Iron Man vs. Bruce Lee

Exactly what it sounds like. Easily the most impressive non-studio stop-motion animation I've ever seen (if that makes sense).

Saddest Thing

There have been many suggestions as to what may constitute the saddest thing. As an exercise, I asked many of my friends, and a young woman as kind-hearted as any I've met suggested that the saddest thing was a three-year-old girl with no arms, falling off a swing on a lonely hilltop. Needless to say, the game ended shortly thereafter. Clearly there was no topping her response; there was also the frightening quickness and clarity with which the answer came to her mind.

On a whim, I wondered what the internet had to say on the subject, and with the help of my friend Google, I found The Saddest Thing, an online user-generated pit of despair. Check out the Saddest Of Them All. These are the ones that were voted saddest, and they are SAD, people. Fun stuff. These are found among the much more numerous sad-but-still-sorta-funny things, like this story, or this picture:*

The brutally honest webcomic Achewood has an excellent (read: heart-shattering) suggestion to add at this point:
(click to enlarge)

I, sadly, do not have a definitive answer to offer you. Perhaps one day I'll stumble upon something so sad I instantly fall into a coma from how bummed out I'll be, and then I'll know. Until then, dear readers, I remind you that you're free to comment below with your contribution to this ongoing dialogue. I would also implore you to consider this video in your own deliberations.

*I know EXACTLY where he got that photo. This spectacular website has been a favorite of mine for a while now.

Cake Wrecks

Proving once again that the concept of a "trickster god" is not entirely without merit, the internet has managed to find enough pictures of poorly-decorated cakes to warrant an entire website. Cake Wrecks is your one-stop shop for pictures like this:

Happy Anniversity indeed. Or maybe something a little more... intentional?

Anyone who knows me well enough knows that this would be the ULTIMATE birthday cake. Just saying is all.

Text says: "We Love Freymoto Put Heart In Place Of 'Love'". Freymoto is an amalgamation of he unlucky couple-to-be's last names, by the way. Probably the most confusing thing about this is the fact that several people are presumably involved in the creation of a custom cake, and not one of them looked at this and thought anything was amiss.

I like thinking that this cake was intentional; it would have been the greatest birthday party ever. I also like to see Holly make some bold choices where most 12-year-old girls would have opted for something else on their cake (Horses? MySpace? I have no clue).

Jazz Tap

Okay, so watch this:

If YouTube is to be believed, Fred Astaire once called that the greatest example of tap dance ever caught on film. If that were so, on would have to wonder if he ever saw the dance trio Tip, Tap & Toe in the movie Pardon My Sarong:

Kutiman

First things first. If any of you see someone wearing this Sargon Ivy cap, I am telling you that it's alright to hit them as hard as you can. Here's a photo of it.

Just to be clear, that's an ivy cap with an embroidered dagger on it. The dagger is intricate and fancy, and lies broken amongst the lilies. It is meant as a tribute to Sargon, a Mesopotamian king who seems kind of sick and twisted and cruel. I mean, this is a guy who "marched to Kazallu and turned Kazallu into a ruin heap, so that there was not even a perch for a bird left." I get angry at places with stupid gimmicky town names as well, but I don't flip out and torch the place. And if I did, I wouldn't want to be memorialized on a hat whose target demographic would be purchasing them for "irony".

ANYWAY! Kutiman is a DJ, musician, producer, composer, animator, and, what the hell, artist. He's been the recipient of some fairly high praise of late, with the release of "ThruYou", an album composed entirely of remixed YouTube videos. This has garnered some minor nerdy applause, but has also revealed this Israeli musician's oeuvre to US audiences.

That's the first track off of the album, "The Mother Of All Funk Chords". If you liked it (you should have), you can watch the rest on the album's website here. Enjoy.

BeatleJazz

Being such a huge fan of both the Beatles and the entire genre of jazz, I'm actually a little shocked that I'd not heard of these guys before. BeatleJazz is a band that I have been blissfully unaware of, as they scooped up some major awards and appeared on several "Top Ten Albums Of The Year" lists. Seriously?! Usually, I'm fairly hip in the ways of music, and yet they appeared at first glance to be newcomers. But they've been around for about a decade now. Am I that pathetically oblivious, or does nobody else know these guys?

Irrespective, I found all four of their albums. I love them all, but the newer two are one that have (apparently) received huge praise. These ones were released after BeatleJazz's first two albums, "A Bite Of The Apple" and "Another Bite Of The Apple". I mention them together because they were conceptually on the same level. They were released a year apart, and are often mentioned together. By the way, you'll need a RAR expander for those files. If you don't know what that is, then GOOGLE IS YOUR FRIEND. Remember that, kiddies. Google is your friend. The password is "mbmc", if that's not immediately obvious (it took me two days to crack that nut. No joke). I can't really recommend any particular songs, because I listened to these albums all in a row without checking the track names. I would, however, point you towards "I Am The Walrus". Some excellent piano work on that part that goes, "Selmolina Pilchard climbing up the Eiffel Tower." Awesome.

Their next effort, "With A Little Help From Our Friends", was a big leap in excellence, as you can tell from the sheer number of bytes it's going to take up on your hard drive. Check it:

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Shazam. Three parts. That means it's three times as good. And then, you have their newest release, "All You Need". This just has two parts, but it doesn't get the above fanfare because I haven't finished downloading it yet. Enjoy.

UPDATE: Okay, I'm not the only one not in the know, because Wikipedia doesn't have a page on them, and Wikipedia has a page on EVERYTHING.

The Dresden Dolls

With the help of a friend, I have rediscovered the dark cabaret stylings of The Dresden Dolls. That's the actual name of the genre. Dark cabaret. Anyway, they've only released two albums, so I'll make this short.

2003's self-titled album features some good stuff, most notably "Good Day", "Coin-Operated Boy", and "Bad Habit".

The real treasure trove is on their second album, 2006's Yes, Virginia.... This is the album with "Sex Changes", "Backstabber", "Modern Moonlight", "My Alcoholic Friends", "Mrs. O", "Necessary Evil", "Mandy Goes To Med School", and "Sing". You may notice that I recommended well over 50% of the songs on this album. That's because this album rules. If I were you, I would just go ahead and get the entire album. You don't have any excuse, it's that good.