Elvis + Helvetica? Hellsvetica yes! October 4, 2009
Posted by Olivia McDowell in Blogging, Cinema, Earworms, Etcetera, FFFFOUND!, Helvetica, Pretty!, The Ether, Typography, Videorama.Tags: Elvis, FFFFOUND!, Helvetica, Helvistica, Music, Rockabilly, Typography, youtube
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Firstly: Elvis + Helvetica = brilliant.
{by Hulk4598 on flickr, via FFFFOUND!}
This girl approves.
Now, for a bit of waffle. (Err… waffle).
Note Exhibit A, above. Young Elvis* all dolled up for the film Roustabout, in too-neat leathers with too-tidy hair . Movie tagline: “Elvis Presley as a Roving, Restless, Reckless, ROUSTABOUT”. [Insert sceptical looks here].
But also note Exhibit B:
{also by Hulk4598 on flickr, via FFFFOUND!}
Young Elvis in a rather naff suit, with an acoustic guitar that he never really played much, and a messed-up coiff that looks like he’s just come off stage after this:
(Skip to 1:00 and press play. Watch to the end. DO IT. Honestly. Just trust me on this, okay? You won’t regret it.)
Now isn’t it ironic that despite the extra “L” in Exhibit A ["Hell for leather[s]“, anyone?] Elvis was actually at the peak of his corrupting deviance not as a “Roving, Restless, Reckless, ROUSTABOUT”, but as a cheeky, messy-haired rockabilly boy?
Clearly, the 1950s were hella good for the Rebellious Youth, in music and typography.
*[as opposed to Old Elvis: let's just not go there, okay?]
PS. Much as I appreciate the sentiment, I’m not such a fan of Helvekitty.
PPS. Whatever happened to Elvis movies on Sunday afternoon TV? Oh well, at least we’ve still got:
Spot the Dustpocalypse: Life on Mars/Earth September 26, 2009
Posted by Olivia McDowell in Art, Cinema, Earworms, Etcetera, Pretty!, The News, Videorama.Tags: David Bowie, Dust, Dust Storm, Dustpocalypse, Earth, Life on Mars, Mars, Meteorology, Sydney, Total Recall, Weather
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Spot the difference:
{ Sunrise on Mars, via NASA }
{ View from my ferry (7.20am, Saturday 24.09.09), Circular Quay, Sydney, Earth }
Sydney saw the Dustpocalypse twice this week: two epic dust storms sweeping eastward from the inland deserts. The first on Wednesday morning, came with full-force opaque orange skies, visibility nil, and undertones of other-worldly terror.
Tom Coates’ Red Dust photo gallery says it best:
{ I adore the deathly reflection }
The second — this fine Saturday morning — resulted in a greyer shade of haze, and that uncannily Martian ice-blue sunrise.
Both eventually cleared to reveal clearer-than-clear bright Springtime afternoons.
Now how on Earth (or Mars) can anyone who lives on this planet honestly say that the weather is just a topic for idle small talk?
Playing in my Head
Movies: Total Recall
{ via giflix }
Music: Life on Mars, David Bowie.
Playing favourites with pretty words August 14, 2009
Posted by Olivia McDowell in Cinema, Pretty!, Words.Tags: Ambrosial, Amrit Vela, Anvaya, Equanimity, Etymology, Magnanimity, Nebuchadnezzar, OED, Sangfroid, The Matrix, Veuve Clicquot
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Winter holidays long gone, I’ve been rather busy studying relatively bland legal verbiage… which is what I ought to be doing now …which would make this the perfect time to wax lyrical about some new personal favourites in the ‘beautiful’ end of the linguistic spectrum!
1. Ambrosial
Huh? Immortal, divine, celestial, ethereal. Belonging to or worthy of the gods. Also suggestive of golden deliciousness.
As in? As in the amrit vela: “the ambrosial hours just before dawn” (when yogis and the sun rise in unison).
Why? Because it both means and sounds what it is: divine.
2. Equanimity
Huh? The quality of having an even mind. Resilience. Evenness of temper. Being undisturbed by emotion, elation or depression. Contrary to popular belief this DOES NOT equate to apathy or a dispassionate disregard for the vicissitudes of life. I’m pretty sure that one CAN be both equanimous and ecstatic, or equanimous and outraged: it’s the capacity to return to even kilter that matters. Far easier said than done, of course (the sea of life is tempestuous and full of serpents).
