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9 matchs for homestar:
It's a holiday (or post-holiday) so I'm posting stupid stuff today (or more stupid than usual). Like the homestar-ish End of the World (link may be dead because site exceeded bandwidth). This may be old news but I just discovered it. No disrespect meant to the war dead, but if we don't [fill in cautionary statement here].
New Strong Bad email features different generations of cheesy video games. A Pong-level charmer called "Secret Collect," ye texte-bafed gamme called "Dungeonmaster," the ultra-sophisticated "Rhinofeeder," and best of all, a 3-D vector game called "Strongbadzone." In the last, you use your cybershield to block Strongbad's "perplexing 3-D geometric attacks" and whenever you lose a point, a message appears on the screen saying "YOUR HEAD A SPLODE." Wait a few beats after the end of the email and playable versions of the games will appear. Back off, baby!
1. kelly's world of cheerleading (hat tip to paper rad); 2.-4. tien's ultimate dbz dimension; 5. homestar runner (sweet cuppin' cakes); 6. tien's ultimate dbz dimension; 7. krystal ishida; 8. lugia pokémon (artist unknown); 9. artist unknown
At the performance Saturday, a video projector rolled a clip of Macchio playing a few notes, then the tape stopped and Cory tried to "beat" Macchio with his own, live guitar. This continued through several tradeoffs. Cory has the moves to pull this off, up to a point, but a small minority of people (who knew Crossroads) knew that inevitably Ralph was going to kick his ass. Thus, suspense was created and a kind of unconscious caste system developed in the crowd between the Crossroads elite and non-initiates. At the end of the performance, Ralph let rip onscreen with a long sequence of cascading notes roaming up and down the fretboard like an impossible physics formula, while the old bluesman looked on approvingly. This was the big moment, and singer Jamie asked the crowd if Cory should go for it, prompting a chorus of mostly yeses and a few skeptical jeers. Cory started a solo and then a few bars into it petulantly smashed his guitar to the floor and walked off, leaving the feeding-back instrument lying there howling. What else could you do?
Speaking of PreReviews, I need to eat some crow for calling The RZA's great Kill Bill music "generic hip hop" (without seeing the movie). Turns out the complex, sample-heavy score is one of the two reasons to see it. You don't really realize how much material was ingeniously mashed up until you watch the song credits scrolling forever at the end. [Update: For some reason Elvis Mitchell in the NYT gives credit to Tarantino for all the music choices and doesn't even mention the Wu Tang guy. What's up with that???] A really lovely tune plays while Darryl Hannah prepares to kill the comatose Uma Thurman; I want to go back just to hear it again.
Oh, and here is the other reason to go see the film, the second in a series of Females I'd Like to Be Slaughtered By (the first being the T-X Terminator). This kind of unabashed fandom is just to help the film industry and America's ailing economy, that's all, really.
Chiaki Kuriyama: Scary.
[The following found sentence has been inserted for design reasons, to put a kind of text buffer between completely unrelated photos. OK, there's an animated .gif, too, but it's way over on the right.] Less than a week before "putting to bed" the second half of Artforum's two-volume look back on the '80s, organized by my predecessor, Jack Bankowsky, I found myself seated across from sculptor Haim Steinbach at a Brooklyn kitchen, a late winter light waning on the running tape recorder and a half finished plate of marzipan between us.
