In 1970-ish, “The Italian Elvis” Adriano Celentano recorded a song called “Prisencolinensinainciusol”. To the Italian ear it sounds like English, but to the English ear it sounds like gibberish, which is what it is. If the Joycean slurry of near-meanings wasn’t awesome enough on its own, it’s set to a stripped down, crazy-funky droning four-on-the-floor arrangement so that the whole setup prefigures both rap and disco. (That said, I think James Brown and Bob Dylan are the real influences, and there’s nothing magical about the song’s foreknowledge, but that doesn’t make it any less thrilling). Add to that the boss dancing, and you have a timeless classic on your hands.

I tried to figure out how the internets learned about this, but I can only trace back so far. There’s this, announcing an edit of the song, and giving a bit of history. (Here’s the mp3 of Greg Wilson’s edit BTW.) There’s this, which gives us the black and white original:

Which is then picked up by Sasha Frere Jones, then Metafilter, then BoingBoing, and then years later, your unreliable narrator stumbles into the whole mess via an Easter egg in the game Glitch. Anyway, the important part is when you search Youtube for Prisencolinensinainciusol and uncover gems like these versions with different sets of subtitles, all set to a mashup of the two videos:

Precinct Calling Ace Vantuso / Prison Colon ends in I choose all / Freezing culmination I choose all.
hope something / poke something / awesome babe!

It’s amazing to see how we project meanings onto sounds. It’s worth adding that in Celentano’s words, from the intro to the TV show staging, the theme of the song is incommunicability, that “we don’t understand anything anymore”, and prisencolinensinainciusol means “universal love”. I also love this karaoke staging of the song for drunken Portlandians, which seems to sum it all up.

Let me just say that when I added the song to iTunes, I chose the genre “heaven”.

There’s a nonstop trainwreck going on in Penny Arcade land, and it goes by the name of dickwolf. To summarize this timeline, in August, Penny Arcade publishes this comic. Some take offense. Mike of PA notices and responds in a fashion that leads to more offense. In October they start selling a “dickwolves” t-shirt in their store. There are more objections. In January, the shirt is removed. Many fans of PA are counter-offended that “they’ve caved in to pressure from a vocal minority”; “teamrape” and “DickWolvington” twitter accounts begin to harass opponents; Mike tweets he’ll be wearing his dickwolves shirt to PAX (Penny Arcade Expo), but also tells DickWolvington to knock it off. Many are noticing and commenting at this point – Leigh Alexander has a thoughtful, conflicted take and a followup, and there is a thousand-comment MeFi thread. Mike receives “joke” death threats. Jerry (other half of PA) comments for the first time, the closest thing to a cogent defense of their position that I can find.

Sheesh. It’s like a parable about American political discourse. First come the principles, then the overreactions, then the death threats.

More...

That fat, old clown is fuckin’ right, yo.

Stranger than fiction, dude. Just read the latest Penny Arcade comic, and then, via this, saw this: Israel calls off raid after soldier’s Facebook post. Wonder if the Israeli military will de-friend him?

How about some nerd gossip? Penny Arcade are in the midst of a book tour, and they appeared on Jordan Jesse Go, the lesser known podcast of the folks behind The Sound of Young America. Things do not go well, and Tycho posts this scather. I love love love Penny Arcade, and I’ve never gotten into any of the Jesse Thorn stuff; however, as a fan of You Look Nice Today, I know those guys are pals with Mr. Thorn and he’s unlikely to be as horrible as PA makes it out. You can read his own description here, and read the follow-up post from a commenter who mentions PA’s well-known anxiety problems. Who knows though. They haven’t posted the podcast evidence yet.

UPDATE, April 8 Gabe mentions they have posted the podcast here, but the link is nothing (right now?). However, the internets have come to the rescue. I haven’t brought myself to listen to it yet…

You can watch our 12 Days of SPACE-mas spot featuring Star Wars characters here. It got mentioned on starwars.com, which is dopeness! I have a ton of great pictures from the set – I’ll try and post them soon.

I’m a little late posting this as I put it up on the SPACE site last week but anyway:

We did a couple Space promos about zombies. The post on spacecast contains some behind-the-scenes pics and commentary, plus the videos.

For the viewer’s convenience the spots are embedded here:

Vimeo link

Vimeo link

A brief note: this was a very low-budget shoot by our standards, so we shot it on my GH1. I’ll post more GH1 details later, as I’ve now had a fair bit of time with the camera and it’s worth reporting back in about that.

