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Ukuleles, Cake, and Cheeky British Songstresses

by Corey on August 2, 2010 in Alderdice, Corey, Entertainment, Music, Videos

For folks who know me, there are three things that I enjoy immensely: the charming sound of a ukulele, the nomy deliciousness of cake, and the delightful cadence of an English accent.

Boing Boing had a shout out to the song stylings of Rocky and Balls. While the name is a bit lacking, these duet darlings from the UK combine a bit of wordplay with simple melodies. My personal favorite of their songs is “Love Cake,” which can be found below.

Like what you hear? Check out their website for more tracks. You can also follow them on Twitter.

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A Little Exploitation Goes a Long Way

by Corey on August 1, 2010 in Alderdice, Corey, Entertainment, Human Behavior, Information, Memes, News, Videos

Like all good memes, Dodson quickly became a product line.[twitter

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Ah, the local news. As mainstream, national journalism gives way to the power of the internet and the blogosphere, it seems as though local media is the only traditional avenue that maintains some form of relevancy. After all, local media know their audience, stories, and needs in a way that a national media outlet is simply unable to provide.

Granted, there are numerous professionals working in television and print in newsrooms across the country who are consummate professionals. Every now and then, though, you have a Chris Allen fondling a breast cancer graphic on camera. Media professionals make bad decisions all the time. Even after serving as the Dean of the White House Press Corps, Helen Thomas found herself forcibly retired after inflammatory comments.

Thanks to the internet, a highly local story can become global internet fodder in a matter of hours. Take the story of Antoine Dodson, the latest example of a local news story gone viral. When an intruder allegedly broke into his sister’s apartment and attempted to sexually assault her, Antoine helped scare off the attacker. A story such as this meets the “smell test” for local news: it’s timely, it’s interesting, and there’s a human angle.

Here’s the problem.

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The Shoe is on the Other Foot

by Corey on July 6, 2010 in Alderdice, Baby Gaga, Corey, Entertainment, Videos

Both Prince Zuko and Aang realize M. Night Shyamalan should have quit while he was ahead.

With Elliott on the way, I’ve had a lot of friends ask me if I wonder what it’s like to be Stephanie right now. Seeing her belly wobble and having my hand occasionally kicked, I can honestly say I would not like to know what it’s like to have “a people” inside of me. Steph recently put it to me this way: Imagine your stomach is a burlap sack filled with kittens.

Adorable? Terrifying? Both.

After getting back from a late lunch this afternoon, I can certainly tell you what it’s like to have a “food baby” inside my tum-tum. Looping around campus, we crossed a speedbump. The abrupt rocking sensation combined with the food baby made me want to yak. In short, I realized the miracle of life is best left to the ladyfolk who endure with patience and kindness.

It’s odd when the shoe is on the other foot. In addition to the trials and tribulations of carrying life, Steph has had to suffer through my rants regarding adaptations of comic books into television shows and movies. She kindly listens as I rant about changes in continuity, missing story beats, and blatant misuse and abuse of engaging characters and series. With that said, I should have picked up on her hesitation about seeing The Last Airbender movie. When we began dating, Steph tried to introduce me to the Nickelodeon cartoon series Avatar: The Last Airbender (Netflix members can watch the entire series on demand!). Given it’s scope, mythology, and overall sense of awesomeness, I should have clicked with it immediately.

From time to time, Stephanie would remind me about the series and how good it was. With the film adaptation premiering, I pull the Book One (season one) DVDs off the shelf and started watching the series last week. It was as good as Stephanie promised. The series was smart and sophisticated while maintaining the fun and whimsy one would expect of a Nickelodeon program. It made sense why Stephanie loved the show so much. I couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t suggesting we go see the midnight screening in town. Well, the 8% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes had something to do with it. The attacks about the movie’s white-washing of the cast (better known as “racebending“) probably had something to do with it as well.

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Former NFL Finalist Star of Yale Internet Viral Video

by Corey on January 20, 2010 in Alderdice, Corey, Education, Entertainment, Social Issues, Videos

Yale University certainly needs very little help in getting students to apply. The prestigious Ivy League school is one of the nation’s most difficult schools to get into, after all.

That doesn’t mean their admissions office doesn’t know how to have fun. Hitting the internet over the past few days has been a 17-minute musical titled “That’s Why I Chose Yale.” The student-produced film has almost 118,000 at the time of posting.

