Akan datang**

[** Coming soon in Malay]

There are so many reasons why I love Fall, and one of them is all the interesting movies that always come our way during this season. Yes, there are of course the inevitable ponderous, poseur "this-will-win-me-the-Oscar" ones, but there are also those gems that really make the Fall movie season so wonderfully exciting. So yes, it's time for ghetto of our mind's annual "What We'll be Watching in Fall" preview. Like I said in last year's post, don't read on or click on any of the links if you don't want to be spoiled- Emilee knows what I'm talking about... :)

In no particular order:

1) Lust, Caution
Ang Lee's follow-up to Brokeback Mountain and set in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, this love story/ political thriller maintains similar themes of love and loss. Did I say Tony Leung's in it? Enough said.

2) Across the Universe
Those of you who have been dying to watch Cirque du Soleil's Love but don't have a mini trust fund to afford the ticket, maybe this quirky, surrealistic "musical" will satisfy. Set to the Beatles music, there is only 30 minutes of dialogue in the movie. And just for the heck of it, Bono makes a cameo too...

3) Control
Jude can barely wait for this biopic of Joy Division's Ian Curtis. And directed by Anton Corbijn (best known for his Depeche Mode videos) no less. The trailer is awesome. (See here for an interview with Corbijn about the movie.)

4) Mr Magorium's Wonder Emporium
With a magnificent title like this, how is a girl to resist? :)

5) Elizabeth: The Golden Age
I know, the first one wasn't historically accurate (because who plays Mozart at an English coronation?), but I love Cate Blanchett, and I loved her in the role of Elizabeth. Who cares what stuffy historians say?...

6) Persepolis
I can't believe they've turned one of my favorite graphic novels into a movie! And by the writer, Marjane Satrapi herself! I don't understand French, but if there's anything I remember from book, just looking at this French teaser is making me ecstatically excited!

7) Sleuth
Two words, Harold Pinter.

8) Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (official website coming soon)
I've watched every collaboration between Johnny Deep and Tim Burton. And loved something, if not everything about each one. Their latest- a homicidal barber and his human-pie-making partner. And it's a musical. Oh goody... :)

9) I'm Not There
More for Jude, the Bob Dylan fan in the household, this indie project by Todd Haynes has Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger and Richard Gere all playing Bob Dylan at various stages of his life. Here's a brilliant clip of Cate Blanchett as a twitchy, scratchy Dylan during his Blonde on Blonde period...

10) Heima
Sigur Rós's documentary homage to Iceland, and what home means to them. It's not enough that we love their music, if the gorgeous trailer is anything to go by, we will love them as film makers as well... As reported on Boing Boing, "You ain't human if SR don't make you weep."

11) The Darjeeling Limited
A Wes Anderson movie. Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman and Adrien Brody as brothers. On a road-trip. Through India. Do you really need to know more?

Fruit pulp

Thanks to my best friend for making my morning!

A few years ago, I had posted something about the then new ad for the Sony Bravia flat panel TV.



Other ad companies had apparently then started imitating and spoofing the commercial to great effect!



What makes it funny however, is not just the spoof itself, but the reaction it then garnered from the residents of Swansea, where the ad was filmed. See here. Thank goodness Sony didn't use fruit- I doubt they could afford to the incur ire of the entire city of San Francisco.

Enjoy!

**Update: Ok, it would now seem that this entire thing- from the ad to the Swansea residents' website was part of a larger viral campaign by Tango, the juice-maker! The campaign also included a spoof news website and ebay listings of things allegedly "broken" during the filming of the ad. See here.

Clever... :)

Back in the kitchen

You know it's Fall in Ann Arbor when a bus ride that typically takes 20 minutes takes you 35 instead :( Yup, it's Move-In day at the dorms, which means huge big-ass SUVs on every corner and brand-new, shiny "here's your present for getting into college" BMWs and VWs... Note to self: stay at home on Move-In days from now on.

So we've been back for a couple of days and still reeling from the jetlag somewhat. I thought I was doing well yesterday until I rested my head on the pillow at 10pm (why? why? she asks herself...), and the next thing I knew, it was 5am. I decided to wake up, did some work, and then promptly went back to sleep until 8.30am. I'm sure that doesn't bode well for my general functioning today...

Something that did help me stave off the jetlag blues yesterday afternoon was cooking actually. I know, that sounds odd, but there's something in the rhythmic chopping, slicing and prepping that necessitated a kind of easy focus and attention from my mind that would have otherwise succumbed to the drowsiness. And so I spent the afternoon making a batch of stuffed zucchinis. It was a little labor-intensive, but like I said, I needed it, and it was somewhat therapeutic too. I miss cooking in our own kitchen- actually, I miss cooking. The thing about being home is never having to cook on our own- there's no shortage of local food to eat and lucky us, home-cooked food is always just a phonecall away... :) But I've also missed pottering around our kitchen, thinking up of new things to try, and bringing back old favorites that always satisfy.

Speaking of which, if you do have a couple of hours to spare, try this recipe for Stuffed Zucchinis. I adapted it from Simply Recipes that calls for turkey sausages. We didn't have any so I used ground chicken and seasoned it with fennel, paprika, red chili flakes and a generous dash of salt and pepper. And I used 5 regular sized zucchinis rather than the really large ones. Everything else was pretty much the same. I highly recommend the recipe- the zucchinis come out all succulent and flavorful, and because it's all veggie and lean white meat, it's healthy too! Just what we need after 5 weeks of abadoned indulgence!

Field Recording 2: Singapore street auction

It's the seventh (ghost) month on the Lunar calendar and temporary stages have been erected all over Singapore. These stages typically host performances (if the clan or business association can afford it) or more commonly benevolent auctions to benefit charities. These auctions tend to be noisy affairs and street performances in their own right. The auctioneer is typically a professional trained in the art of handling a rowdy and drunken bunch. Also, conducting an auction by the side of a busy is no mean feat. This auction was recorded on August 23rd at about 10.30pm and was located outside the coffeeshop on the corner of Sin Min and Thomson Roads.

* update: thought I would add some photos for good measure to provide some context to the field recordings.

A friday night out with the boys

Tempeh contribution

Sometime in April when we had the Cooks over for dinner, we made Tempeh Tauhu Goreng and then posted the photo onto Flickr.


Subsequently, we were approached by someone in the U.K. who manufactures tempeh who asked if he could use the photo on his company's website as well as have the recipe. The website's now up and so is the photo and the recipe. Here's the site's front page:


I gave them a modified recipe from the one I had used since they told me that most of their customers are vegetarians. Here's the vegetarian version of the dish.

