Pop Culture Blog: Music, Movie and Humor
Leveraging low-hanging synergies outside the vertical fruit box since 1999.
I really want to share some of these amazing new “Web 2.0” sites with y’all readers. If you’re uninitiated, Web 2.0 is defined as sites that “let people collaborate and share information online in a new way.” You’re all familiar with MySpace and YouTube – but they’re just the tip of the iceberg. The iceberg is large, and hidden mostly under the ocean of wet webiness or something.
This is the ultimate Web 2.0 site list in existence, and here is a great Web 2.0 ranking list by marketing guru Seth Godin. Some of the sites I’ve been enjoying are Squidoo, Digg and Del.icio.us of which I’m attemptimg to learn the benefits as they relate to search engine marketing, SEO and SMO. I’ve just bought a desk microphone so that I can begin playing with Skype, and Wikipedia is an incredible resource that you may have already come across. But again – large piece of dangerous ice just out of eyeshot.
If I had to pick one that’s been flying under the radar I think folks will want to check out, it’s Meebo. If your company has a firewall, or IM applications have been disabled by your network administrators, stick it to them with this “web based IM that lets you log into your IM networks from any computer with a browser and internet connection with no firewall issues. It employs technologies that make it act more like a desktop application, which dramatically improves usability.” Improves, usability – yet is shockingly detrimental to office productivity. Still, very neat.
The internet is still in its infancy, and it’s only going to get more interesting and fun. This really is a great time to be alive, and I hope you click through and check out some of the next wave in web functionality. Even if it’s just so I don’t look like as much of a toolshed.
Watch this immediately. The best news is, it looks frigging hilarious. In case you’re retarded, click the MEDIA link when you get there. UPDATE: Found it on YouTube. You’ve no excuse now, retard.
Appetizer: If you could have a subscription to any magazine, which one?
I really like the British version of Loaded. It’s hilarious and extremely risquee. I used to buy them every month when I lived over there, and my favorite feature was called Porn-a-Likes. Readers would send in porn photos with ‘actors’ who resembled famous celebrities. Burt Reynolds was a frequent staple, as were various members of the Spice Girls. I think I once masturbated to a Scary Spice lookalike until I realized it was actually Terrence Trent D’Arby.
Soup: Describe your living room (furnishings, colors, etc.).
Filthy, yet large and extremely comfortable leather couches that used to be white. A tower of DVD shelves and the accompanying television and player. 2 PS2s and a big stack of games. Actually, this is a little silly. Click here if you’re really curious, and then immediately re-shuffle your life priorities.
Salad: What does the shape of a circle make you think of?
A flaming, stinking demon-infested vortex leading to the 12th sub-level of hell, donuts.
Main Course: Name 3 things in your life that you consider to be absolute necessities.
Food, water and shelter don’t count anymore? Alright… British television, Greek food and hockey. Strike what I said earlier about the re-shuffling. I’m obviously living in a glass Tudor mansion.
Dessert: What was the last really funny movie you watched?
Midnight Run was on a couple of weeks ago, and I watched it in its entirety even though it was edited-for-TV and I own the DVD. That’s a little strange. Regardless, it’s an under-appreciated classic which proved DeNiro had frightening comedy chops over a decade before Analyze This. Charles Grodin is also perfect as the mob witness Bobby is trying to take cross country. “Jack, you’re a grown man. You have control over your own words.” “You’re goddamn right I do, so here come 3 words for you – Shut the fuck up.”
“Being killed does not make someone Notable.” – Wikipedia
I saw this performance when it first aired in 1996 after the Cult of Ray came out. Frank Black and his annoying unwelcome twin, former MTV Matt Pinfield, chat mindlessly and strum respectively. I always wondered what this song was about, and dug this performance, so it seemed like opportunity knocking when I found it on YT. I also saw Frank live at the Beachcomber in Wellfleet Friday night, so all these factors collided into the first in a series of new and impwoved Wednesday Wadios – which will continue to ripple into the ether, like the opening chords of Hermaphroditos, week after week.
Shazeb was apparently an immigrant from Pakistan who moved to California with his parents around 1992. From the FrankBlack.net forum:
“Shazeb Andleeb, age 17, attended Narbonne High School in Harbor City, California, where he was kicked and beaten to death in the hallway on May 18, 1995. Renee Nieves and Christian Bremmer (Both 18) were two students who took part in the beating.” A forum member tried to make a Wiki about Shazeb, but it was deleted by the admins because being killed does not make you important. I can’t say I disagree with that, but I’m glad to have finally solved the mystery after 10 years. And, as Frank says in the video clip, Shazeb spoke 5 languages. That alone might just be worthy of a Wiki. So I hope the Wiki man lightens up in between games of Unreal Tournament.
Frank plays the guitar like Neil Young – crazy adept knowledge of the most obscure power chords with an almost mindless confidence behind them. He also loves to alternate between minor and major, and will frequently announce the change while he’s playing. I have seen him do this a few times live, and Friday was no exception. “OK, I’m gonna play you guys a song now that doesn’t depress you by ending in a minor“. I wanted to tell him I really didn’t mind. Not even remotely.
Speaking of remote, did I mention where we frigging were? Big surprises for me at the Comba were a version of Western Star which flowed seamlessly into the Pixies’ Where is my Mind? – but the real treat was getting to see an acoustic version of Massif Centrale, which has flown to the top of my favorites in the last couple of years. Screaming “That’s the sound… of your love behavior” with a Harpoon IPA in my hand and the completely inaudible sound of the waves licking the shore just outside was an experience I won’t soon forget.
Watch the clip and then have a look at the Frank Black at the Beachcomber (a pause for SEO) gallery. I desperately wanted to get a photo with him, and upon entering the bar I saw him to my left playing Sopranos pinball with some yunguns. I chickened out, but really didn’t want to be ‘that guy’. Anyhew, I’ll wrap this up lest I begin to sound like I’m lusting after Lance Bass or something. I tend to only write anonymously on the TigerBeat or Out forums when I do that.