Watch Hank and Boomhauer battle it out in the zaniest mashup I have seen in a long time, I tell you hwhat.
Dark In The Boy’s Anniversary!
•October 19, 2013 • 2 CommentsYay, happy blog-birthday to me! This is quite a milestone:
Congratulations for being a loyal user of WordPress services for five years. Pretty cool, I guess. If cool means being a perpetual loner who finds happiness on the internet then yeah, I’m the funking bomb diggity fives years running son! Thanks WordPress, but really I’d appreciate it more if you’d get back to me on that Ads-Manager deal-e-o. You know.
Never thought I’d commit so much time to this blog. I didn’t even know what the heck blogging meant when I started, hence the randomness and why my first posts were poems and a Queens of the Stone Age YouTube vid.
Thanks for visiting me 🙂 My hope is that every now-and-then one of you surfers will read or see something on here that will make you smile or think. That is enough for me and that’s all anyone can hope for really. This is the nature of the internet after all; to vicariously feel for things we cannot touch and experience moments of genuine surprise. Even though you and I don’t completely know each other; because of you, this medium, expressing my thoughts; I don’t feel so alone. I guess this is what blogging for me comes down to — attempting to connect a feeling of disconnect — unless someone out there has a behavioural profile to throw at me and debunk my introspection?
I may be a bit cynical about being congratulated and praised in general but only because, more often than not, it is I who should be grateful. Thanks WordPress, for reminding me that five years is an extremely long fucking time 😛
“MEDIEVAL LAND FUN-TIME WORLD” — A Bad Lip Reading of Game of Thrones
•October 17, 2013 • Leave a CommentSadly, I would pay money to see this. Theme park manager Eddie Stark has one week to whip his lackluster group of employees into shape before the park’s grand opening:
GAME: 8-bit Game of Thrones
•October 16, 2013 • Leave a Comment
This is pretty neat as a stand alone tribute to the show, but Abel Alves went that extra bit and created an entire game and is offering it as a free download, for free!
Game of Thrones gets turned into a side-scrolling retro platform by Abel Alves. But unlike many 8-bit tribute videos, you can actually play this version. PC users can grab the game here (Mac users will need an emulator, unfortunately)
Katherine Mansfield’s Legacy
•October 14, 2013 • Leave a CommentNew Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was born on this day in 1888. She was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand.
Google honoured her birthday while simultaneously reminding me about the BNZ Literary Awards and who the winner was for the prestigious Katherine Mansfield main prize:
☆.。★*・°☆ CATHERINE CHIDGEY ☆° ・*。★.☆
Winning story – Reverse Living (PDF 89KB)
Catherine Chidgey’s bio (PDF 53KB)
Judge Albert Wendt’s report (PDF 59KB)
The Truth Is Here – David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson on The X-Files [live-stream]
•October 13, 2013 • Leave a CommentNice way to celebrate THE X-FILES turning 20 this year. I would have paid to go to this. Watching the live-feed was the next best thing; thanks Paley for the open invitation.
This show dealt in every genre imaginable and still managed to remain innovative over its 10 year running span (1993-2002) Every standalone episode and themes throughout the seasons of the series are still as relevant today as they were when they screened late into the hours of the night, all those years ago. I’m keen for a marathon now!
ON NOW: Live-stream with David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson Talking X-Files [live-stream]
•October 13, 2013 • Leave a CommentI knew there was a reason to Like THE X-FILES Facebook fan page. I should be working on an(other) essay! But this is me right now. LIVE onstage at the Paley Center in New York City:
Trust us on this: David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are coming to the Paley Center to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the premiere of The X-Files, the iconic sci-fi series that largely defined the paranoid thriller for the nineties, and whose influence can still be felt in supernatural dramas airing today.
The X-Files tapped into a new age of anxiety: at a time when radio talk-show hosts were spotting conspiracies behind almost every action emanating from the Clinton White House, the series immersed us in a mesmeric universe haunted by uncertainty, fear, and distrust, and presented two of television’s most complex and enduring characters—FBI agents Fox Mulder (Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Anderson)—to navigate us through it.
Celebrities Read Mean Tweets About Themselves – Music Edition
•October 12, 2013 • Leave a CommentJimmy Kimmel delivers another edition of Mean Tweets, somehow managing to find the meanest, most unsympathetic twitterers on the net. Poor unsuspecting famous people:
Try Your Talent and Remix Chela’s “Romanticise” Music Video
•October 11, 2013 • Leave a CommentAny keen videographers out there? Have a go remixing Chela’s “Romanticise” video any which way you wanna, thanks to French fashion and electronic music record label, Kitsuné. Follow the link or email chelavideoremix@gmail.com to request the files:
The image-link ^ above ^ has more details. Think you can do better than this:
REAL
•October 8, 2013 • 4 CommentsThis is the song that dominated my today: HAIM – Falling
I have been reading the love poems of Roman poet, Ovid for one of my papers. I have been laughing at how good they are, how eloquent his use of language is and then at times how just plain cynical about love Ovid can at once be. Relatable stuff. But I’m also feeling like my gut is churning with concentrated heat I don’t know how to relinquish. A supercharged kinetic haze of colourful warmth, misplaced within me. The type of heat that only reminds me of the only person who has ever made me feel this exact same way before. Ovid, you revenant love stirrer you. I am flustered over the past.
