Showing posts with label YouTube. Show all posts
Showing posts with label YouTube. Show all posts

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Madea for bus monitor!


You know who we need to be a junior-high bus monitor? Madea.

Surely, there must be some real-life approximations of Mabel "Madea" Simmons who can be tasked with straightening out America's feral youth. Give the newly minted monitors a school-bus version of a 007 license so the po-po will leave them the hell alone to do what needs to be done.

Can I get a witness, y'all?

Friday, June 22, 2012

The feral youth of Bus 784


Here's what I think of this Not Safe for Work video that's gone viral around the world, thanks to YouTube.

Here's what I think of little smart-ass, bullying seventh-grade s***s who pick on a 68-year-old grandma, who also happens to be the monitor on Bus 784 in Greece, N.Y.

Here's what I think. Here goes.

Do you remember those little bitty baseball bats common back in the day?

In my youth in the segregated South, they had a common name (common in every sense of the word) I shall not repeat, but I suspect sons and daughters of the Deep South know exactly what I'm talking about.


ANYWAY, this is why God invented those. (And your old man's thin leather belt.) I suspect just nearly connecting with one of the little darlings with a billy club-size Louisville Slugger would have been sufficient to put the fear -- if not of God -- of serious bodily harm into their profoundly undeveloped little brains.

Unfortunately, if the poor woman had done what most any adult would have done when I was a kid, she would have been arrested, and then she would have been sued into pauperism by the wolves who obviously have been "raising" these little monsters. That's because brats like that don't come from nowhere.

There is almost no reason sufficient to administer a serious ass-whipping to a child. Almost. But this is a damn good one.

This kind of behavior toward a senior citizen by a child used to be unthinkable, especially in the South of my youth, unless you were talking about a serious juvenile delinquent who'd be penitentiary bound soon enough. There were reasons for that.

Someone needs to exercise "the nuclear option" against the whole lot of these feral youth on that bus. Now.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

A message from the It Had to Be Said department


Are we going to have to require people to get a permit -- with mandatory video-safety certification as a prerequisite -- before they can legally purchase or use a cell-phone camera or digital SLR? Probably.

Where's Michael Bloomberg when we
really need him?

Tuesday, June 05, 2012

Oh, no!


Eduard Anatolevich Khil is dead.


The Russian baritone -- a singing legend of the Soviet era who found renewed fame, this time internationally, in 2010 via YouTube -- succumbed Monday in St. Petersburg after suffering a debilitating stroke in April. He was 77.

The
Moscow Times reports:
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev expressed his condolences for the performer Monday.

“The death of this outstanding singer, Eduard Khil, is an irreplaceable loss for our culture,” he said in a statement on the White House website. Khil’s songs were “dear to people of different generations, loved not only in our country, but also abroad,” he wrote.

President Vladimir Putin also expressed his condolences to Khil’s wife and son.

Born Sept. 4, 1934, in Smolensk, Khil became famous as a singer in the Soviet Union, performing the songs “Loggers,” “The Moonstone” and “Blue City,” among others.

He also performed “From Where the Motherland Begins,” a song from the 1968 cult spy thriller “The Sword and the Shield,” which regained notoriety recently when Putin said he had sung it when he met the 10 Russian spies expelled from the United States in 2010.

Khil’s popularity faded after the fall of the Soviet Union, but he shot back into the spotlight in 2010 when footage of him performing his wordless 1966 song “I’m Very Glad That I’m Finally Coming Home” appeared on YouTube and immediately went viral.

The song’s joyous “la la la” vocalizations earned Khil the name “Trololo Man” among Western audiences. Several versions of the video have since been posted, with many having received millions of views.

Numerous spoof versions — including one stitched-together video appearing to show Khil unleashing a 10-hour stream of vocal acrobatics and another laid over scenes from “Star Trek”— have also appeared.

The song originally included lyrics about a cowboy riding a mustang in the United States, but the words were deemed anti-Soviet, and it was performed with Khil just humming the melody, he told LifeNews in a 2010 interview.

Khil said he only learned about the newfound popularity of the song after hearing his grandson humming the decades-old tune.

“I asked him, ‘Why [are] you singing it?’” Khil said. “He told me, ‘Grandpa, you’re home drinking tea here, [and] in the meantime, everyone’s singing your song on the Internet.’”



YOU KNOW, the guy was a hell of a singer. I'm glad he got the chance to revel in Act II of his long career before he died. For example, this performance on Russian TV early this year:


REST in peace, Mr. Khil. You earned it.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a cat! A CAT!?!


On the one hand, there's something warped about doing this to your dearly departed pet.

On the other hand, there's something awesome about something this magnificently warped. What I want the guy to do is attach a small camera to Orville the Stuffed Caticopter, set it to movie mode and record the reactions of people as this dead, flying feline comes straight for them.

