The Great Hobo Wars

This Ken Burns effect-laden video is almost painful to watch, but the audio is taken from probably the funniest part of John Hodgman's audiobook version of The Areas of My Expertise (audiobook link/paperback link). His new book More Information Than You Require is out now with an audiobook version TBD. Hodgman was interviewed on last Sunday's This Week in Tech by Leo Laporte, hear it here (the interview starts at about the one hour mark and lasts 30 minutes). In the interview he talks about filming the Apple "I'm a Mac"/"I'm a PC" commercials with Justin Long, his books, Yale University and The Daily Show.

(via kottke.org)

Highlights Magazine: Evil Version

Highlights Magazine for children, by Satan:

Science Corner
Fill one jar with chocolate syrup. Fill a second jar with vaseline. Slowly pour the vaseline from the second jar into the chocolate syrup in the first jar. Now, take a look in the mirror and ask yourself why you do whatever a magazine tells you to do. Answer: Because you're a fucking idiot.

(via Digg)

DN! airs readings from A People's History of the United States

Democracy Now! made good on their July 4 tradition of airing readings from Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. I listened to it a couple of years ago and an entire issue of Adbusters was adapted from Zinn's book in issue #53, "Hope And Memory".

First published more than a quarter of a century ago, the book has sold over a million copies and is a phenomenon in the world of publishing–selling more copies each successive year. Howard Zinn gathered gathered with a group of actors, writers and editors for a public reading of the book at the 92nd Street Y in New York. The cast included Alice Walker, Kurt Vonnegut, Danny Glover, beginning with James Earl Jones.

The program is one hour long but incredibly good. The stories are from average everyday people about the events that really matter to our history as a nation and a people. Watch or listen to the program through the DN! site.

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button Teaser Trailer

I caught this before Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull last month and was stunned. I haven't been as captivated by a teaser like this since Lady In The Water. David Fincher directs, and so confident of the impact of the cinematography his name doesn't even appear in the teaser.

Starts December 19. Based off of a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The music is "Aquarium" from composer Camille Saint-Saëns's The Carnival of the Animals. Here's a version performed by the Esso Trinidad Steel Band.

(via /Film)

UPDATE: The trailer is now available in HD on Apple.

Earth, you beautiful whore you!

So today being Earth Day I thought I'd post a few random Earth-related things...

Terra Grass Chair

This chair frame can be planted in your lawn, filled with dirt and seeded with grass to eventually grow into a seat. The frame is biodegradable and I think you could probably build one using paperboard since the set is a bit expensive (the only one I found for sale is $100). The curves would be hard to copy but you could experiment with the shape. Amanda (who grew the one to the left) says she had to cover hers with sod using some long staples when the seeds failed to blanket it, but I think St. Augustine grass would work well enough.

(via TreeHugger)


Bio Bench



In a similar vein is this bench made of biodegradable cardboard tubes covered with seeds using a cellulose adhesive. Not sure if it's actually available but it was designed by Julian Lwin. I think the shape may make it hard for seeds to take hold but cool idea none the less.

(via Inhabitat)


How To: Build and electric car

My first car was a MKIII Toyota Supra, white old and busted. I always loved the design though and I wished I had the skill to rip out the gas engine and throw in an electric one. TreeHugger came up with a small but very cool guide to building your own electric car recently, and while it would just barely work with the 3,500lb Supra if this design could be tweaked you could make something as cool looking as the Tesla Roadster. Now if we could just get past all this coal-based electricity...


The World Without Us by Alan Weisman

I noticed World Without Us at the bookstore and picked it up because I liked the premise. Imagine that all of humanity suddenly vanished, what would happen to the planet as the traces of our existence sink into the maw of time and decay? Weisman starts in New York with subways flooding, roads collapsing, and all manner of structure deforming and crumbling overcome by wild animals and vegetation. He travels to old growth forests, the Korean DMZ, abandoned cities in Cyprus and Ukraine, and petrochemical plants in Texas to show how all things man-made eventually succumb to nature. If you want to read about environmental degradation from a completely new perspective I really recommend this.

You can watch an interview with Alan Weisman on The Daily Show or hear and interview with him on NPR's Talk of the Nation Science Friday. Here's a pretty cool little timeline to see the progress (regress?) of the earth without humans.

Sarasota Film Festival: We Are Wizards

We Are Wizards was definitely my favorite film at the Sarasota Film Festival this year. I haven't read any of the Harry Potter books but I have seen most of the films and I'm not ashamed to admit that I love the story. This doc is about some of the culture that has sprouted up around Harry Potter like "wizard rock", online communities, comedic interpretation and religious criticism. The profiles really round out the characters and give their motives depth and background. The film is this perfect mix of humor and passion and creativity that surprised me. I didn't think you could do a story about people that have stories about creating stories based on a story and come out with something good.

Wizard rock is a term coined by the two guys in the band Harry and The Potters, who not only sing songs about Harry Potter but actually look like Daniel Radcliffe. Other wizard rock groups include The Hungarian Horntails (a couple of wildly creative boys), Draco and The Malfoys (a couple of guys with kids of their own), and Order Of Merlin. Watching little kids sitting in a library staring slack-jawed as a punk band yells their heads off is hilarious. The interviews with these groups take up the first half of the film but just when I thought the movie would focus solely on the rock aspect they switch it up.

Jumping to fans' community creations and coalitions they film focuses on a boycott led by Heather Lawver in order to stop Warner Brothers from sending cease and desist letters to Harry Potter fan sites. A religious critic is even featured to cover the topic of witchcraft and wizardry. Luckily they didn't pick some raving nut, but she did seem a bit misinformed.

The stubbly narrator you see in the beginning and end of the trailer above is Brad Neely, comic artist and creator of several funny-ass cartoons for Super Deluxe. In the trailer he's reading from a sort of soundtrack overlay he wrote, recorded and performed for the Harry Potter films called Wizard People, Dear Readers. Someone put together a VD rips of the films synced with the recording and I have one, but I have yet to watch it. In We Are Wizards he talks about Warner Bros. bringing the copyright hammer down on him and even performs a bit of infringement himself, adding a hell of a lot of comedy (an profanities, neat!) to the film.

In a Q&A with the director and editor they said they focussed on only a few individuals in the film because they wanted to give the people depth instead of a catalog of all things Harry Potter. They're hoping to get some sort of distribution or maybe even put the whole thing out online. It was shot in 4:3 so it could work well on TV. Even if you've only seen the films I would recommend this film, they made special effort to keep the subject matter light enough that anyone could follow it. You'll laugh, I swear.