Links + Text = Electric Boogaloo!

What an amazing line-up.
This is what Woodstock should've been. I wonder if I have that weekend off?

Tricky Goes Booty/New York Style
Wow, apparently Tricky took a bunch of tracks off of his upcoming album (mentioned here a few days ago, see "Foxy Brown, Method Man... and Tricky") because DJ Muggs (Cypress Hill) didn't make them hip-hop enough! The description of the album in this article has my attention. I'm definitely interested in hearing Tricky mess with the bass/East Coast formula, UK B-Boy style.

The "Praise You" Dance Steps Page
This is a blow-by-blow account of the Torrance Community Dance Troupe's carefully choreographed routine to Fatboy Slim's "Praise You," as seen on MTV in the guerilla-filmed video. Now, you too can rock the b-boy stances.

Ya Wanna Be Hackers? Code Crackers? Slackers?
When we all bought the new Weird Al album at work (I just tell people I "keep the internet plugged in"), I explained to the fellas that this was actually a parody of the Puff Daddy-vs-Dave Grohl Rock Remix of "All About the Benjamins." Like most decent people, they honestly didn't care.

I Will Refrain From The Obvious Croc Dundee References
The Aussie folk hero that the Crocodile Dundee movies were based on died today after shooting at a lot of people. I hope this proves to the rest of the finger-pointin', nose-in-the-air known universe that spontaneously shooting people with guns is not an exclusively American phenomenon. I can neither confirm nor deny that he was listening to KMFDM, but I can tell you that it doesn't seem likely.

I'm going to draft my condolences to Skippy right after I finish with this log entry.

You go, Tigergirl!
I was going to tell her she had a cool page, partcularly since she put the kibosh on that javascript effect with the little dots orbiting the pointer, which was probably pretty awesome when she first put it in there.

But I really don't think she wants to hear it from a guy like me. I like getting mail on my webpage, hint hint, and I would imagine she does too, but she really sounds like she's sick of hearing from single guys. Crikey, it must be heck to be that popular. Where are my web groupies? Would be groupies: if you're single guys, I appreciate the interest but you're wasting your time. Go chase Tigergirl some more.

Good lord, I just said "Crikey."

Celestial Reasonings
This is one of those online diaries, but it's really, really dramatic. Whenever I try to keep a diary, or a journal if you wanna be manly about it, it seems like whatever winds up in there is always the worst-case scenario of what my life is like. Or the best-case. In real life, I'm nonchalant, but in the diary, every little damn thing is Greek tragedy. So that's why, several times, I've tried to start journals (on paper), and that's why, several times, I've stopped journals. Because if I can't read that stuff a couple of years later, and I can't, why would I want everyone else to read it?

Anyway, this person's diary is particularly passionate and heartfelt at times. A couple of her entries closely echo the way I felt a while back, the last time I was rebuffed.
I'm not going to bore you with many details here, but when I was with her (not the author this entry is linking to-- never met her -- this is someone else I'm talking about here), even just when I was talking to her, I felt mature, I felt invincible. I really thought this was... it. But it wasn't to be, for a variety of reasons. Her reasons.

It's easy to stick my head up high and say "her loss," but for a while there it was easier to sit on my bed, stare off into space, and sing along to Painted from Memory by Elvis Costello. I probably don't need to point out right now that I live alone.

Uh oh, I'm starting to ramble. Okay. Check out her page. Particularly this one, where our narrator comes this close to a cheap encounter with a coworker.

The author of the site would probably not want me to point out that I found her page at losers.org.

Unfortunate Movie Headline
Speaking of that other movie -- you know, the one that didn't have Julia Roberts in it -- I "finally" got around to seeing Blair Witch last night. It struck me as what a horror movie by Woody Allen would look like. Granted, there was no upper-class New York City sensibility, but the jittery Handycam footage was reminiscent of "Husbands and Wives," and the entire cast took turns playing the Woody Allen role.

