Florence + The Machine’s new album “Ceremonials” seems to be the album of the year for most listeners. I’ve never seen so much positive feedback on any album before on iTunes. There were only very few negative reviews, while about 99% of the reviews giving the album a 5/5 rating. This was astonishing actually, truly something I haven’t seen before for any album.

But personally, I can’t stomach Florence and her “music”. She irks me to no end. And here’s why: she just doesn’t stop fucking singing (or shouting). She sings from one end to the other, about 95% of the duration of each song! She overpowers everything, there is absolutely no “music” to speak of in there. She just takes over, in a selfish, self-important role somehow, telling us “how it is”, leaving nothing to our imagination. There is no ambiance, there’s no atmosphere. There’s just Florence. The music that exists in the album is just background noise, just so Florence doesn’t appear acapella. It’s even mixed very low!

Make no mistake, Florence can write very nice hooks, in a way that other musicians simply can’t, no matter how hard they try. I do not question her talent to write great melodies and harmonies! But having easy-listening music is not the end all. You need a proper production too, a production which brings a balance between the voice, and the music. Such balance does not exist in Florence’s albums, especially in the second one. In a very surprising twist for me, Pitchfork had the exact same complain about Florence’s album, when awarded it with a 6/10.

But as I wrote in the beginning, people apparently love the style. Which to me is very disappointing, because this shows that most people today are sheep. They prefer to listen to a kind of music that’s hollow and straight to their faces. I can’t see much difference between Florence’s music and than saying “please government, give me more restrictive laws, I love those, because they tell me exactly what to do, what not to do, and how to think“. Maybe I’m overreaching here, but that’s how I feel about Florence’s (and Gaga’s, and Rihanna’s, and any other’s plain pop act’s) listeners: they want to be told how to think and feel. It’s like there’s no imagination or creativity left in these people’s brains anymore! They leach upon Florence’s instead. It’s the “easy” way out of art.

As I’ve written in the past, all this is why I stopped listening to mainstream pop and moved to what it’s now called “indie alternative”. Because alternative, puts way fewer limits to the listener. As a synesthete, I need to be able to build on top of a musical piece, I need to bring myself into it, and fill in the gaps that the artist left intentionally for me. This way, I become one with the work, in a personal and unique manner. Washed Out’s first EP in 2009 for example, was perfect for my needs. One of the most perfect music I ever heard (didn’t quite like as much his new album though).

Anyway, this kind of indie, alternative psych music I prefer is a lot like taking a philosophy test at school. There are questions, and there are hints in the questions, but there are no answers, you will have to squeeze your brain and provide these. But with mainstream pop, the test itself is a multiple-choice one, with the “right” answers already checked in! In other words, the music I prefer is READ-WRITE, while mainstream pop is READ-ONLY.

With Florence, I can’t do read-write. Florence occupies all the space. To like her music I must become her blind follower while she must become my priestess. And I’m not the kind of person who follows others blindly in any way. If anything, I’m known to have strong opinions and hold on to them. I try to progress myself through art and other means, but I can’t follow a fucking cult. That might be a kind of art, but it’s not my kind of art.

Note: Read on about how to fix other things apart of constipation too. Please remember though, I’m not a doctor, that’s just what I did to get out of the health situations I’ve been into.

You might have read my story about battling IBS-D for 10 years, and how the Paleo/SCD diets helped me got rid the IBS menace & all sorts of other problems. However, about 2 weeks into the diet, my diarrhea had morphed into constipation of sorts. Apparently, a lot of people (with IBS or not) get constipated on Paleo/SCD at first, because they enter these diets with a badly altered gut flora. Eating “more fiber”, doesn’t really help.

