I Fell Asleep to Girls Gone Wild... and Now I Have Steel Drums Stuck in My Head

The headline comes from a twit this morning (I don't like calling them "tweets"), and it's all true: I fell asleep on the couch last night with the TV on, in the heart of late night infomercial hell.

So for most of the day today, I've had the Girls Gone Wild steel drums stuck in my head.

The only way to lose an earworm is to replace it with another; my nuclear option is the Chipmunks version of Achy Breaky Heart (for a while, I wasn't sure it actually existed, or if I'd conjured it up in a particularly bad fever dream -- and even if you haven't actually heard it, you can hear it, right?)

In this case, I was able to ditch it with the Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters version of Tonight You Belong to Me from The Jerk, which is a much sweeter and far more pleasant song to have stuck (you can hear it here -- embedded mp3).

Looking on YouTube, though, there's a very nice version by user ShelleyY -- I've included it below. Enjoy:

Now, to finish a few things and head over to the inaugural Friday Night Live in Herndon.

I Can't Hear You Right Now

I flaked on the Web Content Mavens Meetup tonight -- I'd been planning to go, but I took a decongestant this afternoon and it really knocked me out. Which was a pity, since they were going to be looking at open source Web CMSes.

The greater pity is that my head is still stuffed up. I feel like I'm underwater. So I'm a little iffy on Thursday night's DC New Media Technology Happy Hour. Though I hope to be fully up and running for this weekend's eDemocracy Camp.

---

In other news, I was looking for a knife sharpening video on YouTube, and found a way to use your car to sharpen a knife in seconds:

Tags: edemocracy camp, knife sharpening

Weekend Mockup: Meet Head Coach Max Zorin and More

Skimming through weekend events:

* Semiconductor mogul/supervillian Max Zorin was named head coach of the Redskins. (I may have read that incorrectly.)

Grace Jones will replace him as offensive coordinator.

* Herbie Hancock won Best Album of the Year on the strength of his song, Rockit. Once again, Grammy voters show their unwavering support for jazz in their boldest move since Steely Dan beat Eminem.

* The WAMU Winter Membership Campaign is happening. Do they use canned phone-ringing noises to fill dead zones during the on-air pitches? If not, they should. Or at least do an A/B test to see if playing phone-ringing sound effects generates more calls. It's radio, they're used to that sort of thing.

* The McCain campaign responds to the will.i.am "Yes We Can" Obama video:

[Technically from today -- via Corey, who saw it on DailyKos because he is a communist]

Tags: wamu, public radio, john.he.is, herbie hancock

All the News You May or May Not Use at LiveNewsCameras.com

Al's Morning Meeting had an item yesterday about LiveNewsCameras.com, which is an online video news experience that comes out of the Chicago Fox affiliate. It launched this week:

It's a moderated mashup of Fox news affiliate feeds -- if you click one of the updating thumbnail photos, you'll see the video stream from that station. If they're doing a news broadcast, you'll get it; at other times, you'll get a variety of things: Beauty shots of the scenery, raw live feeds from remote crews, traffic cams, weather radar, streaming feeds from their Web site, etc.

You can see the human element in the upper right -- they've got commentary from live video moderators who will highlight particular feeds. (Yesterday, you also overheard chatter from neighboring cubicles, though I think they've fixed that.) Just now, reporter Andy Roesgen was moderating. He'd been talking continuously for some time now -- it was kind of impressive.

The human moderation does add an extra dimension to the coverage (they also take great pains to point out that you can mute the moderator, but when you do that, you lose a lot of the value), but it also raises a significant problem: Having a human moderator is not particularly useful when there isn't anything going on. Which is going to be most of the time.

So, to avoid awkward dead air, the moderator either has to come up with filler (like rampant, unbased speculation during a crisis), or try to find something, anything, interesting from the available feeds.

And interesting doesn't mean relevant -- just because you get the unfiltered, raw scoop on a Philadelphia row house fire, doesn't mean it's relevant to you; you may find the illusion of relevance, which just means you get invested in something that wouldn't otherwise matter to you. It's kind of an artificial investment.

In many ways, it's kind of the news extension of the kind of "ambient intimacy" that many people ascribe to Twitter.

