Category: ultramedia

Subway Stories

It only dawned on me yesterday that the videos from the WYSIWYG Talent Show were still languishing on our old web server, which is rather a terrible waste considering how much more easily you can handle video on the internet now thanks to YouTube. So without further ado, here’s a clip of me from March 2005, reading my bit at “The City That Never Shuts Up: New York Stories”.

Related:

A Holiday Venture

One of the few Christmas traditions I’ve come to treasure is the annual cover song recorded by the guys behind the Venture Brothers. It’s just the bit of good-natured pop-culture fun that can actually make me smile this time of year. The offerings so far have been:

Go Team Venture!

I probably should have remembered to do this before Christmas, but since I mostly hate Christmas I’m never really on the ball about remembering to share the bits I like.

Singin’ for your supper

Bette Davis pulled a neat trick when she took on the title role of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, managing to revive (and in some sense, reinvent) her career at an age when most leading ladies were left with no place in Hollywood. I knew that she worked hard to get the role, and worked hard to get it right (that kind of scenery-chewing doesn’t come easy), but I had no idea she went to such great lengths to promote the movie:

Poor dear. The spectacle of her performance in the movie was intentional, and quite briliant. This just makes me wince. You can almost see her gritting her teeth and thinking, “focus on the paycheck, focus on the paycheck”.

[Thanks to Café Muscato for digging up this gem.]

Go Team Venture!

I only recently discovered that the third, brilliant season of The Venture Bros. is running a great promo gimmick: The Amazing T-Shirt of the Week Club. Each week, after an episode is first broadcast, you can get a t-shirt based on that week’s adventure. By the next week, the shirt is gone and another becomes available. Sadly, I only discovered this in week 7, but thankfully that was in time to nab the sweet Order of the Triad shirt. (Truth be told, the only other shirt I really wish I had is the one for the Guild of Calamitous Intent.)

The Order and the Guild only some of the many — nay, the endless — things about the show that are not only deliciously well-written, but apparently written precisely for my eclectic alternative-music/sci-fi/superhero-focused pop culture sensibility. It is, undoubtedly, pure animated perfection. Let’s face it, have you ever seen another send-up of a certain particular medical condition?

That particular affliction is only one of the many experiences that I have in common with the episode’s writer and show’s co-creator, Doc Hammer. Others include the weddings of Doc’s cousins — one of whom is my oldest, best friend — a variety of family get-togethers, and a few visits to hang out with Doc and his former wife in New York. Not that I’m bragging or anything. It’s just another example of the many people with whom I’ve crossed paths in my life who’ve gone on to do a hell of a lot more glamorous things than I have.

Cultural Miseducation

For ages, most of what I knew about the golden age of Hollywood came from figuring out the jokes on old sketches from The Carol Burnett Show, which I watched in reruns pretty regularly as a kid. Until about three or four years ago, this was all I really knew about the story of Gone with the Wind:

(From Nerve and IFC‘s “50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time“, which is filed with genius.)

Battlestar Barbarella

Barbarella Galactica.

When worlds collide, eh? I love both Barbarella and Battlestar Galactica, but for very, very different reasons. Seeing them mashed together for a promo shoot makes my head hurt a teeny bit. If I were more of a straight persuasion, though, this would make me all tingly, though.

Of course, Apollo or Helo done up as Pygar would certainly do the trick.

Barbarella — The Bob Crewe Generation

Pygar’s New Wings — The Bob Crewe Generation

Danny Boy

Happy St. Patrick’s Day from the Muppets (via Sean):

I can’t stop laughing once Beaker chimes in. It’s perfect.

Danny BoyAs you might imagine, I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Danny Boy, since it’s effectively been my family nickname my entire life. The story goes that my Uncle John came waltzing in the room singing it at one point when my mom was pregnant with me, and it stuck.

It is a lovely little ditty, though, if it’s done right. Most versions of it I run across are a little over-the-top Oirish-y or — even worse — a little too vocally precise but lacking in heart. (Shane McGowan gets it right, if you ask me: a little sad, a little sweet, a little boozy, and a little rough around the edges.)

My favorite version is actually by Harry Belafonte:

Danny Boy — Harry Belafonte

I never really appreciated the song very much until one of the times I saw Joe Jackson in concert in concert. He sometimes does this brilliant bar-by-bar analysis of Danny Boy (well, I guess technically it’s an analysis of The Londonderry Air, which is the original melody that was grabbed for Danny Boy in 1913), detailing exactly why it’s the perfect example of a Irish ballad that can “bring tears to a glass eye”, as an intro to the Faustian story in a song of his own:

The Man Who Wrote Danny Boy — Joe Jackson

Rufus Wainwright and House of Pain do songs called Danny Boy, but neither one is quite the same.

This Room Is a Mess!

My favorite thing of the moment is this ridiculously fun song about cleaning your room:

(Performed by GOGO13, as seen on Yo Gabba Gabba!, by way of BoingBoing.)

At any point between 1987 and 1993 or so, this would have been my favorite song in the entire universe. Coincidentally, in 1987 my friend Neil and I published a zine called Kumquat Popsicle, which featured a drawing of a rudeboy by Neil’s pal Alex Désert, who’s doing the voice of the dad in that song. (I would scan that page of the zine, but it’s in my brother’s attic somewhere along with the rest of my old stuff.)

My pal Dave (who directed me to that clip in the first place) prepared an audio extract for your continued listening pleasure: Pick It Up.

Reading’s Glorious Past

Random pop-culture trivia about Reading that I learned today (with audio references):

  • Mod band Secret Affair played their first show at the University here in February 1979, opening for The Jam. (I would have loved to see either band.) Ten years later, I had a crush on a cute boy who introduced me to the first single, Time for Action

  • In 1981, The Human League‘s producer made them come to Genetic Sound in Reading to get away from the “unhealthy atmosphere” of the studio in Sheffield where they usually worked alongside their former band members who left to form Heaven 17. They recorded The Sound of the Crowd here.