Burnin' Down MTV's Fraternity House

www.unböring.com

Cool 2B Real - Home Page

The banzai! crew will be at the World Famous Iron Horse Saloon in Florida for Bike Week until the 12th, finishing up prodcution on a David Allan Coe Documentary. Look for regular updates from the field here.

The criterion Collection just released a special 2 disc DVD of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The special features agmenting this overlooked epic and worth the busride to the video store. Especially since Gilliam hain't done anything recently, it's just so good to watch this special edition. Here's a review from CityBeat.

Onion AV Club has a meandering interview with pseudo-tarheel David Gordon Green and his acting buddy Paul Schneider. I'm kinda mad at the DGG because he's supposed to direct Confederacy of Dunces. I went to school in New Orleans, I hung out at the Prytania, I hung out with Lucky Dog vendors at 3am, and in my imaginary and just world I'd be directing this story. But the DGG will represent on Dunces, and i should stop being jealous. You gotta like the guy after reading this interview. He says, "Even watching Electra Glide In Blue and The Bad News Bears changed my life." Right on. I really hate it when people say they are inspired by Slyvia Plath or Scorsese or Truffaut or anyone else they recently realized was almost as smart as them. I was inspired by Shel Silverstein and John D. MacDonald and Frank Miller and Harry Crumb, and that's all i can be.

Interview with: David Gordon Green and Paul Schneider

Nice web documentary on shopping at the dollar tree. At 24MB this is strictly broadband procrastination material, but its worth it to see the range of consumers and motivation who invade the store. I remember in middle school i used to go in to "the Tree" and ask how much different items cost. Used to think that was funny, still do. Anvil

Great new blog i read for the first time tonight: Amateur Hour: democratization of media, digital tools, media-making - Corante. "While Big Content is trying to convince us that larger, higher resolution screens and more channels of audio are what is important, tens of thousands of people are bringing the emotional impact of personal storytelling to digital media.?"...yup.

If you are anywhere near chapel hill this weekend, i implore you to come to the Dirty South Improv Festival. This is a brainchild of Chapel Hill prodigal son Zach Ward. If you don't know Zach...well, remeber that scene in the frank sinatra classic 'Robin and the 7Hoods' where Frank kicks a dog down a flight of stairs and then sings 'It ain't easy being green' to it as it drifts off into doggie hell, and then he meets these two romanian twin contortionists and takes them back to his room and makes them play 'Romper Stomper' while drinking Cold Steel? well, Zach made that scene. I mean he MADE it. Be there this weekend, it'll be packed, you'll have fun, hijinx will ensue. DSIF 2003

No one cures a hangover like StrongBad. note to self: acquire rights for StrongBad biopic movie...perhaps Horatio Sanz could bring the man the myth to the big screen. Writing an English Paper

Earth lost a good songwriter and entertainer today... Country singer Johnny PayCheck dead at 64

I cried like a meth'ed up Indiana revival preacher during Hoosiers. I also cried during Hoosiers 2, but for different reasons.
ESPN.com - Page2 - 'Hoosiers 2: LeBron Goes to Hickory'

Scholarly and mature discussion of Generation FARK's Hottest Women -- Bailey vs Ray

I haven't been posting in about 6 months, b/c i'm a slack boob, but i woke up today and heard the new Lil' Kim single JumpOff (which is the name of this weblog), and thought it was a sign.

I been gone for a minute now im back at the jump off
Goons in the club in case something jump off
I'm back up for the high for the pump off
In the graveyard is where you get dumped off
-queen bee

Here's a through article from my HSX friends, Box Office Prophets: Korean Cinema (my hsx rank is a embarassing 300,000 or something).
I have seen a few of the Korean films on the list, and I agree with the article that the production value and originality is way up there. I got the animated feature My Beautiful Girl, Mari , and it is visually fantazmonious.

Hacking Away, Long Before There Were Hackers

retroCRUSH: The barely legal pleasure palace

Now Corporations Claim The "Right To Lie"

Wired News: Keeping Track of John Poindexter

OpenP2P.com: Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution [Dec. 11, 2002]

The Onion | Video-Camera Tips

New Scientist

Last night i had the pleasure of seeing Lynn Hershman's new film Teknolust at a screening presented by duke's ISIS program. At first i was trying my hardest to be that academic and context-savy audience, ready to unpack the film, but i soon sat back and felt like a cub scout at a warm sci-fi campfire. The film used clips of the Man with the Golden Arm (which you should rent if you haven't seen it recently) and i kept thinking of the addict frankie machine (frank sinatra's oscar role), and how In Teknolust, men get infected by a computer virus. It seems that films have dealt with biogenitcs and other scary technology in same way that Frankie's world dealt with smack: either you kick it cold turkey or you die. Teknolust presents a world with some complicated yet hopeful options.

