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#SnowPatrol

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for years, I’ve heard the song Chasing Cars a lot on FM radio on my regular drives back and forth from work but I never bothered to look up more about the band behind it. Then a couple years ago, Josh Groban and Sarah McLachlan did a beautiful rendition of their song entitled Run at a concert at Pine Knob, which prompted me to finally look them up online. Then on May 1st while scrolling through Netflix in the wee hours I stumbled upon this 2018 documentary featuring the aforementioned Irish-Scottish band. Now, even if only for their two hit songs mentioned previously, I now consider myself a fan. 

vinyl records mecca

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DocuFixation: Devil at the Crossroads

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a fairly short presentation about one of the most legendary ancestors of modern music, and his incredibly mysterious backstory...

#Runwell

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The limited edition RUNWELL turntable by SHINOLA on display at the Westin Book Cadillac in Detroit.  What a beauty!

SoundTrack: Obladi-Oblada

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i used to play  this a lot  back in the days  growing up in  Tiwi  when  the Beatles  ruled the Radiowealth turntable  at home . listening  to a 45 Parlophone record  me and my friends  would sing-along-   "Obladi-Oblada, life goes on bra..." 👁   seeing as we were only 7 or 8 years old, we found the “mention” of a bra in a song quite hilarious *Memories of Childhood in Tiwi #1970sTiwi #TheBeatles

it's a Pink Floyd kind of night---Comfortably Numb.

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*****

The Tiwi Town Plaza

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In 1880, Gobernadorcillo* Higino Templado conceptualized and constructed Tiwi's first town plaza in order to provide the community with a wholesome place for people to gather on Sundays and holidays to relax and watch the Comedia or local plays. Municipal President* Mateo Clidoro (1926-1931) initiated the naming of the town plaza to Plaza Templado in honor of Higino Templado during his incumbency. His successor, Mayor Lino Clutario (1931-1934), with monetary donations from the townspeople, was instrumental in erecting a bust of the late mayor Higino Templado at the center of the plaza, where it remained until it was relocated to give way to the building of the "Kiosko" during the term of Mayor Eleodoro Cortezano (1948-1951). Mayor Cristito Cirujales (1952-1955) contributed a water fountain in front of the kiosk, while Mayor Jose C. Templado (1956-1959) in turn built a concrete fence surrounding Plaza Templado in the mid-1950's. Some of these contributions can be ...

Plaza Higino Templado

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Tomorrow will be the inauguration of the Tiwi Town Plaza, which will be officially named Plaza Templado. The Sangguniang Bayan of Tiwi recently passed an ordinance re-affirming the name as it has been historically known (based on oral history and documented evidence) since the time of municipal mayor Mateo Clidoro (1925-1931). Plaza Templado was named after Higino Templado, the sixty-sixth Gobernadorcillo (mayor) of Tiwi. Who is Mayor Higino Templado? Here's a short biography of the man: Sr. Don Higino Templado, the sixty-sixth gobernadorcillo (1879-1884) of Tiwi, Albay was not only a leader, but a builder. Among his notable accomplishments were the founding of barangay Cararayan, the renaming of Cagintilan to Mayong, the propagation of the Abaca industry, the Cararayan-Cale road, the Nagas River Control Project, and one of the earlier versions of the municipal building called the Tribunal, among many others. He was also instrumental in the planning and laying out of ...

TIWI - Molding the Pots of Prosperity from the Springs of History

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"Plaza Templado" was mentioned in this book by esteemed historian Danilo Madrid Gerona (also the author of "Ferdinand Magellan, The Armada de Maluco and the European Discovery of the Philippines”), which was commissioned by the Province of Albay under Gov. Joey Salceda and published in 2013 during the term of mayor Ami Villanueva.

The Flag Pole

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This is a picture that I grabbed from the LGUTiwi FB page of the ongoing redesign and enhancement of the Plaza in front of the municipal building. What caught my attention amid the chaos of construction and what have you was the concrete base of the flagpole. I can still vividly remember the story behind said structure. One day in the late 70s or early 80s, while supervising the construction of the koi (Japanese carp) ponds & water fountains in front of the old 'municipio', my father, Aki Shimizu, was asked by mayor Oriel Clutario if he could improve the old flagpole in the plaza. He immediately asked his workers to gather the materials needed for the simple design that he sketched on a paper bond in haste: bricks made at the Tiwi Ceramic Plant and corals that were brought from Corangon earlier; they finished the job by late afternoon of the same day. Of course, as with many of his public landscape projects and works in Tiwi, my father did it for free. The koi ...

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at dusk, the sun paints brilliant, surreal, dreamy hues through Ann Arbor skies.

*v*

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in Huron river's calm waters the kayakers at dusk stalk the setting sun, stir the proverbial pot and disturb the gods.

BookMark: Suspended Sentences

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My second Modiano. I read Dora Bruder back in 2004. I had no idea who Patrick Modiano was back then, but I remember very well how I managed to pick up his book, together with Amos Oz' Where the Jackals Howl, at a Book Sale outlet near the LRT Station in Pedro Gil because I was looking for something to read to ease the boredom of waiting in line for my interview at the US Embassy. Now that Modiano is a Nobel laureate, I think it's the right time to start reading his works again.

because Cassette Tapes

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yup, i still collect (audio books, rock, operas, musicals, classics et al) and play them on a vintage player from time to time. and at 10 cents for a trip down memory lane i cannot complain- a cheap hobby. a flashback to my teenage years when i used to save up on my allowance and purchase those old rock and roll albums from the local record store.

The Maltese Falcon

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My fifth film noir of the weekend. "The stuff that dreams are made of." ~ never gets old.

One Night in Detroit

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I was on my way back to my hotel room; the place was eerily quiet -- the only audible sounds came from my footfalls -- when suddenly, I felt a rush of cold air brush against my skin; the hair on my neck promptly stood on end. I turned around and flicked a quick shot from my iPhone hoping to catch some creatures lurking within in the process.  And to my chagrin, there was nothing there but just an empty,- deserted hallway.  #historicwestinbookcadilla c

Easy Rider

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crazy adventures, powerful trips: booze, drugs, women and motorcycles. born to be wild.

Enlisted

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after 2 episodes, i am going AWOL from watching this show. Fox should dismiss the scribes and discharge the cast. humor in uniform is dead.

Black Blizzard

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Yoshihiro Tatsumi 's 1956 thriller Black Blizzard provides us a look into his past, when he was still a raw and inexperienced writer and mangaka . Tatsumi, in several interviews, never hides the fact that he has 'conflicting' feelings about Black Blizzard to which he described it as "nostalgic for the past, for the days of my youth" but it's also "like exposing something shameful and private" that he would rather bury and have "hidden from sight." But the work in itself is not bad for a twenty- one year old aspiring and struggling writer- cum- cartoonist. On the contrary it probably revolutionized the alternative comic scene in Japan in those days that eventually made him a gekiga pioneer. Tatsumi's unorthodox visual narrative is like a study in contradiction; it was simple but is actually ahead of his time. The focus and angles are like those that can be seen from the eyes of a master filmmaker; the drawings speak f...

#449

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I bought this book for a sonnet--err song ($3) during one of my forays at a local flea market. Not bad for an 1878 illustrated edition of The Complete Works of the Bard, eh?  William Shakespeare would have been 449 today.