Spacefest Preview
Spacefest 2009 will be held in San Diego Feb 19-22 next year in San Diego. This trailer is a great taster. It is also a way to plug the place where I found it, my favorite new weblog: Bad Astronomy, which is bad ass, indeed.
Fonz Jumps the Shark on HAPPY DAYS vs Drinking Your Milkshake
March 8th, 2008 Comments Off on Fonz Jumps the Shark on HAPPY DAYS vs Drinking Your Milkshake | # link to | posted by david
The reason I’m posting this infamous 1977 clip from Happy Days which gives us the expression to ‘jump the shark’, (meaning to pass ones prime and descended into gimmick) is that I realized that I had never actually watched it.
But that’s not the only reason. The recent ‘I’ll end up drinking your milkshake’ line from There Will be Blood (which originally came from the 1920s) looks set to also become a permanent part of contemporary English vernacular.
What these expressions both have in common is that they are not descriptive of what they have come to mean, without knowing the reference, and yet they are and will be used without knowing that reference. This points to the conclusion, that expressions such as these stick precisely because they are unusual enough for people to take notice, and different enough that there is no existing competition from similar expressions.
Fonz Jumps the Shark on HAPPY DAYS
Comments Off on Fonz Jumps the Shark on HAPPY DAYS vs Drinking Your Milkshake clips, memes
Pruitt-Igoe section from Koyaanisqatsi
St. Louis’ Pruitt Igoe represented the failure of modernist town planning and architectural determinism from Robert Moses to Corbusier, respectively. Shoveling up the uncomfortable mess of slums into machines for living in, threw out the soul with the sewage. The mess came back, as modernist slum replacements deteriorated, but the soul often didn’t. They also act as a reminder of how America was not really a democracy, within living memory; Pruitt was designed for Black people, Igoe for White people.
When I first came to New york in the 80s I asked the cab driver to take me to see a similar Corbusier style project in the Bronx. The first cab driver refused to even drive there, and when I went, the scenes of burning rubble in the streets and sheer squalor, were unlike anything I had ever seen in a developed country.
Koyaanisqatsi is hit or miss in parts, but the Philip Glass score has become a classic, and nowhere was the film more powerful that the scenes of the Pruitt Igoe projects prior to and during their demolition in 1972, only 20 years after their completion. Even before its use in Koyaanisqatsi, the film of the controlled destruction became the worlds most iconic footage of demolition. Architect and Critic, Charles Jencks said their destruction marked the end of modernism. Years later, this film with its powerful score, takes on an entirely different meaning, marking the end of something else, since the architect, of the Pruitt Igoe, Yamasaki – also designed New York’s World Trade Center.
Leaked Christiantology Video
Is Scientology really that much weirder than the Abrahamic religions? Its total membership is less than the number of people actually killed by them, so it is less dangerous by any objective measure. Its existence as an non-accepted cult, is far more short lived. Its world view is much closer to the size and age of the known universe and its threat to science seems to be tragi-comically confined to psychiatrists. But it is much weirder, right?
Wrong.
This was the most amusing preacher video I could find, to illustrate the point. It makes Tom Cruise look like Thomas Paine.
Top 10 TV intros of all time.
OK, most of what I’ll post here will be full length finds – but some clips are so great and when you put them together into a list you’ve got a mini TV show.
Here are my top 10 TV intro’s of all time – post yours in the comments.
1. Hawaii Five-0 We are so not worthy-0. Book him Dan-o.
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r0-z5ZtsaI”]
2. Knots Landing The ultimate B-league show, it had this really weird link to the characters of Dallas. But the theme tune – once you hear it, you just cannot get it out of your head – dammit. This is what it looked like on German TV, for no other reason than that’s random, and you get to hear the tune twice – so that I can ruin your day.
3. Starsky and Hutch They invented funk. Didn’t they?
4. Ironside. Saul Bass style graphics and an ear piercing wail at the beginning, that has you grasping your privates.
5. The Money Program. Jimmy Smith’s big band style from ‘The Cat’, when he switched to Verve records. I guess they knew he was just sooo money.
6. The Monkees. The band made for network TV, that spawned Cable TV, on Internet TV. The thing about the Monkees is that although they were fake, the songs were actually good. Destroys all faith in human kind.
7. Rockford Files. Everyone should own a wood-veneered answer phone system, if they want to get ahead.
8. Taxi. I think I’m gonna cry, a $10.99 keyboard from Wallgreen never sounded so good.
9. Citizen Smith. “Power to the people”, cut to sound of single baby crying.
10. Banana splits. So – Much – Fun. Did you know that the guy in the elephant costume is a Republican Congressman? How are you going to prove I’m lying? And here is the Dickies version, the fastest song ever recorded before the invention of chrystal meth. And here are some fans doing it – cos apparenty that’s what people do over at YouTube cos its one big party there. Smashing Telly is a party of one.
And please, someone, anyone, if you have them, put up the themes for the following: The Liver Birds; The Likely Lads (not the Libertines version); Z-Cars.