Make Dance Here

Robin says,

My sister Lily, an amazing dancer working on her MFA in dance, just started the world's first dance vlog. She's going to make a super-short dance video every week based on her readers' input. I think it's a terrific idea.

Here's a longer dance film she made recently. And here's a recent performance.

Don't think of, like, break-dancing in music videos when you watch these. Think instead of using the whole range of human motion -- including motion we don't usually think of as "dance" -- as a palette.

Snarkmarket Artistes

Robin says,

Track of the day: Santogold remixed by XXXChange. Just feels very Thursday-appropriate, you know?

Update: Hey, I have a question. What's the deal with these music blogs posting MP3s? Do they have special (unofficial) arrangements with labels? Or is it just sort of understood that it's okay to share MP3s as long as you practice restraint? I wouldn't mind dropping some tracks on Snarkmarket from time to time but it still makes my spidey senses tingle. Are my spidey senses stuck in 2004?

Merry Christmas, Nerds

Robin says,

Peter's right -- we're all nerds here. So here is a late-night Christmas Eve post brimming over with nerd-osity. (Like the White House, I try to sneak the embarrassing stuff out while everybody's on vacation.)

• The New York Times is developing and releasing Ruby libraries on the side. That is such a great sign. Bravo.
  
  
• Slicehost is the hosting company of my dreams: $20 a month for a virtual machine running Ubuntu Linux and that's it. You have full root access and can do absolutely anything you want with it.
  
  
• I went ahead and learned Ruby on Rails a while ago, and liked the idea, but couldn't shake this sense that it was just way too big and complex for everything I wanted to do. Enter Merb, which is like Rails lite: Same approach, same access to awesome Ruby resources (like the NYT's new gem), but much smaller and faster. It's like carrying around a wallet instead of one of those huge camping backpacks.
  
  
• Merb lets you plug in the ORM of your choice, and I found DataMapper a lot more intuitive and "right-seeming" than ActiveRecord (the Rails default).

Okay, I think I actually blew out my own nerd-fuse on that last one. See you in 2008!

Grow Games

Robin says,

You need to try this right now: Grow Island. It's a sort of oblique, cutesy, super-simple SimCity. Sort of. And actually, that comparison doesn't do it justice, because SimCity, unlike this game, never really had any soul.

This earlier iteration is fun, too (there's a whole site full of them), but less systems interacting and more absurdist choose-your-own-adventure. In one go-round I got a smiling cabbage; in another I ended up with an underground kingdom of tiny cyclopean goblins.

In any case, the Japanese designer who made them is a genius. Actually, the whole thing feels kinda like a Japanese Orisinal to me -- less arcade-y, more puzzle-y, but with the same underlying sweetness.

(Via the new and excellent Rock Paper Shotgun, which tags this game, correctly, "cute as a basket full of ducklings.")

Shadows

Robin says,

Ooooh. The photography of Nicholas Hughes.

Look Around You

Robin says,

We just wasted an hour watching episodes of Look Around You, e.g. Maths. Even when it's not funny... it's funny!

Paper Planes

Robin says,

Rex is right: The best song on M.I.A.'s new album Kala is "Paper Planes." You can find it on this page... search for "paper planes."

P.S. Also here on YouTube, but what is up with this new genre? I have seen a bunch of them -- sort of ragtag musical slideshows.

Beijing Traffic Lesson

Robin says,

Henry B. diagrams the Beijing left. You really need to see this. Excerpt:

[B] proceeds to swerve right, cutting off [C], a tiny red Peugeot with a gold plastic dragon hood ornament, spoiler and assorted knobs glued on. Since [B] is just accelerating, and [C] is now decelerating, this has created a low-density 'dead space' in the intersection. [D], a strange blue tricycle dumptruck carrying what appear to be 40 of the world's oldest propane tanks, sees this and makes a move.

But it's nothing without the visuals.

Via Tim Johnson.

