Back from the Satellite of Love

I was a huge fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 during the '90s.

For some reason there are few things more entertaining to me that (half)witty repartee between a human and three robots during especially bad movies.

That's why I was so excited to read in the Star today (yes, dammit, I still read the Star) that MST3K's head writer/host Mike Nelson is reviving the concept in downloadable MP3 format.

The project/website is called RiffTrax. The idea is that you buy an audio track of Nelson's smarmy comments about, say, Road House, and then play the track in sync with the DVD playing on you home TV.

Check out the sample on RiffTrax, which has chestnuts like "Ah, ya have to irritate an old guy at least once a day, otherwise what's life good for?"

The timing couldn't be better for Nelson to launch this project. Thanks to iTunes and podcasting, audio downloads have become de rigueur. And thanks to the nature of the Internet, Nelson will be able to take advantage of low overhead to capture a long tail market that can't be served by traditional distribution.

And let's face it, there's lots of bad movies to draw material from these days. I mean, how did the black community let the Wayans brothers release Little Man?

Anyway, sign me up for RiffTrax. I have a feeling Nelson is going to clean up with this, especially when he discovers how to sell subscriptions to the service over iTunes so that we get automatic downloads of the latest riffs.

tagged: video, MST3K, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Mike Nelson, podcast, audio, pop culture, RiffTrax, Road House, Little Man

I don't want my MTV

I missed it. A lot of people missed it.

Hell, even MTV didn't want to acknowledge their 25th birthday. That's right, 25 years ago yesterday, MTV launched itself into pop culture with Video Killed the Radio.

In the following years, as the network cut more deals to get on more cable TV plans, it introduced a whole new medium with an entirely new definition of cool. Remember David Lee Roth's "Dave TV! ALL DAVE ALL NIGHT!" Ah, the memories.

For better or worse (I would argue worse), MTV helped video become as much a part of music as audio. And I admit that it was cool to see the artists I'd been listening to on the radio perform on TV regularly.

But then, the network made an interesting discovery. With the trial of its first "game show" Remote Control (the show that made Colin Quinn a household name), they found that they could engage users for half an hour instead of the 5 minutes of a music video. This of course, meant they could charge more for advertising, which in turn bolsters the bottom line leading to nice fat bonuses for the network execs.

Bye bye music, hello Real World.

Anyway, it's a cultural cliche anymore that MTV isn't really MTV. It completely sucks anymore, but that's okay because the entire traditional music industry sucks too.

Of course maybe, like MTV, I'm just getting old.

tagged: music, video, MTV, old, Remote Control, Colin Quinn, pop culture

YouTube Tuesday: Chad Vader

Chad Vader is one of the rising stars of YouTube. You may have heard of his older brother, Darth, but Chad has a story of his own.

In Episode 2: Day Shift Manager, Chad struggles to find love while keeping his choice gig as day manager at a supermarket...



tagged: movie, YouTube, video, Vader, Star Wars, humor, comedy, culture

In defense of vanity

Blogger par excellence Happy in Bag posted a pretty good rant last week about vanity license plates and just wtf is the deal with that.

There seems to be a pretty solid consensus in the comments that the whole idea of vanity plates is lame. But just to keep the conversation going, I'll offer up this defense of vanity plates...

Why must we all be treated as numbers? Why not try to maintain a small part of our personal identity in this workaday world. Isn't it enough that we are assigned SocSec numbers by the govt, a cube number by the corporation, and a house number by the USPS? Now we have to have a number on our personal transportation as well?

Oh how I long for those romantic days of yore when we could ride to work at the office on a trusty steed named Trigger, instead of a nag named THX-1182.

tagged: culture, vanity, license plates, Kansas, defense

Freeway speech

I read an article in yesterday's Star (yes, I still read the Star despite the abusive redesign. Dammit! They got me!) about a group of so-called Freeway Bloggers.

This group posts politically topical signs and banners on highway overpasses, fences and medians. The authors claim these actions are protected by their constitutional rights to free expression.

It's a convenient way to justify vandalism.

At best, these vandals are irresponsible since they encourage others to commit the same kind of vandalism to public property. And it is vandalism. They are marking up (if only temporarily) public property for their own purposes. They risk distracting drivers potentially causing traffic accidents.

What's more, they know that what they are doing is illegal and they encourage others to be dishonest in trying to copy them. They say so on their website (which I intentionally don't link to).

They claim that if an advertiser can put up a message on a privately owned billboard, then they should be able to put their message on publicly owned highway infrastructure. The key difference of course is that the advertiser has private property rights to put their message on the billboard.

If this group were buying space on a billboard for their message, or if they put their signs up in their own front yards, they would get no argument from me.

Underlying this tactic is a basic misunderstanding of the constitutionally protected right to freedom of expression.

"When the founders of this nation said that everyone was entitled to freely express their political opinions, they didn't mean we could hammer up a sign out in the woods somewhere, they meant we could hammer it up right in the middle of the town square."