But early-on, a comment on PaleoHacks.com made me see the light. The guy said something to the effect of “diarrhea is usually the outcome of some food that shouldn’t have been consumed, and constipation is food that should have been consumed, but it wasn’t“. This made sense to me somehow. Since my diarrhea went away after I stopped eating grains/gluten, it only made sense that constipation was here just because I was not doing enough to fix my terribly damaged gut flora. I was not eating everything I was supposed to eat. I was simply eating “the Standard Western Diet, but without grains/beans/sugar”. The part I was missing from the whole story was that there were other, ancient types of foods, fermented foods, that our modern society has completely shunned off. In the olden days, people were eating fermenting foods all the time. Even their bread was fermented.

It’s been 2.5 months since I started the diet that saved my life, and based on this new information I was able to fix my constipation within a week of following the regimen below. As my leaky gut heals, bowel movements & overall health are getting better. For a month now I have one, firm bowel movement within 30 to 45 minutes of waking up (no matter if I eat/drink or not). It’s like a freaking clockwork. A few days I might have two BMs a day, but they’re always well-formed and looking healthy. This is a kind of healthiness I wasn’t accustomed to after 10 years of feeling like the shit I was over-producing.

If your condition is too extreme (I’ve heard nightmare cases about constipation — and I thought diarrhea was bad), give it at least 4 weeks on the regimen below. For me the problem went away in a week, but then again I had already started Paleo weeks before, and my case was very mild anyway (I never had pain for example).

This regimen might also be helpful for those with diarrhea who are following the mainline Paleo/SCD/GAPS diets, but somehow these diets haven’t help them alleviate their symptoms (because they might be battling mutated bacteria/parasites/protozoal/H.Pylori, which eat anything that falls into the stomach, not just carbs). In that case, add more carbs in to your diet (e.g. parsnips, turnips, sweet potatoes, beets) to empower your “good” gut bacteria, while introducing more “good” bacteria and competition using with the regimen below.

1. Follow the Paleo diet. This is for now, and forever. It’s your new diet, for life. Get into the right brain mode, and accept the realities of why you’re sick and what you have to give up to get healthy again. The Paleo diet can fix, or make asymptomatic, a whole slew of inflammatory, auto-immune, gastro-issues, and even mental issues (e.g. light depression, ADD/ADHD etc)! If the mental issue is severe (e.g. bipolar, autistic etc), you might need to go Paleo-Ketogenic to see more change. If your auto-immune disorder is severe, you might also need to follow the auto-immune Paleo protocol (which also removes “nightshade” vegetables, shellfish, eggs, nuts, and all dairy — eliminating each for a period of time until you find the “offending” food). But just for IBD issues, the plain Paleo diet, is enough.

2. Kefir, kefir, kefir. Home-made, and from goat milk (not store-bought). Most dairy intolerant people can tolerate goat/sheep milk (different casein than that of cows), and if you ferment kefir for over 24 hours, little lactose remains. Kefir will also build better dairy tolerance overtime. If dairy is out of the question, then go for probiotics. I used to buy iFlora before the magic of kefir came to my life.

3. These are the superfoods to go after: bone broth, offal, sea veggies, some raw honey, and most importantly for IBD issues: fermented foods (e.g. live sauerkraut). And some supplementation: D3, Mg, K2-Mk4, fish oil.

Oh, and start researching for yourselves! All of what you read above is knowledge accumulated after spending hours and hours reading everything related to my problems that made some sense. From testimonials, to research papers, to science blogs. Don’t expect doctors to fix your chronic issues, this is almost never possible. For chronic issues, you need chronic, radical changes. There is no magic pill.

Good luck!

Here’s the trailer for “Like Crazy“, a movie shot with the Canon 7D for just $250k, sold to Paramount for wide distribution in the theaters. Two-three known actors also in it (most would remember Anton Yeltsin as “Checov” in the new Star Trek movie). It would be interesting to go see this at the theater, if not just to check out how dSLR footage scales out in a gigantic screen, but the movie is great beyond its technical standpoints: it won the prize for best dramatic feature at Sundance.

