, Sites of Massacre and Destruction shows the horror of the Holocaust.
Section 4, How the Past is Being Remembered recognizes the efforts to preserve the traces of memory, and
Section 5, People Making Memory Today, shows people involved in recreating the memory of the Jewish past in Poland today.

A talented photographer, Chris came to Poland on an unrelated job, filming a documentary. He noted that the remains of Jewish life in Galicia were going undocumented. He was concerned that the existing iconography of the Holocaust and Jewish life [in Poland] were very limited. He then proceeded to make it his life’s work to rectify the situation.

In addition to producing and hosting high quality exhibitions and housing an excellent bookstore, the gallery has since become a center of community life, with concerts and classes, and a newsletter that chronicles local Jewish activities and culture.

I hope they continue to go from strength to strength in fitting tribute to Chris.

Chris Schwarz went about his chosen path in a thoughtful, humble way, with a sense of humor and irony, a clear purpose, and a wonderful, sensitive way with people. He was a special human being. He will be greatly missed.

Found an old website of his which describes work he has done.

Update: From the August Newsletter of the Galicia Jewish Museum:

Messages of condolences can be sent to
info@galiciajewishmuseum.org
from where they will be taken and placed in the official Book of Condolence at the Museum.

Obituary from The Times Online

Obituary from The Boston Globe (NY Times News Service)

We got to the office of Live Smart Homes at 2:05. We had made an appointment. We were left to sit and wait in their overly warm office entrance while crappy music played.

We overheard a young woman listen to a complaint about a leak in one of the buildings while we waited.

After about 15 minutes, which felt much longer, a woman came out from the back to take us to view a one-bedroom flat.

We enter the building entrance to the right of their office. There are workmen making a huge racket, apparently refurbishing some flats.

We enter the flat.

To the left there are two closets. One is mostly taken up by a hot water heater. One is mostly taken up with a clothes dryer.

To the right there is a serviceable bathroom. One of the marketing highlights is that new tenants get a fresh shower curtain.

There is a shoebox of a kitchen – with a washing machine [clothing], microwave, half size fridge built in. Only one person would be able to fit at a time, and with no place to sit, I guess you’re not really meant to eat at home.

The bedroom is completely taken up by a double bed. The room is so small you can’t really stand at the foot of the bed. You can stand to the side of the bed, across from which is the built-in closets, covered with mirror doors. Ugly, but serviceable, and your only clothing storage space.

The living room is almost completely taken up by a not-too-comfortable two-seat sofa covered in cheap blue fabric. Across from it is a “fireplace”, with electric heater. In the corner is another marketing highlight, you get a small TV over a VCR (VIDEO Machine) in the corner of the room. Is this 1990? Does anyone still have videos, that they use?!

The best part of the living room is the hideous wallpaper. Flowers on the bottom half of the walls, split by a wallpaper border and intense stripes on the top half. It is ugly and makes the room look even smaller.

I think it would be psychologically damaging to assaulted by this aesthetic every day. I might become the woman in The Yellow Wallpaper, completely insane, minus the post-partum depression.

Are they worried people will make the walls dirty? [Dirt would probably get lost in the busy design of it.] Kevin’s theory is that they bought it cheaply in bulk. The aesthetic is of an anonymous, ugly hotel, that you don’t mind staying in for a night because it’s cheap and you’re surprised by how clean it is.

Here’s the problem…it’s not cheap…Non-refundable credit checks at £75 each [£150 total] which include a change of locks. £500 security deposit. £425 Rent per month [Slightly larger one-bedrooms are £435, 2 bedrooms start at £465.].

The water bill is included, as is a membership for 2 to the nearby Springs gym [£60-£100 value]. Any home repairs are done by the management company. Council Tax is not included and is an additional £95 a month nor is the Electric Bill.

This is a lot of money for a shoe box, even one that is centrally located. As described above the one bedroom we looked at was really one medium-sized room divided into the different areas with walls. Two people could not live in it.

The sad thing is it would be much better as a studio without the wall separating the bedroom and living room. And, it would look larger if you painted the walls a light color and/or added a mirror. I am not a decorator…even I know this stuff!

I could really only see it as an option for a single person without a lot of stuff, who is almost never home, possibly blind.

Thankfully, we have another option. There is a small three-bedroom house we can rent for less money that is less central. No contest.

Free download of The Yellow Wallpaper or purchase from amazon below.

The Yellow Wallpaper

I took the bus….it is a long bus ride but also the cheapest option if you don’t book the train way in advance.

She is staying in Hendon near Golder’s Green. This is a very Jewish area. There are tons of kosher restaurants and bookstores. It is very much like areas of Brooklyn and Queens in NY only with different accents except for the Israelis.

We did a few organized activities for tourists and some on our own. Here’s a breakdown:

On Thursday, we did a walking tour of Old Kensington. It was supposed to include the roof gardens / Kensington gardens and picturesque streets and homes.

The guide was pretty terrible. It might have been his first time leading this walk. We walked around a place where rich and famous people used to live.

He would point out the little plaques/signs on their former homes. He would read some famous facts about them from a book. Gee, I know how to read too.

Also, I don’t really care the Princess Diana ate at a specific restaurant or shopped for toys in a specific store. I guess I am not the target audience.

I ended up mostly ignoring him and taking pictures and sadly the roof garden was closed that day. The tour ends in Kensington Gardens (adjacent to and formerly part of Hyde Park).

Toilets were not on the itinerary, so Shayna and I wondered if the Consulate of Fiji would let us in and eventually found one in the park.

