Beach cliff
Author: Guy Bergstrom
Reformed journalist. Scribbler of speeches and whatnot.
THE AVENGERS + THE BREAKFAST CLUB = AWESOMESAUCE
What did we do before YouTube was invented?
THE BREAKFAST CLUB is a classic coming-of-age movie, which involves a jock, a prom princess, a geek, a stoner and a freak. THE AVENGERS is the same, except the kids are all grown up, have fancier toys and bigger issues, as this beautiful mashup makes clear.
CLARITY by Zedd is ambitious and good
Music videos are common, and have been done so many time, it’s hard to do anything truly different or interesting.
The Beastie Boys played cheesy cops with giant mustaches in SABOTAGE, which is classic. But 99 percent of other music videos are rock stars preening, divas dancing, boy bands prancing or soulful singers looking all pouty and depressed with their guitar.
CLARITY by Zedd has guts and ambition. They shot footage other than the lead singer wailing and the guitarist thrashing. The film looks interesting, like it could be part of a movie — I wanted to see more of what they did out in the desert and the streets.
Well done, German euro-rockers.
I DID IT MY WAY by Walter White (Br Ba)
BREAKING BAD is the best thing on the Glowing Tube, by far — that’s the consensus of all kinds of critics and smart peoples on this rock circling the sun. The thing has its own subreddit, just like Batman and catsstandingup — that’s how big it is.
Who could’ve predicted the actor who played Hal on Malcolm in the Middle would transform into this amazing character, Walter White?
And this mashup here, of Walter White singing the old Sinatra — well, it doesn’t get any better than this.
I tip my hat to actor Bryan Cranston and the whole BREAKING BAD team. Amazing work on an amazing series.
SUFFERING by Satchel will break your heart, then rebuild it
There are certain movies that simply have the Most Glorious Soundtracks Known to Man.
BEAUTIFUL GIRLS is one such movie.
It didn’t break records at the box office, and may be best known for featuring an all-star cast of A-list actors, and if half of them had names starting with A, hey, we’d be riding the alliteration train all the way to Texas. But they don’t. A few of the actors: Uma Thurman, Matt Dillon, Mira Sorvino, Michael Rappaport, Rosie O’Donnell and some little girl named Natalie Portman.
Here’s a great clip from that movie, which you are required by law to fire up on Netflix and such:
And here’s the song by Satchel, which is timeless
DESERT ROSE by Sting
No matter what you think of Sting — and you should think VERY WELL of him — he’s never boring.
This video is part travelogue, part concert-montage. And it has yet to bore me.
New advice column: ASK AYN RAND
I happily poked fun of Ayn Rand’s masterpiece, because it is a pretentious pile of doggerel.
Here’s that post: The Red Pen of Doom murders THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand
However, John Hodgman did something beautiful with Ayn Rand recently in The New Yorker, and you need to read this thing. It’s a long-lost advice column in Parade Magazine, written by Ayn Rand in 1980.
Here’s the link: Ask Ayn
And here’s my favorite bit from his piece:
Some of you wrote in last week to express surprise that, when I appeared on the Phil Donahue program, I told him that I was a fan of “Charlie’s Angels.” This just shows how poor your critical thinking is. It should be obvious why I love “Charlie’s Angels.” The show is about three beautiful women who are not ashamed of their beauty or their ability at solving crimes. And when their talents were not appreciated by the police department and they were forced to become crossing guards, they refused!
They refused to take money from the government to train American children to believe that the state will forever protect them from risk! They left their jobs and made new lives for themselves in a private capitalist enterprise. They went Galt. (This is a reference to my book “Atlas Shrugged,” which will be made into a movie in the year 1982, and the market will reward it with success. We have already cast Kris Kristofferson—my first choice!—as John Galt.)
What kind of advice would Ayn Rand give today?
The most epic movie trailer mashup OF ALL TIME
This man named Vadzim Khudabets edits movie trailers for a living. So he took 99 movies trailers and stitched them all together into this masterpiece of summer movie awesomesauce.
ICE, ICE BABY as sung by the movies
Oh, this is brilliant. The classic ’90s song by Vanilla Ice, as sung by clips from various movies.
For fans of this song, I took the original and put it under the lyrical microscope, line by line:
ICE, ICE BABY as interpreted by the Red Pen of Doom
CAMERA ONE by the Josh Joplin Group
The great thing about the Series of Tubes is this: say you hear a song on the radio, or lived back in the day when MTV played, I don’t know, music videos instead of stupid reality shows involving overtanned dipsticks and C-list reality shot “celebrities” who are only famous because they’re the son, daughter or step-daughter of a B-list celebrity.
The only way to hear that song again, or see the video, was to (a) glue yourself to the radio, night and day, (b) hit the record store and hope the clerk behind the counter can figure out the song, artist and album from you saying “You know, the video where the singer smashes a guitar on stage” or (c) camping out in front of the Glowing Tube until a coked-up VJ decides to play that video again.
For music loving people, the good old days were not so good. There was a reason hipsters lived at record stores: that’s how you found gems like CAMERA ONE by the Josh Joplin Group.
Today is a better day for anyone who loves music. I’ve had this song on my laptop forever. But is there a video? Ten seconds of messing around on youtube and bam, here it is.
Listen to the lyrics of this thing. The song is great, and the video is interesting — yet the lyrics are what stick with me, even though I’ve listened to this song forever. It doesn’t get old.
The Red Pen of Doom 