Laser 3.14

I SAW this guy in Amsterdam, everywhere, back between 2004 and 2005. Came across him again researching artists to film in Amsterdam for a project. Some of his stuff is pretty pithy but some of it really strikes a chord.

Good to see Laser 3.14 is still kicking.

The Leaderboard

It seems like a long time ago now I tried online dating with Guardian Soulmates. For those not familiar with GS, there is a leaderboard of sorts that guarantees boosted exposure, self-esteem and, one presumes, dates. Lots of dates with lots of attractive people pulled from the cream of the gene pool (does that phrase work..). They call the leaderboard 'Popular profiles' and there are 20 girls and 20 guys.

Back when I tried out GS, I told myself I would pay for no more than one months' membership- roughly equivalent to what I could piss away down the pub one night getting drunk and not quite scratching together the courage to go up to a girl who caught the eye. A month of casual flirting and dates sounded like a good return in place of one night down the pub. Most of all lots of dates excited me, with people totally unaffiliated to anyone I know.

Early on, I realised the leaderboard was the answer. If I could just get myself in amongst the popular profiles, it would all happen. It's based on the number of people who have added you as a favourite- if more people like you and make you a favourite then you get on the popular profiles list.

Now, I thought I'd give myself a helping hand, of sorts, and devised a strategy to get on the leaderboard. I'm not going to divulge the details of my strategy, but suffice to say it was pretty shameful stuff. Could be seen as shameful, maybe. But, you know, all's fair in love and all that and it's nice not to be on the receiving end of that aphorism, or any love-aphorism, for a change.

The strategy didn't work. It didn't exactly backfire, but it was a close-run thing. I didn't get on the leaderboard.

Imagine, then, imagine my incandescent envy when my housemate tells me she's signed up to Guardian Soulmates and she's on the popular profiles list. Number 17. JUst waltzed on, no strategy, no nothing. To make matters worse, she ran through all of the top 20 guys and told me me which of them had got in touch with her. 'That one...that one...that one and that one...' A good quarter to a third of them. Proof that if you get on the leaderboard, the cream of the gene pool comes knocking (..now that phrase definitely doesn't work). Hmpph.

More like a clatter than a pop

Insomnia

I haven't been sleeping well. It hasn't been the best start to the year. Actually, to articulate it properly, it's been a shit start to the year. I don't think that's to blame though. Maybe partly.

I don't usually have a problem with sleep. Sleep is a good, good friend to me. One of my oldest friends, in fact. I hit the sack, lights out. Straight out. I can eat a tonne before I climb into bed, I can drink coffee late at night, I can exercise and get to sleep easily. I sleep well before big days, interviews, etcetera... So not much idea why sleep has rolled over and turned her back to me.

It's not such a problem really, it's just the getting to sleep. Usually that's my forte. I don't even have time to register pillow:cheek before everything sinks away, usually. Lately I can't. I get to the very brink of sleep and something pulls me back, gently and not altogether unpleasantly, were it not for the fact that I know I'll be tossing and turning before I do finally get to sleep. It's not like I need too much sleep for my current day-to-day, so it's not a bother, more a weird inconvenience.

Coincidentally, I've been researching folk remedies and naturopathic treatment for insomnia at work. Onions work, apparently. Cut up some onion, stuff it in a glass and breathe deeply from the glass before you go to bed. Who would have thought. Grass too- take a walk barefoot on grass before you go to bed. People swear by this. Long-term insomniacs- not like me.

When I did finally get to sleep last night, I dreamt I was riding a London bus on the top deck. Then the flooring disappeared, along with the chassis and the driver and the other passengers- pretty much the entire bus- and I was a long, long way up, kind of floating along the path the absent-bus was taking. Lots of people below milling around like there was a carnival going on. No vertiginous complaints, no fear, no idea where I was going. All I could think of was How on earth am I going to reach all the way down to push the button for my stop (wherever it is).

Appendix to Friday 10th December 2010

- Appendix to 4th January 2011

Cars 3 - Bike 0

Top 5

This time of year, everyone has a top 5 or a top 10 or some kind of round-up, so I thought I'd get in on the act. I've been researching weird things for Japanese TV for over a year now. Recently a broadcaster we contact often suggested I try adding the word 'wacky' to any searches in their online archives for finding topics we'd been charged with digging up. That's the kind of research work I do.

At the beginning, I tried to note down what I was researching with the intention of writing about them all here. Soon enough, I realised it would be pretty much every topic we research. The list grew longer and longer until it was entirely unwieldy. Top 5 makes sense.

In no particular order:

- Jim Le Fevre



This man is a hero. Jim Le Fevre uses record players and revolutions per minute to make smart animations. He dubs his creation the Phonotrope (formerly the Phonographantasmascope), itself modelled on a Zoetrope.

His website is packed with wonderful things too.


- Cat Gets Stuck in Window



From the wildly imaginative and inspirational, to the wacky, the most lowly of low-brow entertainment available (that no one else in Japan has broadcast yet). That's how my job rolls.

Pretty funny though.


- And one giant mirror



Viganella: a small town in Northern Italy with no sunlight for three months every year, due to it's location nestled at the bottom of a valley. The mayor instals one giant mirror to rectify this.

The Japanese featured in the trailer had nothing to do with us and I don't think the people in Japan we were working for even used the footage in the end. Didn't stop me burning a copy of the entire documentary to take home and watch (it's office policy - eurgh what a phrase!- to burn copies of everything that comes in anyway).

The array of characters is the most compelling thing in the documentary. The guy playing a caisa (the instrument you can hear at the beginning) plays all kinds of instruments throughout but never utters a word. There's a brooding, quiet type who lives at the top of the hill near where they instal the mirror. And the mayor is delightful and gregarious and determined throughout. I love how he gets nearly blown backwards by the helicopter down-thrust, as he tries to take pictures with a pocket camera of the mirror dangling. Landscape then portrait, then back to landscape.

- Solar Impulse



A solar plane that can fly at night.

I spoke with the PR who was lovely but who told me there was no footage of the plane flying. They hadn't got it off the ground yet. Two months later it hits the national press with the maiden flight. Now it seems it's flown at night too.

- World's Deepest Bin



I love this.