WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Cleaning Out My Gifbox, New Years 2008 Edition

Having gone through a New Year's Day cleaning of my gifbox, here is my biggest, most mind-blowing collection of animated gifs ever. Beware! By clicking on the jump link, you'll be downloading 11 megs of ram-sucking giffy goodness. Computers without much memory may fall over and die.

Coming soon at a WFMU Gifbox near you:

The Animated Recursion Film Festival, and (if I dare):

The Disturbing Cleavage Animation Film Festival.

That said, let the frames begin...

WFMU Homepage Redesigned

Nobody loved neon green, pink and orange more than me (probably true, actually), but all things good and gaudy must come to an end, and WFMU has redesigned its homepage for the first time in ten years. You can see the results here. Let us know what you think in the comments. (Actually, the homepage was re-designed briefly for four days in 2000 but let's not discuss that.)

Among the new features on wfmu.org: links to the most recent blog articles, expandable news items, better layout and organization overall, plus, a vomit-inducing background color which is completely Doron's fault. Also to blame: Kenzo, Marcus, Liz and Listener Scott Emmer. We all had a much nicer background color chosen, but Doron said: "No, something more... vomity."

Next on the redesign agenda: this very blog. And by "next," I mean: after the marathon (Feb 25 to March 9). Although you may notice a critical addition to this blog: at the bottom of the main page, there is now a link  that says: "Older Posts." What a concept, eh? Thanks to typepad for adding this feature five years too late!

You might notice a brand new array of WFMU homepage pictures on wfmu.org as well. We just retired about 400 of the images that once graced our homepage, but you can always keep up with every image we've ever had (past, present and future) at the top of wfmu.org with our WFMU Homepage Image Gallery.

Serious thanks to Doron, Kenzo, Marcus. Liz, and Scott E.

Happy holidays everybody. Put the Krampus back into Christmas.

Cleaning Out My Gifbox, Dancing and Fighting Edition

What I want to know is, why is this the only James Brown animation I've come across:

Follow the jump below for eleven more CPU suckin' , browser crashin' animations, kinetics and animods:

Cleaning Out My Gifbox

Another twelve CPU-starving, bandwidth-sucking, mind-altering animations beyond the jump...

Thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams

 

Rudy Giuliani 9/11 Remix Contest (mp3)

UPDATE: There are three, count 'em, three winners in the Rudy Remix Contest! My own choice is Mr. Fab for his Wake Me Up When September 11 Ends (MP3).  I also opened up voting on my last Wednesday morning slot, and the listener's votes were tied between two very excellent entries, Miguelito Contraband's Gold Plated 9-11 Diapers, and Gary Lambert's Revolution No 9/11. All will receive a personalized WFMU crate ' swag. Thanks to everybody else who submitted so many great tracks!

Here's over two minutes of wall to wall September Eleventh's, courtesy of America's mayor. Your mission: turn some or all of them into music, to be reposted here. The best one received by December 5th wins a WFMU Messenger Bag full of CDs and other assorted swag. (I edited this version from a video collage made by Ben Craw of talkingpointsmemo.com)

Send your submissions to me at ken at wfmu dot org, but if they are larger than 8 megs, please post them somewhere and send me the URL. I will post all submissions here.

There are two versions for you to choose from, an MP3 and an uncompressed WAV file. The audio on both files are identical. Have Fun! And don't forget - September Eleventh.

Rudy Giuliani September Eleven Collage MP3

Rudy Giuliani September Eleven Collage WAV

UPDATE 1: Here's our first round of submissions - and yes, you can enter as many times as you like!

Tommy Mackay - Can September 11 ("Here's one of the ones I did yesterday, mixing Rudy with Suzi Quatro)

DJ Wild Bill - Believe In Rudy (Carjack Remix) ("...mixed Tupac Shakur, Shania Twain, the Monkees, Queen, Boys II Men, LeAnn Rimes, and Rudy Giulliani with Broadway tunes from "Phantom Of The Opera" and
"Wicked."")

Keith Karagan - Eleven Rudy Nine September ("rock <9-11> the <9-11> vote!")

Jazz Kissingers - Blues In September ("The rhythm of "September 11" sounded like "My Momma Done Told Me", so I did this little fantasy here.")

Adnoisium - SeptEl ("after the initial Rudy clip I sample Flava Flav from the PE song "911 is a joke".  Now I don't mean this to imply that the tragedy and loss of 9/11 are a joke,but rather that Rudy's constant mention of it is.")

Sick To The Back Teeth - C Major Nineth Sharp 11th

Stereofect - Rudy Giuliani 911 Remix ("It's a David Tudor type mix with a nod to William S. Burroughs.
Why?... because life... is... a cut up...")