So Madonna’s new single leaked out (sounded more like a “calculated” leak to me). The song itself is a travesty. It’s a cheerleader song, sang by a 53 year old woman. It is reminiscent of early ’80s Blondie, but in a bad way. The song does not add its own spin on the era, the same way modern chillwave does to synthpop, or modern darkwave does to goth-rock. It’s just a copy/paste effort from that era, and not a great representation of it either. This is not the kind of music Madonna needs to do to stay relevant.

Madonna’s previous album was pretty bad as well. Except 2-3 songs in it, the rest were just “too easy”, too flat. But her 2005 album, “Confessions on the Dance Floor”, as well as her previous 3 before that, were really good albums. The music was memorable, and it was blending rather than having over-powering vocals. I’m afraid to say that if the rest of her new album is as bad as this leaked demo song, it would probably be her worst album to date.

The thing with Madonna is that she does a little bit of everything. She writes, she directs, she plays piano/guitar/drums, she sings, she dances, she acts, etc. She’s not that good in any of these in particular. She’s just good-enough in all of them though, enough to get her through the job, with the help of her team. So she’s not multi-talented per se, but rather multi-functioning. Her real talent is business. That’s what has kept her in the limelight for 25 years now.

She’s still the concept-creator though. She explains her ideas, she writes some of them down (music, but mostly lyrics), and then her team puts together the work/production for her. I don’t think this diminishes her as an artist, she’s the one with most of the ideas anyway. But the finished work can only be as good as her team is. If her team is crappy, the realization of her ideas will be crappy too.

Madonna has worked with pretty much the same producers for the last 13 years (after the birth of Lourdes, in the beginning of her re-launched second major part of her career). Before that, she worked for another 15 years with her previous team (usually band members from her first early ’80s band, “The Breakfast Club”, where she was a drummer). Of course, some producers came and go (e.g. Timberlake), but the core of her team hasn’t changed much all these years.

The problem is that people get old. Madonna obviously refuses to do so, but her team is not the same open-minded and creative people they were in 1998. Very few artists remain equally earth-shuttering in young age and later in life. Painters like Picasso seem to be able to manage staying fresh when they get old, but most musicians don’t. When Madonna put together her current production team, these guys were on top of their game at the time (e.g. William Orbit). But the time has come to move to her next team now. She needs new blood ASAP.

And that new blood can only be found in the hipster domain. Not in hip-hop (with Timbaland over-charging his crap), and not in pop (hint: Sweden). As much as some people saw Madonna as a pop marionette, she always tried to push forward with her art and her eccentricity. You might had to look a bit hard to find the glimpses of genius, but they were there. These days, the music scene that produces anything of worth is that of Brooklyn. That’s where Madonna needs to go and look for new blood (even if most bands of this movement aren’t local to Brooklyn). She has the money to put together a super-team from members of Grizzly Bear, Atlas Sound, Animal Collective, Phantogram, Washed Out, Beach House, Bear In Heaven, Crystal Castles, Fever Ray, M83, Neon Indian, Yeasayer, MGMT, etc.

Marry the progressive hipster scene with pop, and there’s no better way to do this than “using” the Queen of Pop to bring that kind of music to the masses: Madonna. Sure, this will be seen as a blasphemous act by many hardcore hipsters (who hate anything commercial), but my response is: fuck’em.

The style I’d go for her new album would be electronic, but not exactly dancy, and not exactly down-tempo either, but rather dreamy, with the vocals being a bit un-focused (clean shouting vocals of pop begone). She needs to bring layers and complexity to her music, because just as she is 53 years old and needs to act her age via her music, a lot of her fans are also older now, and not necessarily hooked anymore by easy pop. This is the kind of music style I’d like to see her do (mp3 is a legal download, hosted on Pitchfork, have a listen).

Since Madonna is all about a concept “theme and look” on her image & videos for each of her albums, I’d go for the space look. That’s one look Madonna has never done (she only touched it on her “Rain” 1993 video). Cut her hair very short, color them white with black stripes. Dress her in Aeon Flux-style fashion (samples: 1, 2, 3).

Conclusion: Madonna must musically evolve and go with the times, or die a painful artistic & business death.

