You're number one...

I picked up a new fan this week. At CVS, and there were a couple of different deals in effect, so I got it at a significant discount. It was definitely necessary, though. We've had a wicked heat wave the last couple of weeks. Now it's moderated, if not quite ended. That won't be the last, though. You never get through August without some scorchers. Summer might not even end until October.

Picture it

Out on my rounds today I saw a couple of kids with a view camera on the river. I call them "kids." They were probably RISD students but seemed like they'd be underclassmen, or could have even been mature and hirsute high-schoolers. But they very definitely did have a view camera on a tripod aimed at the water. This struck me securely enough that I chatted with them about it for a few seconds.

Film is supposed to be dead. Large format photography like that predeceased it. And you don't really expect to see people of any age engaging in time-intensive hobbies like that. So it's a pleasant surprise.

Pieces on the board

Firekites - AUTUMN STORY - chalk animation from Lucinda Schreiber on Vimeo.

The song is pretty nice. It's by an Australian band I'm not familiar with otherwise. But I'm really here because I'm really here because I'm a sucker for a good alternative process animated work. (In truth any hand drawn animation can be called an alternative process at this point.) This one makes fine use of chalk's tendency to leave traces of itself behind, which you might think is a disadvantage. Extra credit for using more than one chalkboard.

Eye opener

I discovered the work of  Jens Retlev just today.*  Several paintings of his hang on the walls of a Swedish cafe that his wife manages. One that particularly grabbed me isn't on his website. And also, or course, his work does lose something in the translation from paint to pixels. But even a suggestion is pretty impressive.

* Pronounced with a "y" sound? You bet!

The greatest show on Earth

This Canadian puppet show is obviously for little kids, but that doesn't stop it from being clever or possessing a certain dark humor. A ringmaster who doesn't bother giving the new lion tamer any special training could be seen as either evil or dumb, but not terribly good at their job either way. You'll see the twist ending coming, but it's still a good one.

Mercury's up there

Okay, so I messed up looking at Ventusky last night. It turns out that if you don't actually click on your city the service defaults to showing you the weather for Zagreb or someplace like that. Lucky Croats. So the temperature is in the low 90s tonight and probably was last night as well. Ah well, nothing I haven't faced before.

 If nothing else it's a sign to change from red to white if you like having wine at dinner. And there's certainly nothing wrong with a nice chilled pinot grigio.

Men, women, children, dogs

I was invited to a friend's house for dinner this weekend and wound up going earlier tonight. It was mostly quite nice, partly because I was seeing people I hadn't seen in months. Plus a relative (his, not mine) whom I'd never met before.

Met the dogs again too. Actually this time there were three, another guest having brought his Shepherd/something else mix. They were fun. It's hard to believe that, after a bite experience, I went through several years of being afraid of dogs. Except for ours, of course.