putting the j in jjosh

pure gold…

[via jeffkrulik]

Sometimes all you can do is watch with your jaw dropped and say "Skillz."

[via waxy]

What a gorgeous day. Wow. Had my final eye appointment today and the doc said my recovery was "a miracle", so that was pretty great. Also the weather was pretty great. Also this clip of old-timey harmonica players that Pat H sent me is pretty great.

I knew I was going to save this one for Friday. So last semester of my senior year of college I had electives open and I took an Audio Production class. The teacher wasn’t that good, but I got a lot out of it and it was a blast. The projects the prof gave us were good, he just wasn’t very good at explaining things…i.e. performing the role of the teacher. Ask Dan R., he took the class with me. The good thing the prof did though, was make us learn all the analog ways of doing things before bringing us into the digital world. So we were splicing tape with razor blades, making tape loops that were held in place with pencils and so on. It was great. I have this experimental tape loop piece but it’s only on reel-to-reel 1/4 inch tape, so I’ll have to transfer that later.

Even once we made the move to digital, the system was so crash prone that you couldn’t do a very long piece, you’d have to stitch several short ones together. We used the system to "master" the first Raygun Theatre album (also on cassette) and I can remember it was a glitch-plagued nightmare, increasing Jack’s every distrust of the digital world.

But what I have for you is my final project for that Audio Production class. I can’t remember what other people did for their final projects, but here’s mine. It’s an 8-minute acoustic guitar rock opera of the story of Samson and Delilah.

Jjosh – Samson and Delilah

My favorite part is the bit in their duet where they start singing at the same time. She’s going "Samson" and he’s going "Delilah, aww I love ya" — I’m still proud of that bit. Delilah was sung by Molly, the girlfriend (now wife) of my pal Pat H. She knocked it out of the park, the piece really comes alive when she enters. She even nails the absurdist ending that I tacked onto the story, she was great.

For some reason I think my sister is going to love this track.

It’s been so fun posting these, maybe I’ll continue a little into next week…

I love old-timey. I love the transforming power of overcoming adversity. I love tap-dancing. I love youtube. via]

First of all, Johnny Rotten has done a commercial for butter. It’s below, so you can check it out, and yeah, it’s a fine advert I guess, but damn it feels tough to have those sell-out feelings about Johnny Rotten. Granted, I guess the Pistols were a manufactured band to a certain extent, so they were always about selling out, and I guess JR is all about pushing people’s buttons and showing them that they’re never as free-thinking as they think they are, but still, damn, a commercial for butter. [via]

The youtube comments are as divisive as possible, with people condemning and defending on both sides. My favorite though, is this filmed response. I can really feel what this guy is saying! He means it! I love that filmed responses can happen, and so quickly, and so well done.

here are the things I’ve been watching on youtube:

"viral" bike guitar hero thing – cool but lame, real but marketing

John Lee Hooker rocks the blues – subtitles?!

girls flip out over American Idol – amazing and horrifying at the same time

Miss Bunny – seriously, I don’t remember watching this one

BBC doc David Lynch made about surrealism – JackW, are you listening?!

BBC doc about Superman

1983 interview with Bono & lead singer of Simple Minds – hair

Adding to the list of US celebs who make weird Japanese ads because they don’t think anyone in the Western world will see them: Tommy Lee Jones. According to the synopsis on mefi:

"Tommy Lee Jones plays extraterrestrial ‘Alien Jones’, who has taken the form of a man to check on the world of humans, all the while drinking a Japanese brand of coffee named BOSS."

While not as loopy as I want them to be, these ads have kind of a quiet, TLJones intense brand of odd.

This one takes place in a "host club", a place where young women and pay trendy young men to entertain them. There used to be this great doc about host clubs on google vid, but it looks like it was sold so they’ve pulled it (good for them). Looks like it just aired on Sundance…some info about it here…) Here’s the ad…

the last shot takes the whole thing to a new level, doesn’t it?

I’m stoked for OB and excited for a black president, but wow I totally forgot we had a black president in 1977…thank goodness for the reminder that is youtube…

some of it still seems so relevant…some hopelessly (thankfully) dated…

Of all the birthday songs in the world, the Russian one is pretty amazing. So what a treat today to receive this gem of a translation found on yt by Mashka! I will take issue with one part of the translation though — while this woman claims it is a "magician" who shows up in the blue helicopter with the ice cream and "gratuitous film", I have always heard that it is a "wizard" who shows up. A subtle distinction, but a critical one I think.

I think the post title says it all. He was going approx 120 mph.

So LeBron James challenges this trick shot maestro to a game of horse. This is actually a bad move on James’s part, I mean, horse uses a totally different set of skills than regular basketball, right? In fact, one could even argue that a pro player is *more* ill-equipped to play horse because he has spent so much time training his muscle memory to perform certain exact shots from exact positions. To try and make them perform more random ones? Tough stuff.

This brings up the whole phenomenon of trick shot youtube videos. have you seen these? Some guys are doing some amazing things. Things that they must have spent a bit of time practicing. And before youtube there wasn’t as much of an incentive, right? Like parkour or that 17 year time-lapse thing that’s going round the internets…as always, the biggest resource is time.

McCain gets Barackrolled. I haven’t been too political on this blog, but this is so good. A blending of memes (have we talked about rickrolling here before?), this has amassed half a million hits in 2 days…the bit where McCain raises his eyebrows is priceless…

Today is a good day for a party. But in this case, I’m talking about a food party.

It’s so weird how in the beginning, she sings about picking donuts "for you and for me", but then in the next shot, she says she got the donuts for her and her alone! Wha? It makes me want one of those donuts. 

via the blog of Wiley Wiggins! Yes, Mitch Kramer has a blog!