With less than two weeks before Christmas, I guess I can begin to uncouple myself from the deeply ingrained grinchiness and provide you with some Holiday cheer.
North Point Community Church has an iBand — that is, a band that plays music using “i” tools. And it’s pretty cool, too.
Check it out:
This is Drew, who raps under the name CRUDBUMP, apparently, but who is also the mad genius behind Toothpaste for Dinner, one of my all-time favourite web comics. He is also the man who used a neti pot, but didn’t use warm salty water. You may recall the hilarious video.
He also sells T-shirts and they are mad hilarious, and they help support his site.
Awwww … so there’s a guy whose girlfriend just moved across the country. He misses her. What does he do? He secretly wrote her a song and, with his roommates, made a video to go along with it. He hopes that through people passing it along organically — virally — it will eventually reach her. He’s not going to show it to her himself.
I’m doing my part.
(via Gizmodo)
What if it had been Disney that had scooped up the Harry Potter property in its infancy? What would have become of these dark “kids” movies (the latest of which I have not yet seen)?
Perhaps something like this?
Perhaps not.
(Found posted by a friend on Facebook. It’s like I don’t even try anymore…)
So, I was preparing a blog post and was going to comment on how the subject of this pending post was like John Henry, and Amy didn’t know who I was talking about. So I typed it into Google to see how I could educate her, in song, and the first result was this.
I’m still not sure that she knows who John Henry was, but damn, that’s some killer blues. I had to share.
Also, Amy, I left that Wikipedia link for you 
I love books. And I have a thing about librarians, too.
You know what I’m talking about: the tied back hair, the glasses, the stern looks… I need a minute here. While I pull myself together, check out this video (thanks to Christopher Moore for the heads up. Yes, THAT Christopher Moore):
Yes, they are all real librarians (or librarians in training). The entire video is made up of the faculty and students from the University of Washington’s Information School.
I think it works as a student recruitment tool. Example: “They would be my professors? They’re awesome!”
This video which has, at the time of this posting, received almost 2 million views, is absolutely unbelievable.
Lin Yu Chun, a contestant on Super Star Avenue, Taiwan’s version of American Idol, is obviously a fan of Whitney Houston. And although I’m not a huge fan of the song, the skill with which this kid mimics Houston borders on the eerie…
(Any comments comparing him to Susan Boyle will be shunned.)
Why haven’t I seen this before now? Was it that I just missed the memo? I spend enough time online that I should have seen it.
In case you missed it too, here it is:
For the past several months, new Muppets videos have been appearing online, usually focusing on a single character or two — such as Beaker’s “Ode to Joy” video (awesome) and some clips of Stadler and Waldorf watching online videos (also awesome).
Now, however, the Muppets have reached a new level of awesomeness and have included all sorts of characters that are often overlooked. I’m thinking of the B-listers such as Lew Zealand and Beauregard.
So it really makes me happy to introduce to you… the amazing, the incredible, the incomparable Bohemian Rhapsody! Yaaaaaaaaaaay!
Parenting isn’t easy. I’ll just put that out there and leave it at that. This post isn’t going to be about arguing with emotionally retarded teenagers or dealing with overtired 9 year olds who are all hopped up on sugar. Nor is it about those moments where they make you proud with their achievements or watching them grow into their own people or about the miracle of life or unconditional love or any of that touchy-feely crap I don’t have the stomach for.
This post is about those moments where something small happens and you go “Wow. I made that.”
Case in point: my youngest, 9 years old, was kicking around the house this morning singing a snippet of a song I’d never heard before. As he usually sings 80′s pop and rock (really), I thought maybe it was a song for a school event or something. Thus, as a good father, I ignored it until he asked if he could go on YouTube. Sure, I said, because that’s how I roll.
A few minutes later he calls me in and says, “Look. I found that song.”
“What song?”
“Dad. The one I was singing.”
And be damned if he doesn’t like good music. Maybe I’m behind the times on hearing this song, but that’s not the point. The song could be 20 years old and I’d still be impressed — he’s found a song he likes and I like, as well. Maybe this is about him becoming his own person after all.
Like I said, a little thing. But I said “wow.”
The song, by the way, is Fireflies by Owl City:
The poor, lowly accordion. An instrument of scorn and ridicule. The butt of so many jokes (not as many as the bagpipes, maybe, but those things deserve it)…
This kid, however, shows that the accordion can go beyond the normal polka fare. In fact, this video shows that playing the instrument can actually be impressive.
As you may know through design or accident, you can play multiple videos simultaneously on YouTube. Darren Solomon discovered the same fact and hit upon the idea of recording videos of a number of instruments being played, the mix controlled by the viewer.
Originally, he recorded himself playing six instruments - the glass marimba, electric guitar, Kaoss Pad/synth, Rhodes electric piano, and the electric bass. Sending out invitations and setting up an open call for more videos for more people playing or singing in B flat, Solomon evenutally ended up with 20 videos.
Users of inBflat can now control the mix by selecting which videos to play and adjusting the appropriate volume sliders. It is a fascinating experiment in musical crowdsourcing that has the added benefit of being visual.
Certainly there will be more examples of this type of creativity in the future. What can groups create that eludes the individual?
What do you get when you take the Red Army Choir (yes, that Red Army), a Finnish rock band called the Leningrad Cowboys, and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama”?
I’m not exactly sure of the answer either, but I’ve posted the video here for you to decide.
Apparently, this concert took place in 1993, so some of you may have seen this video before. I hadn’t. So there.
Don’t judge me.
Artist Erika Simmons is a Georgia-based artist who, among other things, unspools the magnetic tape inside cassettes and turns them into portraits of musicians. I was struck by the Clash one, above, but she’s also got fantastic ones of Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and Michael Jackson.
One of her most recent pieces is a portrait of The Dude made out of a Big Lebowski VHS tape.
I read a cool interview with her at Go Media Zine, where she explains a little about how she creates this art (draw the portrait in glue, cut the tape as little as possible) as well as the inspiration:
The cassette tape series came out of a desire to explore a theme of recursion… tangled hierarchy. Where is the music? On the cassette tape? In the head of the musician portrayed? Where does one begin and the other end? But you don’t have to look at it in that way to enjoy it. I tried to make something fun and easy-to-understand, but with deeper things to think about, if you so choose.
She’s got a website of her own, but it links to her Flickr page for her full portfolio. There’s also an online store, if you’re interested in owning an original (MJ will set you back $2,000 but she doesn’t do prints, so this is one of a kind).