As in? Anvaya: looking equally upon friends and enemies; enjoying the fair and taking no umbrage at the unfair… and magnanimity*, which, according to Democritus, “consists of enduring tactlessness with mildness”. Nicely said, old man.
Why? For such a relatively small word, equanimity ripples with polysyllabic prettiness. And I’ve been looking for the right word to define “excitably tranquil” for quite some time.
See also: Sangfroid…
3. Sangfroid
Huh? Yeah, okay. it’s pretty much the same as equanimity. What can I say? I really like the whole concept.
As in? See above.
Why? Because it sounds so Frenchy-pretty (as most Franglais does). And although when translated literally from the French, it means “cold blood”, I like to think that the “cold” is in this context more like “cool” – and it never hurts to have a chilled, chic outlook on life, the universe and everything. And speaking of chilled-and-chic…
4. Nebuchadnezzar
Huh? An extremely large wine bottle,especially for champagne, equivalent in volume to twenty standard bottles, or 15-16 litres. Used primarily for the novelty factor, and rather large parties.
As in? Well, Veuve:
(The big one. via Whisk Hampers ).
Why? I find it gleefully ironic that all the really ridiculously large wine bottles are named after biblical royalty. And let us not forget, The Neb’ was Morpheus’s ship in The Matrix **.
{ via comingsoon }
* Itself, a charming word.
** Let’s just keep it to the first one, shall we?
Definitely related posts:
- New Year, New Words
- OED WOTD: 2 out of 3 ain’t bad
- Lawks! More silvery ‘new’ words
- Patent/Patently/Patent Leather…
“Refridgerators”, “pidgeons”, “burried”, and The French Band. July 17, 2009
Posted by Olivia McDowell in Art, Cinema, Design, Earworms, Laughing, Pretty!, Spellcheck, The Ether, Videorama.Tags: Air, Art, Craigslist, Mike Mills, Music, Open Salon, Pidgeon, Playground Love, Refridgerator, The French Band, The Virgin Suicides, typos
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Firstly…
Read (v.)>> Good luck selling that “refridgerator”
A brilliant (and very astute) rant from Verbal Remedy (“The She-Lord Of Perpetual Nattering”) on her Open Salon blog Verbs and Spices (once upon a snark) about the relationship between spelling and selling.*
Reminds me of something I once posted about back in the day: Good luck finding that “pidgeon”.
And also, of something I haven’t posted about, but keep meaning to:
I can forgive a typo like this. I kind of like the idea of one Mike Mills being too “burried” in romantic sentiment to spell it correctly… And yes, it’s mainly because, as I just discovered, HE DID THE COVER ARTWORK FOR ALL THOSE INCREDIBLE ‘AIR’ ALBUMS!
My gosh, how I adored (and still do adore) this album and its cover art:
In fact, I wholeheartedly believe we should all listen to it now, and “burry” ourselves in romantic sentiment. So very Virgin Suicides.
* Brilliant name, by the by.
Hitler freaks out over Comic Sans MS April 19, 2009
Posted by Olivia McDowell in Cinema, Laughing, The Ether, Typography, Videorama.Tags: Black Books, Brilliantology, Comic Sans, Hitler, Monty Python, Typography, youtube
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“THIS IS RIDICULOUS! Comic Sans MS does not make me look friendly or cool! It doesn’t look professional at all! Churchill must be making jokes already! What will you do next? Republish Mein Kampf in Comic Sans MS? You are the worst marketing team I’ve ever worked with!
There is tons [sic] of great fonts to work with and you chose the worst!… You even used it to subtitle this f***ing YouTube video! What will our enemies think? That will [sic] invade them riding Teddy Bears?”
{ by DesignerDaily, via Brilliantology (which is a brilliant blog, and which I think you need to RSS as soon as possible, if not sooner) }
PS. Yes, I am aware that this could be deemed mildly offensive. But then, the most humourous things often are. So just remember how much you laughed at Monty PythonThe Life of Brian, FTW) and Black Books (especially The Grapes of Wrath, where Bernard and Manny kill THE POPE with inferior wine)… and chillax.
DEFINITELY RELATED POSTS: Paperlust survives the Typocalypse
Helmer (n.)? December 21, 2008
Posted by Olivia McDowell in Cinema, Democracy, Grammar Attack, Ire, Spellcheck, Words.Tags: Captain, Director, Etymology, Film, Helmer, Helmsman, Johnny Depp, Pirates of the Caribbean, Tim Burton
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In my mind, ‘helm‘ is a noun: most basically, the steering wheel of a ship. Hence, to take the helm. The person who does so is “at the helm”, and is called a helmsman (or helmsperson, blah blah blah). This applies literally, when talking about ships (avast!), and also idiomatically, with regard to controlling the direction of something tangible (like a car) or abstract (like a strategy).
