November Video Linkdump #1

Music Vids

• Basketball Jones song. I totally love this song. It appears nonsensically in the classic movie Being There even though it was originally a Cheech and Chong video that a lot of stars got involved on. George Harrison on guitar! Carole King on piano. Billy Preston on organ.
• Eddie Fisher. I’ll Hold you in my heart. RIP.
• I have recently learned about Julie Ruin, a punk-pop project by performer Kathleen Hanna. See this vid and this one too (by the way I love the cough at the beginning of this song!)  All the songs from this album are great! And of course, La Tigre is great too.
• Another music sensation: Space Your Neighborhood. I had listened to this song for several years, misplaced the CD and forgot the title. Boy I loved 90s music! Space is a Liverpool pop band with witty lyrics.  Here’s another song Female of the Species.
• Two months ago I saw a great concert by a band called Gram Rabbit. Some vids: Shiny Monster and a recent studio performance of Off with your Head.
• Video Mashup of Staying Alive and Another Brick in the Wall.  "Two songs from two groups that were both pivotal to the era, and that had absolutely nothing to say to each other. You COULD NOT like the bee gees and floyd at the same time and be taken seriously. You know all this – hell, I learned from you why these decisions of what I thought were personal taste and preference (…discernment, even) were freighted with all sorts of other cultural, socio-economic and racial baggage. The mashup (not smushing, though that’s nicely derogatory) links them thematically – meaning the people who did this see some of the same content in the bee gees that you did. Capitalism forecloses options, disarms dissent and brutalizes humanity, leaving us with valorizing survival as some sort of liberation. C’mon. Also, who would have ever guessed they were so musically compatible?" (source).
• Everything is better with a bag of weed. Hilarious Family Guy number about the virtues of marijuana. Unfortunately, this song is an earwig that will haunt you all day.

Underarm Cream Joke video.

From Onion: Oprah invited fans to be buried alongside with her.

Silly 2 minute compilation of inspirational speeches from 40 Hollywood movies.

Funny – no I mean hilarious– 8 minute audio story from the Moth Podcast about an actor’s crazy attempt to get cast on the Survivor Reality TV show. 

I wasn’t aware that the Richard Feynman videos were so accessible or humorous. Here’s his attempt not to answer how magnets work. The Fun To Imagine series of talks (on Youtube) were off-the-cuff riffs on random natural topics. I think every 10-12 year old should watch these vides. Isn’t it great that they can!

Here’s one fascinating video by Feynman about fire where he  answers an interesting question: where do trees get their substance  from? Yes, the answer has to do with photosynthesis, but it’s not obvious. 

Microsoft produced a great site featuring Feynman’s lectures. Unfortunately they built it with Silverlight (MS’s multimedia platform), so some of the browsers don’t show it well.

Here’s a video about Capitalist Jesus (from Michael Moore’s capitalism movie).

I’ve grown fond of the Xtranormal animation video clips. Here’s one about the conversation between a tech writer and his project manager. Its accuracy is uncanny. (It was written by Tom Johnson, technical writer extraordinaire). Even though Xtranormal provides the perfect tool for satire, Johnson aims for verisimilitude, not humor. See also the more satirical So you want to get a Phd in the Humanities.