May 2007
Lou Reed Interview
Here’s an excerpt from The Telegraph’s interview:
To leap right from Delmore Schwarz into the world of Warhol - of all the places in the world to end up!’ Reed rolls his eyes. ‘I just thought, this is heaven. I’m in the perfect place at the perfect time. Here you are, you want to write music and songs and look what you’ve landed in the middle of. This is really, really amazing if I live through this. We went from sleeping on the floor - nothing - and then Andy took us in, which meant we got to eat fruit every night. He really liked the songs. And he was the great protector. If you have a Warhol sitting next to you saying, “Oh, don’t change any of that; don’t let them change that, whatever you do,” that really means something. The fact that he liked it meant that it was OK for it to be that way. And, my God, if he hadn’t, it would have been devastating. We would have had to leave.
(Thanks to Jason Hartley.)
Harry Potter Land to Open in 2009
No, it’s not a joke. There is actually a Harry Potter Theme Park that’s going to be built in Orlando. According to BBC News, the park is being constructed under the wachfull eyes of not only J.K Rowling, but also Oscar-winning production designer Stuart Craig, who has worked on the films. To the left is a picture from BBC News, which seems to be a conceptual drawing.
If I knew some fancy HTML tricks, I’d include some countdown clocks. One for the release of the final book, one for the next film, one for when the park opens and one for when some religious leader will declare Potter the anti-Christ and the fake Hogwarts to be “The Palace of The Beast.”
The punchline to the joke is that the last timer is going to go off way before any of the others would!
Icky Thumping
Some radio station leaked Icky Thump, the new White Stripes album, and drew the ire of Jack White. He called the radio station and berated the host for leaking his album. The host had this to say:
Not Touring: Prince and Michael Jackson
While Michael Jackson may have won the King of Pop title in the 1980s, looking back it seems like Prince came out on top. Jackson hasn’t made music in about 10 years, but Prince has continually been putting out great records, great performances and great songs. Jackson still gets more airtime in the tabloids, but that’s all due to scandals and insinuations. Apparently Jackson wanted to do a joint tour with Prince this year, but was turned down because Prince didn’t want to become part of the hoopla over Jackson’s return. I think it was a smart move considering the press is very unlikely to give Jackson any sort of positive spin even if his music is Thriller or Off The Wall good. Judging by his most recent performance he just doesn’t have what it takes.
Meanwhile, Prince is in top form, and with his Superbowl performance and last album along with his city takeovers, he’s making a great comeback (did he ever leave?).
Economist Charts: Cinema Attendance
This seems to be transmogrifying into some sort of series, but anyway, The Economist posted another interesting graph today. This time they’re measuring cinema attendance throughout the world, with surprising results.
Jobs and Gates Joint Interviewed at D: All Things Digital
I thought it would be far more awkward and unsettling than it ended up being, which was actually rather tame as both Jobs and Gates appeared to be having a good time. The occassion also lent itself to millions of annoying bloggers making hilariously repetitive allusions to Apple’s ecumenical “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ads. It also gave Bill Gates the chance to put to rest the rampant speculation on his being Fake Steve, which he vehemently denied. With good cause, too, since Walt Mossberg was right beside him the whole time. (For those out of the loop, Goatberg is Fake Steve’s bête noire.)
Oh, and in case you actually want to watch the interview, here’s a video! (Thanks to MacRumors.)
YouTube Coming to Apple TV
Thousands of the most current and popular YouTube videos will be available on Apple TV at launch in mid-June, with YouTube adding thousands more each week until the full YouTube catalog is available this fall. With Apple TV’s stunning interface and simple Apple Remote, users can easily navigate through YouTube’s familiar video browsing categories or search for specific videos. YouTube members can also log-in to their YouTube accounts on Apple TV to view and save their favorite videos.
Hopefully the trend of decentralizing Apple TV from iTunes will continue, so that I can at some point play all of my stolen movies I got off the Internets without having to hack it. That’d make me want to buy one.
Peace Ranking
The US came in 96th place on the “Peace Index” which is obviously very accurate and objective. While it may not seem like it, this index and others all point out that life in the frozen tundras of nordic countries is superior to that of the our land of excess and greed. Could the epidemic of albinism be to blame? I’m still waiting on the findings of the love index before I make my final conclusions.
Google Maps: Street View
Hey, watch this YouTube video of some guy in an orange bodysuit!
So yeah, starting now, you can see street level pictures of select cities on Google Maps. This is comepletely awesome.
