Fresh


Incredible! from kwest on Vimeo.

via Kottke

What Top Gun is REALLY about. Thank you, Quentin Tarantino, for ruining another movie from my childhood.

Digital Get Down

I was on a myspace page the other day that was playing N’Sync’s song “Digital Get Down”. I let out the obligatory groan and scrambled to find the right button to shut it off. Before I managed to kill the obnoxious pop song, I couldn’t help noting some of the lyrics, though – specifically, the beginning of the chorus, which goes like this:

Digital digital get down just you and me
(you may be) twenty thousand miles away but I can see you
And baby baby you can see me

20,000 miles?! I’d like to know where in the hell these people are at.

See, the earth is roughly spherical, with a circumference of about 25,000 miles. So if you were to stand two people as far apart as they could get, at the two poles, they would only be 12,500 miles apart. At that point, if they took a step in any direction, they would always move closer to the other person.

So, unless they have wacky standards of measurement, these people clearly aren’t both on earth. Even the International Space Station is only about 200 miles above earth, so that’s ruled out as well.

As far as I can tell, the only people to have ever been 20,000 miles away from another human would be the Apollo astronauts on a moon mission. So clearly, Justin Timberlake was channeling Neil Armstrong when he sang lyrics like this:

Baby baby we can do all that we want
Were gettin nasty nasty, were getting freaky deaky

“Freaky deaky“?! Kind of paints the moon mission in a whole new light, huh?

Nerdcore

If you’re not fluent in geek-speak, don’t even bother with this one.

Heart Made of Sound

A fun music video from the Softlightes

Special Delivery

Ben Folds is one of my favorite artists, and the internet was all a-buzz last week about his cover of “Such Great Heights”. (Note the drummer playing a mailbox covered with a towel, using only a wooden spoon).

I dug the song and discovered that the original song by The Postal Service is even better.

Moral of the story: YouTube is chock full of quasi-legal goodness, including all kinds of aweesome music videos.

Remix

Recently, a contest was held to see who could do the best remix of a motion picture trailer. The twist? They had to make the movie seem like it was from another genre all together.

Here’s a pair of the best ones:

Props to Waxy for the links.

Captain Vegetable

I was browing some music online the other day, and stumbled across an mp3 of an old Sesame street skit. You know the one: “It is I, Captain Vegetable, with my carrots, and my celery. . .”

I listened to the song just ONCE, and the damn thing has been in my head for the last three goddamn days. I wake up, and the first though that enters my head is “Three cheers for me, Captain Vegetable! Crunch crunch crunch!”.

Kill me now.

Those Sesame street songwriters are good. With shit like this, I’m surprised that we don’t have a vegetable epidemic in America. Are fast food commercials really more compelling than Captain fucking Vegetable?

Overrated Songs

Some wannabe critics recently collaborated to produce a most overrated songs list. I agree with a lot of them, and the comments about The Doors’ “Light My Fire” are hilarious:

Lyrically, Jim Morrison’s poetry-set-to-music resembles the scribbling of someone who has just finished the Romantic Poetry section of their tenth grade English class. This doesn’t even cover the fact that in the chorus, “fire” is rhymed with “fire”, the second of which is delivered with a strangled bellow that is supposed to convey some sort of passion that is missing in Morrison’s morose and flat delivery during the rest of the song. Also, “girl we couldn’t get much higher”? He sounds like an eight grader who just smoked some oregano he bought in the bathroom of the mall.

Call me a cynical bastard, but these are the kinds of reviews that I really enjoy.

Study break

Bands that I don’t like as much as I think I’m supposed to:

  1. Radiohead
  2. Sleater Kinney
  3. Eric Clapton
  4. Dave Matthews Band

Rockin’ Song of the day:
‘Merican – The Descendants

We flipped the finger to the king of England
Then stole our country from the Indians
With god on our side and guns in our hands
We took it for our own

Built a nation dedicated to liberty,
Justice, and equality
Does it look that way to you? It doesn’t look that way to me
It’s the sickest joke I know

Chorus:
Listen up, man, I’ll tell you who I am
I’m just another stupid American
But you don’t want to listen, you don’t want to understand
Just finish up your drink and go home.

I come from the land of Ben Franklin,
Twain and Poe and Walt Whitman.
Otis Redding, Ellington,
The country that I love…

But it’s the land of the slaves, and the Ku Klux Klan,
The Haymarket Riot, and the Great Depression
Joe McCarthy, Viet Nam
It’s the sickest joke I know

*Chorus*

I’m proud and ashamed, every 4th of July
You’ve got to know the truth before you say that you’ve got pride

Now the cops got tanks ’cause the kids got guns
Shrinks pulling pills on everyone
Cancer from the ocean, cancer from the sun
Straight to Hell we go

*Chorus*

Remix

This flash animation is less than impressive, but the remix of Eminem in the background is genius. It’s like kiddie-carnival Eminem. Truly bizarre…

Mix CD of the Week

Jet – Cold Hard Bitch
Stabbing Westward – Save Yourself
Olympic Hopefuls – Imaginary
The Brand New Heavies (feat Pharcyde) – Soul Flower
8stops7 – Satisfied
Weezer – El Scorcho
MU330 – Hoosier Love
Cake – Stickshifts and Safety Belts
Lemonheads – The Outdoor Type
Low Fidelity All-Stars – Battle Flag
Stephen Lynch – Jim Henson’s Dead
Counting Crows – Einstein on the Beach
Yellowcard – Empty Apartment
The Clash – Should I Stay or Should I Go
Collective Soul – The World I Know
Bad Religion – Drunk Sincerity
Lucky Boys Confusion – Fred Astaire
Beastie Boys – Sabotage
Fuel – Bittersweet
The Suicide Machines – Sometimes I Dont Mind
Toadies – I Come From The Water
Tool – Sober

Happy listening, and remember: even Jesus hates Creed!

