ligress

Yet again...

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 15:27:00 +0000

Yep, I've moved platforms again, sorry!

You can find me at www.ligress.wordpress.com now!

See you there!

The mess we're in

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:03:00 +0000

I’ve been trying to understand bits of the financial crisis, but I can’t say that getting the whole picture has been my latest strength. Here’s the Subprime Primer, which may help minds alike grasp a few more bits and pieces of what’s going on.

Birds

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:56:00 +0000

This is a video from Pleix I really like. Check it out!

The Shard

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:33:00 +0000

The Shard is a project of Renzo Piano that will be a major addition to London's skyline. Once built, the Shard will be the tallest building in Europe. It has been designed to utilise solar power as a considerable source of power and will provide a public piazza underneath its base.

See this link for a grander view of London's panorama with the Shard.

The making of

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 09:44:00 +0000

The topic of unconscious or 'well, it's not gonna kill me, is it?' acquisition of hazardous substances through food has been around for a while. Most of us eat fertilizers and pesticides on our fruit and vegetables, pop a few genetically modified bits in-between and then just do hormones and antibiotics in the steak. To focus on meat, why are hormones and antibiotics used so widely in the production of meat, should we be careful about consuming them, and if so, how can we avoid them in our food?

As much as I don't want to get activist here, but I can't help posting this video from Pleix. It may not be new, but it's quite to the point...

Sex hormones are often used in animal diets because they are an easy way to increase the animals' production of muscles and fat without having to give them more feed. Although the amount of hormones acquired through meat consumption cannot be measured in an accurate manner, as by the end of the processing one cannot tell the difference between the animals' natural and artificial hormones, there is a lot to think about when it comes to having those extra amounts of hormones floating in our bodies. Oestrogen has been linked to an increased risk of breast cancer and to fertility problems in men. Progesterone has been shown to increase the development of ovarian, breast and uterine tumours in laboratory animals. And testosterone has been linked to prostate cancer in men. There have also been concerns about the acceleration of breast development among children in countries that allow hormone use in dairy production. Another concern is that hormones administered to animals could be passed with their feces and as a result have an effect on water and plants. Hormone use in meat production has been banned in the EU and does not allow imports of such meat into the area.

Like hormones, antibiotics make animals gain weight and therefore increase the meat industry's profits. They are commonly administered sub-therapeutically to increase the weight of the animals and also to preven the diseases that the conditions of factory farming can bring on. Some antibiotics administered to animals are also used to treat human illnesses. Long-term usage of such antibiotics can effectively make the bacteria within the animals immune to the antibiotics. If a person ingests such bacteria with the meat and gets ill, the bacteria will continue being antibiotic-resistant. Another larger-scale concern here is the arms race between bacteria and drug innovation that can lead to us having around diseases that we cannot treat appropriately. So far the sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics in meat has been banned in several countries in the EU and imports of such meat are not allowed into the UK.

The UK seems a fairly safe zone for both hormones and antibiotics in meat, but the US continues a much more robust use of these substances in their meat production. I guess the safest bet is to buying organic or going vegetarian.

The Sweater

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:45:00 +0000

This is a song by Meryn Cadell I caught on the radio while driving in the States about a year ago and I only now found the video online. Enjoy and follow!

Little Bo Peep

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:37:00 +0000

This is Phillip Roebuck, a real one-man-band...

Tyrannosaurus Cash

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 10:14:00 +0000

I feel something should be done with the monetary system, and not just in the UK, but everywhere in the world where paying by card and doing Internet transactions is common place. Retailers and other commercial businesses should allow more freedom of use of bank cards and online payments. Fees for spending amounts smaller than £5 in shops and £10 in bars should be eliminated - this would allow more spending freedom for the consumers and eventually more profits for businesses. All this would increase the velocity of the circulation of money and who knows, maybe eventually even bring down the shopping prices.