Snarkmarket's Source for Geopolitical Analysis

Robin says,

Just had this IM exchange:

the apologist: so i went home last night
the apologist: got drunk on scotch
the apologist: and went wild on the blog
the apologist: on fire, my friend

me: whoah

the apologist: seriously
the apologist: re-found my bloggy voice
the apologist: somewhere in my bottle of black label

And you know what? It's true.

The New Sincerity

Robin says,

This video is: hand-crafted, sweet, sad, weird, and beautiful.

This one is: also great, but it betrays its slick origins a bit.

The Bridge and the River

Robin says,

If Gavin had asked me to link to the newest Revelator Press chapbook -- "The Bridge and the River," a collection of Tim Carmody's poems -- I would have happily done so. As it happens he did not, which gives me the opportunity to link naturally and of my own bloggy volition, for three reasons:

1. Allegiance to Tim Carmody, who besides being a terrific blogger and poet (as you'll see), is a prolific & erudite Snarkmarket commenter. This domain is without exaggeration about 25 percent more interesting simply because he stops in as often as he does.
   
   
2. The poems are really good! In particular, I like "Island," which is short but weighty; "February 13, 2002," which -- well, if movies should start with a murder, then poems should start with a moment you truly recognize, and this one does; and "Horn," which is just sort of titanic.
   
   
3. The chapbook's design is pitch-perfect. Brandon Kelley knows what's up.

Do check it out.

(Note: I love the word "chapbook." I suspect you do as well.)

Free Fonts

Robin says,

Wow -- this is the best round-up of free fonts I've ever seen. In part because they are actually useful-looking fonts (i.e. not, like, Klingon script).

The Assassin's Blog

Robin says,

Wow. Speaking of morally serious reporters who write about Iraq, did you know George Packer had a blog on the New Yorker site? Yeah, neither did anybody else. CJR clues us in.

Packer's book The Assassin's Gate was more deserving of a WMYW warning than anything I've read in a long time. I am totally looking forward to a steadier stream of his thoughts and observations.

This Much I Will Concede to New York City

Robin says,

I have long bristled at New Yorkers' insistence that New York pizza is the One True Pizza and all others are pale imitations (or, perhaps, gross inflations).

Well, I'm in New York, and completely by chance I dropped into Rigoletto on the Upper West Side for a couple of slices. Two bucks each (!), so I wasn't expecting much.

They were seriously the best two slices of pizza I've had in... er... forever.

And Rigoletto isn't even close to the best-rated NYC pizza place on Yelp. I think I might have to hit Joe's before I leave.

Driving at Night

Robin says,

Beautiful, evocative VW commercial via kottke.

See, if campaigns ran on that, not on this, I'd be much happier.

Tyger

Robin says,

I've got a huge backlog of film-blogging to do, as I have seen some unspeakably cool stuff at this year's San Francisco International Film Festival. Here's a stop-gap -- a short from last night's "Frame by Frame" animation shorts collection:

Higher quality versions here. And of course, as you can probably imagine, seeing it in the theater was CRAZYNUTS.

Also: Collision by Max Hattler. Also on YouTube! (Man, everything is seriously on YouTube, isn't it?)

Black Rim Glasses

Robin says,

Ethan Kaplan's blog is consistently good. Witness this post on user-generated content where he brings it around to Walter Benjamin in the end. He is a technology guy (perhaps... THE technology guy?) at Warner Brothers Records, so he straddles the line between new worlds and old in interesting ways. Worth subscribing.

Magazines of the World

Robin says,

signandsight translates articles by non-English language authors in Europe (especially Germany) into English. What I like even better, though, are the synthesis: Here's all the smartypants magazines in the U.S. and Europe this week, summarized. Totally cool.

Reminds me of Foreign Policy magazine's reviews of books in foreign languages. The world needs more sites and services like this.

Civilization

Robin says,

There's a great paean to the computer game 'Civilization' over in The Weekly Standard. Be sure to flip to the second page; there's some fun material on Sid Meier, Civilization's creator. In particular I liked this bit:

Meier cites the strategy board game Risk as one of his major influences. "Conquer the world. All those cool pieces. You felt like you were king. It gave you a lot of power." What about the game Diplomacy? "You had to have friends to play Diplomacy so that kind of left me out."