There was no money exchanged in the process of course, but we got credit for the photo and the recipe, and it's just nice to know that our food pornography's appreciated ... :)

881 Soundtrack: A review

After watching the movie, it was time to spend some time mulling over the music of course, and I have to say that both Jude and I have become rather taken with the soundtrack actually. While the film was a little long-drawn at parts, with the soundtrack, I was left wanting more. The renditions of ge-tai standards aside, all the songs written specifically for the film are truly exquisite.

There was a time in my junior college days when mornings were defined by my friend, Yvonne and I walking to school while humming popular xinyao songs (see Wikipedia entry here for this genre of songs originating right here in Singapore.) Listening to the 881 soundtrack has reminded me once again why I- thoroughly non-Mandarin speaking- had found this brand of Chinese songs so beguiling, and why I'm now beginning to rediscover that side of me that loved this music so much. I think there is something about the lyricism of the language that lends itself easily- with few words- to evoking rich images and hence complex moods and emotions. And it is this spareness and simplicity of the lyrics that make the layers of meaning even more profound.

Take for exmple "Black May" (身外物), my favorite track on the album. For those of you who read Mandarin, here are, in my opinion, the most moving lines:

身体和财富, 都是身外物.
都是暂时借来完成短促的演出.
人类是租户, 爱却是礼物.
哪怕物归原主, 爱也不会结束.

I don't admit to having a command of the Chinese language enough to translate this accurately, and even if I did, something is bound to be lost in the process anyway. But to give you a rough idea of the melancholy captured in just those few lines, a very rudimentary, very unpolished translation might read: Our bodies and wealth are merely borrowed for this short performance otherwise known as Life; we are but renters of these mortal possessions. But Love is a gift, and even if it is to be returned one day, it will endure.

Here's the video of the song, performed by Ngak, a popular pub singer/songwriter who performs in various local venues:



Another exceptionally written song, and also the unofficial title track of the album is "One-Half" (一人一半). There are several versions of it on the soundtrack and the album version is performed in a combination of Hokkien and Mandarin.



The lightly upbeat melody of this tune belies the heartbreak and sadness so palpable in the lyrics. Together with "Black May", "One Half" and most of the original songs on the soundtrack sustain a theme of waiting, sacrifice, and a tortured love muted and thwarted by circumstances. In other words, this is painful stuff, folks...

Royston Tan's 881: A review

Royston Tan's 881 opened last week on the 9th of August. The choice of the opening date was really strategic to the movie I must say - 9th of August was National Day and it is also right before the Lunar 7th month or Ghost Month begins.

In a previous post, we've exclaimed our enthusiasm for this movie. Apparently this enthusiasm was also shared by Serene's family and it was a big day out for everyone as I reserved an entire row of seats at the cinema.

The movie has been greatly hyped in the mainstream media and I was both surprised and glad to hear that Royston managed to get actual getai performers to act in this movie. Also, the dialogue of was filmed in a mixture of Hokkien dialect and Mandarin. This was of great interest especially to older Singaporeans (many of whom I spotted in the audience) as the vernacular dialects have been banned on most media channels since the early 1980s.

The opening of the movie was also not without controversy though. According to the Royston Tan blog, the director and cast member (Mindee Ong) were injured by assailants on motorcycles who pelted them with eggs. Read more about it (as well as the official press conference) here.

But did the movie live up to the hype? I would have to say that for the most part it did. The performances put in by the two main protagonists were stellar. Additionally, the visuals in movie were stunning and there was interesting use of CG especially towards the end of the movie. Everyone (this is referring to myself and Serene's family) enjoyed the songs and musical numbers so much that we were still humming a couple of the tunes after dinner. However, there were moments in the movie which would have benefited from tighter editing. There were points which I felt that Royston belabored and could have made more succinct.

We just managed to get hold of the soundtrack and are looking forward to listening to when we return to Ann Arbor and when home just seems a little too far away... :)

New personal avatars - advice sought

We have been meaning to improve on our avatars for a while now. The existing avatars were created using a web application and did their jobs well until now. As the both of us are back in Singapore at the same time, we thought that we would ask our very talented friend Dominic Chang, who's a brilliant animator to help us with creating improved versions of our online identities and image. The result of his work can be seen in the image above. And below shows you how much work Dominic put into this through his process sketches.



What we were going to do with the final icons are to digitize them and then load them onto either Photoshop or Illustrator and fill in the colors. I'd appreciate anyone's advice on how I should go about doing this as this is the first time we are actually doing something like this. Hope to hear from someone soon.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Everyone smile!
Originally uploaded by jyew.

After 4 years of not being around for my parents' birthdays, Jude and I are finally home in August and able to celebrate their birthdays with them this year. My dad's birthday today was a nice little affair, complete with a flower arrangement, a tower of cupcakes, a homemade meal of course, and the wonderful company of my uncle, aunt, and my cousins, Jill and Terri (who just discovered that yes, she can bowl, thanks to the Wii...)

I remember how special it was when my family were with us in Ann Arbor at my birthday two years back, so I'm really glad we're home this year for my parents'.

Happy Birthday Dad! And many many many many happy returns!! :)

Field Recordings: Singapore miscellany

For those of you who have been following our flickr site, you would know that I've sunk some money in an Edirol R09 digital audio/field recorder. I've just started using this device over the past couple of days and must say that I've been very impressed with the results. While it's not exactly difficult to use, getting the recorder going while you are on the move or in a tight spot can be a little involved. Also, I've not invested in external mics yet and have so far relied on the onboard mics on the device. I am still playing around with the settings to suit various use situations and I've included a sampling of how I've used the device below. It's also hoped that my audio captures can provide more context/depth to the photos that I am taking:

Sri Krishna Hindu Temple, Waterloo Street, Singapore





This snippet highlights the fact that I am still getting used to the recorder and also haven't really plucked up the courage to approach performers. I was standing outside the temple recording this. The audio would have been better if I tweaked the settings and actually went inside the temple.

Sembawang Beach, Singapore (08/01/07)







Sembawang is on the Northeast coast of the island. The beach that you see above used to be a British military wharf that has now been converted into a park. It's a nice quiet little beach that still hasn't lost it's rural and laid back air. However, there are still remants of the old wharves that are evident. I sat on one of these old steps and placed the recorder down to capture that waves lapping at the old foundations of the wharves.

