Ghost Town with Téa

In the series of actresses I worship: Téa Leoni.
And this one is serious.

Watched her in Ghost Town. Lovely and funny film.
Finally a part which made me like Ricky Gervais better, instead of creeping me out.

(Again I wonder why it so often is so hard to find good photographs of people who are both beautiful and famous. They are either poor paparazzi shots or glamour shots which make the subject unrecognisable.)

I think part of Téa's appeal is that she feels like she's missing the defensive barrier that most people, especially beautiful people, have. The "don't come *too* close or I'll have to defend myself" barrier. It's very rare to have very little of that, and it's very pleasant for others. Based on primal fear, I guess.

Leno drives a Bugatti

[Thanks to tOP. There's another guy who has strong interest in many things.]

I admire people who have strong enough interest to have an impact in more than one area. Take Jay Leno, TV star, comedian, and car nut. Here he talks about an amazing Bugatti 37A racer. He actually drives it too, from around nine minutes into the video. Like Mike says in his post about roadsters, hardly anybody ever talks about driving these things.

Lenka - The Show

We're many who enjoyed the find of Lenka's Trouble Is A Friend, so I looked for one more of hers, and I was not very surprised when I liked the first one I tried. She's fun.

Running to, not just away

Don't simply retire from something; have something to retire to.

- Harry Emerson Fosdick

I think those are wise words. A great number of people, especially men for some reason (I think women are better at socializing), just go to seed after retiring without any interests to go to. Many of them simply die after a couple of years.

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Fellow Blogger bloggers: how do you like the new posting/management interface? It's really dramatically different, innit? 

Suffering from small equipment?

[Thanks to Norm]

 
Small Penis from Espen Hobbesland on Vimeo.
Lean back, turn up the volume and enjoy our graduation film, "Small Penis". Be sure to watch all the way to the end as we have a great set of bloopers:) It's the story of Daniel, a man who all of his life has felt insecure because of his penis size. This changes when he joins a support group a little bit out of the ordinary. The budget was about 4-500 dollars. Filmed in 5 days in Bergen, Norway. Shot on Sony XDcam, 1920x1080, 25p. Edited in Final Cut. In case you are wondering, the language they are speaking is Norwegian.

Alexa Vega-Game Over

Alexa played one of the kids in Spy Kids one to three. I guess she grew a lot in the couple of months between filming and this release party!
(Sorry, couldn't find a better quality video.)



I liked the movies by the way. Family flicks of course, and very unserious, but good fun and often very funny.

Pakistan bans VPNs

Pakistan bans VPNs, article. 

The notice said that use of "all such mechanisms including EVPNs [encrypted virtual private networks] which conceal communication to the extent that prohibits monitoring" must be reported to authorities.

What is this, 1984? You need special permission to prevent authorities from spying on you? Woa, kids, can you say "totalitarian"?

Copenhagen Central Station

I've gotten quite a bit of interest of the site of the symphonic concert below, Copenhagen Central Station.
For a building this central and this busy, it really is surprisingly pleasant.
It was opened in 1911, but considering the size and cost and time of building such a thing, it was probably designed in 1890, I'd hazard.

(The last pic only shows a third of the width if I recall correctly.)

I guess my liking for it could be related to it being present in several of the periods of my life where I felt I went through a lot of personal/spiritual expansion. I could imagine that if one knew it mainly for going through it when going to a job one hated, for instance, it might "taste" different.

Chooka Parker

[Thanks to Basil]

Talk about don't judge a book by its cover. If I met this guy accidentally, I'm sure I'd like him, but I'd never guess he could play like that.



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What a beaut, that middle judge. A bit over-made-up, though. It seems to be a trend in recent years, an unfortunate one in my view, to put so much paint on pop culture women that you can't see a square millimeter of their own colors.

One-woman cover of Gorillaz 'Feel Good Inc'

[Thanks to Robert C]

God loves redheads.



Great vocal performance, and playing instruments in real time. Kewl.
I didn't see any info on who she is. But if she ever needs cover/promo photos, she can come to me anytime.

TCG sez: Looks like her name is Josie Charlwood.
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"Bolero" played by Symphonic flash mob

[Thanks to Jim in Seattle]

Copenhagen Philharmonics playing Ravel's Bolero and leave. 



This station is like a second home to me. I've no count of how many times I've been in it, but thousands for sure, maybe tens of thousands. I really like it, it doesn't have the hostile super-busy feel that bigger international stations do, it's more relaxed and friendly.
It changed over the years, the great pillars for instance didn't used to stand free.
I often used to have coffee in a coffee shop on the first floor, above the hustle and bustle, what a great place to read and look at people for a while. One day I saw a film crew film a scene with well known actors. They were using one of the long rows of pay phones which used to be there. That's another thing that's changed!

Lenka - Trouble Is A Friend

[Thanks to Anna]

Good song, pretty singer, very cool visuals, and even thought-provoking lyrics. I've heard about how periods of trouble have helped people in their personal development much more than plain sailing had usually done.

Fuji X10

New: Fuji X10. It's not a large-sensor camera like the X100*, so it won't have the X100's outstanding low-light performance, but on the other hand it has zoom, something I'll admit to miss when I don't have it.

