Item The First: Since you’re all cool and wonderful and “in the know” type folks (hey, you read this every day, right?) I’m sure you’ve all already seen this ultra-fantastic video. But just in case you’ve been too busy fighting crime and saving civilization, go watch it now! It’s one of those “why didn’t I think of that?!” things where it’s obvious once someone else has done it and now you’ll see everyone doing it, but this is the first that I’ve seen and it is just awe-inspiring.
Jos Stiglingh took a DJI Phantom 2 amateur drone capable of going up several hundred feet and (probably) a half-mile or so from the operator, attached a high-def GoPro camera – then flew it into the Sunfest 2014 fireworks display in West Palm Beach, Florida! The soundtrack was originally “Con Te Partiro” by tenor Andrea Bocelli and it was perfect — apparently there were copyright issues and now it’s got a hard-driving techno soundtrack that SoundHound can’t identify.
Either way, if this isn’t the most stunning video you see today, you’ve obviously had a much more interesting day than I have!
Item The Second: And then there’s that moment when you hear your computer going nuts, the “Windows Default Beep” sounding off like DingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDingDing… You figure that it’s probably smoking and tossing bits of the hard disk all over the room and you’re desperately trying to remember how recent your last full backup was, until you find that it’s just the freakin’ cat who decided to sit down on the keyboard and start bathing.
Item The Third: Has anyone else noticed that the ebola outbreak in Africa is still growing? Even three and a half months after we were told not to worry, “it’s quite difficult to transmit” and “the risks are quite small.” Now it’s blown way past all previous outbreaks to be the largest ever, both in terms of the number of people infected (over a thousand), the number of fatalities (632), and the size of the region showing cases (started in Guinea, has now spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone as well). To show just how bad it’s getting, the top researcher in Sierra Leone’s effort to combat the outbreak now has contracted the disease himself.
They will let us know when to worry, right? Or do we wait until we see Brad Pitt running past us, pursued by zombies?
Item The Fourth: As a long, LONG time fan of Weird Al Yankovic’s music, it’s great to see his new “Mandatory Fun” album hitting the charts at #1. We’ve seen him a couple of times in concert over the years and he really puts on a great show. His parodies are great and many of his original songs are wonderful. The “polka mashups” on many of his albums are sheer genius. He’s a treasure.
Over the last week he’s been releasing videos from the new album, eight videos in eight days. The first couple, “Tacky” (apparently one long tracking shot?!) and “Word Crimes” (superb and clever animation) were outstanding, and on “First World Problems,” one of my other all-time favorite people-who-happen-to-be-musicians, Amanda Palmer, sings backup.
Item The Fifth: Speaking of music, what’s your walk-up music? I asked this question a while back and I’m sure that you’ve all been giving it a lot of thought. Feel free to drop your answers into the comments, but for me, I think it would depend on my mood.
If I wanted to freak out the opposition and see if anyone was actually listening to the words of a song they almost certainly hadn’t heard before, I would use the chorus of Julia Ecklar’s “Temper of Revenge.” I would use the more upbeat and angry version off of the “Divine Intervention” album (which you can buy here, hint, hint). “Find me a horse / As red as the sun / Find me a blade / That will make their blood run / I will ride out at dawn / While the sun’s in the sky / So the buzzards can see / Where the bodies will lie.” Yeah, that would get their attention.
If I just wanted to be unconventional and weird, what better than some of the above-mentioned “Weird Al” Yankovic? Although it would be tough to decide whether to use one of his parodies (to see if anyone’s actually listening and notices that it’s not the original) or one of his great original songs.
But let’s say that those plans are nixed by either a stodgy team management or by the Prince of Darkness himself. What can I get away with for a more “conventional” choice? After all, they’ve allowed “Sympathy For The Devil” and heavy metal tunes such as “Enter Sandman” have become routine. So, surely I could use something like Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves Of London” or Frank Zappa’s (NSFW!) “Dinah Moe Humm”
To push the boundaries completely, how about TonioK’s (pretty NSFW) “H-A-T-R-E-D” or The Nails’ (yeah, a great song, but NSFW) “Eighty-Eight Lines About Forty-Four Women”? Or go completely to the opposite extreme (as Josh Reddick of the Oakland A’s did) and use something like “Defying Gravity” from “Wicked” or Dan Fogelberg’s “Same Old Lang Syne”?
What mood would I be in today?
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 