Mercury Rev @ Esplanade, Singapore (08/02/07)





This was a rather strange night for me. The esplanade is now the preeminent venue for arts performances in Singapore. However, the venue has been also trying to reach out to a younger crowd by hosting a series of 'indie' and local acts in a month long event called "Baybeats". However, some of the acts in the event has a strong cultural clash with the identity of the Esplanade. It's sort of like hosting the Sex Pistols in the Lincoln Center. And this incongruity was starkly evident in the fact that the venue's ushers busied themselves throughout the performance by asking audiences members to remain in their seats and also to keep ensuring that there was no photography throughout the performance. It was a futile effort.

The audio captured here was in a live performance setting where I was seated 4 rows away from the stage and smack in the middle. The acoustics of the room were excellent , however, the recorder was in my shirt pocket and it may have captured some side conversations that I was having with folks that I attended the concert with. Beware though, I manage to capture quite a big chunk of the concert. As such, the file is rather large (136mb to be exact). Enjoy :)

The Patriot

9th August is Singapore's National Day. And prime opportunity for what is now one of my all time favorite pictures of my dear husband :)

There are so many layers of humour and irony to this photo that I can't even begin to unpack... :)

10 days later...

No, we haven't fallen off the edge of the world... unless you count sleeping at 10.00 every night and waking up at 5.00 in the morning as falling off the edge of the world. I don't think I'll ever be able to suitably deal with jetlag... If anyone has a good formula for handling this beast, do let me know. The upside is though, I've been sleeping like a baby :) I was clocking many a late night over the past week finishing my paper, so I've appreciated the deep, satisfyingly dreamless sleep since we've been back.

So yes, what little action has transpired from my last post 10 days ago: we only just managed to endure the 18 hours flight over 3 continents and the Pacific Ocean; I finally submitted my second prelim exam yesterday after spending 10 hours just on citations and references (!!!); we've managed to already stuff our faces with a good variety of local food; and best of all, snuck in some good quality time with family :) The weather's humid as usual; I'm completely exhausted by 6pm; but we're home, and that's what's really matters :)

We caved in and bought a Wii ...

We caved in ...
Originally uploaded by jyew.

There are those of you in Ann Arbor who know that I've been lusting after the Wii for a while. In fact, a number of you have reproached me for actually picking up and then putting down a Wii that I found in Best Buy. So with Serene's help in tracking down Wii shipments, we finally caved in and got one ... but not for ourselves. Rather we got the Wii for my parents.

The rationalization process goes as follows:

- We have been playing with Rick and Emilee's Wii over the past couple of months, and have been really impressed with the games, the lack of "gamer specific" skills, and family friendly level of interaction afforded by the Wii.

- Besides, we've begun hearing about how the Wii is currently being used in hospitals to help patients with low impact physicality and also to burn a few calories. Also, there has been talk about the Wiis as a way to rehabilitate the stroke patient's brain activity. Trust me when I say this, the Wii sports games do help me break out into a healthy sweat.

- My dad is in his 70s and has never really taken to the computer yet. I am thinking of the Wii as a way to ease him into technology and the Internet. I think the he watches way too much TV now and the Wii might help him stay active (he used to bowl a lot, and the Wii Bowling interface is awesome). Also, he might like to be introduced to the Internet via the Wii www browser. For those of you who haven't tried surfing the web via the Wii, you should definitely try it. The Wiimote is a nice input device and the fact that you can get the Internet on the large TV screen are big pluses.

- My mom is in her late 60s and she's taken to the Internet like a duck to water. And she loves puzzle games, especially the online word games. But her eyes have been giving her trouble and the laptop screen might not be ideal for her.

- Lastly, if my parents don't use the device, I can always find a use for it myself ;)

What do people think about the benefits of using the Wii? Have I made a good case for it? Or have I overjustified the purchase to myself ;)

Pitchfork 2007 video captures :)

I know that Serene said I would be waxing lyrical on this blog about the various performances we caught at Pitchfork last week. However, my travel schedule has been really crazy. And also, I thought that I would let the performances speak for themselves. Below you'll find clips of my favorite performances at Pitchfork 2007 with a little blurb from me about them. Our Panasonic Lumix LX2 camera actually took very high quality wide-aspect ratio video captures of these performances. But in order to get them on youTube, I had to reduce the quality of the videos and trim some of them down.

"Teen Age Riot" - Sonic Youth



This was the opening to their ATP/Don't Look Back performance of the Daydream Nation album in its entirety. It was a real kickass opener I must say and got the capacity crowd on its feet as you can see. While I really liked the idea of watching a band performing its (seminal) entire album live, I have to admit to losing concentration about an hour into the show. Not because the performance was bad, but not all the tracks on Daydream Nation lend themselves to an outdoor live festival performance well. The band admitted as much towards the entire of their Daydream Nation set by saying "Ok, we're finally on Side 4 now. Home stretch..." Their encore set comprised of songs from their latest album, Rather Ripped and this was very well received by the crowd (the bulk of whom I am sure were only toddlers when Daydream Nation was released).

"Atlas" - Battles



I was not able to secure a good position in the audience for this show, as you can tell from the video above. And rightly so, because this was essentially the most anticipated act for a lot of people. The band was tight and extremely skilled at what they were doing. However, the performance was plagued by technical issues- wires were plugged into wrong sockets it seemed. And this somehow sapped the energy of the performance and the second half of the set was a little lackluster. However, I was really impressed with John Stanier's drumming - he looked like he was about to have a heart attack given his very physical style.

??? - Grizzly Bear



This band easily gets my vote for the best performance on Saturday. I wasn't expecting much from this Brooklyn band's performance because I thought their sound would be hard to translate to a live outdoor festival venue. However, they really blew me away with their set. I'm not sure what the title of this song is as it isn't on their album, Yellow House- the only album of theirs that I own. If anyone can help me with the title, it would be much appreciated. Also, I have two more video clips of their performance that I captured. You can get them here and here.

Until next time...

Taking a break from what is going to be some of the most harrowing days of my life as yet, a.k.a. trying to finish my second pre-candidacy paper. Technically, it's not due till the middle of August, but I'm hoping to finish it before we leave for Singapore so I'll have one less thing to think about. I don't think it's undo-able, but it'll just mean a lot of discipline and focus, of which I'm not sure I have enough. That and unplugging the TV and resisting the urge to go online for no rhyme or reason...