UPDATE 2: Here are seven more Rudy Remixes - please keep 'em coming at ken at wfmu dot org. You can use any audio materials in your mix whatsoever, and as little Rudy audio as you like, as long as he's there invoking you-know-what somewhere.

Miguelito Contraband - Gold Plated 9-11 Diapers ("Mash-up of Guliani, Christopher Walken as Bruce "More Cowbell"  Dickinson, and Greyboy's Smokescreen")

Weird Al Qaidawww - Cockroach

Doug Wyatt - Talking Points  (Note that this track is an audio MP4 file, not an MP3) ("In 2004, someone made a video remix of speeches from the Republican National Convention, including Giuliani saying "September 11." That video made the rounds on the net but I'm unable to attribute it. Not long afterwards I composed a piece of music out of it. Last year I spent about half an hour in Final Cut Express combining the original video with my music. So while this does not fall within the parameters of your contest, I
thought nonetheless that you'd enjoy it.")

Adnoisium - N Dats What Happen ("I've decided to submit (at least) one more entry: This time i used the samples more as an instrument, and as such there's less of a political agenda. The feel is also different
because this time I used 8-bit instrumentation.")

Arratik - Null ("All of the sound in this track except for the drums was derived from the source file. I used a circuit-bent Casio SK-10 at the beginning, and the synth tone you hear in the latter 2/3rds was created by loading a 2 millisecond sample into Ableton Live's Sam pler instrument and transposing it to match middle C. The weird droning that continues into the fadeout is the tail end of what happened when I took a 1.5 second sample of Giuliani saying "since September 11th" and stretched it out to over four minutes. The whole thing was assembled and rendered in Ableton Live.")

Jamie Clay - Rudy's Song

Mike Stark - Rudy, The One Trick Pony

UPDATE 3: Here's ten more. Some really good ones in here. Someone should take Lee Rosevere's slowed down "September 11" and use the different parts of it as the musical tones for another remix!

TZA - MasterG

Token Wonder - Open Your Mind

Lee Rosevere - September 11 ("Heres my submission: one utterance of "September 11" by Rudy G, slowed down to...9 mins and 11 secs (clever, no?) Kenny G should love it.")

Adnoisium - Gooble Gobble Nine Eleven ("The title is all meant to be said in the same rhythm. The end clip (as well as the on going background clip) from Tod Brownings "Freaks" came about because of the Guiliani quote "...I'm one of them.")

Tommy McKay - Talk About September 11 ("Here's today's mix, Talk About September 11, featuring Ray Parker Jnr, M, and Nat King Cole.")

Tommy McKay - Rudy Cant Fail To Mention September Eleventh

Multi-Panel - Got To  Know Her

Norelpref - Leaven Happens

Frank Panucci - 911 Rudy Pooty Duty

Nick Archer - Rudy September 11

UPDATE 4: Hold onto your hats, here are 21 more Rudy Remixes - 19 audio submissions and two video entries, and as usual, this batch contains some real gems! The entries are coming fast and furious now so I'm going to extend the contest deadline to Thursday night at Midnight, EDT.

RIAA - Wake Me Up When September 11 Ends (MP3)

Gary Lambert - Revolution No 9/11 (MP3)

Donnie Bobb / Gene Jacket - Rudys 911 (MP3)

The TZA - RudyXXX (MP3)

Puppies Hold Hands - Return Of Rudy Reagan (MP3)

Rokhausen - One For Each Hand (MP3)

Adam O - ACCEPTember11 (MP3)

Adnoisium - 911 Party Attack (MP3)

Adnoisium  - 911 or STINKtember EWleven (MP3)

Carter Maness - Jacques Derrida 911 Remix (MP3)

Michael Weins - Rudy's Favorite Day (MP3)

Norelpref - Sept Timbre (MP3)

Norelpref - Bye Bye So Long (MP3)

Tommy Mackay - When September Ends (MP3)

Trifocal - Invoking Rudi (MP3)

DJ Little Foot - Rudy Talkin' (MP3)

John Slaney - Rudy's Mantra (MP3)

Rothbell - Contest Entry (M4A files - will work in iTunes)

Video submissions:

From Alexander: 3+3+3=9(11) (streaming video from a Giuliani campaign video contest!)

