Don't Be Harshin' On Malcom Gladwell

February 3, 2009 by xerexes

Anyone else a fan of Merlin Mann's video series (Most Days)?  He's entertaining in a short attention span kind of way.  Anyhow I have to shake my head and sigh at yet another not-that-funny attempt to belittle Malcolm "New Yorker" Gladwell -- this one kind of shows that Mann didn't really get the last book.  And to compare Gladwell to Thomas "Suck On This" Friedman... well that's almost fightin' words man.  Anyhow - here's the video:

Most Days (2009-01-30) from Merlin Mann on Vimeo.

It's a Muerto Man's Party

January 30, 2009 by xerexes

Oingo Boingo - my favorite band for a loong time.  I always liked the Mexican folk art influenced design around the Dead Man's Party album and this video has bits of it too.  Oingo Boingo was pretty big in California -- I was always unclear on why the rest of the world didn't fully appreciate the genius of the Elfman.  In fact I guess to many people, I suppose Oingo Boingo is associated mainly with the Rodney Dangerfield movie Back to Class (or maybe the song they wrote for the Anthony Michael Hall movie Weird Science). 

Very young Robert Downey Jr in this video (clipped from the Back to Class movie) - I just saw Iron Man on Vudu this week.  That guy is always interesting - what a good actor.  It's kind of cool he didn't kill himself with all of the drugs he took and we get to see some more work from him.

And hell might as well link to the Gong Show with an appearance by the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo - the precursor to the actual band Oingo Boingo.  The Mystic Knights were more of a cabaret think, led by Danny Elfman's brother Richard.

It's Tricky with Penn and Teller

January 30, 2009 by xerexes

Holy crap - the video for RUN DMC's It's Tricky has Penn and Teller.  I don't think I saw this at the time.

I liked RUN DMC a lot for awhile.  I'm not sure if it was the first rap I really heard and liked -- I was 15 when their first album came out and that seems late to me but memory is a funny thing...  I'll have to scan the memory cells a bit more..

I Do Not Think HBO Understands the Meaning of that Word...

January 25, 2009 by xerexes

Techdirt has a post up on HBO's efforts to scour the internets of footage of the Inaugural concert.  There are more details on all things legal over at this Talking Points Memo post - which is the Inaugural committee owns the copyright and HBO has a 6 month license to it (an exclusive license I suppose).  This is a sensible arrangement - HBO gets the right to broadcast it (and thereby chipped in money for the show) and then the footage is freed up for the historical record.

But it's the footage that the copyright is in - not the event itself.  At least without seeing more documentation (which is unlikely) of contracts and releases, all HBO appears to have is a 6 month license in the copyright of the footage it shot of the performance.  Good questions for a law school exam include:

1.  Being only a licensee of the footage, can HBO go after copyright infringement or must the Inauguration Committee prosecute such claims?

2.  What's fair use of the footage -- which after all is a public event...

3.  What copyright claim does the Inauguration Committee have on any footage taken of the event NOT by HBO but by attendees in the audience?  Did the attendees agree to any terms and conditions upon entering the restricted area (where any non-HBO footage would have had to come from)?

And the greatest music video of all time?

January 22, 2009 by xerexes

I nominate Spike Jonez' video for Buddy Holly by Weezer.