And so, I suspect this blogpost will be a placeholder of sorts for the next week or so. Unless something profoundly incredible happens that we absolutely have to blog about, I think we're going to give ghetto of our mind a modest reprieve. Nothing extended, don't worry (and who knows? my self-restraint might cave in and I'll blog about something completely inane tomorrow), but I really need to finish this paper, and Jude's busy at his conference in New Jersey. We'll probably check in again after we've settled down a little at home.

And the prospect of that is sweet sweet comfort to me right now... :)

Pitchfork 2007 (non-music) recap

Our loot from the weekend
Originally uploaded by jyew.

Cities smell and sound different. And I'm not just talking about the pollution; on a hot summer day, you can virtually smell the heat emanating from the concrete, the asphalt of the roads, the palpable scent of the energy of people jostling about, the rings and grinds of public transportation, and just all the sounds of a city doing what it does best- bustle. It's the same in Singapore too- not better or worse than a little town like Ann Arbor, just different. And it's always quite exhilarating...

Jude's going to tap into his music-journalist mojo and blog about the festival itself, while I just do the usual what-we-saw-ate-bought-ate-shopped-bought-and-ate-some-more recap ;)

Some highlights:
1) Virtually delaying one Pink Line "El" train from moving on when the driver kept talking to us about the concert line-up as we were exiting the station. His utter derision at the prospect of Yoko Ono performing was particularly hysterical... :)
2) Thanks to Ms. Libby Hemphill, discovering the BEST EVER! burrito and tacos we have ever consumed. People, don't mess around with beans, rice and sour cream in your burritos- La Pasadita dresses their carne asada burritos and tacos simply with just cilantro and queso, and you get the most amazing $5 you will ever put in your mouth. We weren't even halfway through our first order before Jude just had to put in an order for two more tacos. Yes, they are THAT goooooood...
3) Being reminded once again about how enlightened the whole notion of public transportation is. Just being able to hop on and off without worries about parking and payment was actually very liberating.
4) Managing to get a swanky hotel room at the Hilton on S. Michigan Ave. for a steal on Priceline (I swear my husband's an Internet deal genius...). Although it was a little disconcerting to think that we were (in)directly fueling the partying foibles of the Hilton sisters...
5) Feeling profoundly old at Pitchfork as we stood among teens and tweens who all seem to either shop at the same thrift/ vintage/ retro/ second-hand store, or hand-make each others clothes from their grandmother's 1950's dress patterns.
6) Scoring a deal for a year's subscription of ReadyMade for only $5!
7) Having hush puppies for the first time at Harold's Chicken Shack #62. I don't know what I was expecting, but these ones didn't really blow me away. Now the fried chicken on the other hand, is another story altogether...
8) Hearing Ace of Base's "I Saw the Sign" on the radio as we were driving through Indiana. Nothing like a '90s flashback and the defining song of my first year in junior college to perk me up while driving at 12.30 in the morning...

Our two-day trip in all its 76-photos glory here.

Pitchfork 2007

So we're off tomorrow on our annual pilgrimage to Union Park, Chicago for the Pitchfork Music Festival. We actually have tickets to the entire weekend, but with Jude's crazy travel schedule, we're only going to stay till Saturday. Which means we're sadly going to miss the New Pornographers, the Sea and Cake, and Of Montreal, BUT we will see Iron and Wine, Voxtrot, Yoko Ono, and one of the main reasons we bought tickets in the first place, Sonic Youth playing Daydream Nation in its full glory. Jude can't wait to revisit the guys who he so unceremoniously thrust a karaoke mike under those many years ago (and for those of you who faithfully follow our blog, you'd know that his anticipation has been growing for the past four months).

Me, I'm looking forward to the entire heady atmosphere of an outdoor, weekend-long music festival, and to DEPART-ment, the on-site bazaar for all things handcrafted, from jewelery to clothes to book covers. Then there's the Flatstock 13 Poster Convention where Jude & I are hoping to find just one more silkscreen poster to fill that gap on our wall. We got a couple of great finds last year- let's hope we'll be just as lucky this year :)

Watch this space- I predict (no, guarantee!) a euphoric Sonic Youth-induced Jude post coming up in a couple of days!...

Oh how they have grown...

We have tickets to the absolute first showing of the Order of the Phoenix tonight (although Libby will argue that the 12.05 IMAX 3-D showing is technically the first show while the 12.10 non-fancy one is a mere close second...). We're definitely going to be bringing our camera- if there were people in Spiderman pajamas on the movie's opening night, you can be sure we'll be seeing wizards and witches tonight... :)

And check out this awesome class photo if there ever were one- you should definitely see it large. There's something about the composition and lighting that's most befitting of the narrative.

[click for large size]

Down below

I'm typing this as I sit in our basement on a makeshift work-table, previously incarnated as the patio table, picnic table and all-round multi-use furniture. The house is just too hot to be working anywhere else. Our bedroom was just about bearable till lunchtime, when all the leftover cool air from the air-con dissipated. Don't even get me started on the rest of the house...

Yup, that's Ann Arbor for you- blistering frost in January/February, oppressive heat in July/August. We've taken to making sure all the blinds are drawn in the day to keep the sun out; that and eating copious amounts of ice-cream. But a dark house and consuming decadent calories only help somewhat, and in the latter case, while easing my sweat glands now, will only hurt my arteries in the long run... I told myself to work in school or anywhere outside whenever I can so I don't feel tempted to switch on our air-conditioning but I had to be home today so it's the basement for me till tonight. We're trying not to use the air-con except when we're sleeping- our little bit to save the frog :) Besides, the basement really is nice and cool, plus the wireless works here so it's no problem at all.

And on that topic, here's a nice article about Al Gore's Live Earth event on Saturday. It was gooood!

Damn good party idea - Powerpoint Karaoke!!!

I came across this simple and fun idea from heathervescent's blog. Apparently it was something they did at BarcampLA. The idea behind it is simply ingenious - to have someone present for 5 minutes with powerpoint slides that they have never seen before. Check out the little excerpt from BarCampLA below:



heathervescent details, step-by-step, how to put together your own powerpoint karaoke event in this blogpost. However, in her event they had someone program a powerpoint randomizer. An interesting side-project that miht require too much programming overhead. A nice workaround may be to use Slideshare and select from one of their existing categories - "Latest", "Most viewed", "most zinged" (???) etc.

A fun night may be had for all with Powerpoint karaoke ;)

Cross atlantic introductions

While meeting up with Ed Vielmetti at the Communities and Technologies 2007 conference, I was reminded by Ed about the confluences that he has with some of the folks back home in Singapore. This has been a post that has been waiting in the wings for far too long. And I thought that it might be appropriate to use this blog to introduce the various individuals to each other. What I will do is write a brief bio for each person and some contact details. You are all free to use the comment section on this post to communicate with each other or better yet see if more direct connections can be made.

