BBT / SBMwS mashup

Two Tarantino remixes you have to watch

This is who James Hyman is, btw.

Be Kind Rewind = Movie for people who love movies

Be Kind Rewind is a little sappy in some parts, to be sure, but its a movie for people who love the creative process of the cinema. It's directed by Michel Gondry, of whose work I am a fan, and stars Jack Black and Mos Def as the lovable losers with a mission to fix everything that they have screwed up. (You know the pattern.)

Plot summary is easy: Black accidentally erases all of the VHS tapes in Danny Glover's video store while Glover is out of town, and the guys decide to recreate those movies that people want to rent themselves, which leads to JB and MD playing all the parts in Ghostbusters and filming at their local library, etc. They call this "Sweding" -- More on this pracitce here.

I love their sheer exuberance. Way back in one of my very first blogposts, I talked about Raiders: The Adaptation, which I still hope to see someday. This exuberance is reflected in some other films I like, including Ed Wood, Boogie Nights, American Movie, and Day for Night -- all of which are about people who just plain love to make movies.

Here's Jack B. and Michel G. explaining the concept of Sweding:


This is the trailer of BKR itself, but Sweded:


Ghostbusters, as mentioned above:


Fan contributions -- Star Wars Ep. 4:



The Shining:


The Matrix:


And just for the heck of it, here's Fats Waller:

Catching up on a few things

Snowed in!

Practically the whole freaking country north and east of Hawaii has been experiencing major winter weather for the past few days, and we are no exception. So, time to clean out a few links that have been sitting around for a while.

• Here's where you can download the Gr*y *lb*m. Here's where you can get the holiday-inspired Santastic Four.
• An essay from the Boston Globe from a while ago discussing the connections between Iron Man the song and Iron Man the superhero.
• Bands I Useta Like
• Here are a TON of documentaries to watch.
• T-shirt: Veni Vidi Wiki
• The Rudiments of Wisdom: Thousands of cartoons covering almost everything there is to know! (This one should go on the sidebar.) Same with The Secret Life of Machines. (Videos here.)
  
• Evolution of movie credits. (Prob. has to do with union demands...)
  

Mashups for this week

Got these from keyword searches for VJ Brewski:

Luda + Scorpions, et al.:



KISS + Tone Loc:



Doobie Brothers + Talib Kweli (I think I might like this one the best out of this batch!):



Free ("All Right Now") + Black-Eyed:

The Missives of October

Wow - Last post was at the end of August. Look, here's the thing -- Stuff needs doing at work, stuff needs doing around the house, so guess what? Sometimes I don't get around to blogging.

That said, several things of interest:

• Jay-Z plus Weezer? Jay-Zeezer! First I needed some sample material. Albums with colors in their names were definitely the way to go, so I started to make a list. How about REM's "Green?" Nah, not ironic enough. King Crimson's "Red?" No way! Everyone hates that prog rock shit. What about Weezer's "Blue Album?" It's really just named "Weezer", but everyone calls it by it's jacket color to distinguish it from the other one they released with the same name. With rap-esque lyrics like, "What's with these homies dissin' my girl?", it practically remixed itself. Paydirt. "Jay-Zeezer" was born.
• Christopher Buckley's endorsement of Obama. Excerpt: This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking? All this is genuinely saddening, and for the country is perhaps even tragic, for America ought, really, to be governed by men like John McCain—who have spent their entire lives in its service, even willing to give the last full measure of their devotion to it. If he goes out losing ugly, it will be beyond tragic, graffiti on a marble bust.
• Lynda Carter's anti-endorsement of you-know-who: (Q: Okay, last question. I'm sure you've seen all the comparisons in the media and among Republicans of Sarah Palin to Wonder Woman. How do you feel about that?) A: Don’t get me started. She’s the anti-Wonder Woman. She’s judgmental and dictatorial, telling people how they’ve got to live their lives. And a superior religious self-righteousness ... that’s just not what Wonder Woman is about. Hillary Clinton is a lot more like Wonder Woman than Mrs. Palin. She did it all, didn’t she?
  