Its lasting impressions will be twofold: a renewed interest in ultra-low-budget film the likes of which we have not seen since Clerks cooled down, and also a series of interminably bad lampoons of its opening text, reproduced on the splash page for blairwitch.com and featured on this poster. These parodies will turn up in places including, but not limited to:

* Linux utility programmers. ("In December 1999, three Enlightenment hackers... a week later their source code was found.")
* Particularly literate raternity rush t-shirts. ("In the fall of 1999, a few dozen Penn State freshmen...")
* The inevitable quickie parody film involving either or both Keenen Ivory Wayans and Leslie Nielsen. ("In October of... oh, f--- it")

In fact, here's a free one to start the ball rolling:

In July of 1999, three wealthy socialites disappeared over the ocean near Hyannisport, Massachusetts, while flying to a wedding...

A year later, their footage was found.

So if you liked that headline I linked to several inches ago, you will love this one, which was so profane I had to save it for antiquity.

GIFS or JPEGS => ASCII Pix!
This is the coolest thing I've seen in ages. Give it the web address of a gif file and click a button and in seconds you have an ASCII version of said file and you don't need to download a thing. This Bruno Jobard guy is a cgi GOD.

A Biography of Geek Hero, Gordon Freeman
When the Black Mesa nuclear research facility went blooey and hideous mutant freaks overran everything, who saved the day? Gordon Freeman, that's who. Although Gordon has a flattop haircut, he also has a coffeehouse goatee and he appears to take his eyewear cues from Buddy Holly. I ask you, who can't get behind a hero named GORDON?

My Favorite E-Postcard Site
Covers of pulp paperback novels with matching headlines. I love these. "I did it for the kicks, man."

Wipeout 3 Track Listing
Wipeout XL was the coolest game I played for ages on the PlayStation. The sequel promises to be quite good. Sasha is well regarded in the UK and he's down with my man BT so I've got high hopes. And the Chemical Brothers and Underworld are back, so, bonus!

Jennifer's blinkin' kinks and riddles of the Sphinx
Jennifer was kind enough to link to me on her new Pitas Pita page. Um, did I say that right, Jennifer? Her excellent page has many links. Go there and check out the Fade To Black site, then find the Celebrity Outtakes for an excellent spew from Casey Kasem.

To my visitors from Jennifer's pitas page, which is probably about all my visitors: I won't usually have so many rap links.

Occupational Hazards
Jeez, I'm glad my brother got out of this biz when he was still young and had his health.

Favorite Song for Sunday night, 8/1: Garbage, "When I Grow Up"
I still like that Moby track, but you can't hum it the way you can hum this.

New background!
Whipped up in about 10min. with Photoshop. I'm full of useless skills. Go check out my Walt Disney World College Program pages if you haven't already -- link above.

If you ``liked'' PetGate, you'll ``LOVE...''
I found this lady's website through the guestbook of the webmaster for WebRing, which curiously downplays its Yahoo ownership. I'm surprised they aren't all "Yahoo!Webring.org" about it. Anyway, lots and lots of people use Sage's guestbook to inappropriately post their pleas for technical support. I hope pet abuse doesn't become a recurring theme in my weblog.

Method Man, Foxy Brown, and... Tricky.
The gradual opposite-of-Pangaeaesque shift of all the record labels into one MegaLabel has led to Tricky winding up on Def Jam, who intends to market him like a Def Jam arteest and get him the same kind of love from the Urban music market that he gets from all the music critics.

I think Tricky's records could keep DMX awake at night, but we'll see. Personally, I think you've got an uphill battle, trying to win over all those haters who swear that British people can't rap. (Who died and made y'all the Electrifying Mojo?)

Portuguese NWA Fan Page (en Ingles)
Yeah, NWA as in Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and those other two guys. I captured the image at the bottom of the first page and threw it up on my desktop here at work as screen wallpaper. Check out "your girl O'Shea" mean-mugging on the left-hand side! (Execution of translations stolen from Tabouli, but at least I'm man enough to admit it.)

