putting the j in jjosh

The Believer has a really cool article with Errol Morris (his new film is about Abu Ghraib!) and Werner Herzog interviewing each other. These guys are titans of doc, and they are so imaginative and smart, it’s a blast to read them (I found the article via). I really like this part: 

(also the illustration at the top of the article is by Maakies’ Tony Millionaire! Blog-chronicity!)

In the article, Herzog and Morris are talking like they’ve known each other for ages, because they have. From imdb:

Herzog once promised to eat his shoe if a young American film student went out and actually made the film he was always only talking about. The young student was Errol Morris , who met the challenge with his off-beat 1978 pet cemetery documentary Gates of Heaven. Herzog makes good on his promise in the short doc Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe.

Apparently after that, Morris sees Herzog’s move as grandstanding or something and it becomes this 30-year-long feud.

Herzog Eats His Shoe is one of those short films that I heard about in film class at college and sort of figured, well I’ll never get to see that because short docs never screen anywhere. But now thanks to the magic of google video, it’s available right here! It’s 20 minutes long, and you could watch it right now!

The film is really really good, and Herzog is incredibly inspiring. I love the bit in there where he’s talking about making the film "Even Dwarves Started Small":

"One little guy caught fire when we watered the plants with gasoline and so I extinguished him with my body, I threw myself on him, and when he was extinguished I told him ‘I’m going to throw myself on a cactus if you all survive.’"

So he did it and there’s still cactus needles sticking in his knee! Also there’s that great bit recently where Herzog got shot by an air rifle while doing an interview and said "it’s not a significant bullet." What a badass.

What the heck is this going to sound like? It’s a mix done by Dr. Dre from back in 1987:

"Dr Dre mixtape from 1987 (which was exclusively sold at The Roadium Swap Meet) that mixes over 300 bits and pieces of songs into a 60 minute mega mix. With a little assistance from Sir Jinx (who at the time was Ice Cube’s partner in the rap group C.I.A.) Dre delivers a classic. Listening to the mix, "Boyz In Da Hood" had already been recorded so this period represents the beginning of NWA."

(via DJSoulNYC)

Dr. Dre 1987 mix Side A

Dr. Dre 1987 mix Side B

Damn that sounds solid! I mean, the man was obviously a solid DJ. I don’t think I’ll listen to it too much, but that was fun.

 American Gangster – B

I just saw this again for the second time and I liked it a lot better this time. I think the first time I saw it I had just watched Crowe, Denzel and Ridley Scott on Charlie Rose and they were so freaking serious and full of themselves about how hard-core and amazing this film was. And then I saw the film and was like "ho hum, o.k." And yeah, it’s solidly done, entertaining from a cop/villain standpoint, fun to see how Denzel rises and Crowe brings him down. Not to mention the actor-of-the-moment Josh Brolin as an evil thug cop…

And a lot of the CRIME = CAPITALISM stuff was kind of hitting me over the head, and I wanted to scream "I get it!" when Denzel’s boss/father figure is telling him about cutting out the middle man, and so on. Denzel is badass as usual, but it came across a little like Scarface lite. And even Scarface wasn’t as good as it thought it was, you know?

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Did I ever tell you about the best meal I ever had?

I’m reminded of this meal because I came across this article…

Matt D and I were heading off to Chicago for TLC to do a ridiculously expensive shoot with a production company there. Everything was pretty well set as far as the shoot, hotel, etc., but I wanted to try and find somewhere great to go eat. TLC would give us a per diem for food, and on shoot days the set would be catered, so breakfast and lunch would be provided for and you could blow the whole per diem on dinner. Both Matt and I would have $100, so we would start with $200 between us. Then if we each put up $60-$70 we’d be on our way to an exemplary meal.

I asked my friend Zanna, who is definitely a gourmand (reads cookbooks for fun, stays up to date on the cool places to eat in major cities) if she could recommend somewhere in Chicago. She says Charlie Trotter’s. It’s wednesday, and the shoot is Friday, so the likelihood of getting a reservation is slim, but I decide to call anyway and see if there were any cancellations. For some reason I feel like I might have better luck if I call and ask in this super deep bass voice that annunciates…every…word…like…this… Turns out they’ve had a cancellation and we get a table for two.

keep reading!