Microsoft Unveils ‘Surface’
Even though I’m a die hard Apple fan, I have to admit, this is some pretty slick technology—perhaps the first “innovative” product to come out of Microsoft in nearly a decade. The “multitouch” concept is hardly new, however—it’ll be the cornerstone of the iPhone’s user interface (which Steve Jobs emphatically noted was patented during his keynote address at Macworld San Francisco earlier this year)—and has also been developed extensively by Jeff Han of New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. I guess the question is, will such a hefty and expensive piece of equipment (~$5,000-$10,000) appeal to non-corporate consumers? Either way, the implications for hotels, airports and restaurants is pretty staggering. I hear Also Sprach Zarathustra playing.
For more Microsoft Surface related info, The Seattle Post Intelligencer has put out a decent overview of the product here.
“The First War In Cyberspace”
A few days ago, Estonian authorities decided it was time to remove a bronze statue of a World War II-era Soviet soldier from a park in Tallinn, a major Baltic seaport. The government expected several protests and riots, which inevitably translate into Internet warfare (and not the kind launched by Something Awful goons). What they didn’t expect was a fullscale assault on practically every Estonian server and the defacement of various Estonian government and political party websites. The attacks crippled their entire Internet infrastructure, requiring an international effort that ranged from NATO to the European Union to get them back online.
Seems like a decent reminder of the fragility of the modern virtual world.
The Strokes Relaunch Website
So The Strokes just released their new website today. My first impression of it is that it breaks some fundamental rules of web design: 1) It resizes the browser window. 2) It uses a splash page. 3) It uses a javascript pop-up window as the actual website. 3) It has uses a Flash-based design. On the other side, it’s a huge improvement over their previous design—plus, there’s a cool new music video of You Only Live Once reminescent 2001: A Space Odyssey (could this mean The Strokes are becoming Advanced?). Hopefully the new website means another album is in the works, despite their prolonged inactivity, Albert Hammond, Jr.’s solo albums and Julian Casablancas joining up with Queens of the Stone Age.
The Search for Music Snobs
Most music snobs would agree that If you want to hear great music you have to seek it out. Instead of idly sitting by the radio or watching MTV, the music snob of the past would go through old record stores, get recommendations from other music snobs or try to make connections from whatever information is available about the artists in liner notes and the music press. Thanks to the magic of the internet, radio is quickly becoming a dead form, and thanks to poor marketing decisions MTV has stopped playing music.
Dustin Diamond Pisses Off A Personal Trainer.
From the VH-1 show Celebrity Fit Club. Schreech! What are you doing? You have neither Zack Morris or A.C. Slater to back you up! Lisa Turtle will not kiss a pile of defeated and dead goo.
Putin’s House of Mirrors
In Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II, Ash (Bruce Campbell), while hiding in a cabin to escape the onslaught of undead demons, consoles himself in front of a mirror, repeating the words, “I’m fine… I’m fine.” Shockingly, Ash’s reflection literally jumps out of the mirror and grabs the “real” Ash, shouting, “I don’t think so! We just cut up our girlfriend with a chainsaw. Does that sound ‘fine’?”
Cultural Blind Spots
Some Whig-head from England doesn’t like popular things, and wants you to name things you don’t like. Get in on the mudslinging and comment where it will matter–at the bottom of a page of an article in The Guardian.
WALNUTS McCain Pwns Obama
John WALNUTS McCain just spell checked the shit out of Obama. (in an official press release, no less!) He might as well put a “noob!” at the end of his response. Obama to respond with funny meme image? Also, according to this website, Obama should only worry about this if he’s “among old-time veterans.” If I were thirteen or a presidential candidate, I would definitely use this in my rebuttal.
Proof That Kentucky Is Insane (As If You Needed Any)
What is this, then? A reproduction of a childhood fantasy in which dinosaurs are friends of inquisitive youngsters? The kind of fantasy that doesn’t care that human beings and these prefossilized thunder-lizards are usually thought to have been separated by millions of years? No, this really is meant to be more like one of those literal dioramas of the traditional natural history museum, an imagining of a real habitat, with plant life and landscape reproduced in meticulous detail.
It’s a Creationism Museum! (which sounds like a great road trip to me.) Also, apparently in Creationist ideology dinosaurs licked oval golf balls.
Mohammed Ali Roast
All hail Dean Martin, Billy Crystal, two latino guys, and Mohammed Ali.
‘Guerrilla Gardening’ In London
[T]he London tourist board pulled off the ultimate ‘guerrilla gardening’ stunt, laying down 2,000 square metres of turf overnight around the city’s famous landmark. Visit London decided to green up the square to promote the city’s many ‘villages’, the local neighbourhoods to which many foreign tourists never venture. For the next two days, visitors to the square will be able to soak up the sunshine in the specially laid-out deckchairs, enjoy a picnic, or take part in a Tai Chi class.
Cool photo. I wonder if the classes are taught by Ren Guangyi, Lou Reed’s Tai Chi master. (I highly suggest you click this link.)
(Thanks to The Lede.)