The history of people fiddling with the idea of having cards as media of payment goes back to the early 1900s. The first credit cards as we know them were introduced in 1966 and since then they've become a favored form of payment for much of the population. The digital age is here in so many ways, so what's keeping a wide-spread standardization of payments from happening? Does it really cost so much to the retailers to carry out the card transactions? I paid a 50 pence extra charge on a £3 purchase for using my card yesterday, which makes the fee over 15% of the entire purchase. As far as the pure transaction costs for banks, they are supposed to be a relatively small fixed percentage of the purchase, so to me it seems like the fixed fees applied in bars and shops are there not just to cover the transaction costs, but also to discourage the use of cards. Why does this take place? The bank charges, exactly as they are, should be transferred to the consumers instead of influencing the policies of retailers. By the way, Sweden supposedly found a way to make this all work.

If one was to push this issue further, why not think of abolishing cash and introducing a strictly card-only system? This would allow more transparency of transactions and eliminate a lot of ways in which cash is misused, but now this is probably a too-extreme measure. What can I say, I can't wait for tomorrow.

Lykke Li

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 09:58:00 +0000

Here's Lykke Li, a young Swedish singer I was recently introduced to. Disregard the videos (I don't think they're that good) and get into the tunes...

Just for fun

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 10:51:00 +0000

Check out the Sartorialist, a blog published by a guy shooting random people with some taste in what they wear in the streets of NYC and other locations around the world. Fashion is nothing, style everything.

Bruno, My Love

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:55:00 +0000

We say it's hard to pick our favorite favorites when it comes to many things, be it friends, countries, or pieces of art. Despite the wealth of choice of literature available and the intense differences between many a writers, I have come to a place where I can not only appreciate, but truly adore a writer.

Bruno Schulz was a Polish Jew, born in 1892 is a small down of Drohobycz in Galicia. Apart from creating drawings and a few magnificent pieces of writing, his life mostly revolved around teaching drawing and handicraft in a small-town Polish school. He was a man of a feeble health and an almost incurable state of self-perceived inferiority and insecurity. His life was an endless conflict between providing financial support for his extended family and carving out moments of freedom in which he was most creative. His life ended in 1942, when he was shot dead by a Gestapo officer in a street of his home town.

Despite not being widely known on an international scale, Bruno Schulz is regarded as one of the greatest Polish-language stylists of the 20th century. The quotation below referring to Jacob, Bruno's father, could easily be pointed at the writer himself.

It is worth noting how, in contact with that unusual man, all things retreated, as it were, to the root of their being, rebuilt their phenomenon down to the metaphysical core — they returned to their primordial idea, only to betray it at that point and lurch into those dubious, daring and equivocal regions which I shall here succinctly call the Regions of the Great Heresy.

Descriptive to the point of transcending the nature of objects and states presented, Bruno Schulz's writings are characterised by a language of incredible depth and color. The simplicity of the prose's content is transformed, liquefied, and brought to its very essence in light of the language used to portray it.

But even further from the light there were cats. Their perfection was alarming. Locked up in the precision and meticulousness of their bodies, they knew neither deviation nor error. They sank for a moment into the depths of themselves, to the bottom of their being, then they froze in their soft fur and grew menacingly and ceremonially serious, while their eyes grew as round as moons, soaking up the view into their fiery craters. But a moment later, cast out to the edge, to their surface, they yawned in their nihility, disappointed and without illusions.

Due to his entrapment with teaching and poor health, and above all, lack of free time, the body of his most popular written work includes only two collections of short stories: The Street of Crocodiles and Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. In 1975 a collection of Schulz's letters was published in Polish as The Book of Letters. Several works have been lost or burned, including some short stories from the early 1940s that the author had sent to be published in magazines, and his final unfinished novel The Messiah.

This works have inspired other creations such as the adaptation of The Street of Crocodiles by the Quay Brothers:

Bruno Schulz's writings and life have been described in more detail in a book by the Polish poet Jerzy Ficowski Regions of the Great Heresy. The texts of The Street of Crocodiles and Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass are available here for free.

0800-YES-NATO

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:31:00 +0000

From the Economist.

The Little Minx

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:38:00 +0000

These are two out of the six videos that can be found at The Little Minx Exquisite Corpse short film collection. Enjoy!