“The Tree of Life” is hailed as one of the masterpieces of filmmaking, and it’ll probably be a contender at the upcoming Oscars. The cinematography is amazing, the editing even more so, and the impressionistic “hidden” puzzle messages is found throughout the 140 minute movie’s scenes or scarce dialog.

The movie tells the story of Jack, a successful architect. Through his flashbacks we see how his early life in the ’50s and ’60s made him the person he’s today: an unbalanced, confused and rather sad person. But that’s where the norms stop. A lot of viewers were put off by the way the story is told: in a very fragmented way (“Memento” is traditionally narrative compared to this movie). On top of that we get some seemingly off-topic imagery of the birth of the universe (a 10 minute non-speaking sequence).

Personally, I didn’t mind the way the story was told. I’m used to experimental cinema (I spend quite some time watching experimental short films on REDUX via the GoogleTV, or on Vimeo via the Roku), so I actually like the impressionistic approach to editing and filmmaking. Without such efforts, there’s no progress. Apparently, a lot of filmmaking students use this movie as their main study, same way Kubrick’s “2001” used to be in the ’70s & ’80s.

Where I hang up with “The Tree of Life” though is on some of the message(s). There are many messages on this deeply philosophical movie: grace & mercy vs nature & violence (and how we should achieve balance between the two), how small & insignificant we are compared to the universe, how everything dies but something new is born from it, how much glory there’s around us to keep up move on even after something traumatic happens to us, our need to heal, how we are all finite and so we must make the most out of our relationships — since that’s all we have.

Obviously I don’t disagree with many of the messages in the film. But the movie tries a bit too hard to show us that “we are nothing in the cosmic time”. On a personal level this is of course right. We’re all going to die, we are all less than nothing in the sea of everything.

But on a grander scheme of things, as a species, or as a collective consciousness (for when species won’t matter anymore), I refuse to believe that there’s nothing we can do to stop the end of our existence when our universe dies. I refuse to believe that we live in this universe (“we” as in a collective consciousness of all sentient beings in the universe) only as long as our universe is also alive. This does not resonate with me, because it’s a very Christian approach to life, the universe, and everything. It’s very limiting, very mold-y, very dogmatic, very restrictive. The Church has tried for centuries to mold us and remind us of what we aren’t or what we can’t be (God), and how we should strive to find happiness in our little, insignificant existence. Maybe out of just plain revolting, or maybe because I don’t believe in limits, I can’t give up easily to strive to be more than I am.

I always thought of myself as a pessimist, but in this case I feel I’m more optimistic than Malick, the writer/director of the film. Like Stephen Hawking, I also believe that there is an ultimate prize for having a chance in living, and that prize is to evolve and become so advanced, that the Universe, its laws, and its limitations and dangers won’t matter anymore. In that scenario, we could out-survive it. Maybe by creating the means to move to another, younger universe, or maybe by controlling our existing one from tearing apart. I don’t know how, and surely we won’t know how for a few more millions or billions of years yet (“we” as any species or collective consciousness with the capability to reach that state, might not be humans who get that ultimate prize). But one thing is certain, I won’t give up our fate to universe’s laws and rules. I will do my best to overthrow these laws, and rules, if they get in our way “to live”. Because as I mentioned in the beginning of this article, without such bending of the norm, there’s no progress. Progress is vital to me.

So overall, I just have trouble with the deeper meaning of the film when taken in a grander context (the film invited discussions such as this after its Creation sequence, which was in itself grand). The film works on a personal level, but I have the feeling that Malick has either a bit too much of a Christian influence in his philosophical and existential opinions, or he doesn’t see all the possibilities. The funny thing is that many Christians hated the film, just because the Creation sequence featured evolution & big-bang, and not a God Creator. Malick obviously tried to get both atheists and Christians to like his film (evolution/creation scenes and existential questions for atheists, and God, prayers and overall deeper meaning of the film was meant for Christians). But the movie’s dinosaurs & CGI won’t fool me.

