I posted about Isaiah Seret’s Hitler is Alive in Burma spot (starring Ellen Page) a few days ago, from the Burma Can’t Wait campaign. Now check out another spot of his entitled Voices (do yourself a favor and go watch it on YouTube and click on the High Quality version, unfortunately there’s no hard-link to the HQ). This spot goes completely in the opposite direction of the Hitler piece. I love it.
The music is by Vetiver - “You May Be Blue (Neighbors Remix)”
– I did the type cards on this one. nothing fancy. minimal, to the point.
I’ve posted about floating garbage island before and i’m sure if you ask any politician, they’d say it’s an urban myth hyped by Boing! Boing! conspiracy theorists. But it’s not! The folks at Vice sent a crew of people with video cameras out to the patch. Their verdict? Not only are the reports true, but it’s worse than they expected. There’s no patch and no island. Nothing that can be cleaned up easily. It’s a galactic mess of floating pieces slowly photodegrading into even tinier toxic, digestible pieces. everywhere and nowhere. a gigantic floating toxic stew. and it’s twice the size of Texas.
Stevey originally turned me on to the series a few weeks ago and I’ve been meaning to repost. With Earth Day tomorrow (Apr22), I thought I put the word out. The documentary is intense, horrifying and urgent. Special props to the Vice team for such engaging content. When watching it, you get the feeling that they didn’t quite know what they were getting in to and the narrator/host Thomas Morton keeps it interesting with an increasing use of curse words as they get further in to the garbage patch. Justifiable considering the horror show they encounter.
Relatedly: Check out this interview, Thomas Morton’s take on traditional (read: neo-hippy) environmentalism as he interviews the authors of Break Through, a book that calls for the “Death of Environmentalism” (or at least its current 60s era mentality). Morton can be a bit harsh and irreverent, but he makes some valid points.
During the 60’s and early 70’s, as the war in Vietnam threatened its borders, a new music scene emerged in Cambodia that took Western rock and roll and stood it on its head-creating a sound like no other.
Cambodian musicians crafted this sound from the various rock music styles sweeping across America and England, adding the unique melodies and hypnotic rhythms of their traditional music. The beautiful singing of the renowned female vocalists became the final touch that made this mix so enticing.
This documentary film, “Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten,” provides a new perspective on a country usually assocated with war and genocide. By celebrating this powerful music, and the people who created it, Cambodia’s musical heyday emerges from the shadows of tragedy into the light of history.
The site for the film has several songs that help define the sound, they are a trip. Surf Rock from an alternate dimension.
Tiger Phone Card is my new favorite song of the moment by Los Angeles band Dengue Fever, whose primary inspiration is 60’s era psychedelic Cambodian surf rock complete with lyrics in cambodian and english. Their music is wicked and their vibe is totally left field. There’s a new film about their pilgrimage to Cambodia Sleepwalking Through The Mekong and the trailer goes into their influences and how they’ve arrived at such an original sound.
The odyssey is a homecoming for singer Chhom Nimol and a transformation for the rest of the band as they perform with master musicians and record new songs along the way.
More than a rockumentary, the film serves up a portrait of modern Cambodia as the band tours through Phnom Penh and beyond, crossing a great cultural chasm with the same spirit of Cambodia’s original rock pioneers.
Cambodia is often synonymous with the brutal Khmer Rouge regime that left millions dead and scattered refugees around the globe. This tragedy overshadows the story of Cambodia’s music scene in the 1960s and 1970s. Cambodian musicians reinvented Western rock n’ roll with a distinctly Khmer flavor to crete a sound that is at once familiar and completely original.
Mear One rocks some wicked pieces in promotion of LA vs War, a 4 day art + activism even in downtown Los Angeles, April 10-13:
LA vs WAR highlights the travesty of a senseless war now going into its 6th year, giving LA artists a platform to exercise their freedom of speech. Hundreds of artists representing our diverse communities unite in delivering a universal message of peace and understanding, and offering resistance and opposition to the US government’s war policies.
