Coming In On His White "Horse"

Today is the twelfth day of Christmas.  So this is my last chance to lament Santa Claus's misuse of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.  But I will refrain.  Poor Rudolph has suffered enough already.  So have you, if you've read my posts on the subject.

Instead of Rudolph, I'm going to talk about a white horse.  If someone were to ride one through the most central part of a city, along its busiest streets, how would people react?

Perhaps they would stop and stare in misbelief the way residents of Bushwick, Brooklyn did when Tammy and I rode down Knickerbocker Avenue one summer Sunday afternoon some time around 2000.  That was a few years before the Williamsburg hipsters started to cross Flushing Avenue because they could no longer afford those Williamsburg apartments they helped to make unaffordable.

But I digress.  Karnchanit Poswat rode his white "horse" through a busy area of Bangkok, his home city.  




Before you watched the video, you had already figured out that the "horse" was really a bicycle made to look like an equine--because you're smart. (Why else would you read this blog?)  Mr. Poswat, who studied film and video in his home country of Thailand,  has also made performace art recordings as well as a video about Buddhism.

So...Knowing what I've just mentioned, I think it's fair to ask:  Does the "horse" video have a deeper meaning?  Or is it a joke?  It just might be neither, or both.

Do other people in Thailand handle horses as well as Poswat handles his? If they do, it might be the reason why Siam (as Thailand was formerly known) was never colonized by Europeans, even though it's between Burma (conquered by the British) and French Indo-China.

Even if those "horses" were bicycles.

From Macbeth To Il Campione Del Mondo

I swear, I was looking for films to show my Lit class.  Really, I was trying to decide between Roman Polanski's or Orson Welles' version of Macbeth.  And I was browsing all of the other film and television adaption of the Bard's classic when...

The YouTube browser took me to videos of The Third Ear and other progressive-rock bands.  From Renaissance's Prologue, it led me through recordings of vocal pieces used in videos.  I swear, it's true.

And then browser took me to this:



Honest, I wasn't looking for bike videos.  But I couldn't stop looking at it.

You've seen a million Bianchis before.  If you are of a certain age, you remember when they all came in some version of the color ("Celeste") you see on Fausto's bike.  Something about this video makes it seem as arresting as it was the first time you saw it.

And the bike...Why, it has--gasp--cottered cranks.  And exposed bolts on the stem.  Everything's so low-tech.

But what a thing of beauty!  And Fausto himself, even when he was wearing a plain white polo shirt, just reeked style. Check out 0:43 into the video.  Those people look like they actually know him; they're not just props or backdrops. 

As for the bike--Check out 2:15 to 2:22.  If only today's integrated headsets looked like that! 

Now I'm going back to work.  I swear, I didn't look for that video.  I was brought to it.