Postverbindungen: March 3, 2010

Some random links from recent internet travels:

• I can only hope that the Zoolander sequel lives up to the original, which still makes me laugh just thinking about it. No word yet on whether Owen Wilson will reprise his role as Hansel, but Jonah Hill is reportedly in talks to play the villain. Justin Theroux (who played the break-dance-fighting "Evil DJ" in the first film) will write the screenplay (his other writing credits include Tropic Thunder and the upcoming Iron Man 2).
• From what my friends tell me about the after-work life of the South Korean salaryman, it's no wonder that scientists in that country are at the forefront of hangover reduction research. Stay thirsty, my scientist friends, or you might find yourself trailing the Japanese, when they begin studying the vodka-snorting phenomenon mentioned by the first commenter on the linked article.
• Meant to post this a while back, but here's a crazy video from the security cameras of a bus whose driver fell asleep and wreaked havoc on a Taiwanese freeway.
• John Gruber pretty much sums up what I have to say about the Apple-HTC Patent Thing. In short, I don't believe that software patents are a bad idea in principle, but the current system is broken, and so it is unfortunate but understandable that companies would stockpile patents for defensive purposes. It's when companies use them offensively (pun intended) that a bad taste is left in everyone's mouths. A friend of the site, Joz, was lamenting recently that Steve Jobs — and, by extension, Apple — would be looked upon much more fondly if he rested on his laurels of good design and constant innovation, rather than always picking fights with or making snide remarks about people/companies/technologies. Unfortunately, life is rarely so simple, and we have to take the bad with the good.

Finally, I'm a sucker for a good Rube Goldberg machine, so I'm happy that OK Go and Synn Labs put in the effort to make this one (available in HD):

Update: Forgot about this video, which may be of some interest to the Japanophiles and yo-yo-o-philes among the Hydrans:

Import a Library in iTunes 8

In iTunes 8, there's no longer a File > Import... item in the menu.

If you want to import a library XML file — after re-installing your system, or when moving the library from another computer, for example — you can use the File > Library > Import Playlist... menu item.

It's confusing, since there is a File > Library > Export Library... command, and it's not obvious that you export a "Library" but import it back as a "Playlist".

R.I.P.

Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes.

Get Well Soon, Morgan Freeman. (Sorry about the marriage.)

Stay strong, Samuel L. Jackson.

From, Your Friends at The Hydra

Big Ideas (Radiohead remix)

This is awesome!


Big Ideas (Don't get any) from 1030 on Vimeo.

The Original Running Man

English band Utah Saints reveals the origin of everyone's favorite dance move in its Something Good '08 video:



The part where the whole dance floor is doing a synchronized running man to the fast beat of the song really throws my mind for a loop!

[via Kanye West's Vimeo page via Kottke]

Update: the original embedded video was no longer available, so I swapped in one from YouTube. You can also watch a QuickTime version via the director's portfolio.

Blood, Sweat, and Bears

Some videos to pass the time:

• Here, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty ... of death!


• In America, you hit tennis ball with racket. In Soviet Russia, racket hits you! (apologies to Yakov Smirnoff)


• Kids, don't miss out on the hottest new dance craze that's sweeping the nation — do the Bear! (plays after a short ad)


• Keep those Rock Band skills sharp, my friends; you never know when your musical talents will come in handy. (read the linked Wikipedia page too, if you have the time)

I. Drink. Your. Milkshake! I Drink It Up!

alliesglove asked me for more There Will Be Blood links.

Link the first: Alex Ross on Jonny Greenwood's musical score in The New Yorker.

Most soundtracks lean so heavily on a few preprocessed musical devices—those synthetic swells of strings and cymbals, urging us to swoon in tandem with the cheerleader in love—that when a composer adopts a more personal language the effect is revelatory: an entire dimension of the film experience is liberated from cliché.

Link the second: American Cinematographer's coverage of TWBB's cinematography in its January 2008 issue. As usual, it's a bit technical and jargony, but it also has some great insight into how the film captured the era it depicts.

