Walk With Me

Cool Stuff

fingers walking on a beach among the seagulls

Peter Yikes, it’s been a long time since I posted—as Laura mentioned, it’s been kinda hectic around here, as some minor but multiple gigs came out of the woodwork just before the holidays.

We haven’t posted a neat commercial in a while, so let’s take a gander at this dandy from Australia (the director’s cut, anybody know the song?). Yeah, it turns out to be for a car company ad for another six-cylinder carbon dispenser, but it’s the whimsical journey that counts here. And this one is a gentle charmer.

Michael Spiccia’s (the director) site: click Film, then Ford for a small Flash version
Dekku.blogspot.com has big MPEG-4, QuickTime and Ogg versions
GoodOil Films (the producer’s site) has a big Flash version (click Michael Spiccia’s name)

Sita Sings the Blues

Cool Stuff

Laura The animation blog Cartoon Brew, for the better part of a year now has been singing the praises of Sita Sings the Blues, a full-length animated movie made single-handedly by indie comic artist Nina Paley. It depicts stories of love and betrayal between Prince Rama and his wife Sita from the Indian epic Ramayana, interwoven with the personal story of Paley’s long-distance breakup with her husband. Along the way there are three Indians doing a voice-over, Creature Comforts-style, debating the finer details of Sita’s story (was she or wasn’t she wearing jewellery when she was abducted?) These seemingly unrelated themes are woven together using 1920’s songs sung by jazz singer Annette Hanshaw. Apparently the movie works, and surprisingly well.

Here’s a trailer, featuring the voice-overs and lots of trippy artwork:

I say “apparently”, because this movie is in distribution limbo and is unable to be seen by anyone. The Annette Hanshaw performances are in the public domain; not so the actual songs. (It’s exactly the same silliness that keeps a song as old as “Happy Birthday”—written in 1893!—under copyright.) Paley (or the film’s distributors) would have to fork out almost a quarter of a million dollars to secure the rights to use these songs in her movie; an insurmountable amount for a tiny indie film during a recession.

Scene from Sita Sings the Blues

Enter the 500-lb gorilla, Roger Ebert, who published a lengthy rave about the movie on his blog. Ebert enjoyed it so much he invited Paley and her movie to appear at his personal film festival in April. (BTW, whether or not you like Ebert’s actual movie critiques, his blog articles are superb, and features the most interesting, civilized and well-written commentaries by readers I’ve ever read … this blog’s readers excepted! 🙂 )

Since the Ebert post, Nina Paley has revealed her distribution plan for Sita Sings the Blues. Basically she will place Sita in the public domain, by uploading the film on archive.org and various mirror sites, and calling them “promotional copies”. Promotional copies of a work are exempt from most song licence fees. Paley will not make any money directly from her movie. Instead, she hopes to earn money by “donations, commissions, grants, patrons, speaking fees”. Sounds an awful lot like the life of artists before the rise of the rights-owning mega-corporations.

February 15, 2009 Update

Cake Wrecks

Cool Stuff

Laura No, we haven’t fallen off the edge of the earth! Usually the client work drops off by early December; this year it picked up considerably. Such is the life of freelancers!

Here’s a fun website that I’ve been reading for a few months, to tide you over until we have something interesting in our lives to blog about: Cake Wrecks, which features disastrously-decorated cakes (done by so-called professional cake decorators, though admittedly a lot of them are of Safeway- or Walmart-caliber quality.)

The following cake wreck made me snort, though. (Both photos from Cake Wrecks.)

This is what the bride requested:

Braveheart-style wedding cake

What she ended up with:

What on earth is that?

RIP, H.M.

Reads

Laura One of the most important figures in the history of brain research—and to me, as a former student of brain and behaviour, one of the most tragic and moving—died earlier this week at the age of 82. Henry Gustav Molaison, better known in the psychological literature as H.M., had a brain operation at the age of 27 to try to alleviate intractable seizures (the result of an accident at the age of 9). The surgery—cutting into the part of the brain called the hippocampus—successfully stopped the seizures, but came with a horrifying side-effect: Molaison could no longer form any long-term memories.

His short-term memory—e.g. remembering a phone number for the length of time needed to dial it—was unaffected, and everything he learned prior to his operation was retained, so he could cope reasonably well with day-to-day existence. However, H.M. never remembered experiencing anything or going anywhere a few seconds after doing it. Even when researchers met with him hundreds of times it was always as if he was meeting them for the first time. Every time he was told of his mother’s death his grief was as fresh as if he’d never been told.

From H.M. it was discovered by Brenda Milner of McGill University, that even though one kind of long-term memory is affected by hippocampal damage, another type of memory is not. H.M. could learn complex and difficult motor tasks (e.g. tracing a star while looking through a mirror); even though he never remembered doing the task, he got noticeably better at it over time. This “muscle memory” is why doing things learned long ago, like playing a once much-practised piece of music, or riding a bicycle, can be performed surprisingly well years later.

After working with hundreds of researchers over the years, H.M. had a vague idea that his story was somehow unusual, but he never could parse the details of why. He did thoroughly learn that he had a bad memory. His only life-lasting memories were ones that predated his 1953 operation, and they eventually lost any narrative thread or context in his existence. He remarked that his life was like constantly waking from a dream.

