Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on June 13, 2009 by admin in Music
They’re not Grizzly, and they’re not bears. Patrick Daughters’ new video for the Grizzly Bear song Two Weeks is pretty clever though.
If Godley & Creme – whom you would probably only know from their tear-jerking 1985 hit Cry – got together with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and consulted with Depeche Mode and the Decemberists about how to be intellectual and moody, you might end up with something like Grizzly Bear’s latest release “Veckatimest”
Royal de Luxe – Amazing Giant Mechanical Marionettes
[ Comments Off ]Posted on June 12, 2009 by admin in Popular Media
The French performance troupe Royal de Luxe is at it again, this time with a three-story tall deep sea diver in the town of Nantes
This clip gives a sense of the incredible scale of a Royal de Luxe performance |
I often think that I might have been much happier if I had run away to be a carny when I was sixteen, which I very nearly did. My fear of rejection at that age prevented this; I had far too many teeth and didn’t smell funny. But seriously, I’ve had a love of theater, puppets, the circus, the carnival, and the macabre from as early as I can remember. Which is why I instantly fell in love with Royal de Luxe the first time I encountered them in 2006, when I saw this magical clip of a giant puppet girl (I honestly almost weep every time I watch that) from their production The Sultan’s Elephant, set to the song “Décollage” from Balayeurs Du Désert’s Jules Verne Impact. The troupe is still at it, with a new production The Giant Diver (Le scaphandrier géant), which is being presented in their hometown of Nantes at Estuaire 2009 (both of those sites are in French). The picture below is from this nicely assembled overview of the story of the giant diver and his niece. There are many more fantastic photos here on Flickr. Apparently, even when Royal de Luxe does smaller works they’re big; although their show La Révolte des Mannequins had no giants in the cast, it was presented in several cities, in 13 shopfronts, and over 10 days. I can’t say enough about my admiration for these artists, just ponder the scale, impact, and magic of what they’re doing. I hope someday they tour the states; so far they’ve only toured parts of Europe, Chile, and Australia.
♫ Happy Birthday To Us ♫
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on June 11, 2009 by admin in Holidays
Dissociated Press turns one year old today. Join the party by helping us pick a Best Of. So far, the only person at our party is that macabre animated teddy bear.
Hey, guess who turns one year old today? Yes, it was one year ago to the day that the first post appeared on Dissociated Press, a little blip about the Moog Electric Guitar. Which pretty quickly established one of our first style guide rules: No gratuitous YouTube links! We pondered doing a “Best Of” piece to celebrate today, but after one full year of daily updates, we’ve decided to leave that up to you. Feel free to tell us what you’ve liked or disliked over the past year; we’re about to do a redesign, and value your input. You could browse the sections or archives in the left-hand navigation, or go backwards through all the posts of 2009 or 2008. If you’re a writer or developer, we also recently expressed some wants and needs in the “Editorial & Opinion” section. And of course, we welcome Birthday Donations; so far the only person at our party is that macabre animated teddy bear pictured here. By the way, it’s also my friend Eric’s birthday, check out his amusing and occasionally cryptic site, Physician Heal Thyself.
Read the rest of this entry »
Real Men Don’t Twitter
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on June 10, 2009 by admin in Technology
Is Twitter a vast nation of sheep led by a handful of loud-mouth marketers and celebrities?
Take any large group of people, say, a cocktail party. Inevitably, there will be one or two loudmouths that draw a circle of listeners, while most people wander and mingle, maybe forming small, more civil two-way conversations. In my view, this remains Twitter’s biggest obstacle to broader adoption: it’s a huge herd of sheep. 80 Percent Of Accounts Have Fewer Than 10 Followers, or as this Harvard Business blog puts it, Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets. The article also points out that Twitter reverses the usual social network pattern in which men mostly follow women they don’t know, and women follow women they do know. Additionally, since Twitter is mostly a one-way broadcast medium, it draws a tremendous number of multilevel marketing and tech guru types who spam the system. I’ve been saying for a while that Twitter would max out somewhere around the number of Blackberry users, who number around 21 million users as of May 2009. These numbers seem to indicate Twitter is at least leveling off, and guess what? It’s just under 20 million users. I chose this number a little arbitrarily based on the idea that Twitter is such a perfect fit for mobile device users. I personally have used Twitter as an MLM tool, as mentioned above, but otherwise would only find it useful if I worked with a large, mobile work force of some kind. For personal use, it just has little appeal. Don’t listen to me though, Twitter to your heart’s content. In fact, here are 10 tools to help you do it better. Do you use Twitter? I’d love to hear about how and why.
Copyright Law Isn’t All It’s Quacked Up To Be
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on June 9, 2009 by admin in Popular Media
It’s someone’s birthday today, but we’re afraid to tell you more because of a bunch of Mickey Mouse Copyright Laws
It’s someone’s birthday today. I’d love to tell you about it, but I’m not sure if the use of his name (clue: he’s a duck) is a violation of trademark or copyright law. You see, the individual in question is a property (and you thought slavery had been abolished!) of a large media company that regularly protects its intellectual property with considerable aggression. Back in 2005, I got intrigued with the copyfight movement and created a couple of parody products on CafePress – the CopyReich Shop , which pretty heavy-handedly pointed a finger at the RIAA and MPAA’s fascist behavior, and the Copyfight Shop, which poked fun at the Creative Commons license. I suggested them for BoingBoing.net, and got this reply from Cory Doctorow: “This stuff is funny, Ian! I’m uncomfortable with the Nazi stuff, though — I’m a believer in Godwin’s Law and worry that the discreditation that accrues to its violators would outweigh the humor. Sorry.” I guess I was too edgy for the edgy. Oddly, CafePress didn’t mind the images, although recently they wouldn’t let me use these images. Maybe they’re anti-gay. Who knows. In any case, something that’s often overlooked when people discuss copyrights is who they were intended to protect, and what their purpose really was. In the United States, the government gave itself the right to copyright material ostensibly to: “…promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries” (US Constitution, Section 8, Clause 8). The idea being that if a creative person could gain an exclusive financial benefit from their creation for a time, there would be plenty of motivation to create wonderful things that would benefit mankind later, when these creations entered the public domain. In my opinion, this has all been completely perverted by the copyright extension act to protect the profits of corporations, at the expense of the individual. What do you think? Below are the images from the CafePress shops.