Thursday, February 26, 2009

Maps


I've been getting all nerdy this week. While my colleagues at work have been listening to ABC News Radio and/or watching Play School - I've been spritzin' and catchin' up on my listenin'. 

Specifically, getting all learned with NPR podcasts. And earlier in the week one of my favourite programs, This American Life, delivered up a piece of documentary gold with their recent story on Plan B

It was insightful, funny and inspiring - it made me want to think about my own documentary making and ideas - but it was also one of those great stories that stays with you more generally. It just pops into your mind even when you're not thinking specifically about what it was saying, because it's somehow related to everything. 

So what is Plan B? Years ago some friends of mine where in a punk band, called Plan B, and hitting it into google seems to bring up all sorts of references to skating and building. 

But in this case Plan B is the road you one day realise you're travelling, and are perhaps surprised by, because you'd always imagined that you'd be cruising along on Plan A. But at some point things changed, you took a different turn and ended up on a different route. Sometimes for the best. Sometimes not. Sometimes just randomly. If I look at where I'm at now in my life, and think about what I thought I'd be doing and have done by now - when I was 17 and invincible - it's funny because some of it is tracking that way, and somethings are so far left-field. But whatevs. Who needs maps anyway?

Unless of course it's the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Maps

Or this acapella version.


... And if you wanna read more about the man behind This American Life, Ira Glass, check this out 


Thursday, February 12, 2009

Here Come The Warm Jets


Of all the tweets I subscribe to I think Brian Eno is by far my favourite. His posts are just so random and sometimes very funny, in a dry way.

Recently he posted a link to an article in the New York Times in 2006 titled 'Unhappy Hour' about a couple who went out for a drink and the jukebox randomly started playing an hour long experimental Eno tune, titled Thursday Afternoon, which eventually made the whole bar very upset and on edge. It's quite a funny article in it's own right, and even funnier when you come across it via a recommendation by Mr Eno titled 'I feel sorry for these people.'

Here are some of his other recent tweets. I think the first one is a reference to David Byrne?

· David doesn't tweet much, does he? Dropping that wanker
· Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame
· Trust in the you of now
· Imagine the piece as a set of disconnected
· Accretion
· How would you have done it?
· Change nothing and continue with immaculate consistency
· Make a soufflĂ©!
· Go slowly all the way round the outside
· Abandon normal instruments


Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Do the Jane Fonda


I've become strangely addicted to Jane Fonda's blog. And quite frankly it's come as quite a surprise to me, this interest in Jane Fonda.

I've always been fond of her in a cheesy 80s aerobics way, and I guess Mickey Avalon brought a bit of a sexy revival of her a few years back, but stumbling across this blog [thanks to the NY Times + Twitter] I've developed a new appreciation for the lady.

Unlike most celebrity blogs she talks candidly about real-life things. Overcoming insecurities, what's happening in the world around her. She comes across as an interesting 71 year old woman, Daughter, Mother, Grandmother, kind of hip person. Huh. Who would've thunk?