equidistance

Due to calendar conventions, in common years 2 July marks the midpoint with one hundred eighty-two days having passed of the current year and one- hundred eighty two days to go until the next year and will fall on the same day of the week as New Year’s. Depending on one’s location—in the northern or southern hemisphere and whether one employs daylight saving time or not plus whether it’s a leap year—the exact point of transition falls at high noon.

underworld theme

Via Kottke’s Quick Links, we were quite astounded to learn that the iconic theme music composed by Nintendo sound designer Koji Kondo (近藤 浩治) for different stages of play for Super Mario Brothers (caution: auto-play, see previously) is informed by some late seventies and early eighties easy-listening and soft rock songs, inspiring the syncopated rhythms that make one want to persevere. The opening riffs of the group Friendship—by special arrangement with Lee Ritenour on jazz guitar—strike one as quite familiar and makes one want to slide down a warp pipe.

your daily demon: morax

Governing from today through 7 July, this twenty-first spirit and infernal earl presents alternately like a bull-headed Minotaur or a mighty bull-like chimera with the face of a man. Giving wise counsel in astronomy and astrology, impairing the virtues of herbs and precious stones, Morax commands thirty legions and is opposed by the guardian angel Nelakael, and according to some sources is a syncretism with the Ancient Egyptian goddess of Truth and Justice Ma’at, as well as the patroness of writing and rhetoric.

lectori benevolo

Writing for Public Domain Review, Alex Tadel imparts some insight on classical literary culture through the lens of the brilliantly illustrated rarity Vergilius Vaticanus, a fourth century anthology containing Virgil’s Georgics and The Æneid—itself one of the oldest sources of the text (see also), though we would still have that material without this deluxe, prestige bound folio crafted and bound at a time when most reading was circulated on papyrus scrolls but be denied the privilege of enjoying this one of a kind commission, acquired by the Vatican Library in 1600 and hence the latter part of the name. Much more on being well-read in Antiquity and the bookish set of the times at the link up top.

looks like a jungle sometimes, makes me wonder how i keep from going under

Released as a single on this day in 1982, we learn from our faithful chronicler, and later featuring on the group’s first namesake studio album in October, The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five was among the first hip hop composition to deliver a message of social commentary and the stress of urban blight and poverty. Duke Bootee and Melle Mel were inspired to pen the song two years before during the New York City mass-transit strike.

8x8

banning: a 1967 forgotten film about a sordid tryst at a country club 

remains of the day: six relics of once ubiquitous fast-food empires  

plain chachalaca: more badly named bird friends—see previously here and here, via Super Punch

awestruck: short, initial pieces optimised for joy and wonder from NPR 

gallery 88: an electronics line for kids from Sony—see also  

dhead xlvi: a David Bowie painting (see previously) saved from a landfill fetches over one hundred thousand CA$  

grand opening: a brief history of the ribbon-cutting ceremony  

britbox: an interactive fiction project for a cult 70s television programme that dabbled in paganism and the paranormal—see also—which never existed

the starlight barking

Via Messy Nessy Chic not only are we given an appreciated reading tip in the comforting writing style of I Capture the Castle and One Hundred and One Dalmatians author Dodie Smith (*1896 - †1990) we moreover learn that Smith also penned a sequel to the 1956 novel—which has nothing to do with the Disney adaptations. A bit reminiscent of the Jellicle cats, Lord Sirius (the Dog Star) comes to Earth after putting humans into a deep slumber and granting canines supernatural powers in order to prevent nuclear war.

tell me that you love me, junie moon

Having its theatrical release on this day in 1970 after premiering at Cannes Film Festival earlier in May, expertly introduced and summarised here by Poseidon’s Underworld, the Otto Preminger film, story and screenplay by author Marjorie Kellogg, starring Liza Minnelli as the titular protagonist who was seriously disfigured on one side of her face by a vicious battery acid attack by her jealous boyfriend and is afterwards institutionalised. There Minelli’s character meets Warren, a gay paraplegic confined to a wheelchair and an epileptic named Arthur, who decide to leave the half-way house and rent a cottage from an eccentric landlady (played by Kay Thompson) together to help each other heal and live their best lives.  Desultory and tepidly received though not universally panned, this movie seemed to me to have its heart in the right place.  Find nearly a scene-by-scene synopsis and storyboard at the link above.