Tagged: video
Bike Hero #3 Mark Cavendish returns.
Well now, who would have believed it.
The post race interview says so much. Mark Cavendish is lost for words after his 31st win at the Tour de France.
The legend lives on.
And two days later Tour de France stage win #32 is chalked up. Again the break away is foiled and the sprinters battle out the finish. The man in green wins with apparent ease.
It looks like he is in love with cycling again and his smile says that all is well with the World.
This is a rider who is still winning stages of the World’s greatest 3 week cycle race at the age of 36. This is unprecedented. This simply should not be happening.
The next hurdle to over come is the Alps. Mountain stages just need to be completed within certain time limits, if he gives up or does not get to the finish line his Tour is over. With the help of his team mates he survives.
Back on the flat Cavendish is in his element. Stage 10 is a textbook finish. His team mates work together and go flat out to deliver the man in green almost to the finish line. Cavendish does the rest, making it look so easy. Win #33 is reached – just one away from the all time record.
This is getting tougher – but there is no stopping the Manx Missile. A hot day in the South of France is where he draws level with Eddy Merckx.
Chapeau!
12 months ago
A year ago I was recovering in a neurosurgical ward with strict orders to stay calm and relaxed, avoiding unnecessary stress at all costs.
Doing so would keep my systolic blood pressure as low as possible and minimise any post op-complications. Without being overdramatic about it, there was a risk of internal bleeding, which could cause a stroke or worse.
So what happens?
Donald Trump gets elected as President of the USA on that very same day,
I can laugh at it now and enjoy the irony of it all, but at the time it was not helpful to put it mildly.
Doug Stanhope made me laugh about the same time when I watched his take on Nationalism back on the ward and now this reminds of that stay in hospital rather than the Trump election.
Laughter always helps and heals.
Chicken – Egg?
Tame Impala? “Never heard of them” you may say. Well I was in the same boat for a long while.
What came first, the song or the video in terms of entering my own consciousness?
Hard to tell really. But I saw this initially on Vimeo and loved the video first and foremost. It is a surfing video that happens to use the track as its theme tune. The whole package did not encourage me to surf, but it did make me look up the band involved.
It is not quite the same as hearing yet another Groove Armada track on a car tv advert. You know the song already, so the advert is not really important. In fact it is verging upon the annoying after a while.
So which came first the video or the sound track?
Who cares in this case? Loving it all.
Classic one liners……7
Dennis Skinner was at it yet again today. Unfortunately the State Opening of Parliament clashes with Day 2 of the Royal Ascot Race meeting and it is no secret as to where the Queen would rather be. It is a perfect opportunity for Dennis to just do what he does best.
Even in what was a shortened ceremony Black Rod still came knocking on the door of the House of Commons to summon MPs through to the so called Upper Chamber in order to hear the Queen’s Speech. This is the way things work in our Parliamentary Democracy. The Queen sits in the House of Lords and tells someone to fetch the Commoners to hear what she has to say.
Not for the first time and hopefully not the last Dennis Skinner delivered yet another classic one liner.
Maybe we will not have to wait 2 years to hear the next one.
Even at the start of the clip you can see the thumbs up greeting from the MP for Bolsover to the man sent down from the Lords, so we could all see it coming.
Way of Ozu
Watching the Editor’s pick list on Vimeo makes you wonder about how much junk has to be watched by the staff in order to derive that list. However you do get rewarded with the occasional golden nugget. As in this case where my jaw dropped on seeing this for the first time. Spellbinding. And I ask myself how long did this film take to be made in itself?
I wish there was a record shop in town.
It is like the good old days. A musician plays his heart out at a gig and after had your socks knocked off by the live performance you wait in anticipation for the next album to come out. Then when you find out this record is to made in collaboration with another favourite combo then it is time to get really excited!
Time to buzz down to Raynors/Rival/Revolver and get your hands on a copy of the LP.
Well Elvis Costello has teamed up with The Roots to make his latest album.
He did his best to shake up the dullards who were stood waiting in their chosen spots to see The Stones be wheeled out later. It was said that Freddie Flintoff used to bowl a lot of ‘effort’ balls in his Test career. Well Glastonbury 2013 was one of Elvis Costello’s ‘effort’ gigs.
So he has now gone onto work with Philadelphia’s finest. It just is a download away to see how they got on.
Bikes – the man who lived on one.
Vimeo.com is a great source of interesting videos. The “staff pick” button is a great option as the best of the latest offerings on the site have been cherry picked for you.
THE MAN WHO LIVED ON HIS BIKE from Guillaume Blanchet on Vimeo.
Record Box – the ultimate
John Peel died nearly 7 years ago. It seems such a long time that has passed very quickly. I have a box of vinyl records that I have referred to a few times on this blog, but the ultimate record box has to be the one that belonged to John Peel.
I found this documentary about this ultimate record collection on youtube and it comes in 4 parts. The first part is here and if you are a music fan I think you will enjoy the programme.
Box of vinyl………(6)
Got the old box of 45’s out for a flick through.
A bold purple cover stood out; I had rediscovered a GothRock classic. The Cult – She Sells Sanctuary. In fact it gets a brief mention in a previous blog, but I think that it deserves more than an honourable mention.
The video was not that great, but I do remember it being on the video jukebox in the “Volley” on King Street. Video jukeboxes were all the rage back then after the dust had settled in the Betamax/VHS format war.
Goths were pseudo punks in the mid 80’s. The sort of mainstream Gothic rock singles that were out then on the video screens were things like this Cult track, Killing Joke – A Love like Blood and Billy Idol’s – White Wedding.
I did like a lot of that style of music. Robert Smith of the Cure was a clever bloke in my opinion who wrote some unique songs. Siouxsie and the Banshees were another band that I thought were pretty sound. I never bought a Cult album though, but the single here was good to bop about to.
So this landed in my singles collection.
Coming back to King Street, pubs and music videos a couple of personal favourites of mine back then that were also on the jukebox were The Ramones – Teenage Lobotomy and Van Halen’s – Hot for Teacher. They stick in the mind. I somehow still remember staring through the smokey fug at the tv screens to watch those two videos, whilst I nursed a beer in the upstairs bar The Ramones promo video was not as slickly produced as Michael Jackson’s Thriller, but was a load more scarier from memory. I cannot find the actual video from then on-line today. Maybe it got banned by the Health and Safety people.
The Van Halen video just appealed for base reasons I suppose. Watching it now makes everything seem so dated. I will not post it as it is degrading to women, all warm blooded males can Google it.
Next goal wins laaaaaaads! 