Columbia ≈ Alphaville

I was messing around on my computer this weekend just gone – probably building an apartment block in Minecraft or something – when Visage’s one and only (as far as I know) hit Fade to Grey came on iTunes…

This reminded me of Kelly Osbourne’s quite blatant rip-off re-imaging of the song from a few years back, One Word, so I fired it up on YouTube…

It’s actually not a bad song, no doubt because it steals references so many elements from the original.

In any case, the video clip reminded me that although I was fully aware of the ground breaking 1965 French Sci-Fi film Alphaville, I actually had no idea what it was about (apart from modernist Paris architecture). So I looked it up on Wikipedia and was surprised to note a number of similarities with Bioshock Infinite – to wit in both stories a man is sent to infiltrate a closed off, technology obsessed city run by a dictator with an obscured past, and becomes involved with his mysterious daughter.

Of course the resolutions of the stories are completely different, but it was just a kind of cool thing to stumble over on a Sunday afternoon.

Oh, and while on the subject of Alphaville, here’s the song you’re probably thinking of…

Crazy Bioshock Inifinite Theories Number One

I suspect that the developers of Bioshock Infinite didn’t actually want to use Girls Just Wanna Have Fun in the game. I think they wanted Time After Time, but they couldn’t get the rights.

Why? Several of the other anachronistic songs seem to contain references to the plot and general theme of the game. Fortunate Son and Everybody Wants to Rule the World in particular. Time After Time would seem to tie in with the time travel elements and the relationships Elizabeth has with several of the other characters, and hence fits the game better than Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.

It’s a theory!

Went to a Quiz Night with Justin and Marika last night. Our table came about 5th or 6th out of 30 or so, which isn’t bad. We were actually in the lead up until the last few rounds, but we had a couple of bad ones, and some other tables had some good ones. It was a good night – although the organisation was shambolic with the result that it didn’t finish until just before midnight.

Additionally, one of the questions was “What did the S.S. in the name of the S.S. Titanic stand for?”. The correct answer – as any fule shud kno – is absolutely bloody nothing, because the Titanic wasn’t an S.S., it was an R.M.S. There was a $50 penalty for challenging questions so we gritted out teeth and ran with it, receiving full points for the completely erroneous “Steam Ship”. Honestly, who vets these questions?

But yeah, stunning ignorance of historical ship designations aside, it was a really fun night and apparently raised a lot of money, so that’s good.

Hmmm, what else has been going on? Oh yes, I’ve been watching some Adventure Time on YouTube. It’s one of those series I’ve been meaning to check out for ages, and against all the odds now actually have. It turns out that it’s every bit as good as I’ve heard – here’s an episode for you to see for yourself! (assuming lawyers haven’t swept down and destroyed it…).

Finally, here’s some nice, soothing music by the Legendary Stardust Cowboy to tide you over…

Jerusalem

Imagine a train. A steel black, armoured train drawn by a massive behemoth of a steam engine which groans slowly into life, accelerating out of the station and onto the tracks, its whistle howling bleakly into the night. As far as the eye can see is a bleak, post-industrial landscape of broken earth, shattered buildings, and dead chimneys, pierced through by the rail line our train follows, its ever increasing speed turning the piles of collapsed bricks and bent girders into a blur with only the cold, dead hills appearing clear in the distance.

The cabin is occupied by two engineers, their forms concealed by greatcoats,  goggles, rebreathers and caps. One ceaselessly shovels mounds of coal into the roaring furnace while the other types cryptic codes into a worn keypad, frayed and dangling wires carrying his signals back to the carriages behind. A greasy printer mounted on the cabin wall coughs to life and starts outputting a list of towns – the keypad engineer ticks them off as the train hurtles through their broken remains.

A golden light appears on the horizon. As the train climbs the hills it becomes brighter, and brighter still until the engine rounds a curve and a vast industrial complex is revealed, occupying the valley below. The sky is lit by gouts of flame and great searchlights, illuminating the stacks and towers of the refineries and furnaces that stretch to the horizon. The train slows as it comes down off the hills, entering a brightly lit corridor between the stacks. The horns and bells of the complex sound out in welcome and the train whistles back – rolling through the great gates that open in the wall of the largest factory…

Got that? Good. Now listen to it.

