Posts from — August 2011

This one made me laugh:

(more defacement of well-meaning signs here)

I ended up listening to Sigur Rós a lot in the last week. Here’s Fljótavík, which is one of my favorite songs by them:

(http://youtu.be/eHnP_NNv_3A)

Chris featured Hoppípolla (also by Sigur Rós) on his blog last week. You should also listen to that if you haven’t already.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to see Maria Bamford when she was in town recently. Some of her comedy is just at the edge of the weirdness that I’m comfortable with, but it’s exceptionally funny and I’d love to see her perform live. Here’s a set of her’s from last year:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uTM_HIabUs)

Actual blogging coming back at some point.. too much stuff going on lately.

Christopher O’Riley has some amazing piano performances of Radiohead songs. His album, True Love Waits is a compilation of these songs, and is well worth listening. One of my favorites is his adaption of Let Down:

(http://youtu.be/HZtLXmVstjY)

Exhibit A:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J74y88YuSJ8)

(relevant Talladega Nights scene here)

(via)

I saw some terrible movies this weekend: Birdemic: Shock and Terror (“recommended” by George) and The Room (“recommended” by Pavel). Rifftrax made them tolerable. Coincidentally, they both take place in the SF Bay Area.

The applause scene from Birdemic was probably my favorite. The choppy applause at the start of this clip is exactly how it occurred in the movie, completely unedited:

(http://youtu.be/3cVtUnGPl5c)

I’m not certain which scene is my favorite in The Room, but the flower shop scene may be it. Many of the lines in the movie are dubbed and aligned really poorly, which makes them sound even worse.

http://youtu.be/7S9Ew3TIeVQ)

Oh, hi doggy.

From the 7/11/06 episode of The Show:

Each day I live in mortal fear that I’ve used up the last idea that’ll ever come to me. If you don’t want to run out of ideas the best thing to do is not to execute them. You can tell yourself that you don’t have the time or resources to do them right. Then they stay around in your head like brain crack. No matter how bad things get, at least you have those good ideas that you’ll get to later.

Some people get addicted to that brain crack. And the longer they wait, the more they convince themselves of how perfectly that idea should be executed. And they imagine it on a beautiful platter with glitter and rose petals. And everyone’s clapping for them. But the bummer is most ideas kinda suck when you do them. And no matter how much you plan you still have to do something for the first time. And you’re almost guaranteed the first time you do something it’ll blow. But somebody who does something bad three times still has three times the experience of that other person who’s still dreaming of all the applause. When I get an idea, even a bad one, I try to get it out into the world as fast as possible, because I certainly don’t want to be addicted to brain crack.

Also, if you do happen to watch the full episode, read the first bullet in the notes section on the wiki afterward. That blew my mind a tiny bit.

Some good stuff for you politics and economics people. My favorite joke was the one at 4:05:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW9dxFrAk-I)

This is a few weeks old, but worth a look if you haven’t seen it already.

With the phone hacking story, it’s been fun to watch how Fox News and other Murdoch-owned outlets cover the story. Not surprisingly, Fox has been covering it a lot less than other networks:

(Source: Pew Journalism.org)

The really amazing part, though, is when they do talk about it. As you hopefully know, the scandal is about “journalists” from News of the World hacking into the voicemails of celebrities, war widows and murder victims. But when this is discussed on Fox, they throw News of the World in with a list of other hacking victims. It’s masterfully orwellian:

(http://youtu.be/n9gOSsvLIO4)

Note how they gloss over the fact that the Pentagon, Citibank and Bank of America victims, but News of the World was a perpetrator. It’s all a whitewash. Don’t worry about the details!

The best part is that they spend the last bit decrying how there are important national issues that should be discussed instead, and then cut to the Casey Anthony story.

I’m not even mad about this anymore. FNC viewers get what they deserve at this point. Whatever.

(via James Fallows)

Looking forward to seeing this at some point:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS5Hjhy1RhM)