So I’ve been doing an Upfront tape for Sundance Channel (an advertising tape) and since it’s not going on-air, we can use any music and any clips from movies to make it. I wanted to use a shot of some slo-motion dancing, like at a rave, and I remembered that there was such a scene in the film Human Traffic.
Described by imdb as “five friends spend one lost weekend in a mix of music, love and club culture,” I saw HT a while ago, and skimming through it again I was really enjoying it…
At some point I’m going to sit down and watch the whole thing again, but for now I wanted to share a couple of clips that I grabbed to use in the tape I was working on. They both feature the main character’s best friend, Koop, who is played by an extremely charismatic actor, Shaun Parkes.
A number of the scenes have really inventive staging, so here’s a scene of Koop doing some bedroom DJ’ing, and working his job selling records…so much energy…I’m using a couple of the shots of him dancing in my tape and they make me smile every time I see them…
A quick look at Parkes’s CV on imdb shows he was also in a series based on Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels. What the heck is that?! Seven 1-hour episodes…good buzz in reviews…hmmm, I may have to check that out…
This is an animated film, done in the style of old 8-bit video-game animation. If you ever went to an arcade or played Nintendo, you’ll recognize the style. It also tweaks the conventions of those old games, coming from Japan and full of "what-the-sh*t?!?!" moments that might have made sense in Japan but make no sense in our culture.
It’s done by Paul Robertson, downloaded from his Livejournal page — he did an earlier film that was like Street Fighter but I didn’t like it nearly as much as this one. Even though this one feels like it gets in my head and dances like a bumblebee telling where the honey is.
All this is a way of saying that this film is completely messed up. Especially by the time you get to the end. There’s this pig, and Buddha gets involved, and then these Violence Kings appear and so on.
It’s called Kings of Power 4 Billion %
I was going to suggest getting intoxicated in some way before watching it, but having watched the whole 12 and a half minutes I don’t think you’d make it.
So stay in your right mind for this one, ‘cuz it’s going to make you feel like you drank a gallon of anti-freeze or something…good luck…
Thanks again to Pat G, without whom we wouldn’t be aware of the impending black hole-ness of Spring 2008. Pat sends a link to a new article about that Large Hadron Collider we’re keeping an eye on in Sweden. Here are a list of the questions they think they might be able to solve once they fire that thing up:
Is the foundation of modern physics right or wrong? What existed during the very first moment of the universe’s existence? Why do some particles have mass while others don’t? What is the nature of dark matter? Are there extra dimensions of space out there that we haven’t yet detected?
Well hey that all sounds good. It would be good to know the answers to those questions right? Especially about the extra dimensions…
But there’s this other group that’s more nervous about the following questions:
Could the collider create mini-black holes that last long enough and get big enough to turn into a matter-sucking maelstrom?Could exotic particles known as magnetic monopoles throw atomic nuclei out of whack? Could quarks recombine into "strangelets" that would turn the whole Earth into one big lump of exotic matter?
Bit of a conflict. So they’re suing to get enough time to make sure none of the bad stuff will happen. As Pat wrote me in his e-mail:
This is pretty funny, some people are suing to prevent the earth getting sucked into a black hole. Of course then again, who will be laughing as we get sucked into a black hole?
Somehow, website UGO.com, which describes itself as "the ultimate online entertainment playground for people with “Gamer DNA,” has lined up a huge roster of celebrities to answer this question: who would win in a fight between a minotaur with a trident and a centaur with a crossbow?
The Onion does this one well with "Who Could You Take In A Fight?", but there’s something great about how UGO makes it so specific to the Minotaur and Centaur.
Also I am stunned at how many people they have in their list…Helen Mirren, Jack Black, the cast of The Wire, Nicholas Cage, GWAR…unbelievable! Here is one from Tom Hanks and one from Will Ferrell to whet your appetite…
Not to mention the comments section from the metafilter post that I got this from has a good ongoing debate about the question…people quoting D&D rules, methods of re-loading crossbows, etc.
"Twin Solid State Musical Tesla coils playing Mario Bros theme song at the 2007 Lightning on the Lawn Teslathon sponsored by DC Cox (Resonance Research Corp) in Baraboo WI."