Ed Vielmetti:

I have known Ed since 2005 when I contacted him to work on a project for Peter Morville's Information Architecture class. Back then Ed was working with Social Text and I had wanted to think about Information Architecture for social software like wikis. I have kept in touch with Ed since and have come to realize what a tremendous asset Ed is to the Ann Arbor community. Ed currently works with Pure Visibility - an Internet marketing company that specializes in Google analytics and Ad Words. Like some of the "Media socialists", Ed occupies a position within a ad/marketing/PR but is experimenting with social media and web 2.0 technologies.

However, Ed also has many other facets that may be of interest to the folks in Singapore. He's very famous for his work on his blog Superpatron where he likes to experiment and mash-up the services provided by the Ann Arbor District Library. One of his latest ideas - put the local library catalogue on facebook :) I am sure there are a couple of Singaporeans (a.k.a Rambling Librarian) who would be interested to get in touch with Ed.

Lastly, Ed also maintains a personal blog called "Vacuum" where he farms links from his delicious account and also aggregates his other 'spaces' on the Internet.

Ben Koe:

I have only recently made contact with Ben through Kevin Lim. Most of what I know about Ben comes from his blog and this is how he describes himself:
"I work at Hill & Knowlton in Singapore as a PR consultant in the technology practice as well as the company's new media specialist where I experiment marrying PR and the social media. I also co-founded and built Scoopasia.com, a free web resource for the PR and marketing industry in Asia."

Ivan Chew a.k.a Rambling Librarian:

Ivan is a librarian in the Singapore National Library board system. I am not exactly sure what his exact designation/position is, but I do know that he is one of the first librarians to maintiain a blog that explicitly details the joys and travails of his profession. I've met Ivan once, but our online paths cross each other regularly. Ivan is an avocate for expanding the traditional role of the library and enabling individuals with disabilities to access library services. There's a nice interview with Ivan that can be found on the LitMinds blog.

Kevin Lim

Kevin is a doctoral student at SUNY, Buffalo but he's more than just academics. Kevin's a real dynamo at experimenting with new technologies, evangelising about them and networking with people to spread the gospel (so to speak ;) ). Check out Kevin's blog, Theory is the reason, for the latest in his exploits with technologies, events, venues or individuals.

Apologies if I have left anyone out. But feel free to ping me if you would like to know more about the folks that I have mentioned in this post or if you would like to get in touch with anyone here.

Introducing ... Gustafer Yellowgold!!!

We bought the Gustafer Yellowgold's Wide Wild World DVD/CD on a whim and we've been since totally bowled over by the imagination and songwriting sensibilities of Morgan Taylor. The NYT review described it as "Dr. Seuss meets Yellow Submarine". I, however, liken it to the sensibilities of Shel Silverstein who also wrote both music and whimsical stories for children. It has a whole hippie aesthetic to it that makes Serene feel like she needs to be wearing flowers in her hair while singing along... I suspect that Morgan Taylor's music is going to be on heavy rotation on our home stereo :)

While watching the DVD, I remarked how a live performance of the songs with the animation projected LARGE would be awesome. And guess what?... Morgan's doing just that. At the New York Public Libraries... and the performances are FREE!!! I'm going to be in New Jersey for a conference and will see if I can sneak out for a day and catch a performance :)

The video above is for the song "Mint Green Bee", one of our favorites already. YouTube has excerpts of a few other tracks as well. Another delightful one in particular is "New Blue Star".

Link to Gustafer Yellowgold Official Site.

La La La La... Linoleum

The highlight of my otherwise excruciatingly stressful day...



As always, it takes a children's show to remind you of the beauty of words and smile :)

The Saturn

I really, really like this photo. It captures a mood and aesthetic that I only wished I could replicate in my photos. Additionally, the photo's artfully staged, impeccably timed, interestingly lighted and beautifully shot. It sort of reminds me of an Edward Hopper painting somehow ... except that this is Hopper in celluloid film (I am assuming here, you never know everything's digitally shot now.)

What are 640 photos worth to you?

So as some of you may know, Yahoo! Photos will be shutting down for good come September. Before we finally decided to go Flickr Pro a couple of years back, we had been using Yahoo! for all our photos and little did we know, that amounted to almost 640 pics over the course of 2 years. Thankfully, Yahoo! has just completed moving all those photos over to our Flickr account, and everything's finally in one place! :)

Although all the sets, titles and descriptions were retained in the move, I went through a bunch of them just to make sure. And we never tagged them in Yahoo! so I did a whole lot of tagging too. Going through the photos was a little surreal though... These were all taken in 2004 and 2005, so most of them captured us during our Masters program. Those were fun times :) Not that the last two years haven't been fun, but it was just a different kind, with a different group of friends who are now scattered all over the country- well, mostly in the West Coast (actually mostly in a very specific part of the West Coast...) I thought I already had very distinct memories of things that happened in those two years, but these photos just made them even more vivid.

First, there was the time when everyone (literally, I think everyone we invited turned up...) came to celebrate us moving into our apartment (where a grand total of 45 people squeezed and jostled in our little nook), then the many, many, many, many, many, many birthdays that were celebrated over the course of those 24 months; there was Spring Break in New York, rock climbing in Kentucky; and who can forget the utterly indulgent and debauched weekend, otherwise known as Jude's MSI graduation where we had no less than four parties over a span of three days (see here, here and here)? :)

Just thinking about how many memories are captured in photos, and how tenuous online archiving of photos can be, I'm now seriously thinking of 1) getting them all backed-up on discs; and 2) printing some of our favorite ones out and then putting them in albums, like it used to be done in the old days... ;) Ultimately, scrolling through web-pages of photos will never be the same as flipping through a photo album. Ten or twenty years down the road, I want to be able to pull out a dusty old album from the shelf and say to my kid, "Look, at one time, your dad and I survived on only $1500 a month, and we were happy." :)

An oldie goodie

Vanilla ice cream with mixed fruits
Originally uploaded by jyew.

For all the crème brulees in the world, there are just days when all a girl needs to satisfy her sweet tooth is a simple vanilla ice-cream with a generous heapful of mixed fruit from a can. I appreciate fancy desserts as much as the next person, but honestly, when push comes to shove, there is no more comforting a dessert than good ol' ice-cream.