TROLL METAL

Oh, like I seriously wasn’t going to troll you!

In response to yesterday’s post about the Black Satans, frequent commenter Martin C. recommended looking up Troll Metal. I did, and have to echo his comment of TROLL ON!!

It’s like Limbonic Art without all that annoying screeching!

Enjoy some more Troll Metal here, here and here.

On another subject, good lord, the Government is just falling to bits. I already had a horrible feeling that Tony Abbot was going to win the election, this pretty much makes it a certainty 🙁

Denys Knows Nothing About Death Metal

Seriously, I know almost nothing about death metal. I can identify it when I hear it, but I am completely unable to distinguish good death metal from bad death metal, or identify or discuss any subgenres of the form that may or may not exist.

As such I have no idea whether The Satan of Hell by the Black Satans is a fine example of the genre, an excellent parody of the genre, or a load of old cobblers. What I can say however is the video clip is hilarious. It’s clear that the band simply got dressed up in leather and corpse paint, then filmed themselves piss-farting around in the Finnish woods. Observe…

The entire clip is ridiculous, but highlights include…

0:28 – Get funky!
0:43 – Going for a jog!
1:03 – Even more funky!
1:06 – Die tree! Die!
1:29 – Missed it by that much!
1:51 – Whoops!
1:53 – Hold! Hold! Now dance!
2:11 – Peekaboo!
2:44 – Snowball fight!

Great stuff! 😀

(For those who dislike the sound of machine gun drumming and gargling, try pairing it up with Yakety Sax. Works like a charm!)

Lol Film

lol film

It’s funny the influence advertising can have on the human brain.

Whenever I hear The Timewarp it take a conscious effort of will for me not to sing…

For perfect pictures,
In sixty minutes,
TAKE! IT! TO KO! DAK! EXPRESS!
(Two lines I have to mumble,
because I can’t recall the lyrics)
And albums too,
And so much more-or-or!
They’ve all you nee-ee-ee-eed,
To make your photos look their very best!
TAKE! IT! TO KO! DAK! EXPRESS!

There’s another song well known song (which I unfortunately can’t recall right now) that I can’t help but finish with Oh what a feeling! Toyota!

So, so sad 🙂

Later: God bless (or maybe condemn) the internet!

My Hypothesis is Ruined!

15 songs into the Hottest 100 and the Warmest 100 prediction is not doing well. The average deviation is standing at just under 21 places, and there have been five songs that weren’t included at all! Can you feel the tragedy!?

(Yes, I’m keeping stats. Deal with it :))

LATER: A quarter of the way in and the average deviation has dropped to 18.3. There are now 6 unpredicted songs.

LATER STILL: Halfway! The average deviation is 16.6 and there are now 7 unpredicted songs. For the sake of interest, the signed average deviation is almost exactly 2, which shows that the songs predicted too low are almost cancelling out the songs predicted too high. So far, the worst prediction is Internet Friends by Knife Party, which was predicted at position 94 and came in at 55, and the best is Draw a Crowd by Ben Folds Five, which was predicted at 74 and came in at 73. On to the lower 50!

LATER, AGAIN: Three quarters of the way through! The average deviation is now 14.1, there are nine unpredicted songs and only three of my selections have made it in (damnit!). The most accurate predictions so far are Gasoline by Alpine, Hold On by Alabama Shakes, Hurricane by Ms Mr and our old friend Draw a Crowd by Ben Folds Five – all came in only one off from the prediction. Internet Friends by Knife Party is holding strong as the least accurate.

At the 75% percent mark my total rating for the countdown is 2.90 – on a scale where 5 is super happy awesome and 1 is kill it with fire! Some more of my songs better make it into the top 25…

NEWSFLASH: Ballpark Music’s Coming Down has proven the first 100% accurate prediction of the countdown at number 23!

LATER: Oh Derp! I missed that the Warmest 100 actually did include Sun by Two Door Cinema Club! Oh well, it won’t have skewed the stats too much. In the meantime, here’s my thoughts on Matt Corby.

