Yesterday was just stunning here (until early evening) so I threw together a quick Spring mix to listen to as I walked around in the sunny sun sunshine. Then I figured I’d give it to you! Keep in mind, it’s pretty random. The criteria for songs was two:
Other than that I was just scrolling through my itunes, alphabetically by band, starting at Z. Some odd choices, but overall it was a great soundtrack for my day. Enjoy.
By now the internet is full of — and links have been forwarded and re-forwarded of — the classic way to make the Garfield comic strip funny: remove Garfield’s speech or thought balloons. It also seems to make it more the way cats really behave…
But, thanks to Malcolm M I have now discovered that there’s a way to take Garfield into the stratosphere of funny: live action. This guy’s site has a ton of these…each one dramatizes a 3 panel strip and then does a weird sort of remix with a music track. Very weird, and I love it.
I remember watching Ali G for the first time on a tape that Roscoe got while we were both working at BBC America (were they thinking of licensing it?), and we laughed until it hurt. This is a great interview with Beckham and Posh Spice from the UK’s Comic Relief…British cultural references abound, but even if you’re not getting them, it’s still pretty funny…
Even though his schtick is a little played out, I still find Ali G really funny, much funnier than Borat for some reason. Borat’s humor seems to come from exploiting cultural foibles, which can be funny, but relies on us being able to point our finger and mock whichever regular person he’s interacting with. Ali G on the other hand takes apart so-called experts in some field (is being famous a "field"?)…I think he has to be quicker, smarter, sharper. The character of Borat bases his misunderstandings on cultural mismatches, where Ali G’s are based on clever use of slang, and youth culture stereotypes. Or something like that.
More analysis is called for, but I don’t have the time or inclination. Plus, with humor it really just boils down to what you think is funny.
UPDATE – I should point out that this vid is old, as Maxine somehow knew it was old and Roscoe’s link to an old Vanity Fair article mentions it…still funny tho…
In the jjosh effort to keep you up to date on all potential black hole occurences, it should be noted that John Wheeler, the scientist who coined the term "black hole", has just died, at the age of 96. New York Times obit here. Here is a great quote from him:
The black hole “teaches us that space can be crumpled like a piece of paper into an infinitesimal dot, that time can be extinguished like a blown-out flame, and that the laws of physics that we regard as ‘sacred,’ as immutable, are anything but."
Too bad he died before we potentially create a "black hole" in "Sweden."
…via a survey on Waxy of supercut montages, here is a collection of all the questions asked during one two-hour episode of Lovelines, separated out by host and then put in alphabetical order. There’s something great about this. Plus it reminds me of working at BBC America, cutting the swearing out of British shows for American broadcast, and making a montage of all the swear words. So much fun.
What’s interesting is that while there are tons of mashups using Beatles vocals, and tons using Doors vocals, there don’t seem to be that many using Rolling Stones vocals. I think this might be because the Doors and Beatles ones come from re-mastering into 5.1 sound that isolates the vocals, and then savvy remixers can grab the vocal track. Maybe the Rolling Stones haven’t been re-mastered into 5.1?
Anyway, since it happens very rarely, it’s always fun to come across one. I’m guessing that this Soulwax remix of You Can’t Always Get What You Want is officially sanctioned and timed to market the Scorsese Stones film (why Marty, why???). Soulwax make great remixes, and while it’s not quite as transforming as I’d like, it’s still pretty great.
While working I came across this fantastic clip from Sneakers, the 1992 team-caper film with the dream cast of Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, River Phoenix, Dan Ackroyd, that guy who was the main bad guy in The Bourne Identity, and Mary McDonnell as the love interest — amazing to contrast her there (young, 80’s sexy, flirty) with her character now on Battlestar Galactica (older, wiser, still flirty).
Also, they’ve got Ben Kingsley(!) as the bad guy, who’s also some kind of computer genius with a weird accent that I think is supposed to be Brooklyn. In this amazing clip, he reveals to Redford how he started his life of crime in prison. Kingsley is pouring on as much menace as he can, and then it gets to the hi-tech bit where he sort of demos how he did what he did. Using the terrible! power! of! spreadsheets!!!
(I especially love the sound of the keyboard when he hits the keys…clak!)
Walking back from yoga today, Maxine and I stumbled into a new sort of graphic arts store on 3rd st, right in the middle of Gowanus. Called Picturebox, it looks like it’s in the middle of nowhere, but there were a couple of people in there when we were there, and from talking to the guy who was working there we learned that it’s been a small art and comics publisher there for a year and a half. The art was very cool, graphic, psychedelic — just my style.
