Tuesday tea TV: 'My Proper Tea'

This is the best thing I've seen in a while. The performance-sync is spot-on, the rap is righteous, and I totally agree: nothing fires me to hip-hop-angry levels quite like improper tea prep. Enjoy Brit comic Doc Brown rhyming about, yegods, milk-first madness ...

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Tuesday tea TV: A very. Serious. Movie.

In what looks to be at least partially and unintentionally hilarious, yet another biopic of Rikyu has been made. Based on the 2008 novel Rikyu ni Tazuneyo by Kenichi Yamamoto, "Ask This of Rikyu" retells the tale of the teamaster from fish shop to the palace to ritual suicide.

Here's the trailer, which defies the basic tenets of teaism with exaggerated drama, a thundering symphonic score, and many furrowed brows ...

Tuesday tea TV: 3,2,1 ... tea bag!

I've been reading a lot of physics lately — the quantum kind, yegods — and I've read before some discussions of the physics of tea. Here, however, is a nice time-killer: a quick physics principle demonstrated by setting a tea bag on fire ...

Tuesday tea TV: Irani teahouses

Interesting short documentary here: a look into some tea cafes in Iran. They're called coffee houses, but they don't serve coffee. Dig all the stunning urns and samovars!



"In Iran, taking a break without a hot cup of black tea would be meaningless." See, not so different.

Tuesday tea tune: Here's lookin' at you, kid

Tomorrow, my partner and I celebrate 20 years together. Love is a superlative experience, worthy of every poem and song it has inspired. Allow me this reach for my weekly offering — it's the Cowboy Junkies, performing "Anniversary Song" on one of my favorite music shows from my old sweet home, Chicago. The refrain for this one goes like this:

Well I've known all these things
and the joys that they can bring
And I'll share them all for a cup of coffee
and to wear your ring

Tuesday tea tune: Y'all

Some down-home, easygoing strumming — coupled with beautiful images of summertime and sun-ripe tomatoes, for those shivering timbers this winter — from the Elms, in a song called "Bring Me Your Tea":

Tuesday tea tune: Young love

I've no idea who these high school kids are, but from the notes on the YouTube link and the performance cues the scenario here seems to be this: Sniffly cameragirl had a bad day, and boyfriend-of-the-year candidate attempts to cheer her up by singing about green tea. It's sweet, it's stupid, it's all of that, even the part about burned kitties ...

Tuesday tea TV: A smart kettle!

Nice! Finally, a tea-related app that actually does something super-useful — turns on (or keeps warm) the kettle!

The iKettle calls itself the "world's first wifi kettle," an unsurprising boast. You can program it to put itself to boil in the a.m., and it'll send you the only wake-up text you really want. When you get home — and your phone hits your network — the iKettle asks you if you want it to start up again. Effing genius! Just don't forget to refill it after each use ...

I really should have seen this before Christmas.

Tuesday tea tune: Righting all wrongs

Tea solves all life's problems, right? That's the idea behind this new promotional video from Yorkshire Tea — they of the nifty slogan, or as Rufus Wainwright calls them "the crystal meth of tea." Come for the nifty theme, stay for the impressive single-take tracking shot. (There's even a behind-the-scenes video about the making of.)

Tuesday tea TV: Purple tea

Within the last few years, farmers in Kenya have wagered on a new varietal of tea — purple tea — with allegedly greater medicinal value and useful seed oil. The tasting notes are beginning to come in, and here's a TV news feature summing up the whole thing:

Tuesday tea TV: 'You would'

For all you back at your labors today after a splendid Labor Day weekend, here's a clip from "The Office" about the totally true fact that if you like tea then, you know, you're gay ...

Keemun, Obi Wan Kenobi. It's our only hope.

My research into virtual performance has begun exploring some of the cutting-edge technology that may soon astound.

Much of the performance spectacles we've seen in recent years — from the Tupac resurrection at last year's Coachella to Hatsune Miku and the other digital idol singers in Japan — are often reported as being holograms, but they're not. They're two-dimensional projections made to simulate 3-D, actually using an upgraded theater trick from the 19th century.

Three-dimensional projection into real space, though, is creeping its way into reality. There are numerous projects in the works now to generate 3-D images, say, dancing on top of your iPad or in the middle of your dining table. The video below — a quickie, just 12 seconds — shows a demonstration of the latter. It's a tiny teapot, projected in 3-D so you can see — as the camera moves around it — the whole object from all sides, including real shadows.



We're gonna see that Princess Leia hologram tech before we die, by gum.

Tuesday tea TV: Naked tea

As a brow-furrowed aspiring writer, while a teenager I inevitably found my way to William Burroughs. My relationship with his prose has remained problematic and challenging. I regret having lived so many years within driving distance of Lawrence, Kan., and never making the pilgrimage to his place.

