Rare TV Title Sequences

Posted By Mark on May 11, 2014

This is quite a find: half an hour of vintage title sequences to television programmes I’d mostly never heard of. And I’d guess you probably haven’t either. But it’s a wonderful feast for the eyes and ears. Found via A Sound...

Scarfolk

Posted By Mark on May 11, 2014

During a browse through my RSS feeds I happened upon an image which was funny enough that I considered sharing it. However, I do like to try to hunt down the sources of things like this when I can so I performed a Google Images search and managed to trace its origin to Scarfolk Council, describing itself as: a town in North West England that did not progress beyond 1979. Instead, the entire decade of the 1970s loops ad infinitum. Here in Scarfolk, pagan rituals blend seamlessly with science; hauntology is a compulsory subject at school, and everyone must be in bed by 8pm because they are perpetually running a slight fever. It goes without saying that the site is fantastic, featuring great inventiveness and humour tied into a period in history with which I’m most fond. It also reminds me that I too used to make an effort, using Photoshop to concoct things mostly for my own amusement. These days I just don’t seem to find the time. I should try to rectify that. Here are a handful of highlights from Scarfolk’s website. The Laybird book of the rapture image I initially found and traced back to here. A warning about bringing giant toys to life that might just be construed as slightly racist. But it does include a little snippet of advice for UKIP: When racism was finally exposed as being detrimental to society, it was blamed on foreigners. That’s Scarfolk Council and it’s now been added to my RSS, liked on Facebook, and followed on...

Moisturise

Posted By Mark on May 11, 2014

Trouble At The Sunday Assembly

Posted By Mark on May 11, 2014

I never was a fan of the idea of The Sunday Assembly, an attempt to provide a non-religious alternative to church modelled very closely on church itself. It’s a bit like vegetarian burgers or sausages; why pretend to be something you’re not? Don’t look like a burger if you’re not a burger. Be your own foul-tasting thing. Have you thought about soya-based dodecahedrons? And it isn’t just the churchiness of the non-church that I don’t like. It’s the high profile, the publicity, the franchising of it as an organisation that smells bad to me. It smells like a business. Do the people attending see themselves as part of a community or as customers? Because I’ve got a sneaking suspicion they’re the latter no matter what they think. I help to run Portsmouth Skeptics in the Pub and the SitP network functions differently. It’s more autonomous, not run from a central point or by a single person, has groups that grow and fade naturally, run by people who want to hear interesting talks and have interesting discussions with no aim to make a profit or form new groups or anything else really. Think of Skeptics in the Pub groups as terrorist cells, independent from one another but able to call on other cells for help, localised, inflicting education and intelligence on victims once a month in the company of alcohol. Think of Sunday Assembly groups as Subway stores, lovely to have around when you’re hungry but you’ve got to remember that their ultimate goal isn’t actually feeding you but increasing the bottom line in a ledger somewhere and finding new markets in which to invest. To reiterate: I’m not a fan of The Sunday Assembly. However, until recently I mostly ignored it as an entity. Just this week, though, I’ve read two interesting articles talking about the organisation. The first article was by Simon Clare – a fellow SitP organiser, running Horsham’s terrorist cell group – who explained why he had left the Sunday Assembly after ten services for Brighton’s franchise. There were developments at “Sunday Assembly Towers” (as the London team call themselves) that I felt that I could not announce to our congregation for fear of losing them. The moment that someone decides to hold back information from their congregation for fear they might disapprove or walk away, is the moment SA ceases to be a wholly positive movement. I love the idea of reclaiming the positive aspects of traditional churches for humanity, but those in charge of the Central SA group have lost sight of this aim, allowing SA to succumb to the same flaws that twisted...

Musicians In Movies Triple

Posted By Mark on May 10, 2014

A trio of videos showing off musicians who have made the leap from the music industry to the film one. Of course, there are hundreds (probably more) of examples of this sort of thing occurring as the two industries are fairly incestuous but I’ve decided to select just three because that’s what I tend to do when sharing videos. The only criteria I’ve used in narrowing things down is that I must have seen the film and liked it. Tom Waits – Mystery Men A mostly overlooked hero of the band of unlikely heroes making up the Mystery Men is Tom Waits as Doc Heller in this cut scene from the movie. I’m not that familiar with Tom’s music but his track What’s He Building In There? is one of my favourites. Iggy Pop – Cry Baby One of my most favourite films by one of most favourite directors John Waters, Cry Baby here featuring Iggy Pop naked and washing his private parts in a bath tub. What’s not to like about that? Tricky – The Fifth Element A short clip from the always enjoyable Fifth Element and English musician Tricky portraying a bad guy. An English person portraying a bad guy? What will the movie industry think of...