I think it was when we were living together, probably 2001 or 2002? I e-mailed the chick who did it last night to let her know she's made probably the only fanvid worth watching. Except maybe the Lion King/Soulja Boy video, heh.

In reply to this comment by djsunkid:
Hehehe, you see I'm paying attention to the nerdly things you show me, and still remember so many years later. How long ago did you show me this vid?

This is by far the best fanvid I have ever seen, and could ever hope to see. Classic track, classic source materials, crazy synching and every so often I could swear it's perfect. I just was inspired to track down the author of the video - not surprisingly, she has a business called Big Big Truck at big-big-truck.com. More surprisingly: her partner is a voice actor for anime dubs, which ordinarily I consider a travesty except he played DOMARAMU on Dragon Half! So like... uh so I'm a nerd but I think that's dope.

ajkido> the odds are good that the person you describe, although certainly not african-american, is also not culturally "black" either. America has created the conditions for the development of an indigenous culture that has only the barest vestigial ties to its geographical provenance. Depending on where that kid's family moved to in the USA, who their neighbors are and how they integrated or assimilated or didn't into their new home, would determine whether "black" is a culturally valid or reductive but descriptive designation.

I'm not sticking up for the use of any other epithets, but as a white person it's not my place to direct black people in its use. It's my place to tell other white people to fuck off with it and that's about it.

Yo Drattus, I don't see wigga as a word in use except as parody. And when cats say "wigger", they're not being inclusive. It's a term driven by the same us-and-them mindset that created the term "white trash" - to wit, the concept of a white person who behaves or appears to be no better than a nigger himself. It's a concept born of the normalization of whiteness and the fetishization of coloured "cool" and basically it reduces everyone to little cut-out dolls of different colours.

I'm a white Nova Scotian who grew up loving rap music from the age of nine (late 80s) and I heard that word a lot and it was not intended as inclusive. Today when friends of mine use it in any circumstance, I grill them. They think it's because I'm sticking up for whatever white person they're denigrating - hell no. There can be no "wigger" unless "nigger" is a valid and debasing term, therefore "wigger" is racist against BLACKS.

What you describe isn't faith. A child who believes in the goodness of his or her parents, due to what "kind" of parents they are, has had a chain of evidence to follow. "Faith in ourselves and each other" doesn't actually mean anything in particular.

I do think he gets a little unkind at the end (Sure it's mean to laugh at someone's toupee! What happened to enlightened self-interest?), but he's essentially on the ball here.

I like how they're REALLY secretaries - don't worry, fellas!

Oh PHEW.

The interesting - and frustrating - thing about this film is that it ISN'T an adaptation of the story. It's sort of a collection of scenes performed in tribute. Without having read the book (recently and intently), there is no way of determining a full or cogent understanding of the plot. Or any plot.

That said, I think the scenes themselves are very well realized. It just would have taken a movie of some considerable length to make such faithful renderings of those scenes into one narrative work.

I think mainly it was done just because it was spring of 1984 at the time and it was a way of paying tribute to the novel.

Yeah I would say that pretty much any joke that can be directly attributed to Matt Groening is anomalous if it's risen much above the level of Jim Davis. Life In Hell is certainly wordier than Garfield, but it also doesn't have much in the way of JOKES per se.

Well the difference there of course is that guitar hero has a prescribed pattern - there's a logic to his composition here, but it's also very free in that the percussion is all micro-edited - I'd be surprised if the fills and pattern variations weren't spontaneous inventions.

I think percussion is the most apt analogy in comparing this to other music - regular players on the drum kit aren't just glorified dance-dance revolutionaries, are they?

Not that I agree with the war or have a lot of respect for its supporters, but the whole "gee they sure have a lot of medical problems" angle is pretty weak when you consider that his sample pool is: a bunch of war supporters who aren't enlisted. So uh... the sort of thing that genuinely prevents you from taking part WOULD be represented in a greater proportion among that population, wouldn't it? And yeah... so would just plain self-interest and cowardice. But that's not actually a counter-argument to their goofball positions, and it essentially constitutes an ad hominem attack that does nothing to advance opposition to the war.

I hate it when people who are on my side of the fence on these issues resort to empty rhetoric and cheap stunts to whip up ephemeral applause from the choir. These issues are real and important and they deserve better than cheapshots.

It's kind of distressing how steadfastly Groening fails to understand that Jon's point is not that Bart hasn't aged since the series' advent, but that unless Homer graduated high school at the age of 27 or so, Bart cannot be a ten-year-old whose father is 38. Whenever you see him in public, it's a sharp reminder that despite the top-notch comedy writing talent he surrounded himself with for a little while just over a decade ago, he's kind of a stupid dude and his sense of humour is just about Garfield-level, only with more domestic violence. Amongst humans, anyway.

Heh, I think that's more of a "F yeah!" than a "F you!"

Anyone who thinks it looks fake can catch him at a live show, where he does the exact same thing. There's no point in faking it - it only tends to impress people who have a rudimentary grasp on sampler technology anyway, which is not like... you know, girls or anything.

That's patently moronic. A computer could reproduce pretty much any piano concerto with MIDI, too, does that mean it isn't impressive when someone sits down and bangs out a complex piece of Rachmaninoff? The whole point is that while that could have been sequenced, it wasn't - every individual sound you heard was triggered by a button being pressed at a precise moment. He played the drums, bass and guitar all separately. It was an insanely complex and demanding feat of musical prowess. Bow down.