Shaking his head at the memory, Elswit adds, "The next night, we had to shoot the reverses of the actors reacting to the big fire, and Paul didn’t want to use any artificial light." In fact, these reverses were lit with real fire generated by either the powerful flame jet operated by Cremin and his crew or, for certain shots, flamethrower-like devices. Crewmembers were protected from the heat by flame-resistant suits, but the grimaces on the actors' faces are genuine. "The flames got very, very hot, but that’s how we did it," says Elswit.

Link the last: USA Today's story on the growing popularity of "I drink your milkshake!" as a catchphrase. The article digs up its origin (via director P.T. Anderson):

Anderson concedes that he's puzzled by the phenomenon — particularly because the lines came straight from a transcript he found of the 1924 congressional hearings over the Teapot Dome scandal, in which Sen. Albert Fall was convicted of accepting bribes for oil-drilling rights to public lands in Wyoming and California.

In explaining oil drainage, Fall's "way of describing it was to say 'Sir, if you have a milkshake and I have a milkshake and my straw reaches across the room, I'll end up drinking your milkshake,' " Anderson says. "I just took this insane concept and used it."

The film's studio, Paramount Vantage, is even using it as a marketing slogan.

Things I Didn't Know, December '07 Edition

Here are some of the things I've learned over the last couple of months:

— Phil Knight, founder of Nike, has been taking writing classes at Stanford, and is a good classmate.

— Nintendo has some excuses for its (mind-boggling, IMO) inability to meet the demand for Wii systems, as elaborated in Wired and in the WSJ.

— Bill Bellamy is Shaq's cousin (link to FHM, so maybe NSFW).

— There's a documentary about CalTech basketball called Quantum Hoops.

— PCs with some Award/Unicore BIOSes will, seemingly at random, play classical music to signal problems with CPU fans and power supply voltages!

— Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, was created as an advertising gimmick for Montgomery Ward. His creator's brother-in-law wrote the now iconic song about Rudolph, sung by Gene Auntry, for a Max Fleischer cartoon.

— Speaking of Christmas music, there are tons of cover versions of "Last Christmas", Wham's gift to the world.

— The Ten Mafia Commandments.

— An expert Scrabble player would not have set the highest Scrabble score ever, given the same circumstances in which it was achieved.

— The first three-way tie in Jeopardy history (where everyone came back) was a true act of generosity, and the guy who made it happen planned it that way.

Spot the Video Game References ...

... in this halftime performance by the Cal band:


Cal Band Great!!

Turtle Shel Silverstein

Slate talks about Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels. Probably old news to the Nintendo junkies and Wii owners out there, but it got me thinking about what must've been going through Shigeru Miyamoto's head when faced with the task of creating a sequel to his industry's Citizen Kane.

After lulling you into complacency with the game's superficial similarity to Super Mario Bros., Miyamoto (depressed or not) signals that he intends to torment you. The first row of question-marked boxes you encounter includes that familiar mushroom, Mario's iconic power-up. Except this mushroom is different. It's deadly. As Mario was tossed from the screen, I experienced a combination of shock and puzzlement. That would become a familiar sensation over the next three hours. Again and again, the game uses your familiarity with Super Mario Bros. to subvert the playing experience.

Mental Floss Magazine profiles Shel Silverstein's career, from Playboy cartoonist to children's books author to musician.

Silverstein made it pretty impossible to get pigeon-holed into a poetry-and-cartooning rut by simply tossing in a few other careers on top—songwriter, musician, novelist, you name it. In 1959, just a few years before he started to write children’s books, Silverstein began a respectable career in music. How respectable? Well, he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, won two Grammy awards, recorded more than a dozen albums, and wrote hundreds of songs that were recorded by artists including Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, and Jerry Lee Lewis.

Sometimes Steal Music

Remember, kids: Don't steal music.*

*Unless you use it — along with video copyrighted by Apple — to make your own clever ad for the iPod touch, which the company's longtime ad agency, TBWA\Chiat\Day, spots on YouTube and remakes into a broadcast version, with you at the helm. Also, it helps if the song you steal is hip, catchy, and has a lyric that seems to reference the product.

Update: Don't worry if the song has already been used in a bizarre ad for a competitor's product.