We had fun walking around there to get back to a train. I took pictures of geese and swans and the Elfin Oak (which sounds cooler in theory than it actually is).

On Friday we went to Hampstead Heath. We wanted to get to Parliament Hill for a view of London.

Apparently London doesn’t believe in putting maps at Hampstead Heath. We found one posted as we exited near the entrance marked Parliament Hill. Enter the huge nature area from somewhere else and you’re on your own. Asking people for directions has them pointing in vague directions, which is as helpful as it sounds.

It didn’t matter because it was a gorgeous day. We had a nice walk and eventually even made it to Parliament Hill (in a really roundabout route). The actual Parliament Hill view is not so special but the wander was great.

Sunday was a great day with flawless weather. First half of the day was a 3 1/2-hour cycling tour.

I highly recommend a tour with The London Bicycle Tour Company (located at Gabriel’s Wharf, +44 (0) 20 7928 6838). [They also rent bikes out if you want to go on your own.] We did the Royal West Tour. It was a great way to see famous sites (and orient yourself in London), get a bit of exercise and be outside in the sunshine.

The guide was great. He did not talk your ear off, just identified what we were seeing with an interesting fact here and there.

Our group finished the regular route a bit early and our guide took us to see a bit more so we would get our full 3 1/2 hours. After the bike tour we returned to the Thames River for a while to take some more photos including ones of Star Wars Stormtroopers out and about in conjunction with a local exhibit.

Sunday night we went on a Jack the Ripper tour with Donald Rumbelow. He is the author of The Complete Jack the Ripper, and is recognized as the expert on the subject. He is also a really good guide.

Because he is well-known there were about 70 people or so out for the tour. You can go with other companies for smaller tours. But he knows his stuff, speaks clearly and makes sure the whole group can hear and is happy to sign copies of his book at the end of the tour.

It did feel a bit weird at times, touring in the wake of a serial killer. It was interesting and will correct misconceptions if you’ve seen any movies based on the Ripper.

I don’t really think it is appropriate for young children. The few that were brought on the tour, thankfully, ended up not really paying attention to what was being said.

So London Walks was 1 for 2 for the walks I went on. Shayna had gone on a few more and had some good experiences.

I would like to return to London and do my own tour to check out Banksy graffiti.

It’s really expensive to visit London (and England in general)…thankfully we didn’t have hotel costs. We did eat out a couple of times at Kosher restaurants and visit some Kosher bakeries.

Isola Bella Cafe (63 Brent Street, Hendon, +44 (0) 20 8203 2000) had really good Thai food. It is a bit of an everything restaurant (people at a table across the aisle were having burgers and fries.)

I ordered a Thai meal special and had yummy corn soup, veggie pad thai and salad, and fried bananas with ice cream for desert. Shayna had a Thai meal special with vegetable soup (a bit salty), fish (good) and chips (fries), and a different fried fruit with ice cream.

The food was really good and the portions are huge (which makes you feel a bit better about the prices in pounds). This is easily a place where two people can share a meal. We ended up taking most of the pad thai home (along with most of the fried bananas) and having it as part of another meal. It reheated well. (Time Out Review)

Coby’s (115a Golders Green Road, +44 (0) 203 209 5054) is an Israeli cafe with cute Israeli waitstaff. I had Melawach which I hadn’t had in ages with grated tomato and a hard boiled egg. Shayna had an Israeli breakfast. Desert was a yummy chocolate crepe with coffee ice cream. this was also a thoroughly enjoyable meal. You have to time a meal to Coby’s well, it tends to get crowded. Definitely go inside, even though all the tables outside were packed when we went, we found a great table inside. [Time Out Review]

Mr. Baker {119-121 Brent Street, Hendon, +44 (0) 20 8202 6845) is a large bakery and a great source for whole wheat pitas and rugelach and other pastries. They also have tables and chairs so you can eat in. [Time Out Review]

We also visited The Cake Company (2 Sentinel Square, +44 (0) 208 202 2327) to look at Kosher wedding cakes. They have some really ornate and fun ones on their websites. It was also not to far from where Shayna was staying.

The woman was very helpful and noted that there are two options, fruitcake or sponge cake…For the fruitcake, I was picturing sponge cake with fresh fruit in it or something (like a yummy fruit tart in cake form)…Not fruitcake, the joke at Christmas-time, stale, hard and filled with dried fruit.

We told her we had never had some so she gave us each a slice. The looks on our face were pretty comical as we each tried a bite (I’m guessing mine was at least as comical as Shayna’s). Shayna had hers first and then gave me the rest of hers. I tried a bite of mine and then held the remainder of both our slices in my hand. I then handed these sheepishly to the salesgirl for placement in the bin.

Definitely don’t want fruitcake. Apparently, they are a popular choice for wedding cakes. What are people trying to say about their futures with their chosen spouse? Eeeeech!!??

Successful bits of shopping in London: a Wagamama cookbook [NOT KOSHER Noodle Place with some nice veggie items on the menu and in the cookbook] and a rain jacket. [It's amazing how difficult it is to find a rain jacket in England. Especially, with all the flooding this year, do people not realize rain is year-round here?]

Link to full set of pictures from my London adventure

Links to related media:

Kosher Food Guide from London Beth Din

Lonely Planet London

Frommer’s London 2007 (Frommer’s Complete)

The Complete Jack the Ripper

The Wagamama Cookbook

Recently this week, UK removed The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it “offended” the Moslem population which claims it never occurred. This is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.

