Ahhh… What?!
Well, he certainty made a good recovery after his original career took a dive. 🤿 …I’ll sea myself out 🏊
Jason Statham Competed in Diving at the 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland
•August 6, 2021 • Leave a CommentBrilliant Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games Comeback: Sifan Hassan (Netherlands) — Women’s 1500m
•August 5, 2021 • Leave a CommentEthiopian-born Dutch (arrived as a refugee in 2013), Sifan Hassan, fell on the final lap of the 1500-meter first-round heat, but rebounds to win!
Pleanty of cool blink and you’ll miss them moments at the games this year, but that comeback takes the cake. I loved seeing the women’s hammer throw too, the momentum they build before hurling 8.82 lb (4 kg) of metal further than I can throw a tennis ball was insanely impressive. I have to play catch up with many of the events though (downloads here I come).
In other Olympic Games related stuff; seems a lot of athletes love anime, making nods to beloved franchises before, during, and after competitions:
Mexican gymnast Alexa Moreno did her floor routine to the Demon Slayer soundtrack:
Last but not least, if you’ve used Google in the last month you’ve probably seen the icon with the cat? If not, click it! it is a classic JRPG made specifically to commemorate the games in cool pixel style — PLAY — Doodle Champion Island Games!!!
It is a Japanese-style role-playing video game designed to celebrate the 2020 Summer Olympics, 16-bit video gaming as well as Japanese folklore and culture.
Real-Life SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Discovered On The Ocean Floor
•August 3, 2021 • Leave a CommentBiologist Christopher Mah was watching a live feed from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) when he noticed two sea creatures bearing an uncanny resemblance to a pair of beloved animated characters:
“If we can bring positivity and we can make people happy by showing them nature,” Mah told NPR. “Well, that’s what nature has always done for us before.”
Unlike their cartoon counterparts however, the Hertwigia (sponge) and Chondraster (starfish) are not best friends.
“In all likelihood, the reason that starfish is right next to that sponge is because that sponge is just about to be devoured, at least in part,” Mah told NPR.
The Dolls With Attitude (2017) [short film] & More Dolls
•July 16, 2021 • Leave a CommentWhile discussing AIR DOLL (2009) with (not Bae Doona) bae, I found by chance this quirky horror-esque short film. Self-contained, funny, and strange, you should watch it:
Writer/Director Naoya Yamaguchi
Oddly enough, a fashion account I follow recently posted several pictures from Moschino’s SS 2021 runway show. It’s certainly different. For no other reason than I saw these related things hours apart from one another; here you go — high-fashion dolls:
Yup… Dudes can be airheaded about things sometimes too you know.
Director Hirokazu Koreeda. Based on manga series Kuuki Ningyo by Yoshiie Gōda
Souped-up Drag Boats of Thailand
•June 16, 2021 • Leave a Comment
I saw a short video on Reddit a few months ago that blew my mind and sent me in a fit of laughter. I’ll post that video first because this guy right here, this guy is living:
Little did I know that it wasn’t just one adrenaline junkie piloting/hydroplaning the rivers of Thailand in his modified riverboat, hitting speeds upwards of 70 mph (112 km/h), but there is a celebrated subculture of speed captains and absorbed onlookers supporting this (unregulated, non-commercial, super dangerous) stupid-fun activity.
Thankful to Chad from CB Media for investigating and sharing his insane motorsports experience:
Hamferð — “DeyðIR VarðAR” …Live Metal Performance during a Solar Eclipse
•June 10, 2021 • Leave a CommentThe song isn’t anything you can rattle your head to, but goodness is it a moody mood:
Definitely got SILENT HILL other-world vibes when the landscape of The Faroe Islands darkened to black 😨🕯️
[This post was prompted by the annular solar eclipse that occurred on June 10, 2021, when the Moon passed between Earth and the Sun. Non acoustic version of Deyðir varðar · Hamferð found here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOtCrPp7d5w]
Birds of a Feather Are Iridescent Together
•May 15, 2021 • Leave a CommentPhotographer Christian Spencer has taken some remarkably well timed and positioned photographs of hummingbirds mid-flight in silhouette against the sun. The tips of their feathers have refracted the sunlight, producing an image that captures the multiple colours that each wavelength of light has (which changes depending on how it bends, from the point of view of the observer).
These awe inducing snapshots went onto trigger my thoughts about the shortcomings of human sight and how without photography we never would have known, or at the very least, seen and been able to appreciate the speed of light within the beat of a bird’s wing — I find that quite hummbling:
More: https://linktr.ee/ChristianSpencer_ART
Good nature photography always reminds me of what life truly is.
Did you know that birds view the world in wavelengths that the human eye cannot naturally perceive? Birds have additional colour cones in their retina that are sensitive to ultraviolet range. Here is the science behind it:
Links for more info: https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/50/10/854/233996 / https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0065345408601059
STAR WARS x Foo Fighters — “Everlong” [mashup]
•May 4, 2021 • Leave a CommentSo much frenetic energy concentrated into one video, I love it!! Mashups tend to play for comedic effect and are a real hit-or-miss because of that. But this… I like this (full screen)
Michel Gongry’s “Everlong” music video is smart, darkly and always a fun watch, and the song is so damn catchy It makes me wanna jump around and dance every time. I guarantee this five minute love story is one you will never forget:
DEATH — “Politicians In My Eyes” [♬]
•April 1, 2021 • Leave a CommentThree black teenage brothers started a band called DEATH in the early 1970s playing punk-rock during the era of Motown — “Politicians In My Eyes” is still as relevant and exceptionally cool as it ever was!
“Gloomy Sunday” [♬]
•March 28, 2021 • Leave a Comment
Billie Holiday was an amazing woman. Before I ever listened to “Gloomy Sunday” and its countless renditions, the title and accompanying story is one I had known about since an early age.
There is a recurring urban legend which claims that people committed suicide while listening to the original song. The original “Gloomy Sunday“, also known as the “Hungarian Suicide Song”, is a song composed by Hungarian pianist and composer Rezső Seress and published in 1933. Since its recording it has been blamed for more suicides than any other in the history of music. In the same decade, the composer himself, his wife, and at least eighteen suicide deaths in Hungary were reported to have had close links with Gloomy Sunday, although urban legend embellishes its more in the hundreds range. This ultimately led to its banning on various radio networks in 1936.
Regardless of whether you choose to believe in the mystery or rather in the social climate of the 1930s in which the song was composed; this is a beautiful piece of music:
The Great Depression had begun and suicide rates were skyrocketing in the U.S. and Hungary. Additionally, antisemitism was taking hold across Europe. He didn’t know it when he composed Gloomy Sunday, but Rezső Seress would later be interned at a Nazi labor camp in Ukraine. He survived the camp, but his mother did not. Prior to becoming a musician Seress had lost his career as a circus performer through injury. He was struggling to make ends meet. (“Rezső Seress.” Wikipedia. August 2,2013.)
This set the perfect (gloomy) tone for Seress to compose Gloomy Sunday. And he did so by putting his heart and soul, his sadness, and his disappointment into the composition. Seress composed the song in the sad key of C minor, and the music alone was said to be enough to make a person extremely depressed or suicidal. Then came the wretched lyrics on top of the music. As the story goes; Hungarian poet, László Jávor, had recently broken up with his fiancée, and his heartbreak served as the inspiration for the mournful lyrics to Gloomy Sunday.
Seress eventually succumbed to his own depression, and jumped from his apartment building in Budapest. He killed himself just after his 69th birthday. His legacy endures:
🎭 