Overall the rest of the deep meanings of the movie are great though (if only when applied at a personal level), and filmmaking-wise the movie is revolutionary. It’s funny that most people who hated the movie, hated it for its “incoherent” editing and “pretentious” feel. Personally, I found these elements amazing on the movie. Where I have a problem with the movie is in a few of its deeper meanings instead.

Rating: 8/10

The kind of music I listen to in the last few years is highly visual. For a synesthete like me it’s easy to close my eyes and create images, and whole stories to accompany a musical piece (kind of like a personal music video). But people wouldn’t “get” such music without an accompanied music video, since these melodies are different than standard pop & require extra work from the listener.

Even myself I don’t always “get” immediately some music without visual help. I largely passed through the “Keep Shelly In Athens” band in the last few months, but its video below made me understand it better after watching it for the first time tonight. Within a few minutes I was already a fan, while just cursorily listening to the band’s music in the past didn’t grab me as much. Funnily, I also just found out that the band is actually Greek, and that they play close to my home tomorrow night! How’s that for timing?

Playing back the visuals of a song in my mind, it’s not nearly as powerful as… being in them though. There are two ways to potentially go around this limitation. First one is to hook up in a machine that could take over my visual cortex and let me see & live what *I* want to see. Just as with recreational drugs though, that’s probably a pretty dangerous affair: “fooling” your brain for too long might ending up burning it. The second way is via a Holodeck-style room/device.

Whatever the solution though, today I feel constrained by our technology (and… gravity). Such technology won’t exist for another 100 to 200 years from now, and by that time I would be long gone. But when it does arrive, it would be the ultimate high. Living music. Feeling it, and seeing it all around you. Some kinds of music, is meant for such an experience.

Doing a remake for TV or the big screen is always risky business. Your effort must be accepted as better than the original, and even then, you’d still have the old fans cursing at you for your blasphemous remake. But you know, I’m not scared off that easily.

I have a few original ideas of my own for TV shows, but if I had to do a remake of a sci-fi show, these will be the ones I’d go re-imagining. And since I like fair business, none of these shows would last more than 3 seasons, with 12-16 episodes per season, and they would be fully serialized, mysterious, and complex (no episodic crap for me). I like my entertainment with a solid pre-plan, and a real, well thought-out ending. Having writers in an office brainstorming mid-season about where to go with their TV series, is my worst nightmare. If I can’t trust my fantasy land that I escape to, what can I trust?

– Alien Nation
Original run: 1989
Why Remake it: Because the original was too simplistic & formulaic.
Sub-genre: Political & social drama.
Year it takes place: 2020.
Background: A bunch of aliens who try to fit in on the daily lives of Earthlings with extremely narrow tolerance. The aliens that are unleashed on Earth are genetically engineered (hybrids) in order to be able to breath here. They look something between humans and their parenting alien race. None of the hybrids are more than 30 years old. The “parent” aliens who made them are a dying race and can’t breathe on Earth, therefore they have to stay in their 5 landed spaceships until they die out (can’t speak English either). As a thanks to the Earthlings for letting their legacy be remembered, after the last one of them is dead, their technology will be shared with the Earthlings. The hybrid aliens are like their parenting aliens in all intends and purposes, they just look more human than they do. The hybrids are hermaphrodites, and they can mate with humans too, either men or women. The engineered aliens are the only “good guys” in the whole story. Both the humans (who feel invaded), and parenting aliens (who feel screwed) have their own secret agendas. Humans want to get hold of the alien tech faster in order to use it against the aliens and get rid of them, while the parenting aliens want Australia & New Zealand, which are big and remote-enough, in order to terraform them by creating a micro-climate for the survival of their own (parenting) race. Obviously, the story is more inspired by popular modern mythology (Greys & human-Grey hybrids) than the original TV show, but I think it’s time someone tells the story from the point of view of the hybrids: unleashed into a strange & unforgiving world, and being the guinea pigs for both sides.