But then I saw this:
Apparently the person at the helm is not a helmsman/person, but a helmer. A HELMER? Helmer: Noun. No, really? Considering that this was the Greater Union cinema timetable, I was willing to accept it as a grammatical anomaly unless a reliable second opinion could prove otherwise, so I turned to the most reliable second opinion in existence: the OED. And I was shocked:
Apparently, helmer IS a noun, and a specific one at that: a person who directs a film (etc). But note also, that it is only colloquial, and only in the United States, and the first recorded appearance was only 1974 (to me, half a century at the very least is a good indicator of a well-entrenched word) AND it’s still only a draft entry.
So I say ‘helmer’ is a dumb, made-up, superfluous word. Who says ‘helmer’ anyway? No-one. Because there is no need to.
A movie director is a movie director:
{ Tim Burton via OvationTV }
And a person at the helm can just be called a helmsman/person… er, or a Captain…
{ Captain Jack Sparrow via imdb }
‘Nuff said*, at least on my part.
NB. No honestly, I was inspired by the terribly worded movie timetable. The Tim Burton/Johnny Depp joint appearance came later, and as a complete fluke, which I can attribute partly to coincidence, and partly to a penchant for my favourite director and his favourite leading man.
* Not surprisingly, the phrase ’nuff said’ originated not with Stan Lee, nor with Frank ‘Nuff Said’ Catton in Ocean’s Thirteen, but on the stage of a 19th-century theatre. See true/interesting etymology about halfway down this article.
Riddle me this…* December 8, 2008
Posted by Olivia McDowell in Cinema, Dialogue, Etcetera, Laughing.Tags: Agar Agar, BankWest, Batman Forever, The Economy
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Q: Why has BankWest suddenly abandoned its premises in Agar House, 457 Railway Street, Chatswood?
A: Because it was unable to maintain the liquidity of its customers’ funds (they kept setting to a satisfyingly firm, gelatinous consistency).
* “Riddle me this, riddle me that: Who’s afraid of the big, bad bat?” — Jim Carrey as The Riddler in Batman Forever (1995). [Click here to listen - via The MovieWavsPage]. I’m honestly impressed that this overwhelmingly underwhelming, mid-90s film managed to produce such a ubiquitous popular idiom.
James Bond: Licensed to specify typeface November 9, 2008
Posted by Olivia McDowell in Cinema, Laughing, Typography.Tags: For Your Eyes Only, Ian Fleming, James Bond, Quantum of Solace, Typeface
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{ image via Salon }
“M opened the pad, tamped the rubber stamp on it and then carefully, so that it was properly aligned with the top right hand corner of the docket, pressed it down on the grey cover…He turned the docket round and pushed it gently across the desk to Bond.
The red sanserif letters, still damp, said:
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY.”
— For Your Eyes Only published in Quantum of Solace: The Complete James Bond Short Stories, by Ian Fleming (who clearly enjoyed writing finicky details like this).
First published at tumblr Proof (v.)
Loves: Cinema, OED October 10, 2008
Posted by Olivia McDowell in Cinema, Pretty!, Words.Tags: Cinema, OED
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Cinephile (n.)
© Oxford English Dictionary Online.
Subscriber: University of Technology, Sydney (Yay!)
First published at tumblr Proof (v.)
The art of product placement October 10, 2008
Posted by Olivia McDowell in Art, Cinema, Democracy, Design, Etcetera, Pretty!, The Ether.Tags: Cinephile, Iron Man, Kill Bill, NotCot, Ocean's Eleven, Polls, Product Placement, The Bourne Trilogy, The Dark Knight, The Matrix Trilogy
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Movie posters with brand integration
by Antrepo Design Industry via NotCot.org.
See also: Iron Man/The Matrix Trilogy and Kill Bill Vol 1/The Bourne Ultimatum.
Any eagle-eyed cinephile will spot subliminal (and not-so-subliminal) product placements.
But how is it that design companies can then turn this into art?
It’s just viral advertising, right?
Just canny advertising folk insulting our intelligence, n’est-ce pas?
First published at tumblr Proof (v.)
