Archive → October, 2008
Celebrities say don’t vote. but vote. but…wait, I’m confused
Leonardo DiCaprio, will i. am, Tobey Maguire, and Forest Whitaker have created public service announcements to encourage American youth to register to vote. The non-partisan PSAs, produced by DiCaprios Appian Way, were created to engage and inspire young people to register and vote and participate in the upcoming election. Celebrities appearing in the PSAs include: Amy Adams, will.i.am, Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Bacon, Halle Berry, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Connolly, Courteney Cox, Ellen DeGeneres, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Jonah Hill, Dustin Hoffman, Anthony Kiedis, Ashton Kutcher, Adam Levine, Laura Linney, Eva Longoria, Tobey Maguire, Demi Moore, Natalie Portman, Giovanni Ribisi, Ethan Suplee, Kyra Sedgwick, Michelle Trachtenberg, Usher, and Forest Whitaker.
there’s even a song!! OMG! just TRY not bobbing your head along to THIS little diddy…
But wait! there’s MORE!!! (following video is uncensored)
Think the videos are a little pretentious, condescending, ironic and nonsensical? Then there’s good news! A bunch of no names have created a non-partisan public service announcement response video to thank Hollywood’s elite for telling us to vote:
20 minutes & 200 clips of SNES & Genesis Games
Names of the tunes used in this video –
International Karate
Comic Bakery
Last Ninja – The Palace
All by Instant Remedy (the album name is Instant Remedy as well).
Places to download FREE music and movies LEGALLY
sources for free, legal movie downloads:
- Free Movies and Documentaries in the Public Domain: These are all free movies that have fallen out of copyright – download away.
- OVGuide: a meta search guide to online movies.
- Movies: This enterprising website has taken the time to find and upload clips of hundreds of movies.
- Veoh Cult Classics: Night of the Living Dead, Eraserhead are all included here.
- Watch Free Movies Online: This site is full of classic movies, all free movie downloads.
- The Internet Movie Database: Movie reviews, information about upcoming movie premieres, movie clips, and more.
- AltaVista – Video Search: Search for movies and videos on the Web in virtually any format. Find free movie downloads easily and fast.
- Yahoo Search-Video: Search for videos and movies on the Web. Also includes a link to submitting your own video to Yahoo to be indexed.
- Singingfish: An audio and video search engine. Search for movies, free movie downloads, short movie clips, and always check “Staff Favorites.”
- Google Video Search: Find videos, movies, and TV programs online.
- Netbroadcaster.com: Features trailers, shorts, independent films, and more. Most of the films on this site are free, but some do require subscription access.
- Turner Classic Movies: Lots of trailers, movie clips, and background information on all your favorite classic films. A very cool site.
- Hollywood.com: Trailers, movie clips, and more.
- All Movie Guide:Comprehensive database of film synopses and reviews as well as concise actor biographies.
- Apple Movie Trailers:An extensive collection of brand spankin’ new movie trailers.
- JoBlo.com: Reviews, trailers, scripts, interviews, clips, and a lot more.
- YouTube: you can upload, watch, and search free videos here.
- YouTube, GoogleVideo, and IFilm: Nice mashup of all three services; looks like you’ll need to know exactly what video you want, however.
- Google Video of the Day: Another day, another Google Video of the Day. Varies from funny to interesting to extremely weird.
- LearnOutLoud: free streaming lectures, audio, and video.
- VideoBomb: “Video Bomb filters up the hottest videos on the internet: people submit links to the ‘Incoming!’ page and you bomb the best ones. If a video gets a lot of bombs quickly, it makes it to the front page.”
- Truveo: a video search engine that delivers pretty good results.
- Mefeedia: “Find thousands of videoblogs (video podcasts), and watch them on your computer, video iPod or PSP.”
- The Open Video Project: a shared digital video collection
- Free Documentaries: “Welcome to the Internet’s top resource for finding free documentaries.”
- SearchforVideo: SearchforVideo is a fantastic video search engine with over 6000 sources available for searching at the time of this writing. News, entertainment, viral videos – all searchable here.
