This Week's Favourite Things! Monday January 9th - Sunday January 15th, 2017

1.  Every live music venue managing to stay open these days, and their owners, staff, musicians and landlords.  Here's a cbc article about some iconic venues that have shut recently including The Railway Club in Vancouver and The Carleton in Halifax.  RIP and thanks for the good times.  The comments on the article are interesting too, as it seems there are a lot of other economic factors keeping people home.

2.  Louis CK "Oh My God" (2013) at the Celebrity Theatre in Phoenix

3.  Cilantro stalks.  Up until last week I'd always spend a lot of time picking leaves off the stalks, but realized the stalks are good blended into smoothies and salad dressing.  Not sure if the stalks have as many health benefits as the leaves but is way less work.

4. A couple of visual artists, and their websites: Eli Halpin and Jennifer Lommers stumbled across while finally looking into what wayfair.ca is - it's some big online decor retailer.  But what is interesting is the artists who have apparently decided to embrace the internet and all these different platforms of getting their art out there, such as Society 6 and other companies that do prints on canvas.  Not that many people can afford a $4,000 painting so I find the whole concept of replicating 2D art this way interesting as a way to make art more affordable and accessible while supporting the artists.

5. Pottery.  I was thinking this week about how long pottery can last, and the answer is 10s of thousands of years potentially.  Eg, here's the wiki page for Venus of Dolni Vestonice, one of the oldest pottery figures dated to 29,000 - 25,000 BCE.   That's a long time! and more reason to try to make better stuff.   

6.  Bing Crosby's Song of Freedom (link to a youtube recording) from the movie Holiday Inn.  

7. Stephen Fearing's 'Between the Hurricanes' album especially "As the Crow Flies" and "These Golden Days"

8.  This article about January's Wolf Moon and Awolnation's album Run

9.  Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers youtube clips, Swing Time and Bouncing the Blues

10.  A couple of trippy Higher Self youtube videos:  12 Methods to Unplug from the Matrix, and Your Soul's Journey, A Message From Your Spirit Guides.