The Blog That Goes Ping

When the video for Weird Al’s “White & Nerdy” came out, though it’s all good in a Weird Al kind of way, I found myself mesmerized in particular by the incredibly enthusiastic, goofy guy dancing behind Al in some of the segments…

a guy who turned out to be Donny Osmond. (Al: “I asked him to be in the video because he was the whitest guy I could think of.”) (Me: egads, how old must he be by now? He’s dancing with the energy of a five year old! A five year old on speed!)

Imagine my glee when I discovered that Al had posted to youtube the first take of that dance sequence — with the Donny Dance behind the Gangsta Al, in front of a greenscreen, for the whole song.

You’d think it would get old during the three minute song. You’d think Donny would run out of dance moves. You’d be wrong.

First came Flickr video on Tuesday. Then came the anti-Flickr-video outcry on Wednesday. Now there’s the anti-anti-Flickr-video outcry.

This last movement takes the highly facetious form of Flickr’s new We Demand Donuts group. “If we get 20,000 people to join the group Flickr will be forced to give us free donuts!” the group’s manifesto states. “Join the group and invite all your contacts. We will make this the biggest protest group on Flickr and force them to give us free donuts!”

[From Attention Flickr video haters: Try a free doughnut | Underexposed - CNET News.com]

I think this is awesome. To these people I dedicate the following video.

There are two things that the average Reddit believe:

1. Ron Paul is the savior of America
2. Creationism and religion in general are destroying America

Imagine my joy when somebody found video footage of Ron Paul stating in so many words that he does not accept the theory of evolution and posted it to Reddit.

Patton encounters the star of his movie Ratatouille’s biggest competition, but he manages not to let that affect his gracious behavior. Via Pop Culture Will Eat Itself.

I have to credit Joe for being enthusiastic about the concept of this; that enthusiasm led me through a failed initial attempt to this, which I consider a relative success. The quality is poor, because it’s got a nasty double-effect thing going on: I started out by stretching the tempo of the Depeche Mode (128bpm) to fit the Andrews Sisters (108bpm) in Audacity, and it was with those raw materials I created the song in Garageband. In the end it sounded kinda slow and ponderous, and I gave it a try speeding the final product back up to 128bpm in Audacity, and was much happier with it overall. That gives it a kind of unnecessary gritty edge, but I’m not going back and redoing it the faster way from scratch, so it’ll have to do.

Oh, yeah, this is “Master and Servant” by Depeche Mode mashed up with “Mr. Sandman, Bring me a Dream” by the Andrews Sisters. Master Sandman!

I have adopted the Nom du Mix “DJ EJ” and the album name “Bring the Wack” for the mp3 metadata. Enjoy!

And happy new year!