There's also this:

"We don't get into glorifying the violence and the gory stuff," says Meier. "That's just not the games that we like to do. I've raised a son and I know all the messages, all the influences, all the things that come into a young person's life, and we're responsible for a part of that. I mean, as game designers, we want people to play our games, so I think we need to take some responsibility for the content and the messages that come through our games."

Unstrung

Robin says,

Check out Unstrung by Lara Pawson, a journalist in Angola. It is kinda what you always thought blogs could be. For instance: here, and here.

Via M. John Harrison, who I didn't know had a blog. His book Light is weird and terrific.

Superlegitimacy

Robin says,

Though a bit old, this is one of the best things I've read on the internet in a while:

Yesterday I took a Tokyu line train from Okayama to Meguro. I was standing in the first carriage, right behind the driver. I noticed a series of odd cries, muffled by glass, and realized they were coming from the white-gloved driver himself. Alone in his cabin, he was accompanying his actions with sharp cries. It was astonishing, yet, weirdly, I was the only passenger paying any attention. My first thought was that the driver was mentally ill. [...] I watched -- and filmed -- the lunatic. He did seem exceptionally focussed. At each station he made an immaculate white-gloved gesture -- a series of florid manual curlicues more like the gestures of an orchestral conductor than a train driver. He pointed at the TV screens in his console showing the doors, then pulled the train away with both gloved hands on his accelerator lever, uttering as if by compulsion his ecstatic falling cry: 'Kkkkyyyyyoooooooo!' Crossing points or passing other trains, he made similar noises. They seemed less like words than explosions of passion for the regular events of the job. And yet it was a passion as formalized as the whoops and howls of kabuki actors.

What's going on? Why, it's superlegitimacy.

(Warning: It might also be naive orientalism.)

A PSA for Current

Matt says,

I'm catching up on weeks of RSS feeds. (Actually, I'm about to go to bed, and I've barely made a dent. Sigh.) Everybody's going nuts over these Ira Glass videos on storytelling. Robin probably won't point it out, so I will:

a) these have been around for a while. I want him to do another set of them now that he's conquered another medium. Hey, co-blogger, could ya work on that?

b) Current's actually got a ton more of these, not only with Ira Glass, but with Sarah Vowell, Dave Eggers, Elvis Mitchell, Robert Redford, Orville Schell, Xeni Jardin, Bonz Malone, Catherine Hardwicke and Jonathan Caouette. Go marinate in narrative goodness.

Foreign Policy: Still Awesome

Robin says,

Foreign Policy magazine just got nominated for two National Magazine Awards. One was for general excellence, which is right on. It's just consistently a great magazine.

And in case you missed it, they now have an eminently RSS-subscription-worthy blog.

Ze Frank's Greatest Hits

Robin says,

If I really did run the Museum of Media History, I would put this video in it. File under "early 21st century internet culture." Also, "early life of President Hosea Frank."

YouTube for Nerds

Robin says,

A new site called FORA is aggregating smarty-pants lectures and talks from the likes of C-SPAN, the Long Now Foundation, New America, various World Affairs Councils -- you get the idea.

Expect bad suits... bad hair... bad lighting...

AND AWESOME IDEAS.

Orville Schell on the future of China, whaaa? (Ring a bell?)

You've heard Will Wright jam with Brian Eno; now see it.

Who better to talk about Iran than Reza Aslan, author of the transcendently good book "Not god but God"?

This is so dope.

P.S. Except that it's kinda hard to link to videos and the pop-up player is lame-o. And they have no RSS feeds. Give them time.

Vibrating City

Robin says,

Hey, go vote for Friend of the Snark Minus Kelvin over at Remix Fight. No registration necessary!

You Can Actually Get College Credit for This

Robin says,

Check out the comments brewing under the last post. Makers of possibilities! Seekers of solitude! Author-functions! Good stuff.