But I'm funny that way.



HAT TIP:
Rod Dreher.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Then there was music and wonderful roses

Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,
To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.
I've read, that things inanimate have mov'd,
And, as with living Souls, have been inform'd,
By Magick Numbers and persuasive Sound.
What then am I? Am I more senseless grown
Than Trees, or Flint? O force of constant Woe!
'Tis not in Harmony to calm my Griefs.
Anselmo sleeps, and is at Peace; last Night
The silent Tomb receiv'd the good Old King;
He and his Sorrows now are safely lodg'd
Within its cold, but hospitable Bosom.
Why am not I at Peace?

-- William Congreve,
The Mourning Bride (1697)

Friday, February 10, 2012

Because someone had to do it


Some of the language here is NSFW. But Dad is just reading
what his 15-year-old wrote about him on Facebook.


This is the best reason I've ever seen for not enacting stringent gun control.

Personally, though, I would have gone for either buckshot or slugs in a 12-gauge shotgun. At least three shells' worth, maybe more. Sometimes, you need to kick a little ass -- or blow up a laptop -- to stem the rising tide of entitled barbarianism.

Oh . . . save the .45 and the hollow-points for the little princess' smart phone. That would be AWESOME.

Thursday, September 08, 2011

Protesting in the key of Z


I am unsure what is the bigger offense -- New Orleans talk-show host Garland Robinette running down his landfill-owning pal's landfill enemies on the radio and then accepting a $250,000 no-interest loan from the dumpmeister . . . or some outraged, off-key "Yat" making a protest-parody to the tune of Barry Manilow's "Mandy."

"Mandy"? And this guy gets paid to do this? On the radio?

If New Orleanians were as good at enacting cultural and political change as they are bad at topical parody vids, the Crescent City might be getting somewhere. But they ain't, and it's not.

I have an idea. Lock Robinette in a room. Make him listen to this damn thing, over and over and over again. Then take pity on the man and just waterboard him instead.


And please . . . make sure that room is soundproof, OK?

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Muffy hearts Fiddy


I have never been prouder to be a GDI than I am right now.

We LSU students always knew them Bammer women were a little . . . well, you know. I mean . . . "go Greek"?


Velma and Billy Sol in Decatur just might be correct in askin' what the hell kind of Sodom and Gomorrah they's a-runnin' down yonder in Tuscaloosa.



HAT TIP: @LisaHorne via Twitter.

Sunday, May 08, 2011

The upside of the End of Days


Look on the bright side: Harold Camping could be right, and we might be raptured before a certain Omaha songwriter and
YouTube maven can compose again.


Son of a bitch.

The Tribulation has started ahead of schedule, and there may be no saving us now.

Monday, February 14, 2011

A flaming zip


The good news is that we're still a creative, innovative nation.

The bad news is it's increasingly in the service of the banal. The dumb. The pointless.

And the profane.

Enter the Flaming Lips' new
YouTube project, something the group is calling a "cell phone symphony." It really is quite clever and innovative -- 12 separate videos that correspond to a single track of the band's new free single. (Profanity alert, etc., and so on . . . click at your own risk.)

The idea is for you and 12 of your closest mates to each download a track, go "one, two, ready, play" . . . and you're the Flaming Lips. Or your iPhones are the Flaming Lips . . .
whatever.

AND WHAT is this new development in popular music? It's a little avant-garde number called "Two Blobs F***ing."

Paste magazine was all over the story. I hope it was practicing safe keyboarding:
The Flaming Lips have been known to experiment with ideas such as this in the past. The 1997 album Zaireeka is made up of four discs intended to played all at once. Around the same time, the band produced “The Parking Lot Experiments” and “The Boombox Experiments” inviting fans to simultaneously play cassette tapes issued by the band with varying pieces of music through their car stereos and ghetto blasters to create a psychedelic symphony conducted by the band.

Now, the next logical step has come to fruition with “Two Blobs F***ing,” which was specifically designed to be utilized with the mobile devices that dominate our increasingly digital culture. “Imagine the lo-fi symphonic joy that you, along with family, friends, pets, and others, will create at the touch of a button,” reads a press release. “The more devices, the more harmonic possibilities can be constructed. You and your device, at one with the music, become the orchestra, just as the Gods of Technology naturally intended it to be.”
OF ALL the things that could have been done as the first multitrack, interactive, do-it-yourself smart-phone single, we get vulgar nonsense like "Two Blobs F***ing." What could have been genius -- and kind of is genius from a technical standpoint -- ends up being birthed as the idiot offspring of cleverness and a dirty mind.

It's rather like a Philip Glass composition consisting of variations on the theme
"There was a girl from Nantucket. . . ."