Nice. What you need to know is that the music is actually somehow generated by the sounds of the sparks themselves, and not through any kind of speaker. More info:
The Tesla coils stand 7 feet tall and are each capable of putting out over 12 foot of spark. They are spaced about 18 feet apart. The coils are controlled over a fiber optic link by a single laptop computer. Each coil is assigned to a midi channel which it responds to by playing notes that are programed into the computer software. These coils were constructed by Steve Ward and Jeff Larson. Video was captured by Terry Blake. What is not obvious is how loud the coils are. They are well over 110dB.
As someone in the youtube comments section put so eloquently, amazing work, nerds.
more pop? well o.k. sure, maybe it’s a little bubblegummy, but this stuff from Robyn is so fun…I know the blog-o-world has been geeking out over Robyn for a while, but I only saw the video for Konichiwa Bitches a month or so ago, and it blew me away with its weird acid-fried scandanavian pop hip hop energy…
and then I caught this video today for With Every Heartbeat while searching for music to use in a mainstream-advertisers type video piece…she’s like some weird version of madonna from an alternate universe!
I was worried that the dolphin stuff below was a little too cute, so thank the internet gods I’ve been rescued by a truly brutal Ernie and Bert music video.
The song is called “A Divine Proclamation for Finishing the Present Existence” and it’s performed by the band Last Days of Humanity. I love how Ernie & Bert still retain their central muppet-ness despite the shift in tone…and the ending is great. Crank it up!
First, this great BBC story about a dolphin saving a couple of beached whales. My favorite line:
"I don’t speak whale and I don’t speak dolphin," Mr Smith told the BBC, "but there was obviously something that went on because the two whales changed their attitude from being quite distressed to following the dolphin quite willingly and directly along the beach and straight out to sea."
Also, some dolphins have been blowing bubble rings and then swimming through them and playing with them. According to the youtube info, this behavior "is a phenomenon that has intrigued scientists watching dolphins in the wild and now is fascinating millions of guests at SeaWorld Orlando."
There’s a nice article in the WSJ about how there might be a part of the brain that triggers an opioid hit when we are given new information that we need to absorb and interpret. That in the past we would need to gather this type of information in order to survive, so we’ve evolved to feel good when we get it, much like eating lots of fats and carbs.
In today’s info-saturated world though (like our food-saturated world), we are able to get so much information that it’s a bit like the monkey pushing the pleasure-stimulating lever until it dies (although this oft-cited experiment might be fake?). This accounts for why it’s so fun to cruise the web for info, to read blogs, to forward links, to post to blogs.
From the article:
In other words, coming across what Dr. Biederman calls new and richly interpretable information triggers a chemical reaction that makes us feel good, which in turn causes us to seek out even more of it. The reverse is true as well: We want to avoid not getting those hits because, for one, we are so averse to boredom.
It is something we seem hard-wired to do, says Dr. Biederman. When you find new information, you get an opioid hit, and we are junkies for those. You might call us ‘infovores.’ "
Now didn’t reading this post make you feel good? You want more, right?
"Meanwhile, more than nine million people still pay $10 to $25 for AOL’s dial-up service when faster broadband service is available in most parts of the country, often at comparable prices. Dial-up is a rapidly declining business, but it is not an insignificant one. After all, it accounted for most of AOL’s $5.2 billion in revenue last year."
Normally I would hate this kind of sugar-y sweet pop nonsense, but something about de-contextualizing it and putting it in the frame of busking makes it work for me. Big time. Roisin Murphy performing "You Know Me Better" on the streets for BBC2 Culture Show’s Busking Challenge. (There’s another Busking Challenge clip floating around of Frank Black beginning to play in Ireland and the cops shutting it down, but it’s kind of frustrating).
Somehow watching it like this, I love the song. It feels like some really dedicated music-types worked and worked to get this slick sound, and dance moves (does she do the robot at one point?!) and couldn’t get signed so they took it to the streets of London. It’s in such a real world, so far removed from the glitz of music videos or photo shoots. People’s phones ring, there’s some kind of clattering cart that goes by in the beginning (it makes Roisin smile)…I love it. And I know if I heard this song in a bar or a club it would make me feel sick.
So I’ve been doing an Upfront tape for Sundance Channel (an advertising tape) and since it’s not going on-air, we can use any music and any clips from movies to make it. I wanted to use a shot of some slo-motion dancing, like at a rave, and I remembered that there was such a scene in the film Human Traffic.
Somehow, website 