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Best Of The Capitol Masters: 90th Birthday Edition by Les Paul & Mary Ford
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"Again, this song is totally inspiring from a production point of view. It’s hard to choose just one song from Les Paul and Mary Ford, but this stood out. It’s a great song, despite not being a Les Paul and Mary Ford original. When people think of Les Paul they tend to think of the guitar the Gibson Les Paul, but Les Paul basically invented multi-track recording and a lot of recording techniques that so many of us use today. The stuff that he did on ‘How High The Moon’ and anything from the early ‘50s is just so, so far ahead of its time. It’s all guitar, even the drums are just him tapping his guitar and not in a cheesy, Newton Faulkner kind of way, it’s serious musicality. He was basically recording in hotel rooms, using bathrooms as echo chambers and the like. The arrangement on this track is crazy. It is a bit silly, a lot of the stuff sounds silly because it’s all plinky-plonk, all very high-pitched, mandolin-like guitars, but you’ve got to remember this was in the ‘50s. It makes Rock ‘n’ Roll, which was often just three chords, sound very unimaginative. This kind of track was jazz chords and guitar orchestra, basically. I’ve definitely robbed some of Les Paul’s techniques over the last few years. On the new record there’s some sped-up guitar, half-time drums and things like that, where you basically slow down the tape and create a whole different instrument almost. If you haven’t seen [the Les Paul documentary] Chasing Sound, I highly recommend it. It’s about how he invented the first electric guitar, using a telephone microphone and putting it on a bit of old railway track, putting and stretching a string across it and amplifying it. That was literally the birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll."

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Ace Ventura - When Nature Calls (1995)
Ace Ventura - When Nature Calls (1995)
1995 | Comedy

"All right. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’ll pick something completely weird and ridiculous for the very reason that I just said, and that would be Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, specifically for the scene in which Jim Carrey births himself from the anus of a fake rhino, because it is one of the single most genius pieces of comedic writing that will never be given its due because it’s part of a ridiculous, vaguely racist, silly comedy. The setup for that whole sequence is incredible from the point you see him. He’s inside this rhino, which he’s using as a sort of eavesdropping device, and it’s so meticulously done. There’s a fan inside because it’s hot. The fan breaks, so he has to undress. All to get to this point where he literally squeezes his way out of the behind of this rhino in front of a family of tourists who just effectively see a rhino giving birth to a screaming, naked human being. The industry involved in setting that joke up, the way that it just creeps up on you, like you’ll think, “Oh, it’s funny because he’s inside a rhino. It’s funny because it’s hot. It’s funny because he’s taking off his underwear.” And then suddenly, you realize, “Oh, wait a minute, this was a long game they were playing here. This is a buildup.” And it snuck up on you. And suddenly he starts to, as only he can, emerge from the back of this rhino, and then this family pulls up, and it’s just brilliant. I think that sequence should be celebrated in no uncertain terms because it is just a genius piece of comedy executed with the extraordinary aplomb that that man is capable of displaying."

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The idea of the book is fantastic, six sisters named after a constellation all adopted. None of them know where they came from, and when their father dies he gives each of them a clue - the coordinates of somewhere from their past and a quote written in Greek that should mean something to each of them.

This book follows the eldest sister Maia and her journey to find out who she is and where she came from. Her journey takes her to Brazil where she finds out who her real family are. A lot of the book focuses on her maternal great grandmother, her marriage and Christ the Redeemer being constructed. I found it quite disappointing that most of the book seemed to focus on her story and not Maia’s story, and that the part about Maia’s birth mother was quite rushed. The story about her great grandmother, Izabela, was interesting but could have been condensed quite a lot and didn’t need to be as long as it was.

I also found the writing quite clunky and it didn’t flow correctly in some parts, a bit like it had been translated from a different language and incorrectly.

It was fascinating learning about the construction of Christ the Redeemer and about Rio as it has always been on my bucket list of places to travel, but I felt that the book didn’t need to be quite as long as it was.

I am torn about whether I want to read on the rest of the books in the series, as I want to know what happens to the sisters and there are still some unanswered questions, but I don’t know if I could continue if the writing style doesn’t flow correctly still.