putting the j in jjosh

I heard this great podcast this morning from WNYC public radio’s Radiolab, which seems to be a sort of hodge-podge, documentary-style radio show that airs intermittently. Their main page is here, and their blog post that I got this mp3 from is here. I’ve taken the mp3 and trimmed it down to just the content and end credit so it doesn’t have any of the radio show bits at the beginning…

It’s by Sherre DeLys, an Australian artist and sound designer, and it’s called "If". I found it weirdly compelling, very moving, sort of like a hypnotic lyrical story. Joshgranger.com is the perfect place for me to be able to post this kind of stuff, because this isn’t anything I’d put on a mix for anyone, and it’s too involved to be the kind of link I’d e-mail around…but it’s definitely a fascinating piece and worth hearing…

It’s about 7 minutes long, so if you want to listen to it later I’m adding a download link under the player…

right-click to download

A great drinking chat with Chris B about God, Zen and the universe reminded me of this cool animation from The Vancouver Film School. It’s basically two films telling the story of the origin of life, one from a creationist perspective, and one from an evolutionary perspective. The fun is that the (religious) creationist one tells it as though it’s pure science, while the (scientific) evolution one tells it like it’s a religious text.

Kind of tough to understand when written out, but easy once you see the films.

Then they take it to the next level by letting you watch both films at the same time, so you can hear the competing creation worldviews giving both sides simultaneously. Whew. I’d post it here, but I can’t match their shmancy simultaneous player. Good stuff, check it out!

Find it here.

Mmmmmm…SILFs.

It seems like I’m always coming across internet memes in postings where people are assuming that EVERYONE knows about it. Like "oh, well, it’s just another lolcatz" or "just a rip-off of All Your Base"…same thing happened when I read about lipdubs (someone in a post used the term "post-Lodwickian" referring to Jakob Lodwick, creator of lipdubs).

Lipdubs are when someone lipsyncs to a song, but splices in the actual song to the video…there are a million out there and most of them are lame (like the first one), but the first I saw (and arguably the most popular) was this one, which is great. It also features SILF:

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video originally posted here.

According to my calendar, it’s Valenmatines Day!

Where does Valentine’s Day come from anyway? Who was St. Valentine? Is this another case of the Church co-opting a big pagan day and making it their own (see Christmas, Easter, Halloween)? The BBC has a great little history of Valentine’s Day that’s pretty interesting. Turns out, no pagan stuff here, though the time is noted as traditionally being the fertility celebration time for the Greeks and Romans…the Greeks celebrating the marriage of Zeus and Hera, the Romans celebrating Lupercus, the god of fertility (also known as the "protector of flocks against wolves").

Who? Lupercus?! Well that’s right, and according to the BBC, Lupercus’s festival was traditionally celebrated with your standard goat-slaughtering, wine-drinking and dead-goat-skin-touching by fertile young girls. Now that’s a Valentine’s Day I can get behind! How did this devolve into chocolates and cards!?

There’s more info here. My favorite bit:

One of [the rituals of Lupercus] was a lottery where the names of available maidens were placed in a box and drawn out by the young men. Each man accepted the girl whose name he drew as his love – for the duration of the festival, or sometimes longer.

Roman key party!

To get to the official Valentine’s Day of Feb 14th, we get to turn instead a heart-warming story of a martyred Bishop who conducted illicit marriages in Rome in 270 AD. The Emperor at the time thought that married men made poor soldiers so he outlawed marriages for young soldiers. But feisty Bishop Valentine (it’s a Roman name?) thought marriage was part of God’s plan and married young people anyway. Nice one!

Meanwhile, back here in 2008 AD, Kanye West celebrates Valentine’s Day by posting a short, Spike Jonze-directed video for "Flashing Lights". It’s kind of great. A bit gratuitous maybe, but isn’t that what Kanye (and Valentine’s Day) is all about?

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When I first started reading about Kanye, I kept calling him Kayne. I bet that happened with a lot of people.

