Tracey Ullman as Arianna Huffington
My favorite part of Tracey Ullman’s State of the Union is her Arianna Huffington impression. Here’s a clip from the first episode, and it only gets funnier. Blogs and kisses!
South Park does Grapes of Wrath
In last week’s South Park, an nation-wide internet outage triggers a mass migration to Silicon Valley. This clip is a hilarious parody of The Grapes of Wrath. I can’t figure out how to embed the video, but here’s the link.
Kraftwerk Review
Kraftwerk hasn’t toured in the Twin Cities since 1975 and the StarTribune wasn’t particularly excited to welcome them back. I’m not sure what Kraftwerk could have done better to impress Jon Bream, but his article seems like a rehash of a Wikipedia article with some bitterness thrown in just for the sake of being a curmudgeon. Perhaps there is a reputation to protect, who can say? The Pioneer Press critic provided a more favorable review, but he does admit to being a nerd. This may be why I enjoyed this show immensely also. Nate Patrin at City Pages also reviewed this show favorably.
This show was an exercise in precision. Here’s how it went down: I was standing next to my gaggle of folks who came to the show. We were just off of stage left standing on the main floor having drinks and chatting. It’s true, we were thrilled to be there and we were very excited to see a foursome renowned for inspiring millions of fans and thousands of artists. A soft thumping beat started a little before eight o’clock. It eventually got louder until at precisely eight the curtains swept open and there they were! Four Germans and their laptops with on-screen eye-candy for the entire show!
Every now and then the oldest one sang. Every now and then the youngest one would smirk and almost smile, but not quite. It seemed as though they were slightly surprised that they actually had a crowd of people cheering for them. The youngest one was definitely almost smiling by the end of the show.
Every song was accompanied by on-screen video and graphics. The giant road whizzing by during Tour de France even made me slightly dizzy. The lyrics to Home Computer seemed a dated (I program my home computer / Beam myself into the future) yet they are a testament to the group’s influence and vision - the album Computer World was released in 1981. This was far before people thought of tinkering with PCs without an expert.
Their setlist was indeed Musique Non-Stop right up until the curtains closed. The crowd rallied for an obligatory encore and we saw movement behind the curtains. When the curtains came back we were treated to Robots!
They closed with Musique Non-Stop with each member of the group walking to stage left and taking a final bow. I think most of them smiled when they bowed, the youngster definitely smiled.
And once the house lights came up, our group was all smiles as we raved about the excellence of the performance we had just witnessed.
From the matching Tron gridline outfits to the performing robots to the exact timing of every facet of the show, this concert experience was a musical techno extravganza to cherish forever.
JPG Filename Fun
I wonder if the web dood realized how BIG her nipples were when this JPG was uploaded for this NBC Universal article?
This has inspired me to build my Gizmoduck suit prototype.
Shakespeare: WTF?
I just saw a the Gutherie’s newest production of Midsummer’s and (to get it out of the way early) I found it entertaining and well acted…Â however…
I understand that the whole play is a dream and that a fairy world can really get a set designer’s creative juices flowin’ but A GIANT MEATBALL? There was some argument among those I witnessed the production with that Titania’s automated-pacman-head-resembling dwelling was supposed to be a rock, albeit a perfectly spherical rock that with a rough (meaty) texture but I was not persuaded–it was a meatball.
Non-traditional settings are not uncommon in Shakespeare and I got over the meatball, I even found it entertaining. The singing however, was unforgivable. I have a rule of thumb with Shakespeare: One can cut or even add things to his plays if one desires but in the case of adding one must be replacing something else, as Shakespeare is not brief and one is not as good of a playwright as he was, the play get waaaay to long and boring. The songs were essentially Bill’s words repeated a few times to varying styles of music–and all were poorly done. There was one song that was obviously a 50s doo-wop parody and it was funny. I don’t think the rest were supposed to be parodies because the audience wasn’t laughing (although if someone would have started I’m sure others would have joined in (except for when Puck sang so terribly out of key that everyone just felt bad for him)). The worst of the music were the attempts (yes, more than once) at a hard rock/rap debacles sung by Oberon, they served to extend his monologues is such a way that everything he said/screamed was completely incomprehensible. He should have just done more of the spinning-rope-hanging-circue-du-soleil thing he’d obviously been practicing a whole lot.
There were a lot of BFA students acting in the show and I got the feeling that Joe Dowling had gotten in the habit of saying “YES!” to anything they suggested. This was really a problem with the mechanicals (which were very funny–but also very, very strange) from a random bit with a stuffed dog getting stepped on to a willingness to take the crossdressing humor to a racist extreme by having the adorable asian guy play Thisby and dressing him in both a school-girl out fit and a kimono.
I rarely don’t enjoy Shakespeare and this was no exception, so I encourage anyone to check it out but prepare for some strangeness. And seriously: What the Fuck?
Miscommunication results in cabinet delivery… True or not?
Threat level: Banana
This is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while.
Banana Mascot Scares People To Death
Obligatory Final Season BG Post
Galactica! Someone had to post something about it. Wired has it covered.