Matt M clued me in to the world of Melvyn Bragg, a writer and sort of intellectual character in the UK who gets to seemingly do whatever he wants on his radio show "In Our Time"…he explores history, religion, science — whatever he wants! And he gets in all these smart people who are experts in whatever he’s discussing and they go at it. The podcasts are available on his website, and they can be pretty mindblowing. There was a great one on The Nicene Creed, The Charge of The Light Brigade, and this mindbuggler posted below on The Multiverse.

I can’t explain it very well, but there’s a great idea in there…

much like early people thought they were the center of the universe, only to learn that we go around the sun;

and then thought the SUN was the center of the universe, only to learn that our solar system is one of many in our galaxy;

and then thought our GALAXY was the center of the universe, only to learn there are lots of galaxies….

so too will we one day learn that we were wrong when we thought THERE WAS ONLY ONE UNIVERSE…

Whoa.

This podcast is about 50 minutes, so I recommend downloading and listening later, though you’re welcome to listen to it here too. If you dig it, subscribe to his podcast, it’s a blast…

Melvyn Bragg’s "In Our Time" – The Multiverse

Tony Millionaire’s Maakies. I always see Tony Millionaire’s collections in the comic store, but I’ve never gotten one. But now that they’re showing up in cartoon form (on SNL and Adult Swim), I may have to take the plunge. I love TM’s description of the series:

"Maakies focuses on the darkly comic misadventures of Uncle Gabby (a drunken Irish monkey) and Drinky Crow (a crow who likes to drink), two antiheroes with a propensity for drunkenness, violence, suicide, and venereal disease."

Nice. Check his animations here, or check his site here. Full of good dark stuff. I love this one (thanks Bill D)…

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O.k. so granted, MIA = super over exposure on the internet…

and within the subset of MIA, Paper Planes = even more exposure…

and perhaps within Paper Planes, Paper Planes remixes = even more more exposure…

but these remixes posted below exemplify a certain type of remix that I really love and that you don’t see that much of, namely the type of remix where the remixer takes away the original music and adds a completely new track under the vocal. These all do that, to varying degrees of success…

The DFA remix doesn’t quite get the key right to fit MIA’s vocals, but kind of makes up for it by being so damn funky and cool…why is James Murphy so awesome right now? LCD Soundsystem and DFA can do no wrong, can they?

MIA – Paper Planes (DFA remix)

Even though I want the Ad-Rock remix to be great, it doesn’t really work. the instrumental is good, but the two don’t mesh very well. Sort of like the video for Paper Planes with the Beastie Boys in a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo. It’s sort of like, "what’s the point"?

MIA – Paper Planes (Ad-Rock remix)

You have to get to this remix by the aptly and R-rated named Holy F*ck (who are they?) to get one that works seamlessly…this track is just fantastic, and while it jettisons the cool and hip hop style of the original, it gets a sort of punk energy that just works somehow…

MIA – Paper Planes (Holy F*ck remix)

The first two will be available on a MIA remix EP coming out 3/1, but the Holy F*ck one is internet only apparently…although MIA has suppsoedly given it her approval…

So even though I wasn’t a fan of Juno, and thought Thank You For Smoking was almost a good satire, and thought it was ridiculous for Jason Reitman to get an Oscar nomination for directing…I’m kind of digging his short film from 2000 "In God We Trust." It’s so rare to see a good short film that when you get one that’s actually entertaining, it’s kind of cool. This is well done and shows potential for Reitman — it’s ambitious, which I could also say about his two films — though I don’t think he’s really gotten it together yet.

