Crazed Teacups

Eric Idle's Season's Greetings

I realize I haven't posted in a while, but I hope to make up for that with this holiday ditty from Monty Python's Eric Idle, called Fuck Christmas.  

Cream First or Jam First?

When eating scones, do you put the cream on first, or the jam?  It never occurred to me to put the jam on first, but apparently the question plagued Hollie Newton and her friends, so she asked the authorities.  Find out what The Ritz said by clicking on the image above or going here.  (And really?  People put butter and jam and cream on scones?!)

Thanks to LDN's twitter feed for the story.

The Open Road London

Here's a great 1927 short film showing the highlights of London - in color!

It's also remarkably similar to Brian's short film, Route 23, which he filmed aboard a double decker bus a few years ago.

Disney Deconstructed

A blog called Sociological Images does a great takedown of the Disney princesses and their, uh, merits.

PW's Top Books of 2009

Publisher's Weekly listed their best books in the major categories (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, etc) of 2009. Among them are two of Powell's Indiespensible titles (David Small's Stitches and Sam Savage's The Cry of the Sloth), a book I was really disappointed by (Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger), and a Zadie Smith book of essays (Changing My Mind) I'd never even heard of before.

But a controversy has erupted over their definitive Top 10: every author on the list is male.  The Powell's blog features lots of links showing reaction to the story.

Transparency

Good magazine features a regular series of infographics called "Transparency." As a communicator, I truly admire someone who can present vast amounts of complicated information in an easy-to-read, instinctual visual. Above is a graphic that shows the 20 countries from which the most people came to the US in 2008, how many immigrants already had family here, and how many received asylum.  (For another great graphic, check out the largest bankruptcies in history here.)

NW Art

I've recently come across two artists whose work I really love.

Jess Bronk

Faryn Davis

 
 

River Still Runs Through It

Thanks to Bernadette for sending me this Pop Matters article, written for the 16th anniversary of River Phoenix's death.  I can't relate to all of it - her love-hate relationship with him as an actor was all love-love for me - but it has some lovely bits to it.  Here's an excerpt:

I finally understood what made River Phoenix special. He had the singular ability to portray real, honest emotion in all its vast ugliness. His nose ran; his body twitched; his voice cracked and stuttered. At times, he was barely audible. But with a choppy, sotto voce delivery, he gave audiences an unpleasant, unsatisfying, cathartic release by revealing all the pain and fear and frustration that they fought so hard to hide.

As in Stand by Me, Phoenix’s shining moment in My Own Private Idaho occurred in the form of a fireside confession. That confession is additionally notable as Phoenix himself wrote it.

His performance wasn’t perfect—he still couldn’t play happy convincingly, and some of his choices were inexplicable—but he had something, an instinct, an ability to make himself transparent. He wasn’t just vulnerable; he was laid bare. As Peter Weir said, “Laurence Olivier never had what River had.” He wasn’t just some teen heartthrob; he was one of the few artists to come out of the 80s who not only had the chance to survive the decade but to transcend it.

Take the Proust Questionnaire!

The best part of Vanity Fair has always been the Proust Questionnaire, which poses roughly the same set of questions each month to a different celebrity.  In honor of a new book compiling the questionnaires, Vanity Fair is letting you fill out your own PQ and will tell you the celebrities with whom you match most closely.  (Be forewarned - they don't actually show you your match's answers.)  So I took it, eagerly awaiting my results.  Might I be close to Emma Thompson, Catherine Deneuve, Ted Kennedy or some other brilliant luminary?

No.  No, I'm not.  My answers matched with Joan Collins (97.8%!) and Yoko Ono (86.62%).

Damn.

Try your luck here.

Quote of the Day

This is from a lovely post on the Powell's blog by Tod Davies:

We went to our dog agility class today, which, for the uninitiated, is a hilarious kind of mini-Grand National training for dogs... hoops, tunnels, jumps, climb-its... the dogs love it and we, surprising ourselves, do too.  It's a great pleasure to take the long drive across the valley floor between the mountains, past the ranches and small-town houses, out to where Diane has all the brightly colored obstacles set out on her fresh mown grass.

Diane, who teaches the class, is one of those very American women you never hear about.  A good neighbor, a quiet citizen, a person who thoroughly enjoys her life, and has created that life to give her a decent, unextravagant living by doing the things she loves best. She's one of those people (thank God for them) who volunteers actively at the local animal shelters, and really makes a difference with her volunteering.  She's the one who started a free obedience class with each adoption; she goes out every week and teaches new pet owners how to get the best out of their pets. Doing that, she single handedly cut the return rate on dogs to the shelter by a half.  That's where we met her, when we adopted one of ours.