– Space: Above & Beyond
Original run: 1995
Why Remake it: Because the original was cheesy & banal.
Sub-genre: Political & military action drama.
Year it takes place: 2190.
Background: I’d keep a lot of the original elements from the original show, but make it “more”. More characters, more complex story, more thrilling, more serialized, more political, more mysterious, and with a wider scope of the universe depicted.

– Earth 2 / Outcasts
Original run: 1994 & 2011
Why Remake them: Because the originals were myopic & slow.
Sub-genre: Political, social, scientific action drama.
Year it takes place: 2170.
Background: A show about the struggles of the first human colony into an Earth-like planet, shortly after the invention of traveling via wormholes (still takes 3 years to get there). Is the planet really barren, or does it have intelligent life currently hiding? Similar concept to the original shows but with a more contemporary delivery, and I’d go a step beyond: the 10,000 colonizers might escaped Earth (which is in bad shape), but what if that new planet was once in as a bad shape as Earth? What if the new colonizers had to pay for past mistakes lingering in the planet, while also fighting the baggage they bring with them from Earth?

– The 4400 / Flashforward
Original run: 2004 & 2009
Why Remake them: Because the 4400 morphed into a soap opera, and FF into a hot mess.
Sub-genre: Mystery.
Year it takes place: 2017.
Background: Three months after a mysterious mental black-out that knocked out most people in the Northern hemisphere, 100 previously missing people come back from what appears to be 50 years in the future. They all have their memories intact of being kept into a future facility for 3 months. They all now have a higher IQ, better memory capacity, better health, better eyesight, maximum endurance & fitness, and can’t get diseases easily (no lame super-powers though). They’ve been shown bits of the past (our future), so when they come back, they’re able to predict public news, proving that they’ve been into the future. Or have they? Story is told from the abductees’ point of view, as they piece together what really happened to them. In the meantime, the abductees are blamed when the rest of the world starts dieing from a new, strange virus.

– Babylon 5
Original run: 1994
Why Remake it: Because the original was cheaply made, and with bad dialog at times.
Sub-genre: Military, political, social, philosophical action drama.
Year it takes place: 2256.
Background: This would be the most difficult one to top off. Babylon 5 hit its stride on mid-season 3, making it one of the best TV shows of all times. It’s a true classic. I’d change/enhance a few things on the show, but the way things developed on the original series were pretty spot-on, so I’d keep that pace and the wide array of things depicted (politics, Mars, Earth, exotic aliens, war etc). The original was shot for very cheap, so even just 15 years later the visuals/dialog don’t do justice to the rest of the story anymore (while the story is more current than ever). A remake in this case would strive to mostly be better visually and with a more modern take on relations, rather than a full re-imagining.

The media have been invited today in Hollywood to witness Canon’s game-changer cinema camera. Canon hyped the announcement last month by claiming that they will write Hollywood history. The C300 is a beautiful small-factor camera, but if we are to judge from the Twitter responses of many industry professionals, the camera seriously underwhelmed them.

The C300 has a 4k CMOS sensor, but it only records at 1080p (if 4k capture is available via HD-SDI is not known at this moment). The camera comes with a PL mount version and an EF one, to accompany Canon’s new 4k-resolving lenses. The price is considered high at $20k by many. An unnamed as-of-yet dSLR from the same C-line was also mentioned by Canon in the press release I received, saying that this new dSLR will be able to record at 4k, but by using the (archaic) MJPEG codec.

This really feels like a big joke today. Either Canon has lost the plot, or they don’t know how to put together specs for people to comprehend. They never made clear if the C300 can capture 4k or not, they mentioned nothing about the codec used, and they never mentioned the 4k dSLR at the event!

What really bothers me is that if the C300 does not do 4k for one reason or another, it should have had the ability to shoot 2k. I mean, come on. 2k is the resolution of most cinema projectors, and it’s so close to 1080p resolution-wise, that not a lot more RAM or processing would be required on board. Not pushing this camera for 2k, while they’re trying to get Hollywood on their side, shows how outside of the loop Canon is.

