Time is like a broken watch. I make money like Fred Astaire.

I have being meaning to get back on the blog for some time, and recent pressures from Mr Blomdini threatening to freeze my account, and the sudden arrival of Desmond Wolf from the deep dark forest has spurred me to make this entry.

Motivated by events that almost made me contribute to the blog over recent months, here is a brief run down in bullet point, almost in twitter format as it were.

 In no particular order

 

I brought a new album. This fellow blogspotter review is much better than anything I could write.

As usual the bFM Summer Series at Albert Park this year was very good. Kody & Bic were a personal highlight.

I didn't go to MGMT and I should have.

In fact I have not been to an indoor gig this year. I was seriously thinking about seeing the Black Keys when they were in Wellington, but then they cancelled on me.

The Hopgarden has poor acoustics, but an incognito Morris Dance Troupe does make for interesting dinner table conversation 

One person's view of interesting dinner table conversation is not necessary your wife's.

Listening to old people talk about eating baked beans on toast is almost as disgusting as having to watch them eat baked beans on toast.

Ever had a George Costanza moment?

I finally got myself an iPhone and am now addicted to twitter.

Busy P and the hot mask

Pedro Winter aka Busy P is a French electronic DJ, producer, manager and owner of the Ed Banger Records label. From 1996 to 2008 he managed Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter better known as Daft Punk. The mystery of Guy-Manuel and Thomas' identity and the elaborate nature of their disguises has added to their popularity. The iconic status of the robotic costumes has been compared to the makeup of KISS and the school-boy kit worn by Angus Young. Their masks may, however, be slightly impractical. Bangalter stated, "The mask gets very hot, but after wearing it as long as I have, I am used to it."

A poet with a camera

Seamus Murphy directed and produced the music videos for all 12 tracks of PJ Harvey's latest album, Let England Shake. Murphy, a British photographer known primarily for his work in war-torn countries like Afghanistan, filmed all of the clips in various areas of England using available light, combining still photos and documentary-like video footage. The shots are both quietly naturalistic and eerily incongruous—a skeleton on display in a museum, Harvey performing in a bare room, the ebb and flow of the ocean tide—and they serve to comment on Harvey's own quietly eerie ode to Sunny England.

The Rothko Chapel

The Rothko Chapel is located in Houston, Texas and was funded by Texas oil millionaires. The building is small and windowless. It is a geometric, "postmodern" structure, located in a turn-of-the-century middle-class neighborhood.

For Mark Rothko, the Chapel was to be a destination, a place of pilgrimage far from the center of art (in this case, New York) where seekers of Rothko’s newly "religious" artwork could journey.

The Chapel is the culmination of six years of Rothko’s life and represents his gradually growing concern for the transcendent. For some, to witness these paintings is to submit one’s self to a spiritual experience, which, through its transcendence of subject matter, approximates that of consciousness itself. It forces one to approach the limits of experience and awakens one to the awareness of one’s own existence. For others, the Chapel houses 14 large paintings whose dark, nearly impenetrable surfaces represent hermeticism and contemplation.

The chapel works were Rothko’s final artistic statement to the world. He never saw the completed Chapel and didn’t install the paintings. In 2011 the Chapel will celebrate its fortieth anniversary, having achieved, in those years, recognition as one of the greatest artistic achievements of the second half of the twentieth century.

Painting of the Rothko Chapel (above) by Douglas Stichbury, 2010.

Ambroise Vollard

Ambroise Vollard was a pioneer dealer who showcased the modernist avant-garde and modernized the business of selling art in the 1890s and early 1900s. He is credited with providing exposure and emotional support to numerous notable and unknown artists, including Paul Cezanne, Aristide Maillol, Renoir, Louis Valtat, Van Gogh and arguably the greatest artist of all time, Pablo Picasso.

The Hotshot

Released in 85 the Hotshot was Tamiya's first four-wheel-drive off-road buggy. It featured four-wheel independent double-wishbone suspension, a unique mono-spring suspension that used only two springs for the entire four wheels. For its time, the car was light, rugged and upgradeable. In the years that followed, parts of the Hotshot were evolved and reused in several other 4WD buggy models, including the Hotshot II, which was identical aside from simpler direct rear suspension, the Boomerang and Tamiya's 10th Anniversary car, the mighty Bigwig.

In 2007, Hotshot was re-released. Electronic Speed Controller is included instead of mechanical speed controller; body has a metal patch to function as a heatsink to dissipate heat from ESC; dog-bone shafts are simplified, hexa bolt and hexa cup universal for connecting front and rear gear boxes are discarded and simpler dog-bone shaft is adapted. Because of ESC, original heatsinks for resistors for the mechanical speed controller are no longer necessary, but included as dummies as they are unique to Hotshot.

You will not be surprised to hear that the re-release is not considered to be anywhere near as valuable to collectors due to the nostalgia value of the older technology in the original kit, along with a number of negative changes such as the removal of real world racing brands from the decal sheet and a less impressive kit box.

The Bob Ross Experience

"We don't make mistakes here, we just have happy accidents. We want happy, happy paintings. If you want sad things, watch the news. Everything is possible here. This is your little universe."

With his calm, patient demeanor, Bob Ross (1942 – 1995) rose to prominence as the creator and host of The Joy of Painting, a television program that ran for twelve years in the United States. He parlayed this success into a commercial "Bob Ross" brand: an industry of how-to art books, instructional videos and art supplies.

Ross had a son, Steven, who occasionally appeared on The Joy of Painting and is a Bob Ross certified instructor. There are more than 1500 Bob Ross certified instructors holding workshops throughout the United States every day. You can become a Bob Ross certified instructor yourself. No previous painting or teaching experience is required but you and your students paintings may tend to look like Bob Ross's.

Ross also filmed wildlife footage, squirrels in particular, usually from his own garden. Small animals often appeared on The Joy of Painting as he would often take in injured or abandoned squirrels and other assorted wildlife.