November was a very happening month, media-wise.
We spent a week in London, during which we made an unplanned visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum, and I found it uninteresting except for a couple of rooms. One of these, as I mentioned earlier, was packed full of awesome “big stuff”. The other was a room I nearly passed by, until I noticed “The School of Athens” hanging on the wall (turned out to be a copy, though a full-sized one, roughly 15 feet by 25 feet!).
Talk about low expectations — the room had a replica of David too (or more accurately, a plaster cast), and I walked right by it without recognizing it. Then I began seriously looking around, and found another work by Michelangelo, this statue of Moses (another plaster cast).
Since there was also some random sculpture by Donatello, and (if you include a nearby room) paintings by Da Vinci, the place had something by each of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 🙂
On the flight back I finally decided to watch some movies. The last year has been exceptional in the total absence of any movies watched in a regular movie theater, so I made my way through Jurassic World (hoped it would be good, it started out well, but disappointing), San Andreas (wtf), and towards the end, a bit of Mad Max: Fury Road. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to finish it, so when I got home I actually bought the movie and watched it again (and again, and again, and again).
Apparently purists prefer the old Mad Max 2: Road Warrior. Sorry folks, I wasn’t even born then.
Anyway, if by any chance, you’ve missed out on this, watch the trailer and then watch the movie (I’d say it’s the best film this year, but I also haven’t seen many others, so it’s obviously very biased opinion)
For some reason I don’t recall now, I came across a bunch of art by some Polish dude who died 10 years ago, Zdzisław Beksiński. I’m not sure how to categorize this stuff. See one example (one of the milder ones, really) at the top of this post, and more here if you like it.
More interesting links:
- My favored background sound (a fad, surely) while working these days is this eight-hour long sequence of “nature sounds”.
- Stark side-by-side bizarrely unequal housing in Mexico.
- A great cover of “Summer Wine”
- An ironic story about a former Guantanamo Bay inmate leading the war against ISIS/ISIL (and, dramatically, facing troops lead by another former co-inmate)
- Since we’re heading into a long holiday season, an article (at NPR) on psychedelic mushrooms as a possible origin story for Santa Claus and his reindeer.
Abacus Noir 