The Red Frog Blog

People may call us a crunchy, liberal folk, but my heart leapt with pride to be an Ithacan at the annual Earth Day celebration at the Ithaca Farmers’ Market this Sunday.  It’s not what you might expect.  Sure, there’s the bellydancing vegans, the solar powered folk band performance, and the ubiquitous drum circle (all admittedly a bit granola), but you’ll also find some of coolest people you’ll have a chance to meet doing some pretty awesome things!  Like Marlo of Garden Gate Delivery who was doing a blind milk taste test (Evan’s non-homogenized milk vs. Wegman’s organic milk) Benj and Julie of Dovetail Builders who were showing off all of the beautiful, sustainable carpentry work they do, or Jennifer Dotson, the brain behind Ithaca CarShare, who was taking her very first enrollments!  Not to mention all the cool stuff I learned about the composting with worms, humanure, the Locavore project, compact fluorescents, etc.  And to top it all off, I had the pleasure of witnessing the 4-H rubber ducky race down Fall Creek on my way down to the event.  Nothing like seeing kids jumping into the creek after those little yellow guys and seeing real ducks get very, very confused by a swarm of rubber ones.  There’s no place like Ithaca.

So I’ve been keeping my eye (and ears) on Portishead’s new upcoming album for a while now, and I’m beyond excited. Giddy, would be the best word to describe it.

All Things Considered had a super interview with Geoff and Adrian (and amazing clips from the album) over the weekend. It was so fascinating while I was driving home that when I finally got home, I stayed in the car to listen to the whole thing.

Last night I was all over YouTube looking for clips from last weekend’s Coachella, which would have been pretty nice to attend. I found a lot of other stuff, and Casey chatted Prince’s version of “Creep” over to me this morning, which was in my opinion, alright.

But the new Portishead album is already giving me the chills. I don’t care if it sounds completely new, or if it is re-hashing the same old (which, doesn’t seem to be the case). Sadly, their only US show this year happened on Saturday, but who knows, maybe they’ll hit Roseland again sometime. Get that video if you are even remotely familiar with them. I still have my VHS copy from 8 years ago. Yeah, they’re that good.

The end of our work week just got a whole lot bettah.

5 gold stars if anyone can name all the visible albums right thurr in my iTunes. Ok, and you’ll get a copy of the Jetsetter album.

In case you haven’t gotten it already, here, at Ancient Wisdom, we tend to like music, a lot actually, and at least one of us is especially talented.

Part of our musical inclination leads us to discover the wide variety of music new and old out there. I like to call it our musical education. And I have learned about way more music in the past few months than at any other time in my life. Keeping our musical selection lively in our office keeps our office going, for sure.

The best is when you discover a new song that you just can’t stop listening to. This doesn’t happen every day. Tyler acquired this great song on iTunes for free no less, “Time to Pretend” by MGMT, found on Oracular Spectacular. Read the rest of this entry »

Just saw a great documentary that I thought I’d review (in an attempt to win Tyler’s “blog today!” contest). It’s called “My Kid Could Paint That“, and it’s about a 4-year old girl named Marla from Binghamton, New York who has an amazing ability to create beautifully mature abstract paintings. A quick summary from NetFlix (my main source for DVDs):

Amir Bar-Lev directs this thought-provoking documentary about a precocious 4-year-old artist whose abstract works have drawn critical comparisons with modernist greats such as Kandinsky, Picasso and Pollack — and whose talents have already profited her more than $300,000. Is her gift with a paintbrush just an illusion, or is she truly an artistic visionary trapped in the body of a child?

Inspiration or manipulation??? I won’t reveal to you what happens because Amir does a wonderful job of telling the story as it unfolded… but let’s just say it’s not so pretty at the end. Amir gives a balanced take on the events and leaves you as the viewer to decide what really happened. And it’s the kind of movie that you just have to talk about immediately after watching it. Admittedly, I was also really intrigued because of the local proximity of the story.

So add this right to the top of your Queue, this is a must-see documentary!