A conversation with Himself

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:28:00 +0000

Tom Waits: a conversation with himself

From The Independent, Friday, 13 June 2008

Tom Waits: The director Jim Jarmusch once told me, "Fast, Cheap, and Good... pick two. If it's fast and cheap, it won't be good. If it's cheap and good, it won't be fast. If it's fast and good, it won't be cheap." Fast, cheap and good... pick two words to live by.

I must admit, before meeting Tom, I had heard so many rumours and so much gossip that I was afraid. Frankly, his gambling debts, his animal magnetism, coupled with his disregard for the feelings of others... His elaborate gun collection, his mad shopping-sprees, the face-lifts, the ski trips, the drug busts and the hundreds of rooms in his home.

The tax shelters, the public urination... I was nervous to meet the real man himself. Baggage and all. But I found him to be gentle, intelligent, open, bright, helpful, humorous, brave, audacious, loquacious, clean and reverent. A Boy Scout, really (and a giant of a man). Join me now for a rare glimpse into the heart of Tom Waits. Remove your shoes and no smoking, please...#

Q: What's the most curious record in your collection?

A: In the Seventies, a record company in LA issued a record called The Best of Marcel Marceau. It had 40 minutes of silence followed by applause and it sold really well. I like to put it on for company. It really bothers me, though, when people talk through it.

Q: What are some unusual things that have been left behind in a cloakroom?

A: Well, Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' cloakroom and was one-sixteenth Iroquois.

Q: You've always enjoyed the connection between fashion and history – talk to us about that.

A: OK, let's take the two-piece bathing suit, produced in 1947 by a French fashion designer. The sight of the first woman in the minimal two-piece was as explosive as the detonation of the atomic bomb by the US at Bikini island in the Marshall Islands, hence the naming of the bikini.

Q: List some artists who have shaped your creative life.

A: OK, here are a few that just come to me for now: Kerouac, Dylan, Bukowski, Rod Serling, Don Van Vliet, Cantinflas, James Brown, Harry Belafonte, Ma Rainey, Big Mama Thornton, Howlin' Wolf, Lead Belly, Lord Buckley, Mabel Mercer, Lee Marvin, Thelonius Monk, John Ford, Fellini, Weegee, Jagger, Richards, Willie Dixon, John McCormick, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Robert Johnson, Hoagy Carmichael, Enrico Caruso.

Q: List some songs that were beacons for you

A: Again, for now... but if you ask me tomorrow the list would change, of course. Gershwin's Second Prelude, "Pathétique" sonata, "El Paso", "You Really Got Me", "Soldier Boy", "Lean Back", "Night Train", "Come In My Kitchen", "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands", Rite of Spring, "Ode to Billy Joe", "Louie Louie", "Just a Fool", "Prisoner of Love", "Wang Dang Doodle (All Night Long)", "Ringo", "Ball and Chain", "Deportee", "Strange Fruit", "Sophisticated Lady", "Georgia On My Mind", "I Can't Stop Loving You", "Just Like a Woman", "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry", "Who'll Stop the Rain?", "Moon River", "Autumn Leaves", "Danny Boy", "Dirty Ol' Town", "Waltzing Matilda", "Train Keeps a Rollin", "Boris the Spider", "You Really Got a Hold On Me", "Red Right Hand", "All Shook Up", "Cause Of It All", "Shenandoah", "China Pig", "Summertime", "Without a Song", "Auld Lang Syne", "It's a Man's Man's Man's World", "Crawlin' King Snake", "Nessun Dorma", "Bring It On Home to Me", "Hound Dog", "Hello Walls", "You Win Again", "Sunday Morning Coming Down", "Almost Blue", "Pump It Up", "Greensleeves", "Just Wanna See His Face" (The Rolling Stones), "Restless Farewell", "Fairytale of New York", "Bring Me a Little Water Sylvie", "Raglan Road", "96 Tears", "In Dreams" (Roy Orbison), "Substitute", "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues", theme from Rawhide, "Same Thing", "Walk Away Rene", "For What It's Worth", theme from Once Upon a Time In America, "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing", "Oh Holy Night", Mass in E Minor, "Harlem Shuffle", "Trouble Man", "Wade In the Water", "Empty Bed Blues", "Hava Nagila".

