Vertigo Can Be A Good Thing!

Well, I'm not saying it's as good as rolling round the sack with a hot guy for hours on end ... but teasing my (slight) tendency to vertigo is for me a pretty intense almost erotic experience.

An experience that the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) in Chicago happily offers with comparative (imagined?) safety.

They offer solid glass viewing platforms ...

... at the 103rd floor ...

... 1,353 feet above the ground ...

Just love this down shot past the kids feet and through the glass floor of the viewing platform ...

... and this one of a kid ...

... doing a bit of inverse flying?

Recalcitrant Pumps III - The Experience Evolves

Before re-posting this one let me say there was obsolutely no set up whatsoever involved - life can just be strange like this - blogger's word of honour, which should settle the matter - LOL!

I've done two some might be tempted to say quirky posts over the last couple of years - 'Recalcitrant Pumps' (19 November 2007) ...

... and 'Recalcitrant Pumps 2' (20 July 2008) ...

... to put on record a recurring and somewhat surreal experience. One that usually happens on the way to my favourite Kings Cross cafe for a morning latte, and perhaps this may turn out to be significant?

Well, there was a recurrence this morning, which I instinctively knew would require another post.

As I wandered home, naturally my mind was racing with all sorts of angles - from Marcel Duchamp's 'objets trouvés', such as his 1917 urinal as a fountain ...

... to the more obvious foot fetish implications ...

On a mundane and surface level, of course this particular sighting suggests the aftermath of a night of wild partying ...

... and the inherent complications of getting home in the morning ...

But I'm open to other interpretations - cos I'm a guy with less than rigid and fixed opinions.

So, guys, does this say something about me and what I attend to?

Or do you reckon there are there other forces at work here?

An Unexpected New Coffee Brew

You may well wonder what's the connection between the two images below - that of the Asia civet and roasted coffee beans.

The opening image of course may have given you a clue.

Let me give you a couple more ...

Any ideas yet?

Okay, for those still none the wiser, all is revealed in this little Animal Planet video ...

Well well well ... .

Look, I've travelled a fair bit, guys, and see things as best judged and valued within the cultural context in which they occur ... and I'd give the brew a shot.

If you want to read more ... LINK

Finding Desktop Background Images

'Wuthering Heights' (1992)

I don't know about you guys but I tend to change my desktop background image every few days. Otherwise I just stop 'seeing' them.

And I'm often scratching my head about where to find new kinds of images, having run the gamut of works of art, travel snaps, old family photographs - the usual stuff.

I used to use porn images but occasional unexpected visits associated with urgent needs to check email lead to some decent surprises for all concerned.

Now the point of this post is that I've just found a whole new venue for harvesting images - snags of films I'm watching on my puter. And I'm stunned how often I reach for the icon of my SnagIt software to capture yet another indispensable image.

Today's collection came from the 1992 'Wuthering Heights' (above), 'The City of Your Final Destination' (2009) ...

'The City of Your Final Destination' (2009)

... and 'Assault Girls' ...

'Assault Girls'

... and 'True Blood' - for something completely different ...

One of Lafayette's V-Visions from 'True Blood'
(Season 3, Episode 10)

Which as much as anything says something about what movies I watch ... and how many a day!

Any confessions on your part here?

Postscript Post - The End of an Era, the 1915 Fire at Le Moulin Rouge

The old Moulin Rouge burnt down in February 1915, ending the era I/we time-travelled to last post.

It's been rebuilt of course but he new one is, well, more than a bit ho hum ... it's just that its time of the past.

The Can Can can no longer be executed as the height of eroticism! It'd be like the very low voltage charge generated by raising one of the legs of your boardies ... to reveal what's just above the knee.





Curiously (though maybe not so curiously) the most poignant image in this footage for me is of the chandeliers ...


... still valiantly hanging on in all the ruination ...

A great metaphor for life if ever there was one!

What's in a Name - Le Lapin Agile

Le Lapin Agile

Just when you think you knew it!