(source About.com)
Free, legal music downloads:
- Amazon MP3 Store: The vast majority of the music at Amazon is for sale, but they do have a rotation of free tracks available for download.
- AmieStreet.com: Focused on promoting new and independent music, their downloads range from free to $0.98 as they grow in popularity.
- Archive.org: An enormous collection of public domain music, expired copyright tracks, as well as some free contemporary music.
- ArtistServer.com: It started off as a resource for independent electronic musicians, but is now open to all. All tracks can be downloaded for free.
- BeSonic.com: Offers over 13,000 free tracks from mostly European acts.
- BetterPropaganda.com: A music webzine covering hundreds of music labels, and offering thousands of free & legal songs for you to download.
- CCMixter.org: a site dedicated to music that you can download to remix and post your results, all under the Creative Commons license.
- Download.com: Most people think CNet’s Download.com is just about software, but they also have tens of thousands of free MP3s you can download from new as well as up and coming bands.
- Epitonic.com: A large selection of free tracks from smaller record companies that are free to download with larger releases available for purchase.
- EZ-Tracks.com: Offers over 30,000 legal downloads that are managed through a partnership with the labels. Starts you off with credit for 101 free upon registering.
- FreeAlbums.blogsome.com: A blog that posts reviews of complete albums that are available for free downloads from numerous sources.
- GarageBand.com: Independent bands can upload their music, then have it rated by users, as well as downloaded for free.
- Imeem.com: Features streaming music from all of the major labels as well as numerous smaller companies, with numerous free downloadable tracks.
- ItsFreeDownloads.com: Finding the free downloads on iTunes can be a chore, this site does the work for you and lets you know what’s free each week.
- Jamendo.com: Artists upload their albums under Creative Commons, allowing new listeners to discover their work. Although free, there is the opportunity to donate to the performers of your choice.
- Last.fm: While most people know Last.fm for its streaming and social aspects, they offer a weekly chart of downloadable free mp3s.
- LegalTorrents.com: Proving that not all BitTorrent activity is illegal, LegalTorrents is filled with completely legal material.
- Live Music Archive: Part of Archive.org, features thousands of live performances by smaller bands as well as the likes of the Grateful Dead and Jason Mraz.
- MetalHordes.com: A band promotion site focusing on various forms of heavy metal, and allowing bands to upload mp3s users can download for free.
- MP3.com: Besides their paid section, MP3.com does offer a large selection of free tracks from acts small and large alike.
- MP3.com.au: Focusing on Australian bands, mp3.com.au offers a repository for bands to upload their music for people to download and try for free.
- MP34U: Works in conjunction with Muzic.com, this site finds sources of free music & legal music from all over the Web.
- MP3Raid.com: Searches multiple sources to bring you approximately a million free song downloads.
- Muzic.com: A sister site to MP34U, wherein the artists upload their tracks themselves, and muzic.com helps them promote their work.
- Purevolume.com: Allows independent musicians to set up profiles for themselves, stream their music and gives them the option of enabling their work for free downloads.
- Ruckus.com: Ruckus provides free music to people with .edu email addresses, and requires you to renew your licenses for DRM once a year.
- SoundClick.com: Offering a mixture of signed and unsigned artists the opportunity to set up profile pages and either stream their music or offer it up for free downloads.
- SpiralFrog.com: Major release albums and tracks available for the price of just watching some advertisements.
- Stereogum.com: Daily free mp3s from various artists, as well as rotating free albums.
- TuneShout.com: A site for independent artists to promote themselves. Artists can upload tracks either for free or at a user cost of $0.89.
- We7.com: We7 offers mp3 downloads for free, but they do have advertisements attached to them. If you want them without the ads, they do offer a paid alternative.
(source Mashable)
What’s Happening
What’s Happening!! is an American television sitcom that aired on ABC from August 5, 1976 to April 28, 1979. The show premiered in August 1976 as a summer series. With good ratings and reviews and, after the failure of several other shows on the network, What’s Happening!! returned in November 1976 as a weekly series. It remained a regular show until 1979; ratings were modest. What’s Happening!! was loosely based on the motion picture Cooley High also written by Eric Monte.