Q: What's heaven for you?

A: Me and my wife on Route 66 with a pot of coffee, a cheap guitar, pawnshop tape recorder in a Motel 6, and a car that runs good parked right by the door.

Q: What's hard for you?http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.bold.gif

A: Mostly I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane. Math is hard. Reading a map. Following orders. Carpentry. Electronics. Plumbing. Remembering things correctly. Straight lines. Sheet rock. Finding a safety pin. Patience with others. Ordering in Chinese. Stereo instructions in German.

Q: What's wrong with the world?

A: We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. Leona Helmsley's dog made $12m last year... and Dean McLaine, a farmer in Ohio, made $30,000. It's just a gigantic version of the madness that grows in every one of our brains. We are monkeys with money and guns.

Q: Favourite scenes in movies?

A: R De Niro in the ring in Raging Bull. Julie Christie's face in Heaven Can Wait when she said, "Would you like to get a cup of coffee?" James Dean in East of Eden telling the nurse to get out when his dad has had a stroke and he's sitting by his bed. Marlene Dietrich in Touch of Evil saying, "He was some kind of man." Scout saying, "Hey Mr Cunningham" in the scene in To Kill a Mockingbird. Nic Cage falling apart in the drug store in Matchstick Men... and eating a cockroach in Vampire's Kiss. The last scene in Chinatown.

Q: Can you describe a few other scenes from movies that have always stayed with you?

A: Rod Steiger in The Pawnbroker explaining to the Puerto Rican all about gold. Brando in The Godfather dying in the tomatoes with scary orange teeth. Lee Marvin in Emperor of the North riding under the boxcar, Borgnine bouncing steel off his ass. Dennis Weaver at the motel, saying, "I am just the night man," holding on to a small tree in Touch of Evil. The hanging in The Ox-Bow Incident. The speech by Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner as he's dying. Anthony Quinn dancing on the beach in Zorba. Nicholson in The Witches of Eastwick covered in feathers in the church as the ladies stick needles in the voodoo doll. When Mel Gibson's blue healer gets shot with an arrow in Mad Max 2: Road Warrior. When Rachel in The Exorcist says, "Could you help an old altar-boy, father?" The blind guy in the tavern in Treasure Island. Frankenstein's monster after he strangles the young girl by the river.

Q: Can you tell me an odd thing that happened in an odd place? Any thoughts?

A: A Japanese freighter had been torpedoed during the Second World War, and it's at the bottom of Tokyo harbour with a large hole in her hull. A team of engineers was called together to solve the problem of raising the wounded vessel to the surface. One of the engineers tackling this puzzle said he remembered seeing a Donald Duck cartoon when he was a boy where there was a boat at the bottom of the ocean with a hole in its hull, and they injected it with ping-pong balls and it floated up. The sceptical group laughed but one of the experts was willing to give it a try. Of course, where in the world would you find 20 million ping-pong balls but in Tokyo? It turned out to be the perfect solution. The balls were injected into the hull and it floated to the surface, the engineer was elated. Moral solutions to problems are always found at an entirely different level; also, believe in yourself in the face of impossible odds.

Q: The most interesting recording you own?

A: It's a mysteriously beautiful recording from, I am told, Robbie Robertson's label. It's of crickets. That's right, crickets. The first time I heard it, I swore that I was listening to the Vienna Boys' Choir, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. It has a four-part harmony, it is a swaying choral panorama. Then a voice comes in on the tape and says, "What you are listening to is the sound of crickets. The only thing that has been manipulated is that they slowed down the tape." No effects have been added of any kind except that they changed the speed of the tape. The sound is so haunting. I played it for Charlie Musselwhite and he looked at me as if I pulled a leprechaun out of my pocket.

Q: You are fascinated with irony. What is irony?

