Henry Phish

This video changed my life.  After watching this for the first and only time, I destroyed every pirated copy of the Cats soundtrack in my collection.  But seriously, music is so cheap these days its difficult to justify illegal downloads. 

I always thought that the whining and bitching of Lars Ulrich was a bit much; people that have made millions of dollars from their fan base and who don’t even require CD sales to do so just shouldn’t complain.  I wonder how many T-shirts he sold last year?  How many gigs he got paid to play?  Or how many corporate sponsored events he’s shown up at just to yell a couple things at the crowd, get paid, and leave?  Anyway, the people that need the money are the musicians, singers, and songwriters who can’t cash in on their celebrity status and are just scraping by.  The record labels will find ways to make money regardless,  but it’s the small time artists that can take the chances and spur innovation in the music industry; they deserve to be paid for doing so.   

And while you’re thinking about that, check out Wierd Al’s video, Don’t Download this Video.

We all knew Wierd Al was wierd, but this takes the cake; a song made up completely from palindromes…that is, according to dictionary.com: A word, phrase, verse, or sentence that reads the same backward or forward. For example: A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!

Check it out here. It’s very fun.

Okay, I’ve been threatening to add this to the blog for months, so here it is.

I found this film, Revenge of the Red Balloon, online about five years ago. I had heard of The Red Balloon, a French film by all accounts, in a class. Being a student of filmaking and film in general, I was totally enthralled by the idea of the Red Balloon getting it’s revenge on the boys who had so violently murdered it in the first film…keep in mind that I still haven’t seen the first film; I just love irony.

The short film is great, and the story behind the making of the film is almost as cool as the film itself. Apparently the director actually went to France to film the short. Anyone who’s committed enough to buy a ticket to a foreign country just to make a film is either completely nuts, or someone I’d like to meet…maybe both.

Anyway, check it out.

Apparently those swords that people have hanging on their walls do work. A local Minnesota man defended his apartment with a sword. The three would be robbers sure picked the wrong apartment. Just because the apartment owner is a Dungeons and Dragons fan does not mean that he won’t be able to defend himself.

According to police, once the burglars were inside, they got into a fight with one of the residents who grabbed his roommates sword and started slashing the intruders. His feisty attack send the invaders running, but not before he wounded several.

Shortly after Minneapolis police arrived, they were called by doctors at HCMC about the arrival of three people to the ER with severed fingers and lacerations.

Man uses sword to fight off burglars

Good thing he didn’t start throwing fireballs at him. Those 1D20 rolls can sure hurt.

A few days ago AOL made the huge mistake of releasing three months worth of search data for over 650,000 of its customers. They mistakenly believed that removing the screen names from the searches would protect their customers identities. Well, the first individual has been identified. Doesn’t take much when you consider that most people search for things that are relevent to themselves. In other words, the searches define the person.

It did not take much investigating to follow that data trail to Thelma Arnold, a 62-year old widow who lives in Lilburn, Ga., frequently researches her friends’ medical ailments and loves her three dogs. “Those are my searches,” she said, after a reporter read part of the list to her.

Web Searchers’ Identities Traced on AOL

Maybe companies should think about their customers data as something they should protect. I wonder what the going rate is for three months of search data?

Hopefully, this situation will help prompt other companies to treat their  customers data more carefully.

Der Bonker ist fantastich…and I’d write the rest of this article in german too if I could only find my highschool textbook.  Though thinking back, I may have turned that back in to the school.  Anyway, that’s how much I enjoyed Der Bonker as animated by Walter Moers.  It’s a very cool music video about the greatest villian of all time and his final days in an underground bunker.  You really don’t need to know german to understand the absurdity of it all, but here’s the translation if you really want to know.

Matt’s earlier post “Mad World” reminded me of two other videos I came across on YouTube. It’s amazing what a little time and some dedication can accomplish. Commercials do not all need to be computer generated to be animated.

TalkTalk reklamı (bigumigu.com)

Akbank - Yenilikçi Güç (bigumigu.com)

I personally like the Akbank one more.

Can anyone find a recent and good claymation commercial?

I always loved the song Mad World. It’s sappy, sentimental and very very depressing…but it’s hauntingly beautiful at the same time.

Check out the video here. Very cool.

This kind of reminded me of an old 70’s slasher flick.  Maybe this is the pumpkin from the opening shot of Halloween?  Very creepy.

Life and Death of a Pumpkin

I have to say that I never expected to hear an anti-Matrix argument from a ninja.  Ninja’s for the most part dont say a lot…and I had always generally suspected that they would rather slit my throat than give a movie review.

I guess everyone has to start somewhere…check it out…it’s fun.

Ninjas and the Matrix