One of the best actors on planet earth, Susan Sarandon bemoans the label 'chick flick.' She asks why 'they don't call man films `dick flicks'.' Fine. susan's got a point, from now on any film with a martial arts to dialogue ratio greater than 4 or any film whose soundtrack includes rap-rock shall be called a 'dick-flick'.

We knew the triangle and orange co. in particular had more than enough talented denizens, but this well crafted article from the independent spells it out in B&W.

Only 8 or so days till the deadline for the sundance film fest. The ulcers are lurking, but according to some new research, the healthiest way to deal with stress is to bottle it up and forget it

Cemetery begins funeral webcasts I'm a techgeek and all, but ashes to ashes and dust to DSL just doesn't work for me.
It's even worse to think about it, if i imagine that I am the guest of honor. Been hassled by network connections enough, it would be a sick joke if they haunted me into the next world.

Music-Swapping Service Gains Stature in New Deal this article from the NYTimes shows dutch p2p firm Kaaza linking up with some ISP's in a big first step toward a real buisness model. I'm only surprised it's taken this long. Mrs. Rosen and all you RIAA luddites, expect more news of this sort as the market ignores your short-sighted squeals and keeps up with the times.

The Spudgun Technology Center
No really, i have no idea where the potato came from Mr. Wilson. I'm sorry about your poodle. I can't imagine who would do such a thing.

Check out the "this is how to do it" website for Jonas Akerlund's debut film spun. Who needs otherworldly consciousness when Rushmore's Jason Schwartzman stars as a cranked out meth-head haunted by a supporting cast with last names like Rouke, Suvari, and Leguizamo. It's directed by the 90's most razoriffic music video director and scored by Billy Corigan, and of course the trailer is sick.

the insider is one of my favorite films, but its nice to see that brawl-head Russel Crowe gets rescued from pickles by his female personal trainer. from FARK

Finally. its about fucking time somebody started trying to protect content by offering more, instead of just squatting on the cookie jar. I never thought Bon Jovi would be the ones to pioneer this for the mainstream labels, but their current campaign gives true incentives for buying and registering your own non-pirated copy of their latest release, Bounce. Gee, rewarding fans instead of damning them as stoopid criminals...i wonder if it'll work. Rock.

On monday, the world lost a true entertainer, and a inspiration to everyone in NC with big dreams. Doug Clark, band leader of the legendary Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts . I was one of many who snuck into their shows when i was younger to hear their ribaldrous anything can happen hot-time music. I got to interview Doug Clark when i was in high school for a documentary project. He was far nicer than even gracious Southern hospitality dictated, and invited me to his home and showed me memorabilia and told me stories for hours. I had always dreamed that one day I could take my kids to see the Hot Nuts and share the outlandish experience like my parents' generation has been able to share with mine, but the music lives. I have a framed vinyl of panty raid above my desk. It helps me keep perspective. He will be missed

You can get The Hot Nuts' Greatest Hits from amazon.

Since making decent films is kinda hard, i always take comfort in pot shots, and no one does it better than Mr. Cranky. check his review of Blue Crush and forget your own artistic demons in such attacks as, "Kate Bosworth looks like she'd be snapped in half by a bad manicure, much less a 20-foot wave. She's so blond and emaciated that I'll bet David E. Kelley is in a bush outside her house right now." Thank you, cranky!

One time I found a pig tooth in my sloppy joe in the elementary school cafeteria, but this dental mishap from the world of rugby is a whole nuther ball game.

I don't want people to think i'm obesessed with this issue or anything, but this ny times article shows how far off the silly end the major labels have fallen. Their new weapon to fight the opiate for the evil-doer masses...glue

From USA TODAY: Rights issue rocks the music world. Here's a surprise, the major music labels are screwing artists and stifling creativity. This is an old story but it might be gaining a foothold.
A few big artists, like Don Henly and Keith Richards, are trying out sound bytes, getting haircuts and heading toward washington. Fight, fight, fight.
Henly: "They've alienated consumers and artists, and whether the rights movement succeeds, the house will fall under its own weight."
Richards: "The time where accountants decide what music people hear is coming to an end. Accountants may be good at numbers, but they have terrible taste in music. I don't know how I'm going to get paid, but I'd rather go out into the brave new world than live with dinosaurs that are far too big for their boots."

here's some fun for monday morning:
Lawn Darts
Halloween for pets
Kudzilla!
Damn those whipper-snap filmmakers!

