This is simply the best thing ever: a fake trailer for The Shining that’s edited to make the movie seem like a heartwarming family tearjerker. The soundtrack song is absolutely perfect.

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categories: Film, TV and Video

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Metallica Drummer! is a hilarious bit of home-video footage that became a phenomenon on the underground video-trading circuit in the late ’90s. A couple of years ago I summarized the video’s backstory in the lead paragraph of a book review I wrote for The New York Sun:

One day in the early 1990s, a young Canadian heavy metal fan put a chair in the center of his living room, turned on a video camera, cued up a Metallica album, and launched into the most hilariously earnest display of fantasy musicianship ever captured on tape. Glaring straight at the camera, and wearing a pair of Bart Simpson shorts, the scowling young man re-created every snare hit, every kick-drum thud, every cymbal crash on the recordings—but he did it on an imaginary drum kit. The young air drummer quickly forgot about the tape he had made, but someone later found it and released it into the underground trading circuit without his knowledge. Metallica Drummer!, as the video came to be known, developed a cult following in the late 1990s, probably because it’s so revealing of the fantasy world that lurks in the imagination of every music freak. To paraphrase Walt Kelly, we have seen Metallica Drummer, and he is us.

The video—a clip is below—is funny without any context, but knowledge of the backstory makes it richer and funnier. The historical record consists primarily of two articles published in the San Francisco alternative press in January 1999. The first article appeared in The San Francisco Bay Guardian when Metallica Drummer’s identity was still a secret. The second came out a couple of weeks later in SF Weekly and related the reporter’s experience of tracking down the mysterious Metallica Drummer in Vancouver and informing him that he and his video were famous. Sort of. The guy was shocked but oddly proud.

Here’s a clip of the first song on the tape, “Sad But True.” I think that link may work best if you have Quicktime 7. It’s a smaller file, so try it first. If you have any trouble, try this version instead, which is slightly bigger and may have fewer compatibility issues.

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categories: Music and Audio, TV and Video

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Here’s a fantastic trove of every Mad cover from the magazine’s October/November 1952 debut all the way up to the current issue, October 2005. This is the 1952 premiere issue:

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categories: Art and Design, Magazines

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Linotype has just released FontExplorer X, an iTunes-inspired font management program for “font sorting, font shopping and font discovery.” I haven’t had a chance to install it yet, but the concept looks great.

[via one of my favorite sites, Design Observer.]

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categories: Art and Design

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Erstwhile New York Times rock critic Neil Strauss appeared on The View last week to promote his new book, The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists. The book, published by Judith Regan, no less, chronicles the two years he spent picking the brains of dudes like these so he could learn how to get into the pants of chicks like these. He became very, very good at it. He originally wrote about these experiences in a January 2004 article in the Styles section of The New York Times.

Here’s the footage of Strauss’s seven-minute kaffeeklatsch with the ladies of The View. Alas, Barbara Walters was not on the panel that day.

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categories: Books, TV and Video

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My pal Clive Thompson, a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, Details, and other mags, has an excellent piece in the latest Wired about “the ‘fab revolution’—the advent of cheap, easy-to-use tools for crafting physical objects, such as laser cutters and 3D milling machines,” as Clive puts it on his first-rate science-and-technology blog, Collision Detection. “Essentially, I argue that the physical world is about to become as flexible as information. Just as computers and the Internet made bits infinitely malleable, precision-guided fab tools will make atoms easy to tweak.”

To immerse himself in these new technologies, Clive used them to create the body of a one-of-a-kind electric guitar. He enlisted the services of eMachineshop, a New Jersey-based company whose website and proprietary software allow customers to design a wide range of physical objects—everything from furniture and toys to sporting equipment and medical devices—that are then manufactured by eMachineshop and sent to the customer.

The first graphic below is Clive’s design as it existed it in the software; the second is Clive rocking out at home with his new guitar.

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categories: Art and Design, Music and Audio, Science and Technology

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It seems that I’m one of the last people to have seen this excellent thing. Heck, even NPR’s All Things Considered did a story about it last week. But I’m posting it anyway, because it’s awesome: In the video for their new song “A Million Ways,” the band OK Go does some of the best dorky dancing ever.

[via AudioMastermind, a great music blog I learned of through another great music blog, Music Thing.]

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categories: Music and Audio, TV and Video

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There are so many people on the Gulf Coast who need help right now. I’m sure most of you have already given money to one or more relief organizations. Here’s another organization you might consider donating to. The website of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, one of the city’s great music institutions, is raising money to help New Orleans musicians. Go here to give.

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categories: Music and Audio, News and Politics

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