Ze Frank finally met with Ray, the composer and singer of the internet meme, “Kick Somebody’s Ass”. This has got to be one of Ze’s most memorable shows to date.
Who Would Win?
Here are several interesting animal “fights”. I’m not going to tell you ahead of time who is going to win, but be warned, it won’t always be what you might expect.
Who would win: Octopus or Shark?
Who would win: Rabbit or Snake?
Who would win: Centipede or Bat?
Oscar Moments On YouTube
For those of you that missed the Oscars, you can catch some of the great moments on YouTube (at least for the time-being). Here is one that I liked, Will Ferrel, Jack Black, and John C. Reilly singing about the pros and cons of being a comedian in an industry focused on drama.
Hit play or Watch at YouTube.
Well, the embedded video is gone, but you can still find clips for the time being at Oscar.com. Apparently, even those clips will be removed soon—talk about a backward marketing strategy.
I guess they don’t realize, the Oscars want to be free.
Missing Link and Pictaps
Check out The Missing Link flash creation by interactive media artist Masayuki Kido. This is really cool. I don’t really have the words to summarize other than to say, it’s a series of silhouettes that appear and with the click of the mouse you can interact with them to see a near narrative unfold itself dynamically. I found it extremely compelling.
You might also want to check out Pictaps, another flash based diversion, on the same site, that allows you to draw a character, and then watch him dance to a silly song.
The Merchants of Cool
A couple of years ago my Seminar for New Media professor showed our class a video about the symbiotic relationship between the media and today’s youth, cool Hunting, and how the network between the five media giants operates. The following embedded video is the same show.
The Merchants of Cool: They spend their days sifting through reams of market research data. They conduct endless surveys and focus groups. They comb the streets, the schools, and the malls, hot on the trail of the “next big thing” that will snare the attention of their prey—a market segment worth an estimated $150 billion a year.
Malcolm Gladwell makes a short interviewee appearance in The Merchants of Cool and reiterates some of his thoughts from his best selling book, “The Tipping Point”.
Hit play or Watch Fullscreen at Google Video.
Find the video on PBS.org.
(via)
In Search of Autumn
Nick Tosches spends a year in search of the mysterious origins of his Windows desktop image: Autumn and the Plot Against Me. It’s an interesting read for all of us would-be detectives.
Say What Again
I’m a typographic artwork fan, a Quintin Tarrentino movie fan, and I really like motion graphic compositing projects, so, when I saw Jarratt Moody’s time-based typography assignment (at SCAD) based on Samual L. Jackson’s “Say What Again” dialogue from Pulp Fiction, I figured I couldn’t pass up the chance to share this:
The basic idea of the project is to take a piece of audio from wherever (movie, song, poetry reading, answering machine) and then represent that audio on screen using only typography.
Jarratt chose a famous bit of dialogue from Pulp Fiction as his subject matter. (Okay, what dialogue from Pulp Fiction isn’t famous?) The resulting piece is full of whimsy and style. Jarratt does some great things with scale and simple but effective camera movements. Get those headphones on and prepare yourself for several lashings of Samuel L. Jackson’s naughty tongue.
Mind Blowing Video of Laser Guided Graffiti
Check out the Graffiti Research Lab’s amazing video of a laser guided graffiti projection system. The artist merely draws his design on a nearby building with a laser pointer and a high powered projector “paints” the image for all to see.
This American Life on Showtime
This American Life, one of my most favourite podcasts/radio-shows is coming to television.
What would a TV version of This American Life look like? And is making one even a good idea? Believe us, we’ve wondered all of that ourselves. But now we’re done, and we’re super excited. Our first season of half-hour episodes debuts March 22nd on Showtime. We wanted to make a TV show that feels like the radio show, but isn’t just the radio show on TV. Take a look and see what you think. Here’s a trailer we created for public radio station websites, just like this one.
Check out the teaser trailer.
Update: Here’s a second movie trailer.
And here’s an interview with Ira Glass about the new show on NPR’s Fresh Air.
Queen Mary 2 Enters the Bay
The Queen Mary 2, sailed smoothly into the San Francisco Bay on February 4th. It is the largest ship ever to have entered the Bay and it cleared the Golden Gate Bridge with about 30 feet of room.
Having just visited San Francisco last month, the photos and videos make me smile. I wish I would have been there to get some photos of my own.