Peasants.

Cowboys are universal.



Ninjas. Damn.

And I do not ever remember seeing this combination before:



I guess that's literally universal with that last one.

Idoru.

"Put him in Camp Bucca"

It occurs to me that if you can make a comedy prank show out of planting fake IED's in celebrities' cars, then for all intents and purposes, the war has been won.

But I have to agree with Allahpundit that this rates a "99 out of 100 on the inappropriateness scale".

(via Hot Air)

Cowboys are universal.


These sorts of mash-ups amuse me to no end.

Like this sort of remake of Leone's magnum opus:


Heh.

Since music seems to be the topic today, I came across this item.

The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”

I wonder what they'd think of Johnny:

But then, maybe he had some idea, because he did come armed.

The internet meme that will not die. (warning: strong language)

Does sound like a lot to pay, though.

Normblog had 3 interesting posts today:

1. He notes the passing of the actress Jean Simmons. As Grim has a habit of noting the cultural ideals and what not of classic Hollywood films, it seems appropriate to note some of Simmons' movies:
Guys and Dolls

I have a soft spot for this movie, having been in the play in high school. Marlon Brando, unfortunately, cannot carry a tune to save his life.

The Robe

Nice smile as there as they're being led off to get martyred. This is the sort of movie that nobody would get caught dead making anymore, but seemed to be a staple of 1950's Hollywood.

Elmer Gantry

This is a interesting film that can be looked at a number of ways. I'll leave it each to get what they want from it.

But it shows I think, how Simmons was one of those 'visions of beauty' that Grim was on about.

RIP

2. Norm also notes Martin Amis behaving badly. Pleading it was 'just satire' is both weak and craven.

3. Norm also notes the British government behaving badly. Which I suppose, is nothing particularly new, but as he notes, the cynicism is rich. Neat trick if you can pull it off.

This little bit of fluff seems to be making the rounds:



I am always slightly astonished at the lengths people will go through for a joke. But it's still pretty neat for all that.

The original, if anybody wants to compare.

(via Glenn Reynolds)

Tell it, Victor:

I have some confessions to make, not because any of you readers are particularly interested in my views; but rather because I think some of you are in the same boat: Have you stopped reading, listening, watching, and paying attention to most of what now passes for establishment public or popular culture? I am not particularly proud of this quietism (many Athenians did it in the early 4th century BC and Romans by the late 3rd AD), but not really ashamed of it either.

Yeah, that's about what I feel these days, too.

(via Instapundit)

I keep saying it sounds better in the original German.

But hey, it is a snappy tune.

I keep telling people that you couldn't make this shiat up if you tried.

Apocalypse porn.

The Wall Street Journal has an article on a new wave of disaster movies.

"A flood of postapocalyptic stories is now headed toward movie theaters and TV screens: Expect to see characters fending off cannibals, picking up day-to-day survival techniques and struggling to maintain their humanity amid the ruins. Previous waves of pop-culture disaster, from the Atomic Age paranoia of “War of the Worlds” to Watergate-era flicks such as “The Towering Inferno,” have depicted calamity in stunning detail. Many of the new projects, however, actually skip the spectacle of doomsday. Instead, they’re more fixed on what goes down in the aftermath."

This sort of stuff generally annoys me, since it is typically the product of some depressed writer, now trying infect the rest of us with their wretchedness:

“For me, I feel like I live in an apocalyptic world with global warfare, a recession, and resource scarcity,” says Jesse Alexander, writer and executive producer of NBC’s “Day One.”

Manup, Jesse. It's not that bad. The government isn't drafting your spoiled, whitebread, middle class butt and making you storm Iwo Jima.
But I also see this sort of thinking from time to time on plenty of blogs, (and comments on blogs), by people who really ought to know better. Whether it's black helicopters, Jihadi Nukes, H1N1, or ACORN activists, there are too many people out there who think that the end of the world is nigh. The end of the world has been predicted before. It did not end then, and it isn't going to end now.

Take a ride.

I'll bet this is a lot funnier to me than to others around here.

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama expressed frustration Wednesday after members of his cabinet failed to recognize his allusion to the 24th issue of the comic series Savage Sword Of Conan during their first major meeting together.

I read "The Savage Sword of Conan" pretty religiously.

Added the president, "For the love of Crom, am I the only one here who wants to keep the U.S. technologically competitive?"

Heh.

I hate blood sucking nazi zombies.

Now this is fun:

Introducing over 175 Movie Posters of Classic War Films that are Outstanding Reproductions in Original Colors.

Enjoy.

Update: link fixed. (I think. Works for me, anyway)

Trolls among us.

In the late 1980s, Internet users adopted the word “troll” to denote someone who intentionally disrupts online communities. Early trolling was relatively innocuous, taking place inside of small, single-topic Usenet groups. The trolls employed what the M.I.T. professor Judith Donath calls a “pseudo-naïve” tactic, asking stupid questions and seeing who would rise to the bait. The game was to find out who would see through this stereotypical newbie behavior, and who would fall for it. As one guide to trolldom puts it, “If you don’t fall for the joke, you get to be in on it.”

Today the Internet is much more than esoteric discussion forums. It is a mass medium for defining who we are to ourselves and to others. Teenagers groom their MySpace profiles as intensely as their hair; escapists clock 50-hour weeks in virtual worlds, accumulating gold for their online avatars. Anyone seeking work or love can expect to be Googled. As our emotional investment in the Internet has grown, the stakes for trolling — for provoking strangers online — have risen. Trolling has evolved from ironic solo skit to vicious group hunt.

The article is disturbing on several levels.

Clever lads.

If this isn't proof that the UK is overrun with surveillance cameras, I don't know what is.