Here's my friend Dov's review of the film that is taking home all the festival awards...feardotcom.com and another less heartfelt review from theOnion. and if you really want to see a scary website, check Madd Matt's Guide To An Early Halloween

Feardotcom is probably the most interesting movie about a haunted Web site I've yet to see. How someone can program in Java and HTML from beyond the grave is unclear, but what this movie lacks in clarity, it makes up for in gore. The film is centered around a cop (Stephen Dorf) who is unable to find a man who tortures and kills people while video-taping the act and broadcasting it over the Internet. The Website, feardotcom.com is not, however the site from where you can watch a murder, but a haunted Website, inhabited by the spirit of a woman whom he murdered a few years before. If someone stumbles across this site, they will die in 48 hours immediately after blood begins running from their eyes and nose like Reno Russo in Outbreak.

Okay, I can buy all of that, but why is URL of this deadly site feardotcom.com and not just fear.com? I threw caution to the wind and checked out both Web sites and learned that there actually is no site at the domain fear.com and the actual feardotcom.com is just the movie's Web site, not the interactive dominatrix ghost woman who can program the Web's only homicidal home page. Think it doesn't make sense for some digital ghost to avenge her own death by killing more people instead of just spamming them like everyone else? Well, that's also unclear, but she seems to want to motivate anyone who visits her page to find her dead body. Easy, right? Well, the ghost is not quite so direct and gives almost no clues to her whereabouts which are, incidentally, at an old flooded Steel Mill which is occupied by homeless blind old ladies and rats. You also have to open the body up and find the torturer's address inside a lipstick case, and then finally kill her killer to avoid being killed by her spirit. Fear is the most powerful motivator, right? Well, fear did not motivate me to walk out on this movie, but human decency does compel me to advise that you not pay to see this movie at theaters, but wait three months will it will most assuredly be seen on USA Up All Night.

Judge challenges pot-smoking basketball player to game Though this story screams afterschool special or the next omar epps movie, you gotta smile at the idea of a judge taking off the robe to teach some H.S. punk a lesson.

Be the first to peep our new film Teddy as erik conducts a live editing seminar at Lulu Tech Circus in Raleigh, NC.

Why do cell phones make us stupid? Interesting article courtesy of Slashdot. I resent their notion that belly shirt = stupid, though.

All of life is summed up in this singular sex column

Here is a link Haiku to make up for my recent absence.

If life was Pro forma
Then the greedy Multiplex
Could make this scheme work

here are two sports quips from my banzai! cohorts' pasttimes of choice. Thanks to FARK 4 the links.

Welsh rugby referees see the joke

Treasure Of ‘70’s Film Footage Recovered: Includes Elvis Sponsored Karate Film Apparently all this footage was sitting in the back of a pickup truck for a few decades. The King, Bruce Lee, and all of Crosby Stills & Nash demonstrating martial arts...i can't wait for the DVD.

it's tuesday morning, energy is null, and i need a drink. perhaps a tasty tumbler of Stoli will do ya, but if not, the following drinks authored by friends of mine have always helped me wrangle pep before lunchtime:

Kinder-Drunk

1oz cherry Pedialyte
1oz vodka
cranberry to taste
stir and enjoy

courtesy of Dov Rosenberg

DETROIT SPIT

1oz whiskey (strong)
1oz campari bitters
1 oz sweet vermouth
mix and strain in glass
final touch - drizzle egg white from one egg into glass for spit effect.

courtesy of ONION HEAD MONSTER

In comparing the current N’sync-divas live era with the last the last slumping sales period of disco backlash and cassette copying, Mark Jenkins hits it right on the moneybag in his article Hit Charade . What pumped new life blood into the industry then was the outsider fare on MTV by british bands who grasped the music video before their American couterparts. Now MTV is a consolidated franchise like everyone else, and the fans will reach elsewhere for a rope ladder out of TRL land.
Jenkins warns ‘In erecting bulwarks around their domains, the major music businesses have left no entrance for the serendipity that kept the pop industry lively (and profitable) for decades. Yet the barbarians at those padlocked gates are the only people who can save the major labels' dwindling empires.’ Whitman said it like this, ‘ A mansion may be heaven on earth, but you might as well be dead,’ and LBJ said it better still, ‘Better to have a man inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in.’