Here’s a link to an older blog post The UK does Teach about the Holocaust where I have included the response of the Holocaust Education Trust in London. This forward is untrue. If you receive it please correct the sender.

My friend did not want to send the link above to correct information because she felt embarrassed for sending a hoax. She had received the email from people she thought were reputable. It seemed like a good message to send on and she did so to people near and far (some she was close to, and some not). Remember the people who were murdered in the Holocaust and don’t give in to Holocaust deniers. Who can argue with that?

Especially in times when Holocaust denial exists, and Survivors of the Holocaust will not be around for much longer, we must be ever-vigilant to be accurate with the information we send.

These email forwards are especially bad. They vilify the entire Muslim community in broad strokes. Definitely not the way to build bridges.

If one person from the long list forwards it on, the myth gets perpetuated. Any email, especially one with absolutes, should be checked with a quick google search. If you want you can also bookmark purportal.com which lets you search hoax, fraud, scam, phishing and misinformation resources from one place.

The most extreme range of crappy to sublime in one performer was the finale by Madonna.

La Isla Bonita as performed by Madonna with Gogol Bordello was absolutely genius. So that’s what the song was missing – wacked out gypsies. Admittedly, I really liked the song when it was first released in 1987. I was 10 or 11 at the time.

The point of the concerts according to the official website:

Live Earth is a 24-hour, 7-continent concert series taking place on 7/7/07 that will bring together more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people to trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis.

The stupidest song possible for Live Earth was Madonna’s Hung Up, the very last song to cap off the night.

A crisis does not indicate that “Time Goes By So Slowly.” This lyric repeats in the damn song at least 14 times, but probably more. And time probably moved even faster last night with the environmental impact of these shows.

Video of Madonna with Gogol Bordello:

Gogol Bordello

Madonna

Foo Fighters

Spinal Tap

Pussycat Dolls

Beastie Boys

An Inconvenient Truth

An Inconvenient Truth

By furtive glances, I noticed her eyes and that she was dozing a bit as I do in the mornings with her bags in her lap. Her two gloves were mismatched colors (dark blue and black) and underneath her long dress as she got off the train I noticed she had on white socks.

Told my Israeli coworker Naomi about this….her response: they’re crazy….I said it was similar to religious Jewish women covering up….she agreed but retorted….they’re crazy too….they are alike….

So we just have to get people to see their similarities…or an ingenius plan I heard in a recent documentary I went to see Encounter Point about workers for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict….make all the smokers get their cigarettes from either the territories or Israel whichever is the home of The Other and people will get along in service of their nic fits…

I think it’s neat that except for a glance or two, at the odd sight of it, people went about their business. It’s one of the things I like about NYC…The countdown to leaving has begun so of course I have to appreciate it before I go.

my flickr: Swimming in Auschwitz Set

Went with Jason to see the NYC / East Coast Premiere of Swimming in Auschwitz at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan.

It is a documentary about six vibrant, amazing women who survived the infamous Nazi death camp of Auschwitz.

Director Jon Kean was in attendance along with Renee Firestone one of the women featured in the film. [Photo above.]

It was really magnificent, I highly recommend it. Editor Anne Stein did a fantastic job seamlessly blending stock footage and the stories of these women so that their narratives kept a collective, cooperative flow.

Director Jon Kean prefaced the screening by stating his view of the difference between how men and women tell stories. A man will tell you the facts of what happened. Women will recall the quirky details.

After the screening the pair came on stage and answered audience questions – my notes below.

Renee Firestone describes the first time she ever spoke about her experience. (She is an educator for the Simon Wiesenthal Center.) It was at a Mormon Temple and they screened the very graphic French documentary Night and Fog (1955) [I remember seeing it in high school.]. She was hoping people would leave. She was surprised that nobody moved and was told by Rabbi Cooper that she must speak. She started to talk and has no idea where the strength came from.

In response to a question about seeking retribution she states that there was very little retribution. They just wanted to live lives. And, telling stories is revenge.

An Israeli woman asks how she feels about 70,000 Jews marching to Washington to protest Darfur but not protesting Ahmadinejad, President of Iran, who has called for Israel’s destruction. The woman, it seemed, equated this to ignoring Hitler.

Renee Firestone responds that she has been involved in protesting every single genocide. We have lived in the bloodiest century. When she sees footage (of Darfur), she sees herself in Auschwitz and asks her interlocuter what she has done?

[Jewish organizations have protested Ahmadinejad. Others have kept busy with other issues, feeling that to protest him on a grand scale would be giving him power and more of a platform on the World stage or that it might be viewed as inflating the risk for political purpose.]

When asked about the reaction of German audiences to the film Renee Firestone describes her involvement with One By One an organization that facilitates dialogue between descendants of victims, perpetrators, bystanders and resisters. She spent a week together with a Nazi in Berlin. She was glad she went. She learned how easy it is to be indoctrinated, brainwashed or just give in to peer pressure. She does not know what she would have done and relates that one can never know unless placed in a situation. Similarly, one doesn’t know how much strength they have until it is called upon.

Director Jon Kean recommends seeing The Last Days, another documentary that Renee Firestone is featured in. During filming, they found documentation related to a doctor who experimented on her sister and she finds and confronts him at the end of the film.

A young woman who is reading Elie Wiesel’s Night asks if she ever has flashbacks to her experiences. Renee Firestone replies, all the time, plus she speaks about her experiencees every day. Sometimes a flash of an experience will hit her out of nowhere. Director Jon Kean adds that when Survivors agree to be interviewed they relate that the next 2 or 3 nights after an interview will be especially difficult.