Pulphope

Robin says,

Paul Pope (who wrote and drew Batman: Year 100) has a new blog. I bet it will be good.

Via Drawn again!

Go See This Concert

Robin says,

<13-year-old girl>

I'll keep this brief: Caught the Imogen Heap concert here in San Francisco on Sunday and it was one of the best I've ever seen. Opening act for her tour is SF's own master chief beatboxer Kid Beyond, who also joins Heap's band as her human drum machine. The whole thing was just a great, inventive show that I could imagine enjoying even if I'd never heard any of it before.

Still a bunch of stops on the tour in the next couple weeks. Many are sold out but, come on. Highly recommended.

</13-year-old girl>

Fake is the New Real

Robin says,

Apropos of nothing: fake is the new real is a really striking webpage, yeah?

Go Slow, Picasso

Robin says,

Even if this Malcolm Gladwell speech (PDF) was only so-so I'd probably still perfunctorily link to it. So, consider it a bonus that it's GREAT!

In it he talks about the differences between prodigies and late bloomers in art; as his prototypes Gladwell uses Picasso and Cezanne. (If that's too boring for you, he also compares The Eagles to Fleetwood Mac and Apple to Dell. And pharmaceutical R&D makes a cameo, too!)

It's a transcript of a recording, not just a speech text, so it has a really nice rhythm and tone. (Actually, it appears that the transcription was underwritten by the economist who Gladwell cites heavily in the speech... pretty slick.)

Gladwell's bottom line (which is almost beside the point in a speech as fun and discursive as this): Our culture has gone a little too wild for prodigies. We ought to make room for late bloomers again.

(Points of Note came outta nowhere with this one!)

Update: Rachel applies the Picasso/Cezanne paradigm to academic life.

Missing the Concert

Matt says,

I heard one of this woman's songs week-before-last, immediately bought the album, listened to it during lunch at work the next day, and instantly went to a coworker's desk to announce I'd found her new favorite thing. And now I give her to you. Her name is Shara Worden, but she goes by My Brightest Diamond.

Tomorrow night, she'll be at 7th St. Entry, First Avenue's adorable little brother venue, but I cannot attend. This makes me sad. Support her when she comes to your town, that she may return to mine.

Motown Remix

Robin says,

Track of the week!

It's Motown meets melancholy folk rock. (MP3 link!)

Again via the 'Move.

Another Masterpiece from Gustaf Von Musterhausen

Robin says,

This video from the band Muse is somehow both completely ironic and unabashedly awesome: It's called Knights of Cydonia and it features kung-fu, cowboys, lasers, and a holographic rock band. Probably more, too, but my pop-culture receptors overloaded and shut off about halfway through.

(Via the 'Move.)

Changing Worldchanging

Robin says,

Ooh! Great new design over at Worldchanging. I know I've said it a million times, but: It's one of my favorite sites on the entire internet.

Ticket Masters

Robin says,

Whoah! Insanely useful comment thread on Lifehacker: How to get cheap plane tickets. I just found out about a ton of things I'd never even dreamed of before -- Tripstalker, whaaa?

So Fresh and So Clean

Robin says,

The Current website just got a BIG update!

In particular it's a lot easier and more fun to click around between videos. Watch for the navigation panel over on the right.

Apartment Hunting for Nerds

Robin says,

New hotness: Rentslicer. It's everything that's cool about housingmaps.com plus a big dose of statistics.

Postal Substitute

Robin says,

Man, ever since that Feist remix, I can't stop wishing for more Postal Service. If you too are longing for clicky, computer-y goodness... here are some stand-ins:

• Milosh (mp3)
• Psapp (mp3)
• The Album Leaf (mp3)

High School Noir

Matt says,

Brick was a blast. It definitely deserves to inherit the college-boy quote-fountain crown from Fight Club, The Big Lebowski, and The Usual Suspects. According to David Denby, it was shot in 20 days and edited on a home computer. (A Mac, says an interview on the official site.) Go trailerize, then go see it.

