Senses working overtime #577

1 This week: out standing in their field...

...while on cross country duty at school. Go Fraser!!

2 Listening: The Boys of Dungeon Lane - Paul McCartney

Macca's latest, released this weekend, is excellent in all ways. I recommend the vinyl over other formats: the packaging, the songs, the sound - it's gear fab!

Here's a taster: Down South is a simple love song to the past.

3 Reading: Bread of Angels - Patti Smith

After being distracted for a few weeks by reading Mojo/ Guardian Weeklies, I've returned to Patti's memoir. I'll need to return to her first chapters eventually. Currently reading about the making of Horses and it's superb!

4 Watching: The Long Promised Road - Directed by Brent Wilson (no relation)

Thanks to their 20% off sale, I picked this up from JB Hi Fi for less than $10!!

5 Celebrating: King's Birthday weekend in New Zealand

Still enjoying his recent speech to Congress.

Overtime: Mahatma Gandhi

We must become the change we want to see.

Senses working overtime #572

1 Back to the brick factory this week

2 Listening: The Shangri-Las - Past Present and Future: Golden Hits of The Shangri-Las

Leader of the Pack is a timeless classic of teenage turmoil and tragedy by the peerless Shangri-Las. The rest of the album is brilliant as well but nothing the melodrama of Leader of the Pack.

3 Reading: Patti Smith - Bread of Angels: A Memoir

4 Reading: Mojo Magazine #386

5 Watching: Person of Interest on Netflix

Interesting take on the vigilante/ do-gooder intervention type of story. According to one critic it is 'transformed from a "crime-fighting show" with an entertaining plot device into "one of the best science-fiction series ever broadcast" '. We're currently halfway through season 1.

Overtime: Mother Teresa

What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.

Senses working overtime 473

1 Autumn at Maple Grove

Jerry and Gracie, Maple Grove, June first, 2024.

2 Reading: Patti Smith - Devotion

3 Reading: Paulo Coelho - Maktub

Loving this book. 

This resonated this week: Everything always turns out well in the end. If things aren't going well, that's because you haven't yet reached the end.

4 Listening: Donovan - The Hurdy Gurdy Man

From 1968 and tinged with Rishikesh and Fabs dust. Jennifer Juniper sums up that heady mix well.

5 Watching: Bodkin

Overtime: Seth Godin

The third impossibility

The first was radio and television. Humans around the world spending a significant portion of their waking hours consuming audio and video recordings of other people.

The second was the internet. Five to ten hours a day interacting, in real time, with other people, many of them strangers.

And the third is AI. We’re about to spend almost all of our time interacting with software that appears to have an understanding of us and the world around us. All the time, in real time.

Senses working overtime #426

1 How I felt this week

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

2a Reading: Rock Roadie by James 'Tappy' Wright

2b Reading: Loud by Tana Douglas

A yin yang approach - a male and female version of being a roadie. Loud is much better written and much more interesting btw.

3 Watching: Tour de France Unchained (Netflix)

4 Listening: Jimi Hendrix Los Angeles Forum April 26 1969

After a four star review in Mojo, I bought a vinyl copy from JB hi Fi last week - it deserves to be played LOUD. It's a monster!

5 Reading/Listening: Patti Smith remembering Jim Morrison

Overtime:  

Love Comes Quietly Love comes quietly, finally, drops about me, on me, in the old ways. What did I know thinking myself able to go alone all the way. Robert Creeley (1960)

Senses working overtime #404

1 The Wife Of Bath

2 Why comedy films don't make it to the box office these days

3 RIP Tom Verlaine

Patti Smith: On Saturday at 2:39 in the morning we lost Tom Verlaine. Words cannot express my sorrow for the loss nor the joy for having known him. All who loved his music may wish to play his records. I am offering Break it Up. It’s the song that Tom and I composed for Horses in 1975. The lyrics reflect a dream I had of the death and imagined resurrection of Jim Morrison. Tom’s uniquely beautiful and expressive guitar work can be heard throughout.

4 Stephen King's 20 rules for writers

5 The power of a walk

Overtime: Writer Lauren Elkin on the joys of walking:

"Walking is mapping with your feet. It helps you piece a city together, connecting up neighborhoods that might otherwise have remained discrete entities, different planets bound to each other, sustained yet remote. I like seeing how in fact they blend into one another, I like noticing the boundaries between them. Walking helps me feel at home. There's a small pleasure in seeing how well I’ve come to know the city through my wanderings on foot, crossing through different neighborhoods of the city, some I used to know quite well, others I may not have seen in a while, like getting reacquainted with someone I once met at a party."

Senses working overtime #242

1 God save the Queen

The freshest opening of parliament once again had the Queen as the star on show.

2 Poetry corner

Wish Please one more kiss in the kitchen before we turn the lights off W.S. Merwin (2016)

3 Christmas spirit anyone?

Try these adverts from UK giants!

4 Christmas music?

Vox has that covered too!

5 Year Of The Monkey

I've just finished this latest piece of writing from Patti Smith. I'll need to re-read this one - loads going on!

Overtime: Leadership lessons from Santa

Ho ho ho for another year!