He is asked how he came to the project and responds that he began the project to study laughter as a survival tool. Men would say sometimes there was humor, and they would laugh, but could not pin down specific details for him. He became enamored of how these women told stories.

She is asked her opinion of God’s role and about faith. She responds that she has so much faith she doesn’t believe God had anything to do with the atrocities. She relates the story of Noah and the Flood and the promise given by God that he will never destroy the world again…she quips that it’s a shame he did not extract the same promise from Noah / Man.

She responds to a question about survival saying it was pure luck. Director Jon Kean adds three elements that helped people to survive according to Michael Berenbaum based on previous events they had done together. [Berenbaum was supposed to be moderator for the evening but couldn't make it due to bad weather.] Assessing Risk, Finding Meaning, Having people to support you are three elements that repeat in tales of survival. They’re not bad things to have in general.

One man in the audience whose father was a survivor originally from Muncacz [Hungary] asked about the responses of former neighbors after the War. His father’s experience were incredulous responses of “You’re still alive?!” “Can’t Believe they didn’t get you!”…Her husband is originally from Muncacz and there is footage in the film of people dancing from Muncacz…Renee Firestone relates meeting her next door neighbor after the war who was about 10 at the time and wondering what his family said about her family being taken away. He said they were sorry her sister died. But, she relates bitterly that nobody asked at the time. Nobody cared. This is one of the only points in the evening that this amazing woman gives in to negativity. Director Jon Kean adds that some may have been sorry their neighbors were gone but it did improve their lives economically.

A woman in the audience asks about the cruelty of female Nazis which is not depicted in this film about women. Renee Firestone agrees that the capacity of women for cruelty was worse and recalls a guard from Auschwitz C Lager who was hung after the war. I believe the reference was to Irma Grese who was hung at the Belsen trial.

To conclude the evening the question of retribution is raised again and how she felt when one of the other women in the film relates that at liberation she was given the chance to kill one of her persecuters but does not take it…Renee Firestone replies we are not killers though she wouldn’t be sorry if someone else killed them. This last bit said with the smile of someone who has survived, amazingly, with her sense of humor intact.

I overheard a woman in the bathroom complain that the film made light and didn’t show what really happened, children being torn from their parent’s arms. She may have been a Holocaust survivor and I would not try to dispute her response to the film. My take on it was quite different. It was a unique perspective on the horrors that occurred. I hope I would never have to confront such horrors and if I did I hope I would be able to keep my humanity intact via my sense of the absurd. Also, there actually is some very graphic documentary footage in the film. You are not hit over the head with the brutality that occurred but the footage is there and it is a subcurrent running throughout the film which should be viewed in advance before showing it to young people.

Upcoming screenings are taking place in London, England and Salt Lake City, Utah. You can check the official website for additional screenings or just buy the DVD (there’s a link for purchase on the site) for $20 via Paypal.

I am torn about writing a summary of the film as opposed to the evening because I think it should be viewed so for now am not going to do so.

Article on the film here.

Woke up at 5:00 AM. Registration was between 6:30-7:45AM according to the website and ride was supposed to start at 8:00AM…I could have woken up at least an hour later. Since I had my vest already I just had to show up – even getting there at 7:30 AM was early – since the ride didn’t start until at least 8:15 AM.

At the beginning and at some points in the middle there was so much congestion with 32,000 riders that you had to walk your bike, and generally the ride is a slow one. While this might suck for an experienced rider this was perfect for me. My mom went to the Salute to Israel Parade and ran into a family that decided to leave the ride because of how frustrated they were….she didn’t mention that what frustrated them was actually ideal for me :-)….

There was some entertainment at the beginning of the ride and along the route in the form of flying inflatable balls being passed along the crowd during the wait for the ride to start, some folks on stilts, Cousin Brucie announcing where people were from, a man in little girl drag with blond pigtails sitting on a large tricycle wishing people a good ride and some jugglers. One bus shelter along the route held a steel drum band and Commerce Bank who sponsored the ride had people in sections to cheer.

The rest areas also sometimes had music and food for purchase. Being given out foodwise there were bananas and oranges being handed out. Drinks were slightly more varied with water and different juices. Tour de Brooklyn rules with their peanut butter and jelly bagels.

People in groups decorated their helmets to make them more visible. Attached to helmets were flowers, ribbons, stuffed animals, beer / energy drink cans, palm trees, arrows and flags – nationality and sports teams. My favorite were a group that had furry rats attached on little platforms, each rat wore a little fluorescent bike helmet.

The basic route info can be found on the Bike New York website. The detailed route is on the NYC.GOV website. It is really neat to ride on highways and bridges without cars.

Anyone considering doing the ride who is intimidated shouldn’t be. You might feel ridiculous for feeling scared when you see little kids doing the ride on their tiny bikes with even tinier wheels (I did, a bit.). There are parts where you walk because of congestion and there are plentiful rest areas (5 before the end.) The pace is really comfortable / easy, partially because of how many people there are. The ride was capped at 32,000 this year and was sold out before ride day. Definitely register before ride day to ensure you will be able to ride and there may be a discount for early registration.

