Ok so it's a few days late for the 4th

... but it's never too late for this.

(via Cosmic Variance)

Alphabet street

This is short, but kinda cool. Also the only actual youtube video of Prince singing Alphabet Street that I could find at 3am last night. Sometimes you just need it.

Nora, the amateur

Amateur: lover of. One who does it for the love of the thing, the passion, the rapture of the moment. This is Nora. The following two videos are likely to make you cry if you're sensitive to this kind of thing.

MAKLAK

My favourite thing on the internet right now.

Kim Deal pedalling.

Happy to be the cat who MEOWed

Interspecies Loving, or, Get-You-In-The-Mood Friday #1: classic cat and dog

This edition of Interspecies Lovin' Friday might just have an anthropological edge for the same money, so hang on in for the ride. Today, we are featuring the classic dog and cat scenario: a volatile and needy situation at the BEST of times.

Here we have a classic moment of edge of interspecies cuteness. The cat finds the chihuahua so godammed cute, he just can't stop himself... these things are so often about subdom issues when it comes down to it.


In the next video, it is clear what is going on is that the siameses had been bored of each other's company for a very very long time, the sheer sameness of it all. And then the puppy arrived... The classic three lover relationship. The love seems to be truly shared around. Note that the dog is not a chihuahua. Only with this species variation could this situation be so harmonious.


The following pair of videos, when viewed in tandem, will help you to learn something. Ok, so look at this first. The picture of interspecies grooming harmony (with a little subdom edge, clearly, if you scrape the vaseline lensed surface away). There is simply no question about it: the chihuahua is this cat's bitch.



Now. Take a look at this. Same cat. Same chihuahua. But realer. More complicated. Also the introduction of cat #2. We are ready for more.



Have you noticed how the cats are ALWAYS the dominant partner?



But can they really get along? I mean, outside of the sofa, the bed, the livingroom floor? Tune in next friday! We might have donkeys. I am not promising anything, Cindy.

It's Bill Hicks, aged 18

He died 15 years ago yesterday.

So that Ross will understand about Jacques Brel

A hymn from Neil Young, aged 25

I am a Brooklyn-bound L train

You know, I was never one for either The Smiths or Radiohead, though I have had my moments with Radiohead, but this song is captivating. Anyone know what it's called?

Bizarrely enough, the very first song I ever busked was Creep, belting it out on the Bedford L platform while my guitar-playing French dude friend did his best to be heard above all the machine noise. Waves and waves of indifference. It kind of rocked, in a very weird way. So it was Creep and there was one other song I can't remember right now, this was 5 years ago in new york, and the other song I only knew one verse of, but it rocked, and I figured that people would be gone by the time the verse was over. Those L trains were sparse though, so pretty fast we moved into town. We'd start playing on the beat of the doors opening. I can't remember what that one-verse song was, now. Dude.

I bought my ticket last night. I fly to New York on the 17th.

First there are kisses, then there are sighs

Jesus, now I'm blogging lousy Boy George videos, but really, isn't this song amazing?

I really don't think very much about Boy George but

his just-flat voice is just-flat in a really haunting kind of way. Anyway, I saw a few minutes of the current incarnation of this dude in the 15 minutes of telly I watched here yesterday (what can I say, it's satellite tv, it's a novelty) and today every time I go into the kitchen and see Ivy and Daisy the pure-black sweet wide eyed german shepherds staring at me, I have been singing the chorus to this song. Nothing on youtube captures the gorgeousness of the single line I have been singing: it's the way he bends the note on the last "make me cryyyyyyyy".

It is rocking my mind right now.

A curated youtube surf

So we start here,

then we take a left,

go straight up for a bit,

then stop

and mosh suddenly.

Stop, listen to the heart beating.

It says, fly.

And then suddenly, we fall into the sea.

This is a particularly favourite thing

of Brooklyn Lover... and it's pretty hot stuff. But check out Elvin Jones, I mean, seriously. He is a living prayer: a human instrument of focussed, relaxed, polyrhythmic devotion. It is off the charts.

Fluff

This is probably only happening because I'm blogging late, but anyway... Not as good as Ernest Borgnine, but not too bad for twenty past midnight. What? You didn't see Ernest Borgnine? Hmm.

Sunset Motel

Just watched this. American passion. Bee you tee full.