Michael Pollan and the Modern Hunt

Robin says,

Absolutely great story about hunting and a "first-person feast" by Michael Pollan in the NYT Mag. (But of course we love MP here at the 'Market.)

The Dark Knight Returns, Again

Robin says,

I'm reading Batman: Year 100 (issues #1 and #2 are out; #3 and #4 still on their way) and liking it a lot. The plot is sparse, and so is the linework -- writer/artist Paul Pope has a style that's half Frank Miller, half manga, and honestly a little Bob Kane-y too.

Here's Wired's interview with Pope; that's what tipped me off to this series in the first place.

Bought my copies at SF's incomparable Isotope.

For a Year I Owned RobotLion.com

Robin says,

If you, like me, find delight in potential new domain names, then check out AjaxWhois.com. Sooo much faster than the fugly looker-uppers at GoDaddy, etc.

Late-Night Cartoons

Robin says,

So, three shows on Adult Swim that I've been TiVo-ing:

	Samurai Champloo. This show is directed by the guy who made Cowboy Bebop. Both hinge on a central creative juxtaposition. With Bebop, it was space cowboys and jazz; this time, it's 17th century samurai and hip-hop. Obsessed with the intro sequence.
	Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. This show is as verbose as its title. And, in truth, it's usually kinda boring. But somehow, I can't stop watching. It's the setting that sucks me in: a blandly realistic future Japan where refugees are the issue of the day and everybody's got a cyberbrain.
	Full Metal Alchemist. Talk about settings: This one takes place in a kind of alternate-history Europe where alchemy, not science, rules the day. The byzantine plot hinges on the alchemical law of equivalent exchange: to get what you want, you've got to sacrifice something of equal value. That idea kicks off the plot and keeps the story running.

Food++

Robin says,

Dinner hacks!

The comments don't quite live up to the headline, but some are quite good (for example).

Motown Ghost Town

Robin says,

Friend of the Snark (and, oh yeah, Michigan Radio reporter) Dustin Dwyer goes exploring in the old, abandoned Motown Records building in Detroit and finds a vinyl record that's been sitting there for decades in the dark.

He plays it for the first time.

Dustin says:

Anyway, this is what journalism is like in Michigan: plants closing, buildings being torn down. Contrast that, say, with Florida, where the big problems of the day are building enough schools to keep up with growing populations, or widening roads, or using smart planning to prevent everything from becoming one big suburb.

Everything there is growth, everything here is decline.

And yet, I'd much rather be covering these stories than those ones.

Just Look at All Those Monsters

Robin says,

This old intro sequence from the Japanese show Ultraman is amazing.

If I was a "video DJ" or something, I would so use it in my next "set."

Smart Storytelling

Robin says,

So the Current VC2 Survival Guide now has a storytelling section, featuring interviews with peeps like Robert Redford, Dave Eggers, Bonz Malone (!), Xeni Jardin (!!), and, my favorite, the This American Life godfather himself, Ira Glass.

Everybody has something interesting to say here, but for my money, Glass's articulation of this stuff is second to none. You really feel like you walk away with something you can use.

Hipster Norah Jones

Matt says,

Am I late to this party? This album has been lying around since April, and I'm only now discovering it? It's awesome! A+++ super-fast seller! will use again!!1!

Of Flying Pasta Monsters and Loneliness

Matt says,

A dream-ish prose poem of reasonable length, by Haruki Murakami, on spaghetti.

IM 2.0

Robin says,

Meebo!

Awesome Tools of the Day

Matt says,

Font junkies like me will love Typetester, a Web-based font comparison tool. (Spotted all over, most recently at Lifehacker.)

This is an old link, but seeing as I need to decorate my workspace, I've been casting many a curious eye at the Rasterbator, which lets you make giant, nicely pixellated mosaics of any image you've got.

Yahoo's Instant Search

Robin says,

Not to be a total nerd or anything, but Yahoo's Instant Search is hot.

Type "san francisco weather" or "al pacino" or whatever. I think it's notable for its creativity -- I certainly wasn't sitting around clamoring for this feature, but now that I have it, I'm like, ohhh yeah -- that's pretty handy.