• Good slideshow on wikis.
• Recently watched a documentary on the typeface Helvetica. Recommended if you like that sort of thing.
  

ZZ P!nk

Sharp Dressed Party:

Dre-C/D(-O-Double G) C

Also, Led Snooppelin:

ST:TAS / Pulp's Common People mashup

Mr. Shatner did a cover version of the band Pulp's song Common People. Throw in some of The Animated Series and a little bit of slash, and you get something like this:

Galvanize the Empire

The non-John Williams music is The Chemical Brothers.

Items

Things from around:

• I spent a number of years working in the mental health field. However, I never bumped into any clients who were mathematicians who specialized in prime numbers, as Mental Nurse did.
• Some fun geeky gadget sites: Technabob, Geekologie, Geekalerts.
• Sweet Home Country Grammar -- Nelly + Skynyrd:

• Did I post this before? Jay-Z and Neunundneunzig Luftballoonen?

Redshirts Bite the Dust

I think this has been around for a while, but it's great. (Redshirts on Wikipedia.)

Not Dead Yet!

Geez Louise - Two months since posting. Not the blogospheric death knell, I don't think, just that work has been absorbing 95% of my brainpower for the last long while. About a year ago we got a ton of new responsibilities at work, and (not to belittle 9/11) it kind of reminds me of the phrase that came into some usage after 9/11: "The New Normal."

Here's the thing: I don't feel guilty about not getting around to blogposting. I would have felt guilty had I not devoted my attention to personal and work matters that needed attention, and so my little observations and links and jokes and opinions and things just had to hold on for a little while. I'll be posting a bunch of stuff that has come my way over the last few months that I thought were interesting but didn't get around to posting.

Meantime, here's a Star Wars/Simpsons mashup to enjoy:

Wikipatterns; Falco; Movie Posters; Books That Make You Dumb

Been a while since I got some blogging in; No time like the present.

Items:

• I just finished reading Wikipatterns, Stuart Mader's book based on this website (or maybe the site is based on the book, or both go hand in hand, or whatever). Blog here. Excellent summaries of wiki philosophy and practice, but obviously in my case it was preaching to the choir. Two things the book did introduce me to: Geek and Poke -- Very funny! It's kind of like Dilbert, but geekier. And, the screencast of Heavy Metal Umlaut: The Movie. Also, the author has a blog hosted by Amazon -- interesting.
  
• Remember Falco? (The "Rock Me Amadeus" guy?) Check out Falco Reloaded. Very entertaining!
• Check out the 100 greatest movie posters of all time. Lists like this are made to be argued about, and this list doesn't disappoint in that regard. (For instance, if person "A" doesn't think movie posters should feature attractive women in various states of undress, and person "B" does...)
• Virgil Griffith is the guy who developed the revolutionary Wikiscanner. Now, he has put together a visual study of Books That Make You Dumb. I'm glad to see that my favorite American novel of the 20th Century, Catch-22, was one of the closest to the not-dumb side. And, we were just talking the other day at work about 100 Years of Solitude, which I have never read but would like to. I thought it was interesting that people who listed The Bible as their favorite book scored 150 points higher than those who listed The Holy Bible.
  

Happy Birthday David Bowie

Happy B-Day David Bowie. In honor, here's Thuggy Stardust -- A bunch of Ziggy/Hip-hop mashups.

