The Conversation Veers Wildly

MVOTD: Wavves - "So Bored" - Home Improvement Wipes Version

2010-05-04T16:51:00.003-04:00

So I always kind of hated Home Improvement for its insufferable "manliness" and general lack of comedic value (possibly also because I had the hots for JTT), and yet I always remember watching reruns of it because it fell in the line of Cosby Show, Simpsons, and Seinfeld reruns that would play on Fox after I got home from school. The show may not have been that funny, but it did contain a slew of interesting video wipe transitions between scenes, which have thankfully now been collected in a single music video set to the strangely appropriate Wavves song "So Bored."

So what's everybody's personal favorite wipe? Mine is playground swing that swings back and then comes straight at the camera. Unexpected, evocative of childhood, possible Ikiru reference. What's not to love?

IndieGamingLove: MineCraft

2010-05-03T11:16:00.000-04:00

Do you like soft, soothing music? Do you feel the urge to create? Do you like exploring little 8-bit worlds seemingly created by the collective sub-conscious of the internet? Then MineCraft is right for you. Jump in. You don't need to download anything unless you somehow don't have Java. The worlds are amusing and you'll be amazed by all the work people have put in to create these virtual kingdoms. I myself was sucked in and created my own 8-bit Playground. Look at my beautiful wonderland. Sometimes my server is running, too, under the name '8-bit Playground'. Join me if it's online.

I Just Want to Give Up and Die: Illegal Grasshoppers Edition

2010-04-30T13:52:00.002-04:00

I have a hunch this feature is gonna get updated with increasing frequency as the immigration debate heats back up. Here now, United States Representative Ted Poe (R-TX), mystified as to why brown people can't be kept out of this country as easily as grasshoppers:

(via)

I just want to give up and die.

MVOTD: Ben Lee - "Song for the Divine Mother of the Universe"

2010-04-29T16:21:00.004-04:00

Space Monkey from Leo Burnett on Vimeo.

I feel kinda meh about this song, but the video, in which a space monkey returns to a destroyed Earth, is pretty beautiful. It's very simple, and the message at the end is a little on-the-nose, but the science fiction references, the cinematography, and the facial expressions on the elderly monkey are enough to make this worth watching.

Online Super Mario Bros.

2010-04-28T16:00:00.002-04:00

Just discovered this incredible new game, in which you can play Super Mario Bros. online. But that's not all - you can play it as any one of six different characters: Mario himself, Link from Zelda, Bill R. from Contra, Simon Belmont from Castlevania, Mega Man, or Samus from Metroid. Video game geeks or people just nostalgiac about the late 80s will, quite simply, freak the fuck out playing this. Play here.

You're welcome.

Amazing Lost Episode Posters

2010-04-27T16:10:00.031-04:00

There's no new episode of Lost this week for some sad and insane reason, but we've got something pretty awesome here to tide us over until next week. Via /film, the artist Gideon Slife is creating posters for each and every episode of Lost. He's in the middle of season 4 right now, and his collection so far is really spectacular. You can check them all out at his flickr page, I've posted a bunch of my favorites below, either based on the art or the episode itself (or most of the time, both). You're gonna want to click to enlarge for a lot of them; each one includes a quote from the episode that is oftentimes pretty key.

A Not-Quite-Faustian Bargain

2010-04-26T11:33:00.001-04:00

You die and go to hell, where the devil proposes a game of chance. If you play on the first day you’ll have a one-half chance of winning, on the second day a two-thirds chance, and so on. If you win, you’ll go to heaven; if you lose you’ll stay in hell. When should you play?

Unfortunately, it seems you should wait forever. After a year of waiting your chance of winning would be 0.997268, but even then another day’s (presumably finite) torment would earn you 0.000007 greater chance of infinite joy.

Maybe the mere hope of heaven is worth something. But is it a valid hope if you never realize it?

New Music of the Day: MIA - Born Free

2010-04-26T11:17:00.003-04:00

Definitely a departure from Kala and Arular....

...this song has been described as MIA screaming over the intro theme for a Japanese cartoon show. I don't think that is entirely correct, but I agree with the feeling. This song is much more tense and certainly demonstrates a new form for her frenetic beats. From CraveOnline, "Spitfire Sri Lankan activist and perpetual envelope-pusher M.I.A., has gone another route. She wants to tattoo her video in your mind and shock you into the realization that the reality you live is an utter facade in the face of atrocities against human rights being perpetrated by authority figures." Get ready for her new album due June 19.

New Music of the Day: Twin Sister - "Something About Us" Daft Punk cover

2010-04-25T19:16:00.002-04:00

Daft Punk is not an easy band to cover, yet (minus the mechanical voice) Twin Sister's cover is straightforward and faithful to the feeling of the song. Would love to have been on that rooftop last Friday.