On my way to the Staten Island Ferry I ran into Steve. Hung out with him at his place for a little while. The stopping moving made it very difficult to move later when I walked the 2 miles to the ferry. He accompanied me and either way don’t think my body was willing to get back on the bike. I was completely stiff. To make things worse we went up the ramp to the regular ferry entrance only to be told we would have to go all the way around – bikes (and their riders) were being loaded on the lower level (that used to be for cars). From the ferry caught the R train and then transferred to the Q. Then the hardest ride of the day was the 1 mile from the train station home. I’m hoping my ass will forgive me someday soon :-) or at least before June 3rd.

Lining Up for the Bike Tour

Bjork at Radio City

Randomly had a hotel room not far from the show for the night through work. Watched some Bravo before going, an episode of Project Runway [Finale of Season 2] and Shear Genius which I had never seen before. Headed over to Radio City,

Bjork at Radio City

Row F in the orchestra is way further back then it should be because Radio City is one of these venues with double letter rows before single letter.

Konono N°1 were the opening act. They were ok if a bit repetitive by the end of their set. Made me yearn for the Afro-Cuban All Stars.

Björk was great but the venue was really wrong for her. I remember seeing her at the Tibetan Freedom Festival and much prefer seeing her outdoors. A lot of the crowd was dead and the energy of the hardcore people got lost.

One of the more bizarre points in the evening was when I told the guy next to me I think she has a wooden leg attached. The beats were really cool and I literally could have sworn for a bit that she had a third leg on that she was using to bang on the stage and create the extra beats. I took a bunch of photos focusing on her legs to prove / disprove the notion. It was actually a bit of fabric hanging form the dress that I was misinterpreting. It’s kind of funny that I didn’t think it too weird for her.

RCMH setlist is below. I am a bit jealous of those who saw her at United Palace theatre because they got Hunter and Immature (and Bachelorette and Hyperballad). Though we got All Is Full of Love and Jóga so I guess it balances out.

Setlist:

01 Earth Intruders*
02 Venus as a Boy
03 Aurora
04 I See Who You Are**
05 Oceania
06 Dull Flame of Desire***
07 All is Full of Love
08 The Pleasure is All Mine
09 Pagan Poetry
10 Jóga
11 Where is the Line
12 Army of Me
13 Innocence
14 Wanderlust
15 Pluto

Encores:

16 [encore break]
17 [band introductions]
18 Anchor Song
19 Declare Independence

*With Konono N°1
**With Min Xiao-Fen
***With Antony Hegarty

After the show I was hanging out by the stage door, at first in hopes of taking a photo of the setlist under the false assumption that the hardcore folks who nabbed it would be hanging out.

Saw Idan Raichel waiting around too. Normally I wouldn’t go over to someone famous but what the hell Bjork wasn’t coming out…Ended up talking to him about the Bjork show – he was really impressed by Antony Hegarty [Antony and the Johnsons] and about seeing him perform in The Idan Raichel Project’s very first show in Tel Aviv. I had even seen him perform back in the day when he was the keyboard player for Ivri Lider. It seems he is in NY a fair bit these days because he’s got a gorgeous NYC girlfriend.

Idan Raichel with fans

I channeled my mother for this picture. These two fans came over and told him they were fans. Without asking him if it was ok I asked them if they wanted a picture with him. Then, I said – if that’s ok with you….it would have been assholic for him to refuse just like it was assholic for me to do what I did….It was a bossy, Israeli, Jewish mother – the matter was settled before he was consulted, like I said assholic thing for me to do. The girls got a cute picture…Sorry Idan….it was ridiculous. The price of fame I guess…

Didn’t end up waiting for Bjork. Had a great salad to go from Metro Cafe and got back to my hotel room to watch some more Bravo. I really don’t get the show Work Out.

I’ll have to try an upscale one at the cute Peanut Butter and Co. (240 Sullivan Street).

Is it because my parents (and me, technically) were immigrants that I didn’t know about this All-American treat? What else have I been missing out on?

Fame Junkies: The Hidden Truths Behind America’s Favorite Addiction

Fame Junkies by Jake Halpern subtitled “The Hidden Truths Behind America’s Favorite Addiction” is really interesting.

You can read about fame school, the expensive conventions precocious children go to be discovered and industries that have sprouted up to support this, celebrity assistants who subordinate their own lives for someone else (they have a support group!), a celebrity home mapmaker, obsessive Rod Stewart fans, police officers on stalker patrol, a retirement home for celebrities and more.

It also explores interesting theories and research.

Efforts to boost self-esteem in the classroom and in the home may have increased young people’s (already greater) tendency toward self-importance and narcissism. And in the age of reality television the perceived availability of fame means many young people do not have to face reality at all.

Belongingness theory – About craving social acceptance, social relations create happy chemicals in the brain and para-social relations with celebrities or characters on a show can induce the same thing.

Studies on Birging – basking in reflected glory (an example being college students wearing a school team jersey – when team wins vs. when they lose; also the language that gets used – “We won” vs. “They Won” or “They Lost” vs. “We Lost”)

A study with monkeys : ) on decision theory. Using a juice currency, monkeys were willing to pay to see frontal shots of dominant males or closeups of female hindquarters; and had to be paid [extra juice] to watch frontal female or subordinate males. It seems that acquiring this social information is useful for survival. Human obsession with celebrity may work the same way.

There’s lots of great stuff in here. Though I do think some of the studies created for the book could use some work. The research seems to reflect the commonsense idea that people who are secure in themselves and have stuff going on may need celebrity less in their lives. In healthy people, healthy doses can still be fun.