Finally, there’s not even over-cranking support in 1080p mode. Not to mention that I’m not too hot on the mpeg2 codec. In this day and age all video editors have OpenCL/CUDA support for h.264, and a good h.264 codec can deliver 2-3 times better video than mpeg2 at the same bitrate. Just use the right h.264 10bit 422 encoder at 50mbps, which should be leaps and bounds better than mpeg2. But no. We had to go back 10 years. (Continues below…)

In my opinion, Canon has two options with the C300, and two options alone:
1. With a firmware upgrade, allow RAW 4k capture via the HD-SDI port.
2. If this is not technically possible in the current design, drop the price by 50% at $10,000.

Failure to do any of the two will result in a big FAIL for Canon. This is my honest opinion on the matter, no matter how good a visual result this camera can deliver. It’s still 1080p, and Hollywood has moved to 4k. That’s the reality.

There are some who say that this Canon camera goes against the SONY F3, and not the RED. But this is bullshit. First of all, it’s much more expensive than the F3. Secondly, it doesn’t matter what the F3 can do. Canon was all about a HISTORIC moment, this was the camera some Canon execs last year were saying it will kill RED. But in reality, this is just a camera created by a company that rode the high horse without realizing it. All this shows that the video success of the 5D MkII, their first video dSLR, was a happy ACCIDENT, and not a planned visionary feature. Canon has no idea what it’s doing with their video cameras. Either they didn’t ask anyone for input, or they got input from the wrong people (wedding videographers?).

As for the unnamed dSLR, please don’t get me started at the MJPEG joke. Really Canon? MJPEG? In (expected) year 2012?

The Canon T3i remains the best-camera-for-the-buck ever released (at $800). Because let me be clear, the C300 is indeed better than the T3i, but not 25 times better. Not by a long shot.

In other news, RED changed a few specs around on the Scarlet (4k video and with great resolutions/frame-rates combos). Some say it will arrive by December. Price starts under $10k, but it’s realistically expected to go to $13k after adding LCD, lens mounts etc. If that’s true, RED won the battle today. As much I don’t like RED’s vaporware, at least they’re genuine dreamers. Canon seems to be comprised from corporate shills instead, who don’t understand the new market that has emerged in the last few years inside Hollywood and outside of it.

Update: Haha, this is getting better and better. So, there is no 4k recording via the SDI port on the C300, and the codec is actually just crappy 8 bit all the way (SDI & CF). Full specs here. In the meantime, RED is pissing off its EPIC users, since the Scarlet can do most of what the EPIC can, for a fraction of the price. And we should not be forgetting AVID, who also today announced an uninteresting (to me) editing solution. This has been a very interesting day indeed.

In early evening there’s this amazing golden light that would enter the bathroom from the small window in my mom’s home in Greece. JBQ’s shadow looked beautiful, I had to snap it away to capture the moment. He had just come back from swimming in the sea.

What can you and can you not eat on a Paleo diet? Here’s a rundown. This could be your first Paleo shopping list! We will be using all these items to cook your first 3 Paleo meals!

1 dozen pastured or omega-3 or cage-free eggs
1 pack of bacon
1 large pork chop (or fish steak)
1 beef liver
6 beef marrow bones
1 celery
3 big carrots
1 bunch of radishes
1 head of cauliflower
1 plain unsweetened coconut milk (get the diluted beverage one)
1 bottle of olive oil
1 bottle of unrefined Virgin Coconut oil
1 green salad mix
1 raw & unrefined honey
1 bag of walnuts or pecans
1 medium onion
1 garlic head
1 avocado
1 jar of olives
1 tomato
1 box of berries
1 lemon
1 apple
1 peach
1 butter
1 jar of mustard (if you don’t like it buy 1 more lemon)
1 salt with iodine
1 whole black pepper with grinder
1 oregano

If you spend less than 20-30 minutes in the sun daily, consider supplementing with vitamin D at about 1000 IU. Enough Vitamin D (also K2, magnesium & krill oil), along the bone marrow broths, raw coconut oil spoonfuls, and offal consumption 1-2 times a week, is one of the secrets of Paleo’s success.

