You May Already Be A Wiener
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on July 21, 2009 by admin in Holidays
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009It’s National Hot Dog Month, but frankly, I think PETA’s winning the PR battle with their suggestion to put something different between your buns
 Lettuce pause for a moment to ponder PETA’s tofu tube steak suggestions |
Whenever someone asks me if there are any foods I don’t eat, I always forget to mention hot dogs, because, er, frankly, I don’t think of them as food. Although I’ll eat one once in awhile, I put them in the same category as Twinkies or a McMeal Deal: a thing I will chew and taste and swallow if there’s no actual organic matter around. But ignore my foodie pretensions. This is America, and it’s National Hot Dog Month, for cryin’ out loud. So grab a white bread bun, some French’s mustard, and stick a wiener in your mouth. To make sure you’re doing it up right, download a copy of the 2009 Hot Dog Month Planning Guide (6.1MB PDF), and to satisfy your appetite for tube steak knowledge, grab a copy of Frank Facts About Hot Dogs while you’re at it. They use appetizing phrases like “meat trimmings”, “stainless steel choppers blend the meat”, and “processed intestines” to further seduce you. And did you know that Americans will eat about 2 billion hot dogs this month? If we did our math correctly, those hot dogs laid end-to-end would reach 189,393 miles, which is about 4/5 of the way to the moon. So, while July 22 is National Hot Dog Day, I think the National Hot Dog & Sausage Council needs to hire a new PR firm. Although they had enough savvy to create a Facebook Fan Page and a YouTube channel PETA already seems to have stolen their thunder by protesting on Capitol Hill July 16. And since we’ve given so much time to wieners and dogs today, let’s give equal time to breasts and monkeys with the Breasts Not Animal Tests game. I scored 33,375 points, but the breasts just came too fast at the end. Got any interesting hot dog or sausage links to share?
Jazzy Japanese Pop Band Sour’s New Video Is Fan-Powered
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on July 3, 2009 by admin in Music
Friday, July 3rd, 2009The clever new video for Sour’s song Hibi no Neiro, from their new EP Water Flavor is performed entirely by fans on web cams.
Whenever I feel like I’ve pretty much seen the Internet and am ready to cancel my membership, something charming comes along and reminds me what I’m doing here. Not too long ago it was Kutiman, the Israeli guy who took hundreds of amateur music tutorial videos from YouTube and mashed them up into amazingly listenable new music. This time it’s the Japanese band Sour, whose music is just some mellow, sparse, jazzy pop that sounds sort of like if a few Japanese guys studied at Berklee and couldn’t decide who they liked more, Chet Baker or Charlie Hunter. The video at left (for their song Hibi no Neiro) was produced completely using their fans, carefully choreographed on web cams to make a whimsical little video that perfectly matches the thoughtful but upbeat tune. They have a few other playful and clever videos on YouTube, including Omokage no saki which uses simple stop-animation, and Hangetsu, which uses some clever shadow puppetry. I was going to research them a little more and write about them, when I realized the bio information on their site summed it up perfectly:
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Kutiman Remixes YouTube
[ 6 Comments ]Posted on March 13, 2009 by admin in Music
Friday, March 13th, 2009Israeli remix artist Kutiman takes worst of YouTube and creates the best of mashups
I secretly hold dear a belief that there’s an incredible harmony at the core of the chaos that is contemporary user-generated media. Well, an Israeli artist named Kutiman proves it with his project ThruYOU. You know all those misanthropic, socially awkward musician types you might find playing music in videos on YouTube, as if they were stars in some imaginary band? Well, even they didn’t realize it, but they WERE. Kutiman did something absolutely INCREDIBLE – and I can only imagine to be mind-numbingly tedious – by sorting through an amazingly diverse collection of YouTube tutorial and demo clips, and then assembling them into mashups and grooves that are in my opinion imminently listenable. I hope this guy gets some kind of distribution deal or financial reward for this stuff. One of my faves, I M New, is featured here. The easiest way to watch them in order is at ThruYOU, but he also of course has a YouTube page. He seems like a very cool and mellow guy; just check out his version of an “about” page. He also apparently does original work; see his MySpace page. Kind of cool dubby jazzy funky grooves, but I personally think his gift is with the mashup. Read the rest of this entry »
Wired’s “Rippy Awards”: Tired, Expired
[ 3 Comments ]Posted on January 28, 2009 by admin in Music
Wednesday, January 28th, 2009Wired.com has proven once again that having been very hip and cutting edge at one point doesn’t mean you’re very hip and cutting edge now. But I’ll give them an ‘A’ for conceptualization regarding their First Annual Rippy Music Awards. The piece suggests that someone should fill the gaping hole in music awards that programs [...]
Wired.com has proven once again that having been very hip and cutting edge at one point doesn’t mean you’re very hip and cutting edge now. But I’ll give them an ‘A’ for conceptualization regarding their First Annual Rippy Music Awards. The piece suggests that someone should fill the gaping hole in music awards that programs like the Grammy Awards fail to fill. Unfortunately, Wired also fails to do so in the piece linked to, but it’s nice to see that a major media outlet has at least mentioned the problem. This has been a disappointment for me for a while; the last time I actually watched the American Music Awards for instance, was when Jamiroquai
Innovid: Advertising You Might Actually Enjoy
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on January 23, 2009 by admin in Popular Media
Friday, January 23rd, 2009In spite of Google’s $2 Billion purchase of YouTube, and the general public’s slowly growing awareness of services like Joost and Hulu (and soon Sling), no one has yet figured out how to effectively monetize these sites. I mean, if you want to see advertisements while you watch videos, why not just watch TV? And [...]
In spite of Google’s $2 Billion purchase of YouTube, and the general public’s slowly growing awareness of services like Joost and Hulu (and soon Sling), no one has yet figured out how to effectively monetize these sites. I mean, if you want to see advertisements while you watch videos, why not just watch TV? And you might as well put physical stickers on my TV screen if overlay ads (see this Wired piece about Overlay.tv) are the alternative. However, Tel Aviv-based startup Innovid may be onto something with their ideas for interactive in-video ad placements. Imagine an interactive version of the Fight Club Ikea catalog scene. The possibilities here are compelling. In the meantime, free stuff is free stuff. Stop sticking ads in my free stuff! If you want to make money, get clever like Monty Python, and guilt-trip your viewers into making you #2 in sales on Amazon.