Montmartre of the late C19 has always had the strongest fascination for me, particularly the establishments that emerged there to meet certain of the shall we say more basic needs of intellectuals, artists, writers, the upper classes, politicians and so on.

While these venues presented genuine artists, such as the cabaret singer Yvette Guilbert ...

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec 'Yvette Guilbert' 1894

... many of the 'performers' had parallel careers as persons of easy virtue, like the famed Can Can dancer La Goulue (Louise Weber, 1866-1929) ...


... who was the undisputed and highly paid star of the Le Moulin Rouge ...


Other similar music halls in Montmartre were Le Moulin Radet ...


... and Le Moulin de la Galette ...

Le Moulin de la Galette 1885

Vincent van Gogh 'Le Moulin de la Galette' (1886)

Other watering holes of the demi monde were cafes, such as Le Chat Noir ...



... and Le Lapin Agile ...

Le Lapin Agile 1880-1890

Le Lapin Agile with the proprietor, Frédéric Gerard, aka le père Frédé, playing the guitar (c1905)

Now - slowly slowly - we're getting to the point of the post!

In 1875, a sign was painted for 'Le Cabaret des Assassins' at 22 rur des Saules in Montmartre.

It showed a rabbit jumping out of a saucepan. Hence, I thought, the name of the cafe - agility does of course keep rabbits out of cooking utensils and off dinner tables, yeah?

However ... the painter's name was Andre Gill and so locals gradually began to call the cafe 'Le Lapin à Gill' (Gill's rabbit) - which I imagine evolved, as things do, into 'Le Lapin Agile' (the nimble rabbit. Though perhaps both meanings were intended at the outset.

At the century turned over, the 'Le Cabaret Au Lapin Agile' was attracting artists and writers, such as Picasso, Utrillo and Apollinaire. Who often recorded the goings on. Classic Montmartre stuff.

Pablo Picasso 'Au Lapin Agile' (1905)

Now, I very much like the notion of time travelling back - even just for a moment - to any or all of these establishments.

And it seemed momentarily possible this morning when I came across a tiny piece of early C20 French film.

It shows a bunch of people in Montmartre walking past 'Le Rat Mort' (the dead rat) ...


... and then we see the briefest camera shot of Gill's sign through the branches of a tree, an image in which we can just make out the legs of the infamous rabbit as it leaps out of a pan sitting on a bottle strewn table ...


Or are we alternatively looking at an early form of Rorschach inkblot test!

The footage then leads into the outside front patio of Le Lapin Agile, with its benches and tables just as pictured in the photograph and painting above. But with with the addition of a maid, a small donkey, and the patron's dog. The requisite writers/painters/poets/whatever are there cogitating away round a table in the background ...


The capped man in the middle ground tries not too successfully to drive the donkey out of frame with a little cane ...


Finally we have the patron himself, Frédéric Gerard, known as le père Frédé ...


... with his back against open window shutters and puffing away on his pipe, for all the world a dead ringer for Santa Claus.

Ok, I'm just going to step into my tardis ... and while I'm away ...

... I hope you'll enjoy this just half as much as I did making it!

Intellectual Teaser

Look at the following seven words carefully ...

banana
dresser
grammar
potato
revive
uneven
assess

... and cudgel your brains to see if you can determine what it is that they all have in common.

Other than having at least doubles of one or more letters.

MMM!

The thinking bit!

How are you going?

Okay - what they also all have in common is that, if you take the first letter, put it at the end and reverse the word, you end up with the same word.

Something silly (I know) but it helped pass the time with my first coffee of the day!

Bailey Does His Special Thing on 'Letterman'

Now this is very sweet and (for me at least) very funny - so we'll have no 'Comments' about the 'low' nature of my sense of humour!

It involves the canine Bailey and his unnamed (Chris Evans-ish) side-kick ...


Here we go then ...

Okay, nice 'Comments' are now required!