Catch A Mate

Catch a Mate by Gena Showalter is fun chic lit, a super quick, sexy read. Suspicious wives can go to the Catch a Mate agency to hire someone to tempt their boyfriends or husbands and confirm their suspicions. The women who work there as bait, especially Jillian Greene, have a very jaded and simple view of men – they are pigs – oink oink. Her opinion will of course change when explosive sparks fly with Marcus Brody – the male version of her.

While I enjoy historical romance (Johanna Lindsey) I do like well-done modern chic lit that reflects now. The business referenced in this book exists in our modern age (talk shows tell me so, it must be true). The one weird thing about the book – the female protagonist is involved in a sexual business, it is 2007, and her fantasy during a wild, anything goes romp is having the male protagonist go down on her. She has never had this experience and is surprised that he is an excited willing participant. Is that truly reflective of women’s experience in 2007? That makes me sad.

Just Married

Just Married by director Ayelet Bechar was really good. It documents the difficulties of two couples Israeli Arabs who marry Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank. As of 2002 there is a law prohibiting family reunification.

Suhad and Rabia are a young couple that met at university. To be together Suhad becomes an illegal resident in Jerusalem. The film depicts her change from vibrancy to depression as she stays in her home most of the time so she is not caught. In a depressing bit of circular beaurocracy, her husband Rabia (the one with legal status in Israel) requests a permit for her and is told he must file for Family Reunification but that no requests are being taken at this time and she cannot be given any other sort of document because she needs the one of family reuinification.

For the older couple on the film Kifach and Yazeed, the solution is to stay in Berlin until the law changes and they can go home. Kifach struggles to learn German and at the same time, she must be in Israel for part of the year so she does not lost her status as is threatened in one municipal office. She had been very active in the struggle for coexistence in Israel and has many photos with major Israeli political figures such as Shulamit Aloni and Ehud Barak. Her husband views Barak as slime and does not want to see the photo, there is elegant symmetry in the film as Kifach later confronts Barak at a conference in Berlin about this law keeping families apart.

There is also a beautiful symmetry as the film ends with both families giving birth to children.

It is a complex issue. The situations these people are in are terrible. They are being kept from having a family with the person they love in their homes. The Israeli government believes that this horrible law may be saving someone’s life; it feels it must ignore the fact that it is also adding much misery to many innocent civilians.

The law was ammended so that women above the age of 25 and men above the age of 35 may now apply for family reunification. The director was at the screening and gave the update that Suhad was about to have her birthday and would more than likely obtain family reuinification and that Kifach’s struggle continues as well.

It makes me feel lucky that all I have to deal with is a bunch of paperwork and a $1000 fee for a fiancee visa to the UK. Our revolution was a really long time ago. (Though, it does suck that the price doubled as of April 1st of this year.)

There is a great summary of the Israeli law involved from a recent Jerusalem Post article (Background: Terror plot may have blown family reunification By DAN IZENBERG, April 11, 2007) :

“Prohibitions on family reunification were first introduced by the Interior Ministry on April 1, 2002, following the suicide bombing at the Matza restaurant in Haifa’s Neveh Sha’anan neighborhood in which 15 Israelis were killed. The driver of the car bomb was a Hamas terrorist who had married an Israeli and carried a blue identity card.

Initially, the freeze on family reunification was total. No Palestinian who married an Israeli could begin the five-year process for obtaining residential rights or citizenship, and those who were in the middle of the process could not advance.

On July 31, 2003, the Knesset turned the administrative decision into a one-year law, which was periodically extended.

On July 27, 2005, the law was amended so that Palestinian women above the age of 25 and men above 35 could live with their Israeli spouses if they met security criteria. Younger Palestinians were still barred from living in Israel.

On March 21, 2007, the law was amended again and extended until July 2008. The current law provides a humanitarian committee to consider exceptional requests for family reunification from women under 25 and men under 35, but toughens the security criteria and extends the restrictions to spouses from countries classified as enemy.

The law in all its forms has been harshly criticized by human rights groups in Israel and abroad. In May, the High Court narrowly rejected a petition to overrule it in its second version. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Meretz MK Zehava Gal-On and the Israeli-Arab rights group Adalah have already declared they will petition against the newly amended law.

The human rights groups claim the law violates the fundamental right of every citizen to a family and is motivated by Jewish demographic concerns. The law prevents roughly 20,000 Palestinians from living in Israel with their Israeli spouses and also prevents them from raising families in Israel.

The government insists the temporary law is based on security considerations. Granting Palestinians Israeli identity cards and the right to unrestricted freedom of movement throughout Israel is dangerous, officials say.”

UPDATE: 29 Oct. 07: Israel to approve some 3,400 requests for family unification in one-time action

Full story in short at Snopes and the Holocaust Educational Trust in London‘s response below.

From Holocaust Educational Trust in London:

After recent rumours regarding Holocaust Education in UK schools. We feel we have no option but to release the following statement.

16th April 2007

Dear Friend,

Over the past weeks there have been a number of rumours circulating via email regarding Holocaust education here in the UK. The emails suggest that the UK Government are removing Holocaust education from the National Curriculum and that in general British schools steer away from teaching what they might consider a ‘controversial’ subject. We want to make it clear that our understanding is the Holocaust is and will continue to be on the National Curriculum and therefore continue to be taught in all UK schools.