Your Parents Help You Hook It Up

Robin says,

The first Zelda commercial (MPEG file). I want to say it's hilariously bad, but I just watched it three times in a row, so I guess on some level it's really, really excellent.

English Grad Students Do Webcomics Too

Robin says,

Animals have problems too.

Also noted: Animal reviews! The otter gets 8.8/10. Seems fair. (Via.)

Sack o' Eggs

Matt says,

I did it today. I had an omelette in a bag. And it was the best. (via)

Best Word Reference Ever

Matt says,

If only this online dictionary/thesaurus (based on the Project Guttenberg e-text of Webster's Unabridged) were available as a Google Desktop plugin.

The New Jam

Matt says,

"Breakfast Club" by DJ Z-Trip. Pass it on.

Six Feet Over

Matt says,

So, as I mentioned, "Six Feet Under" ended, in a melancholy blaze of glory (spoiler alert). They added a wonderful coda to the show's Web site (soooooo many spoilers) for anyone who saw the final episode. The song that had us all in tears, by the way, was "Breathe Me" by Sia.

Calvin and Hobbes Revisited

Robin says,

I can't remember where I found this now, but it is excellent.

Excellent I say.

Thumbs Down

Matt says,

Great bad review (via). Even better bad review (via).

(PS: Crash Bonsai!)

A Low-Key Little Animated Short for You

Robin says,

Nice little animation.

Sound required. Best not be sipping coffee.

TIG-A-SAUR-ONS!

Robin says,

Behold, the new darling of the blogosphere: ART LAD!

The real reason I'm linking is his first post. You seriously need to click and check it out -- it's like the sum of humanity's subconscious fears as rendered in tempera by a six-year-old.

(Via.)

The New Sonic Obsession

Robin says,

Ratatat. Check it out.

Here's the sound-bite:

... their unique sound born of a combined love of Jay-Z, The Rolling Stones, Timbaland, and Beethoven.

No lyrics, which I often can't hang with it, but in this case it's fine great blowing my mind.

I love this effusive praise for one of Ratatat's songs, from an Amazon.com reviewer:

"germany to germany" could bring the world peace if it was played at negotiations.

These guys are Bill & Ted!

Album of the Year!! Or... So I Hear

Robin says,

Tim says Andrew Bird's new album rules. And that's good enough for me.

P.S. Somebody get this guy a job at the New Yorker.

Rocket and the Great Chicken Chase

Matt says,

I've got to strongly recommend the movie City of God, although I have nothing particularly insightful to say about it. (Ebert.) But there's this: I kept a stiff upper lip all throughout the film. Afterwards, as I'm wont to do, I visited its IMDB trivia page. Then came the tears. That's never happened to me before. (Watch the movie before you read the trivia.)

Tickets to Iron Maiden

Matt says,

Pastel Vespa covers Wheatus' "Teenage Dirtbag," over at Copy, Right?

A United Nations Blog! Finally!

Robin says,

Er, wait, was I the only one waiting for somebody to start a UN blog?

Link via C to the T.

Map of Your Stars

Matt says,

LivePlasma is a super-shiny recommendation engine. I tend to distrust these things, but then I entered "Rufus Wainwright," and a cloud of fellow musical artists I've come to adore popped in and orbited his name. And the interface is Google-good (although not Google-fast).

Galang

Matt says,

Ruben Fleischer has a new video out, and I think it may be my favorite of his many super-excellent music videos. It's called "Galang" (look for the link at the bottom of the page), it's by gorgeous Sri Lankan hip-hopper M.I.A., featuring her set against the backdrop of her animated artwork. Waaaaaaay too good not to share.

Fontastic

Matt says,

For anyone who wants a really pretty free font, or for anyone who doubts they exist, try Gentium. It was made as part of the Master of Arts for Typeface Design at the University of Reading, and is free. It prints as pretty as it reads on screen, and the entire point of it is to have full language support. (Via Ask MetaFilter.)