the best laid plants

Featuring just like on my window ledge at my work-week apartment a Money Plant next to a Calathea Rattlesnake (Goeppertia), we were intrigued and quite enjoyed exploring this helpful guide, brilliantly illustrated for caring for our household botanical friends. Via ibīdem, How Many Plants features quite a voluminous identification and upkeep section and will even let one assemble a fantasy league of potted-plants should space have become an issue though one can never have too many.

mind the gap

The always engrossing Things Magazine refers us to the historic preservation work of photographer Matthew Chattle whose been scouring the pavement and floors for decals and stencils that caution people to practice safety in queuing and maintain a social distance, the sphere of our personal space having expanded significantly and perhaps begins to contract again now that we seem to have a better handle on the pandemic. Scuffed and worn, these ghost markers will hopefully completely disappear with this awful pestilence.

harder, better, faster, funkier

Via the Awesomer, we are treated to the musical repertoire of Scary Pockets with their rendition of the Daft Punk (previously) standard with a talkbox monologue and Hessische Rundfunk’s Frankfurt Radio Big Band for some brassy accents. Find out more about this collaboration and sample a whole range of performances at the link above.

you can’t stop us

Courtesy of Colossal, we were quite impressed with the precision, seamless editing behind this split-screen montage of athletes, which references the concatenated splicing work of Donato Sansone, whose juxtaposition speaks to the resilience and compelling camaraderie of sports. More at the links above.

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the harry lime theme

Also known as the above, the zither instrumental from the soundtrack to the 1949 Graham Greene film The Third Man (previously) by Anton Karas became the best-selling single in the US following its theatrical release there on this day in 1950, remaining at the top of the charts for eleven weeks. A guitar version by Guy Lombardo plus three other separate covers were also commercial successes that same year. Long in Karas’ repertoire, he described it as the sort of warm-up music played in a café that no one stops to listen to.

twenty skies

Usually when taking a picture of clouds or the sunset, the last things one wants to see is the fimbriation of power-lines breaking up one’s vista but after seeing this clever collage, like a stained-glass window, building on such disruptions from Alex Hyner, I feel inspired to go out and look for a utility mast with cables breaking up the frame and add in some composite firmament (see also) from other times and places. More to explore at the links above.

din 5009

The Institute for German Standardisation (Deutsches Institut für Normung) has been urging for the reform of the Sprachraum’s radio spelling alphabet (with the DIN assignment above, see previously) for some time. Though lobbying efforts yielded a major overhaul in the mid 1960s to make the official version less gendered and jingoistic, there are choice relics in it such as S wie (as in) Siegfried instead of Samuel as it originally was, Nordpol rather than Nathan, Otto for Oscar or Dora over David to eliminate names that could be construed as Jewish. Though the protocols are still being debated and the civil German use is a bit more improvised than its counterparts (p wie pseudonym), the consensus now to not let the Nazis have the last word is to use city names—W wie Wiesbaden statt Wilhelm, A wie Augsburg statt Anton.

sticky fingers

Released on this day in 1971, recorded two Decembers hence in Muscle Shoals Alabama, the eleventh studio album by the Rolling Stones (previously) with songs Wild Horses, Brown Sugar and Sister Morphine, was quite unsubtle in terms of innuendo with a cover showing a tightly denim clad crotch—that was the subject of censorship in many markets, like in Franco’s Spain where it was released as Can of Fingers or in the USSR where a Soviet military uniform was modelled by a female.
The LP version’s fly had a functional zipper—which was mid-way unzipped prior to distribution as customers were scratching the vinyl if zipped all the way up. Packaging designed by Andy Warhol—notably the liner-notes also featuring the first appearance of the iconic lips and tongue logo, postponed its premiere but the band was enthusiastic about the concept. Mistakenly I had assumed the image was of Mick Jagger when in reality it was a random, cast-off photograph Warhol had recently taken of one of his pet superstars, underground actor Joe Dallesandro (*1948)—who in addition to this cultural artefact, became a street hustling icon and sex symbol—serenaded in a verse of Lou Reed’s “Take a Walk on the Wild Side,” about Warhol’s Factory workers in general, as Little Joe. The album topped the charts in the US a month later.