Dancing Around the Four Sides

Grey, drizzly, dreary, chilly, all the y-words. We turned on the heat for the first time this season yesterday and were treated to that wonderfully autumnal scent of burning dust (ugh). The good thing is the rain and chill seems to have tamped down the mosquito population somewhat. Also I put fleece sheets on the guest bed and flannel sheets on the master, and they are both so nice and cozy (both beds have electric blankets too). (Don't @ me; I get cold at the drop of a hat.)

This is a very cool and amazing article from the Guardian -- Peter Jackson's movie project for the centenary of the end of WWI. He took original film footage and newsreels and basically DID MAGICAL THINGS with them. The trailer for the finished product is included in the article and has to be seen to be believed. They Shall Not Grow Old, article and film trailer.

Terrific video of Buster Keaton. Incredible stunts in a pre-CGI world. Just some amazing clips; I honestly don't know how he did some of this stuff.

The Season 2 Person of Interest gag reel. :D

PERSON OF INTEREST s2 GAG REEL from j_reese on Vimeo.

And yet again -- we couldn't get something like this for the last season of House? Seriously? I will never not be pissed at TPTB for that.

1) Head cold is almost completely gone. It hung on for a while, adding to my general foul mood and crankiness.

2) Read Hilary Mantel's Giving Up the Ghost: A Memoir, and by god it is brilliant. Mantel is a writing god.

3) Started Americanah, by a Nigerian writer named Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which is about a Nigerian blogger (bloggess?) who's been living in the U.S. (in Princeton) and who decides to return home. There was a positive review of it in the NY Times and so far it is excellent.

4) And speaking of Nigeria ... this Nigerian-American singer reminds me very much of Adele:



Four things make a post.

Must run some errands, so here's a cool video to enjoy, possibly the only music vid to feature a zoetrope. If you think you've heard the song before, that's because it's from the movie Blast From the Past, which has a really great '90s soundtrack.

From petitecuriosity, here is a Wilson/Amber, House/Wilson vid, set to a Garfunkel and Oates song called Gay Boyfriend. It's funny and wry, with great editing, and did I mention it was funny? It is, in a wonderfully sweet and gently crooked way. I enjoyed the hell out of this.

Gay Boyfriend, by petitecuriosity

From bironic, here is a new vid that seems particularly apropos in light of the Curiosity landing this week. Multi-fandom (and I do mean multi), set to Nicki Minaj's Starship, this is ... us, in a fantastic blast of exploration and life in a boundless universe, where there's always one more frontier on the horizon. There is so much going on here, and I just loved it.

Starships

Thought about running some errands, but I think I will do those tomorrow and knock off some housely things today ... like folding the laundry from the weekend. Ha. In the meantime, here are some links!

The beautiful 'ghost station' in NY's subway. This is the abandoned City Hall Station, opened on October 27, 1904, with an inaugural private ride conducted by Mayor George McClellan (yes, that George McClellan). Glass skylights, wrought-iron chandeliers ... the station wasn't retired until 1945. My first thought was -- it needs to be in a story. :-)

I can't remember now if I saw this on my Twitter feed or Tumblr: fanfic is the work of the Devil. No, really. :D

Apparently this is an older vid, but I hadn't seen it until last night. The World We Loved, from Dead Poets Society, music by Jimmy Eat World, video by stephantom. Great vid, with beautiful editing and a great song. I had totally forgotten what a tall, lanky kid RSL was at that age (which was 20 in 1989, when the movie came out). You know, in an Alternate Movie Universe in my head, RSL's character (Neil Perry) lived and grew up to be James Wilson, and so to me this is like watching a young Wilson right before he got more screwed up than House. And yes, I know there's another vid that tells that exact story, and it's called If We Shadows Have Offended, by mystictwilight (Dani). Sadly, it looks as if it's been disappeared by TPTB. :-(

Is that it? I guess that's it. ♥

Beautiful bright sun all day, 71 degrees (21.7 degrees Celsius). My god it feels so good.

And now for something COMPLETELY different (via BoingBoing), this is a video by a South African artist called Spoek Mathambo. It is straight-up one of the weirdest vids I've seen in a while -- it reminds me a bit of Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense but it is far beyond that. There's an interesting (very short) article from The Guardian here, about the amazing kids who are in it and who directed it. Striking, visceral images, and a WARNING for violence and the bizarre bug at the very beginning (for folks who may be squicked by bizarre, creeping bugs). I do not know what kind of insect (?) it is, and I'm not sure I want to know.

Edited to add that there is a GREAT explanation of this video's very powerful images in the very first comment from needled_ink_1975! I learned a lot and, as always, that makes me happy.

Via leakeylover on Twitter, this is a "fake" promo video (fan-made) for Season 8 of House, put together by someone called aleTheHOUSEwifeVIDS. It is really well-done.



Link to YouTube