Update: I have the camera now, and the low-light capabilities are actually *really* good.

I like the look of it, very "camera like", meaning it's a machine, not a blob. And apparently it's a dang good lens, so it'll be interesting to see what reviewers say. And it's a 28mm-e to 112mm-e and 2.0 to 2.8, so that sounds great. Still very few zoom lenses are that fast, and the range appeals to me, unlike 12x super-zooms, it has a chance of delivering high fidelity over the whole range.

*The sensor is still larger than most compact cameras', including the one in the Canon S95. Thanks to ES.

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tOP also has an interesting little article about which is the best aperture to use, fidelity-wise.

Wolfman 2010

When I wrote about the classic monsters recently, I found out that Universal had re-done Wolfman in 2010. And being a fan, of course I had to see what blu-ray and recent tech could do with this story.

I am a fan for at least one reason beyond being generally a lover of SF and F, and that is that when I was just the right age, 8-13, Danish publishers were putting out versions of the classic Eerie comics from the fifties. And many of these were not only good, they were amazing. Subversive and surprising stories, and some of the best artists on the planet drew them. So Dracula, the Wolfman, etc, stuck with me good and well.

Reception of the 2010 Wolfman was mixed, but I liked it. Beautifully lit and photographed (and created digitally, like Victorian London rooftops scenes for example), and solid story and solid acting. And very good effects. Unlike some movies done in recent years (van Helsing for example), not done mostly in digital but kept physical where possible, and blended with digital quite seamlessly.  I don't know that the ending quite held up the pace in terms of importance to the story, but overall I quite liked the film.

Just as was the case with the 1992 Bram Stoker's Dracula, I found the intermediate stages of the monster-transformations to be the "scariest" and visually most interesting. In the final shape of both Dracula and Wolfman, they are stuck in the traditional depictions, it seems, but in the middle of the changing, the designers could go wild, and found some interesting far-out inhuman shapes.

Ebook search

Inkmesh, ebook search engine, find formats and compare prices. Seems highly useful.
... Oh, it even includes audiobooks, excellent.

Richard Branson, Victoria Secret Models

Here's a tidbit for the reader or two for whom I clearly am a huge irritation. Seeing as how Richard Branson has, if possible, an even bigger ego than myself, maybe he can be lightning rod for a few hours...



Most people in this world has been taught to not speak well of themselves. But still if you combine them, there are still very many people who have not learned the lesson. Given that, it must take an enormous amount of energy to snarl and lash out at all of them. And does anybody thank you for your hard and selfless work? Nooooo!

Update:
I'm happy to hear that the promotional stunts paint a wrong picture of him. Timo points this out, and Philocalist wrote:

I met Richard Branson several years ago, quite casually in the coffee lounge of a large London hotel.
I was sat on a couch, waiting on the arrival of a courier, with my nose deep in a book: I took no notice of the guy who sat down opposite and ordered coffee, which arrived for 'two' rather than just him - the waiter had made a simple mistake and assumed us to be together.
At this stage I looked up to recognise him immediately, and before I could even react, was offered coffee and cake by him!
Purely coincidentally, his company, Virgin, had very recently purchased a large country hotel close to where I lived, and there was talk of him moving his UK office there, into a refurbished stable-block - it gave me something to talk about :-)
What I found very different about this guy was that he sat and genuinely listened to what I had to say, asking questions of me that perhaps only I, as a local, could answer honestly.
We sat for maybe another 30 minutes: his appointment arrived at the same time as my delivery.
This was in direct contrast with another 'celebrity' who arrived into reception as we sat there.
I won't name names: he was, and possibly still is the biggest game-show host (amongst other things) in the UK. I've never seen such rude arrogance on open display: it was such a marked contrast ... the staff were very happy (and relaxed!) to be around Richard Branson, but avoided GSH like the plague! 
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Darren's Great Big Camera

Darren's Great Big Camera blog.

"No fix for that" says Virgin UK

My TV cable box with the Virgin extra V+ service can record programs. And normally it does it fine. But recently it has suddenly deleted a whole string of recordings at once, everything on it. When rebooted, it has "recovered content" files listed, but these files won't play. It has happened several times.

Not great, so I called Support. After much checking and waiting, I was told that "there's no fix for that". Apparently not even getting a new box would help. And there was no light on the horizon either.  I would simply have to sit back and accept my recorded fave TV programs disappearing periodically. Or, I guess, get Sky TV instead. But I don't think they do broadband.

Wow, that has to be the worst ending of a Support call I've ever had! "There's no fix for that"... seriously?

German city introduces parking meter for prostitutes

German city introduces parking meter for prostitutes, article.
Juanita Rosina Henning, from the Dona Carmen prostitute-support group, called for the meter's removal, saying the women already pay income tax on their earnings.
"This has nothing to do with fiscal equality," she said, adding that prostitutes were the only workers to be taxed in such a way.

Yello - Si Señor the Hairy Grill

[Tak til Benny]

Human penguins

Norm found this video, a commercial which uses nude humans to show how penguins survive in the cold, or maybe it's the other way around.