As long as we're talking about hip-hop and portuguese, here's a couple more links to sites I made purely for my own amusement:

O.P.P., by Naughty By Nature, translated into Portuguese and back to English again.

It's Yourz, by the Wu-Tang Clan, same dilly-yo. I grabbed both of the above pages from Lyrics.ch before it died and was reborn with a fraction of the number of songs. I fully expect an angry letter from the Portuguese Recording Industry Association of Portugal any day now.

The New Moby Single, Bodyrock
This is the best jeep jam I've heard since the Freestylers (see below). And it's from MOBY. I figured we'd lost him to the Land Of Dreams or whatever. All I can say is, keep the guitars and pump up the dirty beats, my friend. There's a realaudio link here. Buy the single if you find it, the two Dean Honer mixes are worth the price of admission.

PetGate
This gentleman was prowling the non-profits block at the Ann Arbor Art Fair last weekend. I finally remembered to check the site out! This is very sad. Initially I thought he was marketing gates to keep your pet from falling down the stairs ala baby gates (not that I've ever seen a household pet fall down stairs), but this is something much deeper. Maybe not a conspiracy, but definitely a crying shame.

Warning: Artistic Nudity
"The Networks" need TV shows with more nonwhite characters. Uplifting plotlines. Nonsexual nudity? Minerva Walker to the rescue!

Soon would be a good time to admire the rest of Mr. Vipond's empire, too.

Phoenix Article on "Palm Pilot Fetish."
A fetish? I don't know. But then again, I do keep it in my pocket and have been known to whip it out to impress friends and acquaintances. And my last ladyfriend regarded it with bored amusement. So, really, the similarities are almost disturbing.

EWF New Album News
Note that:
a.) This album isn't coming out on Pyramid, the EWF imprint, but on Refugee Camp, the Fugees label.
b.) EWF are suing said imprint.
c.) Philip Bailey is nowhere to be found in this article.

CONCLUSION: Remember that episode of the Simpsons where the aliens come down and masquerade as Clinton and Dole? They got Maurice White.

Starsky & Hutch
There are "better," "more complete" S&H sites on the web, but why would you want to "learn anything" over there when you can crash your browser here? A candy-colored, animated-gif explosion! The webmaster's somewhat sketchy grasp of English makes it extra readable. Same guy has an excellent Emergency! website, too.

The Happies
A web companion to Maggie's daily e-mail letter. It helps to put her daily dispatch in context. Many, many pictures of her and her friends -- one or two special appearances by... me!

(I was delighted to discover that you do not need to use the tilde [~] to access her site. I wonder if she knows that?)

The Slashdot code download page
The fellow that created Slashdot, the techie news site, wrote the code he uses to drive his news system. He's made it available to people to make their own sites in the same style. Check out GerOL, all about increased life expectancy, whose moderator made me aware of this. Or Lilithfair.org, which deals, as you might expect, with women musicians.

I want to download and fool around with the code for some upcoming stuff. Not that you asked.

Microsoft Windows Rules The Universe
My God, he's right.

I'm dumping my Umax mac clone tomorrow and signing up for the Wintel army.

George Foster's Life Story - A Book In Progress
I found George years ago through a link from a mailing list. He's an important voice on the web, although I'm not sure who he speaks for. He Speaks Out On Whatever The Hell That Bugs Him. That's what you need to know.

Freestylers Audio Clips
Clips? Whole tracks! Yeah, they're in realaudio but they give you an idea of why you should really go buy the CD immediately. Last I checked it was on sale at Best Buy.

In particular, I recommend "Don't Stop," one of the tracks that will forever conjure up memories of Summer 1999, and which plays when you click the "themesong" link on the side of this and every page, until I find some other song I like better in RealAudio.

Cardhouse.com's Burning Man site
Mark Simple, cardhouse.com honcho, has been a pal since back in the day. Every summer for yeeeears he's invited me to go to Burning Man with him and every Labor Day weekend I had EMU orientation or something to do. Well, this year... it's on. It's so on.