I wonder about some moments that got me to where I am now, right here and now, and where I may be heading. It hurts to know/think that there was a possibility those moments might have been different and may have brought about happier memories. Had I only been more…confident, I guess. I think I would still be where I am now but I don’t think I would be feeling this, temperature I am under. Warmth that I hold on to. Heat that I feel, whenever I think of her. Oh Infinite Intelligence! Oh Ovid! Oh HAIM! can I not fall in love with an illusion and get burned years later by it? Stupid biochemistry, what never was shouldn’t feel like this, shouldn’t it? If it was never real…
Director Guillermo del Toro Adds His Macabre Touch to THE SIMPSONS Treehouse of Horror XXIV Couch Gag
•October 7, 2013 • Leave a CommentMexican dark fantasy lord Guillermo del Toro created the couch-gag for this year’s Treehouse of Horror episode. Not just the couch-gag, but an extended riff of the entire Simpsons title sequence; “It is a tribute to all things dear to my heart.”
Hypnotoad, Lisa in Panland, Maggie with the Cronos being scanned for a whooping triple figure number and terror virtuosos Alfred Hitchcock, Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King all make an appearance. This definitely lives up to the horror name and is possibly the most outrageous couch-gag in Simpsons’ annual Halloween special history — horror reference-porn galore:
This is still my favourite couch-gag by far though:
Ultraman/Homer (Ultraman), Jun/Marge (Kagaku Ninjatai Gatchaman), Atom/Bart (Tetsuwan Atom/ASTRO BOY) Sailor Moon/Lisa (Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon) and Pikachu/Maggie (Pokemon)!
For you Simpsons fanboys out there (is there such a thing?) this gag comes from Season 15, episode 320, which aired on December 14, 2003. It was a warm evening and a Lapland Longspur sparrow perched on your letterbox at approximately 7:32pm. Trust me.
The Smashing Pumpkins
•October 6, 2013 • Leave a Comment25 years ago today, Billy Corgan, James Iha, D’arcy Wretzky, and Jimmy Chamberlin took the stage for the 1st time together at the Metro Chicago.
A great band. Timeless music in my opinion. The original band holds the most amazing record for creating some of the most unique songs and music videos:
The music video was directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris who were inspired by Georges Méliès’ silent film A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la lune, 1902)
They got the idea for the video because the album cover for Mellon Collie reminded them of early silent films, hence, the video was filmed in the style of a turn-of-the-century silent film using theater-style backdrops and primitive special effects. Most of the video’s backdrops and puppetwork were created by artist Wayne White. [Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, April 1996]
This music video was directed yet again by the creative duo, Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. Upon finishing the video shoot, the band flew to New York to perform. However, all tapes of the footage were accidentally left sitting on top of a car, and were lost as the driver departed. The group later flew back to re-shoot the entire video. Billy Corgan considers it the Pumpkins’ best video calling it “the closest we’ve ever come to realizing everything we wanted.” [Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, April 1996]
The second single from their fourth album, Adore. The video for “Perfect” is a sequel to “1979,” and involves the same characters, literally, years older.
The same crew of directors was hired, which consisted of husband-and-wife team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris. It was the fifth and final collaboration between the two and The Smashing Pumpkins. The conclusion of the video, in which a tape falls off of a car and is crushed, is probably a reference to the fate of the first tapes of the “1979” music video, which had to be re-taped because they were left on the roof of a car and destroyed when the car drove off. [Adore,1998]
The second single from the band’s second album and major label debut, Siamese Dream. Directed by Stéphane Sednaoui who intentionally shot using low quality photographic equipment. Corgan said that the plot of the video was inspired by a memory he had of an ice cream truck driver who, upon quitting his job, gave out his remaining stock of ice cream to the neighborhood children. Warning; this video contains people sucking face. [Siamese Dream, September 1993]
Director, Kevin Kerslake, employed various destructive techniques when developing the film to give the video a broken and dirty look. It was shot outside San Francisco entirely on Super8 film at a very modest budget. Corgan was reportedly extremely unhappy with the shooting experience, and the band never worked with Kerslake again. [Siamese Dream, September 1993]
The second single released from their fifth album, Machina/The Machines of God. “Stand Inside Your Love” is a tribute to the play Salomé by Oscar Wilde. Billy Corgan created the video’s look together with English director W.I.Z. under the heavy influence of original Salomé illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley. Corgan calls it the only “true” love song he’s ever written. [Machina/The Machines of God, 2000]
Directed both by Billy Corgan and then-girlfriend Yelena Yemchuk; “Thirty-Three” is a series of images shot in stop-motion, ending with a re-enactment of the Mellon Collie album cover. Discovering this song had a video was a surprise for me.
ARGH, Ava Adore, Rhinoceros, Disarm, Bullet with Butterfly Wings, Zero, Siva, heck, I just want to embed them all! To see a trove of insightful behind-the-scenes footage and the rest of the best Smashing Pumpkins videos prior to the band’s breakup in late 2000, I suppose you could just YouTube them, or if you wanna be cool like me, get yourself a copy of The Smashing Pumpkins Greatest Hits Video Collection (1991-2000)
The Smashing Pumpkins are definitely one of my all time favourite bands.
🎭 