The Show Must Go On...
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News
The north remembers...
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Animals strike curious poses
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Snow Business
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She Wolf in my Closet
Hiya!
How's things?
It's Flora's birthday today and this weekend saw us fire up the charabanc to the Loups de Chabrieres wolf park. Flora is obsessed with wolves, so it really was the perfect birthday treat....
We're off to see some wolves!
Clem finds a small goat that perfectly matches her coat.
A tired looking mummy goat having a rest.
Miniature Vietnamese pigs!
Just in case you forgot were in France, here is a sign explaining the sexual undercurrents in Red Riding Hood.
Flora getting indignant about the gift shop prices.
The birthday girl.
Interesting? - Links and recommendations
Home - If you are similar age to me (pre millennial, non digital native, remember rotary phones and keytars yada yada) you remember what absolute shite Saturday morning tie in cartoons could be. Mostly they were extended adverts for whatever crap Mattell was shilling. So when the girls started watching the cartoon of 'Home'. My expectations were low as the original Dreamworks film was pretty weak to start with. But blow me if it isn't great. Great big slices of surreal nonsense, where aliens coexist with humans in Chicago. My favourite scene so far is the secret nightclub where aliens go to dine on kitty litter!
The History of Food in One Hundred Recipes by William Sitwell
So, so readable. Sitwell charts the evolution of British cuisine and it's myriad influences, from the origins of Egyptian bread through to Tudor dining, right up to the 20th century obsession with French and Italian cuisine. I'm not one of those 'I keep cook books on my bedside' types by any means, but this kept me enthralled.
Lots of love,
Merrick
Random video edition
Hiya!
How's things?
I say 'random' but what I mean is a pick of videos, linked only by their retina melting amazingness.
Clara Rockmore plays 'The Swan' - Lev Theramin's lost love and the only virtuoso of this insanely tricky instrument, plays this beautiful duet.
Leadbelly 'Take This Hammer' - An excerpt from a video that has subsequently disappeared from the interweb. It featured three songs by the man himself and was some of the only footage of Leadbelly playing live. Shot in bewildering technicolor the whole thing comes across like Song of the South reshot as an episode of True Detective.
Proud Mary - Ike and Tina Turner - Horrendous tales of spousal abuse and Ike's dead, dead eyes aside this is an orgy of lights, soul, afros, and energy. This is the definition of kicking life in the dick. Beyonce... who???
Lots of love,
Merrick
New Year, no fear.
Hiya!
How's things?
Well a happy new year to you. After being buried in a deluge of year end round ups, (you know the sort of thing - '2016: The worst year that ever happened to all the people in the world ever') it would be easy to start the year on a downer. Yes, widespread idiocy and self interest had their way last year. Yes, vulgarity gained a lot of ground. But you know what? We're still here and we can still do something about it. So I prepose this motto for 2017:
'2017 - Let's not let the bad guys win'
Soft focus - 40's glamour realness
I set myself a bit of a project over Christmas. I have to confess I know very little about lighting, so I decided to push myself by researching 1940s studio portrait photography and try and replicate the techniques. This resulted in a rather Heath Robinson arrangement in the attic involving cables, wool blankets, and tin foil - so much tin foil!
Interesting? - Links
The Thirty Greatest Paris Review Covers - Pretty, retro stuff. Easy on the eyes.
Sainsbury's old own label packaging - This was the posh supermarket when I was growing up and their own label range was a fine example of popular, accessible minimalism.
House of David - It sounds like a fashion business but is in fact the bizarre tale of a fun loving, celibate commune in Michigan.
Lots of love,
Merrick
What Leonard Cohen Meant To Me...
What Leonard Cohen meant to me…
At some point when you realise you are not the alpha type (realise or decide, I can’t remember which - You say ‘tomato’, I say ‘socially imposed gender norms'). You realise you will probably never score the winning goal at the high school sport you are probably inept at. You will most likely never dole out bone crushing handshakes over million dollar deals in huge glass rooms at the top of huge glass towers. It’s shortly after this epiphany that you understand that as a non alpha type of man, role models are pretty thin on the ground. Doctor Who carried me through the first part of my life, ‘Timelord' still remains the only job I have ever wanted - Regularly saving the universe in idiosyncratic ways whilst wearing good overcoats is a delicious proposition, but wholly impractical one to a middle aged man with two children, a non robotic dog, and several mortgages.
As you get older male decent role models become even harder to come by. Most men become either curmudgeons or bores, the truly unlucky become both. Even our heroes are not spared this fate - the once vital rock star ends up as a self parodying nostalgia act. The bad boy novelist becomes a tedious reactionary grumping away in newspaper columns. If men worth emulating are like hen’s teeth. Men worth emulating in old age are like hen’s teeth to the power of needles in haystacks.