What I still don’t get is what do the RIAA, the big five labels, and their troubled multi-national corporate parents think is going to happen?
Do they think because they get paid goons in congress to pass some watery legislation, anyone will care? Do they think kids’ll wake up ang go, ‘Look, Kristen the new Mariah Carey record only $19.99 and look Sum 41 unplugged comes with a free screensaver, here’s my mastercard.
Do they think the cutthroat computer industry or the target marts will even loose sleep while they put Luke Heller’s favorite dowloaded mp3’s right on the shelves next to the Prayer of Jabez?
Do they think that boomers will lobby their reps for stricter enforcement of copyright laws while they watch TOMMY become the blarring soundtrack for Celebrinex commercials?

Check out photographerRalph Gibson's site. Navigate through a double barrel of stylized B&W images and see what kinds of narrative sprouts grow from and between the two pictures.
courtesy of Boing Boing.

'only connect' from the Aussie thinkspot on line opinion comes a woven but accessible at 2am article from Mark Randell. He starts with a quote from oracle of wisdom - Sun Microsystems 'the network is the computer' and expands the idea to politics, personal relationships, memory, social capital, etc. I believe the same holds true for filmmaking and editing (which i'm doing a mind-numbing amount of right now). the movie is what happens in our minds between the cuts, just like the magic of comic books is what happens between the panels. 'only connect'-E.M. Forster

Tara Grubb For Congress Radio Weblog Weblog for a Libertarian canidate running for Congress in the sixth district of North Carolina. Now, i'm not a Libertarian and i'm not in the sixth district (triad), hell - she's got to be better than Howie Coble, but check out the conversations about real issues which have happened between elected leader wannbe and potential constituents in only a few days. Imagine if all canidates had a weblog. imagine if all reps had a weblog?

Artist Availablility thanks to Daypop for the link. now i can book carson daly to come to my school for $35k, or creed for $250k, or dave brubeck for $20k, get your friends together, pool your book money.

Weird italian sex story from Daypop
rain hail sleet or snow.

information wave technologies bans RIAA access to its networks "Due to the nature of this matter and RIAA's previous history, we feel the RIAA will abuse software vulnerabilities in a client's browser after the browser accesses its site, potentially allowing the RIAA to access and/or tamper with your data. Starting at midnight on August 19, 2002, Information Wave customers will no longer be able to reach the RIAA's web site. Information Wave will also actively seek out attempts by the RIAA to thwart this policy and apply additional filters to protect our customers' data." take that evil multiplex. it's a beautiful thing when power grabs backfire.

Hit Man (Part 1) very interesting piece from fast company about the head of HBO, Chris Albrecht. They definately are running some next level shit right now. I guess there are a few pockets of brilliant humans in the multiplex.

Wired 10.09: Born Digital damn this makes me feel old. I'm not feeling some of TIRED, i mean WIRED's analysis, but it's clear these teenagers are going to save us all one day.

Lulu Tech Circus

The Vocabula Review Bodacious issue this month including pieces on allegory, burning Roget's, and a pun-off. I highly recommend subscribing.

'boards - Screening Room Collection of grade-a advertisements. Make sure you check out Jonathan Glazer's Levi's commercial, anything Nike, the Chris Cunningham ad for Aphex Twin's new record, and of course the Kylie Minogue underwear ad.

hotdogboy.com
strange super short films from a webdesign/filmmaking duo. While watching the 7 or so shorts on their site, I developed a phobia for gerbils, microwaves, and strawberry jelly.

A List Apart: 10 Tips on Writing the Living Web from Daypop great piece on writing for the web.

Plastic: You Can Rest Easy - The Attack Squirrel Is Dead see, we've been telling you they're nothing but rabid vermin. ABC news reported that this squirrel was on a "reign of terror" in which it attacked four people.

The Onion | Police Interruption Hastily Written Into Student Film Funny stuff, though it does hit a little too close to home.

free_culture
from Daypop
Lawrence Lessig's keynote address from OSCON 2002. Chronicles the history of copyright laws, their effect on culture, and the current need for thorough and long-term thinking on the subject.

