Author: Don

1941-2014

Lorenzo Albaceate and friend

Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete, a colleague of my father’s years ago on Triumph magazine, passed away this week. Lorenzo was an interesting guy, charming, intelligent, funny and a pleasure to talk with and be around. He lead an interesting life. Trained as a physicist, he was ordained a priest and obtained a doctorate in theology. One of his friends was a certain Karol Wojtyla, better known these days as Pope John Paul II. He wrote for a surprising range of publications, such as The New Yorker and The New York Times, and often appeared on television, once debating Christopher Hitchens. He was deeply involved with the Communion and Liberation lay ecclesial movement.

I snapped the above picture when Lorenzo visited Wichita not quite ten years ago.

Arriving at Harmony Row

I early acquired the habit of listening to music from the bottom up. A tune with an energetic bass line is far more likely to catch my attention than one in which the bass merely marks chord changes. I took to Cream immediately, partly because of Clapton and Baker, but mainly because of bassist, singer and songwriter Jack Bruce. There are many musicians whose bass playing I’ve enjoyed, but Bruce has always been my favorite.

Jack Bruce passed away today. R.I.P.

Here’s Bruce with Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton:

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Hooks, blurs and frogs

Recently I’ve been going through my older pictures, taken back in the age of film, and putting some of the better ones on my Flickr page. Here are a few recent examples. Click to embiggenify.

Mammillaria pennispinosa

Transplanting the seedlings of Mammillaria pennispinosa into individual pots requires an unusual technique. With the hooked spines embedded in your left thumb and index finger, hold the plant in position as you fill the pot with the potting soil with your right hand. Using a pair of embroidery scissors, free the plant from your fingers by snipping off the tips of the spines. Then extract the hooks from your fingers.

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Seeing red

“Is She U.N. Owen?” is probably the best-known piece of music from the vast Touhou Project, ((except possibly for “Bad Apple“)) and you can find innumerable versions in every style, from orchestral to nightcore, on YouTube. I stumbled across the one above recently while looking for something else.

Another version of the tune, impressive yet ridiculous.

Incidentally, “U.N. Owen” is not “Death Waltz.” This is “Death Waltz:”

Release the penguins

Update: Yet another version of “U.N. Owen,” this one by Floating Cloud.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=VpNvGNRlFaE

Kiss kiss attack

Pupipo

Pixy invoked Haibane Renmei in his post on PuPiPo. Pete also was impressed. I’ve watched the series of fifteen four-minute episodes twice now, and I’ll probably watch it again. I’m not going to discuss it in any detail; it suffices to note that it is funny and poignant, and that there are indeed parallels with the tale of the charcoal feathers. Instead, here are some screencaps.

Wakaba

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Sword and twintails

Tails

There might be several shows worth watching this fall, after several seasons of slim pickings.

Madan no Ou to Vanadis

The protagonist of Madan no Ou to Vanadis is an archer and honorable noble from a minor province in a corrupt kingdom. He is captured on the battlefield by a “war maiden,” who dislikes boring battles, and who doesn’t wear armor, or much else. It’s too soon to tell where the story is going; my guess is that Tigre will have to choose between his homeland in the decadent kingdom of Brune, and the apparently more healthy kingdom of Zhcted where the bright and comely war maiden lives. The series is written and directed by Tatsuo Sato, the man man responsible for Shingu and Mouretsu Pirates, two of my favorite shows. It looks a bit boobalicious for my taste, but I expect that Sato will tell a good story. There are screencaps below the fold.

Aside: Repeat after me: Critics. Are. Idiots. Exclamation point. For example, here’s what the jackasses at ANN wrote about Vanadis.

Amagi Brilliant Park could very well be the first Kyoto Animation series I watch all the way through since Suzumiya Haruhi I. The protagonist, an abrasive, narcissistic former child actor, is drafted, at gunpoint, to reform a decrepit amusement park lest the fairies who live there lose their homes. Although Seiya is an unpleasant character as the story begins, the writer is careful not to make him repulsive, and the fairies are not the cloyingly sweet sort that bore children and nauseate adults. Two episodes in, it looks like it will be at least good.

In Ore, Twintail ni Narimasu, a high school boy with a fascination for girls with paired ponytails becomes a warrior in a powered suit with twintails himself. It’s as silly as it sounds. It might be fun, as long as it doesn’t turn stupid and the writers quit with all the double-entendres. There are screen caps below the fold.

Gugure! Kokkuri-san

Gugure! Kokkuri-san is the oddest show I’ve seen in quite some time. A little girl who lives alone declares that she is a doll. She summons a fox spirit with a Japanese variant of a ouija board, and Kokkuri, the fox, decides to haunt her, i.e., be her guardian. Sometimes Kohina, the girl/doll, is drawn as a human, sometimes as a doll. I think it’s intended to be a cutesy comedy, but it’s a rather unsettling one. Probably during the course of the series Kohina will gradually become more human while acquiring other supernatural friends, but there’s a danger that the show could lurch into something like the final episode of Bottle Fairy. There are screencaps below the fold.

Update: Gugure! Kokkuri-san is off my watch list and is not recommended.

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Pity they’re not real

Extreme botany

If those were actual inflorescences of Amorphophallus titanum and Rafflesia arnoldii, Seiya and Isuzu would be treated to the gentle aromas of dimethyl trisulfide, dimethyl disulfide, trimethylamine, isovaleric acid, benzyl alcohol, phenol, indole and other distinctively fragrant molecules.

It’s just possible that Amagi Brilliant Park is that rare thing, a KyoAni show worth watching.

A courteous invitation

So modest