Star Wars Gangsta Rap

Not the first Star Wars rap video, but probably the best.

Possibly My Next Guilty Pleasure?

Tonight, my fiancée and I are looking forward to the premiere of Bionic Woman. Honestly, I don’t know what to expect. From the trailers and preview clips floating around on the web, I have to say that the script seems horrifically written.

For instance, there’s one scene where a mother and daughter are driving in a car and the Bionic Woman is running in the woods alongside them. The girl exclaims that she, “just thinks it’s cool that a girl can do that.” Now I’m all for strong female characters, but that gem of dialog is a bit much.

Then there’s the performance by Michelle Ryan, who plays the Bionic Woman herself. From what I’ve seen, she’s doesn’t seem to be commanding or confident enough to take the lead role. In fact, I suspect she may be upstaged by her character’s rival, played by the actress who is the primary reason my fiancée and I are looking forward to the show - Katee Sackhoff.

I mean really. How hot is that?

I’m hoping I like the show. I’m hoping it transcends its weak writing and ends up being just a lot of fun to watch, and I’m hoping Ryan grows into her part. I mean this is essentially what happened with Buffy. The show was pretty bad its first season, but still so much fun to watch and it got better and better ever season after that. Most of all, since I’m guessing Battlestar Galactica isn’t going to last past season four, I’m hoping Bionic Woman stays on for a little while so we can get more of Katee Sackhoff.

The Wet Stuff

Finally! Rain!

I group around Seattle and for the longest time I hated the rain. My senior year of high school, it rained a record-breaking 90+ days straight. Take that, Noah. That much constant rain definitely puts a damper on one’s mood and it was definitely a factor in my decision to attend college in sunny southern California.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love sunshine. But it’s only rained about 2 inches in Los Angeles this year and I have been feeling a very deep and primal yearning for a change of pace in the form of precipitation.

A few years back, I saw David Garza, one of my favorite musicians, performing at the Largo. He covered the Eddie Rabbitt song above, mostly as a joke. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find an mp3 of that performance, but ever since, whenever it rains I’ve busted out the tune. It’s a deliciously guilty pleasure.

Chris Crocker Redux

Okay, this’ll be my last post on Crocker, but I couldn’t resist. I’m a sucker for satire and this internet phenomenon has bridged pop culture with politics.

Leave Britney Alone

It is only appropriate that no sooner did the Internet People video come out that it was already outdated with the addition of yet another internet celebrity. Doubtless we’ve all seen or at least heard of Britney’s lethargic performance at the recent VMA’s. While major media outlets, bloggers, and your grandmother were busy lambasting Britney, one individual took the bold stance in defense of the pop songstress. Meet Chris Crocker.

Look Chris, I know most everybody has been pretty mean to Britney this past week, but come on. You have to admit that was a pretty half-assed performance on her part. I know you’re upset about the entertainment news industry making a buck off poking fun, but that’s their job. At least they’re doing a good job with it. It’s Britney’s job to put on a good performance, and girl couldn’t even get her lip synching right, yet she makes nearly $740k a month. Sorry Chris, with that kind of a paycheck, you’d better be able to deliver.

Posted only six days ago, Crocker’s video has gained internet infamy and ridicule to rival Spears’ original performance. Even Jimmy Kimmel poked fun at the guy on his show.

Kimmel references a YouTube spoof of the Crocker vid featuring Crocker’s “father” asking, “Why? Where did I go wrong?!” As with any good internet fad, there has been no shortage of parodying from all kinds of angles. My personal favorite is the one by Seth Green, of Robot Chicken fame, where he implores the internet world to “leave Chris Crocker alone!”

Now that’s a job well done.

Deconstructing Internet People: Part I

So I keep watching the Internet People video to see which references I do and don’t get. I decided I’d take it upon myself to dig up all the original videos and post them up here. Thanks to YouTube, this is all made so much easier. So that it won’t be one gigantic post, I’ll post them five at a time, starting from the beginning.

The Dramatic Prairie Dog - I hadn’t seen this one. I’m glad that has been rectified. Short and sweet.