Eight-track set of the day

Guttermouth: Perfect World
Audioslave: Cochise
Nirvana: Man Who Sold the World
AFI: Silver and Cold
Offspring: Session
Rage Against the Machine: Killing in the Name Of
Sublime: Badfish
Red Hot Chili Peppers: Road Trippin’

Brilliant

A while back, a fellow by the name of DJ Danger Mouse performed a little experiment. He acquired a vocals-only track of Jay-Z’s recent release, the Black Album. He then sampled from the Beatles’ White Album to create backing beats, and the Grey Album was born. And it was surprisingly good. It contains some of the best mash-ups I’ve heard. (My personal favorite is still the Beastie Boys “So Watcha Want” over ODB’s “Got Your Money”.)

Dj Danger Mouse released it for free on the internet, because it was a derivative work, and he wasn’t looking to make money off the track. To him, it was a pure expression of artistic creativity. Unfortunately, word spread a little too fast, and his work recieved a death blow: a copyright infringement notice, ordering him to take own the music immediately. Unfortunately for the goons over at the RIAA, it was too late. The music had made its way onto P2P networks, and a huge number of websites participated in a ‘Grey Tuesday‘ where they hosted the music. These advocates, and I, believe that his non-commercial use of sampled music to create derivative works was fair use.

This would normally be the part where I launch into a critique of the copyright system in the US, and espouse the awesome possibilities of a system like Creative Commons. Others have already covered this case pretty well, though. Do a search for “Danger Mouse Grey Album”, and you’ll get about 8 million relevant articles.

So, why am I bringing up this old news, you ask? Well, it’s because someone just created a video mash-up of the Beatles and Jay-Z, which is almost as brilliant as the album itself. Check it out, be impressed, and remember that this kind of creative endeavour is an endangered species if copyright law continues down the wrong path.

UPDATE: Waxy has mirrors and a torrent link. Enjoy!

American Idiot

Despite the title, this post isn’t about Bush. Surprised?

Don’t have time for much today, but I wanted to recommend the new Green Day album, “American Idiot”. The title track is exactly what you’d expect from Green Day – fast paced and catchy (which is why it’s their first single). There are several other songs in this general category as well, but Tracks 2 and 12 are what really caught my attention.

They’re nine minute long tracks, almost reminiscent of rock ballads, complete with melody and thematic changes. But the cool thing is, they don’t sound anything like the old-school ballads from, say, Aerosmith or Meatloaf. (In other words, they don’t suck!). “Jesus of Suburbia” is especially cool, IMHO:

Everyone is so full of shit
Born and raised by hypocrites
Hearts recycled but never saved
From the cradle to the grave

We are the kids of war and peace
From Anaheim to the middle east
We are the stories and disciples
Of the Jesus of suburbia

Pick this one up, if you get the chance.

From the dKos Comments

I saw the film on Friday with my 12 year old step son. He loved Bowling for Columbine and was excited to see F911. As we left the theater, he was incensed.

“Bush should have to see this. He should be forrced to watch this movie in a room full of a hundred people and he should have to answer every question they have.”

Who says our youth are a lost cause?

A Letter to the Only Movie Theater Owner in Kirksville

I’m writing to urge you to bring the film ‘Fahrenheit 911′ to your theater. Despite opening in just 868 theaters nationwide (three times less than other top-ten movies), it grossed 21.8 million dollars, earning it the number one spot in the nation. That means that it earned over $25,000 per theater this weekend, as opposed to just over $7,000 for the number two movie, ‘White Chicks’.

By not showing a film this popular, you stand to lose quite a bit of revenue. I hope you’ll consider this, and bring the film soon. And if not, well then I suppose I’ll just have to drive to Columbia and give my money to someone else.

Chris Miller
Kirksville Resident
Downtown Cinema 8 Patron

It’s Opening Day

for what looks to be a great movie. The poster is hilarious too:

Farenheit 911

Hopefully I’ll get a chance to see it this weekend in Chicago. Oh, and wish me luck on my Jeopardy tryout. Should be fun, if nothing else.

Worst. . . Song. . . Ever

I noticed that on a recent “50 worst songs” list, they left off my personal un-favorite. Toby Keith’s song, “Courtesy Of The Red, White, And Blue” is pretty bad:

“And you’ll be sorry that you messed with The U.S. of A.
`Cause we`ll put a boot in your ass -
It`s the American way”

That’s just friggin great, Toby. So much is wrong with this song, I don’t even know where to start. . .

Crap

About 5 minutes ago, I finished watching ‘Requiem for a Dream’, and I cannot possibly emphasize how fucked-up of a movie it is.

If you ever have the urge to feel like shit, watch that movie. Alone. In the dark.

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