Graffiti, with punctuation and grammar, only in Quito, Ecuador
13 March 2015
Just as one Wikipedia member is intent on ridding the online encyclopaedia of the grammatically incorrect phrase “comprised of” from articles, counterparts of a sort are on a mission to tidy up errors made by graffiti artists and others, in the Ecuadorian city of Quito:
In the dead of night, two men steal through the streets of Quito armed with spray cans and a zeal for reform. They are not political activists or revolutionaries: they are radical grammar pedants on a mission to correctly punctuate Ecuador’s graffiti. Adding accents, inserting commas and placing question marks at the beginning and end of interrogative sentences scrawled on the city’s walls, the vigilante editors have intervened repeatedly over the past three months to expose the orthographic shortcomings of would-be poets, forlorn lovers and anti-government campaigners.
Originally published Friday 13 March 2015.
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Stories about ghosts that nurses have seen
29 October 2014
Image courtesy of Maximiliano Estevez.
I once spent a month staying at a hotel when I was somewhere or other, and every evening when I came in there’d be a young woman with straight blonde hair, sitting on the stairs. She’d always be engaged in a FaceTime conversation, speaking in Spanish, with, I came to notice, the same male.
I never saw her at any other time. Curious as to who she was, I asked the manager about her one morning. He looked blankly at me. He knew of no such guest, especially one who had been staying there as long as I had. Predictably, I never saw her again.
That’s not quite how things unfolded, and that’s not quite meant to be a ghost story, but I thought I’d tell the tale nonetheless.
Anyway to bookmark for later tonight… ghosts may well contravene the second law of thermodynamics, but these ghost stories, as told by nurses, may have you doubting the axiom that nothing unreal exists, for a spine chilling couple of minutes at least.
Originally published Wednesday 29 October 2014.
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I doubt that our lives are merely the sums of our possessions
12 December 2013
This piece I read on Kottke last week had me wondering about the way we… measure someone’s achievements, success, or net worth, upon their death. In October US comedian and author David Sedaris wrote about the suicide of his youngest sister, Tiffany, earlier this year. Judging from her will, Tiffany appeared to have become estranged, to some degree, from her family, but it was Sedaris’ reference to his late sister’s possessions, or lack thereof, that caught my eye:
Compared with most forty-nine-year-olds, or even most forty-nine-month-olds, Tiffany didn’t have much. She did leave a will, though. In it, she decreed that we, her family, could not have her body or attend her memorial service. “So put that in your pipe and smoke it,” our mother would have said. A few days after getting the news, my sister Amy drove to Somerville with a friend and collected two boxes of things from Tiffany’s room: family photographs, many of which had been ripped into pieces, comment cards from a neighborhood grocery store, notebooks, receipts.
In response, Michael Knoblach, a friend of Tiffany’s, chastised Sedaris in an article he wrote for the Wicked Local Somerville. Among other points, Knoblach wished to make clear that Tiffany’s estate amounted to more than just two boxes of belongings:
I found David Sedaris’ article, “Now we are five,” in the Oct. 28 New Yorker to be obviously self-serving, often grossly inaccurate, almost completely unresearched and, at times, outright callous. Some of her family had been more than decent, loving and kind to her. “Two lousy boxes” is not Tiffany’s legacy. After her sister left with that meager lot, her house was still full of treasures. More than two vanloads of possession were pulled from there and other locations by friends.
Tiffany may have been troubled, but it is clear her life had value far beyond her possessions, regardless of their quantity.
Originally published Thursday 12 December 2013
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Give up and ghost the host, leave a party without saying bye
10 July 2013
When it comes time to leave a social gathering, sometimes people simply drift out the door without saying a word. It’s bad form for sure, but dispensing with what feels like contrived pre-departure small talk, might make for a more graceful exit. It turns out though the practice is quite widespread. So much so, it has been given a name, and has become known as “ghosting”:
Goodbyes are, by their very nature, at least a mild bummer. They represent the waning of an evening or event. By the time we get to them, we’re often tired, drunk or both. The short-timer just wants to go home to bed, while the night owl would prefer not to acknowledge the growing lateness of the hour. These sorts of goodbyes inevitably devolve into awkward small talk that lasts too long and then peters out. We vow vaguely to meet again, then linger for a moment, thinking of something else we might say before the whole exchange fizzles and we shuffle apart. Repeat this several times, at a social outing delightfully filled with your acquaintances, and it starts to sap a not inconsiderable portion of that delight.
Context is everything of course. We’re talking large events here, not small, intimate, dinner parties. That said, how many people here have first hand experience of this? Of ghosting? Yep, as suspected… I see more than a few of you nodding your heads.
Originally published Wednesday 10 July 2013.
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Trailer for Before Midnight, by Richard Linklater, with Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke
9 April 2013
Richard Linklater, director of Dazed and Confused, A Scanner Darkly, and Bernie, collaborates once more with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke to make Before Midnight, the third title in the Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, series of films.
No word of an Australian release as yet (I heard 13 June whispered as a suggestion), but in the meantime check out the trailer. I can’t say what piqued my interest in these films since first seeing them on DVD eight or nine years ago. Eurorail maybe? Peneda-Gerês? County Bondi?
It looks like he missed the flight…
Originally published Tuesday 9 April 2013.