After his death H.M.’s brain was preserved for study, which will hopefully provide researchers with even more insights from a tragic life.

Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno

Cool Stuff

Peter In case you hadn’t heard, the multi-talented Isabella Rossellini wrote, co-directed and starred in a series of short films for the Sundance Channel called Green Porno, about different animal mating habits.

Conceived for computers and mobile devices, the films ended up going on the film festival circuit. They weren’t available online to us Canadians for a while, but they are now and well worth watching for their blend of science and cartoony humour/melodrama.

(Personal favourite: Bees. Go you drones.)

Probably NSFW, depending on how stuck up your office is.

Our 20th Anniversary Dinner: Kaiseki Yu-Zen Hashimoto

Cool Stuff, Family Life

Laura Yep, it’s been 20 years, can you believe it? So to celebrate such a big date we decided to splurge on one of the best Japanese restaurants in the GTA.

For our 18th anniversary we went to another of the best: Sushi Kaji, and were very impressed. However, the only thing that Kaiseki Yu-Zen Hashimoto has in common with Kaji is that a) it’s Japanese and b) it’s located in the middle of nowhere (Kaji’s in a strip mall on the Queensway near Pearson Airport; Hashimoto’s in a Dixie Road strip mall near Pearson Airport.) Masaki Hashimoto’s restaurant is definitely not a sushi place. Kaiseki is a style of Japanese cooking—formed as an offshoot of the tea ceremony—where the presentation of the food is just as important as the food itself. (Explanation of Kaiseki from the restaurant’s website.) Each course is artistically laid out in exquisite place settings, inviting quiet observation and contemplation; the food itself emphasizes balance and tranquility, freshness and seasonality. Many of the ingredients are unavailable in Canada and are flown in from Japan (hence the proximity to the airport)—this is not a low-carbon-footprint meal by any means!

The restaurant is tiny and tasteful, with a ceiling whimsically decorated with stars, moon and fluffy clouds. It seats a maximum of eight and has to be reserved at least a week in advance so Chef Hashimoto can source and plan the dishes. The meal is prix fixe and served omakase style: chef’s choice. Service is paramount: As each course comes, the helpful waiter explains what it consists of and how it’s made, and even (if not obvious) how to eat it. At one point he even brought out the manifest for a Wagyu beef shipment and a page with the Wagyu graphic logo so we could check it over (which was interesting to graphic designers/food nerds like us, but might be a bit of information overload for some.) Photos of all the dishes are taken by the chef as a record of what was served; he makes a point of never serving a given patron the same thing twice.

A selection of a few of our eight courses (be assured that the others were just as good):
All photos by Chef Masaki Hashimoto

Sushi course
The sushi course: Thin slices of whitefish (the waiter didn’t know the English name, but it’s related to red snapper) with real wasabi (zingier than the imitation stuff you usually get, yet with subtle floral undertones); yuzu citrus in the dipping sauce. The deep-orange shreds at the left and the slice at the right are different treatments of Japanese carrot.

Meat course
The meat course: Two cubes of perfectly-cooked Wagyu beef, with daikon spiral, chestnut on root veggie (not sure what it was; it tasted a bit like a sweet potato), and salt and very pungent-yet-citrusy pepper in blue bowl. Gold lacquer bowl at back contains soft-cooked quail egg in a vinaigrette, with fish on top, surrounded by lotus leaves. Peter and I are not egg eaters generally, but this combination was surprising and sublime. The placemat below the plate can’t be seen well here, but was a copy of a vintage woodblock print of rabbits and frogs, which tickled our cartoonists’ hearts mightily.

Fried course
The fried course: Deep-fried shrimp head (salted, so the waiter made sure we knew not to dip it in sauce, unlike everything else on the platter); shrimp body halves, rolled in dyed rice crackers (note the tiny coloured balls), and deep-fried in delicate noodle cages tied with nori. At left is a crane carved out of daikon to be dipped in the carrot sauce at far left. Dismantling the crane to eat felt a bit like artistic vandalism! Under the ceramic plate is a wooden platter with a rectangular depression filled with pebbles—very Zen.

course
Dessert course: Two matcha-flavoured crà¨pes, whose green-tea bitterness is perfectly balanced by two grape-sized scoops of homemade ice-cream and drizzled with sweet red beans. Note the text on the banner on the decorative cage.

After the meal Chef Hashimoto came out and we talked for a few minutes. The chef and staff were genuinely interested in which dishes were our favourites, which is a bit akin to asking us to pick our favourite child!

If the meal wasn’t enough, the staff also presented us with a little present on occasion of our anniversary. Inside a simply-wrapped package was a charming octagonal origami box and lid, with a little flat disc of mild incense (to place in a book or keepsake) and a scroll of iridescent paper with a congratulatory message inside.

By this time I rather wished that I drank alcohol (and lots of it) so I could help their profit margins. This was exacerbated by the fact that Peter and I were the only clients that night. I imagine that this recession is doing a number on specialized restaurants like this. So we’re trying to get the word out that if you can swing the cost at all, go to Kaiseki Yu-Zen Hashimoto for an incredible experience.

Our little present!
A delightful finish to a wonderful evening!