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name that tune day
Posted on July 3rd, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Games.
This week's Name That Tune -- the twenty-second edition -- is happening today instead of Friday (because of the holiday). It's going live at 3:30 PM Brooklyn time. Come on over to Popdose and check it out.
pilobolus binge
Posted on June 25th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Dance.
One of the most excellent things Velma has introduced me to is the Pilobolus dance troupe. They perform at the Joyce theatre in New York every summer, and we've gone to see them every summer we've been together except the couple of summers we were dead broke. The last couple of years have seen our finances slowly climbing out of the crisis zone, and we've been able to indulge ourselves a little bit. Last year we went to see all three programs, and this year we're doing that again, and seeing one of them -- the one with the magnificent "Day Two" -- twice. And I was able to get seats in the second row for one of the shows, and fourth row for the other three.
There's a little bit of Pilobolus available on YouTube. This one's got a bunch of short clips, and is pretty representative, but doesn't give you a sense of them at length:
This one has two long pieces, and though (as is so often the case with dance on film or television) the intrusive and too-close direction detracts a little bit, it still gives a good sense of what they're like in a couple of their aspects. Especially the second piece, "Walklyndon", an early very goofy one that's one of my favorites:
This is always one of the highlights of our summer, and this year should be the best yet.
more subway ad cutting
Posted on June 12th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff.
This one isn't perfect, but good enough. I like the way he actually looks like he's posing for an ad.
hulk is leaf-spittin' mad
Posted on June 2nd, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Photos.
There are assorted common ways to modify subway ads, most of them juvenile or moronic, but lately I've been seeing one that produces erratic but sometimes excellent results: cutting out bits of the current ad, leaving a bit of the previous, postered-over ad showing through. Here's one I liked in the Prospect Street R/M station:
unfortunate advertising headline
Posted on May 28th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Badness.
section head for credit card / airline co-promotion:
Say "good-bye" to lost luggage!
ex matters
Posted on May 11th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Badness.
ESPN's website has a headline on their front page right now that reads:
Ex-O.J. friend: Simpson admitted killing his wife
Leaving aside the small matter that the source would be better described as "O.J. ex-friend":
It is irritating that ESPN regularly refers to "his wife" rather than "his ex-wife". The distinction isn't trivial, and muddying that distinction has been one of the ways that some of Simpson's more repellent defenders have sought to manipulate emotional response to the case.
But it is doubly irritating when ESPN takes care to refer to the source as an ex-friend, yet still refers to Simpson's victim as his wife.
name that tune again again
Posted on May 9th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, Elsewhere.
My weekly Name That Tune game is up at Popdose. It's fun! It's challenging! It's educational! It's free! And it's 98.4% guaranteed!
r. kelly: creepier than you think
Posted on April 18th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Musicians, Badness.
Bill Wyman -- the music journalist, not the musician -- has been doing a lot of good work at his weblog Hitsville. The most important and disturbing piece he's written, one that ought to be more widely disseminated, is his extraordinary compilation of facts and allegations concerning R. Kelly's sexual history with minors leading up to his trial on one of the allegations.
I knew that he was in trouble for taping himself having sex with a minor. I knew that he married Aaliyah when she was fifteen. But I hadn't any notion of the documented extent of Kelly's history with teenagers. Eleven separate allegations of sex with minors have been reported. Some of the details, as Wyman notes, are "a little bit barfy". For example, a year after he'd settled out of court for $250,000 with a fifteen year old girl, the first sex tape emerged:
...showing Kelly having sex with a young girl. The girl’s aunt identified her, and Kelly. In the tape, the singer called her by her first name; she called him “Daddy.” Besides a variety of sex acts, the girl urinates on the floor at “Daddy’s” direction. “Daddy” then urinates into her mouth.
The girl was fourteen at the time. In the reporting surrounding the case, it emerged that Kelly had settled out of court with two other teenage girls.
