Two minutes of wonder

Amazing piece of animation made from NASA pictures. Also, thanks Trent Reznor, for releasing Ghosts under a Creative Commons license. Your music works well here.

CASSINI MISSION from Chris Abbas on Vimeo.

SFW Sunday: Sensitive and Sweet Edition

Pretty ladies with pretty voices on a pretty Sunday afternoon. If this doesn't make you sit back and smile a little, you're doing it wrong.

Zooey Deschanel vs Scarlett Johansson in epic folky duo sing-off!! WHO YA GOT?

8 Bit Terrorism Starts at the Home Screen

Turns out that all those hours you spent manning your Atari joystick might come in handy after all.

Ladies and Gentlemen... Once Again... Not Ben Folds

If he keeps makin' em, I'll keep postin' em.

So Yes, This Is Ben Folds

Who remains awesome.

NSFW 'cause of dirty words.

Mimi

It's longish, and it has some strange noises, but it's otherwise safe for work...

... and lovely.

Wishing there were more like this.

The more I watch this show, the more I'm impressed. If you like James Bond movies, and you haven't seen the original I Spy television show from the '60s, you should. Robert Culp and Bill Cosby (in the first lead role for a black man in a prime-time TV series) are super-suave, capable secret agents. The show was shot overseas in exotic locales, has a hip score by Earle Hagen, and throws some worthwhile thinking into Cold War spy biz plots.

The first two seasons are now up on Hulu, so you can blaze through the whole set.

If you watch on DVD, you'll also get commentary from Robert Culp, who had an impressive TV writing career (working for Sam Peckinpah, among others) before the show, and wrote eight episodes for the first season. Listening to his story is inspiring for writers of all stripes, and especially for those working on scripts.

Can't Take Them Out Anywhere

I love me some baseball. It's hands-down my favorite sport, and now that the kids are old enough to play, summertime is pretty much baseball time at my house. But even if you don't know a bunt from a balk, chances are you know the words to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame", right?

See, baseball fans have this odd habit of asking to go to a game, in song form, during the middle of the seventh inning (commonly called the "seventh inning stretch"). The music is piped in, we link arms with one another, and white-guy sway our way through an off-key folk song if there ever was one. In Chicago, this ritual took on special significance, as beloved broadcaster Harry Caray would lead the crowd at Wrigley Field by leaning out of his booth and directing with his free hand. (Also of note, he's credited for starting the tradition of inserting the home team's nickname in place of the words "the home team", a practice emulated all over the country.)

So, since Caray's death in 1998, it's become a kind-of meta tradition to invite Chicagocentric celebrities to come and lead the crowd at Wrigley.

Mostly, they're awful at it.

Here's a few of my favorites:

We'll start with the gold standard - here's Harry Caray, in 1985.


Here's Eddie Vedder, who screws it up despite claiming to "sing it for Harry". My favorite part of this is his apparent appeal to "buy [him] some peanuts and crack".


NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon doesn't even really try here. Come on guy, put the song on your freakin' iPod, click "repeat", and listen to it while YOU DRIVE IN CIRCLES FOR FIVE HOURS.


Danika Patrick does a little bit better, but could use some time with a vocal coach. Like, two minutes. Or maybe just pass one in the hallway. She's cute, though... just watch it while muted.


Speaking of things to watch while muted, former American Idol contestant Kellie Pickler makes matters worse by hanging around in the booth after screwing up the words (to the WGN news desk's horrified amusement).


Pat from WGN mentioned Ozzy, so I guess I'll throw him in, as well - though like Gordon, this barely counts as an attempt.


And perhaps the most amazing minute of internet video you'll ever see, ladies and gentlemen, your idol and mine, Mr. T.

That's "I pity the Pirates!" at the end, there. Mr T. rules.

Now let's get some runs!

You May Be Right, Bill Stone May Be Crazy

...but it just may be a lunatic we're looking for.

This (Specific) American Life

Last month, the always-great public radio show This American Life did a live show, simulcast to a bunch of movie theatres around the country. I was gonna go, but my current American Life doesn't support a $20 on-a-whim movie theatre ticket, so I skipped it.

Thankfully, they broadcast the show as their regular radio hour last weekend. It's all great, but the song by Joss Whedon and the subsequent bit by Dan Savage (who hosts a great podcast of his own) are must-listens.

As a bonus, here's an animated short by Chris Ware (music by the also always-great Andrew Bird) that was part of the visually-enhanced original program.

Quimby The Mouse from This American Life on Vimeo.

Your Business Card is Crap

Joel Bauer is an author, a mentor...

... an infotainer.

He can teach you to make ridiculous amounts of money in a tiny amount of time. The description of one of his two-hour courses suggests that he can teach you to make $100,000 in 90 minutes.