Revising "BitStreams" (a curatorial thought-experiment in progress)
"BitStreams" was the Whitney Museum's big "computer art" show in 2001. Like the Matthew Barney exhibit at the Guggenheim this year, it was an inexplicable hit with the general public but few artists I know (including many so-called computer artists) liked it. One problem was the curator tried to float a bunch of "discoveries" from the Bay Area and elsewhere that didn't measure up to the exacting standards of us rough, tough New Yorkers. The show suffered from a kind of mid-30-something parochialism, favoring a bunch of earnest data-crunchers the same approximate age as the curator over younger artists with a much more instinctive handle on the medium and also interesting pioneers, like Nancy Burson. And finally, it's tricky to include so-called pop culture in a so-called high art show but let's face it, there's stuff out there kicking the art world's sedentary ass. (George Bush helped word this post.) I wrote about the show here but continue to think of work that would have improved it. Some of the revisions below are tongue in cheek but most aren't:
John Klima ecosystm Joe McKay Color Game
DJ Spooky DJ Assault
Marina Rosenfeld Monotrona
Jeremy Blake videos Cory Arcangel Data Diaries and Clouds
Paintings "based on" the computer Paintings made with the computer
Lew Baldwin milkmilklemonade.net JODI % MY DESKTOP
Paul Pfeiffer Paper Rad
Jason Salavon The Top Grossing Film of All Time Jason Salavon Golem
John Simon LoVid
Planet of the Apes with sod Planet of the Apes without sod
The Spacewürm Scanner
Lutz Bacher dealercam 100 random camgirls/guys - videowall - nudity
Sally Elesby mouse drawings Kristin Lucas mousepad drawings
Jim Campbell Ambiguous Icon #5 (Running Falling) BEIGE ASCII hotdogs
Richard Devine Dynamix II
Jordan Crandall Matt & Mike Chapman
Inez Van Lamsweerde Me Kissing Vinoodh (Passionately) and/or Jon "Clone Tool" Haddock's Kent State/Vietnam backgrounds Laura Carton erased p0rn images
Jon Haddock Sims Tributes Creepy Clown
etc etc
references, easter eggs, and trivia about Homestar & Co. I wonder, though: was it shut down through threat of litigation? The fine print at the bottom (still cached) says, in so many words, "greasy lawyers, go away; this is just a fan site." I hope it's not the case that they
were officially warned off, since the Chapman brothers seem very generous in their approach to internet marketing.
One bit of trivia is how to find the Nintendo game endings, which I mentioned to someone recently. These are small screen shots of the last panels of various games, including Mario lying in bed dreaming of the Princess at the end of Super Mario Bros 2.
1. Click (and watch) the Strong Bad email "Japanese Cartoon."
2. At the end of the short, click the words "Japanese cartoon" on Strong Bad's computer screen and watch a short title sequence for "Stinko Man 20X6."
3. When you are returned to the Strong Bad email, click the words "Japanese cartoon" again to see Homestar watching the show on TV and mumbling along with the theme song.
4. While Homestar is watching his TV, click on the videotape on his shelf that says "NES endings".
5. When the first NES screen shot pops up, click it repeatedly to see more NES endings.
"I'm a blade man, man!"
The Artforum Top Ten wasn't great when Greil Marcus did it: too cutesy-cryptic, with endless attention paid to blues and folk-based music only a few ex-hippies care about. Since he left, artists have been doing Top Tens and now it's even worse. Instead of talking about stuff they know and like (like, say, the work of fellow artists), most feel, because it's Artforum, they have to drop references to obscure theorists, difficult bands, and hard-to-navigate websites (and don't get me started on the "Hot List"). Thus it was a pleasant surprise to see Guy Richards Smit mentioning homestarrunner.com in this month's issue--something even kids like! The link to Smit's Top Ten is here (at least while the mag is on the stands); the link to Homestar is here (but not in the online version of the Top Ten--go figure). Speaking of Homsar, I mean Homestar (cryptic, Marcusian in-joke), I recommend the Strong Bad email called "techno," in which the masked one improvises a spot-on, old school techno track with mouth noises until suddenly interrupted by The Cheat doing a "lightswitch rave." Even Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel would have to agree this is superb. "The system is down... The system is down..."
20X6 vs. 1936 The Unauthorized Script
SCENE: A futuristic landscape, with green manicured park and rounded modern buildings in the background. STINKOMAN, a masked, blue-haired Japanese animation character who looks suspiciously like STRONG BAD, is training. He boxes the air and makes martial arts yells. Videogame music (NES' Rad Racer) plays underneath.
