Finds: Waffle Towels, Reincarnated as a Vacuum, lost Ghana highlife, Quebecois folk

Chess mindset, dance mindset. Solomon Burke, Cry to Me. The way she drags her foot across the floor. Guy Ritchie’s Man from UNCLE; a movie with stronger visual craft than narrative craft. 

A Useful Ghost. Plot: a dead wife is reincarnated in the form of a vacuum to protect her living husband to protect him from dust. Haven’t seen it, but it’s on my list. 

De Frank Kakra. Infectious syncopation. A musician from Ghana, trained as a percussionist, very little is known about his life, but this reissue label is on it. 

Serge in Dub. Gainsbourg made a reggae album? 

Heart like a wheel. The last 30 seconds; specifically, 2:30, when the song expands into a choral panorama. It’s the feeling of emerging from a tunnel and entering a large, well-lit cathedral. Loudon and Kate would make a good biopic. 

“What emerged is a city of extraordinary productive capacity that has almost no memory of itself.” A description of Shenzen, Will Manidis on social media. 

Reading: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. A classic of the genre, I am told. Tone is hard boiled noir, plot seems to be uniquely British. Perhaps the lineage of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? Much has written about this book but there was one section that stood out for me. The main character, the spy Leamas, describes the art of deception. He explains that being undercover is like an expression of the self, more amplified, exaggerated, but grounded in something that is true about his persona. Espionage and going undercover, in some ways, resembles the artist and the act of creative expression. 

Watching: Pets on a Train, a french Pixar-style animation about a runaway train. A family friendly homage to Speed, Die Hard, Unstoppable, the movie has some clever visual sequences, including a shoot-out scene involving Pez dispensers. As a sub-plot, there’s a meta message about media sensationalism and social media abuses. An interesting message for this audience. 

Waffle towels are far superior to standard American towels. More surface area = faster drying of body, material design = faster drying of towel. Far more efficient and pleasant. This style appears to be popular in Sweden and Japan. Where did we go wrong? 

Pro: the soft foil wrapping on butter. Con: dry toothpaste in the corner of the mouth.