As with all of the hallucinogenic swirl that is the internets, I have no clue if this stuff is super-popular or totally under the radar. Either way, you should check it out. Nice animation, politically motivated, and kind of absurd. Sign me up.
so funny…there’s more of them over here…
So rare for an animated gif to make me laugh out loud…
the first line is "So Superman went ballistic." If you see some other line, press refresh to start at the beginning.
[via fluxtumblr]
here we go, finally…there are so many photos, and it took a while to get them culled down…and then another while to get them posted…and then another while to caption them…but here they are:
From July 10th through the 20th, Maxine and I traveled down the Pacific Coast Hwy…from visiting Shelagh in Portland, Roscoe’s wedding in Florence, the OR coast, the CA Redwoods, Sonoma wine country, to Z & G in San Francisco…enjoy the pix…
We started at Shelagh’s in Portland, having dinner out in her backyard, hanging with her chickens…when the sun sets, the chickens know it’s time for bed and the put themselves to sleep! Shelagh, her husband and new baby Marty seem pretty great…
Also her husband installed a bath outside! The fence is high enough that there’s privacy, so they can experience bathing outside…seems like it would be so sweet…
Next day we jetted down to Florence, OR where I was the best man for Roscoe’s wedding…I got to make the scene in a tux, and I think it’s the first time I’ve ever worn one…unless I wore one for prom? I hope I didn’t…
If Maxine hadn’t been there, half of us wouldn’t have been able to get our ties tied…
there are so many more photos, I swear. Click here for the rest…
SC hipped me to this at work. Don’t know why but I think its great. Something to do with the great lo-fi UFO and the accents…
Sure to become a crazy hyped blog-phenom, I want to hate these teenagers but can’t. there’s something about the song that won’t leave my head. There’s something about the video that embraces hi and low tech. There’s something about the way they both skewer and embrace hipster-ism. Who are these kids?!
Some people are going to hate this stuff big time. But really, give it a minute and let the good times roll over you. Also they kept it to 1:30! They know you can’t take too much of this stuff!
Also fun: watch closely when the whale shows up…there’s a Getty images watermark on the shot! Copyfight!
natalie portman’s shaved head – sophisticated side ponytail from thatgo on Vimeo.
from Freewillamsburg, natch
Among the various podcasts out there, I have to give a serious shout-out to Stephen Fry’s podgrams. Fry is a BBC tv comedy institution and he also shows up in various films and TV shows, but the most fun thing about him is how British he is. He has a great accent, seems to both enjoy being from the whole Oxbridge crew as well as satirizing being from it, and really enjoys being well-spoken and intellectual-y. All tempered with the off-the-cuff best British silliness in his humor. The BBC describes him thus:
"Stephen Fry seems as English as tweed, silver toast racks and the London black cab he can be seen driving around the streets of the capital."
His podgrams are very irregular, but are always a blast to listen to. His latest consists of Mr. Fry reading a speech he recently gave regarding the BBC and the motion to "slice" their licensing fee to include the (apparently) foundering Channel 4. He uses this speech as an excuse to talk about his own history with the BBC (from listening to BBC radio to making shows of his own) and to explore the current state of media production and distribution today. For anyone in or connected to any kind of "content production" in today’s world, it’s a pretty great podcast.
The podgrams can be found here, though you’ll have to subscribe via itunes…in case you’ve no time nor audio to listen to a podcast, there’s a text transcript here…and his blog is also fun (he’s a bit of a tech-head)…he’s got a great post talking about being semi-famous and what it’s like to have people coming up to you all the time to talk to you, have pictures taken, etc. Interesting stuff…
I love this bit from the BBC podgram:
And as for broadcasting, well after a mad diversion of believing that it was all about distribution, every media boss now repeats the mantra Content is King.
‘We repent,’ they seem to be saying, ‘being a media boss is no longer about owning as many stations, networks, nodes, outlets and ports as possible – it’s about production, about making things. I see that now.’
‘Hurray,’ shout the programme makers, ‘finally you’ve understood. So, give us the money then.’
‘What money?’ say the media executives, ‘there is no money. We spent it all buying up companies and their back catalogues. We needed content in a hurry, because – in case you weren’t aware … content is king, you know.’
‘Doh. Hang on … but what about new content?’
‘Good lord no. Are you mad? Far too expensive.’
Overheard in the elevator this morning:
WOMAN: So how was it last night?