However, in Twitter may be kind of a solution to this -- they're already using their Twitter account and displaying the feed under the moderator video. Instead of trying to have a talking moderator 24/7 (or however long they're using human coverage), maybe they can pull in humans only when events warrant, and use Twitter (or similar alerts) to let people know.

Al has an interview with their news director -- it's in the nature of an experiment, and they're still feeling things out. Like I said, it has an interesting flavor, so we'll see what becomes of it.

Tags: live news cameras, fox, twitter, ambient news

Naked Whining College Students, Donut Clerks, and Instant Celebrity

A few bits on instant celebrity in the world of social media:

* Being Overly Aware Is Not Good: You probably saw the item this week about the Dunkin' Donuts clerk in NJ who fought a robber so he'd "look good" in the inevitable YouTube video.

While bonking the robber in the head a few times with a metal tip cup may or may not have been the best course of action (the clerk didn't get hurt, though the robber got away with $290 in cash), choosing a self-defense strategy simply because you don't want to look bad on camera does not make for good long-term survival prospects. Though it might get you on a late night talk show. (Alas, we will never know, with the writer's strike and all.)

* Being Unaware Is Also Not Good: Via Obscurestore -- Tufts University has a Naked Quad Run, which is pretty much what you would expect (and similar to events at other schools).

The local paper ran a puff piece on it, and the web version features quotes, photos, and an embedded YouTube video: "Tufts Naked Run brings students together -- with a few injuries." Here's the video, which features rear nudity:

Judging by the article and video comments, there are a lot of whiny, indignant, and insulated college students who don't seem to understand that, just because you're on the grounds of a private university, doesn't mean that you're not still in public view (think "exposing yourself in a bar"), and thus fair game to journalists, citizen journalists, perverts, and perverted citizen journalists.

It's slightly puzzling, because this is supposed to be a generation raised on social media, instant fame, and content sharing. I can only guess that this charming naivete about privacy in public and the power of social video sharing comes from a stunning sense of self-entitlement, brought to you by the campus-wide, tuition-powered protective force field that surrounds many institutions of higher learning.

Anyway, in the comments, there's a lot of posturing about private property, dire warnings of potential under-18 nudity, a complaint about wikipedia plagiarism, and even some internet tough guy "smash your camera" talk, but it really just comes down to people being upset about having video of their pasty goose-fleshed buttocks wobbling around on the Web. To which the answer is simple: Don't go naked in public. Or at least wear a mask.

* Lastly, this week's Tom the Dancing Bug comic has another edition focusing on instant instant celebrity, followed by instant nostalgia (condensed version).

Tags: celebrity, naked quad run

Today Are Crazy Sex Day, Plus 35 Is NOT Middle-Aged and Racewalking From Samurai

* Grammar Nazis and Crazy Sex Day: From today's Sinfest comic:

Sinfest's Slick: "If I was president every day would be Crazy Sex Day."

While I am something of grammar and spelling purist, I don't consider myself a "Grammar Nazi" -- I'm more of a, um, "Grammar Youth." Possibly a Grammar Detective -- part of the Grammar Police, only undercover: observing, gathering evidence, building a case.

* 35 Is Not "Middle-Aged." (Dammit): A news item of no particular consequence about a 35-year-old guy who allegedly blackmailed a 20-year-old MySpace friend into having sex (after she revealed that she'd had a three-way -- well, it just says she engaged in sexual acts with them, so I will believe what I want to believe -- with two college hockey players that she thought might have been videotaped).

Okay, maybe there's some particular consequence here (*furiously taking notes*). But the Fark headline from which this story comes reads:

"If you're a middle-aged fat guy looking to pick up college chicks, this local paper has a step-by-step guide... if you don't mind the ensuing jailarity. (with mugshot goodness)"

Besides the usual snark, there's a sidebar discussion in the comments as to what constitutes "middle age," with a lot of vociferous protestations and denial from fellow mid-30s oldsters.

As I'm going to live forever (also, I'm going to learn how to fly -- high!), I must also add my note of protest.

* Know When to Walk Away, Know When to Run (Samurai Edition): Lastly, here's a video (via BoingBoing) that asks and answers the question: When chased by sword-wielding samurai, would a champion racewalker walk or run?

Bonus: Remember this video the next time you sit in a massage chair.

