fun bit from "The Future is Unwritten:. Julien Temple’s solid doc on Joe Strummer…this clip is about Joe Strummer’s first band, and it’s told in a cool-looking pen and ink wash animated style…the film is def worth seeing, I came out of it wanting to know even more about Strummer…
So they’ve developed autonomous robots to work in warehouses getting the products to be shipped out. There are so many great things about this. Below there’s a sort of corporate-style vid extolling the virtues of the system…I’ve set it to jump in 4:16 ‘cuz the beginning is boring, and there are so many great bits later on:
The fact that the robots are autonomous, so they’re making decisions as to how best work things out.
The way the guy is giving his interview with robots zipping along behind him.
They way he talks about people wanting to "work WITH" the robots, like they’re already getting personified.
The fact that it’s a great benefit that we’ve reduced the walking people had to do (finally!).
The fact that everyone goes on about the "efficiency" of the system without mentioning that people will lose their jobs to robots. It’s a blast.
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finally a blanket that gives you might give you herpes.
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the google maps street view is a pretty good time…I’ve used it to check parking signs to see what day I need to move my car, look at apartment buildings, scout locations where we’re going to shoot…
but the best thing about the street view is that it also captures moments like this…
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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.
I like The Knife, but there’s something about their use of voice fx that reminds me of Ween. So even though it’s supposed to be (and kind of is) spooky as heck, it’s kind of silly too. This is the single from The Knife’s Karin, recording as Fever Ray.
is the new awesome. Let’s face it, the dog is the true rock star of this vid…
Bubblicious from Rex The Dog on Vimeo.
It’s been a long time since I saw something on the internetz that made me say "I must blog this immediately!" This is simple and great. Those of you who have to deal with B&T will especially dig it.
Bars & Tones from André F. Chocron on Vimeo.
For Christmas I got a bunch of 33 & 1/3’s, (also, Gamera does a good job of explaining them here) but without a doubt the most interesting one was on Celine Dion’s "Let’s Talk About Love". Not so much a critique of the actual album (although it is that), it’s more a critical examination of taste, and what it means to like something or dislike something. How our tastes develop (along economic lines, social lines, cultural lines), what is meant by the social currency of cool — all this interesting snooty critical theory stuff with Celine Dion as the springboard. It’s pretty great.
One of the more interesting lines of thought in the book was our fear of liking things that are overly sentimental, or tacky. He posits a theory that part of our dislike of these things is that they make us feel too much, they threaten to pull too much emotion out of us, and that we resist this so that we can still feel we have a hold on our emotions, that we are in control of our feelings. But maybe this isn’t the best thing for us, maybe it would be good for us if we could feel things strongly, really let ourselves go and feel the emotion that certain works of art are trying so desperately to make us feel.
The great thing was that I was reading a lot of this book in LA at our hotel pool — a pool that was too close to the freeway so they blasted middle-of-the-road rock to drown out the traffic noise. I’m reading this stuff about maybe giving in to the emotion and I’m listening to "Livin on a Prayer" and "Blinded by the Light" and so on. I tried to feel what it felt like to give in to these songs and it was interesting as anything. Reminded me of going to church and saying to myself "just for fun I’m going to feel what it would feel like to really BELIEVE. How does it feel? Just give in…" There’s something to it, it’s valuable somehow.
So recently whenever I see or hear something that makes me cringe a little, I try to let go of that feeling and just embrace whatever it is that’s making me cringe. This seems to be particularly effective when dealing with new pop culture stuff that’s right on the border of cool/lame. I love seeing things where I can’t tell if it’s great or if it’s weak. This guy Juiceboxxx is right there. I def appreciate the energy, and I can tell part of it is a goof, and part of it is super serious, but I just can’t make up my mind about it. I know I don’t need to have it on my ipod, but I like watching the video (it’s also a great video). Plus he’s 21, and from Milwaukee, and it seems like so much of his vibe is about being for the kids and I love that. What do you think?
What do they mean by "2"?
Sorry I haven’t been posting as of late, but I’m in LA for work and also I
have
(otherwise known as "pinkeye"!!!) which is surreal and not much fun. I will tell you this though: if you go on an airplane wearing an eye patch, people will hold doors open for you. Eye hurts, can’t look at screen any more. Talk soon.
sometimes I think about how fun it mus be to be Spike Jonze, have some crazy idea and then make it happen…but wait, I get that feeling sometimes (see that Charlie Kaufman promo)…there’s something so epic about this…taken via kottke’s best links of 2008 list which is worth a visit on its own…this is 6 minutes, so wait to watch until you can really drink in the slo-mo…(also maybe let it load the whole way and then skip in :44 past all the intro nonsense…I can’t get the seek pref to work with yt high quality embedding, anyone know why?)…
