F1 Grand Prix of Canada — Qualifying results

Another Mercedes 1-2 as Rosberg grabs second Pole in a row without drama, Vettel back on form to take 3rd on the grid in Canada

After the contentious qualifying session in Monaco two weeks ago where Lewis Hamilton openly speculated that his Mercedes teammate Nico Rosberg caused a deliberate yellow flag to thwart his final fast lap, Rosberg responded by grabbing a straightforward Pole position in Montreal at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve, besting his teammate by less than a tenth of a second. Once again the two factory Silver Arrows were untouchable with Hamilton’s 2nd position over half a second quicker that the Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel, who wrung the most out of his underpowered chassis to take 3rd on a course that demands speed in the long straights. After showing signs of coming out of his season-long funk in the last couple of races it seems the German 4-time World Champion is primed to at least hold off his junior teammate Daniel Ricciardo for Best of the Rest honors come Sunday. But barring mechanical issues, Team Mercedes look to continue running away with the Championship points with the only real drama seemingly to be which of their two excellent pilots will come out on top from week to week.

Full Qualifying results below courtesy of Autosport.com:

Pos Driver                Team                 Time           Gap   
 1. Nico Rosberg          Mercedes             1m14.874s         
 2. Lewis Hamilton        Mercedes             1m14.953s  +0.079s 
 3. Sebastian Vettel      Red Bull-Renault     1m15.548s  +0.674s 
 4. Valtteri Bottas       Williams-Mercedes    1m15.550s  +0.676s 
 5. Felipe Massa          Williams-Mercedes    1m15.578s  +0.704s 
 6. Daniel Ricciardo      Red Bull-Renault     1m15.589s  +0.715s 
 7. Fernando Alonso       Ferrari              1m15.814s  +0.940s 
 8. Jean-Eric Vergne      Toro Rosso-Renault   1m16.162s  +1.288s 
 9. Jenson Button         McLaren-Mercedes     1m16.182s  +1.308s 
10. Kimi Raikkonen        Ferrari              1m16.214s  +1.340s 
Q2 cut-off time: 1m16.255s                                   Gap **
11. Nico Hulkenberg       Force India-Mercedes 1m16.300s  +1.246s
12. Kevin Magnussen       McLaren-Mercedes     1m16.310s  +1.256s
13. Sergio Perez          Force India-Mercedes 1m16.472s  +1.418s
14. Romain Grosjean       Lotus-Renault        1m16.687s  +1.633s
15. Daniil Kvyat          Toro Rosso-Renault   1m16.713s  +1.659s
16. Adrian Sutil          Sauber-Ferrari       1m17.314s  +2.260s
Q1 cut-off time: 1m18.235s                                Gap *
17. Pastor Maldonado      Lotus-Renault        1m18.328s  +2.578s
18. Max Chilton           Marussia-Ferrari     1m18.348s  +2.598s
19. Jules Bianchi         Marussia-Ferrari     1m18.359s  +2.609s
20. Kamui Kobayashi       Caterham-Renault     1m19.278s  +3.528s
21. Marcus Ericsson       Caterham-Renault     1m19.820s  +4.070s
22. Esteban Gutierrez     Sauber-Ferrari       no time

Race day is tomorrow at 2pm Eastern on NBC here in the US.

Earworm of the day — Take It to the Limit by the Eagles

I have been playing this song lately as if it were brand new instead of nearly 40 years old. Between the hooks, the polished perfection of the band and the melancholy wanderlust, it feels like the ideal warm weather driving song. Here’s a primo live performance from ’77 with Randy Meisner singing his classic composition shortly before he quit the band.

Meisner didn’t write many Eagles tunes but “Take It to the Limit” is a beauty. The Eagles get a tough rap in “serious” rock criticism as being somehow too polished and slick, too SoCal for their own good, as if massive popularity somehow made the band unworthy of respect. But maybe all those millions of record buyers knew better than the critics after all. I think with the perspective of time and not hearing their songs every 10 seconds on the radio one can now appreciate just what kind of chops they had. Their lyrics are sharp, the vocal harmonies are Byrds-level good and the hits still sound fresh after all these years due to the super-crisp production. The Eagles gave the people what they wanted and they did it damn well. The next time you’ve got a long road trip go ahead and cue up Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II. Despite the fact that it’s all the same band, the songs are so diverse I bet you’ll keep coming back for more on the way home.

What we’re reading — The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

If at this point in your life you have still not read The Sun Also Rises there’s no need to berate yourself. The great thing about great books you have not yet read is that you are in for a treat when you finally do get around to them. After all, if we had already consumed every iconic novel we might be awfully accomplished but it would also take away that magical frisson that comes from the first-time discovery of something really special.

Of course, if you have read Hemingway’s first full-length novel before you’ll know that it’s well worth revisiting, as we here at MFL do nearly annually (especially in Spring/early Summer). With his revolutionarily sparse prose and frank descriptions of human weakness, sexuality and folly, as well as the beauty and honor aspired to and attained by doing something skillful honestly and well, The Sun Also Rises ushered in a new era of American fiction and spawned a million imitators. Memorably capturing the post-World War I zeitgeist in expatriate France & Spain, where the strong American dollar in the 1920s could enable even struggling artists and writers to live very well, the novel follows wounded veteran and journalist Jake Barnes, embodiment of the so-called Lost Generation, as he consorts with the upper class dilettantes and salt of the earth residents who made Paris and Pamplona such fascinating milieus. Continue reading →

Notable passings — Tony Palladino

In memoriam of a family friend of tomvox’s we post this New York Times obit of self-taught graphic arts legend, one of the true “Mad Men” in 1960s and 70s advertising and a stalwart at the School of Visual Arts for over 50 years, Tony Palladino.

