Whole whack of videos to share with you nice people tonight, concluding, as always, with my own.
First we have this totally kickass feel-good inspirational video :
What I love so much about that video is that it is a story of relentless optimism and ingenuity. Everything Richie wanted to do as a child was greeted with the answer “yes, you can do it. Now let’s figure out how. ”
That is such an inspiring combination of the ideal and the pragmatic that I can’t help loving it. We need more people in this world with that same attitude.
Problems CAN be solved. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you they cannot. They are sad people with limited minds who would prefer to think of something as impossible over facing the possible change to their world-view if it’s NOT.
I want all the young, bright, idealistic designers and inventors in the world to see this video and see what happens if you completely dedicate yourself to solving problems.
And what happens when you are willing to imagine a seemingly impossible outcome and then cut your own path in order to get to it.
Anything is possible when intellect, knowledge, vision, and determination get together.
Next we have this. Pay attention to the center top of the screen during the first part of this vid to see a clue as to what is happening.
Oh, and fullscreen is best.
Holy SHIT! Did you see the size of that boulder? When I first saw this video in animated GIF form, I was so surprised by the landslide that I actually ducked.
You know, just in case rocks and debris came shooting out of my monitor to hit me.
Truly, the age of the dashboard camera is upon us, and with it scores of extraordinary videos taken on what for the driver was just another ordinary day.
This is what happens when people can document their lives like never before. We can all share our once-in-a-lifetime experiences, and thus enrich one another as a whole.
Imagine what it will be like when we all have Google Glass on all the time!
But enough of the wholesome world of the triumph of the human spirit and cool videos of natural disasters, and delve into the realms of horror available only to the deviant monsters who make Cracked lists.
These are, honest to god, the most disturbing ads in the history of television.
Like this one, which seems to have sprouted directly from the nightmares of David Cronenberg’s children.
Trust me, if I ever have a nightmare like that, it won’t be coffee I reach for, it will be a loaded pistol.
Or then there’s this big dose of 70’s drug inspired clusterfudge.
It’s like they got the message that the groovy thing was to make stuff that looked and felt like an acid trip) seriously, the 70’s WAS drugs…everything was stoned), but they missed the part where it’s supposed to be a GOOD trip, not a “do not take the brown acid, it is bad” trip.
I am sure that sometime soon, I will be startled out of deep sleep by a voice whispering “Dacron Polyester”.
And speaking of whispering, this is, I kid you not, the most terrifying ad I have seen in my forty years of living on Earth.
So of course, it’s for a child’s toy.
In 1965, the most popular doll in the world was Chatty Cathy.
This was…. a competitor.
Holy crap that’s scary. I am seriously terrified by that doll. That is so disturbing that it would make a killer ad for a 70’s evil doll horror film.
Hard to believe there is anyone who did not realize how creepy a whisper can be, but apparently at one point, there was enough of them to not only make this ad, but to put it on actual television, presumably deliberately where innocent little children would see it.
And as this was a simpler and more innocent time, people had fewer defenses against the sort of thing back then. Pity the poor little girl who runs to their Mommy because a superficially normal and harmless doll ad scared the bejebus out of them and now they want to burn every doll they have.
Oh, if you are wondering what ad was top of my nightmare fuel charts before this, it’s this one.
And again, it is intended for children.
Suddenly, the Teletubbies seem quite normal and restrained by comparison. The world of children is terrifying.
We need something sane and wholesome to cleanse our mental palates of all that ill-conceived accidental horror. I know…. let’s watch one of my videos full of dick jokes and the like!
Trust me, this will seem like a Norman Rockwell painting of a teddy bear picnic by comparison.
To answer the question that literally none of you have been asking, the bits of sweet sweet music I have been using for the intros and outtros lately are not, alas, my own compositions.
Maybe someday…. but not yet.
Instead, they are some samples I, um, borrowed from a site that preserved these samples from the ancient days of a device called the Mellotron.
The Mellotron hails from 1963, and it worked on a very simple, clever idea.
You take the keys of a keyboard and hook them up to a set of tape players that are all set to play at different speeds. Put the same bit of tape into all the tape recorders, and you have a very primitive version of a sampling keyboard, and have the sound of a whole orchestra at your fingertips.
Sure, it was a lot of work, but it was the best you could do before the age of Moog brought us all into the wonderful era of FM synthesis.
The people behind this particular set of Mellotron samples were studio technicians, and hence had lots and lots of musician friends who could come in and play something short but amazing for them.
The samples are absolutely gorgeous, these people clearly were no mere techs, they had a very keen ear for what makes music beautiful, and the face that you can totally tell that they were on tape at one point only adds to the appeal for me.
I have been trying to make music with those samples, but it’s very hard to work with samples that rich.
And now you know!