Links

Emmanuelle Béart wants to be known as more than just a pin-up. But then, when casual mentions of you are written in gushing style it’s hard to avoid, I guess “you have only to see La Belle Noiseuse to realise that painting for him can be a threshold to pure form, while whatever words we can summon to describe the awesome impact of a naked Emmanuelle Béart, we still need to bear witness - to look” (in this article on Jacques Rivette)

Super Mario Bros in 5 minutes. I don’t know why it’s just fun to watch. (Hums Super Mario theme to self. Does anyone remember that terrible live-action kids’ TV show with Mario and Luigi? They put words to the theme! “Swing your arms / from side to side…”) Socrates - the football player, not the hemlock-drinker - predicts an anti-Brazil conspiracy in the World Cup. Why Chappelle left. Meanwhile, I’m glad to see the High Line is finally open in New York.

What is the difference between flotsam and jetsam? I asked myself. Ah, apparently jetsam is jettisoned stuff; flotsam is stuff involuntarily made wreckage. Anyway, mentally clearing out random things I’ve looked at lately:

The story of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”, and how it moved from an African hit to an international one. In the original version, the “wimoweh” of the Americanised versions was actually “mbube” - Zulu for “lion”. I’ve chanced upon a lot of weirdness on the Internet in my life, but the “teens who still breastfeed” Yahoo group (started by an 18-year-old, ostensibly) was still bizarre. The Holland Village dog passes away. Aww. I remember the li’l guy. On the bus from the hospital yesterday, I watched the men’s doubles table tennis finals of the Commonwealth Games - boy that Nigerian team (Segun Toriloa/Monday Merotohun) was really exciting to watch.

Well, not slacking off, despite the advice of the last link - back from a long day at work, still catching up with things. Entertain yourselves: Jake Shimabukuru does “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” on the ukulele. Pretty cool. What blog post has had the most comments ever? Speaking of posts with a lot of comments, here’s the genius of Snakes on a Plane. I wouldn’t get too excited yet - I had a friend who worked on the set of Bats, and I thought that had the potential to be a so-bad-it’s-good film, but it just turned out to be so bad, full stop. On the importance of slacking to productivity. I knew I had it right all along. Nice quote from Peter Drucker: “All one can think and do in a short time is to think what one already knows and to do as one has always done”.