A: Chevrolet were puzzled when they discovered that their sales for the Chevy Nova were off the charts everywhere but in Latin America. They finally realised that "no va" in Spanish translates to "no go". Not the best name for a car, anywhere... "no va".

Q: Do you have words to live by?

A: The director Jim Jarmusch once told me, "Fast, Cheap, and Good... pick two. If it's fast and cheap, it won't be good. If it's cheap and good, it won't be fast. If it's fast and good, it won't be cheap." Fast, cheap and good... pick two words to live by.

Q: What is written on Hemingway's gravestone?

A: "Pardon me for not getting up."

Q: How would you compare guitarists Marc Ribot and Smokey Hormel?

A: Octopus have eight tentacles and squid have 10 tentacles, each with hundreds of suction cups, and each have the power to burst a man's artery. They have small birdlike beaks used to inject venom into a victim. Some gigantic squid and octopus with one-hundred-foot tentacles have been reported. Squids have been known to pull down entire boats to feed on the disoriented sailors in the water. Many believe that unexplained, sunken deep-sea vessels, and entire boat disappearances, are the handiwork of giant squid.

Q: What have you learnt from parenthood?

A: "Never loan your car to anyone to whom you've given birth." – Erma Bombeck.

Q: Now Tom, for the grand prize... who said, "He's the kind of man a woman would have to marry to get rid of"?

A: Mae West.

Q: Who said, "Half the people in America are just faking it"?

A: Robert Mitchum (who actually died in his sleep). I think he was being generous and kind when he said that.

Q: What remarkable things have you found in unexpected places?

A: 1. Real beauty: oil stains left by cars in a parking lot.
2. Shoeshine stands in Brazil that looked like thrones made of scrap wood.
3. False teeth in pawnshop windows: Reno, Nevada.
4. Great acoustics: in jail.
5. Best food: airport in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
6. Most gift shops: Fatima, Portugal.
8. Most unlikely location for a Chicano crowd: a Morrissey concert.
9. Most poverty: Washington, DC.
10. A homeless man with a beautiful operatic voice singing the word "bacteria" in an empty dumpster in Chinatown.
11. A Chinese man with a Texan accent in Scotland.
12. Best night's sleep: in a dry riverbed in Arizona.
13. Most people who wear red pants: St Louis.
14. Most beautiful horses: NYC.
15. A judge in Baltimore MD1890 presided over a trial where a man who was accused of murder and was guilty, and convicted by a jury of his peers... and was let go, when the judge said to him at the end of the trial, "You are guilty, sir... but I cannot put in jail an innocent man." You see, the murderer was a Siamese twin.
16. Largest penis (in proportion to its body): the barnacle.

Q: Tom, you love words and their origins. For $2,000... what is the origin of the word "bedlam"?

A: It's a contraction of the word "Bethlehem". It comes from the hospital of Saint Mary of Bethlehem in London. The hospital began admitting mental patients in the late 14th century. In the 16th century, it became a lunatic asylum. The word "bedlam" came to be used for any madhouse – and by extension for any scene of noisy confusion.

Q: What is up with your ears?

A: I have an audio stigmatism whereby I hear things wrong – I have audio illusions. I guess now they say ADD. I have a scrambler in my brain and it takes what is said and turns it into pig Latin and feeds it back to me.

Q: Most thrilling musical experience?

A: My most thrilling musical experience was in Times Square, over 30 years ago. There was a rehearsal hall around the Brill Building where all the rooms were divided into tiny spaces with just enough room to open the door. Inside was a spinet piano – cigarette burns, missing keys, old paint and no pedals. You go in and close the door, and it's so loud from other rehearsals you can't really work – so you stop and listen and the goulash of music was thrilling. Scales on a clarinet, tango, light opera, sour string quartet, voice lessons, someone belting out "Everything's Coming Up Roses", garage bands, and piano lessons. The floor was pulsing, the walls were thin. As if 10 radios were on at the same time, in the same room. It was a train station of music with all the sounds milling around... for me it was heavenly.

Q: What would you have liked to see but were born too late for?