Guest Post: Beatrice Njoroge and the Gallery of Contemporary African Art

2010-04-24T12:24:00.001-04:00

Photo by Kamau Mucocki

My friend, co-founder of GOCAA, and contributor herself, Susan Mathenge has been very active in trying to promote awareness and interest in the talented and often unnoticed artists emerging out of Kenya and the rest of Africa. According to her, "this blog is primarily about the culture of the african diaspora. the arts (particularly music) is where we as africans stand on par with or above everyone else. in that space there are so many people (african or not) documenting, interpreting, re-interpreting our culture in photography, film, video, print. i mostly use this as a space to collect all the information people, images, ideas that i come across on the web and elsewhere."

"Lola" by Susan Mathenge

Beatrice Njoroge's work "takes a psychological look into everday life and its relative resemblance to people everywhere around the globe. " Her pieces in this series combine the suggestive look of text and the texture of paint and materials to convey the lost feeling of hand-written communication. As we neglect this personal form of communication, what does it say about the ways we communicate to each other now. "The contrast between abstraction, text, montage and layering and the image of the face on several of my paintings is to explore the notion of the self through the perception of the other."

"RSVP2" by Beatrice Njoroge

There are some great images up on GOCAA's site. Please take a look and support their work.

New Game: Bouncing Balls

2010-04-22T13:21:00.003-04:00

My friend Jack directed me to this new game called Bouncing Balls, which caused me to waste pretty much my entire morning (which admittedly only started at about 10:30). Basically you are shooting a ball into a bunch of other balls, and the ones you hit disappear, and you're trying to get rid of all the red ones.

Notice that I am at level 21 already because I am awesome. Actually there are things that happen that I don't really understand - I'm not sure what hitting the green balls actually does (something good though), and sometimes whole groups of balls disappear and I'm not sure how to get that to happen. But still, very fun. Play here.

Jin Trapped in Weird Sideways "Seinfeld" Universe

2010-04-21T14:41:00.003-04:00

This is just an excellent find. But what does it mean? Has Jin gone back in time, switched places with Jack, and moved to New York in the late '90s? Is Kramer Jacob? SO MANY QUESTIONS.

(Note that in last week's Hurley-centric episode, there was a reference to "the Human Fund." The pieces are all falling into place.)

MVOTD: Madonna - "Like a Prayer"

2010-04-20T15:55:00.005-04:00

In honor of tonight's Madonna-themed Glee (which I will not be watching until tomorrow because as much as I love Glee, Lost is a show of historically awesome proportions). This has always been my favorite Madonna song - the religious overtones creep me out overall, but the use of the gospel choir is pretty effective, and I find Madonna to be at her hottest with that dark and curly hair.

IndieGamingLove: GrowTower

2010-04-20T15:02:00.000-04:00

Grow Tower is the next in a line of games from EyeMaze that make you experiement both with how things work, and how things work best together. It's a combination of trial-and-error and a little bit of a logic game. Mostly, though, it's extremely adorable and rewarding when you get another step closer and the final solution is enough to more than compensate you for the struggle to figure out the order. See if you've got what it takes!

Play Here! And be sure to check out their other games, too!

New Music of the Day: Sun Airway - Infinity

2010-04-20T14:25:00.001-04:00

Oh, The Colors!

Sun Airway – http://sunairway.tumblr.com/

via: Delicious Scopitone

Bump!: Hipster Time-Traveler?

2010-04-20T10:42:00.000-04:00

“Reopening of the South Fork Bridge after flood in Nov. 1940. 1941 (?)”

This photo was taken around 1940 and has not been digitally tampered with. So what's the deal with the young man in the contemporary-looking sunglasses, t-shirt, and camera?

Proof of time travel? Forgetomori investigates. (After reading that page and looking at the photo several times, I half wondered whether this was one of those perception tests..."now, did you notice 12 pink polar bears in the photo?" It doesn't appear to be.)

R.I.P. Dede Allen

2010-04-19T16:46:00.006-04:00

Stanley Kubrick once said that editing is the only original art form within the medium of film, cinematography being rooted in still photography, acting and directing in the theater, writing in literature. Dede Allen, a master and pioneer of this art form, passed away over the weekend at the age of 86. She edited groundbreaking classics such as The Hustler, Bonnie and Clyde, and Dog Day Afternoon. For those who haven't seen Bonnie and Clyde, put that at the top of your Netflix queue right now. Allen's contribution to the construction of that film's violent conclusion is deservedly famous, but for now check out the film's opening below. Pay attention to the way the cuts inside the bedroom intensify Faye Dunaway's performance and the sense of her character's sexual frustration, melting away into lengthier shots once she goes outside to meet Warren Beatty's Clyde.

Hardstalgia: VHS Batman Commercials

2010-04-19T15:51:00.007-04:00

I'm pretty sure everybody had at least one movie that they would watch every single day as soon as they got home from school, for like several months.

For me, that movie was the 1989 version of Batman. And at the beginning of the VHS of that movie were two commercials that I would never fast-forward through because they were an essential part of the excitement of viewing the film (I remain the kind of person who gets irrationally upset if I miss any of the previews when going out to the movies). Above, my favorite two cartoon characters of all time, Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny, shill for the Warner Bros. catalogue; below, Alfred and Batman hawk Diet Coke.

-----Co-Editor's note -------

My daily VHS watch was TMNT II:

"Pixels" by Patrick Jean

2010-04-19T15:44:00.000-04:00

Via.

Not Cool, Claire McCaskill

2010-04-19T14:47:00.001-04:00

You are from the state of Missouri, Senator. Do not make me start trash-talking Missouri. You will not recover. Your only noteworthy city exists exclusively because it was historically a place to stay before moving on to other, better places. I know you have to say I live in crazy town because of The Politics, but I actually kind of like it here so shut up. And stop using "nice" as a polite euphemism for "boring as all fuck."

I Just Want to Give Up and Die: Birther Mayors Edition

2010-04-19T14:23:00.000-04:00

Via.

I went to undergrad at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was good times mostly, but the whole being-surrounded-in-every-direction-by-hundreds-of-miles-of-soy was occasionally a problem. You can get your own personal taste of that problem with the clip above. The mayor of Champaign - the mayor - is a birther. I just want to give up and die.

Deep Background: Batman on Top Edition

2010-04-17T14:18:00.000-04:00

Deep Background: keeping you in the know on the status of my desktop background.

(click to enlarge)

I appreciate the ambiguity of this background. Are Superman and Batman cooperating here, or (as I choose to interpret it) has Batman tamed and conquered Superman through sheer force of will? The not-entirely-subtle sexual subtext is also worth mentioning.

------Response---------------------------------------------------
"...so conservative, so ocd. Maybe you cleaned it up for the picture, but where's the life in your desktop?..."

see how much fun mine is:

and, sidenote, I do approve of Batman riding Superman. Batman will always be superior to superman and spideremo.

MVOTD: New Edition - "Candy Girl"

2010-04-17T13:47:00.000-04:00

We just accidentally stumbled upon this while looking for something else, and man, what an awesome starting-your-day-off-right song.

Bump!: Sabre Rattling and a White Flag

2010-04-17T00:56:00.000-04:00

Bump! Keeping great posts alive

"Sonic booms can get on your nerves.

NASA and the FAA learned this the hard way in 1964, when their testing over Oklahoma City caused eight booms per day for six months. It led to 15,000 complaints and a class action lawsuit — which they lost.

The idea seems to have caught Israel’s attention — last October it started using F-16 jet planes to create sonic booms over the Gaza Strip, to bug the Palestinians. Extra points for creativity, I guess." - Futility Closet, March 28th, 2006

"'White Flag' was recorded in Beirut, around the end of March 2009. Over there, the Israelis like to fly their jets really low over the city once a month. It’s called “sabre-rattling”. If they fly low and fast enough, it creates a sonic boom effect, taking out all the windows in the area.

This faintly surreal experience in Beirut and Syria got rolled into various themes on the album. What I wanted to do was then add a British counterpart. And who would fit the bill better than the British grime artists Bashy and Kano? What they bring to this is great." - Damon Albarn on "White Flag" off their recent album, Plastic Beach, via: NME

Listen here:

New Music of the Day: CocoRosie - Lemonade

2010-04-16T15:32:00.000-04:00

Review and download link after the break...

"Prior to news of CocoRosie’s forthcoming...

Sub Pop debut Grey Oceans, the duo’s fourth album overall album, the last we’d heard from the sisters Casady was auto-tuned Touch & Go single “God Has A Voice, She Speaks Through Me,” a sort of post-The Adventures of Ghosthorse And Stillborn stopgap. And a good one at that. The new collection’s out in May and lead track “Lemonade” finds Bianca and Sierra in a more downcast, less obviously danceable mode. I generally like the group best when they sound insular and emotionally naked but impenetrable and unexpectedly catchy. This one does that trick. As does the majority of Grey Oceans, all of which goes very well with the dusky cover pics." - StereoGum

Grey Oceans is out 5/11 via Sub Pop. The below image is the CD cover. Above you’ll find the LP cover. Both photos were taken by the artist Matt Greene.

mp3 (via P4K): here