Sunday Rainy Day FunTime Post (Minus Rain)

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin.

Recent fun (mostly video) items to pass on . . .

Video and commercial director Ron Winter's keyboard triggered collection of drums and "dance music" sounds. Indulge your inner beatmaker by creating new backing tracks from this playable collection of cliched, obsolete sounds that will probably become hip again two years after David Bowie starts playing with them five years from now.

From Smearballs, the inexplicable "Sweatin' Like a Farm Animal, Cool as a Daisy":

The Three Stooges still owed Columbia several shorts on their contract at the time Shemp Howard died, so the films were completed with a "Fake Shemp" (a somewhat largely accepted bit of film terminology now, thanks to Sam Raimi). Here's most of the Stooges footage that features a Fake Shemp (comedian Joe Parma):

Motörhead's "Ace of Spades" as re-imagined through the miracle of Microsoft Songsmith:

What R2-D2 is actually saying throughout Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace:

"The Short and Simple Story of The Credit Crisis," a thesis design project by Jonathan Jarvis, about 10 minutes, in two parts. Part One:

PART TWO HERE

I miss Falco (and I miss cheap chroma-key music videos that looked like this):

(alternate video for this song HERE, which I hadn't seen before)

Recently, thanks to the book Rip It Up and Start Again by Simon Reynolds, I've been going through an obsession with the post-punk era, and (connected but not always the same thing) the post-Sex Pistols work of Johnny Rotten/John Lydon. Here are two favorites from one of the most hypnotic frontmen in popular musics (the second featuring the fine fine superfine Mr. Africa Bambaataa):

And finally, courtesy Gawker, the "BREATHTAKING DESIGN STRATEGY" created by The Arnell Group for Pepsi.

Pepsi spent good money, many millions and millions of dollars, on the creation of this new version of their logo, and the accompanying campaign, so obviously, it had to be justified with an extensive document that says more than "we think this is an improvement on the logo that will continue the brand recognition while being more attractive and bringing more sales." So what you get is an amazing plan that discusses the new Pepsi logo in terms of Feng Shui, the Golden Mean, Magnetic Dynamics, the Earth's Dynamo, and the Gravitational Pull of Pepsi. Really. No, really.

I wish I'd had this document handy before I created Everything Must Go; I could have REALLY used some of it for that show.

To see the full 27 pages of breathtaking bullshit, check it out HERE (it's a PDF file, so if those don't load well for you in a browser, download it and enjoy - it's easier to read that way in any case . . .).

More recently, Pepsi used The Arnell Group to rebrand their Tropicana line, and wound up with a gigantic failure -- do any of these people actually buy stuff in stores themselves . . ?

Today, after several days of medical procedures and running around for different theatre work in different places all around, it's time for silly fun at home. Hope you enjoy yourself today, too.