Background

These rumours stemmed from a piece that featured in a number of newspapers including the Daily Mail, the Guardian and Telegraph at the beginning of April. See the following links:

Daily Mail Link

Telegraph Link

Guardian Link

The news stories came about as a result of a report commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and undertaken by the Historical Association. The report, ‘Challenges and Opportunities for Teaching Emotive and Controversial History 13-19 (TEACH)’, addresses both the challenges teachers face, as well as the good practise that is occurring when teaching all emotive and controversial historical issues such as slavery, the Crusades and the Holocaust. The full TEACH report is available on the Historical Association website:

http://www.haevents.org.uk/PastEvents/Others/Teach%20report.pdf

In light of this story the Holocaust Educational Trust would like to clarify what to our knowledge is the situation in the UK.

Holocaust Education in the UK:

• The Holocaust became part of the National Curriculum for History in 1991. It is statutory for all students in England and Wales to learn about the Holocaust at Key Stage 3 usually in Year 9 History (aged 13-14).

• Many students will study the Holocaust in Religious Studies, English and Citizenship lessons.

• The UK holds a national Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27th (marking the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau), and this is marked widely in primary and secondary schools across the country.

• The UK has a permanent Holocaust exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London, visited by thousands of people each year.

• The British Government sponsors two students (16–18 year olds) per secondary school/ further education college to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau through the Holocaust Educational Trusts Lessons from Auschwitz Project (This is due to a £1.5 million grant from the Government every year from 2006-2008)

• School groups and private individuals visit the permanent Holocaust exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, the Jewish Museum, London, and The Holocaust Centre, Beth Shalom in Newark, and educational establishments work with resources and educational programmes provided by other important organisations such as the Anne Frank Trust (UK), London Jewish Cultural Centre, and the Wiener Library.

• Teacher training ensures that hundreds of newly qualified teachers are provided with skills and materials to ensure effective Holocaust education for their students.

• Existing teachers participate in training around the UK, and specialist programmes run by Holocaust education organisations including the Holocaust Educational Trust, Imperial War Museum and Beth Shalom.

Within the TEACH report from the Historical Association, there is one particular line relating to Holocaust education which has been the focus of the press and various alarmed emails. It features in the section addressing why teachers avoid teaching certain subjects and states: ‘… a history department in a northern city recently avoided selecting the Holocaust as a topic for GCSE coursework for fear of confronting anti-Semitic (sic) sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils’. (p15)

The key points regarding this statement are:

• This does not refer to Holocaust education on the National Curriculum-it is a post- 14 History GCSE course (publicly examined course)

• History at GCSE is not compulsory (only one third of pupils opt for history post-14) • This is an anecdotal response from one teacher in one school out of four thousand five hundred secondary schools in the UK. While we cannot say what happens in every single school, our understanding is that this is highly unusual and not general practise of teachers around the country.

• All schools can choose which history topics they wish to study for coursework at GCSE level.

• There is no suggestion that this or any other school is failing to cover the National Curriculum in teaching about the Holocaust at Key Stage 3, Year 9 (age 13–14). At no point does the report from the Historical Association suggest that the Holocaust be removed from the National Curriculum for England and Wales.

Obviously we and all Holocaust related organisations in the UK take this very seriously, however on this occasion we want to allay all fears and impress upon everyone that the Holocaust is not being removed from the National Curriculum. This particular incident does of course merit further investigation but in no way represents all the good work in our schools across the country.

Please do circulate this far and wide to all who have shown an interest in this particular issue and Holocaust education in general here in the UK.

Should you require further information please do contact us at the Holocaust Educational Trust

program

Classic Stage Company is awesome again. Went to see a reading of The Tempest last night. The culmination of their Monday Night Open Rehearsal Series where you explore parts of a text with different directors and actors. It had Michael Cumpsty reading Prospero with Brian Kulick directing (full cast below). There are times when I go to a crappy show and am really impressed by the lighting or the scenery in service of something mediocre but a night like this reminds you that a good text and good actors are all you need.

Full Cast (Apologies for any errors. The program listed only their names so matching the actor to the character was via google searches and process of elimination in some cases.):

Craig Baldwin – Antonio
David Costabile – Trinculo
Michael Cumpsty – Prospero
Herb Foster – Alonso
Melinda Helfrich – Miranda
KK Moggie – Ariel
Luis Moreno – Caliban
George Morfogen – Gonzalo
Lorenzo Pisoni – Ferdinand
Steven Rattazzi – Stephano
David Skeist – Sebastian

Upcoming at CSC is an open rehearsal series for Aquila Theatre Company and The Iliad. I think I’ll skip that one but for those unafraid of the classics go for a really unique theater experience.

Discovered the artwork of Ted Lange via a boingboing link to his Son of Super Mario today with some great drawings based on The Tempest.

I don’t think that he is Isaac from The Love Boat.

Sidewalk Cafe has free live music (2 drink minimum, not too strictly enforced plus they pass a bucket around for the artists – suggested $5). I used to go all the time in college to hear Matt Sherwin play on Monday nights. The Trachtenburg Family Sldeshow Players are playing next Friday! I will be in Chicago though.

Ivan Sandomire's Guitar

It is difficult to shoot photos at Sidewalk Cafe because it is really dark there.

Saw Phare Play’s The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). It’s like something your really talented friends from college put on and you have a great time. And there are plastic cups of wine sold during intermission – poured generously and only $4.

It’s at the Lodestar Theatre. Make sure you take the address with you. I had the address with me and still walked by it. It’s at 616 Ninth Avenue (between 43rd and 44th.) There is no marquis or sign, just the show’s poster on the door. You have to go up the stairs and there you are. And if your friend is late you will end up texting them during the show while they try to figure out how to get there.

Video from the show below:

The quality of the video is not that good….but the show is quite fun and is running through April 29th.

