I absolutely adore Flotation Toy Warning. I don’t know who they are, or where they’re from, and I can’t remember how I heard about them, and consequently their album, Bluffer’s Guide to the Flight Deck, sounds like the mysterious crackly transmissions from a distant planet. Or a bit like Grandaddy, Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev. You know, that lot. Playful and dramatic chamber pop. If you like that sort of thing, you’ll like this. Probably.
Month: February 2010
Optimistic Duck
Big Bird
Early Henson Workshop design for the popular Sesame Street character Big Bird. 'Yeah, it was rejected for being weird and frightening and making Frank Oz cry,' laughed Jim Henson in a 1972 interview, 'But boy, I tell ya, the kids would have learned to fucking read.'
From The Story of Grass by Harris and Hughes, 28 pages of words and pictures and the spaces between them, coming soon from Aloha Ino Press.
Optimistic Duck
Historicals
1829: The first London policeman is created by putting a hefty, violent man, some shiny buttons, a hat and a big stick into a vat and stirring until angry. PC No. 1 was just the first of many furious, vat-grown law enforcers who would police the streets of London. Nicknamed 'the peelers', because that's what they would often do to the people they caught, the police had a very easy job until 1848, when the first criminal was created in a different vat and successfully introduced into the capital.
Moon
Clint Mansell’s gorgeous and atmospheric theme for Duncan Jones’ film Moon.
For a low budget British indie, Moon is a pretty ambitious film, what with being a sci fi movie set on a moonbase and everything. It wears its influences (Silent Running, Dark Star, 2001) on its space suit sleeve, so it’s not what you’d call original, but then Jones can use our familiarity with Moon’s spiritual ancestors to wrongfoot its audience.
I don’t want to say too much about the story. It starts as a study in isolation: moon-bound employee of Lunar Industries Sam Bell is nearing the end of his three year contract looking after helium-3 harvesters. He’s alone up there, communications are down, and he whiles away the time watching recorded messages from his wife, making little model houses and tending his potted plants.
And then the whole thing takes a left turn into weirdness, but the way the script deals with that weirdness and its implications is beautifully and unexpectedly matter-of-fact, the existential elements brilliantly grounded by Sam Rockwell’s distinctively engaging performance.
The design and effects are great, but for sheer spectacle this is Sam Rockwell’s film. Moon was written specifically for him and he clearly relishes the opportunity. He turns in a typically fantastic performance (or two). I think I might love Sam Rockwell a little bit. Oh, and Kevin Spacey gets to be a creepy robot, which, you know, he pretty much is anyway.
If you haven’t seen the trailer, skip it and just watch the film. Thankfully the success of Moon doesn’t hinge on any single twist or revelation (which is what I was expecting, and I usually hate cuz I’ll spend my time watching the film trying to work out the twist, and I’m always disappointed when I do, and also disappointed when I don’t. Lose-lose!) but the less you know about this one before going in, the better.
Moon is thoughtful sci-fi of a kind we don’t get to see enough of, but it’s no Solaris, thankfully. It’s exciting and funny, poetic and human, and it’s got some Chesney Hawks in it. And Errol off 15 Storeys High. I loved it, that’s all.
Fact File #8: Tigers
Despite their colouring, tigers do not taste orangey. If anything they taste of silently stalking death mandibles. With a slight cinnamon tang.
It is easy to tell the difference between an Indian tiger and an African tiger: an Indian tiger’s ears are relatively small in proportion to its head, whereas African tigers do not exist.
There used to be eight subspecies of tiger. There are now only five, plus Tigger, but there’s only one of him, a fact which he currently finds “wonderful” because the awful implications have yet to hit him. But they will, and when they do… bam, no more bouncing and singing, he’ll be with Eeyore down by the river, you mark my words.
Tiger saliva is antiseptic. It’s what Bear Grylls uses instead of Savlon.
The distinctive markings of the tiger acts as camouflage in tall reeds, grasses and the bedrooms of people who think they are way sexier than they actually are.
Once a tiger has tasted human flesh, all other foods become secondary and they will always crave another taste. We are like heroin or crispy aromatic duck to tigers.
“Catch the tail by the tiger,” sang the Fraggles. “Don’t,” sings me. Who are you going to believe?
A tiger’s most developed sense is its sense of hearing, followed by its sense of humour and its sense of fair play (never cheat while playing Boggle with a tiger. They get grumpy). Its least developed sense is its fashion sense. C’mon guys, it’s the spring season: orange and black again?
Tigers do not purr, although if they know a tune they’ll sometimes hum along.
Tigers enjoy Frosties, but will often buy the supermarket own-brand equivalent, becase they have no real conception of brand loyalty. One more thing which separates us from the beasts, along with abstract reasoning and the use of condiments.
More facts next time, fact fans!
Right Wing Clown
MAN-MADE CLIMATE CHANGE? SNOW SUCH THING.
I notice that it snowed last week. So much for global warming.
Perhaps it’s time we take these so-called scientists and fill their trousers with custard until they accept that sunspots, speed cameras and the BBC licence fee are to blame.
*****
BAA BAA BASTARDS
So I expect some council somewhere has probably decided that some nursery rhyme or other should be banned or changed so it’s all about Muslims or same-sex marriage or something.
You couldn’t make it up!
These looney lefties should be rounded up so I can pretend to throw a bucket of water over them, only the bucket would actually be full of confetti. And then I’d reintroduce National Service, hanging and Sunday Night at the Royal Palladium.
*****
GORDON McBROWN MORE LIKE!
Is it just me or is Gordon Brown Scottish?
A soda siphon in the face is too good for him!
*****
RUNG ‘UNS
Asylum seekers? I would stand next to them and I would have a ladder over my shoulder and I would turn clockwise and they would see the ladder coming and duck, but then I would turn anti-clockwise and the ladder would hit them in the back of the head and they would fall over.
And then I would involuntarily repatriate them.
*****
KEEP IT CLEAN
So Mr Sheen is polish.
What’s wrong with shining up your table with english?
It’s another symptom of broken Britain. I see Princess Diana is still dead, too.
Honk honk.
Historicals
1859: Victorian ladies would often carry a tall table around with them, as a contraceptive. In those sexually repressed times, if a gentleman should find himself overcome with amorous desire he would generally direct his attentions towards the four long, shapely, bare legs of the table, leaving the lady free to make her excuses and leave them to it. It was rare to find a Victorian gentleman who didn't have an occasional table.
Bullets
Have I posted any Tunng before? I don’t know. I saw them live at the Green Man festival a couple of years ago and fell under their woozy summer afternoon spell. Is it folktronica? I hope not. It’s just music, innit. Anyway, they’ve got a new album, …And Then We Saw Land, coming out soon, so here’s a song from their last one, Good Arrows, that I like, and which has a great video that manages to complement the song while simultaneously having very little to do with it.
Ramshackle Charm 