{"id":3790,"date":"2007-01-12T01:36:14","date_gmt":"2007-01-12T09:36:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2007\/01\/12\/3790.html"},"modified":"2007-01-12T01:36:14","modified_gmt":"2007-01-12T09:36:14","slug":"video-roundup-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2007\/01\/12\/video-roundup-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Video roundup"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Here's a bunch of videos that have come to my attention lately.  Too sleepy to be sure who pointed me to most of them; sorry.  I should probably have split this into two posts to keep the number of links manageable, but I'm too sleepy for that too.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2006\/10\/17\/3706.html\">A while back<\/a>, I linked to a video of a Stanford Juggling Research Institute video.  A while later, the SJRI posted <a href=\"http:\/\/video.google.com\/videoplay?docid=-7176310636805638266\">another video<\/a>, of the same show at a different venue, the IJA Championships.  The reason I'm linking to this second video is that in the first one I linked to, they dropped clubs a little more often than usual; the performance in this second video is smoother, and won them the silver medal at that championship. Of course, the performance is pretty astonishing (and funny) in both videos.<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of amazing three-person physical performances, Lola points to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=HSnowOgaFEY\">Solid Potato Salad<\/a>, a clip of three sisters named Ross performing a song about, well, potato salad.  But the amazing part is what happens after they're done singing, around a minute in.  Contrary to the blurb on the page, this video is not an ad for potato salad; one of the commenters says that it's a clip from the 1944 movie <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0036673\/\"><cite>Broadway Rhythm<\/cite><\/a>.  Dunno if that's true or not, but the Ross sisters were indeed in that movie, according to the IMDB.  Anyway, there comes a point when I can no longer visually parse these performers as human; they start to look kind of alien.  Very very impressive.<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of three-person musical performances, here's Australian comedy group Tripod performing their song \"<a href=\"http:\/\/video.google.com\/videoplay?docid=1329362959167995041\">Make You Happy Tonight<\/a>\" at a comedy festival. It starts getting funny (and geeky) about a minute into it (but you should start listening from the beginning for full effect).<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of geekiness, here's <a href=\"http:\/\/video.google.com\/videoplay?docid=-9136575504838642038&hl=en\">PlayStation 3 vs. Wii<\/a> in the style of the PC vs. Mac commercials.  Um, neither the video nor the audio on this one are entirely work-safe.<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of silliness, Naomi points to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ATXV3DzKv68\">Helsinki Complaints Choir<\/a>. \"Finnish artists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen collected the pet peeves and angst-ridden pleas of people in Helsinki and then composed this choral work around the list of complaints. Music composed by Esko Grundstr&ouml;m.\" With subtitles in English. Lyrics probably aren't exactly work-safe if your coworkers speak Finnish.  This one's six and a half minutes long, plus thirty seconds of closing footage, plus an inexplicable minute and a half of blank screen at the end.  So you can safely stop watching when the singing ends.<\/li>\n<li>A few years ago, BMW got eight high-profile film directors to create a series of short films\/long ads for BMW with the collective title <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bmwusa.com\/uniquelybmw\/bmw_art\/films\">The Hire<\/a>. I sort of thought I had seen all of them, but after James Brown's death, Noda pointed to <a href=\"http:\/\/video.google.com\/videoplay?docid=-6346567075405238576\">The Hire: Beat the Devil<\/a>, which among other things is a fun reworking of the Robert Johnson\/\"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.deltahaze.com\/johnson\/legend.html\">sell your soul to the devil at the crossroads<\/a>\" story, featuring Gary Oldman as an over-the-top Devil, James Brown as \"Mr. James Brown,\" and of course Clive Owen as Driver.  See <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0338768\/\">IMDB page<\/a> for more info.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Nq55R7R-qfw\">If programmers made planes<\/a>.  (This ad turns out to have roughly the opposite point from what I was expecting.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=A8VTmy5clHk\">Trailer for new documentary <cite>Nerdcore for Life<\/cite><\/a>.  Geeks do hip-hop.<\/li>\n<li>Thanks to Josh for a video <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=f2XQ97XHjVw\">taking the cornstarch-and-water thing to a whole new level<\/a>.  (This may be even cooler than the cornstarch\/water stuff that I <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2005\/11\/13\/3239.html\">linked to<\/a> a year ago.)<\/li>\n<li>In a sort of vaguely similar vein: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=fpI4EiGACo8\">ferrofluid<\/a>! (See also <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kodama.hc.uec.ac.jp\/project\/protrude.html\">still images<\/a>--thanks, j7y!)<\/li>\n<li>You know those cute little pushpin-like info markers in Google Maps?  Here's a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=tvHeNC5VJw8\">life-size one<\/a>.  See also <a href=\"http:\/\/www.datenform.de\/mapeng.html\">stills and info<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Thanks to Twig for a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.glumbert.com\/media\/roleplay\">cute political ad<\/a> (definitely not work-safe) featuring a couple who's into roleplaying, in the sexual sense.  Sort of.  Heavy-handed but amusing.<\/li>\n<li>On a more serious note, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0N5wzr5xeWI\">Oxfam did a Starbucks-protest video<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=dteTrEM7mlM\">Starbucks responded with a video of their own<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Last but not least: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jet-man.com\/actuel_eng.html\">Jet-man<\/a>!  A Swiss pilot, Yves Rossy, has built a personal-sized set of rigid jet-powered wings that enable him to fly.  (The text on that page seems to be a little bit confused about Batman--I think they meant Superman, but then why mention Bob Kane?--but just ignore that part and watch the video.)  It's sort of like <cite>Rocketeer<\/cite>, only it's real, and involves wings. Well, and he can't yet do a vertical takeoff from the ground; he needs to jump out of a plane first.  The video doesn't give as much of a sense of what it's like as I would like, but definitely cool. There's also a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bEXxkWXncuo\">video with more discussion<\/a> (in French, iIrc).  You'll believe a man can <em>really<\/em> fly.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s a bunch of videos that have come to my attention lately. Too sleepy to be sure who pointed me&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-net-video"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3790\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}