|
 Are we sick of the Dean yelp yet? We are. Right now someone is just logging on to his website with that screamapiller.wav from an old Simpsons episode he taped, ready to show the word that Dean’s yeagh! Sounds a lot like the screamapil—Hello? Where is everyone? Don’t you care? Nope. It was fun for a day, though. I was driving Gnat to school, and the radio played Dean’s entire recitation of the states; when it was done Gnat said “We’re going to a lot of places, aren’t we?” Yes, she listens to the radio now. I’m giving her a head start on rejecting everything I believe. Anyway, I went home and whipped together my own remix of the Deanapiller scream. Here you go. Mr. Teachout kindly noted a passage from the site yesterday – the discussion about movie music – and added his own remarks. An excerpt: Actually, one of the things about Sixties and Seventies films that has dated most completely, at least for me, is the use of jazz in the underscoring—or, rather, the use of Hollywood-style big-band pseudo-jazz, sometimes lightly dusted with rock. It’s funny how that should make me wince in an oh-God-how-totally-unhip way, seeing as how I’m a recovering jazz musician myself. Why is it that the use of so rich and evocative a musical idiom should root a film in its time and place to the point of outright paralysis, whereas the best symphonic scores of the Thirties and Forties float free of their periods? He’s right, and I know just the music he’s talking about. But there’s another form of dated music that’s the bastard child of the rock-scented quasi-jazz: jazz-flavored quasi rock. That unholy twist-era movie rock with jangly guitars and trumpets. It had no discernible melody, and it would keep going as long as the scene required – almost as if the stuff came out of a tap. You found it in TV shows, crime movies, teen romps – anything that needed something to suggest that there were Juveniles about, and they might well be Delinquent. Whenever I hear that stuff I think of some second-rate Ann-Margret type (if such a thing is possible) with a drink in one hand, slurring her words, exhorting some bothered squarejohn to loosen up and get craaaazy, dad. And then she puts on a record of absolute crap by Jack Twang and the Crapsmen. Or maybe we’re talking about the same thing. He also mentions Saul Bass, who designed so many of the classic 60s title sequence. (I would have thought Bass did the “After the Fox” animation, but I checked; it was Bender.) (Hey, these are important details!) As long as we're talking about guys whose vision defined the look & feel of an era, there's another name that comes to mind: Ken Adam. The man behind the James Bond sets. He also did Dr. Strangelove, and I don’t think I can put it better than this Google-translated German interview: “And we are calmed down to know that the US government sits in the kriegsfall completely reliably in the be Room from Stanley Kubricks ‘;Dr. Seltsam.’” The Internet is truly Borges’ library; some days I find myself looking for a site I had stumbled across at work, unable to find the path back. You get mixed up with these Japanese language search engines, and you have no idea where you pop out; they’re like black holes. I found this, and spent at least ten minutes mousing over the little doors to hear the music, which seemed typically Japanese – cute, technologically savvy, and inevitably incomprehensible. I figured it was some sort of demo for a modeling program, but the fifth step was really too much. What was wrong? And why was it wrong? Why was the fuzzy bear wearing camel-toe slippers? Why? Backed up, did some research, and ended up learning that the Awa Dance is a Japanese custom. In the summer, people get together and do the Awa Dance, celebrating the day when some castle-builders got hammered and invented . . . the Awa Dance. (This is one of the virtues of having a fast-moving culture that regards everything as disposable; if we were like the Japanese, we would be doing the streak into the 26th century.) I thought I’d post a link when I got home, but between office and home the word Awadance had become avodance. Did you mean avoidance? Google asked. I did not. Finally googled “Japanese dance” “hands above” and bingo. It’s like I’m the Sphinx, the Internet is Oedipus, and it answers nearly every riddle. What a world. Need more links? Sure. One more thing. That classic 1984 Mac commercial? It’s been updated. Now the 2004 ad for the 1984 computer shows you how far we've come: we can use computers to go back to the past to alter how the present anticipated the future. If you know what I mean. While resizing these frame grabs, I got an idea, expressed below. Apple? Here's an idea for a new ad. Free. You're welcome.     |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
...