I know this sounds boring, but once in a while, I do enjoy some vanilla flavored ice cream- not French Vanilla, which is a little too cloying; just regular down-to-earth vanilla. Sometimes having too much going on in your ice-cream (fudge pieces with chocolate-coated cashews and caramel swirls with dots of marshmallow and fruit- enough already!) is just... well, too much. Vanilla is wonderfully versatile, goes great with pies, fruits, Nutella, or just on its own. It's also a very elemental thing- when we were kids, vanilla ice-cream was the safest dessert my parents would give us, and so it often reminds me of childhood somehow.

Today, I was just craving it with some mixed fruit. Get the lite version that's usually made with pear juice rather than sugar syrup. That way, you don't detract from the creaminess of the ice-cream too much, and it doesn't get overwhelmingly sweet. It was delicious- simple, sweet and comforting, and thrown together in a jiffy. I suppose you could jazz it up with some shredded mint leaves, but honestly, who are we kidding? I could barely wait to take this picture before slurping it all up!...

4 years...

It's been beautiful... :)

Love is what makes two people sit in the middle of a bench when there is plenty of room at both ends.
-Anonymous

Summer resolution #2

Spend more time at the Ann Arbor Summer Festival.

We've been here close to 4 years and I don't think we do enough at the Festival. So this year, we've decided to make more of a conscious effort to go to the shows and special events. It's rare enough to get good acts in Michigan, and even more rare that they're right in town and a mere bus-ride away. Last week was great coz we managed to catch a double-bill of Cesaria Evora and Seu Jorge- Latin/Brazilian/Portuguese samba jazz vocals. Awesome!... Cesaria has a truly spellbinding voice and Seu Jorge was really fun to watch too! You may remember him as the Portuguese-speaking David Bowie-singing crewmember in Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Needless to say, by the end of the night, the crowd was all up and dancing :) The promo site for their performance has some really good sound clips you can listen to.

Then last night, Jude, Rachael and I met for dinner before walking to Top of the Park to watch Happy Feet. By chance, we managed to catch the last 15 minutes of Strange Fruit, an Australian-based troupe that performs on 4-meter tall stilts. The lighting wasn't very good but Jude managed to snap some pictures of them here. They were delightfully elegant and whimsical. It was part dance, part circus, part Cirque du Soleil, all art.... :) The best thing was how they were performing right amidst the crowd rather than on stage or somewhere removed from the audience. It wasn't participatory or anything, but I think their proximity to everyone lent a certain carnivalesque feel to the whole thing which was really nice.

Happy Feet was a wonderful treat for me :) It's definitely not Finding Nemo, and by no means a kid movie; but it had a real soul to it that I wasn't expecting at all. The soundtrack is amazing, the narrative strong and thoughtful, and some of the underwater sequences are nothing short of breathtaking. Everyone was grooving, tapping their feet and there was clapping all around by the time it was over. Sitting out in the open watching a movie was really fun- kinda like how I'd imagine a drive-in movie would be like. I think we're going to try to catch Dreamgirls next week.

So there- Ann Arbor's just lovely in the summer, and having the Summer Festival right downtown reminds us of that just a tad more :)

Will you...

My sister's engaged! With some help from this swoony scene from Love Actually, Sam's favorite black marker pen and construction paper, and the song from my beloved Elmo & Andrea Bocelli clip :)

Oh happy happy happy!!

A night with Royston Tan - via youTube

I have to admit to spending too much time on youTube tonight - chasing links and checking out everything that has been uploaded related to Royston Tan. A Singaporean filmaker who has gained prominence internationally and who Time magazine described as being an Asian "iconoclast". Check out this essay written by Kenneth Tan, chair of the Asian Film Archive.

Royston's showreel above highlights his eye for beautiful composed pictures in his films. And that's what films are - stories captured in a sequence of pictures moving at 35fps. I haven't yet watched all of Royston's works, but his upcoming flim "881" looks like something that I really want to watch when we travel back to Singapore. Check out the trailers below:





Some background for non-Singaporeans. The film revolves around the "ge tai", or literally translated the "song stage", which takes place annually during the Seventh Month (or the Hungry Ghost month) of the Chinese calendar. Traditionally, Chinese opera performances would be held on the Seventh Month of each year - the only month in the year when the Gates of Hades are thrown open, and ghosts, spirits and all departed souls make their annual pilgrimage back into the land of the living.

As a way of placating these spirits, temples and clan associations would host performances that take place on temporary stages like the one seen in Royston's clip above. The performances tend to be loud, boisterous, noisy, and sometimes seen as annoyances when performed close to residential areas. But these performances are highly popular amongst the older folks back home, primarily because the night's proceedings would usually take place in Chinese dialect, Hokkien being the most popular.

However, there's been a fair degree of romanticization of ge tai performances, especially amongst arts practitioners. It's a theme that has emerged in a variety of plays, books and films in the recent past. I personally feel that it's a way for Singapore artistes to grasp onto an "authentic" local art form in a country that is made up of immigrants from all over. Additionally, the ge tai is an art form that makes sense to the Chinese in Singapore, but its frequent appearance in popular culture speaks to need to hear about the nostalgia held by the other ethnic groups in the country as well. Anyway, enough with my views... Royston's film looks like it's going to be huge and fun to watch and we are definitely looking forward to catching it on the big screen in Singapore.

** Update:
I found yet another clip. This time of the director and his two lead actors performing in a traditional ge tai style ... and in, of all places, Central Park in NYC!!! This was part of the Singapore Day festivities that was held earlier this year in Manhattan.

Interview

Who knew? Steve Buscemi cleans up nice, and there's more to Sienna Miller than a sparkling smile. And the mismatched chemistry is kinda of interesting... Can I say I'm intrigued?

[click for trailer]

Interview is also the first of three movies that make up Triple Theo, a project to remember the life and work of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch film-maker who was murdered in 2004 for his political and religious views.

Summer resolution #1

Eat more salad.

It's that sweltering time of the year again when even boiling water generates too much heat to even bear it... It was hitting 96F today and I think I'm done slaving over the stove and oven for a while. At times like these, it's hard to imagine that this place actually snows 4 months of a year...

It's definitely salad time.

Just in the last 3 days, I've had a salad everyday. One completely raw salad with home-grown spinach and fresh herbs (it was so tasty I had it with no dressing whatsoever), I made one for lunch yesterday (I pan-fried halloumi and dressed the salad with a sweet-spicy mango vinaigrette), and my friend, Tanya made me a simple turkey and mayo salad with dill pickle and tomatoes at lunch today. All different, all yummy! Which got me on a resolution from now on to make more salads.