Call it the debasement of art. Listen for yourself, though. (I assembled all the audio tracks in a multitrack digital audio workstation so you wouldn't have to . . . or have to try to round up 11 friends with smart phones -- and a high threshold of pain.)


I'M NOT SURE what this is more of, prurient or pointless. Actually, what it's more of is 8th grade -- which is where, unfortunately, too much of our culture's "artistic" sensibility lies.

As it is, "Two Blobs"
just leaves me with . . . nothing. I'm not shocked. Neither am I outraged.

The single didn't have much of a beat, and you couldn't really dance to it. I might give it a 42, Dick.

It didn't leave me smiling, and it troubled me not with deep thoughts. Really, it's nothing. And art -- music -- should not be nothing.

But we're addicted to pushing envelopes for the pushing's sake, even when we have nothing to say. Unfortunately, increasingly, we're a culture that has nothing to say.

It's almost as if we were 300 million blobs mentally masturbating. Call it a mortal sin of the mind.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Life according to Facebook


There are two kinds of people in this world, and primo examples of each were just posts removed from one another on my Facebook feed this morning.

Above, we see People Who Tear S*** Up. People Who Tear S*** Up are pretty much good for just that and nothing else -- they don't know nothin' 'bout makin' nothin' decent.

They tear up property. They tear up people. They tear up institutions, and they tear up societies.

They even tear up perfectly good record albums and phonographs.


SOMETIMES, People Who Tear S*** Up try to convince you they're actually "reforming" something. This is bunk -- don't listen to what they say, watch what they do. Which usually involves s*** that used to work, but now is torn up.


THEN THERE is the other kind of people, People Who Make S*** Work.

The folks behind The Fun Theory are examples of this second, more useful, brand of human being. Basically, People Who Make S*** Work see something that ought to be -- something whose implementation would benefit humanity -- and they find innovative ways to make it so.

For example, there's the case of the Stockholm engineers who set out to convince folk to take the cardio-friendly stairs instead of the sedentary escalator. And look how they pulled that one off.

After all, any moron can set an LP on fire. It takes a genius, though, to make us gleefully take the stairs in the subway station.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

It's a bird! It's a plane!


It's a frog!


A frog?


Not plane, nor bird, nor even frog . . .
it's just little old her . . .


The Alaska publicity hog.

I guess I could write 500 words on tea-party morons and idolatry, but I think I'll just go with
"homina homina homina homina," instead.

Good grief.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Using Auto-Tune for good, not evil


You know how I said this was the one awesome use of Auto-Tune ever? I was wrong.

This one is better. In fact, this is the best thing to come out of Kansas City since Big Joe Turner and the jump-starting of Karrin Allyson's jazz career.

In fact, this is to awesome what the Kansas City Royals are to suck. Trading Zack Greinke? Really? Two words: Johnny Damon.

Anyway, as I said back in September. . . record labels, you are so over. Buhbye!

Thursday, December 09, 2010

All we are saying is give pizza chance


LSU's 459 Commons. Wednesday, 1:30 p.m.

A billion years ago, when I was a poor student, this kind of behavior was reserved for the student section at Tiger football games.
No, really. When I was a freshman in '79, a fight broke out and someone went flying past my head. Down the steps.

Airborne.

I blame the spread of this kind of bad behavior to campus dining facilities -- and note that the video contains many F-bombs . . . screamed, no less -- on Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and his budgetary broadax.

Why?

WHY THE F*** NOT?!?

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Your Daily '80s: I speak jive


From 1980, we have these classic moments from Airplane! featuring the late Barbara Billingsley.

What, you think tonight of all nights we'd feature something else? Fo' true?

Chump don't got no sense, look like a jive-ass fool!

Monday, September 20, 2010

Sunday, September 05, 2010

The hit record labels missed


Here is the story of a crime that led to an impassioned soliloquy from the victim's brother that led to the most awesomest use of Auto-Tune ever (OK, the one awesome use of Auto-Tune ever) that led to one of the awesomest viral videos ever that led to an iTunes single that led to . . . the Billboard Hot 100.

Outstanding!

Is this a great country or what? I mean, great if you don't have to live in the projects, which I'm hoping Antoine Dodson's family will be able to leave with all the money to be made on the "Bed Intruder Song."

Oh . . . I hereby pronounce record labels irrelevant. That is all.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Trad media's murder machine


Dear traditional media:

Wondering where all your advertising went?
I think I just found it.

Here's the new advertising formula: Make a catchy video. Put it on
YouTube. Wait for it to go viral.

The Coca-Cola "Happiness Machine" video has attracted almost 2.3 million viewers so far. The only cost was that of producing it.

It's a new world, traditional media.
You may not be part of it.


HAT TIP: Inside Music Media.