From Stallio! - September Eleven Mentality (youtube link)

UPDATE 5: Here's the final batch of entries into the Rudy Remix Contest. I'll be announcing the winner on the air at 1145am on Wednesday, December 12th.

fatty jubbo - rudy oh rudy

The Haunted Pussy - Rudy Remix

Clayton Counts - Blood

Clayton Counts - Pennies from Eleven

Rob W - Rudy Rocks The Casbah

Mrs Fab - Here He Goes Again

Adnoisium - 9-1-1

Adnoisium - IX-XI

Billy Jam - Sept Eleven Remix

Campbell Payne - It's Always 9-11 (M4A file)

dj meq - the post september period

Puppies Hold Hands - Rudy Remix

Little Foot - Rudy Talkin

Touching You - Giuliani Remix Pt2

Help Me Find Jimmy Hoffa (MP3)

Here it is by popular demand, one of my record fair finds: a song of heartbreak and disinterment:

Tim Wilson's  Help Me Find Jimmy Hoffa (MP3)

Mickey Mouse Gas Masks Rise Again

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the US military issued gas masks to civilians in Hawaii, and rushed a special children's model into production, which consisted of a hood with bunny ears. By early 1942, The Sun Rubber Company and the Disney Corporation designed the Mickey Mouse gas mask pictured above (on the left). The US military ultimately ordered 1000 Mickey Mouse masks, and awarded an "E" for excellence to the Sun Rubber Company for the contract.

Few of the original 1000 Mickey Mouse gas masks have survived. One is still on display at the US Army Chemical Museum at Fort McClennan, Alabama (not that you would want to visit - Marcus informs me that the place is notoriously toxic, as befits a Chemical Museum). But why exactly have the Georgian riot police now appropriated the design 66 years later, just in time for their crackdown on the Rose Revolution? And more importantly, are they paying royalties to Disney?

I Got You, Mr. President (video)

John Schnall, WFMU's former animator-in-residence (and the creator of the Telephone Jam and the Midnight Matinee) has been busy with his youtube channel lately and he just cranked out a political love paean that even Sonny Bono would've been proud of:

 

Check out John's other videos on his youtube channel.

Hermeto Pascoal Plays a Lagoon (video)

Here's an excerpt from Brazilian composer Hermeto Pascoal's piece Musica de Lagoa, in which Pascoal plays underwater flute, while accompanied by a chorus of bottle blowers.

Thanks to Ed Word and Youtube's Bigfootpegrande.

Comedy As A Second Language (MP3s)

Our Scandinavian correspondent John from Oslo recently submitted this amazing example of indigenous Swedish comedy from the radio show Hassan:

Hassan - Gay Goes West (MP3)

What's great about this is that you don't need to understand any Swedish in order to enjoy it. In fact, it's far more amusing when you don't understand what they're saying. (If you're curious, John included a translation of it which you can read after the jump. But listen to it first.)

It got me thinking - what other foreign language comedy clips could I come up with that are funny in spite of the language barrier? Unfortunately, I could only come up with one other one, this Cheech and Chong-inspired routine from the Japanese edition of Yellow Magic Orchestra's Multiplies album (translations welcome!):

Yellow Magic Orchestra - Snakeman Show #3 (MP3)

Let me know if you can think of any other non-English comedy routines that pass the incomprehensible humor test.

John from Oslo went on to report: Generally Danes, Swedes and Norwegians understand each other. Lately the linguistics department at the University of Oslo have seen an increased tendency among Scandinavian youngsters to speak English. As this snippet proves:

Subway Gunman Bernard Goetz and His Pet Squirrel

"Her teeth are like chisels..."

Thanks to Pamela and peapod8

September Songs - 38 of 'em (MP3s)

There are only a few days of September left, so here are 38 versions of Kurt Weill's beautiful (and misleading) September Song:

James Brown   |   Lee Hazelwood   |   Santo and Johnny

Lotte Lenya   |   Walter Huston   |   Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra

Gene Bianco   |   The Harmonicats   |   Arthur Lyman

John Lennon   |   Django Reinhart   |   Bryan Ferry

Charles Mingus   |   Duke Ellington   |   Errol Garner

Ian McCulloch   |   Lindsay Buckingham   |   The Young Gods

 Lou Reed   |   Hank Penny   |   Earl Bostic

Scatman Crothers  |   Artie Shaw   |   Chet Baker

Chico Hamilton   |   Dean Martin   |   Dee Dee Bridgewater

Delcos   |   Dion and The Belmonts   |   Harry James and His Orchestra

Jimmy Durante   |   Mill Brothers   |   Nat King Cole

Nate Butler   |   The Platters   |   Ronnie Scott Quartet

Sarah Vaughan   |   Stan Kenton (w/ June Christie and The Four Freshmen)

I've been featuring this song throughout the month on my show, and while I haven't posted every single version that I've played on the air, most of the better ones are here. Nothing beats the James Brown version from his 1970 LP Soul on Top, on which he was backed up by the Louis Bellson Big Band, with arrangements by Oliver Nelson.