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Face to Face, a film by Michael Rymer, with Matthew Newton and Luke Ford
12 September 2012
Face to Face (trailer), a drama, is the latest feature of Australian film director Michael Rymer (Perfume, Queen of the Damned), who also produced the Battlestar Galactica TV shows from 2003 to 2009. Face to Face is Rymer’s film adaptation of the play of the same name, written by Queensland based playwright David Williamson, in 2000.
Face to Face traces the proceedings of a community conference, a trial scheme that takes minor matters out of the court system, and brings together all who are party to a dispute. The process allows everyone to tell their side of the story, under the auspices of a moderator, who later drafts a resolution that binds on all involved.
Wayne (Luke Ford), a former employee of a Melbourne scaffolding company, is a hot headed young man who lost his job as result of violent outbursts and inappropriate conduct in the workplace. Luke finds himself before a community conference after ramming his ute into the car of ex-boss, Greg Baldoni (Vince Colosimo).
Wayne is supported by his mother Maureen (Lauren Clair), and best friend Barry (Josh Saks). Meanwhile Greg’s wife Claire (Sigrid Thornton), Julie (Laura Gordon) his secretary, Therese (Ra Chapman) the accountant, Richard (Chris Connelly) the foreman, and Hakim (Robert Rabiah) a worker, turn out for the company.
As the conference progresses though, Jack (Matthew Newton) who is moderating, often struggles to control tensions in the room. As the complicated series of events that led to Wayne’s outbursts work their way to the surface, tempers fray and emotions erupt, but it becomes clear there is far more to his actions than meet the eye.
For a drama that for the most part features ten people sitting in just one room for almost ninety minutes, Face to Face is utterly compelling. The key to this intrigue lies in both its strong characters, the ceaseless allure of gossip, together with the voyeuristic pleasure of witnessing people’s dirty laundry being aired in public.
In opening a can of worms that leaves just about everyone present embarrassed to a greater or lesser degree, Face to Face is a reminder that there are always two sides, maybe more, to every story. Robust performances, solid scripting, together with a deprecating humour, combine to create intense, gripping, fly on the wall style drama.
Originally published Wednesday 12 September 2012.
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The billboard artworks of Robert Montgomery
8 June 2012
London based artist Robert Montgomery takes billboards, both in use and disused, and turns them into oversize canvases to make a variety of observations on day to day life.
Originally published Friday 8 June 2012.
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When galaxies collide, coming to the night sky in four billion years
4 June 2012
Several billion years hence our galaxy, the Milky Way, will collide with galactic neighbour Andromeda, and form a new entity some are calling Milkomeda. This NASA image depicts key steps in the process, and if nothing else will transform the night sky into a visual spectacle.
Not that anyone will probably be around to think about it anyway, but the night sky will have far less appeal once the merger is complete. The bright white haze (in the last frame) that will eventually take the place of the Milky Way (first frame) looks a little bland to me.
Via NASA Science.
Originally published Monday 4 June 2012.
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French illustrator Mega’s new take on the alphabet
14 May 2012
Image courtesy of Mega.
Paris based illustrator and street artist Mega, whose work I’ve mentioned before, recently launched I Just Murdered The Alphabet, a new project that will see him create a new illustration each day for five months.
Inspired variously by graffiti, sign painting, and psychedelic art, Mega’s new series of works are a tribute to hip-hop culture, and also an introduction to an intriguing, though imaginary, tribe that seeks to set itself apart from mainstream society.
Originally published Monday 14 May 2012.
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The Way, a film by Emilio Estevez, with Martin Sheen, James Nesbitt
23 April 2012
Still from The Way, directed by Emilio Estevez.
People have been walking the Camino de Santiago, or Camino, an 800 kilometre long track from the Pyrenees in France, to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, in the Spanish town Galicia, for over a thousand years. Many are Christian pilgrims on spiritual retreats, while others walk the scenic pathway purely for leisure.
American eye doctor Tom Avery (Martin Sheen) finds himself on the historic trail for other reasons however, in The Way (trailer), the latest feature of American filmmaker Emilio Estevez (The War at Home, Bobby). Estevez also plays Tom’s adult son, the free-spirited Daniel, who dies during a storm soon after embarking on the long trek.
Intent on walking the path alone in remembrance of Daniel, Tom isn’t exactly overjoyed to run into the same people repeatedly. They include Joost (Yorick van Wageningen), a Dutchman trying to lose weight, Sarah (Deborah Kara Unger), a Canadian escaping from an abusive marriage, and Jack (James Nesbitt), a struggling Irish writer.
The four eventually end up walking as a group, and in their own ways are able to be of help to each other. Tom however remains the most aloof of the quartet, and the most prone to bad tempered outbursts, as he struggles to come to terms with his grief, while harbouring a lingering ambivalence towards his trekking companions.
On one hand The Way is a warming portrayal the ancient Camino, and the people who travel along it, and their quest for whatever it is that they are seeking. Many of the situations that Tom and his co-walkers find themselves in will doubtless be familiar to anyone who has spent time backpacking, regardless of where they’ve been.
Yet it’s as if the grimness of Tom’s trudge, and the varying despair of those accompanying him, wasn’t quite enough for the screenwriters, who seemed to decide the story was want of a little more tension. The solution however, mainly in the form of Tom’s frequent meltdowns, comes across as contrived, and at odds with the consoling calm of the Camino.
Originally posted Monday 23 April 2012.
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