What’s Happening Opening Theme Season One 1976:
Joint scenes featured Ernest Thomas (Raj), Haywood Nelson (Dwayne), and Fred Berry (Rerun) taking turns dribbling a basketball down a sidewalk. Individual scenes introduced each character; Raj appearing on front porch, enjoying the temperature and throwing his jacket back inside the house, and Dwayne skateboarding off his driveway, then falls as he reaches the sidewalk, but breaks into laughter. Raj and Dwayne then meet up in front of Rerun’s house, who appears on a balcony eating. Later, the three hitchhike a ride from a pickup truck on a street corner; unbeknownst to Rerun (who was looking in the other direction), the truck stops long enough for Raj and Dwayne to hop onboard. When Rerun realizes this, he starts to run after the truck, with no success. Mabel King (Mabel) and Danielle Spencer (Dee) are named but not shown.
What’s Happening!! follows the lives of three working-class African-American teens living in the Watts area of Los Angeles. The show stars Ernest Thomas as Roger “Raj” Thomas, Haywood Nelson as Dwayne Nelson, and Fred Berry as Freddy “Rerun” Stubbs. Co-starring are Danielle Spencer as Roger’s little sister, Dee; Mabel King as Roger and Dee’s mother, Mabel; and Shirley Hemphill as Shirley Wilson, a waitress at “Rob’s Place”, the boys’ favorite restaurant. Recurring characters include Rob (Earl Billings), owner of Rob’s Place; and Miss Collins (Fritzi Burr), a sarcastic history teacher and the sponsor of the school newspaper.
Unlike Good Times, a contemporary show that also had African-American cast, What’s Happening!! only rarely and mildly ventured into social commentary. TV Guide once famously referred to What’s Happening!! as “a look at urban black life that manages to capture the offensiveness of Amos and Andy while avoiding that program’s fun.” Most episodes focused on the goals of teenage males — meeting girls, finding after school jobs, and planning for the future. Episodes sometimes featured subplots involving Mrs. Thomas, Raj’s bratty sister Dee, or waitress Shirley.
What’s Happenin’ Now!
The show was a modest success in its network run, despite some serious production problems. Many black sitcoms as well as other sitcoms do not achieve the super ratings during their first run, The Cosby Show being an exception. But repeats of the show’s 65 episodes did considerably well in syndication. In some markets, the show was perceived to appeal to both children and adults in a similar way that shows like The Brady Bunch and Happy Days did. The show was often aired in transitional hours where stations would go from the cartoons to the evening sitcoms. In a few markets the show actually had far higher ratings in syndication than during the network run. With this in mind, a revival of the show was produced entitled What’s Happening Now!!. It ran from 1985 to 1988 in first-run syndication.
In the sequel to What’s Happening!!, Raj was a struggling writer who became co-owner of the old hangout, Rob’s Place (with partner, Shirley (played by Shirley Hemphill). He married a girl named Nadine Hudson (played by Anne-Marie Johnson). Raj and Nadine became foster parents to a 9-year old girl, Carolyn (played by Reina King, real-life sister of Regina), Rerun became a used car-salesman, Dwayne became a computer clerk, and Dee was off to college, although she still made appearances from time to time. Actor Fred Berry caused problems in the new version of the series, was dropped from the cast and was written out, along with Reina King, who disappeared after the 1985-86 season. In the 1987-88 season, Martin Lawrence came onto the show as a brand-new character, teenager Maurice, who worked as an assistant in Rob’s Place. Maurice’s friend Darryl (Ken Sagoes) was another new character. The series ended in 1988.
Yogi Berra
Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra (born May 12, 1925 in St. Louis, Missouri) is a former Major League Baseball player and manager. He played almost his entire career for the New York Yankees and was elected to the baseball Hall of Fame in 1972. Arguably the most beloved baseball player since Babe Ruth, Berra was one of only four players to be named the Most Valuable Player of the American League three times, and one of only six managers to lead both American and National League teams to the World Series.