Matt Corby

LATER: And right on the verge of the top 10, two more accurate predictions. Flume’s Sleepless at 12 and Calvin Harris’ Sweet Nothing at 11. Does this mean the top ten will be completely accurate?? (I doubt it :))

IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LAST LATER: Maybe I spoke too soon. My Gun by the Rubens at number 10 – just as predicted…

IMMEDIATELY AFTER THAT: Another correct prediction – Tame Impala at number 9 with Feels Like We Only Go Backwards. How long can this streak last!?

AND AFTER THAT: Well, that was fun while it lasted. Frank Ocean breaks the chain taking number 8 with Lost.

GETTING TOWARDS THE END NOW: Down to the top five. I imagine that it’ll be a shuffling of the five highest songs left on the Warmest 100 list – Thrift Shop, Little Talks, Breeze Blocks, Holdin’ On and I Will Wait. We’ve just got to wait to see what order they come in….

RIGHT ON THE VERY TIP: So, will the Number One be Monsters and Men (Yey!) or Macklemore and Ryan Lewis (Boo!)? I have a nasty feeling thrift shopping is going to beat small talk. Also, what the hell is this “Breeze Block” thing at number three!?

THE END OF EVERYTHING: Well, there we go. Little Talks by Monsters and Men at number 2, so (barring an apocalyptic upset) Thrift Shop by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis has taken out the 2012 crown. Damnit. But on with the statistics.

The average, overall deviation for all Warmest 100 songs that made it into the countdown is 10.79 places. The signed deviation is 0.08, which means the songs that were ranked too high almost completely cancelled out the songs that were ranked too low. The worst prediction (excluding those songs that didn’t make it in entirely) remains Internet Friends by Knife Party – which was predicted for 94 but ended up 37 places higher at 55. Eight songs were predicted accurately…

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis – Thrift Shop – 1
Of Monsters and Men – Little Talks – 2
Alt-J – Breeze Blocks – 3
Tame Impala – Feels Like We Only Go Backwards – 9
The Rubens – My Gun – 10
Calvin Harris – Sweet Nothing – 11
Flume – Sleepless – 12
Ball Park Music – Coming Down – 23

The top ten songs were all predicted correctly, but the middle five were in the wrong order. The top three songs were predicted accurately.

Eight predicted songs didn’t end up in the countdown – the highest predicted position being 56 for Japandroids.

Japandroids    – The House that Heaven Built
Haim – Don’t Save Me
Kanye West – Mercy
The XX – Chained
Something For Kate – Survival Expert
Frank Ocean – Pyramids
Haim – Forever
Van-She – Idea of Happiness

On the whole I think the Warmest 100 did a great job – and at the very least gave me something to do all day 😀

The overall score as far as songs that don’t make me want to remove my brain with a spoon is 2.9 out of five – which means I could just about put up with the entire playlist. Of the songs I voted for, 8 made it in. Which is pretty good considering I never expected Euphoria to get in anyway and just voted for it out of principal. The other omission was Santigold’s The Keepers – which I’m actually very surprised about. But hey, it’s probably my best performance in years, so I ain’t complaining.

Roll on the Hottest 100 2013! (and let the whinging about how the Hottest 100 and Triple J in general aren’t anywhere as good as they used to be begin…)

Warmest 100

In this age of social media it’s hard to keep a lid on things. As such, a rather clever individual has scraped the net for people’s Hottest 100 votes, and come up with a prediction for the countdown, which can be viewed at warmest100.com.au.

He reckons to have collected about 3% of the vote, which may not sound like much, but should actually be enough to draw general trends from. I’m very happy to see that almost all the songs I voted for have ended up on his list – but I’m less happy to see he’s tipping the awful Thrift Shop for the number one spot (I’m even less happy that he’s probably right…).

In any case it’ll be very interesting to see how his list compares to the real one come Saturday.

Predicted Positions for Songs I voted for…
97 – Spiritus – Lisa Mitchell
67 – All the Rowboats – Regina Spektor
46 – Run Alone – 360
26 – Bangarang – Skrillex
20 – Same Love – Macklemore and Ryan Lewis
16 – I Love It – Icona Pop
10 – My Gun – The Rubens
2 – Little Talks – Of Monsters and Men

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