Good art + Good ideas. The Ghandi piece, in the video, is amazing!
A new documentary called Surfwise is coming out. Looks pretty good:
Like many American outsider-adventurers, Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz set out to realize a utopian dream. Abandoning a successful medical practice, he sought self-fulfillment by taking up the nomadic life of a surfer. But unlike other American searchers like Thoreau or Kerouac, Paskowitz took his wife and nine children along for the ride, all eleven of them living in a 24 foot camper. Together, they lived a life that would be unfathomable to most, but enviable to anyone who ever relinquished their dreams to a straight job. The Paskowitz Family proved that America may be running out of frontiers, but it hasn’t run out of frontiersman.
Recently I’ve been incessantly listening to Yeasayer’s hit from last year 2080 (i’m late to the party, as usual). La Blogotheque’s Take Away Show idea is rad and i’ve linked them before. They’ve got a new episode up with Yeasayer performing 2080 and I have to say I almost like it better then the original. Stripped down to acapella vocals, piano, spontaneous choir and banging and clapping makes the song even cooler then it was before.
Update: I ripped the song to mp3 so I could bump it on the regular. I hope the Yeasayer kids (and Blogotheque) don’t mind, it seems to be within their politics and general vibe to be cool with this. Download it here.
WASHINGTON — President Bush on Saturday further cemented his legacy of fighting for strong executive powers, using his veto to shut down a Congressional effort to limit the Central Intelligence Agency’s latitude to subject terrorism suspects to harsh interrogation techniques.
Steven Lee Myers mines the last eight years of Bush’s presidency and this is what this guy comes up with? That Bush’s legacy is that he fought for “strong executive powers”? Let’s cut the crap: this is what Bush’s legacy is and this. GW makes Richard Nixon look like Tiny Tim and all Myers can come up with is that Bush tried to help the post of the president have a stronger say in government?
Vice has a pretty cool internet-based video site thingy called VBS.tv and it has tons of content. I’d love to be watching this stuff from the comfy confines of my couch, apple remote, front row and my flat-screen. Hook it up Vice Peoples.
One of the VBS channels is a surf culture oriented, documentary-style series called Hi Shredability* and if you’re a surfer connected to the internet, chances are you’ve already seen it. If not, it’s a pretty good source of non-commercial surf-docu content and interviews. Episodes almost always feature underdog surf culture luminaries like Alex Knost, Mike Cunningham, Robin Kegal, Kassia Meador, Dan Malloy etc…
VBS just posted the final 3rd installment of the Thomas Cambell series and I’ve been waiting for it to go up to post this (as i’m not much of the cliffhanger kinda guy). What I really took away from his series was how surfing, art making and filmmaking are essentially the same thing, there are no distinctions for him. It’s all really just about: doin’ your own thing. and just trusting that it’s all gonna come together in the end. For Thomas it always seems to.
Hi Shredability host Tyler Manson on Thomas Campbell’s working process:
The state of Thomas Campbell’s desk says a lot about his work habits. It is covered in scrapes of paper, paint, photos, leaves, pieces of thread, books, doodles, and cups full of brushes, pens, and pencils. The pile is six inches deep and covers the entire desk, spilling onto the walls and floor and growing by a factor of 12.5 percent every day (we guestimate). He is working on so many different projects all at once we’re not sure how he keeps it all straight. Some end up getting finished, framed, and hung on a white wall, while others are dropped to the floor and maybe picked up days or years later and turned into something totally new.
Thomas Campbell episodes: 1 | 2 | 3 | his website
– *with a name like “Hi Shredability” the series creators must have a well-placed sense of irony
Hi, my name is Ed Fladung, I'm a recovering web-designer who moved to Mexico about 4 years ago. Learned to surf, got married and bought a nice camera. This is my weblog/photoblog. It covers broad subjects like becoming an ex-pat, surfing, photography, graphic design, music, art, architecture, living in mexico, all things Apple and WordPress related, etc... You can find more about me here. I hope you enjoy.
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