Tag: video

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Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex

Tomorrow there shall be another gathering at Andrew’s house to watch the Ghost In The Shell TV series, called “Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex”. We have watched the first 14 episodes and will be continuing from there.

Feel free to bring snacks.

Where Call me or Andrew if you don’t know.
When Show up for 8 pm, we’ll wait a little bit for latecomers before starting. We’ll go til we get tired.
Who If you know either me or Andrew, you’re invited. Simple as that.

Tonight, darling Imogyne has surprised me with a ticket to the Hawksley Workman concert tonight at the Cultch. I’m devlishly pleased, though I’m leery on the details of who that actually is. I think I have a mash-up cover of Striptease on my home computer that wasn’t too bad.

  • New TV on the Radio video for Dreams.
  • Lucky, a short film by Nash Edgerten.
  • an essential Drinking Driving Awareness commercial.

    • Michael Green is visiting with me when he’s here. I feel like a fraud. He’s too cool for me to know.


    fortress europe
    Originally uploaded by grahamb.

    Mamoru Oshii’s next film looks like a cross between Tampopo and City of the Lost Children that was violently shoved though the minds of internet comic-nerds who play too many video games before being handed to Terry Gilliams for Art Direction.

    The Mark Ronson bootleg video, a montage of animated London graffiti, for a cover version of Radiohead’s track ‘Just’ is also pretty awesome. The animation’s a nice testament to the creativity of street artists.

    Waverly films just did a video for Brendan Benson with a similar concept of animation style, simple forms interacting with real people quite cleverly.

    And now it’s hailing.

    tonight theater begins until sunday


    water play
    Originally uploaded by lightpainter.

    Jimmy Buffet, a musician of some sort according to the blurb on the back, has managed to write novels that blissfully survive every bookshelf razing I’ve had in a decade. Back in 1989, he wrote Tales From Margaritaville, a collection of short stories about cowboy sailors and being in love with the ocean that gave me cravings for fish, which I’m allergic to, and sailing down in Florida. I mention it because I’ve just re-read it for the Nth time and it still carries the same effect. It’s all flying-fish sandwiches and satisfying endings, people in a poisonous paradise doing the best they can and remembering to enjoy when they’re puzzled. He makes me care about football, fishing and golf. It’s a little crazy. I’ve been to Florida.

    Though of course, it makes for a great escape from the rain that’s outside, persistently threatening to dissolve the front windows of the store with basic erosion. It’s almost so much rain that it seems unrealistic to try to describe. There’s more rain in the air between me and the opposite side of the street than would be required to fill a backyard pool. It’s like a joke. How much water was there? This much, and then you point to an ocean or a Great Lake and cackle like a demented child. Bloody ridiculous, really.

    I’ve been finding solace in the must-see media of the week, Un-Pimp My Ride, a gratifying short series of advertisements from Volkswagon that feature a gang-signing german scientist, (“V-Dub representing Deutchland”), who actually made me laugh out loud. This video was last week, though still wonderful.

    And by request: Warren, on his birthday, shamelessly flirting back and forth with Joss Whedon.

    I miss my ghost

    My monthly bus-pass ran out yesterday, so I mostly got home on the back of a strangers bike. I’d never ridden on the back of a bike before. It was fun, though it feels precarious. Stopping was an adventure.

    “I’m going a long way still, mind if I catch a bit of a lift?” When he’d stopped at the light next to me, I saw he had foot-pegs on his back tires. He grinned when I asked, pleased to get such an oddball request. He gave me a ride to Main Street. I told him children’s stories for my fare, “and then the prince took out his cleaning supplies and began to scrub away the ashes”, leaning over his back in my long inappropriate coat and top-hat, my hands slipping a bit on his jacket. He pedaled away laughing.

    It only occurred to me about a block later that we didn’t exchange names. Sometimes, I am too stupid to be brilliant. That’s two strangers in a row who’re probably going to be telling stories of That Weird Girl They Met. (I hope I get my book back. He said it would take him a week to read.)

  • Fredo Viola has new video up.
  • Public Domain Film Torrents.
  • Marimba Ponies. thanks Cherie, happy wedding.)

    • a tab closer post

  • HUNGRY? CUP-A-NOODLE!
  • Tron remixed as a Depeche Mode music video from Justin Alt. does anyone else agree that tron refuses to look dated?
  • Scariest film in years, Mac Cosmetics Ad ft. Amanda Lepoore.
  • Polysics, who seem like a Japanses Devo.
  • Naked taiko drumming. ( a longer cut of the same performance.)
  • the eerie game of quarters
  • LSD being tested on Britsh Troops. “he himself then lapsed into laughter.”
  • Brokeback to the Future
  • Not a Stupid Girl, by Pink

    • pack up your bags for moskau, kids

    “Hey you!!” “WHAT!” “Nothing…”

    Remember a year ago, that Eurovision Contest Band that Nicholas and I were banging on about so loudly that BoingBoing finally picked it up a month or two later?