A: Vaudeville. So much mashing of cultures and bizarre hybrids. Delta blues guitarists and Hawaiian artists thrown together, resulting in the adoption of the slide guitar as a language we all take for granted as African-American. But it was a cross-pollination, like most culture. Like all cultures. George Burns was a vaudeville performer I particularly loved. Dry and unflappable, curious and funny – no matter what he said. He could dance too. He said, "Too bad the only people that know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair."

Q: What is a gentleman?

A: A man who can play the accordion, but doesn't.

Q: Favourite Bucky Fuller quote?

A: "Fire is the sun unwinding itself from the wood."

Q: What do you wonder about?

A: 1. Do bullets know whom they are intended for?
2. Is there a plug in the bottom of the ocean?
3. What do jockeys say to their horses?
4. How does a newspaper feel about winding up papier-mâché?
5. How does it feel to be a tree by a freeway?
6. Sometimes a violin sounds like a Siamese cat; the first violin strings were made from catgut – any connection?
7. When is the world going to rear up and scrape us off its back?
8. Will we humans eventually intermarry with robots?
9. Is a diamond just a piece of coal with patience?
10. Did Ella Fitzgerald really break that wine glass with her voice?

Q: What are some sounds you like?

A: 1. An asymmetrical airline carousel created a high-pitched haunted voice brought on by the friction of rubbing and it sounded like a big wet finger circling the rim of a gigantic wine-glass.
2. Street-corner evangelists.
3. Pile-drivers in Manhattan.
4. My wife's singing voice.
5. Horses coming/trains coming.
6. Children when school's out.
7. Hungry crows.
8. Orchestra tuning up.
9. Saloon pianos in old westerns.
10. Roller-coaster.
11. Headlights hit by a shotgun.
12. Ice melting.
13. Printing presses.
14. Ball game on a transistor radio.
15. Piano lessons coming from an apartment window.
16. Old cash registers – ka-ching!
17. Muscle cars.
18. Tap-dancers.19. Soccer crowds in Argentina.
20. Beatboxing.
21. Foghorns.
22. A busy restaurant kitchen.
23. Newsrooms in old movies.
24. Elephants stampeding.
25. Bacon frying.
26. Marching bands.
27. Clarinet lessons.
28. Victrola.
29. A fight bell.
30. Chinese arguments.
31. Pinball machines.
32. Children's orchestras.
33. Trolley bell.
34. Firecrackers.
35. A Zippo lighter.
36. Calliopes.
37. Bass steel drums.
38. Tractors.
39. Stroh violin.
40. Muted trumpet.
41. Tobacco auctioneers.
42. Musical saw.
43. Theremin.
44. Pigeons.
45. Seagulls.
46. Owls.
47. Mockingbirds.
48. Doves. The world's making music all the time.

Q: What's scary to you?

A: 1. A dead man in the back seat of a car with a fly crawling on his eyeball.
2. Turbulence on any airline.
3. Sirens and searchlights combined.
4. Gunfire at night in bad neighbourhoods.
5. Car motor turning over but not starting, it's getting dark and starting to rain.
6. Jail door closing.
7. Going around a sharp curve on the Pacific Coast Highway and the driver of your car has had a heart attack and died, and you're in the back seat.
8. You are delivering mail and you are confronted with a Dobermann with rabies growling low and showing teeth... you have no dog bones and he wants to bite your ass off.
9. In a movie... which wire do you cut to stop the time bomb, the green or the blue?
10. McCain will win.
11. Germans with sub-machine guns.
12. Officers, in offices, being official.
13. You fell through the ice in the creek and it carried you downstream, and now as you surface you realise there's a roof of ice.

Q: Tell me about working with Terry Gilliam.

A: I am the Devil in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus – not a devil, the Devil. I don't know why he thought of me. I was raised in the church. Gilliam and I met on The Fisher King. He is a giant among men and I am in awe of his films. Munchausen I've seen a hundred times. Brazil is a crowning achievement. The Brothers Grimm was my favourite film last year. I had most of my scenes with Christopher Plummer (he's Doctor Parnassus). Plummer is one of the greatest actors on earth! Mostly I watch and learn. He's a real movie star and a gentleman. Gilliam is an impresario, captain, magician, a dictator (a nice one), a genius, and a man you'd want in the boat with you at the end of the world.