Current students applying to college have grown up accustomed to individuals breaking into song and dance for no reason whatsoever. Think about it: High School Musical, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, and the TV series Glee all rely heavily on bits of the old song and dance.

What’s particularly fun for forensicators is that the star of Yale’s YouTube sensation is Kobi Libii, a 2003 NFL National Finalist in Original Oratory. Check out Yale’s official YouTube channel to see the viral hit, or hop on over to NFLtv to see his final round speech titled “Spin Cycle.”

p.s. Don’t miss the cameo from NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams at the 6:50 mark.

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We Are of Peace. Always.

by Corey on November 6, 2009 in Alderdice, Corey, Entertainment, News, Politics, Social Issues, Videos

President Obama is a alien lizard from outer space.

It’s not the claim of opponents of the President’s healthcare reform efforts. Instead, it seems to be the allegorical underpinning of ABC’s reimagining of the early 1980s television miniseries V.

Anyone who has sat through an honors high school English class where they read George Orwell’s Animal Farm can attest to the power of achieving political commentary through the use of allegory. As it turns out, a pig is not always just a pig nor is a horse always just a horse. In the case of V, a story about an alien invasion is not just a sci-fi yarn about visitors from another planet.

An article from Slate this week poses the question “Is V a political allegory?”:

More than a few journalists and bloggers have remarked that it’s possible to read V as an allegory hostile to President Obama and sympathetic with the birthers and other nutcases who believe him to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The charismatic Visitors load up their “bandwagon” by “spreading hope.” In using their sophisticated iguana technology to provide free medical services, they promise “universal health care.” Indeed, if the show is to have the symbolic import that we expect from a science-fiction story, this is the only possible way to read V as a coherent text.

The original miniseries, which aired in 1983-84, did not seem to hide its message. The Visitors from the series were painted as Nazis, building upon a generation still very familiar with the ramifications of WWII and the Nazi occupation of Europe. Still entrenched in the Cold War, it had a resonate message for American audiences.

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Sesame Street is Old Enough to Be the Parent of a Teenager

by Corey on November 4, 2009 in Alderdice, Corey, Education, Entertainment, Social Issues, Videos

The black and white television in the spare bedroom of my grandmother’s house had a twice-daily appointment during my childhood: Sesame Street. Shortly after consumption of a bowl of cereal in the mornings and somewhere just beyond nap-time and reruns of the A-Team in the afternoons came my daily childhood instruction.

Over the years, our furry friends from that fictional New York borough have built quite the pedigree (122 Emmy wins and broadcasts in 140 countries worldwide). In addition to being woven into the very fabric of American culture, the folks at the Workshop have another milestone to celebrate next week: 40 years of television history. Since it’s inception four decades ago, Sesame Street has made a lasting impression on countless children who are now well into adulthood. When the show began, the landscape of both television and culture were very different.

The New York Daily News sums it up nicely:

The groundbreaking show, produced by the Children’s Television Workshop and a staple of public broadcasting, was years ahead of its time in promoting values that are now taken for granted in many places – accepting and appreciating diversity, not making assumptions based on gender, and being sensitive to cultural and economic differences, are all ideas the show emphasized before it was fashionable to do so.

The show has changed over the years in many ways. What was once a program intended to supplement learning for inner city children has become a cultural mainstay.

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Save the Date: March 24, 2009 – Ada Lovelace Day

by admin on January 7, 2009 in Advocacy, Games, Human Behavior, Information, Politics, Science and Technology, Videos

As a lover of all things internet, I just wanted to direct more attention to Boing Boing’s post about the Ada Lovelace Day pledge that’s going on for March 24th this year. Put yo’ bloggin’ pants on and git to goin’!

From the pledge via BoingBoing

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Over 300 people have already signed a pledge to publish a blog post, video blog or podcast episode about a woman they admire on 24th March 2009. We need 700 more people for the pledge to be successful.

Recent research by psychologist Penelope Lockwood discovered that women need to see female role models more than men need to see male ones. But in the tech world women’s contributions often go unacknowledged and role models are hard to find. Ada Lovelace Day is a chance for us to sing the praises of the women who make tech tick: entrepreneurs, innovators, sysadmins, programmers, designers, games developers, hardware experts, tech journalists, tech consultants… The list of tech-related careers is almost endless and we want to see examples from all of them!

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