I think salads have gotten a bad rep for being either bland, dry, boring, or all three. To some people, an exciting salad makes about as much sense as a fashionable sweater. But as those of you who watch What Not to Wear know, a sweater can be fashionable, and so can a salad (exciting I mean, not fashionable...) A good salad shouldn't make you feel like a rabbit who's just chomped down an entire cabbage patch- I think given the right ingredients and some imagination, salads have the potential to be very interesting entrees in and of themselves, especially in this increasingly oppressive heat. So here's my list of some affordable salad ingredients (some everyday ones and some a little more of the indulgent variety) that will hopefully make your next salad attempt just that tad more exciting!

Salad essentials:
* Romaine lettuce
* Baby arugula (a handful goes a long way so we mix them up with the cheaper lettuce to make it stretch a little- besides, some people find its pepperiness a little overpowering. I personally love it...)
* Fresh tomatoes (vine-ripen better than Roma. We can't afford heirloom tomatoes, but if you can, those are even better)
* Eggs
* Any kind of ham or bacon (a little of the salty cured meat makes any veggie taste just a little better)
* Dill-pickle. I usually don't like pickles, but just chop one spear up and it really perks up any kind of mayo-based salad, and somehow makes it less cloying. Or you could use a little relish too I guess.
* Olive-oil packed tuna (they're better than the ones packed in water. Trader Joe's sells them for a steal)
* Good olive oil
* Aged Parmesan-Reggiano
* Vinegar (balsamic and white wine)
* A tart fruit jam (I know, odd; but trust me, with a little olive oil and wine vinegar, you've got a fancy dressing that's much tastier than the ones in the bottle.)
* Chicken-breast. Buy them when they go on sale and roast them on your own with olive oil and herbs. They keep well and they go with all kinds of salad.
* Potatoes
* Cilantro (fresh herbs brighten up any salad)
* Olives
* Chili flakes (just half to a teaspoon into a fruit vinaigrette helps develop some depth to the flavors)
* Pasta shells of any kind
* Cucumbers. English cukes are good because they have less seeds, but you can also just get regular ones and core them before chopping them up.
* Avocados (I could eat an entire avocado with just some salt and a drizzle of lemon...)
* Halloumi cheese. They taste sooooo good panfried- toasty on the outside, gooey on the inside.
* For texture, something crunchy- croûtons, nuts, pita chips, etc.
* Red, yellow or orange bell peppers. They're scrumptiously sweet and they make your salad look bright and happy :)

Nothing on the list is particularly fancy or expensive (although we can't afford to buy halloumi cheese every week though. Or even avocados for that matter...), but play a little mix-and-match with the veggies/proteins/carbs/dressings and you should have a good enough variety of yummy salads to last you through summer. Serve with some good bread (after we discovered Great Harvest, it's hard to go back to regular store-bought bread- their Guinness with Monterey Jack Cheese Loaf is amazing!!...), and you won't find a better satisfyingly yummy and exciting plate of healthy goodness!

Congrats Sadanori and Kyoko!

The day has finally come when the boy we all thought would never grow up, finally met a woman who would make an honest man out of him. Our dear Horiguchi-san is now officially a married man! Well, actually, he has been for a few weeks now- the wedding ceremony was held in Tokyo but he and Kyoko had their American reception today in Dexter, MI.

They make a really sweet couple- Sadanori always makes Kyoko laugh, and the general consensus is that she's his calming angel... :)

This picture was taken at my birthday last year and it captures what we wish for them for the rest of their life together- closeness, laughter and joy. We blew this photo up a little and framed it as a wedding gift to the couple. We hope they'll like it :)

Pictures of the American reception here, and here are pictures from their Japanese ceremony, courtesy of Jason.

My first publication :)

C.H.E.L.L.O. (Manual)
Originally uploaded by jyew.

What do I find on my table when I walked into my office this morning? My first publication! Affectionately referred to as the CHELLO in our research team, the Child/ Home Early Language and Literacy Observation is an instrument we've developed to examine language and literacy practices in home-based preschools [Dan and Wendy, you know exactly who/what I'm talking about...:)]

Apart from all that work with Sesame Street, this instrument has consumed the bulk of my project work this past 2 years. Just ask Jude- he's about sick of hearing me talk about this amorphous thing called the "CHELLO"... And now it's done! I'm really happy. We put a lot of work into it, and I do believe that it will help caregivers and children in these settings. Unlike the home-based preschools you might typically find in Ann Arbor or more middle-class suburbs, home-based child care (especially in fringe cities like Flint and Grand Rapids) tend to more often than not enroll children from lower income families. These parents tend to work long or irregular hours and so place their kids in home settings because they often have more flexible hours.

The intention behind the instrument is that hopefully, if we can examine these environments really carefully and take thoughtful steps towards improving them, we can then help close the gap in language development between these low-income children, and their middle class peers.

And the CHELLO even has its own little web-page! :)

Arctic Monkeys - Fluorescent Adolescent

Ok, I know that Videos of the Week are usually Jude's purview, so I'm stealing a little of his thunder here... ;) But seriously, I'm scratching my head over this one more than recommending it though: the song- I lurve. Absolutely brilliant! and rather widely acclaimed as Arctic Monkey's best single from their new album, Favorite Worst Nightmare. The video- I'm not so sure. As if I'm not petrified of clowns enough, here are now marauding hyper-violent, soccer-hooliganesque clowns incomprehensibly beating their old friends into a senseless friggin' pulp? I get the overall narrative at the end, but really...

What do people think?

Bonfire Nation

Think of it as Survivor meets Lost meets Woodstock. Bill calls it "Boy Scouts with a budget" :) Yup, and that's Bonfire Nation for you. Bill and Jolie invited us to this event held on 5 acres of land just outside Ann Arbor that is owned by their friend, Eric. It's an amazing set-up if you ask me: there's an area for tents, a makeshift bar, an adult-friendly zip-line, a beer-pong table, a gigantic wooden tepee, and of course, at the center of it all, the bonfire.

What's remarkable though (apart from the awesome "infrastructure" and the initial towering inferno of a bonfire), and the thing that really enthralls Jude and I is how this is the product of a group of people's simple desire to want to just hang out together and have fun. Everything on that piece of land has grown and evolved over seven years- the zip line has broken a couple of times, but they just make a stronger and stronger one each time round; they run our of wood for the bonfire, and so they go into the forest and chop down more dead trees; every time, there's a bonfire, friends bring more friends and other people are embraced into the group: things and people are just added on organically as part of the entire sensibility of fellowship. More than combustion, Bonfire Nation is about communion :)

For pictures and details of the bonfire itself, see here.