Q: Give me some fresh song titles you two are working on.

A: "Ghetto Buddha", "Waiting For My Good Luck To Come", "I'll Be an Oak Tree Some Day", "In the Cage", "Hell Broke Loose", "Spin the Bottle", "High and Lonesome".

Q: You're going on the road soon, right?

A: We're going to PEHDTSCKJMBA (Phoenix, El Paso, Houston, Dallas, Tulsa, St Louis, Columbus, Knoxville, Jacksonville, Mobile, Birmingham, Atlanta). I have a stellar band: Larry Taylor (upright bass), Patrick Warren (keyboards), Omar Torrez (guitars), Vincent Henry (woodwinds) and Casey Waits (drums and percussion). They play with racecar precision and they are all true conjurers. I'm doing songs with them I've never attempted outside the studio. They are all multi-instrumentalists and they polka like real men. We are the Borman Six and as Putney says, "The Borman Six have got to have soul."

Chocolate Jesus

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 12:11:00 +0000

For those of you who may 'have trouble getting up on Sunday morning and going to church'...

Beauty and The Beast

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:57:00 +0000

The topic for this post arrived into my head when I was people-watching the French on a beach a couple of weeks ago. I could see the perfect bodies, but then also the imperfections of the behaviour. Why has evolution not equalized and unified the physical beauty in human beings with their intellectual capabilities? After all, beauty is a sign of health and fitness and hence of good genetic predispositions while intelligence could be rated as one of the most important survival qualities. If evolution is preoccupied with the enhancement of the human race for the sake of the survival of the fittest, then shouldn't beauty and IQ not go hand in hand as we breed? In looking for a partner we obviously seek physical attractiveness, but also don't want to spend too much time around people who will make us fall asleep at dinner, so how has this not worked itself out over the millennia?

Life is usually easier for the beautiful ones, so there is less incentive to succeed through self-development and hard work. For the less beautiful ones, on the other hand, developing intelligence and gaining knowledge is often the only route to score in life both on a professional and a personal level. Hmm, will the world be full of supreme humans in a few centuries provided we don't destroy the earth beforehand?

A dog's life

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 13:34:00 +0000

Upon hearing about FlexPetz, I thought that it was my long-lived dream of having a dog in London finally coming true. So I thought, until I actually visited the site of the company moving to London from the States and supplying this rent-a-dog service to the busy, mobile, or the purely lazy urban dog lovers. I never thought that the shared ownership would be doable, simply because I think it requires a set of conditions that makes it convenient for the owners and not upsetting to the animal. I would guess that something along the lines a close friend or family member who lives in the same street would potentially do, but a company-facilitated dog rental? I think that the business has a potential of making some people happy, but is it really the right way to go about dog sharing? The other side of this is the money: not only does FlexPetz charge a monthly fee of 100 GBP, but on top of that requires a mandatory fee of at least 180 GBP a month for the minimum of 4 days a month it assumes you'll spend with the dog. Some of the funds FlexPetz generates do go to caring for the dogs, but ekhem, has sharing anything ever been more expensive than full ownership?

So how will the dogs feel about all this? FlexPetz claims that a dog will have a maximum of 2-3 owners at one time, but how many owner will that amount to over the dogs entire life? What are the 'permanent' homes that they go to once too old and sick? In principle, they aren't all about money and convenience - all the dogs are rescued, but doesn't FlexPetz really leave them to a fate similar to the one they seek to leave, a semi-permanent life of seeking the one owner that will not get rid of them once they're inconvenient? Maybe shared dog ownership is a good idea, but one that just isn't workable on a business scale?

Rabbit

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 17:10:00 +0000

This is an animation from Run Wrake that I recently fell in love with at Short and Sweet. Enjoy!