Not mentioned is why Mr. Bauer would spend 120 minutes teaching if he could make $100K in 90 minutes. That's all part of the mystery, I guess.

Below, he berates you for having a crappy business card. Before you click play, you should know that Joel Bauer is completely serious.



I'm not sure why I'm so fascinated by this. Maybe it's that I've met guys like Joel, and been sad for them. I think maybe I feel like it's a kind of public service announcement. If you go through your life believing something ridiculous like "life isn't about being liked, it's about being effective", take a moment to look outside your wacky world in which your sheer chutzpah and willingness to say ridiculous things keeps people from telling you how much of a nutter you really are.

Don't be a Joel.

Something That Doesn't Sound Like Coldplay

NPH FTW.

Epic Shepherding FTW

It's my second "hey this ad is cool" post of the day, but OMGWTFBBQ.

magnifique publicité

I love it when an ad agency gets a good idea and just figures out a way to work it into a product promotion.

Stella Artois has launched smoothoriginals.com - a collection of short film parodies - to support the release of its new light product. From the site:

Ah, le cinema! Remember the days when men were strong and silent, women were chic and sophistique, and the action was as smooth as our 4% tripled filtered beer? Formidable!

John Mequlaine apathetically follows Simone's cryptic instructions in "Dial Hard", rap battles get a bohemian redux in "8 Kilometers" (Monte Carlo side! Say bonjour to your mother), and a Belgium Jack Bauer contemplates just how long "24 Heuers" really is.



Hooray for Stella and its agency, Mother London, for a great campaign.

Factoid Monday!

The presentation is a little heavy-handed, but a lot of the stats are pretty interesting.



PS - Does anybody else find it amusing that a presentation with a lot of "wow are things obsolete fast" messaging used a techno-pop song from 1998?

Angry Christian Bale Is Angry... REMIX

So, the director of photography for the new Terminator movie walked through the area where Christian Bale was trying to film an emotional scene - twice. Christian kinda loses his mind a little (NSFW) - and is pretty well trashed in the press, because you can't do this kinda thing after being arrested for slapping your own mother and expect anybody to be on your side. Despite that, I think Hex and I are both on the record for being on American Phycho's side in this (but neither of us, to my knowledge, have ever thrown down with our respective mothers. Or each other's mother, for that matter). Call this however you want, but I just like this guy a little more every time I hear about him. He's like that crazy-ass Russell Crowe we once new, before he went all Ron Howard on us.

Fear not, you're not reading a guest post from TMZ. There is something highly recommendable in all this, and it's this dance remix, titled "Bale-Out".



(ahem... dance remixes of NSFW things are almost always, also, NSFW)

New Environs for Thin T-Shirts

Forget immigrants. In this economy, honest hard-working Americans may have to face competition for jobs from the threat within.

Dead Walking in their Masquerade

It frightens me (no pun intended), but we're fast approaching the time when zombies are mainstream. They've already graduated from the relative obscurity that is the regard of niche-horror movie fans, and they've got a firm death grip on that sort-of acceptable underground cool movement. If dressing up like a Star Trek character makes you a nerd, but a Darth Vader bobblehead on your desk just makes you a geek, then zombies have entrenched themselves firmly in the geek-o-sphere. But the movement is growing, and I'm worried that somehow MTV is going to get involved. Or a CBS reality show. In short, it feels like zombies are about to go all Hot-Topic on us.

For the time being, though, the undead are undeniably awesome. And even though it acts as a good example of the coming mainstream doom of the genre, there's something special about 880 people in Austin - doing the thriller dance.

Hopefuls Roasting Hopefuls

Every year the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner is held in New York as a fundraiser for Catholic charities. It's been a campaign stop in election years since the 60's - and recent years have seen some pretty humorous speeches from the candidates.

Typically these things don't really do it for me... the speeches are carefully crafted to be funny without being risky. They're written well and are usually pretty humorous, but they generally come across like a blues album by Rush - all the right pieces, none of the right screw-ups.

So maybe it's just because we've been inundated with the specially crafted campaign messages more than normal this time around, or maybe it's that as a moderate democrat I can't help but kinda like John McCain too, or maybe it's just that this year, they were ACTUALLY funny.

But I laughed, a lot.

McCain speaks:



(the video poster stuck some anti-Obama ads at the end, sorry about that, it was the only place I could find the whole thing)

...and then Obama speaks:



If only we could give a pass to the entire election arena and allow all of the discourse to be candid and real - then you wouldn't need Leo DiCaprio and Sarah Silverman to tell young people to vote.

Making Fun of Political Action Commitees

... because the funniest part of this is that isn't far from reality. Not far at all.