beautiful, funny, sad & true

This my new favorite 1950’s song; “Just Multiply” by Varetta Dillard. The electric guitar part is particularly noteworthy and awesome.

“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”

–Tom Stoppard, “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead”

Love it.

Also, here’s a longish interview with Gary Oldman about the film.

Super-ultra-mega-thanks to Cristina for sharing this.

Surely you can spare twenty minutes of your busy life to watch something so beautiful.

Ballon Rouge from Christopher Walters on Vimeo.

In musical news, I got the opportunity to see my friends Cirkestra last Friday.  Here’s a video of their song “Philomena”, which is one of my favorites, and the video was shot at that actual show.

Even more important than that, however, is the fact that IrishBand now has an animated video for one of our songs.  Please check it out and enjoy it, and feel free to share it with each and every one of your friends.

Thank you.

While driving home from the store today, I saw a police car along the side of the road with the words “UFO Response Team” emblazoned on the back, and the little kid in me got all excited thinking about all that stuff again.  You see, when I was young, I had an endless fascination for UFO’s.  I had a stack of books about them (by authors like J. Allen Hynek and John Mack) and I watched every TV show I could.  The Air Force used to have a special team called Project Blue Book that investigated sightings and stories, and for about two seconds in the late 1970’s, long before “The X-Files”, there was a TV show based on Project Blue Book cases that was called “Project U.F.O.”

Long before conspiracy theories abounded or distrust of the government became de riguer, there seemed to be a kind of mythology about UFO’s.  One show described an ancient site in South America that was given the insipid name of EarthBaseOne, which (after decades of retrospect) looked like an Inca temple.  It was a large square, with no roof, and in the walls of the square were carvings of skulls.  One was human, and the others (all around the walls) were slight variations on human faces.  Some were very similar to our current visage, while others were grotesquely misshapen.  A quick Google search revealed that the site’s real name is Tiahuanaco, in Bolivia.

Anyway, the show put forward the idea that extraterrestrial life forms created humanity, and that Tiahuanaco was the place where they worked out their ‘design’ for us.   An interesting theory, and one that I’ve never forgotten.

So anyway, I got to thinking about all that UFO business again this afternoon, and I really wanted to see the show “Project U.F.O.” again.  It took longer than I would have thought to scrounge up an actual episode (Due to a government cover-up, perhaps? KIDDING!), but here’s one for you.

Warning:  WATCH THIS CLIP AT YOUR OWN RISK.  It may have been based on an interesting premise, but the show is a complete and utter turd.  Do not attempt to drive or use heavy machinery after watching it.

You’ve been warned.

There, see?  I warned you.