Popped Culture

Steven Page Has Drugs In His Pocket

2008-07-17T14:08:00.006-04:00

In honour of Barenaked Ladies front man Steven Page and his recent arrest for snorting coke through a Candian bill while at his girlfriend's, roomate's apartment in Syracuse, NY, I present La La La Lines. (Cocaine slang starting with L from Argot and apologies to Sesame Street's Bert and Ernie.)

Ed: Hello Steve.

Steve: Oh. Hi Ed. Someone left these lines here and I don't know what to do with them.

Ed: Why don't you put them right in the middle of your nose?

Steve: Yeah, thanks.

Ed: No, I'm just kidding. They're not my lines. Um, I was thinking though, you could sing like a "La La La" song.

Steve: Yeah, that sounds great.

Ed: No, I'm serious. You could sing some "La La La's" and then some pretty words that start with "L." You'd have a nice little song there.

Steve: Oh you mean like "La La La?"

Ed: No, come on, give it a try.

Steve: La, la, la, la... lines
La, la, la, la, Line cocaine

Ed: I guess.

Steve: La, la, la, la, Lady snow. This is fun.
La, la, la, la, leaf marijuana

Ed: I think we're almost there. I just, I was thinking more sort of, you know, loverly lilting words that start with "L." Like this...
La, la, la, la, Love affair

Steve: Uh-ha.

Ed: La, la, la, la, lace

Steve: I see.

Ed: La, la, la, la, lady

Steve: Ahhhhhh!

Ed: La, la, la, la, lights in the sky.

Steve: I got one. You are going to love this one!

Ed: I love it already. Let's hear it.

Steve: Here we go...
La, la, la, LEGAL TROUBLE!

Ed: *Sighs* Listen to me
'Cause, "L" is such a lovely letter
For words like Lady caine and lace
The lines lights up your face
So why not la, la, la, la, laaaaaaaaaaaaah...

Steve: La, la, la, la, laaaaaaah...

Both: ...with me!

[Fading...]
La, la, la, la, lines
La, la, la, la, Love affair
La, la, la, la, Lady snow
La, la, la, la, Line cocaine

I Love Counting to the Number Four

2008-07-15T12:02:00.001-04:00

Feist's reworking of 1234 for Sesame street has been leaked on YouTube and it makes a seamless transition to a children's song. It reminds me a lot of R.E.M.'s Muppet version of Shiny Happy People. Fun, light stuff.

Anything I Can Do, My Friends Can Do Better

2008-07-13T23:20:00.005-04:00

You'd think that being surrounded by such great talent, some of it would rub off on me. Here's a roundup of what some of my friends are up to in culture and online:

Karen Henricks has designed Canada Post's stamp for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. It had never occurred to that there are designers for stamps, but it makes perfect sense to me now. Karen — do you get to go to the Games now?

Nikki Stafford has recently returned from giving a keynote address — Don't You Forget about Buffy: Why Joss Whedon's Masterpiece Captivates Us Still — at an academic conference on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As the author of books on Buffy, Angel, Lost, Alias, and Xena, she is passionate about TV and has recently penned a great post defending the study of the idiot box.

Another university friend, Richard Gilmore, is part of the photography exhibit 21 Days of Black Rock City until Aug. 3 in Petaluma, CA. Ricky is a fabulous photographer and often shoots fire-dancers. You can see examples of his work here.

Last, but not least, two of my friends have been named to NxE’s Fifty Most Influential ‘Female’ Bloggers list. Amber MacArthur of commandN (among other things) and Rachel Sklar, the editor of Huffington Post's Eat the Press have both deservedly made the grade.

Congrats to all of you!

Olé: The Bored Matador

2008-07-07T13:31:00.004-04:00

Bullfighting is a deranged, gratuitously cruel blood sport, but the craziest label is reserved for those who take part in the running of the bulls.

Skittering down a narrow cobblestone street, pursued by a dozen 2,000-pound angry beasts, you pretty much deserve what you get. And this year the bulls are up 13-0, trampling multiple people who don't have the sense to get out of the way. Nobody has been killed so far — the bulls won't be so lucky.

But what caught my attention while putting together a gallery for work was the bored dude leaning against the wall having a smoke as bulls toss runners left and right. His ennui is preternatural.

Art Grand Slam

2008-07-04T00:02:00.000-04:00

What does one of the world's top athletes do once they've retired from their sport? Create Jackson Pollock-esque art, of course. Former World No. 1 woman's tennis player Martina Navratilova has created her own spin on painting, serving up paint-soaked tennis balls and firing them at a canvas.