Tags: sinfest, grammar nazis, middle age

Welcome, You've Got Dammit! 24 in 1994 (Video)

Here's a CollegeHumor.com video that's far funnier than it has any right to be:
24: The Unaired 1994 Pilot (link via TotalFark):

College Humor's 24: The Unaired 1994 Pilot

It's a 24 short that portrays the people at CTU trying to do what they do now, except using early 90s technology -- dialup, one-way pagers, pay phones, dot matrix printers (with tractor feed paper), etc.

As a tech user during that era and a former AOL insider, it was especially fun to pick out the anachronisms (though I could not for the life of me remember the term "anachronism" -- unemployment is making me soft).

If you want to get picky, AOL 3.0 didn't come out until 1996 (I was still using 2.5 when I started); Geocities wasn't really Geocities in 1994; they did, you know, have fax machines in 1994; and people were able to get stuff done before online (And even before computers. Or so I heard.)

Oh, and you can see they're using AIM (on a Windows 3.1 machine?) instead of an AOL client -- AIM didn't come out until 1997:

Since I don't even know if you can run AOL 2.5 or 3.0 on a modern machine (I couldn't, the last time I tried -- don't remember if they were ever officially sunset or just allowed to die... assuming you could find an installer -- need an install floppy?), chalk it up to "revealing mistakes."

The references to Lycos, Encarta, and such, as well as a contemporaneous event or two (Nancy Kerrigan, anyone>) were amusing. I got a few chuckles. (But why did the terrorists just disappear?)

College Humor's production values have been pretty good and are getting better all the time. Good job.

Dammit!

Tags: 24 in 1994, college humor, dammit

Caught Up in the Halo Hype (The Last One Standing)

Up until now, I've managed to avoid most of the hype around Halo 3 (which should be out... right about now). I'm not much of a gamer -- I have an Xbox (Zero60), and I completed the first Halo (though only on Heroic, not on Legendary), but that's it. I don't even have Xbox Live.

Then, last week, I caught this clip of the Halo theme done on Mario Paint:

It started with that. Now, with all the commercials and the hype, I can't get the Halo theme out of my head.

It Gets Better

---

Then, today, saw this Halo promo short film on the Discovery Web site: Halo: Last One Standing, which is evidently part 3 of a series set right before the events of Halo 3, with effects done by WETA (the SFX company that did Lord of the Rings, not the public broadcaster).

It also evidently kicks seven types of ass.

Just as an example, there's a scene about halfway through, where a Marine gets jumped by a Brute, tries to scramble away and gets pulped by the Brute and his Gravity Hammer. It's chilling and brutal:

Note the blood spot where the unfortunate Marine got Hank Aaroned into the wall. At least he died with his pistol in his hand.

If the Halo movie looks anything like this short, it's going to rock.

However, in the spirit of sucking out the fun of sci-fi by overanalyzing it, I do want to point out two things that don't make sense:

1. Early on, a Marine grabs a Brute Spike Grenade that's sticking into the wall next to him about to explode, and hurls it into the air, blowing up a Covenant Banshee that's streaking by:

The Banshee he's going to frag is off-screen.

It looks really cool, but leaving aside the fact that it's ludicrous (unless he was just trying to get rid of the grenade and simply got improbably lucky), it's way too short of a throw. The grenade, which is about 2/3rds the length of a baseball bat, barely completes a full rotation and doesn't diminish appreciably in the distance before it hits the conveniently-passing Banshee. For the Banshee to be that close, it would have to be a whole lot bigger.

Yes, I know they applied artistic license to fit everything in frame, but you're already having a guy shoot down the equivalent of, say, an A-10 ground-attack jet by chucking a hand grenade at it -- we're already stretching credulity pretty far.

(Now, if you have the Master Chief do it; sure, why not -- he's a cyborg. But you still have to fix the perspective problem.)

2. The apparent plot of the short is that the Marines need to figure out where the Master Chief is going to land by painting him with a laser designator:

According to the dialog, "Search & Rescue teams are awaiting coordinates," and "That's it, we got it; recovery team has his coordinates."

Of course, needing a guy on the ground to paint a re-entry vehicle makes absolutely no sense. To make sure the guy was within visual range, you'd need to put in him the general vicinity of the landing (and if you knew that, you wouldn't need the guy).