If anyone could show me how to age gracefully, with humility, humour and wisdom (All the while done with a knowledge of decent tailoring). It was Leonard Cohen. Great lyricists and poets do one of two things, they confirm something we know to be true or they tell us something that we wish to know, something that is just out of our grasp. Leonard Cohen could do both.
Leonard Links
Interview 2001 - Lovely little three parter from Stina Dabrowski from around the time Cohen came down from the Zen monastery at Mount Baldy. Clearly Mme Dabrowski has the major hots for him, but Len copes with all the awkwardness with epic good grace.
The Stranger Song - A mesmerising performance from British TV 1967. Alice, My mother in law and I all had a debate for ages - Is he is crying at the end?
If It Be Your Will - Anthony (him of The Johnson's fame) performed this at an Australian tribute concert. Beautifully arranged and performed cover of one of my absolute favourite songs.
Lots of love,
Merrick
Bedlam
Hiya!
How's things?
Thrilling! - Aggressive Amateur Woodworking
For the past week I have been all alone, muttering to myself and building hopefully what constitutes my daughter’s loft bed of her dreams. I am no skilled carpenter but I do have, to borrow the parlance of Cockney detective programmes, a bit of ‘previous' in this area with the Fred Flinstone bed, and I approached this problem in what seems to be the solution of every twenty first century problem - a bit of research, a Youtube video or two, a borrowed power tool et voila!
Bad Jack Fashion Traitor
I am not one to pick over old wounds, and I have covered in previous emails my supposed idiosyncratic style of dress. I also mentioned the stick I come in for from my two brothers for my clothes, their merciless teasing and taunting. That was cruel but I weathered it. So imagine my surprise when I discover my youngest brother, Jack sporting both a yellow rainmac and a Breton top - both staples of the Double Merrick wardrobe.
Galling to say the least.
Interesting? - Links
For Exposure - A Twitter account dedicated to exposing the all to frequent (and often hilarious) requests for creative professionals to work for free. Or for 'exposure' or some shit. As I once said to somebody who made a similar offer to me "My children don't eat exposure".
Masonic Temple - A subterranean Masonic temple has been discovered underneath the old library in Limoges (not that far from the Double Merrick studio). Spooky...
Atlanta - Bit of a surprise hit with me. I never really got Donald Glover's appeal, but he has turned out this thoughtful FX comedy. Set on the Atlanta streets, it enters on rapper Paperboy and his cousin, as they try to stay afloat and make it in the rap game. It veers between social commentary and wilful surrealism, but what really stayed with me is some of the lovely understated performances.
Lots of love,
Merrick
Back to Skool pt. 2
Howdy chums!
How's things?
Well, are you ready for round two of my summer catch up? Last time we had adventures in kidney infections and Framboise, the new DM dog. Buckle up for more news nuggets...
Celebratory! - I went to a wedding.
Swallowing my recent disgust/contempt I have for my post Brexit homeland. I travelled back to England to see my old chum Rowena get married to a very nice chap called Alex. It was a lovely sunny day in the quaint Sussex town of Lewes. Not normally a wedding person (I prefer funerals - At least you know the outcome), I was surprised by how much of a grand old time I had. There was some great entertainment, lots of interesting people to talk to, and the whole thing had that elusive relaxed feeling that so many people aim for, but hardly anyone manages to achieve.
Industrious! - I started a new cartoon.
Wanting to do something a bit more humour based, I started a little one panel cartoon called Near Future. It was partly inspired by spending a couple of days in the hipster spawning ground of Hackney and my love of how the future used to look. We don't have the future anymore. Instead we have swapped rocket ships for mobile phones that can call taxis, alien life forms for overpriced organic sour dough bread.
You can find it over on my instagram.
Interesting? - Links
Crazy Ex Girlfriend - Have been LOVING this. The perfect mix of self aware romcom and pithy musical. The story of a delusional lawyer's attempts to win back her first boyfriend. Featuring some snappy dialogue and hilarious songs like 'Heavy Boobs' and 'The Sexy Getting Ready Song'.
Online Theramin simulator - rinse the scuzz, up the delay, make some touch screen noise, motherlovers.
Nikola Đurić 'The Raven' - Went down a internet rabbit hole t'other night and discovered the world of Yugoslav Blackwave cinema from the 60s & 70s. Subversive and underground, some of it dull, other bits poetic.
Lots of love,
Merrick