Economist Charts: Global Infidelity
Well, not really, but they did design this nifty graph. The results are also interesting, if not surprising, but as the article suggests, it might just be a measurement of varying levels of cultural honesty as opposed to purely reliable statistics on adultery. The Economist also posted another article on marriage today—divorce demographics in the U.S—and how there is “a widening gulf between how the best- and least-educated Americans approach marriage and child-rearing.”
If you’re lazy and don’t want to read it, here are the stats. For the best-educated:
The divorce rate among college-educated women has plummeted. Of those who first tied the knot between 1975 and 1979, 29% were divorced within ten years. Among those who first married between 1990 and 1994, only 16.5% were.
…And the least-educated:
At the bottom of the education scale, the picture is reversed. Among high-school dropouts, the divorce rate rose from 38% for those who first married in 1975-79 to 46% for those who first married in 1990-94…The out-of-wedlock birth rate among women who drop out of high school is 15%. Among African-Americans, it is a staggering 67%.
New White Stripes Video: A Mexican Tale
The complex fantastical journey of sexual desire of the White Stripes expands in the newest video. The red-headed woman, typically used as the object of desire in these songs, is now Meg White, completing the circle of desire to detachment to unattainability, back to desire. Also, the video’s pretty swell.
Female Sharks Can Reproduce Asexually
It’s a process called parthenogenesis that was originally thought to be found in most vertebrate lines except mammals and, until now, cartilaginous fishes like sharks. I can hear Ian Malcolm frenetically effusing the line, “Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way,” in the back of my head (the part dedicated to Jurassic Park-related trivia).
But Dr. Hueter said he thought it unlikely that most sharks, which are highly mobile, would end up so isolated that parthenogenesis would be much of a factor. Sharks have plenty of other problems that are of potentially greater impact.
“I would be concerned about a lot of other things than whether or not a female shark can get a date for an evening,” he said.
Everybody’s Gonna Dance Tonight!
What do Mackenzie Crook (Gareth Keenan from The Office UK), Natalie Portman and Paul McCartney all have in common? They all star in the Michel Gondry-directed video for Paul McCartney’s new single “Dance Tonight.” I like the transition from joyous pop song to depressing pop song to Lynchian fantasmatic netherworld. (Thanks to Liz Goodman.)
Rolling Stone Reviews “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End”
If you don’t want to watch the whole video or read the whole article, here is the basic gist:
The good news first: Keith Richards totally rocks it playing pirate daddy to Johnny Depp’s Capt. Jack Sparrow…So what’s the bad news? Richards is onscreen for barely two minutes. The rest of At World’s End left me at wit’s end wading through nearly three hours of punishing exposition, endless blather (pirates take meetings — who knew?), an overload of digital effects and shameless setups for Pirates 4.
I can’t believe they’re making a Pirates 4. Horrifying.
Arguing Against Perpetual Copyright
In response to a New York Times Op-Ed piece by Mark Helprin, A Great Idea Lives Forever. Shouldn’t Its Copyright?, thousands of despondent readers pleaded with Stanford University law professor, chairman of the Creative Commons and all-around Web 2.0 Deus ex Machina, Lawrence Lessig, to write a devastating rebuttal. Rather than writing a formal response to the Times, however, Lessig, as noted in his blog, setup a Wiki where the users could write their own response. The result is fairly amazing. (Thanks to The Lede.)
Al Gore’s Sweet Mac Setup
Check out this ridiculous setup featured in the gallery section of Time Magazine’s recent article on all things Al Gore, aptly titled The Last Temptation of Al Gore. Three—count them—three cinema displays! It’s hard to verify, but it looks like those are 30”ers, too. That comes with a hefty price tag, but Al Gore is also a gizillionaire and has been on Apple’s Board of Directors circa 2003.
“We have dug ourselves into a 20-ft. hole, and we need somebody who knows how to build a ladder. Al’s the guy,” says Steve Jobs of Apple. “Like many others, I have tried my best to convince him. So far, no luck.”
I was hoping maybe that was Gore urging Jobs to run. Sigh. (Thanks to John Gruber.)
Slavoj Zizek Reviews “Das Leben der Anderen”
Another insightful analysis/critique of pop culture by the famed Lacanian-Marxist psychoanalyst, this time of the film Das Leben der Anderen, a.k.a. The Lives of Others, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film (2006).
Musical Spotlight: Brian Eno
In August 1995, millions of people flocked to Best Buys around the world to pick up the latest edition of the revolutionary new Windows OS, Windows 95. This was back in the days of innocence, when folks still gave a rats ass about Microsoft releasing a new edition of its famed (and now infamous) OS.
An Open Letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez
From the entire Harvard Law School Class of 1982 (PDF Warning). Hopefully he’ll take a hint from Paul Wolfowitz and step down soon, though if he does, I have to admit, I’ll miss the humorous coverage he’s been receiving from Wonkette.
