Every year, in order to raise a large portion of the school budget, St. Andrews Catholic School holds Taste of the Town. Local restaurants love it because it brings new customers to their establishments. And the people like getting a taste of the restaurant’s best for a buck or two. Bob Natale, my brother, is the big-shot weekend dj at the Easy Listening station in Myrtle Beach , South Carolina (WEZV-FM). He’s in charge of publicity for this event. Bob’s the Orson Welles of Myrtle Beach, writing, directing and narrating the video. Listen to those dulcet old-time radio tones.
Bob’s dream, and I’m sure it’s the dream of many of those sweet children of the school, is for Rachael Ray to come down this Fall and be the Taste of the Town celebrity judge. I’m throwing the whole weight of the GammaBlog organization behind this quest. Rachel, it’s for the children.
After viewing this collection of Jaffee’s fold-ins in Mad Magazine, I think he definitely helped mold my earliest political thinking. I remember the harsh ones shown here from the Vietnam war years. From month to month you never knew if you’d get a silly celebrity joke or hard political commentary, until you actually folded the page, or had fun trying to join the left and right panels in your head. The New York Times has an interactive web version of a bunch of Jaffee’s illustrations which mimics nicely the paper folding reveal of the punch-line (drag with your mouse).
I like Monty Python, but this movie completely missed my consciousness. This is a funny clip from Eric the Viking, about when and when not to go berserk. Though it gets only 30% on Rotten Tomatoes, I just added the movie to my Netflix queue.
I’ve been using Netflix for the past couple of months, and I’ve got to say that I’ve been impressed. On Monday their website went down, and the video I was expecting yesterday did not show up. This morning they sent out an email apologizing for the outage and offering a 5% rebate for this month’s service. This is the first time a video did not show up on time. In general if I drop my video in the mailbox before noon the next day, I get the next one in my queue two days later. That is: get the movie Tuesday, return it Wednesday, get the next one on Friday. I find this an impressive collaboration with the often maligned US postal service. This is a shout-out to them as well. If I am diligent about returning the videos the next day I can reliably get four videos a week with my two-at-a-time $13.99-a-month plan (working out to roughly 90 cents a rental with the tax). A price increase is planned for June 15th.
There are some negatives. You may have to wait awhile for new releases. I’ve had No Country for Old Men and I Am Legend at the top of my queue since long before their release dates and am being told to expect a long wait for both of them. Also the discs are sometimes a little scratched up, but so far none of them have been unplayable. In general it is a pretty good deal, but you might want to stick with your local shop for the latest videos releases.
By the way, their tip of cleaning glitchy discs with window cleaner is a good one. And their suggestion algorithm is excellent. I’ve found it to be very helpful in finding videos for my queue.
The opening theme of Italian television’s “Studio Uno” (1961), the black-tights version, not the first episode’s scandalous opening featuring the naked legs of the lovely German twins Alice and Ellen Kessler. This dance routine apparently fed the fantasies of a generation of Italian men. The choreographer was Don Lurio, an American, also known for tap-dancing while rhythmically tearing newspapers. The twins were still doing the dance in 1990.
Fan video of the 30th anniversary of Star Wars. Tour the massive merchandise section, watch the stage shows, see a taped greeting from Lucas, unveil the Yoda Stamp, and best of all, see a marching band playing the Darth Vader theme followed by Imperial Troopers of all nations. Just like being there, only better.
“The brain is a little Python script I wrote that tags each picture with GPS coordinates that it gets live from my Wintec WBT-201, and hopefully when you play the video you see the position of the picture on Google Maps. The picture taking part runs really well and I could conceivably leave the laptop in the trunk, but I like to see the pictures as they’re taken. And besides I like to watch everyone freak out when they see the computer in the front seat, they think I’m doing some kind of deep scan on their cars for overdue parking tickets.” – Wrybread
