Friday

Friday here already, and with it lame and boring weekend, pretty much all melancoly, and nostalgy. This starts with such a nice mood, can only get better.

With Art

Artwork by Natalie Shau. More of her work here.

Fanfare Ciocarlia

Speechless, my hands hurt for clapping so much and so hard. They played for 2h, they could have played 10h. Amazing.

Stroopwafel

Hi Stan, I told you I would make a post about food. And today is candy, stroopwafel. Lekker
Just remember to bring some if you ever visit, and Drop also, the salty ones :).

I've got the blues

Yes, it's one of those days. Weekend, no program for saturday night. Melancolic growing in me, go away, go away.

Dreaming

Retrato em branco e preto

Já conheço os passos dessa estrada
Sei que não vai dar em nada
Seus segredos sei de cor
Já conheço as pedras do caminho
E sei também que ali, sozinho,
Eu vou ficar, tanto pior
O que é que eu faço contra o encanto
Desse amor que eu nego tanto, evito tanto
E no entanto volta sempre a enfeitiçar
Com seus mesmos tristes velhos fatos
Que num álbum de retratos eu teimo em colecionar
Lá vou eu de novo como um tolo
Procurar o desconsolo
Que eu cansei de conhecer
Nossos dias tristes, noites claras
Versos, cartas, minha cara, ainda volto a lhe escrever
Pra lhe dizer que isto é pecado
Eu trago o peito tão marcado
De lembranças do passado e você sabe a razão
Vou colecionar mais um soneto
Outro retrato em branco e preto
A maltratar meu coração

A.C. Jobim/C. Buarque

Movie of the week - The Jacket

Sharing the same premises of such movies as The I Inside and The Butterfly Effect, in the psychological thriller/time travelling genre, it is still a movie that I actually watched without getting bored, which doesn't happen very often nowadays (in defence of all the other movies, they're not bad, not all at least, I just get bored easily, and prefer to go and play guitar or eve online). The fact that Adrien Brody is the main character is just the perfect cast choice, a performance in the same pitch as we saw in The Piano, and with such depth as Ralph Fiennes in Spider, he just leads you into his journey. I'll give it 7 out of 10 stars.

For The Stars

Eventho I rather prefer the live performance of the album, this is, like one critic said: "what pop singers would sound like if they could actually sing", some say this is a brilliant listening, while other claim Von Otter lacks the "soul" required to sing anything rather then opera. "This disk reeks soul; the soul of a beautiful voice singing gorgeous songs with perfect acompaniment; the souls of some of the best songwriters that ever lived; the soul of one of the greatest recording studio's on earth".

My comment is: this is the perfect way to start those mornings when it's cold and rainning outside, you have to get to work, but you're not that late, and you eat your breakfast listening to it. Yes, for this one you have to be in the mood, but is worth it. And winter is coming, any day now.

Autumn is here.

In the wee small hours of the morning
While the whole wide world is fast asleep
You lie awake and think about the girl
And never ever think of counting sheep

When your lonely heart has learned it’s lesson
You’d be hers if only she would call
In the wee small hours of the morning
That’s the time you miss her most of all

mann/hilliard

Hong Kong

Only one day here, on our way to and from Macau. Lovely city, hope I will go back to take a deeper look into it some day. At the time HK was already "one country, two systems", but Macau was still portuguese. Many stories on that trip :P

I want a Garden!

Skagen

I'm back for another post of my trips, this time to recall a nice little town on the top of Danmark, Skagen. This is the place where the Baltic Sea meets the North Sea, making those funny waves.
This is also the only time I have seen the northern lights, which is a beautifull scene, can't actually describe it. You got to be there, pictures just can't give you the feeling.

Another good thing about it is that it isn't only in Portugal that there are bad bar singers, yes, Sussi og Leo will probably be the funniest concert you can see there. Can't remember being in such a crowded bar, it was so crowded that in order to get drinks we actually give money to the guy next to us and ask whatever we wanted to drink, and he would pass it around till the bar and in a couple of minutes we would get our drinks and change same way, priceless.

Time for bed, again... next time I'll make a post about Hans Christian Andersen and Odense.

Religion - World biggest plague? on pair with the politics!

Walkin on a thin line here, I can see many people willing to "chase me with torchs and pointy sticks" and clear my head from such profanities. I'm not gona dwell into a philosophical point of view, I respect everyone's own opinions and beliefs, if they had formed one, but I won't and I will not give the high ground to someneone who says, "it just is", "my parents/priest/guru teached me that", "I was raised this way". A man that I really admire is Stephen Hawking and I kinda share his point of view which is: "if god exists the only thing he done was the big-bang".

I'm not a scholar on the subject, nor will I copy/paste a few facts to try and prove my theories, and I'm talking about this cos this week we had a small family gathering, an aunt came and visit, and, in the middle of chattering it always comes up youth social life, and the times I go to church (ye, right). I just nod and smile, not gona argue with someone that untill a few years thought the sun revolved around the earth, doesn't know that the cruzades were sponsored by the pope, that christianity only emerged as a big religion because christians oppressed other people against their will, and that the bible was just a gathering of texts that the council of nicea found more apropriate as a method to control the people, etc...

