I’m pretty excited for the Microsoft Kinect. Motion-sensing gaming with no controller! Sounds great, right?
And I’m sure it will be really, really fun. I’m excited to see all the different ways game designers use the technology. But the other day I was showing some of these videos to my wife, and I could tell we were both thinking the exact same thing. In addition to being really, really fun, this is going to really, really embarrassing.
Don’t let the title of this post fool you. It’s not that I’ve never enjoyed streaming something through Netflix; that’s a feature I use regularly. It’s just that it seems like nothing I’m ever really, really excited about watching is available. I always decide I want to kill some time by streaming something and then struggle to find something worth watching, as opposed to deciding what I want to watch and then being pleasantly surprised by its instant availability.
That changed today with NBC Universal’s announcement that they’re going to allow Netflix to stream a ton of their content, including Battlestar Galactica, 30 Rock, The Office, Friday Night Lights, and, the kicker…
I didn’t watch a whole lot of Sesame Street growing up, so for all I know, it’s always been this weird. But I keep stumbling on these strange videos from the show.
First came the Katy Perry collaboration, which, while still available online, was pulled out of the television episode in which it was supposed to appear.
I mean, I know they’ve done stuff like this before (I fondly recall Feist’s appearance from a couple of years ago), but Katy Perry seems like an odd choice. Don’t get me wrong; I’m a fan of hers, and I don’t really think there is anything wrong with this. But as soon as I saw her outfit and thought for a second about the unaltered lyrics of her honestly-not-Sesame-Street-appropriate songs I knew that people would be up in arms about it. Don’t the good folks over at the Children’s Television Workshop know how much people love to have fits of hyperventilation about stuff like this?
Then today I saw their parody of True Blood. It’s more benign than the Katy Perry performance, I guess, although I’m sure people can find something in it to complain about (vague vampire references = sacrilegious?). I was more just baffled by it.
I mean, I guess ostensibly we’re learning about rhyming? Is that the point? All I really took away from it was that grouches like mud. I know they know more about education than I ever will, but it seems like we might be worrying too much about entertaining the adults watching along with their children here.
[Update: Flavorwire has 10 additional Sesame Street parodies, including Mad Men and 30 Rock.]
Hey, if anyone knows how I can get a job in London with smart, attractive, interesting people making cool videos with an iPad, shoot me an email. Thanks in advance!
Seriously, I know great places near here to get lunch and everything.
[Dentsu London via Urlesque]
So, this has been floating around the internet for the past couple of days, and I have been doing my best to avoid it, knowing how I would react. I finally broke down and watched it today, and I don’t know what to say other than I feel a deep sense of shame after having my stomach reduced to a quivering, frightened mess by a YouTube video.
[Update: The video has disappeared. Your stomach is relieved.]
In the least surprising news of all time, Blockbuster, Inc. is declaring bankruptcy. As of now all of the talk is about debt restructuring and the like, but this is clearly a company at death’s door. With Netflix and iTunes and (the still sort of mystifying to me) Redbox, we all knew this was coming for the better part of a decade, right?
Oh, lawyer commercials. Initially hilarious, eventually depressing. Like this one.
[via Gawker]
It’s not particularly relevant to me, because I don’t live in Florida. Also, my wife and I love each other.
Seeing this reminded me of a local lawyer commercial I saw recently. Now, I’ve never seen A Few Good Men. I don’t even know what it’s about, really. But learning that the real-life lawyer that Tom Cruise‘s character (the one who prompted Jack Nicholson to yell “You can’t handle the truth!”) is based on is now an ambulance chaser…well, that made me sad.
Vodpod videos no longer available.Although I’m sure that both of these gentlemen are very good at their jobs.
Excited for tomorrow’s return of The Office? Not even a little bit? Man, you guys are a tough crowd. What about after watching this video?
[Update: The video I put up from Hulu expired, like, immediately after I posted it. And I can’t figure out how to embed from NBC.com. So here is a basic link to a worse, shortened version on their website. This is what failure feels like.]
[Second Update: I finally figured out how to embed video from places other than Hulu and YouTube! So the video is now available below. Plus, NBC put up the full version. It’s like a pot and pan set double bonus!]
Vodpod videos no longer available.I have to admit that it makes me feel sort of sad and out of touch when The Office parodies an internet meme that I wasn’t even aware existed. At least with the wedding dance I got the reference.
As I said in my previous post, all of the videos I took at Lollapalooza were pretty terrible. I didn’t have my Flip or anything too fancy, so I was just taking them with my digital camera, which doesn’t allow me to zoom in or out once I start filming, and also doesn’t have the highest video quality. Plus, I’m pretty unwilling to stand with my camera in the air for the entirety of what were, in most cases, my favorite songs by whichever band I was watching. I’d get one chorus recorded for posterity and then turn the camera off and enjoy the rest of the song in the moment.
Some people, however, are much more prepared/professional/devoted than I am. YouTube is awash in Lollapalooza videos far, far superior to my own. For the entry that had all of my personal thoughts on the shows, I wanted to only use my own photos and videos. But as a follow-up, I thought it would be nice to pick out some better representations of the artists I saw.
The New Pornographers – “Challengers”
Dirty Projectors – “Cannibal Resource”
For the third year in a row Johanna and I attended Lollapalooza in Chicago. It’s become a tradition and a great excuse to return to a city we love. (As I type this, I’m watching My Boys on TBS. Yes, I love Chicago so much that I’ll even watch My Boys.)
I thought I would share my belated thoughts on the festival, along with some photos I took and a few terrible, shaky, fraction-of-the-full-song videos that I took. Because who doesn’t love terrible videos?
Friday, August 6th
4:00 – 5:00 The New Pornographers
During the first act of a music festival I’m always relatively distracted trying to get my bearings and people-watch, so it’s a shame that we started things off on Friday with The New Pornographers, a band that I actually like quite a bit. I don’t remember much from their set. I know Neko Case was wearing a big floppy hat, and I know that they played a nice version of “Challengers.” That’s about it.
5:00 – 5:50 Dirty Projectors
Reviews of this performance were pretty mixed, and seemed to be less about the performance and more about how much the individual reviewer actually likes Dirty Projectors. Well, I like Dirty Projectors and loved Bitte Orca, and I thought they were great. The tempo of the songs was even less stable live, and several seemed just about to collapse before Dave Longstreth pulled everything back together. The erratic nature added a nice bit of tension and seemed to snap me to attention, which was good since I’d been sleepwalking during the New Pornographers.
Johanna and I really enjoy this stage because it’s usually easy to get pretty close to the action, and also because we’ve seen some of our best afternoon/early evening shows here (Sharon Jones, Santigold, Band of Horses).
Of Modern Proportions 