And it's re-entering the atmosphere -- it's not something you can hide. Once they spot it on radar/lidar (or just look out the window of that hovering Pelican dropship and follow the smoke trail), they'll know where it's going to land (the guy on the ground wasn't marking it all the way down, so it's not maneuvering -- it's on a ballistic trajectory).

I suppose it could have been explained away as some back-assward way to do IFF interrogation,if they were trying to sneak the Master Chief's re-entry vehicle in among a cloud of decoys, but the dialog and on-screen action don't indicate this (and there's that whole "guy on ground" problem again).

Anyway, this is an awfully long entry for someone who ostensibly isn't interested in the Halo 3 launch, so I'll just say I hope the movie is good, whenever it comes out.

Tags: halo 3, halo last one standing

Something From AT&T That Doesn't Suck

I had the TV on just now, and an AT&T commercial came on. It features a band -- a girl on keyboards and a guy on drums -- playing a show in a club; the shot pulls back and shows all the happy cellphone users in the crowd bopping along (and presumably bootlegging the show with their phones).

It's a 15-second spot, and you only hear the song for about 10 seconds, but the tune is impossibly catchy:

I checked out the url featured in the commercial, Then Ewatt.com (hey, that's what it says), which had no relevant information, but The Google has the ad on the first page of results -- the song is "For The Actor", the band is Mates of State, and they've got 4 songs for download on their MySpace page.

Another band for the list (which needs refreshing, anyway -- most of the bands I would go see live are defunct in one way or another).

Tags: mates of state, for the actor, at&t

Why Didn't Someone Tell Me About Pulp?

I'm not sure how, but I managed to completely miss Pulp back in the 90s.

That changed recently when I saw this clip of William Shatner covering 'Common People' with Joe Jackson and Ben Folds on the Tonight Show in 2004 (can't embed it, unfortunately).

I was watching it for the Shatner kitsch factor, but then Joe Jackson jumps in with his vocals and the song really takes off. It especially starts kicking ass when they duet.

(Take note around 2:19, when Jackson laughs a bit in reaction to Shatner over-emoting on the "everyone hates a tourist" line.)

Anyway, it rocks. I was curious about the original, which also rocks:

I'm kind of obsessed with both versions right now. I keep playing them back-to-back, then all of sudden, I see an hour has gone by.

And while I doubt I'll pick up the Shatner Has Been album, Different Class is definitely on my list.

Tags: pulp, common people, william shatner

A Glaring Error in the Beastie Boys' 'Paul Revere'

Every time I listen to the Beastie Boys' Paul Revere (which is probably more frequently than would be considered healthy), I always change one lyric in my head. The verse goes:

Pulled out the jammy -- aimed it at the sky.
He yelled, "Stick 'em up!" and let two fly.
Hands went up and people hit the floor.
He wasted two kids that ran for the door.

Now, the line that goes:
He wasted two kids that ran for the door.

should be:
He wasted two kids who ran for the door.

The two kids are people (even after being wasted), and as such, should be referred to using the pronoun "who."

So I always make the correction.

YouTube adaptation of this kids book

Tags: beastie boys, paul revere

Please Do Not Offer My Senate a Hindu

I guess I'm a bad person, but sometimes I can't help but enjoy watching a good trainwreck unfold.

Specifically, I'm curious to see how the conservative blogosphere reacts to today's disruption of the Senate's morning prayer, which was delivered by a Hindu and interrupted by three Christian protestors:

Politics and religion. The only way it could get better if it had been delivered by a lesbian. Or possibly a terrorist.

[Title comes from here. Wav here.]

Former President Gerald Ford Eaten By Wolves (He Was Delicious)

This will probably be the 10 millionth time you see this today, but if you haven't, this SNL sketch of Dana Carvey as Tom Brokaw pre-taping obituaries for Gerald Ford is one of the funniest things you'll ever see (even now, given news of his actual death):

This link was posted in the Fark thread, which also brings up the ever-popular "Trifecta in play/Celebrity deaths come in threes." Who's next -- will it be Castro, as one poster suggests? (I know it would make my dad happy.)

Incidentally, the bit at the end where Dana Carvey is speaking some "African" language of clicks and pops for the Zimbabwean invasion scenario newscast is one of the reasons why the whole Rosie O'Donnell "ching chong chinese" affair from a few weeks ago didn't bother me much -- whether it's gringos speaking fake Spanish by adding -o to everything (el pass-o el mayo-o), or someone putting on a Sgt. Schultz German accent or whatever, making up sounds for languages you don't speak just doesn't strike me as all that offensive.