Well, at least their happy. Someone said ignorance is bliss, or happines. Can't remeber correctly, but I agree.

About a post in a friend's blog on the question about what is luxury. Well, luxury for me would be living in a place where bullshit only appeared on tv, oh and I'm prolly gona be called snob again, but one more, that everyone had the IQ higher then the room temperature.

Doing some browsing found some stuff that is so appaling that one eventually find it amusing. Can't verify the truthfull of the facts but I actually believe this one, America, land of the free speech.

And here's a few more links: Clambake, Nicea Council, auto de fé.

Just an add on: there were this discussions in a game chat the other day about an Italian Bishop that came on tv saying that condoms cause AIDS, and we were arguing about he was lying or not, and someone said he was not lying because he believed that to be true. Just think about it for a second.

Infernal Affairs (Wu jian dao)

One of the best movies I have seen in years, and probably the best in his genre. Magnificent acting, overwhelming story, you name it... just be sure you don't have the english dubbed version (the only one here on video rental stores).

Unfortunatelly, on the other side of the globe, instead of just releasing the movie to theaters, Martin Scorcese, with the prodution of Brad Pitt and Martin Sheen, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Di Caprio, Jack Nicholson on the cast are working on a Hollywood remake, already called "The Departed", it makes my heart hurt. It's like Hong Kong making a chinese remake of "Casablanca" with Chow Yun Fat as Rick.

"play it again Tong Pin" or "this is le begiling of a beautifull fliendship"

Oh, I'm just tired, me go to sleep now. wǎn ān

Sushi

Zaebos > my wife can cook! hehehe... she's 1/2 japanese
Zaebos > f/lunch... we had sushi!
Marie Sklodowska > that's not cooking
Marie Sklodowska > that's showing you she has skill with a large blade



source: http://omgrawr.net/

Sugestões

O new York Times escreveu: "Fanfare Ciocarlia is a band of speed demons, laughing its way across the bumpiest musical terrain.", denominada como «mais rápida banda de metais do mundo», esta Brass Band romena vai voltar a Portugal, e desta vez para 6 datas. E é assim, não sei onde, não sei quando, não sei como, nem com quem vou, mas EU VOU.

Uma outra nota, desta vez de mais interesse para guitarristas. O mestre (não o Hatori Hanzo) vai estar em Portugal em Novembro, é verdade, Steve Vai estará na casa da música no Porto e na Aula Magna em Lisboa.


"Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is THE BEST..."

Me

Who is the Central Scrutinizer :P

For those curious souls, here's a description:

Sometimes when you're not looking he just sneaks up on you. He looks like a cheap sort of flying saucer about five feet across with a snout-like megaphone apparatus in the front with two big eyes mounted like Appletons with miniature motorized frowning chrome eyebrows over them. Along the side of his disc-like body are several sets of stupid-looking headers and exhaust hoses which apparently propel him and punctuate his dialogue with horrible smelling smoke rings. In the middle of his head we can see an airport wind sock and constantly twirling anemometer. The bottom of him has a landing light and three spoked wheels. In spite of all this, it is obvious that the way he really gets around is by being dangled from place to place by a union guy with a dark green shirt up in the roof who is eating a sandwich (pieces of which drop off every once in a while and lodge themselves near the hole where they put the oil in that makes the cheap smoke).

He hovers into view and speaks to us thusly...

Central Scrutinizer:
This is the CENTRAL SCRUTINIZER...it is my responsibility to enforce all the laws that haven't been passed yet. It is also my responsibility to alert each and every one of you to the potential consequences of various ordinary everyday activities you might be performing which could eventually lead to *The Death Penalty* (or affect your parents' credit rating). Our criminal institutions are full of little creeps like you who do wrong things...and many of them were driven to these crimes by a horrible force called MUSIC!

Our studies have shown that this horrible force is so dangerous to society at large that laws are being drawn up at this very moment to stop it forever! Cruel and inhuman punishments are being carefully described in tiny paragraphs so they won't conflict with the Constitution (which, itself, is being modified in order to accommodate THE FUTURE).

Joe's Garage - Act 1 - 1979 - Frank Zappa

ps.- se alguém ainda tinha dúvidas sobre a minha sanidade mental já as deve ter dissipado, MUAHAHAHAHA.

Dancin' Fool

Don’t know much about dancin’
That’s why I got this song
One of my legs is shorter than the other
’n’ both my feet’s too long
’course now right along with ’em
I got no natural rhythm
But I go dancin’ every night
Hopin’ one day I might get it right
I’m a dancin’ fool, I’m a
Dancin’ fool
I hear that beat; I jump outa my seat,
But I can’t compete, ’cause I’m a
Dancin’ fool, I’m a
Dancin’ fool

The beat goes on ’n’ I’m so wrong
The beat goes on ’n’ I’m so wrong
The beat goes on ’n’ I’m so wrong

FZ

Århus

Miss Århus, waking in the morning and eating breakfast listening to Ibrahim Ferrer, Bruca Maringuá with the snow outside, taking a strawl in 'Den Gamle By', eating those delicious sandwiches in the Sidewalk Café, and above all her kys when I opened my eyes... Life was great.