eleven benevolent elephants

We quite enjoyed this selection of British tongue-twisters, which struck us more as vocal exercises aimed at improving enunciation and fluency rather than a word game—particularly a wicked cricket critic and many an anemone sees an enemy anemone—that served as a segue for a particularly fabled announcer’s test to be presented cold and with no preparation to prospective radio and television talent as a gauge of their pronunciation skills, memory and recall and breath control, asked to deliver the following without mistake, hesitation or rushing for lack of oxygen. 

• One hen
• Two ducks
• Three squawking geese
• Four Limerick oysters
• Five corpulent porpoises
• Six pairs of Don Alverzo’s tweezers
• Seven thousand Macedonians in full battle array
• Eight brass monkeys from the ancient sacred crypts of Egypt
• Nine apathetic, sympathetic, diabetic old men on roller-skates with a marked propensity towards procrastination and sloth
• Ten lyrical, spherical, diabolical denizens of the deep who all stall around the corner of the quo and quay of the quivery all at the same time

Now say that two times fast. It was to be repeated back in the style of a cumulative song, with each verse getting increasingly longer.  There are of course several variants of the semi-legendary audition. More rhyming challenges from Futility Closet at the link up top.

but the kettle’s on the boil and we’re so easily called away

Starting a two-week run at the top of the UK charts on this day on 1971, the album Ram, the second by the duo of Paul and Linda McCartney, featured the leading single “Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey,” that song itself reaching number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 and the McCartneys’ first certified Gold post-Beatles. A medley of sound-effects and harmonies, the montage style is reminiscent of Abbey Road and is described by the artists as a musical apology from the younger generation to the older for being impatient and dismissive. I had another look and I had a cup of tea and butter pie.

7x7

2slgbtqia+: a calendar of Native American and First Nations’ Pride events—the 2S is for “Two-Spirits”  

about the damn end: DJ Cummerbund (previously) mixes Lizzo and Linkin Park—via Waxy  

sacred modernity: McGregor Smith explores Europe’s superlative post-war churches—via Things magazine

why ernest saves christmas: wholly machine-generated articles on any number of topics—the logorrhoea of infinite neural networks producing infinite copy, via Web Curios  

signature sound: a 1957 musical horoscope album (see also here and here) orchestrated by Hal Mooney  

the endangered california bumbletrout: court declares bees are fish to afford them better defence under the state’s species protection act  

night of a thousand judys: a tribute concert for charity on what would have been Garland’s one-hundredth birthday

das rollende hotel

Given the continued popularity of touring coaches especially in Germany and river cruises that offer similar sleeping berths, we were delighted though not completely surprised to learn of this hybrid experience (see also), a hotel on wheels, Rotel, first conceived by Gerog Höltl in the late 1941 to trek passengers through the Bavarian Alps, expanding as far afield as pilgrimages to Israel, journeys across the Sahara starting in 1969 and a two month voyage to India. No artefacts relegated to the past, one can still book tours through Europe, Africa and Asia. More from Messy Nessy Chic at the link above.

they’re here

Released on this day in 1982 from an adaptation of a story by Steven Spielberg and featuring the talents of JoBeth Williams, Zelda Rubinstein, Heather O’Rouke, Craig T Nelson and Dominique Dunne, the parapsychological thriller follows a suburban California family whose home is haunted by malevolent ghosts who abduct their younger daughter, Carol Anne, having inexplicably carrying on with a television set airing post-broadcast static. While the rest of the family is sent away for safety and having determined that the nature of the intrusion is a poltergeist, the ghost-hunting team summon spiritual medium Tangina Barrons who locates Carol Anne on the other side and guides her mother through the gateway to retrieve her, Barrons triumphantly proclaiming, “This house is clean!”

doni🍩 donnts

Somewhat reminiscent of these knock-off branding jobs, we are indebted to Boing Boing for referring us to a thread on one of Janelle Shane’s (see previously) latest visual experiments with neural networks—namely with Dall·e—prompting it to recreate corporate logos and failing in spectacular and interesting ways. I am not sure what is happening from iteration to iteration but the undertaking also recalls a challenge to humans to draw such ubiquitous things from memory. Much more at the links above.

 

your hit parade

The cover of the standard Škoda lásky (Wasted Love) by Jaromir Vejvoda known in the German Sprachraum as Rosamunde and released for English-speaking audiences under the title “Beer Barrel Polka” by accordionist and bandleader Will Glahé topped the charts in the United States on this day in 1939, selling over one-million copies by 1943. Glahé, prohibited by the Chamber of Culture of the Third Reich from spelling his name with an accent from 1934 to 1945, had toured internationally and were particularly popular in America and achieved further successes with his “Liechtensteiner Polka” and “The Cuckoo Waltz” and performed with the Glenn Miller Orchestra and Fats Domino.

bergpark wilhelmshöhe

H and I had visited the sprawling landscaped park outside of Kassel some time ago but neglected to blog about it here, so we were happy to have the occasion to revisit and share impressions of the Baroque giardino all’italiana built for Landgraf Karl I von Hessen beginning in 1696 on the anniversary of the presentation of the water elements (Wasserspiele) by Giovanni Francisco Guerniero in 1714, switching on the cascades and waterfalls for the first time. The landgrave had met the architect in Rome whilst on a Grand Tour and engaged him to realise his grand plans for the largest garden on the continent, and though making a solid first impression which delighted his patron, Guerniero fled back to Italy once it became clear that planning errors and cost-overruns meant that the project could not be finished. Atop a pyramid, atop on octagon, is a copper statue of Hercules, surveying the watercourse. Successive occupants of the palace expanded and contributed to the character of the park over the years, adopting new styles and eventually veering away from the French formal style to more of an English garden and it was finally completed after a century and a half of construction. Open to the public, it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013.