MAN: It was fun…I think…
WOMAN: Oh, you black out in the cab ride home again?
MAN: No…I don’t think I did…
I should note that the building I work in has MTV on 3 floors, so there’s lots of young party-types in the building…contrasting with the tax accountants on another 2 floors…
On my ride in to work I was listening to some tracks off The World According to RZA, a record that didn’t get a US release. It’s RZA going around the world and highlighting a bunch of foreign rappers and hip-hop types…it’s a bit hit-or-miss, but it’s pretty fun, and you really get a sense that these foreign MCs are really giving it their all because they know it’ll have RZA’s name on it. JG and I came across it while doing research for our all-things-RZA talkinwu project.
Here are two tracks from World According to RZA…in the first one, there’s this great intro bit out on the water (the sfx are fantastic) and RZA talks about how he’s against killing whales because he "heard they was here before us, you know?" The second track starts with a typically mighty Ghostface verse before moving on to a RZA verse (I love how he says "cranberry") and then some French(?) rap that is so smooth of flow…I wonder what they’re saying…
[audio:RZA_north_sea.mp3] [audio:RZA_saian.mp3]Recently I came across a CD of audio from this semi-band project I was in back in something like 1999 or 2000. My pal Bijan and I were gonna both play guitar, and then instead of having a singer, we’d just have a dat player playing these stories that we would record. (I’m sure This American Life was on at the time, but I wasn’t aware of it.) The songs’ dynamics would match what was going in the story…
I only managed to record 3 stories, and we had all of 4 practices before we gave it up. Then I advised Bijan at work that if they didn’t give him a raise he should quit. They didn’t, he did, and the next thing I knew he had moved to New York. It was crazy.
The CD I found has two of the stories I recorded — the third, which was fantastic, has been lost to the aether.
First is Mr. B (initials for names to protect the storytellers)…a guy I worked with a handful of times. A real old-school producer guy, who talked a mile a minute and smoked constantly. He wore all black and was a blast to hang around with. I just figured he’d have a good story, so I got the mic and started recording…his story is split into two parts…the first sound you will hear is Mr. B lighting a cigarette…
[audio:01_Bill1.mp3]
In part two, at the appropriate time, Bijan and I were going to start playing J Geils’ "Angel is a Centerfold" and it would slowly get louder and louder as the story went on, before erupting into a massive crescendo at the end! Whatta show it would have been!
[audio:02_Bill2.mp3]
Next is J, who worked with us for a while at Team. If you knew her, you’d never guess that as a kid she was chubby and unathletic…Bijan and I were practicing in Team’s rarely used 2nd floor space, after-hours, and J saw us one night and asked what we were up to. An aspiring actress (wonder where she is now?) she said she had a good story…
[audio:03_Jana1.mp3]Work’s been a little slow recently, so I’ve been crossing items off the ole to do list, and watching this fascinating hour-long doc on the thousands of boxes Kubrick left behind when he died. The guy who made it spent 5 years going through the boxes (off and on, not 5 solid years), and the doc is a really interesting look at a bit of an obsessive recluse.
The whole thing is on google video…I found it via good old metafilter…here’s a great clip where the filmmaker finds a bunch of behind-the-scenes footage shot by Kubrick’s daughter on the set of Full Metal Jacket…apart from how fun it is to see a little bit of what Kubruck was like, I love how prominently tea figures in this scene…
My fascination with the Large Hadron Collider continues to grow. It looks like the timetable for maybe creating a black hole in Switzerland should go something like this: first tests on Aug 8th, full test in Sept, and first full run "before year’s end". Can’t wait.
Meanwhile, here’s a rap by a science writer working at the LHC, all about what’s supposed to happen. I love it when science is explained using rap.
from the ever vigilant bb
this month’s banner was taken in the Redwoods, natch…blog post about the vacation is coming, I swear…
One sunny Autumn day a few Falls ago, I went out to the backyard of 1806 Lamont to work on Oscar Wild’s catwalk. Maxine filmed me doing it, she finally finished editing it, and it came out great…
I’m amazed at how maleable the muppets seem to be when it comes to remix culture…and how great they are. I think it’s really a testament to the imaginative power of the muppets and how purely creative and fantastic they are…
This vid makes me talk like I’m talking about Wu-Tang…where once I might say "that Rza verse is really good, but Ghostface just nails it!", now I say Ernie’s really good, but when Bert comes in, he totally kills it! Nice one Bert.
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