get back to where you once belonged

On this day in 1969, the Beatles staged one last, impromptu concert together from the Savile Row headquarters of the band’s Apple Corps headquarters. Though unannounced and very much to the surprise of all within earshot and beyond, the event was not a spontaneous—the planning at the set-up taking place over the previous few days. Accompanied by Billy Preston on keyboards, the group played nine takes of five songs, including the title one three times, which was to be their last public statement together before disbanding. John Lennon bowed out with, “I hope we’ve passed the audition.”

claroscuro

We appreciated Colossal’s introduction to Spanish artist and photographer Javier Riera through his series of luminous projections on trees and branches to tease out depth and perspective though his geometrical highlights. Nature tends not to admit hard edges but it’s sometimes that imposition that brings out the organic, like with these chequerboard forests that the project reminded us of. Learn more and see a whole gallery of Riera’s pictures and installations at the links up top.

they know, daniel

Via the always excellent Miss Cellania, we discover that former Trump associate Roger Stone’s recently retained attorney, Robert C Buschel Esq., wrote a political thriller back in August of 2016.
A member of the twitterati has helpfully “live-tweeted” it complete with memetic footnotes and annotations that enhance the special prescience of the work. One does not necessarily need the insight or confirmation of how these people think—the unreadable “By Silent Majority” is predictably problematic even by pre-Trump standards, but it is nonetheless beneficial to know what one is dealing with, replete with self-recrimination.

briar rose

On this day in 1959, Walt Disney’s adaptation of the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty” (previously) went into theatrical release.
Despite the grandeur of the storytelling, wonderful villainy and Academy Award-nominated score, critical reception was mixed and tepid at best, accused of being too much like Snow White. This reaction prompted the studio to abandon the folklore genre altogether, not to again revisit princesses and magic (the reserve of anthropomorphic rodents and canines, arguably with the exception of the other commercial failure of 1985’s The Black Cauldron, loosely based on a Welsh myth that nearly bankrupted the company) for three decades until the 1989 release of The Little Mermaid.

goldberg variations

We thoroughly enjoyed this find from TYWKIWDBI that showcases quite a masterwork of engineering and synchronicity that perfectly exemplifies a Rube Goldberg machine (previously)—that is, a deliberately over-complicated apparatus for accomplishing a simple task, in this case serving dessert. The featured video has no soundtrack but that one you might be mentally accompanying it with is from the group “Powerhouse,” a sextet formed by Raymond Scott in 1937 that joined the Warner Brothers catalogue in 1943.