Off-kilter music video from wonderfully talented Britcom actress-writer Alice Lowe—here playing electro artist Kitty Litta—who’s great in everything she’s ever been in: Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, The Mighty Boosh, Sharon Horgan’s Angelo’s series, Snuff Box (she played David Bowie), Black Books, The IT Crowd amongst many, many other things. Someone at BBC give this women her own show already!
Apparently somewhere between thirty seconds to a minute after the opening weekend numbers for Avatar came in, the entirety of Western civilization decided to go 3D, and wholesale convert our malls and living rooms into one gigantic Disneyland of the Damned, like a Michael Bay Transformer changing state from “obnoxious and expensive” into “obnoxious, expensive, and three centimeters from your face.” Not only has Hollywood made 3D nigh-on mandatory for its big releases (presumably to combat file sharing), but 3D televisions are slated to begin rolling out this summer, despite health concerns (apparently they can cause vertigo, seizures and a host of other shocks to our woefully non-3D-adjusted systems). Perhaps it’s Michael Jackson’s revenge from beyond the grave, for barely noticing when he pioneered the technology with Captain EO back in the dark ages of 1986, or 24 BA (Before Avatar) in Hollywood years.
And now, the Internet. Intel Labs’ Sean Koehl recently predicted that the Internet will “go three-dimensional” within five to ten years—the company is currently hard at work developing the technology, touting its potential use for teleconferencing, among other business applications.
But… but. You know as well as I do that that’s not what it’s actually going to be used for.
If Koehl’s timeline bears out, somewhere between 2015 and 2020—right as Web 3.0, the Semantic Web and Augmented Reality are coming to maturity—we can expect:
Porn. I imagine the nearly-bankrupt porn industry will be all over this so quickly that they’ll just about be able to create an entire virtual reality pocket porniverse which the Global Otaku Diaspora will likely declare permanent residence in and which the rest of the world’s population will likely spend a good chunk of their waking hours in. Expect bedroom and office doors locked.
A constant, endless assault of cats. You will be like a cat lady for all the cats in the whole world, who will be all up in your face, all the time. Guess what’s in your inbox this morning? It’s another 3D video of somebody’s cat. And now it’s in your lap.
A running, inescapable feed of status updates from your friends—imagine the hovering, 3D heads of your online acquaintances popping up when you least expect them to constantly update you as to what they’re having for dinner, how much they hated Robert Pattinson’s directorial debut, or sending you a link to a 3D video of their cat being confused by their 3D computer. The thought of constantly being bothered by twelve-second video clips of the holographic heads of everybody I’ve ever exchanged two words with or been cc’d on an e-mail from, all of whose comments are bound to be equally aggravating and pointless, is enough to prompt a pre-emptive desert homestead. Are we all doomed to become like Jimmy Stewart in a doozie, with all those heads swimming around ours, all the time? Combined with augmented reality, three-dimensional Internet is going to be f___cking unavoidable. And so will everybody you know.
And good god… do we really want a three-dimensional version of Chatroulette? Do we really want to be able to see all of us, all the time, in shuddering, sickening three dimensions? Are we ready for the Slob Singularity, when everybody on the Internet can have the experience of staring directly at everybody else on the Internet; when all of our Doritos-greased faces see each other as one Being; when we all become One All-Slouching, All-Trolling, All-Wanking Consciousness?
I hope we are. Because that’s what’s coming. In glorious 3D.
(Watch Captain EO, It Is the Future: The Horrible, SAN-Depleting Future)
As a fan of Shakespeare, David Tennant and Patrick Stewart, I’ll definitely be recording this one. And while I doubt this RSC production will end on a note as unconventional as the actual shooting of Horatio, I don’t think a TARDIS is gonna come along to soften it much, either.
Shakespeare’s immortal “To be, or not to be” takes on a whole new meaning (and medium) as classical stage and screen actors David Tennant and (recently-knighted) Sir Patrick Stewart reprise their roles for a modern-dress, film-for-television adaptation of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s (RSC) 2008 stage production of Hamlet.
The production will be presented on PBS by the Great Performances series on Wednesday, April 28, 2010, at 8 p.m. EST (check local listings). Immediately following the broadcast, the film will be available online in its entirety here on the Great Performances Web site.
Best known for his performance in the title role of the popular British TV series Doctor Who since 2005, Tennant made his debut in October as the host of MASTERPIECE CONTEMPORARY on PBS. His many other credits include his recent portrayal of Barty Crouch Junior in the big-screen blockbuster Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
C’mon, people, this happened to me all the time in 8th grade, and not once did I ever press charges:
A Florida man is facing misdemeanor battery charges for holding closed one nostril and blowing bloody mucus on his girlfriend after a fight. The 44-year-old Crestview man had been in an altercation before blowing the contents of his nose on his girlfriend, the Crestview Bulletin reports.
