Remembering the King of Pop

Bidding farewell to Michael Jackson, I reflect upon my memories I have of the Hoosier pop star. I don't think I truly appreciate his music until much older, but what I remember most growing up was his videos. No one has, or probably will, gain the status that he did to produce music videos (or short films) with that much production value. His films/videos were collaborated by the likes of Martin Scorsese, John Landis, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Stephen King, Stan Winston, and Rick Baker.

There are so many that are memorable, I've decided to include a few of the lengthy and possibly less visible ones - Enjoy

Captain EO (1986) - High production film that became a 3D Disney attraction for a number of years

*If you have 3D (red/cyan) glasses lying around, here's the original 3D video*




Moonwalker(1988) - 93 min feature length film with its most notable song Smooth Criminal. (features film split in 11 parts, ignore last video)


Ghosts(1997) - Co-written by Stephen King and played before his film Thinner



Bad (1987) - Classic song, classic video


Thriller (1983) - Video speaks for itself


Still not enough MJ? This link contains 81 videos (music videos, some redundant)

Stan Bush's 'The Touch' Transformed

With Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen releasing in a month, a song has been redone for the upcoming soundtrack - the infamous song 'The Touch' by Stan Bush. Featured in the soundtrack for the original Transformers movie in 1986 (the one where Optimus dies), the song has become a cult classic and so much so that it was also sung by Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights. Let's hope Weird Al doesn't try to remake 'Dare to be Stupid.'

'09 'The Touch' or Sam's Theme:


'86 'The Touch':


Dirk Diggler's 'The Touch' from Boogie Nights:

Spinal Tap: Unwigged and Unplugged?!

I'm really bummed out I just found out about this, because this tour just passed through Seattle on Monday. Unwigged and Unplugged features Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer performing acoustical sets as well as Q & A sessions. I didn't like A Mighty Wind a whole lot, but there's no denying this trio is quite funny and musically talented. No Marty DiBergi here, but it looks like a great tour.

A Preview of Unwigged and Unplugged:


View the Spinal Tap Reunion from 1992

Stonehenge!



Big Bottom

The Tax Day Cometh...

Happy Tax Day! You can smell the sarcasm emanating off of that statement. Hope you haven't waited till the 11th hour. I'm glad school financial aid submissions were due awhile ago so that it forces me to do my taxes early. Here's some April 15th goodness....

Taxman from The Beatles cartoon circa 1967:


Tax Day for Springfield. I'm sure it's still like this, but technology makes it a lot easier these days. Wish they had the part where Flanders does his taxes:

Got a Nautical Themed Pashmina Afghan.....

Because The Lonely Island dudes released their first album today titled Incredibad. Not completely familiar with that name? You've probably seen former Channel101 trio's Saturday Night Live Digital Shorts, as they produce the usually out of studio sketches as well as write for the show. I'm convinced they've kept SNL sort of afloat recently since the departure of Will Ferrell. They were responsible for that aweful movie known as Hot Rod - I'm thinking they should stick to short comedy sketches for now. Anyways, Incredibad is comprised of many songs that have been displayed as Digital Shorts in the last few years.

Here's a few of the songs featured on Incredibad. WARNING! Explicit language and material. If you really want to see the uncensored videos, you can see them on their youtube channel, but I always have to chuckle when audible 'bleeps' are added for censoring.

I'm on a Boat (featuring T. Pain)


Lazy Sunday (featuring Chris Parnell)


Ras Trent


D*** in a Box (featuring Justin Timberlake)


We Like Sportz


Space Olympics


J*** in My Pants


Natalie Raps(featuring Natalie Portman)

Japan + Freddie Mercury =

This performance of I Was Born to Love You:

Return of the Conchords

New Zealand's fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo is making its return to TV in January. The premiere for Season 2 of Flight of the Conchords has been released early.

Check it out!

The Soul for Getting Down

October 31st is the day that many people celebrate Halloween. I've never been a huge fan of Halloween or horror movies or things that go 'BUMP' in the night. One 'ghoulish' video that's always been a favorite of mine is Michael Jackson's Thriller, which is iconic in enough of itself but is even more prominent around Halloween. Last weekend, those in Washington took part in a worldwide event called Thrill the World, which attempts to get as many people/zombies across the world to dance to MJ's ballad simultaneously. The record was broken with 4179 people across 10 countries.

