1700 b.c. vintage

American and Israeli researchers excavating the Tel Kabri archaeological site in Israel announced discovery of the oldest known palatial wine cellar from ancient Canaan - "striking wine," that is, and when breaking through to a storage room adjoining a banquet hall, with the remains of 40 ceramic jars equivalent to what was once about 3,000 bottles of red and white wine.  They may find even more wine cellars.

Chemical analysis of residue indicate that it probably tasted like retsina or contemporary Greek resinous wines.  According to the NY Times, the group will be reproducing "a reasonable facsimile."  At banquets, it would have been served up with goat meat. 

*Photo credit/via NY Times, photographer: Eric H. Cline/George Washington University, remains of ceramic wine jars from the ruins of a 1700 B.C. Canaanite palace in Northern Israel.  

balloon fiesta

Via Huffpost, a time lapse youtube of 700 hot air balloons taking flight at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.  Held over a period of 9 days last month, it's the largest hot air balloon festival in the world.

it felt like i knew you

Taking exhibition sleep to new heights?  Perchance to dream?  Aye, there's the rub with a daring subway performance art piece from George Ferrandi.

Antonellapavesse.com also comments here on a city that always sleeps on its underground along with 800 more pictures of  Big Apple MTA snoozing.  The blogger observes, "New York is the city that is chronically sleep deprived and takes naps on the subway."

intersections

Sweet potato latkes with cranberry sauce, anyone?  The NY Times reports on a rare convergence of Thanksgiving and Hannukah this week. The last time the two holidays overlapped was in 1918, and the next intersection won't happen until 2070.

antique egg poacher

An antique egg poaching stand in action (video below) via the Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans.  The museum just opened the first pubic library in the south devoted entirely to southern culinary literature, and is also housing The Menu Project, collecting menus from restaurants throughout the southern United States. 

street fashion

black leather jacket.

manoir de mes rêves

Around the fire with Angelo Debarre and friends.

strange museums

Bananas, bad art, barbed wire, and the delightfully weird.

le ballet mécanique

Le Ballet Mécanique (1924), a collaboration between American composer George Antheil, French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker Joseph Fernand Henri Léger, filmmaker Dudley Murphy, and American modernist artist Man Ray who contributed cinematographic input.



The Philadelphia Museum of Art is currently hosting an interdisciplinary exhibition through January 5th, 2014, Léger: Modern Art and the Metropolis.   Curated by Anna Vallye, the exhibit is designed to "shed new light on the vitally experimental decade of the 1920s in Paris when the great French modernist Fernand Léger (1881-1955) played a leading role in redefining the practice of painting by bringing it into active engagement with the urban environment and modern mass media. This will be the first exhibition to take as its inspiration and focus Léger’s monumental painting The City (1919), a cornerstone of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s collection and a landmark in the history of modern art, placing it in dialogue with the urban art and culture of modernity."

PMA hosted a screening and discussion of Le Ballet Mécanique, what wiki describes as one of the masterpieces of early experimental filmmaking. Composer Antheil's "most enduring work" was intended as a soundtrack, but film and music were reportedly not brought together until the 1990s.

sleeping beauty

 
Behind the scenes for The New Victory Theater's sumptuous Sleeping Beauty marionette production.  Carlo Colla & Sons have been handcrafting these puppets since the 19th century, using wool from Scotland, silk from China, along with real human hair for the wigs, and carved from linden wood.  The puppets are repainted for different shows, and were featured in a February cat walk during Milan's Fashion Week wearing costumes for Giuseppe Verdi's operas.  T Magazine reports, "Modern costumes are much more intricate than those of early marionette shows, because the change in stage lighting from lanterns to lightbulbs made it easier for audiences to see details."

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*Photo credit/via T Magazine,  "A Marionette Production of ‘Sleeping Beauty,” Created With Centuries-Old Techniques, by Alainna Lexie Beddie.

one fabulous party

This had to be one fabulous Halloween party - don't miss the photostream at the link (and note the poisons ready to serve up!) -

Queda menos para la noche más terrorífica y tenemos ideas y trucos para celebrarla a lo grande http://t.co/eZxJiUXLhE pic.twitter.com/JYsD3bVi7D
— Vogue España (@VogueSpain) October 31, 2013