Details of the fight in which the man received the bloody nose were not released. The woman was splattered with snot containing the blood and other bodily fluids on her face, chest, arms and pants, but showed no signs of any injury that could have caused the blood to be hers.
Is it that hard to sustain a relationship these days without having to splatter your mate with nose blood? Hey, unnamed Crestview couple, take a cue from Sarah and Colin Kavanagh!
(Dick, right, with Blade Runner director, Ridley Scott)
Fascinating 3-part interview with sci-fi author and visionary Philip K. Dick (VALIS, Ubik, Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said) conducted for French television. Footage of Dick is hard to come by. Equally hard to come by? Passionate boosting of France! Watch below as Dick discusses his (seemingly justified) paranoia, equates being a writer with being an enemy of the state, and schools us on the Nazi origins of “egghead.”
With the new student at Riverdale High being the openly gay character, Kevin Keller, Dangerous Minds pal James St. James reminds us that Archie Comics have been gay for a while now…
Via World of Wonder. From the collection of Charles Johnson.
Interesting 2007 essay by Sean Wilentz from the Oxford American Magazine about the recording of one of the greatest albums of the last century, Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde. A couple of interesting quotes in the piece from actor-musician Kris Kristofferson, who at the time (1965) worked as a janitor in the recording studio where the album was made. Here Wilentz describes the scene when the epic Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands was created:
The strangest Nashville recording dates were the second and third. The second began at six in the evening and did not end until five-thirty the next morning, but Dylan played only for the final ninety minutes, and on only one song: “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.” He would later call it a piece of religious carnival music, which makes sense given its melodic echoes of Johann Sebastian Bach, especially the chorale “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” Unlike “Visions of Johanna,” though, this epic needed work, and Dylan toiled over the lyrics for hours. The level of efficiency was military: Hurry up and wait.
Kristofferson described the scene: “I saw Dylan sitting out in the studio at the piano, writing all night long by himself. Dark glasses on,” and Bob Johnston recalled to the journalist Louis Black that Dylan did not even get up to go to the bathroom despite consuming so many Cokes, chocolate bars, and other sweets that Johnston began to think the artist was a junkie: “But he wasn’t; he wasn’t hooked on anything but time and space.” The tired, strung-along musicians shot the breeze and played ping-pong while racking up their pay. (They may even have laid down ten takes of their own instrumental number, which appears on the session tape, though Charlie McCoy doesn’t recollect doing this, and the recording may come from a different date.) Finally, at 4 a.m., Dylan was ready.
“After you’ve tried to stay awake ’til four o’clock in the morning, to play something so slow and long was really, really tough,” McCoy says. Dylan continued polishing the lyrics in front of the microphone. After he finished an abbreviated run-through, he counted off, and the musicians fell in. Kenny Buttrey recalled that they were prepared for a two- or three-minute song, and started out accordingly: “If you notice that record, that thing after like the second chorus starts building and building like crazy, and everybody’s just peaking it up ’cause we thought, ‘Man, this is it….’ After about ten minutes of this thing we’re cracking up at each other, at what we were doing. I mean, we peaked five minutes ago. Where do we go from here?”
The song came to life as swiftly as any of Dylan’s ever had, requiring only two complete takes.
Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands took just two takes? WTF?
The new Liars album, Sisterworld is getting serious consideration as my second favorite album (after MGMT’s Congratulations) of the year so far. Sisterworld’s dark musical textures call to mind Radiohead, Philip Glass, Faust and Megadeath simultaneously. It’s one of the most sonically “colorful” albums since Their Satanic Majesties Request, with a palette ranging from house-shaking electronic Krautrock drones to calm, syncopated oboe and bassoon ostinato, often in the same song. It’s an album that must be listened too fucking loud or else you’ll only understand half of its charms. This album wants to brutalize you. It wants to kick you in the head and leave you bleeding and puking in the gutter. But in a good way! Highly recommended.
The brilliantly packed version I have (w/ slipcover and hardback sleeve) also came with an alternate version of Sisterworld with remixed versions by Carter Tutti, Melvins,Tunde Adebimpe of TV On The Radio, Alan Vega, Thom Yorke and Boyd Rice.
Thank you Iain Forsyth!
Ah, Avengers! Led by art student Penelope Houston, the San Francisco-based band opened, of course, for The Sex Pistols during that final, disastrous show at Winterland. And, yeah, maybe his band was imploding, but Steve Jones liked what he saw. The Pistols guitarist went on to produce the band’s first EP, which, IMO sounds far more ferocious than their still glorious (and still out-of-print) full-length, Avengers.