September Song was written by Weill (with lyrics by Maxwell Anderson) for the 1938 musical Knickerbocker Holiday. Walter Huston (father of John, Granddad of Angelica) introduced the song when he played Pieter Stuyvesant in the original production, and scored a hit with the 78 version of it while the show was still in its first run. In the play, the peg-legged Stuyvesant sings the song to Tina, the lovely Town Councilor's daughter, in the hope of rushing her into marriage against her better judgment. Peg-leg Pete uses the shortening days of September and the onset of winter to convince Tina to give herself to him and not to his rival, Brom Broeck. (Tina marries Broek in the end.)

Fun with Phonetic Dutch (video)

We already knew that Dutch was the best (funniest) language on earth, but it took B3ta's CCC to demonstrate the limitless possibilities of fake phonetic translations of Dutch children's videos:

Iguana Pop

Previously: Topography  |  Peanut Butter

Robot Bears to Help The Wounded and Elderly

Robots which will scoop up bloodied, wounded soldiers and carry them off to the army medic? A scary thought, unless the robot in question has the head of a cuddly Teddy Bear! The US Military (in conjunction with Vecna Robotics) is developing exactly that. Officially known as the Battlefield Extraction and Retrieval Robot, or BEAR, the robot will be able to lift soldiers weighing up to 500 pounds and wheel or walk them to safety. The adorable Teddy Bear head was designed to put traumatized soldier at ease. As one Army project manager put it:

"Robotic extraction of combat casualties from under fire or from hostile or contaminated environments is the 'holy grail' of the TATRC mobile robotics program. The BEAR prototype as envisioned in the VECNA proposal and current research contract is the most promising approach I have seen to safely extracting casualties from urban and wooded terrain or from other areas with numerous obstacles that would impede entrance by other vehicular or aerial robots."

And when the BEAR isn't rescuing the wounded, it will be busy preventing bedsores in hospitals. From Vecna's website:

"The SCI-BEAR robot is an in-hospital solution that benefits both patients and hospital staff. Designed especially to comfortably lift, carry and set down the injured, this version of the BEAR is also optimized for the hospital environment. Able to negotiate tight spaces in semi-private rooms, the SCI-BEAR has specially-designed software systems that aid the operator in performing safe, successful repositioning and transfers."

Vecna has no explanation as to why their company is named after the Dungeons and Dragons Master of All That is Secret and Hidden.

Look for the Battlefield Extraction and Retrieval Robot rolling your way in 2012.

via POE News / BBC

500 Years of Art in a Woman's Face (video)

In less than three minutes, no less:

This was done by Eggman913. Thanks, Doug and Juxtapoz!

Canadian Football Fan Portraits

Portraits of visiting team fans at Vancouver's BC Lions games, via Ziza. File next to Jill Greenburg's End Times or Monkey Portraits series, or Philip Toledano's Portraits of People Playing Video Games. The photographer of these is unknown, but if anybody figures out who took them, let me know.

Shatner - Conan Remix Video

Not that William Shatner needs any help re-inventing himself musically or otherwise, but here's a remix of him cruising along in his racecar at 160 MPH, and discussing it with Conan O'Brien:

UPDATE: The video was made by Smudgeorama. Thanks to Stark Effect and shatnerrulz

Someone Tell Ted Nugent That The RIAA's Got His Cash

As the RIAA prepares to apply it's webcasting royalty rates to over-the-air broadcasters (link), all in the interest of putting more money on the hands of recording artists, it's fascinating to periodically check the list of artists that the RIAA simply can't locate: link.

Sound Exchange (the collection arm of the RIAA) prints a list of artists who can't be paid, because they can't be found! If they can't find them, they have no choice other than to pocket these artist's cash. And it's all legal.

Sound Exchange's "Unpaid Artist List" includes such recluses as Ted Nugent (for the Amboy Dukes), Kraftwerk, Kruder and Dorfmeister, Pizzicatto Five and The Dust Brothers, to name but a few. If only these artists could be located, then Sound Exchange could pay them their hard earned royalties! After all, this is exactly what Sound Exchange exists to do. What a shame that artists like Lene Lovich, X-Ray Spex and Rita Lee can't be found.

As the Sound Exchange website states: "If you know any of the featured artists contained on this list or have contact information for them, we would greatly appreciate it if you would notify them that SoundExchange is looking to pay them the royalties they are due."