In an emergency

Rosecrans Baldwin, remembering his experience of volunteering at the drive-through COVID testing centre at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles: To live in Los Angeles is to exist in a selfish place full of self-helping people: the cliché persists partly because it’s true. But the Southland is also so vast, so diverse, it repels single stories.… Continue reading In an emergency

COVID: The Experience

Word comes to us from M.G. Siegler of one cinema’s … gutsy… approach to what we hope is the beginning of the end of the pandemic: Taking cues from amusement-park rides, blocks of seats have motion effects that pitch, twist, vibrate, and roll in coordination with action happening on screen. And, there are “atmospherics” that… Continue reading COVID: The Experience

Totally Eclipsed…

Folks, I give you Totally Fixed Where We Are: Cheesy? Oh yes. A work of genius? Very possibly!1 [Via swissmiss] Perhaps you need to be of a certain age to fully appreciate this. Or perhaps not. ↩

Social distancing

I found myself sat in our local bus interchange this morning, with every second seat holding a sticker reminding passengers to maintain social distancing. This is a much nicer1 approach: The restaurant at Izu Shabonten Zoo in Shizuoka, Japan is crowded! But those seats aren’t occupied by people. They’re occupied by stuffed animal Capybaras that… Continue reading Social distancing

The Machine Stopped

YouTube’s algorithm has been suggesting this video for a couple of days now but I’d been ignoring it until a comment at Charlie’s Diary gave me a nudge towards it. Granted, the Current Situation provides comedians with a target-rich environment,1 so it’s more of a whistle-stop tour than the in-depth charge sheet that some of… Continue reading The Machine Stopped

Close, but not quite…

Further to my reference to that famous Lenin quote… “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” … turns out that @Pinboard has evidence that this is indeed a misattribution. Wrong author, right sentiments.