I have not sold the CDJ decks yet, so if you’re interested, drop me an e-mail…

Meanwhile the always sweet Miss Fidget has alerted me that there are other, more low-tech, but also more badass, options that are worth considering. This one comes from New Orleans musician/inventor Quintron. The vid is long, but worth it for the jam session about 3:50 in…

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Well, apparently there’s a possibility of black holes appearing in Switzerland this May as a result of the upcoming Large Hadron Super-collider work that’s coming up.

In this huge machine (the LHC), in Cern, near Geneva, they’re going to collide two counter-rotating proton beams. Hmmm, wonder what that means. Anyway, basically they don’t know what will happen when they do this. Black holes might appear.

There might also be strangelets and monopoles; unfortunately, only brainiac scientists know what they heck those things are, so they don’t seem like such a big deal.

Black holes on the other hand are sexy, very sexy.

You can read the whole paper that assess the risks here, if you dare (thanks, Pat!).

Or I can just quote you the money part of the paper here (liberally *snipped*):

"It is important to notice that: The study for the [previous collider] had concluded that no black holes will be created. For the [LHC super super collider]  the conclusion is very different: "Black holes could be created!" !

The main danger could be the complete destruction of our beautiful planet. Such a danger shows the need of a far larger study before any experiment !

If we add all the risks for the LHC we could estimate an overall risk between 11% and 25%!.

We cannot build accelerators always more powerful with interactions different from natural interactions, without risk. Our desire of knowledge is important but our desire of wisdom is more important and must take precedence. The precautionary principle indicates not to experiment. The politicians must understand this evidence and stop these experiments before it is too late!"

Well, come May some scientists are going to be eating their words. Maybe the guys who wrote this paper, or maybe the rest of the world.

I find it hard to worry about this stuff though…there’s enough going on at the ground level to be worried about without some shmancy sci-fi fears of black holes appearing.

Still, I’m gonna track when they’re switching that thing on…

if you listen carefully, at one point the computer/witch doctor says "when you come to church on palm sunday, come in your birthday suit."

video for kid 606 – the illness

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All I can remember about this is that Mark sent it to me ages ago and I’ve had it on my desktop ever since. I would check it out every now and then and think "I’ve gotta do something with this!" And now I have.

Without further ado…

"Tokyo 1 & 2"

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The Corporation – A

A massive documentary that is so full of amazing stories, facts and characters, it probably has about 8 full-length documentaries lurking within it. From the Bolivian riot in Cochabamba over water privatization to the attempt to destroy Roosevelt after the creation of The New Deal to the public indifference over biological patenting. Holy mackerel this film was full of ideas.

Told very simply, in classic talking-head style, this doc sets out to define what a corporation is, a bit of the history, and how modern-day corporations are functioning in today’s world. Needless to say, most of what it has to tell us is pretty harrowing stuff. But it’s full of fascinating, stimulating, outraging, depressing, invigorating stuff as well.

Mostly what this film made me do, (as have several other films, or books, or discussions about the state of the world today) was question: what has to happen for people to start caring about this stuff and really absorbing it? Because to a certain extent this film is preaching to the choir (I imagine). I expect most people who are willing to rent/buy/download a 2 and a half hour documentary called The Corporation are probably already interested in social issues.

So what has to happen, what kind of story has to be told to get an "average" person to connect to some of these difficult truths. I am somewhat heartened by the success of a film like Michael Clayton, but as far as generating social outrage, it’s a bit of a softball. And it’s not enough to show some astounding facts and leave the audience to get mad. I suppose Inconvenient Truth really affected some people, and Michael Moore’s had great success with his style of "I am the everyman and I can’t believe the world is like this!"

Maybe it’s wrapped up in Maslow’s pyramid of needs, and people can’t face these issues that exist outside of them while they still have so many current, direct issues to face on a daily basis, i.e., where am I going to find the money for that housing payment. But no matter what situation people are in, there’s always a need and connection to stories…

So maybe there’s some way to tell these stories so that people get them, the way The Beatles made music that people couldn’t help but get, the way Shakespeare wrote plays that people couldn’t help but get, the way great leaders stimulate action through speeches that people can’t help but get.

