Ryan Baker //
Björk enlisted Canadian animator John Kricfalusi for the music video to the sixth single from her 1995 album "Post"; you're likely familiar with Kricfalusi's work via the seminal cartoon "Ren & Stimpy", as was Björk, but more recently Kricfalusi received attention for lending his distinctive style to a couch gag for an episode of "The Simpsons" and, in 2006, another animated music video for Weird Al Yankovic's single "Close But No Cigar".
An ominous fusion of rock and electronic music, Pendulum's "Witchcraft" is a great song enhanced by an aesthetically perfect music video. Also, I'm a big fan of lasers (to say nothing of laser pentagrams).
(1) NATO helicopter mistakes 9 Afghan boys, ages 9 to 15, for insurgents, kills them all (via The New York Times)
(2) The disappearance of the Great American Ronald McDonald (via Bloomberg News)(3) Missouri suffers worst mayonnaise disaster in history (via The Kansas City Star)(4) "Things being destroyed very slowly" (via YouTube)(5) "Iraqi Tron" (via YouTube)(1) The amazing leaked finale of "Two and a Half Men" (via YouTube)
(2) Former Borders Books director of merchandise planning and analysis gives 6 reasons why the retail chain is down and out (via Quora)(3) Read the rejection letter an 18-year-old Tim Burton received from Walt Disney Productions after submitting his children's book, "The Giant Zlig" (via Letters of Note)(4) Photo series of actors in character (via Vanity Fair)(5) See the launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery ... from the window of a commercial airplane (via YouTube)In the late '50s, a young puppeteer named Jim Henson was commissioned by Washington D.C.-based Wilkins Coffee to produce a series of ultra-quick commercials. Henson's ads, featuring a pair of early proto-Muppets named Wilkins and Wontkins, proved incredibly successful, and until 1961, Henson continued to produce ads for Wilkins' products, ultimately cranking out 179 commercials.
What's so striking about these ads isn't just the tremendous creativity or whimsy, but the raucous slapstick violence. Poor frumpy Wontkins is frequently maimed, murdered, blown-up, threatened, whalloped, stabbed, guillotined, clobbered and beaten, but there's somehow still a friendly air of delight to these ads.(1) Filmmaker unearths two 30-minute 3D films from 1936 ... made by the Third Reich (via The Guardian)
(2) Matt Taibbi asks - and answers - the question "Why isn't Wall Street in jail?" (via Rolling Stone)(3) Andrew Sullivan on shrinking the prison population (via The Atlantic)(4) Philiosopher/critical theorist Slavoj Žižek on cultural capitalism and the tragedy, farce of charitable giving (via RSA Animate and YouTube)(5) Baby gets drunk, trashes Las Palmas bar (via YouTube)(1) Play "The Great Gatsby" for the NES
(2) Hey, remember the ultra-secret recipe for Coca-Cola? Yeah, here it is (via News.com.au)(3) Time magazine reports on the 5 predictions of futurist Raymond Kurzweil, all of which are terrifying (via The Week)(4) David F. Friedman, horror film producer and pioneer, passed away at age 87, leaving behind a legacy of "Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS" and "Blood Feast" (via The New York Times)(5) Music video for the Black Keys' latest, "Howlin' for You," plays like a grindhouse trailer (via YouTube)French orchestra leader Paul Mauriat took a French-language love song and produced a wildly successful instrumental interpretation that reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 music chart.
(1) Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak expected to step down tonight (via The Associated Press)
(2) The best architecture of the decade, 2000 - 2010 (via Mammoth)(3) Only in Mississippi - proposed specialty license plate sponsored by the Sons of Confederate Veterans honors General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who also happened to have founded the Ku Klux Klan (via Yahoo!)(4) Still waitin' on those jobs, House Republicans (via the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee)(5) Bach's "Toccata & Fugue" played with floppy disk (via YouTube)(1) Detroit Mayor Dave Bing: "There are not any plans to erect a statue to Robocop. Thank you for the suggestion.” (via Den of Geek)
(2) Sir Christopher Lee to receive BAFTA's highest honor (via The Baltimore Sun)(3) Revealed by Wikileaks - U.S. agreed to tell Russia Britain's nuclear secrets (via The Telegraph)(4) Ever wonder what Times Square would look like with no ads? (via The Village Voice)(5) JANTS! (via YouTube)