Episode One of "Look Around You," entitled "Maths"
Robert Popper is a British comedy writer, producer and performer. With Peter Serafinowicz, he co-created the brilliant educational film parody Look Around You. As "Robin Cooper," he wrote a series of bizarre letters to obscure professional and interest organizations which became the book "The Timewaster Letters," which was a best-seller in the UK, and has just been released in the US.
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This post is going to be sans-graphics, but fulla-info.
If you live in Seattle, I hope I'll see you this weekend at Bumbershoot. And if you can't come this weekend (or if you can), I hope I'll see you at Sketchfest Seattle later in September. Guests at Bumbershoot include Janeane Garofolo and The Human Giant, and at Sketchfest we'll have Dan Savage.
If you're in New York, don't miss Will Franken's "Grandpa, It's Not Fitting" at Ars Nova on Wednesday night. Will is an amazing solo performer who made his name in the San Francisco theater world. He essentially does one man sketch comedy, and what isn't hilarious is always fascinating -- you really go for a ride.
If you're in Los Angeles, don't miss 826 LA's Falltime Yukfest September 10th. I'm really proud to be sponsoring this amazing show, with Tim & Eric, Jimmy Pardo, Al Madrigal, Bill Burr and a bunch of other great stuff. Proceeds benefit 826 LA's literacy programs.
Finally, if you're in San Francisco, and you miss Louis CK at the Punchline Weds-Sat, September 3-6th, you're a fucking idiot. Seriously, just fucking go. There is no better standup in the world right now, and you should count your blessings that you could ever, ever get to see a show like his at a place like the Punchline. Tickets here.
Thanks to AST's Big Box of Money for this fantastic sketch featuring Mr. Sylvester Stallone and Mr. Will Ferrel. Subtitled in French for you French Sly nuts.
We continue our journey into The Sound of Young America's vast audio archive with this program from The Sound of Young America Classics.
Whoa. This show is loaded with fun stuff. Only a few of them really tie in to the theme, but hey! Rockets! Dan Piraro is the creator of Bizarro. Josh Kornbluth is the host of "The Josh Kornbluth Show". We talk to Josh about his one man show "Ben Franklin: Unplugged" in celebration of the 300th anniversary of Franklin's birth. Also, Andrew Baron and Amanda Congdon are the co-creators of Rocketboom the world's most popular vlog site (that's right, I said vlog).
Please share your thoughts on the show in the comments section!
Jesse and Jordan are joined by the delightful comedian and actor Al Madrigal, who demonstrates his wide array of impressions, which all sound, to be frank, pretty similar. They also discuss The Hills, vatos with gelatos and much much more.
* Review the show on iTunes. * Do you have a dispute Judge John Hodgman can solve on a future broadcast? Email it to us! Put Judge John in the subject line. * Have personal questions for Jesse and Jordan? Call 206-984-4FUN and tell us what they are! * Would you like to play Would You Rather with us on a future episode? Email us or give us a call at 206-984-4FUN.
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Scott Simpson of You Look Nice Today (one of my favorite podcasts and 1/2 of the Monsters of Podcasting) has been really busy with his fucking flip cam lately.
At least he's teaching. Above: guitar technique. Below: packing technique.
Seun Kuti is the son of Nigerian Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti, and the leader of his band, Egypt 80. Their new CD, called Seun Kuti & Fela's Egypt 80, is Seun's first collection of original songs. The albums seven tracks mirror his father's commitment to the liberation of African people in Nigeria and elsewhere.
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The strange and remarkable film Hands on a Hard Body, about a contest at a Texas car dealership wherein the last entrant left touching a truck gets to keep it, is available on Google Video. Entrants get periodic bathroom breaks, but as the contest stretches past 24 straight hours, madness starts to set in. A really amazing film, as recommended by Dr. Manhatta in the Docs thread on the board.
Kottke.org adds that the contest was suspended in 2005 after an entrant killed himself after pulling out.
In this clip from The Peter Sarofinowicz Show, the marriage process is captured perfectly. I can't even begin to tell you how closely this tracks my personal experience with marriage, courtship &etc.
Filmed at La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s masterpiece. Was thinking I have much in common with the great Spanish architect. We both defy convention, he with his breathtaking designs and me by wearing a lobster bib in the shower.
