Hitler Cats?!

Oh nooooo... talk about tragic genetic accidents! There are even a few AWESOME ones on Flickr.

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New Sufjan Stevens music!

Cool!! Sufjan Stevens is releasing an out-takes album (July 11) of stuff from his Come On, Feel The Illinoise, which came out last year. Apparently, Illinoise was originally slated to be a double album, hence the boatload of leftover songs.

You can hear a lot of the album via these two links:

one two

I've only played the first one (which is the first 5 songs from the album, I think) and it sounds great so far.

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Own a piece of music history

Wow, you really can find almost anything on ebay. There's an auction going on for a one-of-a-kind, prototype vocoder built for Kraftwerk in the 1970s (I assume- maybe it was built earlier than that) and used on a couple of their songs, including "Autobahn." Don't miss the great pics down below the description.

(Kudos to Jeremy for finding this... he said he didn't have time to post it, so I did!)

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This is one of the most brilliant radio stories I've ever heard, and so amazingly informative about the Lincoln Memorial. If you have a half an hour... honestly. I got chills a few times.

You know, the more I live in Canada, the more I realize how much half American I am. I'd like to think that this half is blue, however. The red & white American can kiss my ass.

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More right-y humiliation

The Colbert Report's Stephen Colbert gives U.S. Representative Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) a little pop quiz. Painful to watch, and even more painful to realize that people as dumb as a bag of hammers have power over your life as an American.

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When you believe in things you don't understand, then you suffer

My GOD, this is the COOLEST thing ever. I found it via Phancy.Com after I checked if my mp3s for the week had uploaded. But, for reals, you HAVE to see this. My god. As if "Superstition" weren't one of the coolest songs in the entire world already...

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La Sagrada Familia

Slate has a great photo feature today about the amazing La Sagrada Familia cathedral, in Barcelona. Antoni Gaudi, the architect, was known for his oddly organic, sometimes whimsical style. (More about the building here.)

Gaudi is the only architect I know of to inspire a pop album, as well. :)

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Video Killed The...

...dialup connection.




This site gives you a great framework to browse a crapload of music videos from the 1980s... they're all on YouTube, so if you can't block that annoying ad just under the video window (Firefox + AdBlock remove it very nicely) just take inspiration from the list and go look them up on YouTube itself.

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News anchors gone wild

Holy cow! I'm not even sure how to describe this, but I'll try: one of the Phelps clan appeared on the Fox News network, and anchorwoman Julie Banderas (pictured) promptly opened a can of whoop-ass on her.

Not as articulate as Jon Stewart's takedown of Bill Bennett last week, maybe; and I'd be appalled if a CNN anchor acted this way, for sure- but wow, *I* might even flip on Faux News once in a while if they handed out this kind of punishment on evildoers more often. :D

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The lyrebird...

...is TOTALLY Nature's Guy From The Police Academy Movies.

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Gotta love Jon Stewart

When he's on, he's really on. Watch him humiliate Bill Bennett as Bennett tries to explain why gay couples aren't "real families."

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"World Of Glory" and "Songs From The Second Floor"

Several weeks ago, I ran across this blog posting about Swedish director Roy Andersson's 1990 short film, "World Of Glory":

World of Glory is a 15-minute tableau-film, with one and the same person in the foreground of every tableau. In the opening scene, this person stands in a huge open lot with his back to the camera, together with a crowd of people who are flocked around a closed van. They look on as naked, whitened, desperately weeping men, women and children are led and driven like cattle into the van. None of the onlookers shows any sign whatsoever of wanting to intervene. The doors to the van are then locked and a pair of men help one another to connect a tube from the van’s exhaust pipe to an inlet leading into the compartment where the people are. One of the men gives the ready sign and the van drives off slowly in circles around the lot. Towards the middle of the scene, the main character turns around and looks directly into the camera.

The post also includes a link to a bit-torrent allowing you to download the film.

(more in the complete post)


I've watched "World Of Glory" twice now, and the openeing scene still gives me an almost violently horrified feeling. The rest of the film's 15 are, incongrously, filled with black, absurd humor as the nameless lead character explains the banal details of his life to you, the viewer. (Technical note: I had to download this file- ffdshow- in order to see the English subtitles in the "World Of Glory" movie.)

Curious, I decided to get the DVD of Andersson's 2000 theatrical film, Songs From The Second Floor. It's an amazing, amazing film. Shot in the same ablau style as "Glory," this films tells the interconnected stories of a series of characters in a gray, rotting city as something- the end of the world? Fate?- is bearing down on them and driving many of them quietly insane. Here's a two-minute trailer(some nudity, RealPlayer format).

The movie is extremely, extremely slow-paced, but the longer you watch, the more you get caught up in- and nearly smothered by- the dreamlike images and stilted actions of the people onscreen. The review linked above describes one of my favorite scenes this way:

...as Kalle watches his crucifix-cursing friend head back towards the city in the distance, several of Kalle's personal demons appear from the ground in the opposite direction and slowly drift towards our hero; in an attempt to scare death off, Kalle yells and flails, and the undead lie down, disappearing into the ground, only to reappear when he turns his back. There's constant onscreen motion in this simple, prolonged take, but the camera stays perfectly still.

Click the image for a larger view of this scene:



I highly, highly recommend both of these films- it's been over a month since I watched them, and yet I can still remember almost every image from both of them, they are so burned into your brain as you watch. I see Andersson is working on a new film called "You, The Living" (click the link labeled "new feature film")... I'd love to see this one on a big screen at the theater, although at that size Andersson's images might be COMPLETELY overwhelming.

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Cool word of the day

"aichaku"

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white deer

white deer
Originally uploaded by lee_3dhighway.

Took this today on the way to the Chamblee Arts & Antiques fest... I thought it was kind of cool and eerie.

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See it in sound

I'm so excited... the "A Prairie Home Companion" movie opens next week here in Atlanta. One of my favorite people, Garrison Keillor, directed by one of my other favorite people, Robert Altman...

This is either going to be brilliant, or a crashing disaster. It's apparently a fictionalized account of the series coming to an end.

Get a load of that cast!

I've been a fan of "APHC" since I was in college in the 80s, and finally got to see a live performance last year... this movie looks like it's going to be a twisty, trippy play on nostalgia and memories and people's fondness for the show. I can't wait.

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