It's Not Easy Being a Green Junkie

NIN's Hurt, as performed by Sad Kermit.

(Probably NSFW: language, Heroin Junkie Kermie, general wrongness)

The AccordionGuy blogged this before I did. That doesn't make it right.

Kermit the Frog is beloved by millions. Not just liked. Beloved. How could any star, amphibious or not, handle that kind of pressure?

Sure, it's easy when you start out. Do a little kids show, get noticed, go on a few talk shows, pretty soon you get on a bigger kids show, you're the king of children's TV. Then you get a variety show. You're the star. You're on top of the world baby! But do you think this is easy? 5 years of tantrum throwing co-stars, Hollywood has beens, the constant pressure of a live show, and everyone wants you to be that funny, cheerful muppet they expect you to be. Sure, there's love affairs, movies, and all the trappings of fame, but is it really enough? Enough to compensate for that empty feeling inside?

No one talks about the dark years, after Jim died. About losing your voice. Lesser muppets told all, but not you. No one knows what it's like. To be the sad frog. to be the bad frog. Behind white eyes.

Just a Quickie (Apache)

Apache

Sorry posting has been sporadic. I need to take some time to get ahead of the game again. Regular posting will resume shortly.

In the meantime, here's Apache by the Tommy Seebach band.

The Uncensored Reply

My Box

(NSFW: language, references to Canada's National Symbol)

The Internets work at lightning speed.

How else to explain this reply to the Justin Timberlake / Adam Samberg video I posted just before Christmas. Well, OK - It had been on the air a few days before that, and I'm actually posting this a week after it first hit the net, but I'm saying that the Internets work at lightning speed, not me personally.

So anyways. She calls herself Bunny. Her voice sounds pretty good. She's been blogging about it. She has a box. For You.

I usually post only one thing a weekend, but since I was lazy on Tuesday, here ya go. There'll be something else tomorrow.

An Uncensored Christmas

A Special Box from Saturday Night Live (NSFW: language)

Kelly Z sent around this one. I dug up the uncensored version elsewhere.

Andy Samberg is someone I've been following for a while. He and the rest of the Lonely Island crew are one of the main reasons SNL doesn't suck as much as it used to. On SNL the trio now focus on shorts, often music videos, and they've started to develop some real street cred for the show online (virtual street cred? GTA cred? who knows). Of course, NBC responded by sending cease and desist letters to posters, but they're new to this online game.

This music video featuring Andy and guest host Justin Timberlake, is about the ultimate gift a man can give his woman to show his love is real. Check it out.

This simplifies my Christmas shopping enormously.

Viewer Mail

Okay, so in an effort to accommodate my legions of adoring fans (alright, Adam, my legionnaire of vague tolerance) I've decided that if someone sends me a vid and I haven't figured out what to post tomorrow, up it goes (subject to personal taste, whim, the terms and conditions of my web provider, and other considerations - YMMV).

In other words, blame Adam for today's vid.



William Shatner's Rocketman.

[SPOILERS FOLLOW]

Bernie Taupin is a widely admired lyricist. His collaboration with Elton John is legendary. So when a legendary lyricist comes on stage to introduce someone re-interpreting his greatest work You Know It's Going To Be Something.

And Bill Shatner does not disappoint. Other, lesser artists (Kate Bush for example) would have chosen to sing a song such as this, but not The Shatner. The Shat knew that it was The Power of Acting that would make these lyrics sing. And so, he takes the stage, his dapper tuxedo representing his bold sophistication, his dangling cigarette a sign of jaded ennui so universal it requires no explanation. He begins to speak, and the power of his Acting is so great, the music isn't even needed until the poignant moment when he says he'll be "high! As a kite by then." As the early lyrics of the song progress, his regret at having to leave the earth is palpable. Never have these words been more compelling. And just as you think this couldn't possibly be more powerful, in the middle of the first chorus, through the power of chromakey, Shatner is joined onstage by another Shatner! The resulting by-play between these two facets of of the Rocketman's personality, as represented by not one but two Shatners, their performances separated by time but appearing as one, is one of the most unbeleivable moments in Science Fiction Award Banquet history. I won't even try to let you know what happens next, but just imagine for a moment, what could be better than two Shatners?

This is truly a masterwork, and a fine addition to my stable of video clips for you, the viewer. Adam sent me another link, which I hope to use next week. Forget what I said about blaming Adam for this. It's all me baby. Oh yes.

He Only Loves His Collider

This picture (courtesy Wikipedia) is believed to be the first picture ever placed on the web. The subjects are believed to be the first band on the web. Ladies, Gentlemen, and the rest of you, I present Les Horribles Cernettes.

Sometime around the beginning of the Gayer Nineties (as in much more gay than the Gay Nineties), a young woman working as a secretary at the CERN labs in Switzerland was upset because the long shifts her physicist boyfriend was on were making it difficult for them to get together. To get his attention, she enlisted the help of Silvano de Gennaro, an analyst in the Computer Science department at CERN to write "Collider" a song about the perils of loving a high energy physicist. They performed it at the CERN Hardronic Festival to get his attention. The song was a hit and is now acclaimed as "the national anthem of high energy physics", at least according to the band. Speaking of the band, it formed subsequently around de Gennaro and took the name as a backronym from the initials of CERN's largest experiment, the soon to (finally) be completed Large Hadron Collider.

So why all this history, and where's the video? Keep yer shirt on, pilgrim, and let me 'splain. I don't think I can properly explain the current state of internet video without talking about what has gone before. So, from time to time I will be dredging up some hoary old internet artifact, probably in some obscure format (speaking of which you'll need Realplayer for this one).

So back to history. The CERNettes were a hit with the hard physics community, were invited to perform at all manner of Phyisics conferences, Nobel prize parties, and the World'92 Expo in Seville. AT the '92 Hardronic Festival they were seen by a guy named Tim Berners-Lee, who was working on something called a World Wide Web, whatever that was. After the show he asked de Gennaro for a few scanned photos of "The CERN girls" to publish on his web thingie. She later said "I had only a vague idea of what that was, but I scanned some photos on my Mac and FTPed them to Tim's now famous "info.cern.ch". How was I to know that I was passing an historical milestone, as the one above was the first picture ever to be clicked on in a web browser!"

So now on to the video. What I've dug up is a music video for "Collider", from the band's site complete with CERNettes in prom dresses do-wopping their way around what might be the largest physics lab in the world. And if that's not hot I don't know what is. And the video is... Here.

Straight Up!

Music video time.

"User Generated" video being what it is, low budget is given a new meaning. Hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on crew, lighting, sets, costumes, dancers and choreography are replaced by one guy against a beige wall with an acoustic guitar.

Acoustic covers can often sound better than the original. Certainly Torontoist thinks so, having included this in their better-the-original cover song list. "If this was a Jason Mraz, Ryan Adams or Jack Johnson track, it would be an indie smash. Believe it." Graphic designer Dave Werner has found the song's inner street cred.

Straight Up was written by Elliot Wolff, a fairly prolific music producer from the eighties. So far I haven't been able to track down a bio. If this song sounds familiar, it's because it was originally popularised by Paula Abdul. Yes, that Paula Abdul.

Dave Werner has a blog and a pretty cool portfolio site. Check 'em out.