Top10-Mar2023
- Radiant Plumbing & Air Conditioning Promo Films are the best damn not only plumbing and air conditioning company, but the best damn company there is right now. There are fewer things in this terribly short lives of ours that warm my cockles, as much as good, old, honest tradespeople creating their own promotional materials. I write that without a hint of irony or cynicism. There is nothing more honest than the act of creation without the inhibition that overeducated peers and long irrelevant artistic thinking brings. They just barge and create and bless them for it. This came from Alex Morris and STRATSCRAPS who asks, begs really, “I guess what I’m saying is… Can we stop trying to make thing perfect and more that’s just fun?” And that is the point. These videos are the shot of unadulterated, wholesome and unexpected joy you need in your life right now. “Toilet Dune.” Amazing. “Radiant, Unite” has easily the most enjoyable special effects I’ve seen in my life and yours. By the looks of it, these Austin, TX based plumbers have more fun at their work than 99.5% of people in the so called “creative” industries.
- Imagine a newsletter about strategy that was as funny as it was frenetic, well that is Alex Morris’s STRATSCRAPS which you will be subscribing to shortly. The only reason this is not number one is because, well, it doesn’t quite yet have the special effects Radiant Plumbing & Air Conditioning offers, but I’m sure he’s on it.
- Bab L Bluz “Nayda!” - North African (Moroccan largely) psychedelic blues swimming in groove that is unstoppable
- Chocolate every damn day. Just try.
- Hindenburg Research are a company that finds fraudulent companies and scams (of the Wall Street and Silicon Valley variety), shorts their stock and then guffaws in a deep baritone while counting the millions+ it makes. Afterwards, they publish their results. Nothing short of beautiful
- Al-Qasr “Who Are We” - Because I love you, I’m presenting not one, but two arabic language and folk music inspired psychedelic bands. Al-Qasr are definitely less dancer, but can get heavy on the fuzz for sure though.
- I can’t even express how much I’ve thought about this, but finally someone did it. Someone, and they’re of course Italian, finally came out with solar tiles that look nice and fit the local landscape and built environment.
- Neanderthals - It usually takes me a free museum day with the kids to think about other hominid species and this was the case a little while ago. We rarely think that it wasn’t just us that walked around on two legs and did human-like things way back when. Neanderthals made tools and even musical instruments. Oh and many of us have their DNA.
- Elvis (HBO) - For as long as I can remember, my view of Elvis was shaped by Public Enemy’s line “Elvis was a hero to most but he never meant shit to me…” but this terribly well put together film shines a light on his life in an extremely sympathetic way. Whether he was the “straight up racist that sucker was simple and plain,” or not is clearly called into question with scene after scene of him hanging out with loads of black people on purpose. So whether or not to do as Chuck D implores to “Motherfuck him and John Wayne,” or not, I might be on the fence now. But one thing is for damn sure which the film almost states, that he would not have gotten anywhere near as big as he did if he was black. Oh, and how the fuck he was The King and Little Richard wasn’t? So yeah, Chuck D maybe you were right.
- The Brewer Rewriting the Story of Beer in Iran - Intriguing journey through a solo, Persian-American, woman brewer in New York trying to recreate the beers her family made in Iran. The most fascinating bit is not just the using spices and flavours from Iran (and the region I suspect) but that she did it for her grandmother.