Loving: Flight of the Conchords

Yeah I know they've been around a little while now but I've finally caught up with Flight of the Conchords after catching little snippets of their show on YouTube and on tv.

And I'm happy to say that they live up to the hype.

I bought their self-titled album the other day and it's been on the cd player ever since.

For the as yet uninitiated, FOTC is "Formerly New Zealand's fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo" and in the last few years they've had a meteoric rise to fame, with a BBC1 radio series and now a successful HBO (Home of Bloody Oarsome) tv series.

Musically I'd put them somewhere in same field as Ween in terms of musical ingenuity, fun and their ability to effortlessly cross genres but they have a slightly more consistent sound and a Beck like ability to bring the groove. There are probably a number of other influences I'm not cool enough to have picked up on although it does seem as though they might like a little Bowie as well (judging by the all-eras Bowie tribute song called "Bowie" on the album)

The full first season of the tv show is winging it's way towards my place as we speak so I'll probably report on this at another time - for now, these clips from YouTube speak for themselves.

(Reinforcing my theory that the inclusion of robots automatically makes anything 50% cooler)



(Too many mutha uckers, ucking with my shi)

Struggling: with the assignment

11 days to go and I'm still researching every imaginable element of FPS gaming - by now I should be well on to designing a game and writing a report about the whys and wherefores, but the more I read the more ideas I have and the broader the project gets.

I still don't know whether to design a game for non-gamers or experienced gamers and haven't even come close to content yet (which I think will be learning language vocabulary but I'm not positive)

Yikes.

Pondering: a payment system for musicians

Insight on SBS last night had an interesting (if slightly shallow) look into the issue of music file sharing (or piracy if you will.)

They took the usual mixture of musicians, young downloaders (all teens), ISP nerds, media academics and the odd music industry bod and had a really good chat about the issues. As you might expect, the teens saw nothing wrong with what they were doing in general and had a number of self justifications for their actions - including the fact that they didn't want to pay for another Hummer for Kanye West (though they had the decency to feel embarrassed/apologise to the artists present that they had downloaded.

The artists were more ambivalent, not liking missing out on direct money for cds but appreciating the value of expanding their fan base and getting more people to live shows. The record labels were unsurprisingly outraged and produced figures which seemed entirely made up (though they were only questioned once on this by a media academic and former muso) which suggested that a billion songs are "stolen" every year, which translates to about $200M in lost revenue in Australia alone.

After a point it seems that the boots were out for the ISPs, who were seen as profitting the most from this traffic. Jenny Mackie, the host - who I normally hold in high regard - seemed a little out of her techo depth here, putting across the view (which was accepted by pretty well the whole audience) that every bit and byte of ISP traffic converts directly to extra payment by the user. The reality of course being the people go on set plans with x amount of data (unless they are suckers willing to pay extra punishment fees for exceeding these amounts - generally what you get with cheap plans) which means that transferring music costs no more than anything else. The feeling was that the ISPs should somehow be paying the music industry (and I wonder how much of that would hit the artists) for the actions of their users.

The issue of how much record labels screw artists over was another one that no-one raised - my understanding is that the proportion of money from CD sales that ends up in the hands of artists is scandalously low, and only after the labels "expenses" have all been accounted for.

The issue of songwriter income came up which was a pretty valid point that I hadn't factored in previously.

Anyways, I was thinking about this all this morning and was wondering if there might be room for a paypal kind of service that enabled fans to make direct micro-payments to "support" their favourite artists. (i.e get a little guilt reduction by paying for downloaded songs) (Not sure how song-writers fit in there but perhaps this information could also be provided or if you chose to "support" a song, the donation could be split between the two)

I can see more issues arising with something like this - listed artists bearing the ire of their labels and fans wanting anonymity in case they were labelled as pirates (rather than just fans wanting to give their favourite bands a little extra cash)

Just a thought. (Interesting that you can watch the whole show online for free too - not uncommon I know but I like the contrast)

LOLing: The Delusionists

The Delusionists are a group of university comedy revue types, much the same as the D-Generation, The Chaser and Monty Python started out. They're from Sydney and I have no problem putting them into the company of those three - their stuff really works and they know how to end a sketch.

Jesus: Healer, Preacher, Carpenter



Dick in a bottle. (In case you can't tell)



A few good men

Loving: Oz

You can tell when I have major work to do - I seem to discover some amazing new distraction for "study breaks".

I've been watching Oz, a dark, gritty prison drama for a while now but I've just finished the 4th season and it really is getting better and better. (At times it seems to be going a little over the top with the melodrama and the speed with which worlds of crap seem to poor down on the heads of everyone - but shit man, it's Oz and it's ok.)

Oz is set in Emerald City, the experimental unit of Oswald State Correctional Facility, which means that rather than bars everywhere, the prisoners live in a more open plan kind of place, with the cells closed off by some kind of plexiglass. From a tv perspective this makes a lot of sense as you have a much clearer view of the whole goings on.

Being an HBO show (home of The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Wire, Deadwood, Six Feet Under - basically anything good from America that's been on tv in the last 10 years - except The West Wing), you get the full in-your-face gamut of language, sex, violence, drug use and other adult content. If you don't have a couple of people being brutally shanked (stabbed), beaten or otherwise killed in an episode, it's a slow week in the prison.

Episodes are tied together by some kind of overarching theme, provided by the shows narrator (of sorts), wheelchair bound Augustus Hill. These are often philosophical in nature and have ranged from the wide variety of home-made knives you find in a prison to famous people who have been prisoners (Galileo etc) and broader reflections on family or revenge.

I started searching the YouTube videos for something to show you but hit one spoiler and don't want to know any more. The link will give you an idea anyways.

Here's a clip I've put up previously that shows what happens when Seinfeld comes to visit Oz. (This came about because Seinfeld's cousin plays a thug biker in the show and apparently Jerry visits the set from time to time)

Seinfeld in Oz
by renzo433