Sunday 24 June 2018
bowiebranchia
catagories: ๐ถ, ๐จ๐ค, networking and blogging
Monday 23 April 2018
1. outside
The ever excellent Everlasting Blรถrt introduces us to the painting, portraiture and storyboard work of David Bowie through a curated gallery that captures the artist’s soulful legacy, highlighting the influence of contemporaries (many of whom whose works he patronised and collected as well) and the German Expressionism movement that Bowie and Iggy Pop immersed themselves in when they moved to Berlin in 1976. Artwork includes sketches that are studies in cosmetic and costume development, album covers, stage directions for performances and a few panels for an unmade film adaptation of a story called “Hunger City.”
Monday 14 August 2017
david bowie, david bowie
The photographer Gerald Fearnley who took the cover-image for the artist’s eponymous first studio album (“Sell Me a Coat,” “Maids of Bond Street” and many others titles) in 1967 is sharing some of the unused outtakes. One can see the germ of some of his other personalities that would be developed fully later in Bowie’s career present and exposed already on this one roll of film.
Monday 26 December 2016
mmxvi: annus horribilis, annus mirabilis
december: Pioneering US astronaut John Glenn passed away, as did America’s TV Dad, Alan Thicke. Doctor Henry Heimlich also left us, as did Zsa Zsa Gabor. Over a billion user accounts are compromised by a once pioneering search engine. Carnage and destruction continue in Aleppo as Syria, all the global powers’ proxy-war, is poised to fall to the entrenched government. A truck ploughed through a crowded Christmas Market in Berlin. Sadly, singer George Michael passed away as well as icon Carrie Fisher with her mother, Hollywood legend Debbie Reynolds, joining her the next day.
november: Donald J Trump defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton as the forty-fifth presumptive to the office of President of the United States of America. We had to say farewell to America’s TV Mom, Florence Henderson. Janet Reno died, and we had to say good-bye to Andrew Sachs, who played Manuel on Fawlty Towers. Retro funk and soul performer Sharon Jones passed away as did Leon Russell though not of precisely the same genre. Poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen left us. Fidel Castro expired aged ninety, on Black Friday and cause of death was declared as America’s return to greatness.
september: Meaningful global climate accords held in Paris are put into force, although later in the month carbon dioxide levels surpass anything experienced in the course of human events. NASA launches a probe to study and return with samples from an asteroid with a high potential to impact the Earth—in the twenty-third century, possibly either nudging it closer or pushing it further out of bounds.
august: Gene Wilder left us. Brazil hosted the Olympic Games. The actor that portrayed R2-D2 Kenny Baker sadly departed, as did host and political discussion moderator John McLaughlin. Costa Rica powered itself with renewable energy for one hundred days and hopes to wean itself off of fossil fuels completely.
july: A wholly solar-powered aircraft becomes the first to circumnavigate the globe. We had to say good-bye to Elie Wiesel. During Bastille Day celebrations, an atrocious terror attack occurred on promenade of Nice, setting off a summer of terror across Europe. An abortive coup d’รฉtat rocked Turkey and a political purge followed, exacerbating an already tense situation. The African Union’s fifty-four member nations issue a single passport that allows holders to travel visa-free within the bloc.
june: After two decades of construction, the Gotthard Base Tunnel under the Alps in opened. The UK voted to leave the European Union. The promising actor Anton Yelchin who played the new Chekov was struck down far too early. Boxer Muhammad Ali departed.
may: Presidential elections in Austria are too close to call, and the contenders a member of the Green party and a far-right candidate will hold a run-off later in the year. Nationalism is on the rise throughout the world. Super Tuesday’s delegates are awarded to Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump.
april: The pop megastar Prince passed on. Der Sรผddeutsche Zeitung along with a consortium of other news outlets publish millions of leaked documents implicating many heads of state and prominent figures in the Panama Papers scandal. For the first time in history, capital punishment is outlawed by more than half the countries in the world.
march: Coordinated bomb attacks take over a hundred lives in Lahore and Brussels, and ISIS claims responsibility. Sadly, comedian and show-master Garry Shandling passed away. World-renowned architect Zaha Hadid also left us. Myanmar sworn in its first democratically elected president in half a century.