A Popped Culture Canada Day

2008-06-30T00:01:00.000-04:00

Happy Canada Day. It's a long, long weekend so I'm taking a break from pop culture, but here are a few images to celebrate some of Canada's contributions to the field.

Pop Science

2008-06-25T22:47:00.003-04:00

From the people who brought you Lolcats comes GraphJam: pop culture for people in cubicles. It's like indexed, except user generated and mostly about pop culture. I don't know what it is about graphs that I find so amusing, but here a few that kept me skimming the site:

more graph humor and song chart memes

more graph humor and song chart memes

more graph humor and song chart memes

more graph humor and song chart memes

more graph humor and song chart memes

Worth A Read... Dirty Words Edition

2008-06-23T22:47:00.005-04:00

I heard a great quote from the late George Carlin on the radio this afternoon about the power of those infamous seven words. Of course I can't find it now, but cut to the essence of his Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television routine — that words only have power because we give them power.

It's been amusing to read all the coverage and eulogies to Carlin that tiptoe around this still taboo words (well, at least in the mainstream media). Of course you can read them (and see them in action for that matter) online all the time, but they still seem to carry a mystique.

So in honour of Carlin... Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, Tits. Phew, don't we all feel better now?

So what's worse than swear words? Celine Dion singing AC/DC's You Shook Me All Night Long. Total Guitar magazine named it the worst cover of all time and having watched it I can't say I disagree. The horror...

The Ultimate Lego Weapon

2008-06-20T15:54:00.006-04:00

Having no artistic or engineering skills, all my Lego creations tended to be square houses, square cars, squares, well, you get the picture. Even my pre-formed sets never turned out the way they looked on the box, so I've always been impressed by intricate dioramas.

But nothing prepared me for the 3,800 piece Death Star recreation. Gizmodo has some great hi-res pics of this piece of geek Nirvana, which is going for the low, low price of $499 (Canadian). Yeesh, who says Lego is for kids?

Of course for your money you get "the Death Star control room, rotating turbolaser turrets, hangar bay with TIE Advanced starfighter, tractor beam controls, Emperor’s throne room, detention block, firing laser cannon, Imperial conference chamber, droid maintenance facility, and the powerful Death Star superlaser," plus a trash compactor monster!

Ok, I'm off to play with my son's Duplo blocks and make a, um... box.

Requiem For A Day Off

2008-06-19T16:16:00.004-04:00

Some selective editing and a dramatic score can completely change the flavour and intent of a film. Take Ferris Bueller's Day Off, cut everything except the most dramatic scenes and lines and overlay Lux Aeterna, best known as the theme music for Requiem for a Dream and you have an entirely different movie.

For a stunning mashup of Requiem for a Dream, check out the twisted version of Toy Story.

Coo Roo Coo Coo Coo Coo Coo Coo

2008-06-17T14:25:00.005-04:00

Take off, eh. Beauty. Break out your toques and your stubbies, we may be in for another round of hoser-mania.

Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas are returning to the small screen this fall as the beer-swilling McKenzie brothers in The Animated Adventures of Bob and Doug McKenzie. The cartoon, which will air on Global this fall, has just been picked up by Fox — a network with considerable success in launching new cartoon series. (And a penchant for cancelling them too, I might add)

The hoser icons have been on an upswing recently, showing up in Disney's Brother Bear films as moose and last year's Two-Four Anniversary Special. It's quite the run for a couple of characters created as SCTV filler back in 1980. And it would only be cynical of me to suggest that the pair has few other prospects.

There will, of course, be a certain nostalgia factor in checking out the series, at least for Canadians. Like all good Canucks (or at least teenage boys of a certain vintage) I thought their movie Strange Brew was hilarious even though I'm positive it would not hold up to a repeat viewing these days.

It's not like you can update the characters, so it appears Moranis and Thomas are playing off the fact that the brothers are out of their decade. A press release describes the show as following the "exploits of the McKenzie Brothers as they do their best to "beat the system", avoid work, and have some fun in a changing Canadian society." We'll see.

I'm not positive if this pilot/trailer from ANIMAX Entertainment is what the basis of the show is, but seeing as Dave Thomas is one of the founders, I guessing so. If so, I hope they move away from flash animation for the prime-time series and ease up on the product placement.

Obsoletely Fabulous

2008-06-14T13:17:00.007-04:00

A superb rendering of the cast of characters of Futurama, from Al Gore to Zoidberg. Kenneth White has been adding to the image for years and it is reminiscent of the Simpsons cast poster I have hanging in the basement.

The next direct-to-DVD Futurma release, The Beast With a Billion Backs comes out next week and I'm hoping they will have gotten by the "Hey, remember all these guys?" format that made it seem more of a retrospective than a new episode.