Like a car crash in slow motion ...

I must admit that ever since I found out about Consumer Reports' crash test videos, I've been morbidly addicted to scrolling through the videos for different makes and models in order to see how they perform. In particular, I have viewed the video for my own car, a Hyundai Elantra, at least 5 - 6 times. There's something about watching car crashes that's fascinating. This quote by Vaughn, one of the characters in J. G. Ballard's novel, "Crash" and uttered in Cronenberg's movie version might be instructive:

"The car crash is a fertilizing rather than a destructive event."

I am also reminded of a conversation that I had with a former lecturer of mine who teaches Digital Media & Art in Kuala Lumpur. I was asking him how his teaching was going and he started telling me about working with one particular student just before the deadline for a final project. He described the experience as such:

"It's like watching a car crash in slow motion. The dummy in the car knows that it's going to hit the wall. But neither the dummy, nor the viewer, can do anything to avert the impending catastrophe."

With those choice quotes in mind, I hope you enjoy the crash test videos in new light :)

I am a robot...

The significance of the post title will become clear as you go through the photos of Jude's birthday :) I think we all had a blast!

1. Us (bright), 2. Berry tart, 3. Guess what I bought Jude for his birthday?, 4. Our Pisco sour, 5. Bill and Jolie Robot, 6. Jude and Libby (bright), 7. My first successful steak dinner, 8. Jude with Maria, Matt and Dana, 9. Jude's birthday Evite

Oh Kumo...

Kumo 5
Originally uploaded by jyew.

Rick and Emilee are in Pittsburgh for a wedding and so it was time for our annual dog-sitting session with Kumo. He is just a complete and utter sweetie- so obedient, so affectionate, and so intelligent! Last night, as we were falling asleep, he went over to Jude's side of the bed, starred hard at Jude, came over to my side and starred hard at me, and then went by the window and plopped himself down unceremoniously before sleeping. Unless people tell me otherwise, I'm going to tell myself that he was wishing us good night...

Then this morning, when he realized that Jude had woken up and was in the bathroom getting ready, Kumo deemed it proper to come up to a still sleeping me and nudge me with his fluffy snout to wake me up as well. I guess in the grand labradoodle scheme of things, couples are meant to wake up together... Either that or Rick and Emilee are more disciplined risers than we are :)

Oh Kumo...

There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.
~Bern Williams

A Jude favorite

Bak Kut Teh (Peppery Pork Rib Soup)
Originally uploaded by jyew.

So we'll be home in about a month and half; till then though, my husband continues to be assailed by those pangs of longing for local food. Last night, we made nasi goreng (Indonesian Fried Rice), and while it doesn't come close to what we would have gotten at home, it served its purpose adequately.

Tonight, I'm making bak kut teh, pork ribs in a light, peppery broth. It's one of Jude's favorites and I think it'll be good for dinner. The weather's been doing that freaky thing where it's hot and sunny one minute, and really chilly and rainy another, so all we're really craving right now is something warm and comforting. Besides, Jude's coming down with a cold of some sorts and a nourishing soup for dinner will hopefully do his system some good.

I want to say that I made the dish from scratch, but alas... I have neither the time, skill, nor availability of many of the herbs. And so, as with so many of the foods that we miss from home, it's Prima Taste to the rescue. To those of you who scoff at all things pre-packaged, you clearly 1) have a coffeeshop/ hawker center/ food court round the corner from you where you can get a plate of char kway teow for less than US$10; 2) have the time and fortitude to scour for authentic Southeast Asian ingredients in order to make these things from scratch, and/or 3) have not tasted any of the Prima pre-mixes. Their chicken curry and laksa are particularly good. And the best thing is, I just discovered that they have an importer here in the U.S.! No more lugging back packfuls of the stuff to be hoarded and rationed till out next trip home!

"Creature Comforts" comes to America!

Jude had posted here last year about the British series, "Creature Comforts" and its humorous yet incisive take on current social and political affairs. Good news for all Aardman Animation fans- the U.S. has produced its own version and it's starting Monday at 8pm on CBS!

Hailed as a cross between "Wallace and Gromit" and This American Life, "Creature Comforts" uses Nick Park's trademark stop-motion animation to give voice to real-person interviews of everyday Americans all across the country. Topics range from drunk driving to health care to dating. Some of the sneak peaks I've seen have been downright hilarious, but also sweet, charming and always wonderfully insightful. I'll be glued to my couch come Monday night, and I hope you will too :)

Some sneak peeks:

SOME of the best comic acting you'll see all summer will come from the animated clay animals starring in "Creature Comforts." An American version of a British series based in turn on a short film by Nick Park (the creator of Wallace & Gromit), it puts the unrehearsed words of ordinary people into the mouths of Plasticine dogs, cats, horses, pigs, porcupines, monkeys, pandas, crabs, sharks, roaches and whatever other animals seem appropriate or appropriately ironic to the subject or voice.

Topics are as varied as health, lying and sex, and the result is something both witty and complex — a kind of heightened reality television that, beyond letting you laugh at the funny juxtapositions and marvel at the animation, focuses your attention on the voices themselves, and what people have to say, and how they say it. A reminder that we're all at once individuals and types, and animals under our clothes.
-L.A. Times

(Yet another) Video of the week: Modest Mouse - Missed the Boat

What's there not to like about this video? It's one of the better tracks off Modest Mouse's latest album. It has a cardboard box robot, and a "Frankenstein-esque" narrative of appearances aren't what they seem, love found and evil overcome.

Coming back to the cardboard box robot - I wonder if anyone has done an analysis of the cardboard box robot as an iconic aesthetic form? Think about it - the gestalt of a stack of cardboard boxes piled on top of each other evoking images of the ideal scientific fulfillment - a human-like machine. It's a robot that all of us can build without having any scientific know-how whatsoever. I could go on, but I still hold that my favourite robot form to be the cardboard box robot :)


1. Parallax BOE-Bot and a box of wheels and gears, 2. Robot costume, 3. Robot costume - side, 4. Robot costume - Kat having fun, 5. Robot costume - back, 6. Robot costume - grippers

Battle at Ham's Deep

Link from Boing Boing

Check out this rendition of the battle at Helm's Deep, featuring Jim Henson's Muppets!! My favorites are Kermit as Aragon (complete with flowing, war-greased hair!) and Miss Piggy as Eowyn, I'm assuming :)