This is where they're wrong. We all have a right to say what we want (with certain exceptions).

But the constitution does not guarantee a right to be heard.

tagged: Freeway Bloggers, freedom of speech, vandalism, free, expression, Bush, politics

Happy blogday (belated)

I came to the sudden realization yesterday that this blog turned 1 year a couple of week's ago.

What a delinquent parent I am to not remember the birthday of my blog. Actually, it's not really that big of a deal when you read that some people have been blogging for ages (since the turn of the century) and have much greater traffic.

Still, it's a milestone of sorts. And it's the longest I've ever kept a regular journal, so balls to blogging!

This whole thing started on July 14, 2005. A friend of mine had been urging me to blog for a couple of weeks and after a late night (hence the name) IM conversation, I finally did.

Since then, I've had nearly 20,000 visits. I started keeping track of Technorati rankings in late December when I was ranked a respectable 361,466. When I checked yesterday, I had climbed to 9,297 (which coincidentally was my ranking in my graduating class at K-State -- hey, I never claimed to be a rocket surgeon).

Anyway since my arm's getting a little sore from the self back-patting, let me just say a quick thank you to everyone who visits. I hope I haven't bored you too badly. I've made some great blogfriends and I highly value the free exchange of ideas. Hopefully we'll get to meet sometime in the corporeal world (I still owe Xavier Onasis a Scotch).

And if perchance I have offended, I offer now my sincerest apologies. But I can't really promise that it won't happen again.

tagged: blog, blogging, anniversary, Technorati, K-State, friends

YouTube Tuesday: Best. Mashup. Ever

I love the fact that consumers have such great editing and publishing tools these days. Anyone can now create their own works of art and publish them for everyone to see. Those in the marketing biz call it "consumer generated media."

One of the best examples I've seen is today YouTube Tuesday submission. Take the godfathers of British comedy and mash it up with a campy sci-fi hit and you get Monty Trek.

Join the crew of the intrepid Enterprise as they finally return to Camelot. You'll have to click the link, since the "owner" has disabled the embed function. Still, this is funny enough to make it worth your while.


Monty Trek

WARNING: Do not drink milk while viewing this video, as there is a high risk of ex-nasal lactification.



Huge tip of the hat to Get on the Blandwagon for passing it on.

tagged: movie, YouTube, video, music, mashup, Star Trek, Monty Python, culture, humor

Kansas Guild of Bloggers Carnival

Go check it out at Blog Meridian.

Don't forget to submit a post for this week's KGB Roundup, which Blog Meridian will host next Monday.

tagged: Kansas, blog, blogger, carnival, KGB

inertia

I just haven't been able to get going all day. From the moment I woke up, I've been the proverbial "object at rest."

A couple of extra cups of coffee didn't help any and I've been pretty unproductive all day.

Hopefully I'll be able to break out of the malaise tomorrow. Until then, I've gone back to my blogging roots to pass on a couple of items that I stumbled upon today as I tried to become interested in something, anything.

• First, I found this M.C. Escher meets Salvador Dali flash presentation. Here's the link. Try zooming all the way in, it's way trippy.
  
  
• I also wasted a good half hour writing my own George W. Bush speech with this handy-dandy tool. Hours of fun for the whole family to enjoy. Send me a link to the speech you wrote.
  
  
• I also ran across this pretty neat flash adaptation of Kafka's famous Metamorphosis. I just reread that book and a collection of Kafka's other short stories a few months ago, so I found it particularly interesting.

Well, time to call it a day. Hopefully I'll get more done tomorrow. If not, there's always the colossal time waster that is the Internet.

tagged: Internet, Kafka, malaise, Metamorphosis, Escher, Bush, Salvador Dali

Landis maximus

Congratulations to Floyd Landis on winning the 2006 Tour de France. It's very satisfying to see an American win, particularly this year, when Americans weren't really expected to show up.

For those of you keeping score, this is the eighth year in a row that an American has won the most prestigious race in cycling and the biggest sporting prize in France.

Unfortunately, as with all American Tour winners, Landis is in for some major medical problems in the off-season. He' scheduled to have hip-replacement surgery, a big deal for anyone, but a mega-big deal for a cyclist. It's like Roger Clemens having arm replacement surgery -- a potential career ender.

And let's face it, Landis wasn't really a favorite to win this year's race. A doping probe resulted in the elimination of the big favorites - Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso and Joseba Beloki -- before the race even started.

Still, it's tough to discount an American coming back from a major medical setback. Greg LeMond set the trend when he returned to the Tour after being shot in the heart during a hunting accident. And Lance Armstrong's battle with cancer is very well documented. Both came back stronger than before.

So here's a big bon chance to Floyd after a hard-fought and well deserved victory. Looking forward to seeing you next year.

tagged: Tour de France, Floyd Landis, cycling, Lance Armstrong, Greg LeMond, France