They crossed another line that I’m not sure they should have crossed, but it’s still pretty funny: Improv Everywhere mission: Even better than the real thing.
Also covered in the NY Times: Where the streets have no shame.
Here’s a fun one for anyone in need of some Bush-related musical uplift: rx-imaginewalkonthewildside.mp3 (MP3 audio file).
More about the clip in the Boing Boing post mentioning it: The President sings “Imagine” and “A Walk On The Wild Side”.
This actually took place a while ago, but This American Life did a segment about it this weekend, and I caught it in the car and really loved it.
The story concerns those wacky comedy guerrillas at Improv Everywhere (previously linked to for their McDonald’s bathroom attendant mission), who picked out a newish, mostly unknown rock band called Ghosts of Pasha (G.O.P.) that was scheduled to perform a gig late on a Sunday night at NYC’s Mercury Lounge. Normally such a show would have had about three paying customers. But 35 IE agents prepared themselves by downloading songs from the G.O.P. web site, and then showed up and gave the boys in the band their best gig ever.
The story makes for a fascinating twist on the question of who is the performer and who is the audience. The members of G.O.P. were (naturally) weirded out by the unexpectedly big crowd that was whooping and dancing, singing along with every song, but they soon got into it, as band and audience fed off each other’s energy.
Within a few days the band figured out what happened; see their comments on the IE site: band response.
It sounds like it was a lot of good, clean fun. The episode isn’t available yet on This American Life’s 2005 show archive page, but it should be there shortly. Highly recommended.
So like, here I go again with more prurient entertainment. I’ve recently become burned out with the arguement or the debates or whatever we’re calling it here. Some people have tried to go fact for fact and are polite in their posts (jbc) (TeacherVet) others are a little more vitriolic but still good people (Rise Against).
However none of us are really changing each other minds at all, or even offering up more food for thought. I’ve been a Libertarian leaning independent for years and will probably be for years to come. I’ve become worn out already with the stupidity and namecalling (except when I’m being stupid and calling people names).
So from now on, I’m going to try and keep it light. Without further ado, college chicks in bikinis, its iPose. And iPod minis, they have those too. (There are dudes for people who like dudes, but I think the people who like chicks are gettin’ a better deal with this one.)
Big guns, chicks in bikinis, 20 gigs of storage. “Hopefully, from now on many Militants and Terrorists will use their AK47s to listen to music and audio books…They need to chill out and take it easy.”
So, Eminem’s Mosh video is #1 at MTV. As it should be.
Meanwhile, Daily Kos diarist kid oakland offers a detailed deconstruction: The politics of Mosh.
Norm at onegoodmove points to both RealPlayer and Quicktime versions of Eminem’s new Mosh video. Even better with pictures! Eminem.
Promoted from the comments, check out Michael Fisher’s catchy little George Bush remix: Prison system (mp3 file).
Coudal Partners, via Boing Boing (again! again with the Boing Boing!) offers this cool Ethan Mitchell version of the NASA plane crash film set to electronica: Crash ballet.
Boing Boing: Eminem’s anti-Bush anthem leaked online.
Another one of those McSweeney’s things that I really love, for reasons I can’t explain. From Jessica Suarez: Martha Ballard, Enlightenment-Era Midwife, Reviews Mötley Crüe, a Musical Group.
If you’re a fan of Radiohead, you should definitely hear this awesome medley from Hard N Phirm: Rodeohead. [4.5M mp3 file]
I really love the whole concept of HyperText.
As a member of the Sum41 Fan Club, I got an email the other day letting me know about Rock Against Bush Vol .1. It sounds like it will be a sweet rock/punk CD, packed full of some great songs you know, and a ton of new tracks written by bands who (as Canadian Sum41 put it in their newsletter) feel they “just can’t sit quietly and watch that idiot fuck up your country and the rest of the world.”
So why do I love HyperText?
While preparing this little blurb, I noticed the link to PunkVoter.com, where I discovered:
God bless the Internet, and God bless America Burma
I was flying back from Vegas this afternoon, and I found a copy of AA’s AmericanWay Magazine in the boarding area for SWA. I flipped through it while waiting to board (because I was too lazy to get my book out of my carry on bag), and found the most compelling argument against online music downloads (legal or otherwise) I’ve ever heard.
I think more people should apply this argument to more things.
