Dream Deceivers

A few weeks ago some friends and I were talkin' documentaries and listing some of our favorites. We all agreed that the Maysles were the kings of the genre (I fear Drew Barrymore's impending performance as Edie Beale), but I lamented the fact that I've never been able to scrounge up a rental or purchase of two movies I love and haven't seen in years. The first, "Cannibal Tours," is a scathing and alternately funny and depressing look at white tourists culture-clashing with natives of Papua New Guinea in the 1980s. It's far and away my favorite ethnographic film, as anthropology's only worth a damn when it's completely subjective.
Watch a quick, awesome clip here, more info here.

I was really, really excited to discover that somebody posted the other doc I've been wanting to watch again on Google Video. "Dream Deceivers" tells the story of two teenage boys in Reno who shot themselves in the face after getting really drunk and convincing themselves that the Judas Priest song they were listening to was subliminally urging them to do it. Remember when everybody was really concerned with subliminal messages? That was like a genuine anxiety gripping the nation. Anyway, the boys' families subsequently sued Judas Priest, and the film captures the trial and the life of the horrifically disfigured surviving teen. I just learned that the comic "Preacher" based the character Arseface on James Vance. It's virtually identical actually.

Watch the movie here. Anyone with even a passing interest in Judas Priest, 1980s metal culture, issues of personal responsibility, and/or music censorship will find it fascinating.

Gang Starr - Full Clip
EPMD - Headbanger

in heavy rotation

MGMT - Electric Feel

(buy)
MGMTspace
image via Flickr

They Live! Well, they WILL live, really soon.

Today, in What's Freaking Me Out Right Now news: msnbc.com has a slide show confirming my suspicions (granted, suspicions largely crystallized by reading Ghost in Shell) that Japanese people have gotten way, way too comfortable with robots. They're directing traffic! They're ballroom dancing! They're adding levity to your anxiety-fraught hospital visits! Whatever. Don't you fucking look at me, Toaster.

Then in their sci-tech section there's this article,"Killer Robots....Friend or Foe?," on the possible dangers of giving military robots autonomy:

On one side of the issue is Ronald Arkin, a robotics researcher at Georgia Tech who is working on a Pentagon-funded project to build a sense of ethics into battlefield robots - "an artificial conscience, if you will," he told me.
"The basic rule is to try to engineer a system that will comply as best it can, given the information that it has, with the laws of war," Arkin explained. "And it's my belief that eventually we can do better than humans in this regard."

Uh-huh. You can definitely do "better," totally...you sir, are a race traitor. Stupid humans and their incessant curiosity. Somebody stop Ronald Arkin before he creates Skynet!

Tokyo Police Club - Citizens of Tomorrow
This band is excellent live, you should go see them. (buy)

To My Boy - Tell Me, Computer (buy)

Radiohead - Paranoid Android (buy)

furry balls of anxiety

Sherbie: this is what gmail's target ad for me was today

http://www.puppypetite.com/shih-tzu.htmlGPB: hahahaha

thats made for you and (redacted) esp (redacted)

its like they Photoshop in extra-sad eyes

Sherbie: yeah I'll send it to her

GPB: definitely biggest laff of the day

there are so many of them and they are nearly identical

Sherbie: I know!

they're lil clones

GPB: new gchat pic

god i cant even pick which one looks the most dejected

they are literally on the brink of puppy suicide

It's been done, and done again, part 2

Nina ran a tight ship.



At first I didn't like this cover on general principle, and the majority of Feist's work sounds like E-Z listenin' for hipsters to me, but there's no denying this remix.

Feist - Sea Lion Woman (Chromeo rmx)

Moonshine

Last weekend I watched Danny Boyle's "Sunshine." I really wish I had seen it in theaters as it's one of the most visually stunning movies I've seen in a long time. It more or less completely falls apart in the third act, but it sure was preety.

The film reminded me of a conversation I had with someone last December about the lunar-landing conspiracy. I floated the idea, which I am by no means particularly attached to, that the landing or at the very least the documentation of such was a hoax. As proof to the contrary I was introduced to "Full Moon," the collection of NASA's master Apollo negatives and transparencies acquired and rescanned by photographer Michael Light in 1999. The resulting prints do arguably offer incontrovertible proof of the mission (would the government spend the time and mind-boggling expense on creating thousands of "production stills," the majority of which had never been previously available to the public? Possibly, yes, but it seems doubtful). It's impossible to look at the photographs and not automatically associate them with the hundreds of sci-fi representations you've seen of the exact same thing. What's more, Light's perception is likely just as informed by "2001" and its ilk as ours is, and the restoration process required many aesthetic choices on the his part:

Because of the scientific and documentary survey nature of the Apollo images, I have been especially careful in my use of powerful digital tools to not alter them beyond what any good printer might do in making a fine exhibition print. Naturally even this required a host of aesthetic decisions for each image -- for which I am solely responsible -- but in each case I let the information on the film lead me, not vice versa. Color was the most demanding challenge. As explained in the book's essays, the physics of human color perception on the Moon are more complex and subjective than on Earth. Film itself adds its own peculiar characteristics to a recorded image, and the type of film used and processing methods also varied from mission to mission. Color accuracy is further complicated by the fact that in the process of duplication, NASA's masters often gained a blue, green, cyan or yellow cast that simply is not present on the original film. My guide has been the fact that lunar soil, when held in the hand on the Moon's surface, appears as lighter and darker shades of gray.

I guess I just find it kind of remarkable that space travel is such a huge concept to wrap one's head around, given the enormity of the cosmos and how rife with possibilities the exploration of it is, and yet the visual lexicon of space travel — both real and fake— has been so incredibly consistent. Which I suppose is partly why some people don't find it credible at all.

Questions of scientific verity aside, these pictures are fascinating and I believe them. You can see twelve of them here.

William Safire - In Case of Moon Disaster
(more info)

Air - Kelly Watch the Stars

The Orb - Little Fluffy Clouds

Sheeeeiiiit

So I finished the Wire Season 4 last night, and it was definitely my favorite despite being entirely Avon and Stringer-free. Everything the show sets out to do in terms of portraying the ailing city of Baltimore and its unwieldy infrastructure completely works this time around. The school system stuff, the mayoral race, and the drug war plots all interwove seamlessly. Amazing. Now I just have to wait 18 years until the final season comes out on DVD and hope certain friends of mine can finally grasp the fact that I don't like it when they tell me about major happenings/deaths on episodes I haven't seen yet. Sshh!

I've been listening to "Roc Boys" a lot at work lately and I watched the video the other day, which costars 'big paws on a puppy' Michael. This made me curious about how many other hip-hop videos Wire cast members have been in and it turns out someone did a roundup a few years ago (the answer is many, many videos and this list isn't even current). Also looked up the dude who plays Slim Charles, wondering if he's a rapper because his voice is such gravelly goodness. Not only is he a disc jockey in DC, he's a singer in a go-go band! DC go-go is something I'd never heard until I visited a DC native I was dating in college, and one of the few musical genres in which every song sounds exactly, exactly the same to me. Except for this one, obviously:

E.U. - Da Butt (2008 mix)

Watch the "Roc Boys" video here.

I'm Out for Presidents to Represent Me

Dead Prez - Hell Yeah (Pistol Pete rmx)

(buy Dead Prez)
Pistol Petespace