    25 years after they disbanded, Dschinghis Khan has returned with a world-wide reunion tour called “Back On Their Horses”.

    A little digging and we find the man who used to play Khan passed away from AIDS complications. When they played at the Olympiyski Arena in Moscow to 30,000 screaming fans on the 17th of December, 2005, they had a replacement. From pictures found here and here, it appears the years have not been as kind as they could have been.

    This is the first video that I found. There were more found by Nicholas, but world save us if we spend the time to dig them up again. We’re already becoming dangerously interested in this retro-disco pop band from before we were born. Any more time spent researching Dschinghis Khan and William Gibson will dedicate a dry mocking paragraph of some short story to describing us in uncanny detail.

    Environment in crisis: ‘We are past the point of no return’

    Of course, a latent obsession with a discontinued gimmick band is admittedly a little outré. It’s much more conventional to share surreal clips of Japanese culture like this nicotine energy drink commercial featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger exploding out of a girl’s head or this happy-hardcore music video featuring a fire-breathing fat man in gold lamé dancing with a harem of pretty, um, genies?

    It’s understandable, a country that gives us such gems as japanese girls versus the syncopated masturbation video of doom“, “japanese girls in meat-visor hats versus the giant lizard” or “japanese girls versus the giant black man” deserves whatever press they can get. (Doesn’t being Bob Sapp in Japan strike you as an excellent way to make a living? To hell with being a Pro Wrestler and K-1 fighter, just cash in on being incredibly big.) In fact, when I discovered “japanese girl in seal hat versus the polar bear“, I think I watched it three times in a row, my hand over my mouth in vague shock each time, more concerned for the bear than the screaming girl.

    However, I think it’s only fair to give the rest of the world’s astounding media a moment in the sun. Like, alright, I know it’s not as weird as the hip thrusting lingerie flamingos, (and what do you even call Shingo Mama no oHa?), it’s more of a catastrophe, but what about the David Hasselhoff Ooga-Chacka video that’s been dominating my friends list? The thing with the fish or the eggs or the flying fairy children are all just as messed up as anything spewed forth from a pop idol incubator. (Don’t even get me started on the green screening. I did better with a painted floor and a second-hand handheld camera that had an eyepiece with a tendency to fall off mid-shot). After all, American Idol has its own trainwrecks, some so spectacular it’s a wonder they don’t bring back the tradition of leaving brain damaged babies in the hills to die of exposure at the Burger King Tender Crisp Bacon Cheddar Ranch.

    Brain scans reveal men’s pleasure in revenge.

    BoingBoing recently featured Heavy Ammunition, for example, who has put together a brilliant clip of the Che-Stormtrooper phenomenon comprised solely of individual photos put together to look like video and put to a catchy hip-hop version of the Vader theme, (Here is where to get the stickers). They also pointed the way to a neat page showing a side-by-side video of an eerily identical Apple commercial and a Postal Service video.

    Not blindingly funny stuff, true, but decidedly as artistic as SHUN! or the classic slap-stick german safety film and about as equally creative as when The Tonight Show rigged a phony free photobooth and created a clip so delightful that LOL becomes LOL and not “I smile gently at this”.

    As an eye-wash, even if you weren’t brave enough to click on anything else in this post, (and shame on you for missing out on the marvelously astonishing photobooth), Everyone must watch this video. That means you, yes you, who is looking at this with skeptic eyes that are already wandering down to what’s in the next entry. Too bad, toughen up, this is where your attention’s at if it knows what’s good for it. If you really must know, it features dogs and lasers, but that tells you nothing, so there was really no point in saying so. GO NOW WITH THE CLICK!

    edit: the dog video is for Vitalic and created by Pleix.

    he said, I dreamed about making out with you. It wasn’t even sex.



    Originally uploaded by folkfestfan.

    It was a tiny alarm in an unfamiliar gloom that smelled like honey. I picked it up and couldn’t figure out how to turn it off, so I nudged the priest next to me, and put it into his hand that wasn’t trapped by my body. He mumbled, I was serious when I said the bit about the nipples was about you, and shut it off.

    It sounds like fiction, but it’s true. I sat up, did up some buttons that had been undone, straightened my stockings and kissed him on the forehead. Go back to sleep. His shirt was open, so I put my hand on his chest to feel for his heartbeat, and smiled. Some mornings I know how much of this holy book was made for me.