If you like electronic music, or find it baffling, or a little of both (*handraise*), you should check out Ishkur’s guide to electronic music. I was amused when I realized I’d been listening to the same 20-second sample, looping, for about 20 minutes, without realizing that that wasn’t just the actual piece.
Thanks to Hiro for the link.
There’s something really cool about seeing someone expose her breast to about 130 million TV viewers, live, without (apparently) meaning to. It’s cool because all those viewers had their moment of satori, when the world suddenly stopped, and their brains shut down, and nothing made sense, giving them the barest (!) moment in which to appreciate the infinite possibilities of existence. Anyway, it probably isn’t possible that you’ve missed this, but in case you clicked past the followup, here you go: Janet Jackson’s breast exposed during halftime show.
So, CBS and the NFL are pissed at MTV, which they say will most likely never be in charge of putting on a Superbowl halftime show again. MTV says it is really, really sorry; that the incident was “unrehearsed, unplanned, completely unintentional.” Justin Timberlake says it was a “wardrobe malfunction,” that it was “not intentional” and was “regrettable.”
I’m guessing that the idea was that Timberlake would pull off the leather cover, leaving Janet’s red bra exposed. But he grabbed a little too much, leaving nothing but a silver piercing (nice contingency plan, that) between a global television audience and (gasp!) an actual unobstructed view of a human areola.
A few more links: From the Washington Post: NFL: No place for titillation on Super Bowl menu. The story mentions that FCC Chairman Michael Powell has vowed to launch “an immediate investigation”; given his previous remarks about how much he loves his TiVo (“It’s God’s technology!”), something tells me he’s done some investigating already. Apropos that: Justin and Janet steal Super Bowl show, according to TiVo.
Finally, the link you’ve all been waiting for: A certain disgusting rightwing weblogger has detailed images.
Anyway. Onward.
The Dixie Chicks’ Natalie Maines continues to mouth off about what a lame president George Bush is, most recently in an interview with NBC’s Today show: On top of the world once again. Meanwhile, she won a silly award from VH1. Woo! Go Dixie Chicks!
My wife waited until we had been married for 19 years before taking me to the opera. She was worried I wouldn’t like it, she said. Which was probably smart. I’m the kind of bastard who will sit with folded arms stoicly enduring the joke I wasn’t interested in hearing just then, or the read-aloud article that interrupted the article I was reading at the time, then give a curt nod and go back to my original activity with no response whatsoever, practically screaming my indifference.
Anyway, she apparently knew what she was doing, for which I’m grateful, because I was ready, and otherwise I might have missed the chance to see, or at least to appreciate, Shu-Ying Li as Madame Butterfly at the Lobero Theater in Santa Barbara last week.
The part that shocked me the most, I think, is that live opera (good live opera, anyway), while looking and sounding more or less exactly like what I’d always seen on television, turns out to be completely different in person.
It was bigger than I expected, closer, more human, more real. I’ve been to some really amazing concerts in my life, but this was different. I wasn’t sitting in an audience, watching a performer on a stage. I was right there, inside the skin of this poor woman, experiencing her joy, her betrayal, her madness. It was beautiful, and terrifying. I was streaming tears through much of it, and in the final moments I just lost it, my features working uncontrollably as waves of emotion washed over me.
So anyway, I’m an opera lover now. Who would have thought?
The rock band Hell of Earth is planning to allow an onstage suicide “live” at their next show in St. Petersburg, Florida. As you would expect, this has caused quite a bit of controversy, but my favorite part of the whole thing, is that the city council needed to pass a special law, making it illegal to: “conduct a suicide for commercial or entertainment purposes, and to host, promote and sell tickets for such an event.” Apparently, they had to pass the special law, becuase otherwise they had no legal grounds to try and stop the show — no one in the band is planning to “assist” this anonymous individual, they’re just going to let him come on stage and do his thing.
The show must go on however, the lead singer promises that the show will happen at an undisclosed location within city limits, in front of a select few die-hard fans (pun intended) and it will be broadcast live on their website.
I remember the August, 1977, issue of Analog magazine. I read it in my bedroom, upstairs at the back of my father and stepmother’s condo, the same room where I listened to Bad Company’s Running with the Pack and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis. I remember that issue for just one reason: it contained a really cool short story called “Ender’s Game” by a first-time author named Orson Scott Card.
Wow, I thought. This guy is awesome.
He’s still awesome: MP3s are not the devil (part 1).