I have a great love of Futurama and don't want to see its legacy diluted by a Lucas-esque desire to fix what wasn't broken.

One Chord to Another

2008-06-10T22:40:00.004-04:00

Sloooooooan, Slooooooooooooan! Sorry, but you just have to do that when talking about Sloan, who to my surprise (and no doubt theirs) released their ninth studio album today, 17 years after they stormed out of Halifax.

"We were Canada's Nirvana, then Canada's Oasis, then we weren't anything," Chris Murphy told the National Post's Ben Kaplan. The above photo encompasses the interview (click for a larger version) with the shoot-from-the-lip Murphy. There are more quotes at The Ampersand.

Some choice zingers:

"In the ’90s, all we had to do was show up, we were cooler than everybody. Who’s going to be cooler than us, Tea Party? I Mother Earth? These people aren’t cool — we’re cool."

"Collective Soul? Nickelback? Poor Eddie Vedder — he’s responsible for all that shit."

"Underwhelmed is our Creep. Actually, Creep is their Underwhelmed. We predate those motherfuckers."

The new album is Parallel Play and I'm listening to it as I write this. Check it out. Slooooooooooooan!

It's Not Over Until The Gay Cowboy Sings

2008-06-09T16:00:00.002-04:00

The legend of Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar will live forever, the latest iteration coming in the form of Brokeback Mountain: The Opera. The New York City Opera has commissioned an opera based on Annie Proulx's short story, to open in 2013.

While I don't know anything about arias, I do think Andrew Lloyd Webber's I Don't Know How to Love Him from Jesus Christ Superstar fits the playbill perfectly.

I don't know how to quit him.
What to do, how to split from him.
I've been changed, yes really changed.
In these past few days, when I've seen myself,
I seem like someone else.
I don't know how to take this.
I don't see why he moves me.
He's a man. He's just a man.
And I've never had a man before
In any way,
He's just one score.

Ha, this is easy. I should be in musical theatre!

The above pic is fanseelamb's Sims versions of Jack and Ennis.

Ice Ice Baby

2008-06-08T23:11:00.004-04:00

It is likely that the above editorial cartoon by the Globe and Mail's talented Anthony Jenkins will be baffling to non-Canadians — in fact it is too me as well, not because of the content but the context behind it.

Gallons of ink and tears have been spilled over the CBC's decision to walk away from the theme music of Hockey Night in Canada, a jingle that has been bizarrely lauded as Canada's "second national anthem."

I for one reject the notion that every Canadian is obsessed with the game and that our nation's greatest triumph came in 1972 when a Canadian team out-thugged the USSR. But there's little point in saying so — I can't deny the stranglehold that hockey holds on our culture. Even I can talk (sorta) about hockey and I didn't even watch a (whole) game this season.

Admittedly, after 40 years, the song is iconic, so the plan to replace it with the help of a contest seems a touch trite. "It would be the ultimate Canadian Idol, really," mused CBC Sports executive director Scott Moore. Umm, exactly. Idol meets hockey culture — it's the worst of both worlds!

Which brings us to George Stroumboulopoulos. Strombo has been the whipping boy for anyone who hates change at the CBC. As the 'toon says, he "skews to the younger demographic," which was the complaint when he was brought over from Much Music. So he talks fast, get over it. I think I'll have to tune in to The Hour this week to see if we do get an armpit rhapsody.

So there's Canadian culture in a nutshell: hockey and complaining about the CBC.

Where everybody knows your name

2008-06-05T23:11:00.002-04:00

Fatal Farm's take on the classic Cheers song is just the right amount of wrong. And with an accused al-Qaeda mastermind's trial beginning in Guantanamo Bay today, this seemed an appropriate choice. Is appropriate the word I'm looking for here? Hmm...

Anyway, Fatal Farm has reworked 15 TV themes from the 1980s and given them a neck-snapping twist. They can't even put their version of ALF on their YouTube page and their Ducktales intro made me feel a little wrong. Now that's comedy.

Worth A Read...

2008-06-03T22:41:00.007-04:00

The New York Times digs up a little info about the blogger behind garfield minus garfield, which I wrote about last February. Seems Dan Walsh is a 33-year-old technology manager from Dublin and Garfield creator Jim Davis is an occasional reader of the site. He says he is flattered rather than peeved by the imitation.

I guess that's because he's not as amusingly abrasive as Joe Mathlete's Marmaduke Explained.

New York Times: Is the Main Character Missing? Maybe Not.

If a television show turned cultural phenomenon spawns diehard fans who recite dialogue by heart, wear costumes inspired by the show and buy all the tie-in products, are these devotees nerds? If the show in question is Star Trek, The X-Files or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the answer is certainly yes. But what if we're talking about Sex and the City?

