Sean Daily is an English major from New Jersey now living in Las Vegas, the Other City of Lights. "I consider 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' to be comfort reading, I like the al pastor tacos at Tacos Mexico and I count among my literary influences the Chainsaw from 'Doom'. 'RRRRRR! You don't like that, do you, Mr. Undead Marine! RRRRRR!'"
Shanoah Alkire is our Discordian at large. "Born in Santa Cruz, I grew up in Grass Valley and the Bay Area, and now lurk in Las Vegas. My literary influences include Ray Bradbury,
Lewis Carroll, and Douglas Adams. I also program as a hobby,
and currently maintain the Gtk port of Angband. You can find
a rather old bio of me here."
I’m not really sure whether to classify this as a full post or a What the F*** for today, as it shares a little of both.
All I really know of this is that it is the opening to some sort of Japanese Shakespearean Musical. The ending has the same tune, only all the actors were ghosts.
Now here is “To be or not to be” turned into a song and dance number, the ‘Mondai’ song. Think this is the same musical. This has Tatsuya Fujiwara as Hamlet. I so wish I understood Japanese.
And here is Hamlet seeing the ghost of his father when trying to have sex with a fat Valkyrie. The kid has issues. ^_^
Sometimes I have no idea how I got to a video. Or even if I do, it’s from a strange enough route that I have to wonder anyways.
This is a case in point. However bizarre it was, earlier I was looking at a Japanese cast singing “Jesus Christ Superstar” (and that was very cool. Too bad it didn’t allow embedding.). And later, I was watching parts of Andrew Lloyd Webers “CATS” in Japanese.
None of that explains how I got to this odd fan made video, titled Overdrive, by IOSYS. After watching a purely Japanese version, I grabbed a version with subtitles. It didn’t help, though I’m assured this features Reisen Udongein Inaba, the Moon Rabbit.
Warning: this video may cause insanity in laboratory rabbits in clinical studies. And it’s not worksafe, besides that.
I’ll admit to sympathizing a bit with this one. The song is entitled Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me, by TISM, and the animation is by Bernard Derriman. You can also see it in flash animation form.(If that website looks familiar, well, other flash animations on it have been featured here before…).
If nothing else, it’s a really cute bunny rabbit animation. And totally not work safe.
ZOMG! Well, you dirty birdie, if we’re going to have pro-drug propaganda [1] on this blog, then dammit we’re gonna have some anti-drug propaganda, too! You know, keep things Fair and Balanced™ and whatnot.
That’s right, it’s time for 1936’s Reefer Madness, courtesy of those fine folks at Archive.org. You can view it in full – and for free – here.
Interestingly, Reefer Madness may not be the ”propaganda film” that everyone says it is. Sez Archive.org:
Considered THE archetypal sensationalized anti-drug movie, but it’s really an exploitation film made to capitalize on the hot taboo subject of marijuana use. Like many exploitation films of the time, “Reefer Madness” tried to make a quick buck off of a forbidden subject while skirting the Motion Picture Production Code of 1930. The Code forbade the portrayal of immoral acts like drug use. (The illegal drug traffic must not be portrayed in such a way as to stimulate curiosity concerning the use of, or traffic in, such drugs; nor shall scenes be approved which show the use of illegal drugs, or their effects, in detail.)
The film toured around the country for many years – often being re-edited and re-titled (“Tell Your Children”, “Dope Addict”, “Doped Youth”, “Love Madness”, “The Burning Question”). It was re-discovered in the early 1970s by NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) and screened again as an example of the government’s demonization of marijuana. NORML may have been confused about the film’s sponsorship since one of the film’s distributors, Dwain Esper, testified to the Arizona Supreme Court that “Reefer Madness” was not a trashy exploitation film but was actually sponsored by the U.S. Government – a convincing lie, but a lie nonetheless.
This is backed up by a review for Reefer Madness at AllMovie.com:
… But this reception of the more overtly ludicrous aspects of the film presupposes that Tell Your Children (as it was originally called) was truly intended as a heartfelt if clumsy warning against drug addiction. At least three sequences, barely registering with a modern viewer, demonstrate that it was not: the least subtle of the three is a lovemaking scene between the young leads that includes what appears to be French kissing, a strict taboo under the Production Code that regulated mainstream Hollywood fare; then a girl under the influence wantonly removes her sweater to reveal a brassiere; and, most subtly of all, but perhaps also the most indicative of the film’s true intent, the character of Mae Coleman’s seemingly superfluous changing of wardrobe. The sequence, during which Mae (Thelma White) lovingly rolls up her sheer stockings, may be explained to further establish the character as an unscrupulous despoiler of young innocents. But apart from parents, educators, and law officials, Mae is the only adult present with misgivings about the drug-induced orgies taking place in her apartment. Granted, the character is as ill-defined as everyone else in the film, but her presence still goes a long way to demonstrate Reefer Madness’ true mission: sexual titillation.
