Finishing Off 2016

Lately I’ve been reading occasional comments about how we should just trash all of 2016 as being a horrible, no good, very bad year. What with all the celebrities and pop culture icons dying, and all that. These complaints started appearing around the middle of November…. Interesting, to say the least…..

But anyway, we keep making this same complaint every year. That this past year was the absolute worst, and we need a global Do-Over. What a depressing hellhole we must be living in, if each succeding year is worse than all the ones before!

Look, there are a couple of things that I wish had turned out differently. A president-elect who actually showed a real interest in doing the job, for one.

But if you throw the entire year onto the trash heap, you throw out a couple of things that we really should keep.

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Another Holiday Message from our Sponsor

It’s probably the most unusual version of “Deck the Halls” you will hear.

La Senza is a Canadian-based lingerie company. Back in 2010, they wanted to make it known that they had garments in the larger, hard-to-find sizes. Their ad agency noticed that there was a correlation between cup sizes and musical notes….

The campaign – a video and website – was launched in the beginning of December, 2010. The website not only linked to the store so you could purchase the featured items, but had an interactive app where you could “play” and even record your own tune.

The video is below the jump; it’s a lingerie ad (YouTube has it as “age restricted”), so it’s probably Not Really Safe For Work.

Unless you work someplace sexy.

In which case, can I send you my resume?

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How Chemists Decorate a Christmas Tree

Back in 2007, Brady Haran was making short films on science for the BBC and the University of Nottingham. Some of the material – scientists talking about their work in an informal setting – was uploaded to YouTube under the name “Test Tube”. The next year, he teamed up with Professor Martyn Poliakoff to make short videos about each chemical element. The “Periodic Videos” YouTube channel branched out to discuss molecules and other chemistry-related topics, and has earned praise from scientists, educators, and the media. Haran has branched out; he now has over a dozen channels covering everything from word origins (Words of the World) to psychology (Psyfile) to the history of science (Objectivity).

The above video is from 2009.

I’d have put caffeine on the tree, myself…….

Christmas with Mr. Weebl

You’ll find a lot of people on YouTube these days who consider themselves celebrities. But none of them can hold a candle to Jonti Picking of the UK. An animator and musician, he uploaded his first video to the Web in June of 2002. It featured two egg-shaped beings called “Weebl” and “Bob”. Since then, he’s produced something like 200 videos, and has done some professional advertising work.

Over the years, Weebl and Bob have appeared in a number of Christmas-themed shorts. This one is #4:

In addition to Weebl and Bob, he’s done a few other series (with their own Christmas episodes):

“On the Moon” with the Toast King and Insanity Prawn Boy:

“Cat Face”, about a giant-headed floating cat:

For 2013 through 2015, he did “Advent Calendars” – one short animation per day for December, leading up to Christmas. Here are all the videos from 2014 in one convenient place:

Picking’s production seems to have tailed off recently. One can forgive him; fourteen years on the Internet is a very, very, VERY long time.

Well, if by chance you come across this, thanks for all the laughs, Mr. Picking, and a Merry Christmas to you and yours!

Some More Holiday Music For You

I goofed.

I was in such a rush to get out my annual Christmas Mix that I didn’t realize that I duplicated a tune from my very first collection in 2014. I also neglected to adjust the file names to a standard format – one where if you sorted them by file name in your media player, they would play in the order listed.

My apologies.

To make it up to you, allow me to share a couple of other mixes that I have in my collection.

These are from WFMU’s Rock and Soul Ichiban blog, and you can get them here:

http://wfmuichiban.blogspot.com/2014/12/merry-twistmas-from-ichiban.html

The blog post has links to three mixes; each over an hour long. And it has track lists, too. Since they are professionally made, the tracks are all properly balanced for volume and blend into each other with no gaps.

WFMU is the coolest radio station on the planet. Based in northern New Jersey, they are a completely independent freeform station. They get no advertising money; except for a few grants, all their money comes from listener donations. This means the DJs are free to play whatever they want (within the guidelines of the FCC and basic decency, of course).

Back in 2009, they launched a couple of 24/7/365 “Web Only” streams. Rock and Soul Ichiban was one of them. It features obscure and lesser hits from the 50s and 60s, mixed in with movie trailers and vintage commercials.

In addition to the blog, there’s also a Facebook group where you can follow all the goings-on with the stream.

So if you like what you hear in those holiday mixes, give the stream a listen!

A Christmas Mix for You – 2016

This could turn out to be a habit. I’ve collected so much Christmas music over the years (around 7 GB worth!) from various places around the Internet, including many music sharing blogs, that I feel rather compelled to share some of my favorite finds with you.

Here’s this year’s collection.

Over an hour of holiday, well, cheer – I hope.

The list after the jump.

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On the 2017 Hall of Fame Ballot – Part 2

Okay, now that we’ve gotten the “one and dones” out of the way, who’s left among the thirty four players on the ballot?

We can pretty much divide the remaining twenty one into three groups:

The Hall of the Really, Really, Really Good:

Jeff Bagwell, Trevor Hoffman, Edgar Martinez, Mike Mussina, Tim Raines, and Gary Sheffield are holdovers from last year. They are joined by Vladimir Guerrero and Ivan Rodriguez. There’s no one here that stands out as an obvious Hall of Famer like Ken Griffey Jr. did last year. You’ve got to dig into the numbers. They are all potentially worthy; it pretty much comes down to personal opinion. I think closers are overrated – so much for Hoffman. Mussina was never the best pitcher in his league, and really wasn’t that great – he was just very good for a long time. Sheffield never really stood out as a superstar, unlike Guerrero and Rodriguez….

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On the 2017 Hall of Fame Ballot

It’s that time again – the Hall of Fame ballot has been released. Fans and writers are already debating the worthiness of holdovers Jeff Bagwell and Tim Raines, newcomers Ivan Rodriguez and Vladimir Guerrero, and the usual arguments over Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds.

But also on the ballot are a squadron of new names; many of which you’ve never heard of and will probably never hear again. But they have met the minimum requirements for nomination, and might get a vote or two from a friend. And when you’ve been in the Major Leagues for ten years (the required minimum for consideration), it’s kind of hard NOT to pick up a little fame along the way.

So let’s pause and tip our hats to these likely “one and done” candidates, because I’m sure we’d all wish we could at least get as close to Fame as they have.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Beastmaster II: Through the Portal of Time (1991)

There’s a term in film criticism that comes up in the discussion of “bad” movies – the Idiot Picture. It has a couple of definitions. It could refer to the plot of the movie progressing only because a character is an idiot. I’ve heard it referring to a fantasy / sci-fi movie world where everyone is so idiotic that the movie reviewer feels they could take over that world on a good weekend. Or perhaps it’s the movie makers who are idiots for including utterly inane dialog and leaving vast plot holes. Or maybe it means that only an idiot would think it’s a good movie.

Beastmaster II seems to cover all of them.
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Our Long National Nightmare

People are still trying to come to grips with the concept of a Trump presidency. And it’s not a pretty sight. Even if he somehow manages to be sane and rational, surrounds himself with sane and rational advisers, moderates his political agenda, and doesn’t embarrass the nation any further, there are still some things that are going to happen no matter what.

He has already emboldened racists and bigots, and the GOP pretty much has free rein to do what they want in Congress.

It doesn’t look good for us.

But there are things we can do to at least mitigate the damage.
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