I picked up a Dr. Strange treasury from 1975 that looks absolutely amazing, and reminisced with the guy working there about how cool it was that Dr. Strange lived in Manhattan on Bleeker Street! I love it.
From looking at the art, by comics legend Steve Ditko, it got me thinking of this great doc that I read about a while ago and tracked down (with quite a bit of effort). It’s by Jonathan Ross, who is a sort of British late-night talk guy, but gets a bit more respect than our Leno/Letterman dichotomy.
Called "in Search of Steve Ditko", it’s about Ross’s fascination with Ditko, and his attempts to track down the camera-shy artist. It’s really fun and tough to find, so I’m putting it here for you to download and enjoy. It’s about 600MB, and I’ve no clue what speed my server will go to, so maybe set it going overnight or something. If it’s not working, let me know in the comments and I’ll work out some other way to host it…
I originally read about it on Neil Gaiman’s blog, because he shows up at the end to help Jonathan Ross out, so if you’re a Gaiman fan, it’s got that too. And Alan Moore, in all his crazy beard, crazy rings glory.
Panda Bear of Animal Collective released a solo album last year that hit the top ten in many many critics’ best of 2007 lists. And the album is kind of great…all Beach Boys gone psychedelic freak-out but still sunshine-y. I especially love the first track, Comfy In Nautica…it’s like a weird gentle industrial-style rhythm with a Brian Wilson sunshine vocal, I love it…
I saw Animal Collective in a tiny DC venue, The Warehouse Next Door…I only went to the show because an old high school friend of mine was in the opening band, Antelope (they’re on Dischord, neat-o). Antelope and Animal Collective — nice, right? Anyway, Antelope were pretty good, but Animal Collective blew the lid off, all yelping and mask-wearing. In the middle of their set my high school pal leans over and says "Pretty fresh, huh?" and it had been ages since I’d heard "fresh" used. Since then I’ve been using it liberally.
Fresh is a great word for this remix of Comfy In Nautica that I came across over at the fantastic blog Analog Giant. The Giant posts liberally, and even the tracks I’m not that into are still interesting. This remix is done by XXXchange of Spank Rock. I’m sure he pronounces his name "triple x change," but I like to imagine him pronouncing it "ex ex ex change." I don’t know much about Spank Rock, except for the Baltimore guys make good! angle. I’ve hung out with some people who went to school with the MC, Naeem, and say that he used to be this total geek, and how amazing it is that now he’s this feted MC.
Anyway, XXXchange’s remix shoots an already great song into the stratosphere…I’m listening to it on repeat!
Last night Chris B and I went to Terminal 5 to see Boredoms (apparently not "the Boredoms", just "Boredoms").
You may not know Boredoms, but perhaps you know that one of their dummers, Yoshimi, is the Yoshimi from the Flaming Lips record "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots."
I tried to see them last July when they did their storied 77 drummers playing for 77 minutes on 7/7/07 at Brooklyn Bridge park (link to youtube clip), but the line was absolutely insane, literally the biggest line I’ve ever been in for anything in my life. If we’re ever walking around in Dumbo I’ll show you, it was crazy, it stretched literally for blocks!!…
So when I saw that they were going to be playing in NYC I snapped up a ticket. It was advertised that they’d be playing "in the round" and that sounded kind of great too. Chris got a ticket as well and we headed out last Sunday night.
It was one of the most amazing concert experiences I have ever had.
Top 5 easily.
Before we go any further, let’s get a sense of what exactly Boredoms sound like. Because saying "japanese noise band" doesn’t really do them justice. Here is a track off their masterpiece Vision Creation Newsun…the tracks on that album don’t have any names, just symbols, so this track’s name is actually a little heart symbol…try to make it at least 11 seconds in so you can get a sense of the drums kicking in…
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?
Is it Spring where you are?
What’s interesting is that while there are tons of mashups using Beatles vocals, and tons using Doors vocals, there don’t seem to be that many using Rolling Stones vocals. I think this might be because the Doors and Beatles ones come from re-mastering into 5.1 sound that isolates the vocals, and then savvy remixers can grab the vocal track. Maybe the Rolling Stones haven’t been re-mastered into 5.1?
From looking at the art, by comics legend Steve Ditko, it got me thinking of this great doc that I read about a while ago and tracked down (with quite a bit of effort). It’s by 
Panda Bear of Animal Collective released a solo album last year that hit the top ten in many many critics’ best of 2007 lists. And the album is kind of great…all Beach Boys gone psychedelic freak-out but still sunshine-y. I especially love the first track, Comfy In Nautica…it’s like a weird gentle industrial-style rhythm with a Brian Wilson sunshine vocal, I love it…
Welllll well well.
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 