Saw Bruno on the weekend. It’s got some hilarious parts, but it seems almost like a collection of skits that would be better enjoyed on YouTube.

It’s almost all embarassement humour in the same mold as Borat. Part of the time Bruno is successfully provoking and lampooning hetero gay panic. But often he is doing this by playing into straight stereotypes of gays. I think my favourite scenes were at the beginning, when the victim of the meatspace trolling was the fashion industry, and not so much later in the movie, when the victims are southern US men. In general Bruno felt a lot staler a character than Borat – we’ve all seen hilarious gay stereotypes in our entertainments before, and we don’t need Bruno to point out that yes, wrestling is pretty gay.

Video, from Hardcore Nerdity.

He can speak Elvish – in Klingon.
(via the King of Canadian sci-fi Mark Askwith)

No.

(via)

Dear Robot Readers,

I could use your help with something. I have a film in this year’s Star Wars Fan Movie Challenge. (I admit it, I’m a huge nerd.) It’s called “Bad Day For Vader”, and I’d love it if you voted for it. It’s only a minute long so that part ain’t hard, but you may have to register on atom first – not sure. You should be done in a couple minutes regardless.

Those of you with weblogs, newspapers, megaphones and/or skywriting businesses, I’d also appreciate your help spreading the word.

Voting stops at noon on friday, so if you could, make haste!

Here’s the link

Thanks and I owe you one.

Vindicated! I was actually having my doubts as to the authenticity of this film (see previous post), after I seemed like the one naive idiot who didn’t think some arch ironist like Gondry or Jonze was ingeniously behind it. However, here’s a review at twitch. “The film is not a put-on. After Last Season is, however, so genuinely and startlingly bad that a movie cult will undoubtedly form around it.”

Other highlights:

• “Unbelievably, the film’s trailer, including the editing, is representative of the entire movie.”
• “Impromptu props made of cardboard and other discarded material are everywhere.”
• “In fact, the performances seem disconnected from the overall narrative as if they were occurring in a black box.”
• “Some scenes are perceptibly out-of-focus. There is a pervasive, muffled background noise. Scenes come and go with no continuity or explanation. Conversations often cutaway to shots of furniture and other items for no reason.”
• “A large part of the movie consists of the previously mentioned computer graphics, which are brutally crude. Although these graphics fit into the story, [the] film leans heavily on them to pad out the 93 minute running time. Thus, the parade of colored circles, spheres, birds, and fish tends to goes on and on as if the film went on pause and a screen saver kicked in.”

Joy!

I’m really thrilled by After Last Season. The trailer is something else:

It’s tempting to believe it’s an exquisitely constructed hoax, isn’t it? After reading this MetaFilter thread, though – especially this and this – you’ll be convinced it’s real. Real, and more awesome than a sack of robot pegasi. Just for font nerds alone it’s a comedy explosion. If you like fonts, unrelated clips of mundane dialogue and overlit white rooms, you’re in for a nirvanic thrill ride.

Anyway, it’s opening “regular-wide” tomorrow, so if you live in Lancaster, CA, North Aurora, IL, Rochester, NY or Austin, TX, please go see this. I hear they have printers in the basement you can use. (via the Space blog)

SHE: Oh Shit, Dog shit
Suck my dick, bitch

HE: No, its:
Raw shit, aw shit
Slapped in the face with dog shit
I see some haters
Get on the ground and shine my balls, bitch
No, that’s the second half. The first is… What is it?

IPOD: Raw shit, raw kicks
Get in the way, might get your jaw split
Aw shit, I see some haters
Don’t step to me until you get some balls, bitch
Raw shit, raw spit
Get smacked in the face with dog shit
Aw shit, I see some bitches
Get on the floor and shine my balls, bitch

HE: Pretty hard to remember.

Klingon Night School

Do yourself a favour and check out my friend Gord’s masterful Klingon Night School spot. And give him a vote in the showdown – I hope you’ll agree he deserves it.

Full disclosure: I may or may not be a klingon in the above video.

And he can ROAR.

Ah, Mr. Show. (via)

Knockoff brands always make me laugh, whether it’s Sorny or Toasted Oat Os. So I wound up thinking about The Asylum today, the studio that produces ‘mockbusters’ (which I’ve mentioned here before), and I checked in to catch up on their recent output. Highlights:

• The Day the Earth Stopped
• Sunday School Musical
• Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls
• 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea
• The Terminators
• and the confusing Transmorphers 2 in 3D.

What, no Dank Knight starring Heath Leggings and Bristian Cale? Missed revenue opportunity, fellas.