One of the most difficult things for a DIY label to do is to create an engaging music video on a shoestring budget. The Get Out Clause has found a novel way around this problem using a combination of Manchester’s state of the art CCTV system and a little knowledge of the Freedom of Information & Data Protection Act. The Get Out Clause set up at various locations around Manchester city centre where they knew there would be CCTV coverage and performed their new single Paper. The footage was then requested under the Freedom of Information & Data Protection Acts and a video was cut together in their home studio.

What's also telling is that all those cameras don't seem to be doing anything to reduce the crime rate, either. At least somebody has found a use for the things.

(via Art of the Prank)

Who makes that now?

Listen:


Or this:


Or this:


Or this:


I'm sure you'll like this:


How about this:


Or this:


Or this:


Can't forget this:


So I say lots of people are making that now. Most of those clips have dragged the music out of the movie, but I think that's similar to playing the overture there without the rest of the opera.

But let's consider Wagner again: Listen to Tannhauser, and you're listening to 1845.

Let's go back a bit:


That's 1724. And I'm going to make a wild ass guess and say Wagner never heard that. But you just did. (Maybe Wagner did hear that, but I betting not because I don't think anyone was playing the Viola de Gamba in 1845 in Germany, in a style of music written a century earlier, in France, for a French King.)

And why did you hear that? Its the technology.

Let's go back another 100 years:


I wonder if Wagner ever heard Monteverdi. Anybody know if Monteverdi got performed in mid 19th century Germany?

And go back even earlier:


I'm sure Wagner never heard that. But now we have.

Now watch these guys mash it up:


Looks pretty fearless too. I wonder what they've heard that influenced and inspired them and how they heard it--and who are they going to inspire someday? Sure, it isn't Wagner, but hell, he was a genius. I bet if Wagner was alive today he'd be making films.

Its the technology part everybody misses here. Its part of the problem with 'classical' music in the 20th century. The original article walked right past it:

We all know that the invention of recorded sound around 1900 made possible an extraordinary dissemination of the riches of the classical repertoire – largely composed for the rich and powerful – to the mass of ordinary people. On the gramophone, the radio, television and, subliminally and hence more powerfully, through the movies, the classical sound in all its variants (even the supposedly rebarbative confections of the Second Viennese School) has insinuated itself into the culture at large. Never before have so many people listened to, or liked, so-called classical music. Yet this extraordinary triumph has culminated in a malaise, a feeling, widespread in the musical profession and elsewhere, that classical music is in crisis and that things have never been so bad. Classical music feels abandoned, left behind as history has moved on, sulking in its tent as the real cultural action happens somewhere else.

(emphasis mine)

Through the technology, everything old is new again. There is so much of it, that one could not listen to it all. And because we are all different, we can now follow our different likes. And through the technology, we don't have to go to an opera house to listen to Piercello play Tannhauser. We can record him and listen to him while typing our blog posts.

So what's been lost? Its not so much lost as it is found. We as listeners have access to all styles of music from all history now. And other cultures too. All because of the technology.

UPDATE:
Grim asks "Where are the geniuses like Wagner now?" Which is a fair question (although I'd not call it a "problem" per se).

I don't have a answer, only a hunch. And that hunch is that those geniuses are out there, but they're doing something else. What? well, what ever they want to. The time and place that Wagner grew up in was a more circumscribed culture than was now exists in nearly any Western country Maybe any country. Perhaps he's playing on his xbox right now. I'm not sure.

As to what happened in the 20th century--well, there were close to 100 million people killed off before their time, and who knows what they would have done. Those thread were snipped. One cannot know what would have happened.

Also, musical tastes and forms have changed. Wagner was writing for an orchestra, which is just one kind of musical form. When Piercello gets back, perhaps he can give us some idea of how that has changed over the years.

Or take Jordi Savall, the guy in that video you so liked. He's not composing anything new, he's reviving old stuff. he maybe arranging it, and intrepreting it, but its not really the creation of "new" music, the way it would be if he say, wrote an new opera about the Reconquista or something, even if was in the style of Monteverdi. And that idea there, the revival of the old--especially in terms of music developed in the last century, and to my observation that was new. Before, the old went out style and stayed that way, for the most part.

I googled this phrase: "revival of ancient music" and look what popped up:
WASHINGTON LIKES OLD TUNES.; A Revival of Ancient Strauss Music Due to Mrs. McKinley. (Open the .pdf file) That was in 1899, and Strauss' "Blue Danube" is described as "Ancient". (And notice that the Marine band was chucking Tannhauser aside to play Blue Danube). The New York Times thought it was noteworthy enough to comment on it. Think about that for a minute.

And if this wikipedia article on Early Music Revival is anywhere near accurate, although it started in the 19th century, it seems to have taken off with the advent of recording, and is described as 'fully underway' in the 1950's. When you could record anything you'd ever want to record. To reiterate: this had to have an effect on 'new' music.

"I know it when I see it".

American Digest takes a look at...well...something I am finding hard to describe. I'm no stranger to "unconventional" (a neutral enough a word) notions of conceptual art--I am mostly amused by it and typically mock it unmercifully (you probably don't want to be around me in an art museum, and I and some like minded friends nearly got tossed out of the National Gallery once) mostly because its all been done already and more competently, by people who had much better reasons to be unsatisfied at conventional society than anybody does nowadays.

I can't really add anything to the commentary over at American Digest, other than to concur that yes, there is no bottom, and the abyss is real, and be careful how close you get to the edge.

UPDATE:
American Digest has noted that Yale is announcing the whole thing was a hoax. "Performance Art" if you prefer. Well, for my part, I think that there are easier ways of announcing to the world what a miserable wretch one is, than the method employed by Ms. Shvart.