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:

• there’s a whole Rock Against Bush Concert Tour
• that Bush ‘s campaign shirts are made in Burma, a country Bush has imposed sanctions against
• that Urban Outfiters tried selling shirts that say “voting is for old people”, which has prompted the Vote F*cker T-Shirt

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).

At first I wasn’t going to run a link to this, since it’s kinda, I dunno, dirty or something. But then I thought, fuck it.

Anyway, from the fine people at cosmo7.com: Recording artists safety guide to the beach.

For those of you who aren’t members of the MTV generation, you may not have heard about “The Kiss” (or more appropriately: “The Kisses”) from Thursday nights MTV Video Music Awards. Being the 20th anniversary, Britney Spears & Christina Aguilera got together on stage to do a tribute rendition of Madona’s legendary “Like A Virgin” stage performace from the very first VMA ceremony. They were then joined by the orriginal material girl, who launched into her latest single “Hollywood”, taking breaks between versuses to plant big juicy open mouthed kisses on each of the two pop-princesses.

For those of you who like looking at hot chicks kissing, there are plenty of pictures all over the web, and even some video clips.

There are plenty of people pointing out how contrived the whole thing was, but what I find most ammusing is how much all the coverage has been about “Madona kissing Britney” — with very little mention of the fact that she planted big wet ones on both of them. The clip I saw acctually cut away when Madona turned towards Christina …. which brings me to the second most ammusing part of all this, the way they cut to Justin Timberlake just for a reaction shot. (I have to admit, it was a hilarious reaction shot).

Favorite Chicago “outsider” artist and musician Wesley Willis died last Thursday, and since I was out of touch with civilization at the time I only found out about it this morning. Sigh.

Obituaries available from Alternative Tentacles (Wesley’s label), the Chicago Sun-Times, MTV, and Rolling Stone.

So I came across that Ftrain.com link, and that led me to Some words on cognitive dissonance from Steve Burns, and I couldn’t resist linking to it.

Yes, that Steve Burns. Well, maybe you lack young children, or you’re better than I am at resisting the urge to park them in front of a television, in which case you’re saying, “What Steve Burns?” So follow the link, and come back when you know.

There was always something hypnotic about Steve. You couldn’t (well, I couldn’t) not watch the guy. And the Quicktime videos from his new album, Songs for Dust Mites, are pretty engaging. Though I’m not sure how much of that is their inherent engaging-ness, and how much is just my brain going, whoa, that really is Steve from Blues Clues.

Anyway.

Okay; last Salon link for today. From Cary Tennis’ advice column: Guitar grifter? Cary’s correspondent is a group of friends of a well-off young woman who has been smitten by, and is now engaged to be married to, a man who says he is a bass player for a major rock band. The friends have reason to believe he might be lying, and want to know how they can talk the bride-to-be into hiring a private investigator to check the guy out.

Nonono, responds Tennis. She can find this out easily without needing to resort to professional help (at least assuming she’s willing to entertain the question at all). He then explains how. So, if you might conceivably find yourself in similar circumstances, be sure to check it out.

Lies.com: serving your information needs for nearly a fourteenth of a century!

From the subversives at BlueDisguise Records comes The Knockoff Project, which offers side-by-side comparisons of “album cover spoofs, goofs, tributes, send ups, near misses and coincedences.” Interesting, though maybe it helps to be old enough that you remember when an “album cover” was larger, and carried more of a visual impact, than is possible to achieve in something the size of a CD case.

Link courtesy those hunter/gatherers at Yahoo! Pick of the Day.