National Post: Female Trekkies

This is the first in what I hope will be a semi-regular posting of stuff I've been reading. We'll see.

Stormtroopers Can Dance If They Want To...

2008-06-02T22:48:00.004-04:00

We can dance if we want to, we can leave the rebels behind

'Cause if the rebels don't dance and if they don't dance

Well they're no friends of mine

These are just a few pictures of the secret lives of Stormtroopers from Doctor Beef's Storm Troopin' Flickr site. Hilarious stuff. Link via Information Nation.

The Ennui of Henri

2008-05-30T11:34:00.002-04:00

My filtered water tastes impure.My turkey and giblets has begun to taste exactly like my whitefish and tuna in gravy. It's all the same.

French cat existential angst at its arty best.

Link via Cute Overload! and by way of Pam, who's kittie isn't quite as deep a thinker.

All Popped, No Culture

2008-05-28T23:22:00.005-04:00

A fun little toy from Animoto that I heard about on Q this afternoon. Load up your pics, choose some music and out pops this slick looking video. Not too shabby.

You can create 30-second videos for free, but anything longer will cost you $3. I may even pay up, but who knows, I said the same thing about Radiohead.

I used 18 images - bonus points to the person who can name the most.

All Your Memes Are Belong To Us

2008-05-25T14:20:00.003-04:00

If one good viral video deserves another, then paying tribute (parodying?) 24 of them ought to help do ok, right? Yup. Weezer's latest video, for Pork and Beans landed on YouTube two days ago and has already had over 2 million views. From Dramatic Gopher to Mentos explosions and the Star Wars kid, it's like all the memes of the past few years rolled into one tightly packed piece of time wasting.

If you need a refresher on the all the videos they are referencing, Vallywag has pulled them all together on one page. It's similar to a recent South Park episode where 10 of the most popular memes killed each other off in a violent melee. But that's just wishful thinking — they aren't ever going to die.

Archie vs. Common People

2008-05-24T00:01:00.001-04:00

Take the lyrics to Pulp's best song and toss in Riverdale's class struggle that has always been at the heart of Archie comics and you get Chris Invincible's clever mashup of the relationship between Archie and Veronica.

And for added bonus points, Michael Hanscom set the whole thing to music.

Superheroes Don't Die, They Just Fade Away

2008-05-20T22:05:00.008-04:00

A great collection of superheroes well past their prime from Italian artist Donald Soffritti.

The Marketing Campaign Is Out There

2008-05-16T22:48:00.003-04:00

In a summer season crowded with super heroes and big-budget blow 'em ups, how does a long-lost franchise break through the marketing clutter? No, not Indiana Jones — is there anyone who doesn't know that's coming out? (Plus it has a Cannes premiere, for whatever reason.) And I'm not talking about Sex and City, which has every media outlet indulging in all the fashion and relationship brouhaha that swirls around it.

I speak instead of intrepid FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, who have long since faded from our TV screens. While the show went off the air in 2002, for many fans it ended two years previously when David Duchovney started curtailing his appearances. I had been an avid fan but lost interest with the convoluted, going-nowhere mythology, and once Mulder was gone I transferred my allegiances to a young Sydney Bristow. I never even saw the finale. A movie came out, which I recall had something to do with bees, and is now mostly referenced as a cautionary tale for Lost on how not to wrap up a series.

With so much baggage — and indifference — The X-Files has embarked upon a brilliant stealth marketing campaign to get people talking about extraterrestrials again, with the aid of some very heavy hitters.

First the Vatican weighed in, out of nowhere, professing a belief in aliens. "In my opinion this possibility (of life on other planets) exists," said Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the head of the Vatican Observatory and a scientific adviser to Pope Benedict.

"How can we exclude that life has developed elsewhere," he told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano in an interview in its Tuesday-Wednesday edition, explaining that the large number of galaxies with their own planets made this possible.

This from a church who didn't get around to admitting that Galileo was right about the earth revolving around the sun until 1992.

Then on the same day Britain's Ministry of Defense released their files on UFO sightings, dating back to the 1970s, with more to come. The ministry said it compiled the reports solely to determine whether enemy aircraft had infiltrated British airspace. "The Ministry of Defense has no other interest or role regarding UFO matters and does not consider questions regarding the existence or otherwise of extraterrestrial life-forms," it said Wednesday.

A coincidence, as easily explained as weather balloons reflecting city lights, or evidence of viral marketing is out there? It's a conspiracy I want to believe.

Whoa, Freakin' Sweet!

2008-05-11T23:00:00.001-04:00

Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Family Guy Matrix mashup is. You have to see it for yourself.