The Odds of That found w/ NextDraft. This article requires free registration, but is well worth it. A highwayman willie nelson of a piece about coincidence and statistics and conspiracies and miracles and more. The impetus: two elderly twin brothers in Raahe, Finland, setting out separately on their bicycles to do errands. Within the space of two hours, both were hit and killed by separate trucks in two separate accidents on the same stretch of highway.
Warning: do not read this article if you feel the the movie SIGNS, "blew your mind."

O'Reilly Network: Blogging for Dollars: Giving Rise to the Professional Blogger [Aug. 12, 2002] an article from Daypop, of course, about the need and potential for professional blogging...that's a little what I'm trying here. we'll see what goes down.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Why ads on the net don't work
from Daypop Top 40. good piece on the futility of online ads. Banzai! is running its own small textad campaign to support our americana crooner Joe Williams. We're running ads on grass roots community sites like Daypop and Metafilter . It's too early to tell if it's a success, but keep an eye for a full detail of the campaign a month or two.

The Sight and Sound Top Ten Poll 2002
Fascinating list of top movies and top directors chosen by both critics and directors. You can view five decades of the list and see what has aged well, what has fallen, and who's status has risen with time (like Yasujiro Ozu).
.

Hollywood's Responsibility for Smoking Deaths
from http://www.daypop.com
In "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell, the author talks about why anti-smoking campaign have done little to dent teen smoking. Piles of money have been spent trying to convince us that smoking isn't cool, but that's not the problem, he says, "Smoking was never cool. SMOKERS are cool...In this epidemic, as in all others, a very small group - a select few - are responsible for driving the epidemic forward."
In this NY Times article Basic Instinct author Joe Eszterhas (recently diagnosed with throat cancer) speaks about his guilt and responsibility for writting such glamorous smokers, "I have been an accomplice to the murders of untold numbers of human beings. I am admitting this only because I have made a deal with God. Spare me, I said, and I will try to stop others from committing the same crimes I did."
I admire his honesty and courage. (tangent: The Insider is one of my favorite movies) I don't ever remember a Hollywoodite admitting guilt about a bad movie, much less a role in untold murders. I suppose the image of his missing larynx and "bloody" hands will give me pause before i pen a cool chain smoking anti-hero, but how far do we take this idea? If Eszterhas had been hurt in a car crash would he call for an end to fast and furious driving scenes? If he would have been bed-stricken by a clogged artery would he regret writing scenes of big macs and pizza? I feel his anguish, but I can't help but wondering if someone will try to sue Hollywood because their grandma died from lung cancer. Maybe they have. Maybe they should?

A Timely Subject -- and a Sore One (washingtonpost.com)
from http://www.daypop.com
A solid article about the fox-news-inspired uproar over UNC's summer reading list for incoming freshmen. the book in question, "Approaching the Qur'an: The Early Revelations" by Michael A. Sells, has enraged televanglists and right-wing pundits across the country.
I haven't read the book or the Koran, but I have to agree with student body president Jennifer Daum, 21,
"At the very least, it starts a dialogue," Daum said. "My feeling is that if you're not prepared to read ideas that are not your own and that you might disagree with, you do not belong at an institution of higher learning."

a klog apart
a great overview of information architecture and content categories on the web.

BBC NEWS | UK | How Ned Flanders became a role model
includes an explanation of the hot british tribute band "Ned Zepplin" and a ten-week Simpsons study guide for U.S. Sunday Schools.

CNN.com - Sieberg: Opening the door to 'TV-plus' - August 8, 2002

ACLU Press Release: 08-06-02 -- In Surreal Development, Bush Administration Routes TIPS Calls to TV Show "America's Most Wanted"
John Walsh and John Ashcroft team up?...where's Walker, Texas Ranger.

The Salt Lake Tribune -- 'U'-Rated Edits in for Fight

i used to be a Karl Malone fan when i was little, and then he pissed me off and I took his poster off my wall. i have a theory that all things from utah must generally be bad. i don't like the "growing -- and lucrative -- trend, especially in Utah, of bowdlerizing videos and DVDs". but admit that the idea of major studio directors getting upset about some grocery store in Provo selling clean versions of their blockbuster movies is just a tad hypocritical, but we are all complicit in the illusions that built the multiplex.

Yahoo! News - Japan Launches ID Network Amid 'Big Brother' Angst

Ideapad by David Wertheimer | netwert.com

videos.antville.org
This site is a godsend. I've wasted several days of my life since discovering it. All the best and most original videos that you rarely see, even if you have MTV2.