Sacred monsters

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:33:00 +0000

Last night I could feel only two things: clear happiness and a the strange pride of being human. The potential of the human mind and body suddenly dawned on me again as I watched Sylvie Guillem and Akham Khan unwind on stage at Sadler's Wells. 'Sacred Monsters' is possibly the most appropriate title for this piece. With its minimalist scenography, stunning musical accompaniment, and the dancers' elegance, 'Sacred Monsters' was one of the most exceptional pieces of contemporary dance I have ever seen. Despite being very casual, the performance echoed everything contemporary dance should be about: beauty, athletics, and above all, the expression of the human soul and creativity.

Sylvie's fleeting innocence and striking technique contrasted and complemented Akhan's strenght and sophistication in their common struggle between conforming to traditional forms of dance and the journey into the contemporary expressive dance form. The dancing varied from aggression and internal conflict to surprising humour and tenderness. The weight of Akham's choices and Sylvie's worries of futility in dance were perfectly balanced with sparks of humour and the striking ease between the dancers. Beautiful, inspiring, or as Sylvie pointed out, simply 'merveilleuse'.

In sickness

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Fri, 30 May 2008 22:12:00 +0000

Horrors have long been an element of the film industry and despite being able to appreciate the old classics, I cannot quite comprehend why people give so much attention and spend so much money to see all the modern trash horrors that are being produced. There almost seems to have emerged a whole new genre of horror cinematography, which produces horrors with not just the classical thrill, but also with sickly sex and unentertaining violence. The bad acting and predictable plots draw even more questions about this genre's popularity, but maybe this is a sphere in which we just don't seek high-brow stimuli? Could it be that in our uber-comfortable castle lives drive us to seek out more basic experiences and emotions that we can no longer find much of in our modern lives? Horrors, both old and modern thrive on one of our most basic emotions like fear and disgust.

In principle, I have nothing but a pause of 'wonder' for these films - after all we should all be able to watch whatever we want so long as no one gets hurt on the way. What does disturb me though is the common perception that it is perfectly okay to play trailers for these films. I realise that this is fiction and yet another genre of cinema, but I am time and again disturbed by sitting squased between film viewers chewing on their popcorn and having really unpleasant images thrown in my face.

Bending spaces

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:12:00 +0000

I have recently come across a wave of artists who have created something of an art form that is a fusion between illusion, graffiti, and architecture. Georges Rousse, Felice Varini, and Julian Beever are some of the most prominent illusionists in the sphere of anamorphic art. They create illusions of objects by painting in interiors, on streets, and pavements. The illusions are visible only from specific angles and disappear if they are distorted.

The Cat with Hands

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:07:00 +0000

I do apologise for not having much real written content lately, but my final year deadlines are catching up with me! Perhaps at the end of it all I'll finally be an educated woman!

Here's a piece from the lastest Short&Sweet:

What brand are you, love?

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:14:00 +0000

People watching can be good fun, but recently I find the brand parade in London a little obscene. I keep seeing the boys and the girls, the hot mums, the Shoreditch kids, and naturally the Posh-wannabes, all wearing sunglasses possibly worth more than their outfits. Being at the Borough Market every week, I keep seeing more and more frames, both shades and the classic variety, with big thick brand initials on the sides. Is this a bit off as far as style exhibition is concerned or am I the only non-shades-extravaganza follower in town?

Just another day in London

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:01:00 +0000

Nanushka

noreply@blogger.com (Paulina Wojnar) — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 16:11:00 +0000

I can't say I'm the greatest fashion follower, but I'm still capable of love when it comes to clothes. I have my parameters and usually follow them, but sometimes it's just like springtime love - you see it, you take it. So far the only designer that has kept me on board of loving followers is Nanushka, a young fashion designer whose work I discovered when I lived in Budapest.

Nanushka's style combines elements of the modern urban edge, comfort, playfulness, and the simplicity some of the current fashion trends beg for. Nanushka herself is a young beautiful woman who came out of the London College of Fashion and started her own line of clothing design in Budapest. She now supplies her creations to shops in Madrid, London, Tokyo, and some cities in the US. Take caution, you may fall in love.