Category: positive thoughts

Mog’s Christmas Calamity

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Just as readers in the UK (and there are several, or more) may not have been aware of Zebra & Giraffe’s new single, which I shared yesterday, so readers in SA (yes, I haz them too) might miss the Sainsbury’s Xmas ad if I don’t share it on here. So, here we go:

Aww. What a wonderful story. And what a lucky cat.

The John Lewis Man on the Moon ad which I shared last week has come in for a lot of criticism via the social media mob (see how zeitgeist I am?), namely because it set out to highlight the plight of elderly people who might be lonely at Christmas time, but it didn’t come for free. In fact, apparently allegedly, it cost £7 million to make: cue angry people telling us that the money would have been better donated to charities helping elderly people to be less lonely this Christmas. And maybe it would, but that’s not how it works. That’s not how any of this works. That money belongs to John Lewis, and – maybe you need to take a seat before I reveal this next fact, folks – they can do whatever the fuck they like with it. It’s not their responsibility to make sure that old people aren’t lonely this Christmas. It’s not specifically anyone’s responsibility, (which is basically the root of the whole problem). But people in glass houses etc: What were you doing about it before the mildly creepy Man on the Moon made you realise that some elderly people might be lonely this Christmas? What are you doing about it now?

Hmm. Exactly.

I now await, with some anticipation, those same individuals going after Sainsbury’s, whining that they could have spent their advertising budget on buying smoke alarms for apparently otherwise fairly well-off households in middle England. Or that the Ad Wizard should have saved his travel budget and not rented that casino, instead providing a Slovenian dancing girl and a bottle of budget brandy to everyone in Struisbaai, or some equally random SA village. (Obviously, while I disagree with the reasoning behind this argument, I’d actually love to see the results were it actually to be done) (as opposed to the smoke alarm thing, which would be dull.)

Whatever. I tire of this constant requirement to find fault with anything and everything.

Why can’t we just enjoy these ads for what they are: Mog’s Christmas Calamity for being a wholly implausible but eventually rather endearing story of community spirit at Christmas time, and Man on the Moon for being a rather dodgy looking, apparently undead pensioner spying on a young girl with a hugely powerful optical device?

It’s All The Same

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Except that it actually isn’t. Because this here single marks an entirely new direction for Zebra & Giraffe, and it’s actually rather nice.

The new EP Slow Motion is semi-available now.

Many familiar places in this endearing, yet ultimately rather sad, railway-based video.
And some important lessons, too. Never open the book. The book is full of bad secrets you don’t want or need to know. You will only end up disappointed. And back drinking cheap red wine in a soulless bar in Beaufort West.

We’ve all been there.
(Through the heartbreak and upset of broken promises and lost love, I mean, not Beaufort West.)

Edit: Oh, apparently it was some soulless bar in Matjiesfontein. My bad. Still: It’s All The Same.

Cape Town Clouds Make Sky News

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Sky News. Clouds. SKY News… Geddit?
*sigh*

But yes, the Sky News website finally caught up with Cape Town’s spectacular lenticular cloud formations of Sunday afternoon, and told the world about them.

Fullscreen capture 2015-11-10 015651 PM.bmp

The story quotes photographer Kyle Mijlof as saying:

“I was on my scooter at the time, driving along Signal Hill back home to Camps Bay, I stopped to get this quick shot – I still had my helmet on.”

From which we can deduce that Kyle lives in Camps Bay, rides a scooter and usually takes his helmet off when taking photos. Also, we can tell that he isn’t a vegan and he doesn’t do crossfit, or he surely would have told us by now.
He continues:

“Honestly, the whole skyline that day was unbelievable and a bit of an eerie stillness in the air.”

Well, it wasn’t windy, which is a bit unusual for this time of year. But “eerie”? No. That’s a bit of a stretch.

Still, it’s just nice for Cape Town to get some positive (or at least not negative) coverage on the international news circuit.

Man On The Moon

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SUSPEND YOUR SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE, for the 2015 John Lewis Christmas ad is here and while being a whole lot less full of penguins than last year, there are a few awkward stretches of reality that you’re going to have ignore if you’re going to fully enjoy this year’s effort.

Music is Oasis’ Half The World Away, covered by Norwegian artist Aurora (Aksenes), who will be singing at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert next month, along with some other Norwegian band.

And the advert is lovely and inclusive, sending out the right messages for the holiday period. Because, it’s always nice for a strange, lonely, probably harmless, but nevertheless ever-so-slightly creepy, old man to be able to stare directly into a young girl’s home, isn’t it? Especially at Christmas.
I wonder if her parents know about this?

She is, however, clearly a scientific genius. NASA need to sign her up right now.
Rigging up a telescope that size to be able to achieve that sort of resolution is something no optical physicist in history has yet managed. And yet she’s… what? 10 years old?, and is working out of the living room of a house in suburbia while being distracted by her brother’s XBox antics. Incredible. In. Credible. No, I mean literally, not credible.
And her package delivery system of twelve apparently ordinary helium balloons to get that telescope in a shoebox to him? That’s akin to the Rosetta Comet team landing on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. If this analogy is to be continued, she will come down to breakfast on Boxing Day wearing a dodgy shirt, and everyone will hate her and forget her altruism and seemingly impossible lunar transport system of the previous evening, and how she made an old man who can apparently survive without oxygen, very happy.

How did he get up there, anyway? What’s he been eating? Where did the wood come from to build his house and that bench? Why hasn’t an earth based astronomer noted his presence? Why does he look vaguely like a cross between a Galapagos tortoise and Doc Brown out of Back To The Future? So many questions…

And then, if we’re going to be properly pedantic (and hey, who’s going to stop us?), then “Half The World Away” would amount to a distance of 3,185.5km. That’s not even 1% of the distance to the Moon. Each party involved is going to be sadly disappointed by that sort of meagre effort, although I suppose Mr Green Cheese wouldn’t even know about it.

Look, it’s nice, it’s touching, but it’s wholly scientifically invalid and completely implausible. What are our kids going to learn from this?

I, for one, will not be shopping at John Lewis this Xmas.

UPDATE: The Guardian: Who is Moon Hitler?
The Independent (spoiler: it’s not): The John Lewis Christmas advert and the Commodification of Loneliness.

I Love You

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I really do. But quite aside from that, here’s the hauntingly beautiful Quintet Version (2 violins, a viola, a cello and a double bass) (and a piano, but apparently we’re not counting that) of Woodkid’s track I Love You, which you may recognise from this ad.

Wow. Just wow.

Woodkid’s album, The Golden Age is next on my shopping list. I’ve had a wander through his youtube channel and there’s some remarkable stuff there. Most of his songs seem to be around 4 minutes long. However, this colab with Max Richter is more than double that. No surprises there, though.