South Park - I’m not really sure if this is supposed to reference any specific thing from South Park beyond the fact that you can find pretty much anything from South Park, be it a short clip or an entire episode, on the internet without any complaints of copyright infringement. To represent the mass amounts of hilarity that are South Park clips, here’s one of Cartman singing Styx’s “Come Sail Away” - the full version, not the quick one-minute one.

The Star Wars Kid - Internet gold! It’s spawned countless remixes, been parodied by Stephen Colbert and the Colbert Report, and even earned a nod from George Michael Bluth in the television show Arrested Development. Here’s the original.

Numa Numa - Because everybody loves fat people dancing! He tried to rekindle his internet popularity with another, far more produced Numa clip, but honestly it was pretty lame.

Back Dorm Boys - College kids doing what they do best - procrastinating. It’s heartwarming to see that even in cultures that are oceans apart there exist unshakeable similarities.

That’s it for now. More to come later.

Midnight Ridazz

My favorite L.A. activity in all the world is going down in t-48 hours which is Midnight Ridazz. This month’s theme is a a revival of last year’s, Swarm the Pier II. We’ll be riding from the Bicycle District in east Hollywood to the Santa Monica pier.

Some people will be dressed up as bugs, myself most likely not included since I don’t have anything that would fit the bill. It’ll be sixteen miles out to Santa Monica and probably twelve miles or so back. If anybody would like to join me, let me know. Ride on!

And to get you pumped up about riding bikes, here’s a fun little gift from Japan:

L’shana Tova!

No, I’m not Jewish. I just happen to work for a very Jewish company. One of the benefits of this is that I get to celebrate Rosh Hashanah by not going to work tomorrow. Not that it matters as things are pretty busy at the moment and I’ll be working from home tomorrow anyways. But it’s a nice change of pace. I’ve been having trouble focusing at the office lately. I don’t know why, exactly, but I think changing the setting up will help me be productive tomorrow. My current plan is to get some breakfast at one of the many fabulous local diners then head to a local coffee shop with wi-fi, plop down with my laptop and itty-bitty Wacom tablet and get down to bid-ness. I’m always fascinated by the world that exists from 9-6 as it’s something I only get mere glimpses of during my lunch break. In L.A. especially it seems like there are a lot of people who have copious amounts of free time and I’ve got to wonder what the hell it is they’re doing! Are they unemployed? Self-employed? Trust-fund children?

Until then, I’m celebrating my bisected work week with a little malted beverage action. At first I was thinking some Oregon honey beer would be appropriate, seeing as apples and honey are a big thing for this holiday. But instead I decided to crack open a bottle of He’Brew Pomegranate Ale that I’ve had sitting in my fridge since the Beer Cruise in August. It’s not bad. A decent bodied ale with the pomegranates making a very distinctive appearance, maybe a little too heavy-handedly. Or rather, if you’re looking for the pomegranate taste it’s definitely there, but it exists more as an afterthought such that the taste doesn’t really lend itself to the rest of the flavor. It was still pretty refreshing. Not altogether memorable, but ’tis the season.

Internet People

This is essentially the history of the internet from 2000 to the present.

I think I got a good 70% of those references. Maybe less, there are A LOT of them after all. I do have to protest to the placement of All Your Base in their list. As far as I’m concerned that’s the first internet phenomenon. Star Wars kid didn’t come along until much later.

This just goes to show, though, that the internet has become more than a communication tool but a culture all itself, and to go even further the group of people who like passing around random clips, images, and miscellanea (I’ll call them memers?) is yet another subculture within that. I’m sure that’s already pretty obvious. The medium is the message, after all. But now I have to wonder whether this means internet meme-ry has jumped the shark. After all, isn’t this “Internet People” clip essentially a “Greatest Hits” compilation? And in the world of popular music, isn’t it usually a sure sign of a tired band when they put out their Greatest Hits album?

Then again, it’s probably just the self-referentiality that’s going to get old. Even if most of the net becomes an echo chamber, there will always be fresh clips of people doing weird and novel things. But like all pop culture references, there’s only so much the collective consciousness can take before it screams, “Enough! I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about! And why are you calling it ‘the internets’ anyways?!” Meanwhile, in the background lurk those who will still give each other knowing winks in anticipation of the inevitable retro-geekery.

The Big Bad

This gave me a chuckle this morning:

GOP front runner or Buffy villain? You decide.

Taken from AMERICAblog.com