When I was a kid, I was a huge web-dork. I spent inordinate amounts of time with html and java-script. But you need something cool to put within all that code, so I was soon spending inordinate amounts of time with Paintshop Pro and its accompanying .gif creator. I don't know how many hours up through college I spent creating .gifs, but I was awesome at it. Remember, in the late 1990's, before we had easy to stream video (you know, before I could watch downtown Cairo live on my phone while on a sidewalk in Manhattan) .gifs were an effing big deal. It's an image! It moves! Now .gifs are like a pair of chucks or Vans: sure, we have the technology for better, more comfortable shoes, but the old-skool shoes are just so cool. .Gifs are just so cool. Kinda as cool as this high-five:
Now in 2011 to create a .gif you go to a website, enter the youtube link, and press Create .gif. Not as exciting a process, but just as exciting a result.
I once had to make a Mbira (aka Kalimba) for Science Olympiad. For an event called the "Sound of Music." Yes, I am a nerd. Unlike this guy, I was never very good. AIK showed me this video over the weekend and we watched it a few times while we drank before going out. Weird pre-game music, I know, but it's a pretty awesome song.
...Well, not everyone, but a lot of great random musicians are acting goofy in the very fun new Sara Bareilles video for the song Uncharted. It's refreshing to see a well-made low-tech video, and here's definitely a case where the video makes the song. Watch below, because when else will you see Pharrell and Sara Quin battle for most adorable in the same video:
I don't really know anything about this Bareilles musician and from the sound of it I could write her off as radio friendly singer-songwriterzzzzzz...., but there's just 4 too many cool folks (Pharrell Williams, Tegan, Sara, Ben Folds) who agreed to be in this video to not give her more of a chance. Will do so.
Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine/The Nightwatchman) and friends sang This Land Is Your Land at a rally in Wisconsin last week for the protesters, public and private employees, who want to kill the union-busting bill. The whole video is worth it, but if you're in a rush start at 4:20.
Mahlon Mitchell, President of the Wisconsin Professional Firefighters Association on Democracy Now Friday morning, talked about himself and 60 firefighters sleeping in the capital rotunda alongside 600 protesters, even though their union is exempt from the bill:
"Well, it just shows how important union work is and how important the union is to the middle class. There is not one employee, public employee, state, municipal, local employee, firefighter, police officer teacher, that does their job to get rich. We don’t do our job to get rich. We do our job to have a decent life, to have a decent middle-class family and not have to struggle like a lot of our other people do. Well, what this bill will in essence do is bring the middle class back down lower. And that’s really where the Governor wants and the corporate backers want us, so that we’d have less power and we have less influence on elections. So this is not about just unionism. This is about an attack on the middle class. This is about Wisconsinites, and this is a hard-working Midwest state, and we need unions to help take care of our middle class."
Video Interview, which I highly recommend. I think we'd all be better off if we reminded ourselves that we must share this country, it belongs to us all, "us" being a very general term; and we need to make room for everyone to retain their individual potential. It's not a race to first place, it's a society. The bottom-line is that you (meaning everyone) should be worried about the middle-class shrinking. How are we doing with that? Glad you asked.
More about the song, after the jump (because originally this was a music post).
Best new song of Tuesday. Jarrod Gorbel, formally The Honorary Title, released his EP Bruises From Your BadDreams last week. This is the strongest song: I'll Do Better.
This is a fitting "first post" for me (J would concur). The amazing comedy duo Garfunkel and Oates put out a new video for their song, This Party Took a Turn for the Douche. The song is kind of amazing, as you can tell by these lyrics:
Did my last keg stand like General Custer
And I'm assessin' the damage like a claims adjuster
I ain't your Daddy but I'll call you son
Yeah I get metaphysical like fuckin' John Donne
There's also few things more gratifying than singing For the douche, for the douche For the motherfuckin douche!!!!!! If you want to feel cool, you can see their old-skool video, which I kinda prefer. See it after the jump.