    I’m usually intimidated by sacred things, but instead I’m still okay. I am blinded by halos and I fear for my vision. Don’t let me burn like a witch scalded by a writer’s rejection, I want to say, but I don’t, because in my heart, we are family. I’ll call him later, and laugh a little, and I’ll make him happy.

    I passed the cenotaph today walking home in the rain. It’s our Remembrance Day here. Veterans were lined up in black capes with their heads down. I stopped until they began talking about Jesus. It makes sense to me that soldiers would have gods, but I woke up next to my rabbi, so I kept on walking.

    Home is a shower, maybe. Home is downloading my videos of the last night’s proceedings and uploading them for you here. Home is this keyboard and listening to Shane, knowing that he’s still content to be left in bed because I tucked him in there, because his rings got caught in my fishnets, because one of these days we’ll have time for each other, but not just yet.
    download these

    “This one’s called Finally.“

    “I saw some cows and it got me to thinking about love.“

    “If your lips were crayons, I would like you to press them to the colouring book of my face… and scribble.”
    (You can hear me murmur, oh no, on the video when he began talking to me.)
    Video II, continuing the same poem.

    A bit of crowd banter. New rule: you must be that beautiful to ride this ride.

    “For the woman who told me to fuck off after I told her she was beautiful.”

    “All you need to know for this poem is that a lanyard is nothing more than a glorified keychain.“

    “I’m sorry that I keep saying I’m sorry.”
    This is where the band kicked in.
    Video II, continuing the same poem.

    “I don’t imagine you saran-wrapped in black latex or seeping out the edges of something tight and red.“

    “I’m going to shit books so bad-ass that they’ll be banned for trying to define bravery as walking into a biker bar wearing a pink sweatshirt with a picture of a unicorn being tamed by a gnome.“
    He used to scald me with this from stage. He knows a little better now, but he stills whispers it at night. I like the BrickHouse, I said to my friend. Whenever I go, I leave with Shane. I don’t even know you yet, but I’ve been sleep walking towards your kiss. Shh.

    In his own cunning way, my friend tells me about his girlfriends oral sex habits.“

    edit: I’ve also got two videos downloaded a long while before.

    World Slam Finals: Help Wanted. Every day my grandma would come into my room and I’d hear her say, “Rise and Shine. The world has a window that holds a sign there’s help wanted somewhere, young man”, so I rose and I shone. I put on my shoes and I was gone.

    CBC: People Get Better.

    Quick brainwhacking clip before I go smother Ryan with a pillow for snoring.

    Remember the ten thousand superballs sent pouring down Kearny Street in San Fransisco like a gleeful tide of bouncing doom?

    Here’s the commercial they were making.

    (For fun, the official site has making-of clips and little explanations about how incredibly wonderful they are for making all this and isn’t it imaginative?)

    The music is that sweetly unreal Jose Gonzales cover of Heartbeats, originally a pop-crunchy song about a one night stand, by The Knife. At various times, I’ve been addicted to both, though mostly the original. I like the Gonzales cover mostly for the novelty and for how it reminds me of the little beach-house with Alastair, down in California.

    Here is the original, here is the cover. Here are the lyrics.

    Does anyone else think it’s an odd choice?

    Also, as another odd SF piece of “art”: San Fransisco made of jell-o.

    ow… ow ow ow ow…… OW

    Oh my wrack and toil, oh my heart and stars. The body aches today. Every joint feels violated and every muscle abused. On some very fundamental level, every snap and creaking pop declares dancing a success. I suspect I went into it somewhat violently last night, non-stop from nine-twenty to two-thirty. I jumped on people, was swung around by people, and was generally given plenty of open space, no matter how crowded the dance floor. All while running soley on an energy drink and some candy bars bought from the club vending machine. Take that, groaning machine. However much it hurts, I’m in better shape now.

    a video of plants with eyes
    There are some more videos of fake robots in the directory.

    After my shower, I discovered two puncture wounds, equidistant from one another, on opposite sides of my neck. My best guess is that this is the price paid for hugging people with especially spiky collars. It looks odd, however, as if I were a product of some traditionalist sort of mad scientist who pulled the tiny plugs from my neck before letting me out. Too obvious, you see. I didn’t kill anyone who kissed me, however, so obviously I’m getting better at being in a cuddly public. I’m curious as to what sort of lipstick some of them used, as it took some scrubbing to remove it from my chest this morning, but I’ve no way of asking. Who are you people? I’ve no idea. My livejournal was brought up a few times, entirely by these people I don’t think I know. Apparently there are plans to friend me in the works, so that I might begin to, but so far no one’s followed through. Perhaps they too are lying in crowded knots of wanting to never move again.