If she'd done the slanty-eyed, buck-toothed thing, then we would have problems. But otherwise, it's silly and stupid and some folks need to get a grip.

Technorati Tags: gerald ford, dana carvey, snl, parody, rosie o'donnell, ching chong, stereotypes, eaten by wolves

James Brown... Is Dead

And L.A. Style experiences a sudden surge of popularity, bobbing briefly into view, before sinking back into the depths of obscurity:

I saw the Godfather of Soul at the 9:30 Club with MWH a few years ago.

James Brown wasn't actually on stage all that long; he was more like the emcee at a variety show, which included a few different vocalists and a magician, plus about 23 people on stage.

We were standing pretty close to the stage -- close enough that we flinched when he snapped the mike stand at the crowd, reeling it back by the cord with the practiced hand of the hardest working man in show-business.

I remember at one point, he was talking about DC, and something about how we needed to get the city back on track. We weren't sure exactly what he was saying, but we applauded along dutifully, until he said something that made me realize, "Wait a second, are we clapping for the return of Marion Barry?" (This was before his political resurgence, such as it is.)

Anyway, I'm glad I got the chance to see an icon like him live, especially in a small venue like the 9:30 Club.

However, it looks like we're going to be hearing a lot more of 'Christmas in the Ghetto' during the holidays from now on, which is unfortunate, since it's one of my least-favorite Christmas songs.

Technorati Tags: james brown, la style, 9:30 club

9/13/99: Never Forget

September 13, 1999 marks the 7-year anniversary of the tragic events at Moonbase Alpha, where all 311 of the base's inhabitants were lost and presumed killed after terrorists set off a thermonuclear chain reaction on the moon's Nuclear Waste Disposal Area 2.

The resulting catastrophic explosion blasted the Moon out of Earth orbit and into deep space (an event that has been seared into our collective consciousness through repeated viewings of footage from Alpha's internal cameras):



It seems hard to believe, but only 7 years after the Moon was stripped from the sky, the events of Sept. 13, 1999 seem distant and remote -- as if they had happened 30 years ago, not 7.

To commemorate this horrific event, and to honor its victims, I've created some graphics to show our resolve and prove to those who would harm us that we will NEVER FORGET:

Similarly, we must always remember the heroism of the Eagle Transport pilots and crew as they tried to rescue the trapped Alphans:

May the victims of the Moonbase Alpha attacks always be remembered:

Spread the word with graphic badges:

250x153

200x122

100x61

9/13/99: Never Forget.

********************

Okay, so I liked Space: 1999 as a kid. I had some of the toys -- an Eagle transport (not the big one... though I wanted it), the playset (with action figures), the Colorforms, and a jigsaw puzzle. But I'm not a diehard fan. I don't participate in any of the online fan forums. And I especially never thought I'd be doing up tribute graphics for the "anniversary" of a fictional event from a 70s TV show.

So why do it?

I blame YouTube, and two blog entries that were floating around the geekosphere last month: The best and worst sci-fi openings of all time.

I didn't geek out about the lists then and I won't now (other than to say that the Blake's 7 opening and closing themes should have been on the best list).

Not only did the Space: 1999 theme song bring back memories, but it rocks. It still kicks ass (listen to that bass line! the wailing guitars! the orchestral break!) -- and it's aged really well (unlike, say, the Star Blazers theme, which, though still epic, is a lot more like a show tune than I remembered).

Anyway, when I was watching the Space: 1999 opening credits, I zeroed in on the "September 13, 1999" title cards.

Obviously, because of the Sept. 11 anniversary, we've been seeing a lot of remembrances and memorials on the Web, including graphic tributes of genuine sincerity (but varying quality) with crying eagles and "Never forget" and such.

I think it was the eagles that did it for me. Eagles and the Eagle Transporter. I guess you had to be there.

Anyway, I'm not trying to make fun of anyone's 9/11 memorial graphics -- I guess I just kind of overloaded on them over the past week. So that's why all this "Never Forget: 9/13/99" silliness.

Tags: 9/13/99, eagle transporter, geekosphere, moonbase alpha, september 13, space 1999