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It’s Not Easy Being A Mashup Addict

[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 28, 2009 by admin in Popular Media

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

It Can Leave You All At Once Sweatin’ Like a Farm Animal, and Cool as a Daisy


Radiohead Meets Dave Brubeck

The other day a friend turned me onto this Pulp Fiction Audio Mix mashup, which reminded me that it’s not easy being a mashup addict. For a long time I complained about how musicians were getting lazy and building whole songs around a single sample (like Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz Deja Vu ), and now I’m whining because I can’t find sample-based material fast enough! I’m not even always sure what I’m looking for; the word “mashup” wasn’t in the OED last time I checked. My favorites are probably the purely musical ones like the the rather brilliant Dave Brubeck/Radiohead clip featured at left, or this Beatles/Kinks/LCD Soundsystem clip, but this medium is pretty broad. Consider the early 90′s EBN mashups like Rock This Base or the more recent Golden Age of Video by Ricardo Autobahn. Both mix the audio and video of multiple sources to pretty good effect. I’m still probably most impressed with artists like YouTube remixing genius Kutiman for his sheer devotion to musicality, but face it. Even William Shatner explaining why Kirk climbs a mountain has some merit, as does a meme-remashing like Christian Bale takes David to the Dentist or the utterly insane Sweatin’ Like a Farm Animal, Cool as a Daisy. If mashups are a totally new concept for you, check out our previous pieces on the topic. Read the rest of this entry »

American Idle: A Culture Paralyzed By Fox TV

[ 2 Comments ]Posted on October 20, 2009 by admin in Popular Media

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

In the end it wasn’t communism that brought America to a standstill. It was Fox TV.

I’ve maintained for a long time that “Fox News” is an oxymoron, so it was refreshing to see the Newsweek piece The O’Garbage Factor by Jacob Weisberg, in which he points out that the politicized Australian-British style of reporting that Rupert Murdoch brought to America with Fox is simply un-American. I’d go further, and suggest that the Fox network in general is directly responsible for many of America’s cultural ills. While I love “edginess” and “pushing the envelope” when it comes to media and creativity, it should be clear to anyone who watches the evolution and influence of pop media that Fox has taken the lowest common denominator as low as it can go, and had a profound negative impact on American culture on the way down. Fox originally sliced out its market share with shows like Married With Children, a show that I personally found amusing, but that clearly blazed a trail for the later cultural cancers (also brought to us by Fox) like “Reality TV” (now there’s an oxymoron) and ranting morons like Bill O’Reilly. I mean, when you start at the bottom, “lowest common denominator” eventually means “subterranean rot infested with maggots”, which I think would be a good description of a typical episode of The O’Reilly Factor or some of the more desperate reality TV shows. So what’s a person to do? Well, you could plan a meeting with your more influential media-savvy friends. Just make sure American Idol isn’t on that night.

Antichrist – Cinematic Genius? Or Pure Provocation?

[ Comments Off ]Posted on October 15, 2009 by admin in Popular Media

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

Lars von Trier’s latest film has everything you need to grab some headlines: Misogyny, dying babies, genital mutilation, and demonic talking foxes.

When you’re trying to market a film these days, it’s hard to cut through the noise. If that’s what you need to do though, call your film Antichrist, be sure to include lots of misogyny, scenes of babies falling to their death while people have orgasms, use the latest HD cameras, and attach a big name like Willem Dafoe to the project. Apparently it helps if you seem to be having a nervous breakdown in the first round of casting, and claim in the press that you’re not sure if you’ll ever make another film. I sound like I’m pre-judging Lars von Trier’s latest film “Antichrist”, but I’m really not. Who knows, it may be the greatest thing since Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, which also has stories about the production that rival the drama of the film itself; see for instance, this clip, in which Herzog explains how one of the native chiefs appearing in the shoot offered to kill Klaus Kinski. In all honesty, although I was very intrigued with von Trier’s approach to shooting Dogville, I’ve only seen miscellaneous clips of his work. However, the fact that Antichrist looks beautifully creepy in the clips I’ve seen, is so completely surrounded by controversy, and won an “anti award” at Cannes will probably compel me to see it. Antichrist is slated for odd US release dates; it’ll be available via Video On Demand on October 21, and in limited release October 23. See IMDB for the various release dates. Since it was shot with Red One HD cameras, the YouTube clip above doesn’t really do it justice; consider viewing the HD trailers at Apple.com Read the rest of this entry »

Is Glenn Beck A Homosexual Nazi Blood Elf?

[ 5 Comments ]Posted on October 9, 2009 by admin in Popular Media

Friday, October 9th, 2009

Why hasn’t Glenn Beck denied raping and murdering a young girl in 1990? Who cares. When else do you get to have serious conversations about the Chewbacca Defense and the Moron in a Hurry Test?

One of the joys of not having cable is that I rarely have to get to know the personas of people like Glenn Beck. Stories about how there was an advertising boycott against him were an amusing side note in my peripheral media vision; I’m always happy when some ranting hack on cable news or talk radio takes a beating, especially in the case of one who makes comments that President Obama is a “racist” and has a “deep-seated hatred for white people.” My interest in the story took a new turn the other day though; having received frivolous cease-and-decist letters letters on more than one occasion myself, I was especially amused first when Isaac Eiland-Hall created the site glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com, but even more so when Beck took the issue to the WIPO, and then again more so when Eiland-Hall’s lawyer Marc J. Randazza responded. The lawyer’s response (143KB PDF) is the best part of this all; it’s not only hilarious, but a perfect instructional tool if you know someone who isn’t familiar with Internet Memes. In the response brief, the lawyer points out that “Only an abject imbecile could believe that the domain name would have any connection to the Complainant“, referencing the moron in a hurry defense (which I was surprised to find has nothing to do with the Chewbacca Defense), and then going on to reference in Read the rest of this entry »

Outrage Outs Hypocritical Gay Politicians

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on October 5, 2009 by admin in Popular Media

Monday, October 5th, 2009

Should politicians that are publicly anti-gay while privately gay be outed? Where’s your righteous indignation? I dunno, but your Outrage is on HBO this week.

I missed Outrage when it hit theaters in May, so I’ll be trying to crash a friend’s place this evening to catch it on HBO. The idea of a movie created specifically to out politicians that are publicly anti-gay while privately being gay hits some dynamic chords for me. Conversations about issues related to gay rights are usually a little more nuanced in my circles. I’m not sure I’m behind government approval of gay marriage, for example, but that’s because I’m not sure I believe in government PERIOD. Otherwise, I vehemently support a person’s right to marry whomever they like, regardless of gender, or even species — as long as the other species is consenting. In this case though, it’s a little more cut-and-dried for me. The idea here is exposing politicians’ hypocrisy, not their sex lives, right? How can that be wrong? Well, I wonder how a filmmaker shooting a film like this chooses their “targets”, and what their methodology is in general. But hell. Once they’ve got the goods, it’s a no-brainer, right? They’re just exposing lying politicians, right? As Rep. Barney Frank (whom I previously had no idea was openly gay) puts it: “There is a right to privacy, there’s no right to hypocrisy.” If you’ve read this far, you may be curious as to just who the film exposes. The list includes Florida governor Charlie Crist, who was once a likely pick as John McCain’s running mate; David Dreier, who was once a leading Republican candidate for House majority leader; Ken Mehlman, George Bush’s campaign manager during the 2004 election and former RNC chairman; former New York City mayor Ed Koch; the now-retired Read the rest of this entry »

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