Th details surrounding the marriage to fifteen year old Aaliyah are creepy, too:
...she was a singer and a protege of Kelly’s with whom, associates have said, he was having an affair. Without telling her what was going on, Kelly arranged an impromptu wedding at a suburban Chicago hotel and then swept her toward a plane. Fortunately, the girl called her parents. They came and got her and, articles have said, the pair never saw each other again. As rumors surfaced about the union, Kelly lied about it. But then Vibe magazine found a marriage certificate, on which Haughton’s age was listed as 18. The union was annulled a short time later.
There are several more allegations. I'll just mention one more:
Many of Kelly’s associates have been quoted saying they thought he was sick, or had an uncontrollable compulsion to have sex with young girls. Perhaps the strongest evidence of this is that, while already under indictment for filming himself having sex with a child, he was found to have in one of his houses a digital camera with new photos of him having sex with an underaged girl. ... The search that produced the camera was later disallowed by a judge, so Kelly was never prosecuted for those photos.
R. Kelly has been subject to a certain amount of mockery for what has been generally seen, so far as I can tell, as celebrity peccadilloes, maybe a little further over the line than most. I think the record Wyman has compiled makes a compelling case that Kelly is a genuine sociopath. Why he has not been held more accountable by the media and the entertainment industry, I don't understand. Read the whole thing and see if you don't agree.
my favorite sitcom has been canceled
Posted on April 18th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Sports.
Isiah Thomas has been fired* as the coach of the New York Knicks, ending the most inexplicably protracted reign of incompetence and absurdity I can remember in all my time following sports. I'll miss him.
* Actually, he still hasn't exactly been fired; he's been relieved of his coaching duties, but is still being kept with the organization in an undefined capacity.
two limericks for felix hernandez
Posted on April 16th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Sports.
Seattle Mariners Venezuelan phenom Felix Hernandez is much celebrated at USS Mariner; in fact, they gave him the nickname King Felix by which he is nationally known. Every day he pitches is "Happy Felix Day" at USS Mariner. Today limericks broke out. I contributed two:
All hail the young King from Caracas.
His eminence never should shock us.
When he mixes his pitches
He leaves batters in twitches
And our cheers can be heard in Secaucus.
But then I discovered he's actually from Valencia. You can't rhyme much with Valencia (or Venezuela) in English, so I came at it from a different angle:
A Valencian monarch named Felix
Has an extra-high-powered double helix.
Hitters flail at his flings
And their once-mighty swings
Are reduced to limp, impotent wee licks.
Happy Felix Day!
speaking the same language
Posted on April 10th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Badness.
In an mild argument at another web site I've been told I'm "kind of mincing words in the sense".
great band name and title
Posted on March 19th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff.
Another fake album cover:
indie rock album cover generator
Posted on March 17th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Elsewhere.
What a great idea: a slightly labor-intensive but fascinating method for generating faux indie rock album covers. The examples shown on Brainiac's page are excellent, but check out the entire archive, too.
When I get home, I'm going to make some of my own.
exterminate (a continuing series)
Posted on March 3rd, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Badness.
A couple more rhetorical bugs that signal the brief sleep of the conscious mind:
"Despite ... or perhaps even because of"
"That's not to say ... far from it"
name that tune day
Posted on February 29th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Elsewhere.
Name That Tune #8 goes up in fifteen minutes at Popdose.
perhaps a bit too close to home
Posted on February 25th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Untruths, Cartoons.
Sent to me by Velma:
name that tune day
Posted on February 22nd, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Elsewhere.
I keep forgetting to mention the new Name That Tune games on Fridays. Today, at 12:30 Eastern, I'll be running my Name That Tune game over at Popdose. Come over and play!
what, a bus? a truck? a helicopter? i think we should be told.
Posted on February 9th, 2008 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Badness.
A headline right now on ESPN's front page:
Did Stewart hit Busch with more than car Friday?
Hitting him with a car by itself merits a suspension, I think.