Berra, who quit school in the eighth grade, has a tendency toward malapropism and fracturing the English language in highly provocative, interesting ways. Simultaneously denying and confirming his reputation, Berra once stated, “I didn’t really say everything I said.”
He picked up his famous nickname from a friend, Bobby Hofman, who said he resembled a Hindu holy man (yogi) they had seen in a movie, whenever Berra sat around with arms and legs crossed waiting to bat, or while looking sad after a losing game.Years later, the Hanna-Barbera cartoon character Yogi Bear was named after Berra, something Berra did not appreciate after he started being periodically addressed as “Yogi Bear.”
Some of the best Yogi-isms:
* As a general comment on baseball: “Ninety percent of this game is half mental.”
* On why he no longer went to a popular St. Louis restaurant: “Nobody goes there no more, it’s too crowded!”
* “It ain’t over till it’s over.” – After Berra’s 1973 Mets trailed the Chicago Cubs by 9½ games in the National League East; the Mets rallied to win the division title on the next-to-last day of the season.
* When giving directions to his New Jersey home, which was equally accessible via two different routes: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
* On being the guest of honor at an awards banquet: “I’d like to thank all those who made this night necessary.”
* “It’s like déjà vu all over again”. Berra explained that this quote originated when he time and again witnessed Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris hit back to back home runs in the Yankees’ seasons in the early 1960s.
* “You can observe a lot by just watching.”
* “It’s tough making predictions, especially about the future”
* “Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours.”
* On a trip to Cooperstown, to attend a dinner, Phil Rizzuto commented to Yogi, “I think we’re lost.” To which Yogi responded “Yeah, but we’re making great time.”
* When told by a queen visiting New York on a particularly humid day that he appeared “quite cool,” Yogi innocently responded “Thanks; you don’t look so hot yourself.”
* When asked if he wanted a personal pizza cut into 4 or 8 slices, Yogi responded with “Better cut it into 4, I don’t think I could eat 8.”
* “It’s not the heat, it’s the humility.”
Teen girl with racist Tourettes
Everyone knows Tourettes syndrome will make you blurt out things you didn’t want to say – usually curse words. but add racist words to it – and lets face it: the only racist word anyone cares about in America is the N-word – and the hilarity just runs wild! Not wild like, jungle wild though. like, not wild in the sense where the hilarity would have to be civilized by a superior society that forcefully delivers it in chains or anything. I’m just sayin…. N#GG@R! oh jesus. I’m so sorry! just watch the video…
Making huge messes is awesome when you don’t have to clean it, or yourself, up
Mike Judge turns 45
In 1991, Judge’s short “Office Space” (also known as the Milton series of shorts) was picked up by Comedy Central following a Dallas animation festival.
In 1992, Judge developed “Frog Baseball”, a short featuring the characters Beavis and Butt-head, to be featured on Liquid Television. The short led to the creation of the Beavis and Butt-head series on MTV, in which Judge voiced both title characters as well as the majority of supporting characters. Beavis and Butt-head attended Highland High School in their series, which is the name of a high school in Albuquerque, New Mexico (USA), the city in which Judge grew up. The show ran from 1993 to 1997 and spawned a feature-length film, Beavis and Butt-head Do America, released in 1996. To this day they are still arguably Judge’s most popular characters.
In 1997, Judge left MTV to create King of the Hill for Fox. Many of the show’s characters were based on people he had known while living in Texas. Judge continued his voice acting, playing both Hank Hill and Boomhauer.
In 1999, Judge wrote and directed the live-action comedy film Office Space, which was based in part on the Milton series of cartoons he had created for Saturday Night Live. In the film, he made a cameo appearance as Stan, the manager of Chotchkie’s (complete with hairpiece and fake mustache). The film, for which the budget was approximately US$10 million, grossed only $10.8 million in initial release. However, as of mid-2006, Office Space had sold nearly six million video and DVD copies.
Since fall 2003, Judge has run a very successful animation festival, together with animator Don Hertzfeldt, called “The Animation Show”. He even created an appearance for Beavis and Butt-head featured in The Animation Show 2007. “The Animation Show” tours the country every year, screening animated shorts from mostly independent animators.