HOMESTAR RUNNER enters from right. This is "old timey" Homestar, a cartoon figure straight out of a black and white 1930s one-reeler, complete with celluloid scratches and hair caught in the projector. Like a hologram, he doesn't appear to inhabit the same spacetime continuum as STINKOMAN, yet the characters interact. He is kicking a crumpled can, which bumps STINKOMAN's foot.
STINKOMAN: Wha-? Who are you? (NOTE: All STINKOMAN's lines are delivered in an exaggerated, shouting voice, as in a bad English anime translation.)
HOMESTAR (with nasal, "country" accent) : I'm-a Homestar Runner.
STINKOMAN: That name is dumb. It sounds like it's so dumb.
[SLIGHT PAUSE, as if STINKOMAN'S words are delayed in tachyon transfer between dimensions.]
HOMESTAR (in CLOSEUP): Well, what's your moniker?
STINKOMAN: I go by Stinkoman. That's the name of talented fighter (sic) if ever there was one!
HOMESTAR: Okay. If you say so. Would you care for some dry meal? (Bag labeled "DRY MEAL" appears out of nowhere and hits ground with a loud wheeze)
STINKOMAN: No way. I'm training for fighting. Or maybe a challenge. So what's that thing you're kicking around?
HOMESTAR: Oh, that's just an old can of water soup. (CLOSEUP of HOMESTAR looking sad) I kick it around ever since my dog washed away in the storm of '28.
STINKOMAN: You seem like you might not be from around here. Do you have any special powers?
HOMESTAR: I can play a mean washboard. (Washboard materializes. As HOMESTAR scratches it rhythmically, STINKOMAN begins bobbing up and down involuntarily.)
STINKOMAN: What is that? What is that? Some kind of robot?
HOMESTAR (another slight pause): What's a robut?
STINKOMAN: You don't know what a robot is? (Pointing) HA HA HA HA! You are so dumb. (CLOSEUP of STINKOMAN laughing with cartoon steampuffs coming out from his head) HA HA HA HA! Dumb!
HOMESTAR (while STINKOMAN is laughing): Oh, go soak your fat head.
STINKOMAN: Are you asking me for a cha-a-a-LLENGE? (Begins powering up, Dragonball Z style, a halo of energy growing around his body)
HOMESTAR (while STINKOMAN is powering up): Yes sir. Yes sir, I am.
[STINKOMAN's energy aura reaches full power and with a cry of "Double Deuce!" he leaps into the sky. As he begins plummeting downward, HOMESTAR aims a peashooter at him and fires with an audible "ptui."
LOW ANGLE SHOT looking up at the rapidly descending STINKOMAN. HOMESTAR's spitball hits STINKOMAN's eye just as he is about to land on HOMESTAR.]
STINKOMAN (back on ground, howling with pain): My eye! It's like my eye! It hurts so bad!
HOMESTAR (as STINKOMAN jumps in pain): Well, folks, you know what that means. Now I'll do a dance.
[HOMESTAR launches into a comical dance, splaying his feet and twisting his head to inane electric piano music. STINKOMAN stops wailing when he sees what HOMESTAR is doing.]
STINKOMAN (pointing at HOMESTAR): HA HA HA. That dance cracks me up. You gotta teach me.
HOMESTAR: Just kind of...shimmy and shake.
STINKOMAN (imitating HOMESTAR's dance): Yeah! Now I've got it.
[The two dance jerkily, several feet apart, calling out each other's dates of origin.]
HOMESTAR: 20X6 (pronounced "Twenty Exty-six").
STINKOMAN: 1936!
HOMESTAR: 20X6.
STINKOMAN: 1936!
HOMESTAR: 20X6.
STINKOMAN: 1936...
[The call-and-response continues as picture FADES TO BLACK]
Cartoon roundup. Homestar Runner is a funny, web-only Flash animation series created by two 20something brothers in Atlanta. It's sort of in the Power Puff Girls mode but the characters and voices are much weirder. Its original fanbase included a lot of Christian kids because it uses clean language, but its popularity is spreading so major media may soon be involved (if they're not already). An essay about the cartoon is here. The episode "Where's the Cheat?"--or as one of the characters says, "Where the Cheat is at?"--is recommended.