Just bought these at Ricky’s cause my Adidas sneaks are definitely not waterproof.

To Air Is Human by Bjorn Turoque / Dan Crane (inventor of aireoke) is about the international Air Guitar scene. It is funny and well-written, a quick read.

Sondre Lerche

Sondre Lerche is a really fun performer. This is the second time I have seen him…the first time with the Faces Down. It was extremely difficult to google the names of the members of The Faces Down for labeling photos so here they are…I had to dig out the CD insert to Duper Sessions…: Guitar: Kato Adland, Bass: Morton Skage, Drums: Ole Ludvig Kruger. The vibe was very different at the solo Hiro Ballroom gig which was all goofy and acoustic. This was full of energy and creativity, full-on rock. And he is so cute! and married (Sorry Lee!)

Thomas Dybahl, one of the opening acts (sorry I missed them), dressed in a ridiculous outfit and danced on stage for Phantom Punch. I thought he might be Captain Morgan of the rum for the alcoholic punch. Most songs came from Phantom Punch with some older songs thrown in for good measure.

After the show Sondre sat in a corner signing whatever people brought him. There was a long line. Lee offered to pretend to be going into labor so I could skip the line…Asaf, Ofer’s friend suggested I use the Holocaust as a reason, no, six millions reasons. Israeli humor…The Faces Down also roamed the crowd happy to chat and sign things for fans including bassist Morton Skage trying to sign a towel that a cute Asian girl had gotten from the stage from one of the roadies. (See my flickr set for photos.)

I ordered the tickets in advance from ticketweb. You have a choice of getting them delivered in advance for $14 or doing Will Call (for some reason I don’t recall regular mail being an option for the show). If you like to collect ticket stubs you’ll have to pony up the $14 because at willcall they just cross your name off of a list. If anyone has a ticketstub from this show, I would love to have it.

Setlist:

Airport Taxi Reception
The Tape
The Curse
All Luck Ran Out
Well Well Well
Minor Detail
Dead Passengers
Tragic Mirror (solo)
Modern Nature
Everyone’s Rooting For You
Face the Blood
Hello Headphones
Track You Down
She’s Fantastic
Phantom Punch
Say It All
—
Sleep On Needles
Two Way Monologue
John, Let Me Go

Photos and CDs below. The new Phantom Punch for alterna-dance-fun-rock, Duper Sessions for jazzy goodness, The others for more acoustic rock and gorgeous lyrics (the great lyrics applies to all of them.). The Don’t Be Shallow E.P. has a beautiful cover of Night and Day.

We were both hungry so we tried to go to the nearby, standby Zen Palate. Their kitchen was closed but we found a new, nearby, vegetarian falafel place Maoz Vegetarian that is open until 3 AM. We sat, ate too much, and talked. It was very fun. So sad that I had to go to work the next day.

The staff were helpful and friendly. Though there are very few places to sit. 4 stools to be exact. It seems like it is more of a lunchtime takeout kind of place. We were lucky, a couple was just finishing up as we got in. The falafel, Belgian fries and salads were good and fresh. It is a franchise business. We were told by one of the staffpeople that the founder is Israeli and opened the first one in Amsterdam. We picture a ישראלי מסטול (stoned Israeli) thinking up his big idea. Apparently, there are a bunch of them now in a load of countries. Good on him.

One of the other staffpeople is originally from Morocco and his English is amazing for having come here two years ago. He recommended a Moroccan singer called Pinhas and an online Moroccan music site to find him. Look under Par Chanteur for him or other artists. There’s some good music there.

Yes, we sat there a long time.

You fool!

Inside message says: “Hope everything’s kosher for your holiday celebration! Happy Easter! Happy Passover!” Card available at Papyrus.

Happy Passover!

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mom and me

Please take this opportunity to register to be an organ donor. It is an amazing gift you can give. My mom is the proud recipient of a kidney transplant. She was lucky. There are thousands of people on waitlists around the country.

Read more about my mom’s story here. You will also find links to more information about becoming an organ donor.

Presidential proclamation here.

In NY register here.

For organ donor families, recipients and loved ones Saturday, April 14 “Remember and Rejoice.” Transplant Recipients International Organization (TRIO) of Manhattan hosts its 12th Annual Ecumenical Service from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan. Join TRIO to remember donors and their families, and to rejoice with recipients. No tickets or reservations necessary. All welcome. For information, call 718-597-5619.

calendargirl is a vocalist for Freeform Five and has a neat project called calendarsongs. She is posting a song per month for remixing by the interweb, at the end of a year, the goal is to have an album.

I belong to a flickr group called paleo-future devoted to images of outdated visions of the future. Enjoy this comic of the present as it might be viewed by the future with one of my favorite authors as the punchline. He is a contributer to the awesome boingboing. His novels are below. His law and silly pics here.

Update: Check out Scott Beale / Laughing Squid‘s photo from flickr.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (Book) Authors:Cory Doctorow Manufacturer:Tor Books Released:05 December, 2003

A Place So Foreign and Eight More (Book) Authors:Cory Doctorow, Bruce Sterling Manufacturer:Four Walls Eight Windows Released:18 August, 2003

Eastern Standard Tribe (Book) Authors:Cory Doctorow Manufacturer:Tor Books Released:10 March, 2005

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (Book) Authors:Cory Doctorow Manufacturer:Tor Books Released:16 June, 2005

Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present (Book) Authors:Cory Doctorow Manufacturer:Thunder’s Mouth Press Released:11 January, 2007