16 minutes long, and fun…perfect lunch break short film…

"In God We Trust" (2000) – dir. Jason Reitman

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For all thems what thinks Steve Earle is just an actor playing that counselor guy on The Wire, here’s a clip of him kicking it on Jools Holland…

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Yesterday morning I was suddenly hit with the memory that I once wanted to do a doc (or series?) on culture jamming, the artform that has the artist using the culture as the medium for their art. It’s generally making some kind of comment on mass culture, often to do with consumerism, occasionally with art itself. Probably the best-known example (unless "Andre the Giant has a Posse OBEY" counts) is Banksy, whose stencil graffiti is mega-famous now, but I always liked his museum insertions better. Pictured above is a classic that he snuck into the British Museum in 2005; my favorite bit of the story is the fact that the British Museum:

"praised the way his rock was hung and the style of the sign, which was ‘very similar’ to their own design."

He’s also hit New York museums…

What else could count as culture jamming? Well, I think Improv Everywhere would definitely fit in, and I’d love to do a segment on The Amazing Hypnotist, though I guess these days they’re more well-known for the annual No-Pants Subway Ride or the Grand Central Station Freeze or Best Gig Ever, which showed up on the premiere of the tv version of This American Life.

I think Santarchy would fit in as well — without a culture for hundreds of Santas to play against, there wouldn’t be a Santarchy.

There must be more — if I could come up with a strong set of them, it could maybe make an entertaining, Erroll Morris-ish doc a la "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control". Plus it would have the overarching culture jamming theme over it.

So that popped back into my head yesterday — I think because I’m geeked to do more filming after The Snow of Truth — and then today I get this great link to a blog that someone has started within the comments section of a post on Gawker, which is itself a blog. Let me repeat that. Someone has started a blog in the comments section of another blog. Awesome. Does this count as culture jamming?

hey, a new Wax Tailor album came out last April, how about that? I’m gonna check it out and get back to you, but in the meantime, this video is pretty fresh.

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I was thinking of buying an iphone. My old(e) ipod mini just died of critical hard drive failure, and my phone is old(e). I still have a year to go on my Verizon contract, but then I came across this way to get out of your verizon contract if you do it before 3/2/08, so I figured, what the heck, I’ll get an iphone!

But then talking to some people made me think maybe I shouldn’t. And I hate being an early adopter. And I don’t really NEED it, since I’ve got a decent phone, and I’m using my backup 256MB Creative mp3 player (from the days before ipods!!), so you know, I started thinking maybe I shouldn’t…

and then I came across this, and figured, well maybe I’ll just do this instead. This seals the deal.

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Came across this really wild form of animating paper based on the stratacut technique…it seems like it’s been pioneered by Javan Ivey, and this clip is lifted from his website, pretty good stuff. Also he’s in Brooklyn, so there’s that too.

Check it out…strangely beautiful and affecting…

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His website has a good timelapse film of him preparing the animation…18 hours to prepare, compressed into 30 seconds…

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So after posting that bit about the CERN collider perhaps creating a black hole, I didn’t want to freak you out and let you know that when they start up that huge collider it might also create a rift in space-time and allow time travel to be possible. But hey, it might.

Instead I want to let you know (courtesy joshgranger.com science coorospondent Pat G) that some badass scientist named Scott Funkhouser (yes!) thinks he may have unearthed some kind of new cosmic constant, and it’s 10 to the 122. Nice. Good work, Funkhouser. It comes into play in trying to explain that "dark matter" we keep hearing about, and also:

"the ratio of the mass of the observable Universe to that of the smallest possible ‘quantum’ of mass is about 6×10¹²². And the number of ways in which the particles of the current Universe can be arranged throughout space (a measure of entropy) is 2.5×10¹²²."

According to Funkhouser (preach it, Funkhouser!) “It is unlikely for chance alone to be responsible for generating so many pure numbers from just several fundamental parameters.” In other words, it looks like design! I love it when science gets out in the fringes…

Meanwhile, let’s take a moment to reminisce on another, more classic cosmic number:

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Wizards, robots, math, science, hip-hop — I love this video! It’s by comedy/music duo Hard n Phirm.

They’re also known for their medley of Radiohead songs done in a bluegrass style. Of course they are. It’s called Rodeohead, check it out…according to wikipedia (can we ever believe them?!) Radiohead themselves approved the track…

Hard n Phirm – Rodeohead