february: For the first time since the Great Schism of 1054, the leaders of the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches met and committed to an Ecumenical Declaration. Writers Umberto Eco and Harper Lee passed away on the same day. Heretofore theoretical gravitational waves were observed for the first time. A huge swath of Canadian temperate rain-forest will be protected forever and called Spirit Bear. Bolivia and Peru also reached a deal to protect Lake Titicaca.
january: Davie Bowie tragically passed away, as did musicians Glenn Frey and Natalie Cole. There’s an outbreak of the Zika virus, causing panic in the sub-tropics and prompting many couples to postpone having children, due to the risk of birth-defects. Brutal and powerful Mexican drug-trafficker Joaquรญn Guzmรกn is re-captured after his escape from a high-security detention facility. The International Atomic Energy Agency declared that Iran has complied and dismantled its nuclear weapons programme and instructed the UN to lift sanctions.
Wednesday 2 November 2016
aladdin sane
It seemed to me that emojis had heretofore reflected a rather limited range of career options—police officer, princess or palace guard—but happily the credentialing body who enriches our vocabulary and their vocations have made glam rock star something to aspire to (among others) as an homage to David Bowie.
Saturday 15 October 2016
salone del mobile
Thanks to Fast Company, we learn that the late David Bowie was a grand patron of the Memphis-Milano movement having amassed a sizable collection with signature pieces from artists like Peter Shire and Ettore Sottsass.
The collection is so extensive and representative of the group’s work, Bowie’s furniture will be given its own auction and one can preview the lots at the link. Comprised chiefly Italian designers, they took the name Memphis, incidentally, after hearing the Bob Dylan song “Stuck inside of Mobile (furnishing as well as a city in Alabama) with the Memphis Blues Again.”
Tuesday 5 April 2016
oration or the sound and vision
Thanks to a sharp eye perusing a 1984 edition of some teen Tiger Beat magazine, the response to an inquiring reader’s question about the rumoured role of the Great Emancipator to be portrayed by none other than David Bowie, we learn about an unperformed but still immense spectacle that was to be played at one of the Olympic venues of the Los Angeles games that summer.
Far outstripping those cross-over, special guest-star sitcom episodes that kept my rapt attention (like when Fred and Ethel Mertz appeared as Darinn Stevens’—the second Darrin—parents or when the Harlem Globe-Trotters were shipwrecked on Gilligan’s Island or the angry ghost of Valerie Bertinelli haunted the Love Boat), an experimental, day-long bit of musical theatre was being orchestrated, called CIVIL warS, it was to feature the musical stylings of Mister David Byrne with libretto that included Mister Bowie as Abraham Lincoln, delivering the Gettysburg Address in Japanese. Corporate sponsors were a little anxious, and with the boycott of the American games by the polarised Communist world, the project was shelved. Read more about this amazing opera that would have perhaps been too grand and overwhelming for this Universe at Dangerous Minds. The closing ceremonies did include a UFO landing to the fanfare of Thus Spake Zarathustra and a giant grey alien that saluted humanity’s peaceful coming together.
catagories: ๐ฏ๐ต, ๐ท๐บ, ๐บ๐ธ, ๐ถ, ๐จ๐ค, ๐บ, foreign policy, holidays and observances
Friday 20 November 2015
5x5
antique singer sewing machines: cosplay caliphate labs are desperate to obtain red mercury
genre: enterprise in Grenoble to furnish free short works of fiction so people waiting don’t feel compelled to stare at their phones
space oddity: theatrical preview of David Bowie’s upcoming Blackstar album
b.f. skinner: pigeons can be trained to spot anomalies on diagnostic screenings as good as human radiologists
Tuesday 24 February 2015
curtain-call and cat-walk
Sometimes a reminder is far better than a discovery.
Wednesday 14 January 2015
ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Friday 2 January 2015
arcade sounds
Via Laughing Squid comes a nifty series of the lyrics to David Bowie’s timeless ballad “Space Oddity” illustrated through panels, imagined album covers of vintage arcade and console video games. Though not quite lent the psychological heft of one’s own favourite songs or of Mozart to settle one’s mood, video game music (think ะะพัะพะฑะตะนะฝะธะบะธ, the Tetris song) is composed specifically to remove distractions and helps to keep one focused.
Sunday 28 August 2011
mรคrchenhaft or funk to funky
catagories: ๐ถ, ๐จ๐ค, ๐, networking and blogging