Funny how fine the fine the line is between propaganda and exploitation, huh?
Whatever it is, though, Reefer Madness still great stuff – “great” in the sense that a train wreck is great, that is.
[1] Actually, I have no idea if May the Cube Be With You was pro- or anti-drug. It could have been Thomas Dolby singing praises to Almighty Cthulhu, High Priest of R’Lyeh, and every time someone plays it humanity comes that much closer to the apocalypse. Like I’ve said before, I’m terrible with song lyrics.
Well, I’ll keep with the theme for the moment. It’s worth noting that I go on vacation from Weds to next Mon, so after Weds post, my posts may be spotty, depending on Internet access, and if I have time, so theme may vary.
I haven’t really had time to prepare posts ahead of time yet, either, so we’ll see how it works out.
Today, though, I found an odd little tune of Thomas Dolby’s called May The Cube Be With You. I strongly recommend watching the (embedding disabled) original music video, but here’s a remix you can listen to.
And, yes, this song is unabashedly about drugs. Rated non-work-safe due to the comments at the end of this long remixed version, though.
Well, given that I posted Mr. Funk, I suppose I should do Daddy Cool, the epitome of cheesy disco music.
This is an absolutely classic video, down to the fake orgasms the one girl does while the guy with his shirt off slides a long hard microphone between his legs.
I actually do somewhat enjoy this video, especially watching the three ladies in this video’s over the top dancing. Thing you may want to note here is that the guy and three girls shown here are not singing. They are lipsyncing, much like Milli Vanilli.
Just like that, in fact, as it’s the same German guy behind both of them, Frank Farian. He used Boney M as one of his psuedonyms.
Now, you might have been thinking “I bet it would be easy to make a really horrible cover of that song, and throw in some chicks with punk hairstyles.”
No?
Well, the group Peaches was. I wish they hadn’t.
This is a train wreck. It’s so bad I really had to play it. That sad, lonely guy in the circle reminds me of scenes from Myst for some reason. Probably the overacting.
Funny thing is it really makes me appreciate the original…
Well, continuing with the all-Shanoah-all-the-time marathon, I heard two songs recently that it occurred to me would be very inappropriate to play together. And, well, I don’t need much more invitation then that…
The first one is some funky hip jive along the line of my last post. This is the Mighty Show Stoppers, with the Hippy Skippy Moon Strut. Yes, really. Makes you want to dance, but I think large doses of caffeine or something stronger would be neccessary to keep the pace.
And, to totally change pace, here’s a song by a schizophrenic black guy named Wesley Willis. His catchy, upbeat title for this song is I Murdered Your Family. You want to guess what it’s about?
Well, no new deaths today that I know of, though I haven’t really checked too closely. It’d be pretty eerie if a new celebrity started dying each day for a blog theme, after all. Like Michael Jackson, who is now confirmed to have died of a heart attack. (The default method of dying from having your name written in the notebook from Death Note, as I recall.)
Don’t think we had a firm established theme before that, so I’ll fall back on what I had been doing: posting Frank Zappa songs.
This one’s a rather nice rundown of televangelists and other religious groups, Jesus Thinks You’re A Jerk. Includes jabs at Jim & Tammy, and the Ku Klux Klan, among others. Pity the lyrics shown are occassionally misspelled, or incorrect. (Bush for Pat was one noticed, for example.)
It’s a fun song lambasting various people and groups that need it, anyways. And no, not work safe.
For the lack of any other direction in my posts, I’m going to go from Popotan back to Frank Zappa again.
First, a song along similar themes to the one I played earlier, Teenage Prostitute. This song is called Easy Meat. Questionable themes or not, this song rocks. Though I’m not sure what her kink about beating people up with a copy of the Rolling Stone Magazines all about…
(But then, I’m not a robot.)
And how can you have Easy Meat without her uncle, Uncle Meat? This is an instrumental. Art style on the music video is pretty neat. I’m normally not much for yellow, but this looks pretty cool.
