Posts Tagged by Watching

I wanna hold em like they do in Texas Plays

Gaga just played two sold-out nights in Houston. I went Sunday night for work. You can read my review here.

Her music is mindlessly fun. But when she talks about her mission to free her fans of their insecurities, and when she talks about her relationship with her parents, she seems 100% legit, vulnerable and so honest and open-hearted. This is why I love her.

Proper Fucking Booming

The Deepwater Horizon spill is bad. Really bad. But you want to know what’s worse?

Uhh, language is NSFW.

(Via MetaFilter, where the comments are, as always, priceless.)

Those fuckers better not screw up my approaching Florida vacation, and they better not fucking kill off the 8,000 remaining endangered Ridley sea camp turtles that are just beginning to recover from a 1979 oil spill.

Fire and hailstones

I’ve been obsessed with watching weather videos on Youtube lately. Metafilter is partly to blame, as is The Awl, but the real culprit is El Nino*, which is responsible for the worst winter Houston had in the past 30 years and also the fact that we’re probably gonna have one helluva hurrican’ season.

I also had this thing, when I was a kid, where I felt a kind of strong kinship to any object or event that I could remotely relate to my own personal history. For example, I loved to read stories about The Pilgrims’ Mayflower because my birthday was in May, and in some way felt that made me connected to it. It’s weird, I know. I have also always been fascinated by the eruption of Mt. St. Helens — it happened two days after I was born. I even have a Mt. St. Helens “emerald”, as the true emerald is the birthstone for May.

Best comment in the hailstorm thread: Our planet is fucking awesome.

*Which in Spanish means “the Nino”.

Piano with Wind and Trains

Trailer: Piano with Wind and Trains from Andrew Laker on Vimeo.

I just found out my friend Butch, whom I’ve written about before, has had his first feature-length doc, PIano with Wind and Trains, accepted to the Chagrin Falls International Documentary Film Festival.

Butch and I met while working at a small suburban newspaper — he was a photojournalist and I was in my first real job as a reporter. We had the most evil of editors, but fun coworkers who made the job tolerable and a margin of creative freedom. Later Butch found a job that would let him experiment with video, though he still does a lot of photography work too.

I am excited about this film fest not just because I am credited in the doc as a creative consultant but also because it’s a friggin’ good movie, a heartwarming story, and because I am proud of my friend.

Category 5

Rick Mitchell + Jeff Corwin = Hank Schyma, my new crush. We bonded over tornadoes at the Art Car Ball.

This one makes me miss Oklahoma.

Minsk meets Cub meets Vespa

In the middle of watching the Top Gear: Vietnam Special. But don’t read the link like I did, because spoilers abound.

The entire episode is available on Youtube.

What is tiki?

It was CLH who turned me on to the Polynesia Pop craze, but it fits in perfectly with my love of all things Midcentury. Most people don’t understand the Hawaiian shirts, cocktail culture and exotica music. The DVD of Tiki looks like a good primer to explain how Polynesia went from culture to kitsch in the 1930s and ’40s.

At Hukilau 2010 in June (our annual pilgrimage to Florida) I’ll be volunteering at the door for the world premier of this documentary. There’s a sneak peek below. At around 9:34 you can see brief footage of CLH and I sailing on the Tikki Beach at Hukilau 2004, the “Hurricane Hukilau”. There’s also footage of many of the places we visited during our month in French Polynesia, including the tallest tiki in the world.

What is Tiki // The DVD OF TIKI from Van Hagen on Vimeo.

Lousiana Man

Been on a Cajun/zydeco kick this past week, thanks in no small part to my boss at the paper, who suggested we write about it. I had always known EastTex had a strong zydeco history but even with my French minor I was dumb to the fact that zydeco = les haricots. Language always fascinates me.

I would marry Kristin Wiig if it were legal in my state

Ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb

Can not believe how good this actually looks. Yes that is Little Miss Virginal Vampire Lover and Tom Cruise’s protege Dakota Fanning.

For comparison, here’s the real thing:

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