I’m glad Maxine and I are doing the small things we’re doing to contribute to the solution — recycle-mania, buying local food, getting humanely raised meats, limiting consumption, some of our work projects.

Not sure where I’m going with this, or what’s coming out of it, but that’s a powerful film to get me so charged up.

Especially as hung over as I was this morning.

 This is so great. I read somewhere that it’s "all over the net", but you know, I mean, my sister hasn’t seen it yet, so I guess it’s not ALL over the net…

It’s on youtube, but the person who posted it somehow turned off embedding, which I didn’t know you could do…if you want to go to the original youtube posting, it’s here.

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 as I get ready to sell my CDDJ decks and move on to another system that’s more digital, I begin to find exactly how many options are out there these days. For instance, what exactly is happening here?:

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I love the way Nicholas Cage will do a long string of major studio crap and then drop an indie gem on you. He’s so great. Leaving Las Vegas, Adaptation, Wild at Heart.

A week and a half ago I was over at M Devito’s and just wanted to crash on the couch and watch something on his absurdly large tv…National Treasure was just starting, so I figured I’d give a try. All I wanted to do was veg out. And I don’t think I even made it a half hour. It was so bad! Atrociously bad! The dialogue, story, acting…the sets were weak for crying out loud. For a moment I thought Christopher Plummer would be able to hold me in, but no. I changed the channel and watched the middle hour of Titanic.

And I guess National T made scads of $$$, as has the sequel, right? Let’s have a look…ah yes…box office for National Treasure 1 worldwide gross is estimated at 347 MILLION DOLLARS! Yikes. National Treasure 2 is still out and it’s already made 383 MILLION DOLLARS. Wow.

And then there’s this (thanks, Malcolm!):

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and

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Over the spring of 2007 I did a bunch of promos for a movie night at Sundance Channel called Sonic Screen. It was pretty fun, the films were mostly great (Gimme Shelter, the Flaming Lips doc) and there was a really interesting one on Femi Kuti called Femi Kuti Live at The Shrine.

Femi Kuti is a mega mega star in his home of Nigeria, and he has a small concert venue there called The Shrine which he plays frequently to packed sweaty crowds. He’s also extremely political, and his songs are often about social issues or Nigerian policies that need to change.

I admit, his music doesn’t really do it for me, although it was amazing to see how much he practiced, what a talent he is (singing, guitar, keyboards, sax), how lithe and pumped he is, and how much energy he has. He’s also totally adored. This is a clip from the film that I pulled out because it was so amazing. For the first minute he’s explaining how he’s letting people vote on the best songs for him to perform, and then a devotee walks by. Kuti’s face is great, and the devotee is so full-on. Amazing.

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So fierce.

Enchanted – F

Having sounded off previously about how I couldn’t believe that Enchanted was Oscar-nominated for 3 songs(!!) while Once only got one, I then noted that some part of me secretly wanted to see Enchanted. This was due to the fact that I like Patrick Dempsey, had read an interview with him about how this was his return to the big screen, and then had seen some review that liked the film. Also I’m a story geek and was interested as to how they were going to tweak classic fairy tales.

Last night after a tough day at work, Maxine just wanted to crash on the couch, order out and watch something girly, so we got fish n chips (and mushy peas! amazing Park Slope Chip Shop) and watched Enchanted.

Or tried to.

We only made it about ten minutes before we both realized that as we weren’t 6 year-old girls, we weren’t going to enjoy this film.

Luckilly we had 35 Up to get us out of our fairy tale slump.

I love Alex Trebek, he’s so classy and brainy-seeming without being obnoxious. He seems like he has a good sense of humor and who doesn’t love a dry dry wit. Usually he’s really straight-faced without being super-serious, but every now and then (apparently) he can’t resist dropping into silly mode. But then it’s even funnier because he’s still sort of…straight…

Trebek with no pants

Trebek is morally outraged

Trebek goes to a rave

A young Trebek starts swearing  (very Casey Casem style)

And a couple of YTMND’s:

MC Trebek

Trebek in Funky Town

I don’t understand how people find all these little moments when there are like 5000 episodes of Jeopardy out there…but the internet has its ways…