Tony Palladino, Designer of ‘Psycho’ Lettering, Dies at 84

Tony Palladino, an innovative graphic designer and illustrator who created one of the most recognizable typographic titles in publishing and film history, the off-kilter, violently slashed block-letter rendering of “Psycho,” died on May 14 in Manhattan. He was 84.

Mr. Palladino’s conception for “Psycho” originally appeared on the book jacket for Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel of that title, published by Simon & Schuster. For his 1960 film adaptation, Alfred Hitchcock purchased the rights to the lettering for its promotion, which influenced the opening credit sequence created by Saul Bass.

Mr. Palladino said the design — stark white letters torn and seemingly pasted together against a black background to resemble a ransom note — was intended to illustrate typographically the homicidal madness of the novel’s protagonist, Norman Bates.

“How do you do a better image of ‘Psycho’ than the word itself?” he said.

Read the complete NY Times obituary for this highly accomplished man here.

MFL is goin’ mobile

We know a lot of you do your blog reading on a mobile device and we wanted to make that experience cleaner, quicker and richer (as they say in browser-speak). So we’ve created a mobile version of the site that’s easy to navigate and easy on the eyes, making it a breeze to track topics at a glance with associated thumbnails. You don’t have to do anything on your end, just continue to go to our bookmark on your mobile device and the new format will automatically kick in. And of course you can still access the full desktop version from a link at the bottom of the page if you prefer.

We hope this makes it easier for you to keep up with MFL and a more enjoyable experience when you’re on the go. And we’ll keep striving to constantly improve the site with our readers in mind — however gradual that may be since we are mainly a pack of beer drinking luddites — because we appreciate you spending a little of your valuable time with us. Thanks as always for dropping by and we hope you enjoy MFL mobile.

And now for putting up with such a dry blog announcement, without further ado, here’s The Who:

Watch Collector’s Notebook — Tissot “Navigator” World Time

The advent of Rolex’s GMT-Master in 1955 was the culmination of a creative arms race in the Swiss watch industry to come up with unique complications for telling time in two different timezones. The newly-dawned jet airliner age enabled intercontinental travel to explode in popularity and created demand for this complication in a wristwatch . A dual timezone watch, therefore, became a tool for the sophisticated world traveling gentleman or international man of action and was marketed by the manufacturers to exactly that putative clientele. Among the most enduring alternatives to an extra fixed 24-hour hand was the concept of rotating time zone discs or bezels with the names of cities representing the world’s different temporal regions. And among the handsomest and most clever produced during this burst of invention was the original Tissot “Navigator” World Time watch, which debuted in 1953 and therefore predates the GMT-Master by a few years.

TissotNav-7_edited-1

Featuring an oversized 36mm x 44mm beefy lug screwed steel case (sometimes also found in gold top or solid gold) the Navigator achieved its dual time capabilities via an inner rotating world time disc that was calibrated to the 24-hour scale on the face of the watch. Continue reading →

What we’re listening to — Hoodoo Gurus

There is nothing particularly revolutionary about the Hoodoo Gurus but they were one of the most purely fun bands to emerge from the often gloomy 1980s music scene (Depeche Mode they are not). Hailing from Australia and featuring a distinctly surf & garage influenced brand of guitar rock, the Gurus pumped out catchy hit after catchy hit for college radio even if they never quite hit the big time Stateside. The main asset for the HG’s was their chief songwriter and inimitably adenoidal, ever-so-slightly kitschy singer David Faulkner and his well-penned half sincere/half ironic tributes to 60s Americana, Australiana and disposable pop culture in general.

Perhaps the one essential album would be their extra strong sophomore effort, 1985’s Mars Needs Guitars, but really there are one or two great tracks on pretty much every Gurus album. So much so that I’d recommend tracking down the now out-of-print 2-disc CD compilation, Ampology. Because sometimes all you want to do is hear the hits and Ampology distills down the HG’s prodigious output to its essential pop-rock essence just as any well-chosen greatest hits collection should.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmwIZUR1Kl8

Not really a hard rock band but definitely a band that rocks hard without taking itself too seriously, the Hoodoo Gurus are well worth rediscovering and just in time for summer’s tasty waves and beach cookouts, as well. Soon enough you and your mates may well find yourselves singing “Like wow-Wipeout!” at the end of a pleasantly sunburnt day.

RIP Sir Jack Brabham, 1926 – 2014

The Australian triple Formula 1 World Champion Sir Jack Brabham has passed away at the age of 88. Among his many accomplishments, Sir Jack was the first and only man to win the Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships in a car of his own design (1966).

Photo from www.brianwatsonphoto.co.uk

From his son David, a fantastic racer in his own right:

On behalf of the family, Jack’s youngest son David said: “It’s a very sad day for all of us. My father passed away peacefully at home at the age of 88 this morning. He lived an incredible life, achieving more than anyone would ever dream of and he will continue to live on through the astounding legacy he leaves behind.

What more can one say? Sir Jack raced in the greatest era of Formula 1 against the best drivers, won 3 championships, left on his own terms and lived to become a beloved figure in his golden years. He may have departed this world but he goes on now to join his rivals and friends Jimmy Clark, Graham Hill and Jochen Rindt among others in that great paddock in the sky. What a legacy and we should all be as lucky to shuffle off this mortal coil as accomplished and fulfilled as this great man. He truly left nothing undone. Godspeed, Sir Jack.