Podthoughts by Colin Marshall: Technology in the Arts
I'm no fan of irony, but I find this one delicious: I loves me some media consumption, but I'm not the target audience of most of the media I consume. (Or maybe I am, which leaves open the question of why C-SPAN, Dwell magazine, Prime Minister's Questions, The New Criterion, Charlie Rose and The Economist are squandering so much time and money targeting 23-year-old essayists/podcasters.) Podcasts, however, don't tend to have target audiences — most seem content to define their demo as "whoever clicks the subscribe button" — but the one I'm covering this week does. It's Technology in the Arts [iTunes link], and if you run a small- to medium-size arts organization, you'd do well to give it a listen.
Needless to say, I don't run a small- to medium-size arts organization — not since my atonal symphony orchestra, critical gender semiotic performance art theater and roving mime troupe all fell through. But no matter! As noted here before, I still draw massive quantities of enjoyment from listening to discussions from within subcultures I don't know much about; it's all kinds of fun to try to decipher what's being said, and to pick out the shiniest pearls of information that I wouldn't have gotten through my usual avenues.
an applied research center at Carnegie Mellon University that investigates ways technology can improve and enhance the practice of arts management and, when appropriate, develops technology solutions and services that meet critical needs in the field. We partner with nonprofit arts organizations from all artistic disciplines from around the country. In addition to online software tools, we provide consulting services, informational blog and podcast, and an annual conference. Our team is made up of geeky artists and arts enthusiasts with a passion for streamlining arts management processes through intelligent use of technology.
And even though I'm not currently a manager of the arts, that's right down my alley — and in this technology- and creativity-doused 21st century, whose alley isn't it down? Every two weeks, Pittsburgh-based hosts Brad Stephenson and Jason Hansen go around talking to people either residing at the center of the big art-tech convergence or making that convergence happen, occasionally taking the show on the road to interview other tech-using art people — and sometimes art-using tech people, from whom I'd like to hear more — at conventions held in far flung lands like Denver [MP3] and Waterloo [MP3].
One of my favorite aspects of podcasting is that it allows the listener to "meet" a wide range of new people doing neato projects who they wouldn't normally run into. Technology in the Arts serves up quite a few of those, from the founders of Artlog.com [MP3] to the president of the Association of Arts Administration Educators [MP3] to the co-director of the art-space Future Tenant [MP3]. But Brad and Jason also exchange words with a few people I'll bet you do know, like Max Fun pals Merlin Mann [MP3] and Jonathan Coulton [MP3], as well as Max Fun punchline Leo Laporte [MP3] — of Laporte on Computers.
Listening to these conversations, I find I've been picking up bits and pieces of information about a lot of cool stuff of which I hadn't previously been aware, like Bjork's ReacTable synthesizer, the handy-sounding Zoom A4 recorder and the old-time-radio-filled Archive.org. (Okay, I've known about Archive.org since its inception. But I like to hear it brought up.) I've also learned that I'm very glad that I don't have to manage technology for arts people. From what I've gleaned off this podcast alone, arts people sit, on the technophobia scale, somewhere between J.D. Salinger and the Unabomber. (I rarely meet tech people who seem artphobic, though — I wonder why that is.) So I guess I raise my Asahi to anyone man enough to unite art and tech, no matter the results.
The producers of Technology in the Arts fit into that group, and their podcast easily scores an A for concept. (I could go into my well-worn rant about how the convergence of art, technology, business and science — or perhaps exposure that the divisions between them were always artificial — is the most important phenomenon of our time, but I, uh, won't.) The conversations can be a little clunky and something has to be done about that synth-xylophone theme music, but hey, I'm not going to complain.
Vital stats: Format: interviews and between-host commentary Running since: October 2006 Duration: ~30m Frequency: biweekly Archive available on iTunes: most of it
[Freelance podthinker Colin Marshall soared like the glorious eagle to the top of the dog-eat-dog podcast-reviewing game, but blew his fortune on a series fix-and-flip scams, a brutal Elmer's-glue-sniffing habit and unslakable thirst for blonde Asian hookers, dying derelict in 1987. Reach him at colinjmarshall at gmail. Discuss Podthoughts here, or submit your podcast for the next by-Max-Funsters column here.]
"Rust, a fungus disease, sapped the
wheat crop. Production of durum wheat dropped from the 10-year average
of 31,547,000 bushels a year to 4,976,000 bushels."