The clarity of the following clips—both of them, gulp, 32-years-old—is absolutely astounding. I’m assuming the first one’s from SF, but the second one takes place at LA’s legendary Masque. Click play, watch, repeat!
Shit! Have you heard this new song by M.I.A.? Dig that rad Suicide sample! If you want the ultimate sound of power electronics—so violent—why not go back to the ur-source of Alan Vega and Martin Rev? I could listen this on repeat all day.
Live version here.
Via various links around the Tumblrsphere I discovered this great WFMU post on Sister Irene O’Connor, the “post punk nun,” who dropped a drum machine and some echo effects behind some Catholic jams to ignite the holy spirit.
Among the sea of sound-a-like private-pressed Catholic lps that came out in the 1960’s and 1970’s, Sister Irene O’Connor’s 1976 album stands out with its primitive drum machine and spooky, echo-laden vocals. Released in 1976 on the ‘Alba House’ label, the dual-titled Fire of God’s Love/Songs to Ignite The Spirit lp features several haunting and remarkable songs, including the three below. In particular, the title track “Fire of God’s Love” strikes me as so otherwordly and uniquely eerie that I wonder how far Sister Irene’s O’Connor’s seeming solipsism extended beyond music.
(Songs linked in the post!)
(WFMU: Two Australian Nuns Turn on Drum Machine to Ignite the Spirit)
After the death of Malcolm McLaren, film critic (and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls scribe), Roger Ebert posted on his always-excellent journal, McLaren & Meyer & Rotten & Vicious & Me, his take on getting a Sex Pistols movie off the ground with Dolls director, Russ Meyer.
At the time, Ebert had no idea who the Sex Pistols were. The Pistols, though, very much wanted to work with the creative team behind Dolls, a movie Johnny Rotten deemed as being, “true to life.” It’s a funny, informative account that somehow, along the way, accommodates both P.J. Proby and Scientology.
As to why the movie, Who Killed Bambi?, never happened, various reasons have been circulated: Maybe 20th Century Fox pulled the plug after reading the resulting screenplay, or McLaren’s shaky finances would never have covered the film’s budget. Or perhaps, most intriguingly, (Princess) Grace Kelly, who served on the Fox board of directors, simply didn’t want the studio to back another Russ Meyer X-travaganza (likely profits be damned).
Oh well, we still have Julien Temple’s The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle and The Filth and The Fury. But we can now add to that era another document. Ebert just posted on his journal the complete screenplay for Who Killed Bambi? Here’s a sample:
Just then the SEX PISTOLS appear on the screen. They’re dressed in what could be described as Proto-Punk: The look is definitely different from that of the other people on the line, and yet isn’t as well-defined as it will be later on.
They split up to work the line: They’re of it, but not in it. STEVE carries his guitar, vaguely suggesting they’re into music of some sort. SID VICIOUS goes into his famous Sun-Glasses dance, his hands inverted and placed in front of his eyes to suggest either binoculars or a Batman-style headdress. The Pistols seem amused by the notion that people would stand in line in an unemployment queue at all.
Proby watches, fascinated by their wonderfully Downtrodden look, as they approach the others.
SID VICIOUS (to the Miner)
Why stand in line, you silly twit?JOHNNY ROTTEN
It’s your money - why wait for it?PAUL COOK
Why don’t they provide seating out here?The crowd grows silent, uneasy, in the face of the attack.
STEVE JONES
They take it with one hand and give it back with the other.SID VICIOUS
So smash it and take it!
And while Ebert refuses to comment on his script, “I can’t discuss what I wrote, why I wrote it, or what I should or shouldn’t have written. Frankly, I have no idea,” here he is in ‘88 with Meyer and McLaren discussing—and venting over—Who Killed Bambi?
Physicist Stephen Hawking has suggested (in his new documentary series) that aliens almost certainly exist in the universe (by dint of the sheer numbers and probabilities involved)—but that we’d probably be better off not looking for them, since they might eat our poor asses.
THE aliens are out there and Earth had better watch out, at least according to Stephen Hawking. He has suggested that extraterrestrials are almost certain to exist — but that instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact.
The suggestions come in a new documentary series in which Hawking, one of the world’s leading scientists, will set out his latest thinking on some of the universe’s greatest mysteries.
Alien life, he will suggest, is almost certain to exist in many other parts of the universe: not just in planets, but perhaps in the centre of stars or even floating in interplanetary space.
Hawking’s logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved.
“To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational,” he said. “The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like.”
(Image above is taken from a Bad Astronomer post on a New York Times depiction of aliens from Venus and Mars from 1912.) (He also counters Stephen Hawking here.)
