You guys know I love these “lets all cooperate to make a crazy big single roving camera massive lip synch”, right? Well, the folk behind this one told Paul Feig it was inspired by Freaks & Geeks. It’s super cheesy cool!
Last night I watched the gold medal match between NZ and Australia in netball. It was the most exciting sporting match I’ve ever watched. Double overtime then into golden goal, which in netball means securing a two-point lead. Netball is a game of absolute focus, where small errors cost a lot, and in a big match like this the pressure is intense to never make the tiniest mistake. Maria Tutaia, who I’ve long thought just didn’t have the nerves to finish the big matches, never wavered and delivered the win in a way that has shut me up forever. Amazing. Already being called the best netball match of all time! Watch closing minutes here (stupidly, can’t embed).
So here are some celebratory Friday linky!
Bleeding Cool provides the necessary backstory to understand a Doctor Who spoof styled after On The Buses. Read’n’watch here.
Some alumni from Joss Whedon’s weird, troubling Dollhouse show make a music video on the same theme:
Latest mindblowing infographic doing the rounds: the true size of Africa. Africa is really, really big. Which makes it even more shameful that I know next to nothing about it.
Hilarious/cringey The Internet Never Forgets: Tumblr-log of famous actors when they were clothes models. Exhibit A: heartthrob du jour Robert Pattinson [WARNING this will make you feel dirty and wrong, he is far too young for your lust in this pic] B: Sarah Michelle Gellar [this one is just weird]
The Global Entrepreneurship Week launch event had a focus on Social Entrepreneurship, with speakers including Sam Morgan, Marc Ellis, Rod Oram, and others. It sounds like a pretty cool thing. I didn’t make it along due to the Waitomo deadlines, but the whole thing is available via Massey’s mediasite. I look forward to checking that out. GEW is in mid-November, so keep your eyes open.
The Hobbit has been in the news for all the wrong reasons – and I don’t think NZ has had so much interest in such a fuzzy dispute for a long time. I’m still not remotely clear what the union is actually concerned about. My sympathies lie with actors, but I don’t know that the unions are discharging their responsibilities to well at the moment. Anyway, Theatreview has been tracking the entire story and dragged all the links to one place.
Sadhbh asks, are there any chick-lit novels where the girl ends up with the good guy, not the bastard? There are tumbleweeds. Well worth a read, and do comment if you have any suggestions!
(The pigphone was the logo for a flat party we had in… 2001? It was a great logo of a phone that looked like a pig. I can’t find a digital version but my paper records are extensive, so hopefully it will be found.)
A gay 15-year-old chose suicide to escape bullying recently, and Dan Savage of the Savage Love column/podcast responded.
Why are we waiting for permission to talk to these kids? We have the ability to talk directly to them right now. We don’t have to wait for permission to let them know that it gets better.
So they’ve started a YouTube channel to deliver this message to LGBT teens who need to hear it. Spread the word.
I dunno if permissions will let people see these, but it’s facebook so presumably they will (ba-DUM-dum). It’s Dermot’s take on Star Wars In Cork (that’s the place in Ireland, not the thing that goes in bottlenecks)
Further sign of mainstreaming of geek concerns: geek fashionista collection based around sci-fi imagery. TARDIS dress anyone? (Back when I was a lad, this sort of thing could only exist in a MAD magazine parody. Now it seems odd that it hasn’t happened before. Which brings me to…)
“Team Unicorn”, a quartet of lady gamer geeks, produced this parody of the most-parodied-song-ever California Gurls. Its a “we are geek girls hear me roar” song. It has Seth Green rapping.
In its wake this vid produced a small flurry of discussion. Anarchangel smartly discusses some of this reaction in terms of contested subcultural boundaries, and gives some awesome linky. Alternative/geek royalty Theremina expressed unease about the vid on Twitter, and was appreciative when someone pointed out this vid along similar lines:
There’s potential for a lengthy post on this and related issues. Anyone have time to write it?
Wil Wheaton considers the hairdo of the character he played on Star Trek, Wesley Crusher, in the face of an enthusiastically bad-language using celebration of same.
Keeling over, that is. Still busy. BUT NOT TOO BUSY FOR LINKY
Video about goin’ climbing in Wgtn. Haven’t watched it, too busy, but its W-town so if you’re local you probably know some of the people in it. Maybe even the guy in the screencap right here.
Classically-trained voice teacher evaluates the style and technique of five heavy metal vocalists. (This is an example of that rare subspecies of linky that will be catnip to both Sokky and Jet Simian.)
Via the Knifeman, Joyce Carol Oates short story right there for the reading (I haven’t yet but Joyce Carol Oates that’s why)
Have I ever linked to You Are Not So Smart before? Great blog that points out all the ways we get stuff wrong. Fun, insightful, and important, because man, so many problems caused by not realizing you might be wrong about something.
The New York magazine article that was the basis for Saturday Night Fever: Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night. Written in the new journalism style, this appears impossibly mannered now, and I doubt you’ll be surprised to hear the writer made it all up.
And finally… this totally made my working day yesterday. A relaxation-tape version of Snoop’s (decidedly not safe for work) Gin & Juice. Love it.
Watchin’ the Tall Blacks vs France at FIBA World Champs in the other window. NZ playing its best game of the tournament so far. I love (LOVE) watching random guys from the NZ basketball league taking NBA players to the hole. But I will not spoil the game for ppl who record it to watch later. So only cryptic comments from now on.
Here’s a treat: the death trap page from Treasure Hunters University, which appears to be a site by a guy who’s all about going into Mexico and looking for ancient treasures in deathtrapped tombs, for realsies.