Here’s how to use these products you just bought:

Breakfast: Fry two eggs in coconut oil with salt & pepper. Remove the eggs when done, add 4 strips of bacon and fry them until crisp. Cut half an avocado, peel it, slice it (reserve the rest in the fridge unpeeled, in plastic wrap). Serve all of that with 1/4 cup of berries, and a glass of coconut milk beverage, or water.

At 9 AM (once a week only): In a big pot (or slow-cooker) fill it with water, and put in there the beef marrow bones, two washed celery talks, 1 washed & chopped carrot, 1 peeled & chopped onion, 2 peeled cloves of garlic, salt & pepper. Cook with the lid closed, until 6 PM in low heat. Let it cool for an hour or so, add two tablespoons olive oil, and then strain the broth into a big glass jar. Drink a glass of that bone broth with your dinner (eat the marrow itself too, but discard the veggies/bones), and keep the rest of the broth in your fridge. Consume it within one week.

Lunch: Wash the 2 carrots and the radishes, and cut them in 1″ pieces. If radishes’ greens are in good shape & they look fresh, wash these up too and chop them. Place them all in a baking dish, and then drizzle 1 tablespoon of honey on them. Place the beef liver in the middle of that same baking dish (make room). Then add two tablespoons coconut oil, salt & pepper, and 1/4 cup water. Bake at 400F (205 C) for 50 minutes until soft, turning the liver a few times in between. In the meantime, wash and slice the tomato, peel and cut the second half of the avocado in pieces. Add these half of the the green salad mix in a salad bowl, and then pour on the salad some olive oil, black pepper, and half of a washed lemon. Toss the salad, and then put the used half-lemon in the still-cooking bone broth. Enjoy your liver with mustard or some lemon. Have a peach for dessert.

Dinner: Cut half of the cauliflower, and wash it (refrigerate back the rest). Boil it in lots of boiling water, until soft (optionally, add a clove of garlic if you like it garlicky). Strain the water out, add 1 tablespoon of butter, salt, pepper, and 2 tablespoons coconut milk. Mash the cauliflower with a potato-masher, or use a blender, until it’s pureed. Meanwhile, use a frying pan and add two tablespoons coconut oil in it, the pork chop (or fish), salt & pepper, oregano. Fry in medium heat until cooked through. To prepare dinner’s big salad: add the rest of the greens from the salad mix, some walnuts, peel/seed/slice the apple, and add them all in a salad bowl. Juice some lemon on them, and add olive oil, salt, pepper, and then toss well. Enjoy your dinner, with the still-warm bone broth & marrow, a few olives, and water.

After 2-3 hours of dinner, it’s time to sleep now. Always eat enough during meals so you’re never hungry in between, and never skip breakfast (or you WILL be hungry by 10 AM eating random garbage). There’s no snacking after dinner (or ever), and try to keep the food times constant every day. You can have caffeine-free plain herbal tea at any time though, and of course, water. Smoothies as occasional desserts are ok, as long as all the pulp is in there too.

Tomorrow, if you have left overs (e.g. roasted radishes), you can incorporate these in your breakfast instead of the avocado (microwave them to get them hot again). For your future shopping list consider eating all kinds of allowed veggies (some of them will be a new tasting experience for you), meat/fish/offal, and fruits. Mix and match, the sky’s the limit. Forget real desserts, and breads btw. Nobody should be eating 3 cups of almond flour in a bread/cake form, because you wouldn’t be eating as much almond normally (not even within 2-3 days). Overdosing on that stuff is not good for you, and it’s one of the reasons why grains are such a problem today (too much wheat or corn or rice in everything). Learn to live without these kinds of “processed or complex” recipes. Simplicity is key.