Links for Boxing Day

Happy Boxing Day! (Long time no blog.) Items:

• DJ Lobsterdust vs. the 1980s: Six good mashups here, including Van Halen/Soulja Boy and The Scorpions/Luda.
• Speaking of non-traditional music, here's David Byrne in Wired on the future of the music business. Excerpt: First, a definition of terms. What is it we're talking about here? What exactly is being bought and sold? In the past, music was something you heard and experienced — it was as much a social event as a purely musical one. Before recording technology existed, you could not separate music from its social context. Epic songs and ballads, troubadours, courtly entertainments, church music, shamanic chants, pub sing-alongs, ceremonial music, military music, dance music — it was pretty much all tied to specific social functions. It was communal and often utilitarian. You couldn't take it home, copy it, sell it as a commodity (except as sheet music, but that's not music), or even hear it again. Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, but after you did, it was over, gone — a memory. Technology changed all that in the 20th century. Music — or its recorded artifact, at least — became a product, a thing that could be bought, sold, traded, and replayed endlessly in any context. This upended the economics of music, but our human instincts remained intact. I spend plenty of time with buds in my ears listening to recorded music, but I still get out to stand in a crowd with an audience. I sing to myself, and, yes, I play an instrument (not always well).
• Freakin' GOBS of great stuff at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive.
• Via Mind Hacks, an optical illusion called (I'm not making this up) The Purple Nurple:
  

Fun Mashups

Unk & Avril & Oh Mickey:

AC/DC & J-Kwon:

Crank Dat Soulja Boy!

Soulja Boy:

Various Items

Here's the story: Work is busy, life is busy (we finally cleaned out the garage loft today) and despite my best wishes to blog effusively, I get to what I get to. That's my new motto.

• Documentary being worked on about Wikipedia and wikis in general. You can contribute ideas to the film's own wiki site.
• Chris Anderson says the music biz is UP UP UP, except for CD sales.
• Map of the Star Wars Universe. Also, comparison of Star Trek and Star Wars spacecraft.
• The other night, The ♥G♥ and I watched F**k: The Documentary. Highly fucking recommended! Comments on profanity, free speech vs. censorship, the fluid nature of language, and just how silly we Americans can be about certain syllables, from Drew Carey, Alanis Morissette, Ben Bradlee, Ron Jeremy, Ice-T, Tera Patrick, Sam Donaldson, Janeane Garofolo, Kevin Smith, Hunter S. Thompson, et al. Not just them, but the no-fucking-fun crowd: Alan Fucking Keyes, Pat Fucking Boone, Dennis Fucking Prager, Michael Fucking Medved, and Miss Fucking Manners!
• Also watched 28 Weeks Later. Spoliers! I think this was even better than Days. Interesting things to note: The central family essentially doomed half the world or so by their own inability to realize that almost all of their countrymen had perished from the Infection. The whole U.S. Army involvement was very Iraq-ish, but here's the thing: They (Army) had the wrong idea about putting everyone into a confined space, but they had the right idea about trying to get rid of everyone afterwards. Very Planet-of-the-Apesesque ending.
• Django Reinhardt/Paul Simon mashup. Awesome!
• The math of vampires, ghosts, and zombies. Excerpt: Let us assume that a vampire need feed only once a month. This is certainly a highly conservative assumption, given any Hollywood vampire film. Now, two things happen when a vampire feeds. The human population decreases by one and the vampire population increases by one. Let us suppose that the first vampire appeared in 1600 c.e. It doesn’t really matter what date we choose for the first vampire to appear; it has little bearing on our argument. We list a government Web site in the references (U.S. Census) that provides an estimate of the world population for any given date. For January 1, 1600, we will accept that the global population was 536,870,911.2 In our argument, we had at the same time one vampire.

Items

From around the Web:

• Lots of funny Marvel/DC action figure skits.
• Similpedia! If you have a block of text and you want to see what Wikipedia articles have to say about the content, check this out. (Trust me! -- Via MicroPersuasion.)
• Also - Numberpedia? Will it work? Why not give it a try? (Via Words at Work.)
  
• Mythbuster Adam Savage on Blade Runner.
• Queen's 'It's a Hard Life' + 'You Can't Hurry Love'.
• Check out Stephen Colbert interviewing Andrew Keen. I thought Colbert was supposed to be the one staying in character as a thick-headed dunce. Keen out-Colberts Colbert!