Michael Hopcroft

When one of my old Motivators turned up on Facebook, I realized I wanted to start doing these again (the poster was unattributed and poster probably didn't know its origins, but I didn't mind because it wasn't the sort of thing you get anything other than fan-cred for anyway).
 
So I've done a few to dip my toe in.
 
 

Whatever it is, it's free-range, gluten-free, non-GMO, organically farmed, no added salt, heirloom variety, no corn syrup added, sustainable and free trade, and it's only $189 a serving. And it tastes like s***. 
NT: What the 21st Century North American version of Valhalla looks like.

When one of my old Motivators turned up on Facebook, I realized I wanted to start doing these again (the poster was unattributed and poster probably didn't know its origins, but I didn't mind because it wasn't the sort of thing you get anything other than fan-cred for anyway).
 
So I've done a few to dip my toe in.
 
 

I.....I can't write that....
 
Lucius Alexander
 
The palindromedary stood in the middle of the Room of Pain gazing curiously about at implements and equipment it had no hope of understanding, disturbed neither by the evidences of a deviant Human sexuality - for all Human sexuality was equally alien to it - nor by the fact that most of the room was various shades of a color that somehow lay at an angle to the normal straight line of the visible spectrum. "Of course you can write it" said the beast, "The question is, can you write it without a palindromedary to help you?" Then it casually walked away, leaving the door mercifully open...nothing is keeping me here. I can't stay here. Why am I still here, turning about, my eyes constantly skittering away from objects I cannot bear to see both because of their implicit threatening purposes and because my mind rejects the very existence of that...that....colour....

All I'm going to say on that is that if someone is cruel to me, that doesn't obligate me to be cruel to them in return. Quite the contrary, in fact -- it's horrifyingly difficult not to demand revenge against a crime that heinous, but in the end what do we gain when we kill him? Isn't "all human life is valuable -- except yours" the precise attitude of this man towards his victims?

All I'm going to say on that is that if someone is cruel to me, that doesn't obligate me to be cruel to them in return. Quite the contrary, in fact -- it's horrifyingly difficult not to demand revenge against a crime that heinous, but in the end what do we gain when we kill him? Isn't "all human life is valuable -- except yours" the precise attitude of this man towards his victims?

Citizen Kane. I can see why it's hailed as a cinema classic.

Kamichu! is from a while back, but I got to see a couple of episodes again and it reminded me why a show that could only be made in Japan doesn't necessarily mean the ultra-weirdness people claim.
 
During the lunch break at a rural junior high school, a shy girl named Yurie matter-of-factly tells her best friend that she's a god now. Sometime overnight she somehow became a divinity. The immediately attracts the enthusiastic interest of a classmate who runs the nearby shrine, who begins an attempt to find out just what sort of god Yurie has become.
 
It makes a lot more sense if you know even a little about Shinto. Shinto has millions of gods, which inhabit just about everyplace. A human becoming one during their lifetime is rare but not unthinkable. A Westerner would probably have sent Yurie to a psychiatrist. As it is, Yurie finds that she can now see and interact with the hundreds of minor gods with whom mortals share the town.
 
But in this case Yurie is absolutely right. She's a god, but doesn't know what she's doing. An effort to create a breeze resulted in a typhoon with her face in its eye almost laying waste to the town. Afterwards her new friend seizes on "the god of junior high' as an opportunity to save the shrine from bankruptcy, a quest which becomes more earnest when they discover that the god who had previously inhabited the shrine has been gone for three months. Again, it falls to Yurie to resolve the situation by traveling to the plane of the gods, locating the missing god, and gently persuading him to come back.
 
It's really very sweet, innocent and oddly fascinating.

It's hard finding work if you're a panda. It's even harder if you aren't even trying. That is the situation faced by Panda, a protagonist in one of 2104's more interesting anime series, Polar Bear's Cafe.
 
Panda wants to relax all day and eat bamboo, but his mother wants him to get a job and will suck him up into her vacuum cleaner if he doesn't. So he reluctantly goes out looking and stumbles upon a cafe run by Polar Bear, who is in fact a polar bear. after a reluctant and unsuccessful attempt to apply for a part-time job at the cafe, Polar Bear takes a strange sort of pity on him and directs him to the perfect job for him -- at the zoo, acting like a wild panda for the benefit of children who are blown away by seeing pandas.
 
Now the world of Polar Bear's Cafe is decidedly odd. Wild and exotic animals who are just as smart as people walk among us and nobody bats an eye. The human woman Polar Bear ends up hiring to work for him doesn't mind working for a massive Arctic carnivore, nor is it a problem for his many human customers.. Lots of animals work at the zoo (some are regulars at the cafe) but apparently few if any live there. Polar Bear himself has a fondness for puns and non-sequitur that always annoys his best customer, a sardonic penguin who is always in the cafe and doesn't seem to have a job or much of a social life.
 
One of the most interesting things about the series is the drawing style, which is detailed and astoundingly realistic. The animals look like the real thing if the real thing were walking on their hind legs and making espresso drinks.
 

 
The rest of the drawing style is very painterly and Miyazakiesque, which is surprising for a TV comedy.

For those who were curious
 

For those who wish to be more cautious
 

Electro-pop pioneers the Pet Shop Boys, performing a song from Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera. 
 

Can you tell me how to get to.... Westeros?
 

Can you tell me how to get to.... Westeros?
 

Can you tell me how to get to.... Westeros?
 

Team Clorox. But they almost backed out when they refused to change it to Formula 409.
 
NT: Subtle signs your weekend of binge-watching Game of Thrones is not going as planned.

Q: TAKE US TO THE ZOO, DADDY! TAKE US TO THE ZOO, DADDY! TAKE US TO THE ZOO, DADDY! TAKE US TO THE....
 
A: I will look for you when the war is over, an hour and a half from now.

Get married. Take that, Alanis!

Get married. Take that, Alanis!

Kimbra singing "Good Intent" in Simlish. (The Sims gibberish language.)
 

Before there were rock stars, there was Franz Liszt. In the mid 19th-century, Liszt was the most popular and sought-after musician of this day. A pianist with great artistry and great charisma, his European tours were greeted with a fan frenzy reminiscent of the American tours of the Beatles. Women thought he was the sexiest man alive (a feeling of which he took full advantage) and everyone was in awe of his playing. He was almost the polar opposite of his friend and rival Frederic Chopin: Chopin was a moody introvert who preferred intimate venues such as noble and bourgeois salons, while for Liszt the bigger the stage the better. And he was always seeking to expand the repertoire of his instrument, even beyond his work as a composer.
 
So at one point he decided he would add the symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven to his repertoire by arranging all nine for the piano. It was a quixotic gesture, but then Liszt was a quixotic man. The results have since occasionally been recorded as complete sets, and I got my hands on one of them recently through Rhapsody.
 
Give Liszt credit for understanding his instrument. The piano doesn't quite convey all the subtle layers and shadings of sound Beethoven used so fluently, but the transcription is spectacular and demanding from a player. It sounds similar to the original works, and yet in other ways completely unlike them.
 
Eventually Liszt himself would turn to the orchestra and conducting, popularizing the "tone poem" (a form that would perhaps reach its ultimate expression fifty years later with Richard Strauss) and composing at a furious pace. Eventually, finally exhausted with performance and womanizing, he repented his "wicked ways", stopped touring, and took up the Catholic priesthood.