The treasures to be seen on YouTube continue to astonish. For this lazy New Year’s weekend, we offer Émile Cohl‘s Fantasmagorie; created in 1908, one of the first animated films.
To make this film, Cohl placed each drawing on an illuminated glass plate and then traced the next drawing-with variations-on top of it until he had some 700 drawings… the characters in the film look as though they’ve been drawn on a chalkboard, but it’s an illusion. By filming black lines on paper and then printing in negative Cohl makes his animations appear to be chalk drawings.
It is charming, odd, fabulous and at the .47 second mark seems to be secretly giving a New Year’s message.
Ever since we discovered radio station WKCR’s annual Bach Festival years ago, we’ve can’t get through the holiday season without a big dose of the great composer. The festival features music of Johann Sebastian Bach exclusively from 3pm on Thursday 12/22 till midnight on Saturday 12/31, streamable live at the top right of their site…full of fat joy for a week, whenever you want it…
(Video link.) We recommend checking out “One of the Nicest Places on the Internet”, a website doling out virtual hugs. It’s mission: “turn the sad into happy and the happy into celebration.” We find it brilliant, curiously heartwarming, beautiful, strange, sweet, healing, sometimes a bit creepy, effective, and finally, if we stay too-long, overwhelming. But what’s amazing is: you can feel the hugs.
You can have as many hugs as you want and you can also post your own hug. On YouTube, you’ll find an endless, ever-growing chain of hugs.
The Irish Times reported an amazing story of a 100 year-old letter to Santa found tucked in a Dublin chimney. It was found by the house’s current occupant, John Byrne, who works in the building industry.
“At that time, the fireplaces were made of brick with a shelf on either side,” Byrne. “The letter was found on one of the shelves.”
It makes some simple, very specific requests: read more…
Although we love walking through the canyons of trees for sale on New York City streets, we haven’t been able to wrap our heads around buying and decorating a Christmas tree. Lately, we’ve seen a number of festive alt-Christmas trees made with inexpensive string Christmas lights: right up our last-minute alley. We can tack them to the wall, or spiral them around a modernist lamp, improvising a bit of treelike, sparkly magic. A ladder works curiously well as a form… read more…
We already so burnt out from holiday stuff, blogging, renovating, life, that this piece by guest blogger Sarah M came just in the nick of time:
As a chronically overcommitted, over-scheduled multi-tasker, I regularly push myself to max capacity. Working long hours, offering up my time for others’ projects, sacrificing sleep for productivity, and running home only to leave again five minutes later have become common practice. I can see the flaws in this system, but it’s helpful to have a reminder, which makes a recent piece by Tony Schwartz in 99% extremely valuable.
The big takeaway is that doing more doesn’t necessarily mean we’re getting more done. He uses the example of two people who both work 10 hour days: one barely leaves his desk all day and one works 90 minutes at a time, taking brief breaks to renew his energy. By the afternoon, the constant worker’s capacity to get anything done has so diminished that he is actually LESS productive than his colleague who works less time. The more productive of the two works in pulses rather than constantly, maintaining his capacity and focus throughout the day.read more…
With the holidays soon upon us, I thought I’d post one of my very best cookie recipes. Or perhaps I should say cookie dough recipes: in addition to being able to fashion it into all sorts of cookie shapes and flavors, it also makes a great bake-ahead tart crust. Fleur de Sel Cookies, Earl Grey Tea Cookies, Coffee Vanilla Bean Cookies, Shortbread Pastry Lids and Shells for Tarts, and Brown Sugar Lime Curd Tart are just a few of the creations it easily morphs into. Once you know the basic thinking behind it, you can improvise endlessly with it. read more…
We saw this image of a gift and thought “What a chic, minimalist gift-wrap”, and saved it to look at more closely later. When we did, we discovered it is actually an artwork called ‘set it free’ by maryanne casasanta.
It’s a photograph of a wrapped copy of ddddoomed, or, collectors & curators of the image – a brief future history of the image aggregator by r. gerald nelson. The image was published on tumblr for online distribution by artist, with this idea in mind: read more…
Keeping perspective during the holiday season’s flurry of buying can be difficult. While gift-giving is a lovely tradition, so many of us get caught up in the “keeping up with the Joneses”-style of shopping: buying the newest, neatest toy/appliance/Apple product to keep pace with our consumption-centric world. The shopping-cynic in us was thus delighted by “The 5 Best Toys of All Time” featured in Wired’s GeekDad column. They include:
a stick
cardboard box(s)
string
cardboard tubes
dirt
Both funny and true, full of examples of the amazing things you can make out of these simple elements, the piece reminds us that the holiday shopping frenzy isn’t actually necessary. While we’re not suggesting anyone fill a Christmas stocking with dirt (although it would make a mean mud pie), it doesn’t take a fancy new toy to give someone a meaningful gift. This is why we love to give presents people can make things with or use, like. Here’s a list of 12 favorites, swell given singly or in combination: read more…
(Video link here.) This video features the great natural history documentarian, Sir David Attenborough, reading lines from the Louis Armstrong song “What a Wonderful World” as stunning scenes from Attenborough’s documentaries fill the screen. While we watched, we were both delighted and a bit stymied. The video was both beautiful and perspective-broadening, while bordering on being precious and slightly manipulative. It was in fact made by the ad agency RKCR/Y&RH as a tribute to the aging Attenborough and a promo piece for his latest, and possibly last series, Frozen Planet. That explains alot.
As often happens, we held off on posting it until something came along to point it in an unexpected direction. We found it on the strange and beautiful blog Rolu, in a poem by James Broughton. If you mute the video’s corny soundtrack and keep the poem in mind as you watch, you get a WHOLE other experience…
We were charmed by this wondrous rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Sugar Plum Fairy on a glass harp – wine glasses filled with water. We were also amazed when went to GlassDuo’s website and learned:
“Many of those who see a set of wine glasses for the first time consider it most avant-garde to use it as a musical instrument. And it amazes them to learn that in the Far East glass instruments were already known in the Middle Ages…”
We wish our gift wrapping could do the boogie-woogie like this Gif Wrap by Fueled by Coffee. But barring that bit of magical brilliance, here’s our favorite strategies for impromptu gift wrapping. read more…
: right up our last-minute alley. We can tack them to the wall, or spiral them around a modernist lamp, improvising a bit of treelike, sparkly magic. A ladder works curiously well as a form… 
