Wednesday Wonders 12

1. CDK Dance Company

There are few things in this world that reset me or instil a greater sense of wonder than a few minutes spent in the company of Holland's CDK Dance Company and this performance:

2. Snarky Puppy

Staying with music, Snarky Puppy is a fluid jazz ensemble formed in Texas twenty years ago. You can listen to any album, or watch any YouTube video, and it will blow you away. Picking just one was impossible, so I pretty much pulled this at random:

3. Logitech MX4

I've been using the Logitech MX3 mouse for a few years. I would say I really like it, but the truth is I just don't notice it at all, which is probably exactly what a mouse should be about. There wasn't any obvious reason to update the MX3, it worked perfectly. And yet along comes the MX4 and it's a little heavier, which turns out to be a good thing, and it has haptic feedback, which turns out to be an excellent thing. If you use a mouse, the MX4 is the best there is.

https://www.logitech.com/en-eu/shop/p/mx-master-4

4. Hauschka/Volker Bertelmann

Kathryn Bigelow's "A House of Dynamite" might be the best movie of the year. In part, that is due to Volker Bertelmann's innovative, eerie score. Bertelmann has created soundtracks for a host of movies, but he also composes and performs as Hauschka, using pianos that look like The A-Team have got at them. "Abandoned Cities" and "Salon Des Amateurs" are probably the standout Hauschka albums, and well worth checking out. Here he is doing a Tiny Desk concert at NPR:

5. Jana Carpenter

An unusual wonder, but it's our twentieth wedding anniversary this very day, so it seemed appropriate. If you're reading this, there's a good chance you arrived here via the Lovecraft Investigations or Aldrich Kemp, in which Jana plays Kennedy Fisher and the Underwood Sisters respectively. Or you might know her as Libby Ward in Mythos, Imogen Blake in Bad Memories, or Mockingbird Smith in Temporal. She's an actor, improvisor, musician (with Sweet Billy Pilgrim), and she's currently working on her History PhD. We've been together for 31 years, married for twenty. Here she is in a music video with her previous band: