It's only a paper moon

Sorry about the light posting. Going from practically zero exercise to walking for three hours on the beach every day left me pretty tired. But because I want you to find something new here, try these paper lanterns.

Which reminds me I had a gorgeous view of the triangulation between the moon and two planets the other night. Forget which planets they were but It was the Venus/Moon/Jupiter conjunction and the clouds let up just as they were rising. The stars are so bright at the beach without the street lights of the city. [More lanterns at this link]

Beer bottle orchestra

I love this so much. I'm told this is big in the Midwest - Peacherine Rag




If you can't see the embed, try the direct link.

RIP Dr. Warmflash

Sad to see my childhood dentist died. Long time friends will remember how much I loved Dr. Tom, my dentist in lovely downtown Noho, but that's nothing compared to how much I loved Dr. Warmflash as a kid. I actually looked forward to going in to see him.

Not that I ever loved getting fillings, but he was so gentle and soothing. And as I recall they used the laughing gas for us really young ones while you being drilled so that helped. You got to pick a little prize from the treasure box at the end of the visit and I loved the Highlights magazine for kids in the waiting room.

Looking at the comment page attached to the obituary, I see I'm not the only one with fond memories of the good dentist. He had a loyal patient base that reached across several generations. A lot of people who saw as kids in the 50s. I even recognized one of the names.

Great loss to the profession. Aren't that many really great dentists in the world. Rest in peace.

Good clean fun

I have a little collection of foreign soaps and matchboxes from my travels. The matchboxes are actually even better but I liked this little photo gallery of European soaps. Here's one. I have someting similar to this one from Belize.

More soap here and scroll down to the bottom of his page where there's a cute little moving graphic called "feed the fish." Usually hate moving graphics, but this one is a fun interactive and more mesmerizing than annoying.

Salty fog

I'm all mellow from a wild afternoon on the beach. Got there, the sun was shining. Stopped to hang out with this gigantic freaking heron who wasn't afraid of people. Ten minutes later, a fog rolled in. Within two minutes you couldn't see ten feet in any direction. Stayed for three hours anyway. It alternated between fog and sun the whole time.

The shelling isn't so great here, but the beach is long, the people on it are interesting and the birds are all really friendly. Had some intimate encounters with the sand pipers and a flock of frigate birds swooped me in formation. That was really cool.

Fog burned off for the last time just at at sunset. So that was cool. Also, too, I cut my hair this morning, and it was the perfect cut for this environment. Which is pretty much 100% humidity. At the end of the day it looked great. So there's that.

Jurassic botanical gardens

This just astounds me. Look at this flower:

MOSCOW — It was an Ice Age squirrel's treasure chamber, a burrow containing fruit and seeds that had been stuck in the Siberian permafrost for more than 30,000 years. From the fruit tissues, a team of Russian scientists managed to resurrect an entire plant in a pioneering experiment that paves the way for the revival of other species.

The Silene stenophylla is the oldest plant ever to be regenerated, the researchers said, and it is fertile, producing white flowers and viable seeds.

To be clear, they extracted the material from a fossil. As in a piece of stone. Amazing.

Photo credit and full story here.

Crying with pride and joy

I forgot to watch The Voice last night but thanks to the wonders of the internets, I could watch a woman I've literally known since she was a baby win a spot on Blake's team on the computer. She even had two choices, and she turned down Cee Lo. Which I think was wise. I didn't like the way he was looking at her. Blake was much more sincere about admiring her talent more than her beauty.

Can't embed it, but click here to watch Naia Kete nail that performance. Of course, music in her genes. That's her mom in the video at the end, an old friend of mine from the Happy Valley, who's also a tremendous musician and pretty sure the tall guy with the dreads is her baby brother, also a talented performer.

I haven't seen any of them in well over ten years but still feel as proud of Kete as if she was my own family. I was so happy for her, I really did cry watching the vid.

Meanwhile, I haven't had a real vacation in at least five years and I found an affordable beach I like. So I spent three hours walking on the sand to collect a handful of shells. My hair is all fluffy from the salt air. Going to spend a few days here before the hotel rates go up. Feeling tired, but happy and peaceful. [photo viawith bonus video]

Surgically removed

These are so incredible, I wanted to post every single photo. I wish I had the kind of talent that could create like this:

Using knives, tweezers and surgical tools, Brian Dettmer carves one page at a time. Nothing inside the out-of-date encyclopedias, medical journals, illustration books, or dictionaries is relocated or implanted, only removed.

See the rest of his art here.

Fart jokes

Boys seem to love fart jokes. Me, I'm not so keen on them but have to admit I found these Japanese fart scrolls kind of amusing. It was hard to chose which one to feature.

Lots more here. Worth clicking over just for the one with the cat.

When it says Libbys on the label

If I had a dollar for every time someone sang that jingle to me when I was young, I could have retired by the time I was 30 years old. I was very glad when they retired it. Hadn't thought about it in years but then I ran across this site of vintage ads. This predated that jingle.

I think it predates all these ads too but it may be somewhere on that site. It's kind hard to navigate these live journal things. You have to view the archives through the sidebar and the tags. I actually arrived there following a link to vintage pin-up produce ads. But cool site if you have the time to fool around with it.

Pink Birds

If I was rich, I would live on Richard Branson's Necker Island, because this happens:

Apparently this is one of the few places flamingos breed, and they help them hatch the eggs.

White bird

Posting this one especially for my friend Michael who loves hummingbirds as much as I do. Always amazed by these sort of mutations in nature.

More photos here.

When your gravity fails

I was thinking about this song the other day. Really nice cover of an old Bob Dylan classic.



Meanwhile, still busy with real life stuff but nothing interesting enough to talk about.

RIP Whitney Houston

Music business is deadly. Fully three quarters of the friends I've lost in the last three years at too young an age have been musicians. RIP Whitney. Only 48 years old.

Bunny bath time

Sorry, all is well, just been busy with real life stuff. For now, here's your cute overload of the day. Compared to the rest of the photos, this guy looks like he's really enjoying it.

[More photos here]

Hey Mickey!

I've been to Disney World but this restored 1957 home movie of a Disneyland visit from the Disney History Institute reminds me I always wanted to go the original Disneyland in California. Love this video. Speaks of a more innocent age. And love the clothes. Notice that the women mostly all are wearing dresses. Back in those days, a lady didn't wear slacks in public.



[via]

Fireflies

I call them lightning bugs, but these time lapse photos of fireflies in the wild are incredible no matter what you call them. When I lived in lovely downtown Noho, there was a certain time of year when you could stand at the top of the big hill going down into the meadows and it looked very much like this, except they were blinking. It was like walking into a fairy tale.

More photos here

Happiness is a warm friend

Been busy with real world stuff so light posting. No big news but just ran across this cute overload.