Check it Out

Britney Spears is back, whether you like it or not. She may be annoying and do stupid and crazy things, but she has somehow stayed on the charts and revived her career. This is also despite the fact that she can’t sing, and her albums mostly consist of well programmed beats and her breathy, whispery talk-singing. In any case, her latest track is a catchy number called “Womanizer”, which she performs Live at Star Academy. Whether or not she actually sings the song live is up for debate at this point. If I were to guess I would say that she probably does not.

An unexpected appearance at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade was made by Rick Astley, when he performed a live Rickroll. He emerged from the float in the middle of a song from Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends and began to lip synch his hit from the 1980s, “Never Gonna Give You Up”. At the end of the song, a character yells, “I Like Rickrolling!” Rickrolling is an internet meme that usually involves a user clicking a link and being taken to the music video for the song. I think it is pretty funny that they have done the same thing now on live television.

Yes, I know that Thanksgiving was yesterday, but just bear with me. I saw that the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special was on TV the other night. Even though it is not as well known as the Christmas special or even the Great Pumpkin, it is still a classic. Here is the scene where all the peanuts are sitting down to their Thanksgiving dinner around the ping pong table. After the Thanksgiving special, they aired “This is America, Charlie Brown”, which was a totally different mini-series from the 80s, which actually featured adults in the cartoon, as well as educating us about the story of the Pilgrims.

When there is a fight in sports, the severity of the punishment really depends on the sport. In hockey, fighting is pretty much tolerated and in a normal fight each player just gets a 5-minute major penalty and then it’s over. In baseball you risk getting ejected from the game, although I have not seen a big baseball brawl in quite a while. In basketball, fighting usually means ejection and perhaps a suspension. When it happens in the NFL, it is taken pretty seriously. Maybe that’s one of the reasons that the players don’t fight with each other a whole lot. However, in the Dolphins-Patriots game, Matt Light sucker punches Channing Crowder and then is afraid to walk in the same locker room tunnel. He puts his helmet on as he reaches the tunnel. This fight could have some serious consequences as the players will plead their case to the commisioner.

Pretty much everybody remembers “Closing Time” by Semisonic. The lyrics to the song were inspired by the birth of singer Dan Wilson’s child and are pretty memorable. The concept for the music video was explained by drummer Jacob Slichter in his book So You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star: How I Machine-Gunned a Roomful of Record Executives and Other True Tales from a Drummer’s Life. I highly recommend this book, which is a humorous and honest account of the rise and fall of a rock band, Semisonic in this case. Anyway, the video was filmed using a single shot approach, but with a split screen which required Dan Wilson to be on camera for each of the screens during the video. A pretty neat effect that makes this video concept work well.

MythBusters is a great show on the Discovery Channel where two guys try to test out various myths and theories by using physics, and have fun doing it. Most of their experiments involve something blowing up or otherwise destroyed. YouTube recently asked Adam and Jamie from MythBusters to appear on YouTube Live to create a painting using paintballs. They decided the best idea would be to put someone in front of a machine shooting 20000 paintballs and see what the resulting black background looks like. So Jamie put on a bunch of armor and stood in front of the machine. It paints in less than 1/10 of a second. Watch what happens.

Kanye West is releasing a new album called 808s and Heartbreak in December. Here is his new video for the song “Heartless”. It’s animated and I must say, it’s kinda cool. It looks like it was taken from live-action shots, and then they made it look more cartoonish. Hype Williams directed and produced the video, and the song’s not bad either. Look for guest appearances from some Campbell’s Soup cans as well as from several of the members of the Jetson family. It has been reported that West will perform at the American Music Awards ceremony tonight along with Alicia Keys, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, and others. I don’t think that will be animated, though.

Cypress Hill has been one of the most popular hip-hop groups in the U.S. since their debut album in 1991. For their fifth album, Skull & Bones, in 2000, they took a different two-disc approach. The first disc, “Skull”, was more hip hop oriented, and the second disc, “Bones”, experimented with more of a rock sound. They even did two different versions of the first single, titled “(Rock) Superstar” and “(Rap) Superstar”. “(Rock) Superstar”, which is shown here, is still a quality track to this day. It was once performed by the group along with the members of Velvet Revolver. The group is still around and continues to break down barriers with their music.

Nick Arcade was a kids’ game show that aired on Nickelodeon in the early nineties. There were video challenges that would put two kids against each other on various Sega Genesis or SNES games. And of course, the final bonus round where the winning team had to be part of their own video game, thanks to virtual reality. This was state of the art technology at the time. But this particular kid was quite possibly the worst player ever! He didn’t quite get the hang of the whole bluescreen thing. Looking back, the show just makes me laugh, but also brings me back to those old school games.

I used to love the show “Whose Line is it Anyway?” I would watch all of the reruns on Comedy Central in the early nineties. The original British television show began in 1988 (before that it was a radio show). There were some great American players like Ryan Stiles, Greg Proops, Colin Mochrie, and Wayne Brady. The British players were good too, especially Tony Slattery and John Sessions, and I especially liked Clive Anderson as the host. The American show, which was made famous by Drew Carey, was good, but in my opinion did not have the same charm as the original. The clip below is from the American version on ABC, a good edition of Let’s Make a Date.