well, who am I to keep you down?

Via the Morning News, we learn that delightfully Nathan Apodaca—the TikTok sensation that lip-synced Fleet Mac’s “Dreams”—has been asked to skateboard in the inaugural parade of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who continues to bring good vibes and positive energy (plus undoing a grave injustice by reacquainting a new generation with the band), and even gave us something to smile about in 2020.

high-times and misdemeanours

Though we want no more Joe Camels—or sugary coffee and preciously flavoured vapes for that matter—and I can understand the intent behind the regulations, we learn via Super Punch, that the state of Maine finds that the mermaid mascot (see also) of a Portland marijuana dispensary runs afoul of the law. Newly opened enterprises aimed for adults are not allowed to use labelling or programming that might appear to target or appeal to people underage with depictions of humans, animals and fruit are specifically restricted.

mlk

Observed on the Monday nearest, US federal holiday in honour of the civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. recognises his birth on the fifteenth of the month in 1929 (murdered in 1968), we had never realised that Stevie Wonder’s song “Happy Birthday” (a far better tune to sing than the traditional birthday party chant even after copyright prohibition lapsed—with even the opening lyrics taking on new dimensions, see also, with this knowledge and embarrassment that this tribute escaped our attention) released as a single from his Hotter than July album in April of 1981 was composed as a campaign to make King’s birthday a nation holiday for America. The song’s popularity compelled Ronald Reagan by November of 1983 to sign the holiday into existence with the first holiday held in 1986 and universally observed (on the state level) by 1993.

also sprach zarathustra

Previously we wrote about the unused soundtrack for 2001: A Space Odyssey and so were pleased to find this addendum, coda to the story from Things Magazine and learn that the film demo tape with the composition by Mike Kaplan, 2001: A Garden of Personal Mirrors, has been rediscovered, more than five decades after it was written and is getting the air time it deserves.

it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is

Breaking a story that Newsweek had delayed publishing on the liaison, Matt Drudge first brought to the public news of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal (previously here and here) on this day in 1998. The on-line aggregator not acknowledged by the established press until four days later when the Washington Post following up on the scoop that investigative reporter Michael Isikoff’s editors had sat on and then killed.

6x6

a perfectly pleasant man but with a name of a bumbling villain from a Charles Dickens novel: the final resting place of Mister and Missus Skeffington Liquorish, via Super Punch 

glass-bottom: a transparent kayak with rainbow LEDs  

a line in the sand: Saudi Arabia plans a one hundred-seventy-kilometre-long belt city of net-zero, walkable communities (see previously and also here)  

beyond the poseidon adventure: the namesake blog reviews the forgettable sequel that came seven years later starring Karl Malden, Michael Caine, Sally Field and Telly Savalas 

 beauty, loss, confusion, hope, division, grace and grandeur: a ten thousand mile photographic essay of in the form of a long, lonesome look at America by Stephen Hiltner—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links 

mother nature: artist Tomáš Libertíny recreates the bust of Nefertiti (previously) in honeycomb with the help of bees

motown

Via the always excellent Things Magazine (with several other utopian visions to explore and debate in this instalment), we learn about Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe (*1900 – †1996), town planner, landscape developer and architecture and his 1959 project Motopia, which despite its automobile-centric name, really was dedicated to the prevention of sprawl and spill-over and the preservation of green spaces where no car or lorry could encroach—see also. Instead what Jellicoe envisioned was a grid of mixed-used residential towers connected by elevated jetways, whose intersections were all roundabouts following the roofline of the blocks with the option to spiral down to one’s home or office, leaving the land below pristine and even wild. Though never realised according to plan, districts like Shanghai’s Oriental Pearl Radio and Television Tower were informed by Jellicoe’s design. Much more at the links above.

strange bedfellows

One could be excused for thinking that we were nearly done with Trump after his corporate donors had distanced themselves from that dumpster fire, but one rentier entrepreneur whose business acumen and ambition seems somehow complimentary—if not pandering—who we also thought it safe to assume would not be making an encore appearance, the MyPillow guy (see previously) has remained loyal and showed up at the White House on Friday to share some thoughts about declaring martial law, excerpted from his MyPillow Plan™ playbook thanks to a telephoto lens.