Archive for the ‘Video’ Category
Four minutes that will make you love Billy Joel
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“The Springsteen model, only tweaked, turned up, and transformed into a fairy tale of post-apocalyptic New York.”
From this awesome article by Maura Johnston
The serious business of humor on the Web
Jennifer Ordonez doesn’t think the Internet is very funny, or at least, not funny enough to make money.
Writing in Newsweek June 9, in the spectacularly well-named Technologist column, she said, “as a revenue driver, comedy on the Web has thus far been a joke.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Molly McAleer takes 'overshare' to a whole new level
Defamer didn’t know what to make of this, and neither do I.
The only one who came close was friendslikeJimRome who said, “What hath God wrought?”
I didn’t want to watch it, but I couldn’t really stop. Sure it’s degrading and demeaning and sad, but when she’s done, you can’t help but be a little bit in love.
I mean, what choice do you have?
P.S. For any 40-something newspaper people who might be reading, this is why you don’t get us. This is why we’ll never make sense. This is, ultimately, the face of the new world. And no, I’m not ready either.
UPDATE 9-30-08: Molly McAleer forgives me …and perhaps, by extension, all of us.
Could you do this at your office?
http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=173714&server=www.vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=01AAEA&fullscreen=1
Lip Dub – Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo.
Could you do this at your office?
Introducing the phenomenon of the office dub. A random group of co-workers starts with a single song and films themselves lip syncing to it. I wanted to try this at the A-J but the Hank Williams people got in a big fight with the Johnny Cash people and six of our editors went to the hospital.
The TMBG people, consisting of me and well…me, did not have enough mojo to assemble a group. If you're willing to lip sync Particle Man on camera, please reply to this post.
Shades of Dawkins
Double-posting today because I can't resist this image.
Richard Dawkins is perhaps the most famous atheist in the world — an outspoken educator and defender of evolution. In October 2006, Dawkins spoke at Randolph-Macon Women's College in Lynchburg, Virginia. Dawkins' lecture was attended by a large group from Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.
Liberty students dominated the Q&A portion of Dawkins' presentation, questioning him with varying degrees of hostility and outrage.
A Quicktime video of Dawkins' speech is available here.
A casual observer might watch this and think Dr. Dawkins doesn't have a friend in the world. But now we have visual evidence to the contrary.
This picture cracks me up. I've never seen the good doctor smile quite that widely before, and I've never seen him photographed in that particular shade of red.
The CNN/YouTube Debate
American politics changed on Monday. We can't see the whole shape of it yet, but the CNN/YouTube debate broke up the pattern of boring, predictable debate questions and brought the concerns of ordinary people to the forefront.
Too often it seems like our political system is made of granite blocks — giant, ponderous forces that are invulnerable to change. The YouTube questions took a big chunk out of that system and the politicians are scrambling to deal with it.
The questions were a spin doctor's nightmare — rude, shrewd and merciless. The YouTube contributors stripped away the protective layers of PR and asked point-blank questions about issues that the politicians would rather avoid.
Candidates were left stammering and off-balance, struggling to cope with questions that no rational process could prepare them for. It was deeply satisfying in a way, to see politicians answer questions from people who normally couldn't have made it through security.
The oddball questions elevated some candidates and made others look hollow. A questioner asked Chris Dodd how he was going to be different and he bragged about being the same for 30 years.
Someone asked Hillary Clinton if she was a liberal and she arguably hit it out of the park, proudly calling herself a progressive and (correctly) explaining how the word had changed over the years.
The best question came from “Saheedb.” He asked which Republican the candidates would pick as a running mate. A great question that gets to the heart of how politics really works.
I'm fascinated by this experiment because Internet culture is fundamentally the opposite of political culture. Political communication is all about reserve, control and good manners. Internet communication is about candor — about ruthless, unfiltered honesty. Those two cultures clashed on Monday, and I think the process is better for it.
The citizens asked smart, tough questions, with a few rude ones thrown in for flavor. I didn't need to know if Hillary was woman enough or if Obama was black enough, but it was fun watching them answer.
Michael B. Duff 