So this caught my eye recently. Many moons ago, the BBC made a good documentary about Burroughs, called "Arena" (watch the whole thing here). Now over at the BBC's Space site, there's a reel of unused footage showing Burroughs in England stopping by for tea with Francis Bacon (the ’60s painter, not the 16th-century statesman). Bacon serves up tea from his drab little kitchen, making it extra strong per Burroughs' taste and adding a bit of milk before the two begin talking about Tangier.

Watch the reel here. Warning: Just be patient. It's a dumb, overly designed web site. You may click through and get the video right away, or you may have to press the elevator button No. 4 and wait for a silly image map to load (the graphics, and their loading speeds, are akin to playing "Myst" on a 1990s Macintosh Performa), then click on the Francis Bacon tea cup. You can watch, but you can't stop, start, pause, share or embed the resulting video. Sigh.

Tuesday tea TV: Comprising coffee

The following video made the rounds in various social-media hand-offs last week. It's from Wired — one of their occasional, interesting analyses of the component parts of everyday stuff. This animated video takes a quick tour through the contents of a cup of coffee ...



What's inside your cup of tea?

Sidestepping the usual mish-mash of hawked health benefits and the seemingly endless discussion of caffeine content, here's one fairly good answer.

Tuesday Tea TV: 'The Tea Chronicles'

One of my favorite online personalities for years has been Charlie McDonnell, the cutie video blogger behind Charlieissocoollike. He and some mates have recently unveiled a short film, starring Charlie and featuring tea as its unsettling plot point. It's like a PG Tips commercial directed by M. Night Shyamalan (but, you know, satisfying in the end). "I'll bet you put the milk in first, too, didn't you? You monster!" Charlie cries.

Watch the full 10-minute reel here:

Tuesday Tea Tunes/TV: #teaspora

Here's a video that's every kind of cool — plus it's a lovely song.

For her newest tune, "Tea Song," Irish singer-songwriter Róisín O crowdsourced footage for the video, asking people to send in clips of themselves drinking tea. But not just any people — the request was made to Irish expatriates living around the world. It's a phenomenon referred to (and hashtagged) as the "teaspora."

"It’s crazy to think that, after growing up in the Celtic Tiger, so many of our close friends are now living and working abroad," she said. "That’s why we felt this idea for 'Tea Song' could be cool and a nice way to get back in touch with friends and family we haven’t seen in a while, and at the same time get in touch with fans abroad. And also share our mutual love for tea; it brings us closer as a nation!"

Tuesday Tea TV: Harry Connick Jr. in a tutu

A friend recently made me aware of an occasional segment on the "Ellen" show, in which two little girls with frightful British accents sit down to tea with whatever incongruous celebrity guest happens to be handy. It's pretty cloying — and I tend to steer away from anything that highlights the tea experience as the provenance of girls — though this episode featuring singer Harry Connick Jr. is amusing and amusingly awkward.

"I'm surprised at how comfortable I feel," Connick says as he dons a tiara and pink tutu.



The girls mention Connick's recent appearance on "American Idol," where he appeared as a mentor to the shrill harpies that pass for talent on that show. Talk about awkward and amusing — Connick was clearly driven to near madness as he tried to impress upon the warblers the value of the American songbook and that the songs are actually about something greater than however many notes you can cram into one syllable.

Share some weak tea with Morrissey

I've written about Morrissey recently — I interviewed him last fall, at the end of which he answered a nagging tea question — and here's another bit, a fun one.

The second half of "Victoria Wood's Nice Cup of Tea," a recent two-part special on the BBC, the British comic shares a cup with Morrissey in Manhattan, talking tea (he travels with an Italian pot, drinks weak Ceylon daily) and, in this clip, suffering through easily the most awkward gift exchange ever ...

Tuesday tea TV: Creep-tastic ad

Warning: The video posted here is uber-creepy. I've watched it the one time. I won't be watching it again. I'm not a spooky movie kinda guy, and I hate clowns. But ... but ... it's so weird, and so cool, and a really different and interesting way to advertise tea. Don'tcha think?

En garde! The art of tea dueling

I forget what lead to my brief flirtation with steampunk — I think I backed into the subculture while reading Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle trilogy — but a friend recently asked me if I was aware of tea dueling. It's a steampunk thing, and it beats pistols at fifty paces.

In a tea duel, the duelists sit across a table from each other. Each is armed with a cup of hot tea and a tea biscuit (butter cookie, what have you). Refereed by the Tiffin Master (or Mistress), the duelists dunk their biscuit into the tea for a count of five seconds, at which point the biscuit is removed. The duelist who waits the longest before eating the biscuit — without having lost any soggy crumbs or saturated pieces to the tea — wins. Victory is described as a "nom," and it's harder than it might seem.

Nerdy, but civilized. Complete rules can be found here in the "Articles of the Honourable Association of Tea Duellists" (sic).