Jobs and Prosperity on the E-Frontier
I’m finally graduating from college this August. Problem is, I’ve only managed to acquire a BA in Arts and Letters over the last five years. Well, that and an amazing ability to write seven pages on anything three hours before the due date with little to no prep work. I occasionally watch Dirty Jobs and find myself sufficiently lacking in my ability to chainsaw dead horses for French cuisine or to wallow in the town’s collective fecal mater for twelve hours at a time. (As a quick aside, why doesn’t Dirty Jobs do porn episodes? Have they and I missed it? Are they saving it for sweeps? Can you imagine Mike Rowe trying to be a bottom for a day?)
Why Does the Internet Love Ron Paul?
So there’s been a lot of Internet buzz about 2008 Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul. U.S. News recently published an article titled Ron Paul’s Online Rise, which mentions his status as the #1 searched term on popular blog syndication website, Technorati. I’ve read a lot of other news stories about this phenomenon, but none of them have asked a rather interesting (at least to me) question: why does the Internet love Ron Paul?
Rolling Stone Picks Worst Pop Lyrics Ever
Yesterday, the BBC posted a list of the top 10 worst pop lyrics of all time. They included U2’s “Elevation,” Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs,” Duran Duran’s “Is There Something I Should Know?,” and Oasis’ “Champagne Supernova.” Des’ree’s “Life” topped the list at #1 with this work of unmitigated genius:
I don’t want to see a ghost
It’s the sight that I fear most
I’d rather have a piece of toast
Watch the evening news
Ostensibly inspired by the BBC’s list, Rolling Stones’ Rock & Rolly Daily blog made its own top ten list, as narrated by their “no-nonsense” Facilities Manager, Brian Studley. I think his thick Boston accent adds to the effect.
Bill Richardson: Most Advanced Democratic Contender?
Bill Richardson has just entered the running for most Advanced 2008 Democratic presidential hopeful with his new “Job Interview” campaign ads. Just look at his sad-puppy facial expression. The pathos are overwhelming. Not to mention the ridiculous little diddy they play at the end. Enjoy.
The only competition that I can find so far is this video of Dennis Kucinich, the tree-dwelling elf, singing Merle Travis’ “Sixteen Tons”:
The video also aptly shows how Dennis Kucinich is only about a foot taller than the rest of the seated audience.
Update: On second thought, I can’t decide if these are actually overt. I think that the Richardson videos might be overt, whereas Kucinich inexplicably breaking out into song is definitely advanced, not to mention his invocation of a Southern dialect.
Keepin’ it Real, Keepin’ it White
Today Wonkette posted not one, but two news features relating to racists and Neo-Nazis. Tonight must be a full moon.
The first on today’s list is Republican Ted Poe who, whilst arguing for the case against withdrawing from Iraq, invoked the somber memory of the War Between the States when he decided to quote “successful Confederate general” Nathaniel Bedford Forrest. I suppose this would all be well and good had it not been for the fact that Forrest was the founder of the Ku Klux Klan. Whoops. As Wonkette aptly reminds, how could a Confederate general be successful when the Confederacy lost?
Today’s “Ticklish Subject”: Žižek!
For those of you who have never heard of Slavoj Žižek, the bear-like postmodern Lacanian Marxist philosopher and general ruminator on popular culture, here are some emblematic YouTube videos that display his veracity:
Žižek on masturbation and ideology:
Žižek on philosophy and late capitalism:
Here are more of his articles. I suggest you give them a read. His insight into today’s society is unparalleled by any public intellectual that I’ve yet to come across, thanks to his brevity and his astounding capacity to evoke genius. More publicly available Žižek articles are available at the bottom of his Wikipedia entry.
Daily Double: Sasquatch and Skunk Ape
According to Cryptomundo, a popular Cryptoozological resource that I’m sure you’ll all soon become well acquainted with, a recent sighting of Sasquatch has been made in Cranbook, British Columbia. The original article was published in the Edmonton Sun.
In other news, Florida International University has posted the award winning documentary “Footprints,” made by TV Production students at FIU about Florida’s very own skunk ape. Here is the trailer:
I don’t know about the rest of you, but this trailer makes skunk ape seem vaguely erotic. I hope they can get Wilford Brimley to narrate the follow-up when they eventually find its hard-core, bony carcass.
“Indiggnation” and Afterthoughts
A few months ago, a secret decryption key for HD-DVDs was leaked onto the internet. Just recently, however, numerous websites that contained the key have received takedown notices for allegedly violating “intellectual property” rights. That seems like a simple enough matter to deal with, despite the fact that copyrighting a series of random numbers and letters is seemingly inane (the sequences happens to be “09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0,” by the way).