Want to learn how to dance to Thriller? Here's Thrill the World's Step by Step Video Guide!

Here's Michael's original video 'Thriller'

Here's the 165 Seattle zombies that showed up to contribute to the record:

KazooKeylele - 'Nuff Said

....plus he's singing that awesome song again.

Singing It Like You See It

So someone's been making 'Literal Video Versions' of 80's music videos, starting with A-ha a couple of weeks back. Tears For Fears' Head Over Heels was just released recently. Click the links for each song title to see the original video.

A-ha - "Take On Me"



Tears For Fears - "Head Over Heels"

Another Reason to Hate Def Leppard

I'm not a huge hockey fan, but Def Leppard was dumb enough to flip the Stanley Cup upside down.

I = V/R

We went more over Ohm's Law in one of my classes today, as applied to circuits - somehow reminded me of robots. Robots are going to take over the world. Reminds me of this Flight of the Conchords song:

Communication Strategy by Sir Mix-a-Lot

The rapper from Seattle gives us a good strategy that would work in aural rehab.

Revelation in Music Parody!

When I flew down to San Jose last week, I took Alaska Airlines. For the first time my flight actually took off on time and landed early with no fuss! The plane I took looked like what you see here, has the Genie from Aladdin. Inside the plane, while boarding and exiting the plane, Disney songs are constantly being played throughout the plane: soft enough to penetrate the mind, but not loud enough to be disturbing or obtrusive. For some reason 'Be Our Guest' from Beauty and the Beast kept replaying in my mind, a tune I 've not heard in ages from a movie I haven't seen in ages..... until I recently put 2 and 2 together. Mr. Burns from The Simpsons sang the song 'See My Vest' in his attempt to make a vest out of Santa's Little Helper's canine offspring. It's the same melody as the Disney film. It took me this long to figure this out!

Be Our Guest




See My Vest

Sing Along, Just Follow the Bouncing Dog

The last few months, I've spent many days on the road and many a night in a motel room for work. Like cable channels TNT, USA, TBS, like to show the same old movies over and over again, so does HBO. There's Something About Mary seems to play anywhere I had HBO. I always thought the movie was funny when it came out, but never got back to it and now parts of the movie keep playing over and over in my head, like some of the Farrelly brothers' films. One thing that keeps plaguing me every once in awhile is the credits of the film, with The Foundations' 'Build Me Up Buttercup', which is quite funny. Apparently they made a karaoke version when it came out on home video, with the same footage from the end of the movie (including the new member of the J-E-T-S, Brett "Faahhhvrah"):

Counting Down......

This last Thursday, I bid farewell to my job at Washington Audiology. It was a great experience and now I look forward to going back to grad school at UW in a couple of weeks. Coming up before then, the first NFL Sunday begins tomorrow for '08 and should be exciting. I'm going to a wedding next week as well and I always thought the song 'Final Countdown' by Europe, which is played during the final minutes/seconds of a sporting event, would be a fitting song to play instead of 'Bridal Chorus' or 'Canon in D major' as the bride comes down the aisle. The 80's arena rock song was recently rejuvenated during the show 'Arrested Development'. Here's a great cover of the song by a cello trio Melo-M.

Resurrection of Roundball Rock

Today, the Team USA basketball team opened up the Olympic Games in Beijing by taking on the Chinese National Team, which included NBA notables Yao Ming, Yi Jianlian, and Wang Zhizhi. After a close first half, USA broke away and won convincingly, 101-70. What I want to note about this game, which was part of NBC's immense Olympic coverage was their use of "Roundball Rock" during the game. This was the theme song for the NBA on NBC, composed by John Tesh. Once ABC took over national coverage of the NBA, the song went away. I guess NBC brought it back with their coverage of basketball. Listening to that song brings me back to the memories of the NBA when it was at its highest during the heydays of Jordan and the Bulls dynasties, Mailman and Stockton, Ewing and Starks, Miller and Smits, and the voice of Marv Albert...."Yes."









I'm sure you've heard this song before, if not let me introduce you to 'Roundball Rock'







Here's an ESPN.com article on Tesh and his infamous song

Here's an old intro from NBA on NBC:



......and here's Mr. Tesh's response to all the fans of the song: