It’s bad enough when the flaming nut-jobs from the
Westboro Baptist church say “God hates Jews and fags,” but this?

(We bet the little girl got caught listening to Lady Gaga and has
to hold the sign as punishment. Cherry Cherry Boom Boom!)

Dedicated to the flaming nut-jobs of Westboro Bapitist “Church”..
Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say) -Lady Gaga
(VEVO video, USA only.. sorry)

Jack Bauer was very, very bad last year..

A follow-up to this post.

I’m thirsty.

This is officially a Natalie Imbruglia weekend here at The RhodesTer Chronicles, because I adore her and she’s got some serious social media stuff going on at her website. You can follow her on Twitter, fan her on Facebook, friend her on MySpace and do a number of other things I won’t link here because I don’t personally use them.. Bebo, Daily Motion, Vimeo, etc.

The point is that she (or someone) hired somebody who’s VERY social media savvy to make sure her online personae is as user-friendly as possible, including the ability to embed clips from her site like I’ve done below.

I remember seeing a help-wanted ad posted online for the same type of deal regarding Britney Spears a couple of years ago. It read something like, “Social media and design expert needed for Britney Spears camp; must be fluent and extremely knowledgeable in all aspects of design, promotion and the use of online media.” Shortly after that I noticed a big change in Britney’s online personae, from kind of sucky to incredibly well done. I’m not a fan and you don’t need to be, but you have to admit that when it comes to her website and other online ventures, someone appears to really know what they’re doing.

I’ve seen this happening with more and more public figures recently, whether they be performers, authors, actors or politicians.. 2010 is ushering in an era of online branding and access that’s beyond anything we’ve seen, and despite the fact that her album releases have been sporadic over the almost 13 years since “Torn,” I’m glad to find that Natalie Imbruglia is no exception.

Yes, I’m a gushing fan — I admit it! She’s gorgeous, she has a great voice and sexy accent, and if her songs aren’t haunting and beautiful, they’re snappy and catchy.

Now I can add a snarky sense of humor to that list. The video clips are outtakes of Natalie having a chat with a beachball and a cushion, which are two semi-inanimate objects featured in her “Wild About It” video, shown at the bottom after the clips. The humor is all very British and as such, may be a bit risque for some prudish Yanks I know. You’ve been warned.. DON’T play the 6th clip out-loud at work, unless you work in a strip-club, bar or adult book store.

I dig British humor and its no-holds-barred approach..

Now, the video for “Wild About It,” featuring Cushion and Ball, plus Natalie running around in a pink tutu the morning after a wild party. I entirely relate to that, having done it myself..

Of course, you can also get Natalie’s music from Amazon,
either downloaded as MP3s or shipped directly on CDs..

tell the WORLD.. Digg Google Bookmarks StumbleUpon email Facebook Twitter Add to favorites

]]> http://rhodester.net/suck-the-nozzle-natalie/feed 0 http://rhodester.net/elvis-martina-frank-and-biff http://rhodester.net/elvis-martina-frank-and-biff#comments Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:19:53 +0000 RhodesTer http://rhodester.net/?p=6045

Man, we don’t know about you but we’re having fun with this VEVO video of the day on our front page.

We know you’re not having fun with it if you’re outside of the USA, and we’re sorry about that. Occasionally we get the video from HULU instead and they’re the same way, because we guess it costs like a zillion dollars in foreign export taxes to let the vids be shown in other countries. Along with that we hear, “they can’t get the rights to it.”

What does that even mean, anyhow?

The RIGHTS. They can’t get THE RIGHTS.

If we were a musical person (we’re so not, by the way) we’d want our video to be shown in the USA, Canada, Europe, Slovakia, Australia and everywhere else. The more the merrier. But we guess somehow, someone somewhere is greedy. They want lots of money and dammit, if they can’t get it then you just can’t show your stupid videos in their country.

Or something like that. That’s seems to always be what it comes down to with these things.

Well, we apologize once again if you’re Canadian, European, Slovakian, Australian or anything else because you’re missing out on a really cool one today.

We thought we’d do Christmas Week here at The RhodesTer Chronicles, beings how Christmas is Friday, and today we have a duet with country singer Martina McBride and the late Elvis Presley.

“How can this be?” You ask. “How can Elvis, who died in 1978, sing with Martina McBride who is a contemporary country singer? Her career didn’t even start until much later and she was like two years old when this video of Elvis was made!”

First of all, we’re impressed that you know when the video of Elvis was made and how old Ms. McBride was at the time, but then we’re kind of disappointed you don’t know exactly when her career started. You were a little vague on that.

But the answer, our vague friends, lies in video trickery.. most likely mirrors set at just the right angle, and special lighting, plus smoke. Lots of smoke. At just the right angle.

In the video, which you poor foreigners are missing out on, Elvis sings “Blue Christmas” to a small studio audience of mesmerized young women who are staining their panties, and Martina McBride walks up to join him, making it a duet.

Rather brash of her, if you ask us. We didn’t hear The King invite her up to sit beside the thrown.

But she does, and it actually makes for a nice little number. He looks at her several times and smiles, so you’re left to wonder who he was really smiling at before they blew some smoke, adjusted the lighting and set the time-travel mirrors at just the right angles. Priscilla? Lisa Marie? Ann-Margret? Dolly Parton?

I guess we’ll never know. But it seems Natalie Cole started something some twenty years ago when she did the video for Unforgettable as a duet with her long-since-deceased dad, and these types of things are getting better every year. I’m hoping I’ll still be around when they achieve the technology to let you attend a live Sinatra concert in 1966. You’ll have to dress accordingly to blend in and not raise suspicion (no, you may NOT take your iPhone) and you’ll have to come right back after the concert. None of this going and meeting your parents stuff and trying to get them to fall in love again so that you’ll be born.

Wait.. if you’re already born and can go back, then there must not be a problem. Unless.. unless that bastard BIFF messes things up while you’re at the Sinatra concert! Then you’ll have to stay and fix it!

Fortunately, the only one who gets to time-travel today is Martina McBride. Click here to see it IF you’re reading this on December 22nd of 2009 and IF you’re not already at the front page of this blog and IF you’re in the USA.

Otherwise you can check it out in the video archive IF you’re in the USA but it doesn’t matter what the date is, as long as it’s after December 22nd of 2009. But we’re afraid you can’t see it if you’re in 1966, which doesn’t matter because even though I existed, this blog didn’t, so you’re not reading this anyway and, oh shit..
there’s BIFF!

1977-2009

Talent — Charm — Class — Humor

“Money means nothing to me, but humor means everything.”
- Brittany on David Letterman

She always made me smile.

..by Robin King

Approximately 26,000 individual still shots and a year in the making for this three minute short (and to think I hate putting an hour into a blog post that gets read in five minutes).

Ten Thousand Pictures of You from Robin King on Vimeo
Not seeing the video? click here

Tip of the Santa Hat to Laughing Squid

Thanks Krispy!

I’m-a put this on my blog too, because this guy is awesomeness..

Not seeing the video? click here

This shows me that if I ever have a job again and I’m ever late for that job, I need to get Morgan Freeman to come in and explain to my boss why I was late. Or maybe he could defend me for murder, not that I plan on murdering anyone anytime soon.

This is my Poken.

It arrived in the mail the other day.

Coffeesister got one too. Her Poken is fancier, because she’s all artsy-schmartsy. My Poken is rather plain but at the same time, dignified. It’s kind of like Michael Caine in “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” but not as smarmy.

I can see that expression on your face. The wrinkled nose, the furrowed brow.. you’re wondering what in the heck a “Poken” is.

Allow me..

It’s a little electronic gizmo that you plug into a USB slot on your computer. You put information on it by creating a card at the Poken website, which can contain as much or as little information as you want. Mine gives my name, what city I live in, my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google and Skype profiles, plus my email address and a link to The RhodesTer Chronicles.

The point is, you can have the card say everything about you, or almost nothing. You can also have multiple cards that do both.

Then, if you’re out and about and you have your Poken on you and you meet someone who has a Poken of their own, you can whip them out and swap information by touching them together.

That’s it, and it’s perfectly legal.

See that three-fingered “hand” symbol on the Poken in the picture above? Technically it’s three fingers and a thumb. The thumb is necessary for the Poken to “grasp” the information being given it and then it “clutches” it with the fingers until you get home, whereupon it “releases” the information to your Poken account at the website when you plug it in to your computer.

Okay, I just made all of that up. It’s just a little hand symbol. But it’s not a human hand, unless they had an accident with a bandsaw, so it must be an alien hand, or a Four-Toed Hedgehog.  But it’s really cool because it lights up when you swap information with somebody. It also flashes angrily at you if the information didn’t get swapped correctly, so you have a chance to try again. When it’s successful, it flashes all happy-like and you go home and download that hot chick or hunky guy’s social-networking profiles.

We recently moved out of Palm Springs to embark on new adventures. When saying goodbye to people I’d gotten to know while living there, I’d hunt around for a piece of scrap paper and a pen, then sloppily jot-down my email address, my blog url and maybe my Facebook address if there was room on the paper. So far none of them have gotten in touch, having certainly lost the paper in a terrible windstorm.

While doing all this I thought, “Dang, wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a little gizmo that we all carried around and all we had to do was touch the Hedgehog hands together so that all of our information would be exchanged? They wouldn’t lose my social-networking profiles in windstorms!”

Seriously, I thought that. But alas, I didn’t know about Pokens then and neither did the people I was saying goodbye to, so we just stood there waving as the wind battered us and whipped our hats off our heads.

NOW I have a Poken, but nobody to exchange information with. I exchanged social-networking profiles with coffeesister by touching our Poken Hedgehog hands together after we’d activated them, but that’s it so far. It was kind of useless because we’ve been living together for almost 20 years so I had all of her information already. I’m thinking of obtaining Pokens for our cats just so I can add a few more users to my contacts in the Poken website.

This is because we’re stuck in a small town without a car for a while, and even if we did go out, which we don’t, I doubt there would be much opportunity to go around poken people. They just got the Internet here about a year ago, right after Edna retired from working the town’s telephone switchboard.

I know this is all very pathetic but I hope to be in San Francisco soon and actually be getting out more, where I can go around the big city and commence poken lots of people.

I hope I don’t get arrested.

Meanwhile, I’ve discovered that my Poken also doubles as a flash-storage device. Over two gigabytes worth! So even though I have nobody to Poken with right now, I can store over two gigs of files on a little stick so that I can transfer it to the laptop that I don’t have.

Okay, so that explains what Poken is and now you have no excuse not to get one.. the wind is kicking up, so hang on to your hats and grab that little Hedgehog by his thumb.

Not seeing the video? click here

Here’s how much..

Not seeing the video? click here

in loving memory of Ian and Rufus
Visit petfinder.com to find a shelter in your
area and rescue your future best friend.

Oh MAN I’m like a kid in a candy store right now, having a peppermint shake with my fudgeburger..

VEVO has launched!

VEVO is described as the “HULU of music video,” which is really cool because Hulu.com has all of these TV shows and movies in great quality that stream right to your desktop, laptop, iPhone, Blackberry and other assorted gizmos, so now there’s a service where you can get music videos that way too.

To be clear, HULU is the fudgeburger in this metaphor, while VEVO is the peppermint shake.

The Internet is the candy store.

You and me are the kids.

I just pulled your hair because you stuck gum in mine.

You little fucker.

Music videos have been online since the early days of the Internet but it’s been kind of like the candy aisle at a hardware store – poorly stocked, stale, all thrown together and there are screws that have fallen into the taffy from the bin overhead.

Now.. finally.. there is a service that streams videos to you in high quality and you can make playlists and it’s all divided up into genres and artists and stuff like that, plus there’s a huge selection which is amazing considering that the site launched about twenty minutes ago.

You also won’t have to worry about one of your favorite videos being found by an Internet Overlord and pulled off the web because it was posted by a 12-year-old kid named XhellRaizrX.

It’s a little buggy at this point – a few hours ago I called up “genres” and it showed me all the genres they had available – Alt Rock and Children’s Music. I assumed that they probably have more than that so I just waited, and sure enough all of the genres came back online a few hours later. I chose “thrash metal” and it played a Hannah Montana video for me.

She’s a sexy little baddass biatch, eh?

It’s been getting less buggy as the day goes on, so there must be an army of tech-elves with ironing boards and irons, ironing out the kinks.

Hey, speaking of THE KINKS, mouse-over this and push play, then continue reading..

Whoa, this is going to be fun!

If the KINKS video above doesn’t play for you, either the tech-elves aren’t ironing fast enough or you’re in a region that VEVO is not allowed to stream to, YET. They say they hope to have worldwide distribution soon, which is good because I’ve gone and done a silly thing and that’s put a DAILY VIDEO from VEVO on the front page of this blog, and since this blog travels the world, I want the video to be seen everywhere.

I’ll be choosing something different every day and mixing it up so that it’s rock one day, classical the next, then pop and so on. All of the videos will be chosen solely because I like them. If you want to poke fun at my choices you’re more than welcome to do so in the comment section, but you then must go to the sidebar on the left, click a widget and buy something.

So the very first VEVO Video Of The Day is Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn,” because I’ve always liked it. She’s adorable as she sings about lying naked on the floor and the fake house falls apart at the end, which symbolizes her relationship with the tall blond guy and how it fell apart but she dances anyway because she’s just a sexy little short-haired trooper.

If you’re reading this post on a day other than the day it was posted, which means the video on the front page has changed, then grab a fudgeburger with a peppermint shake, mouse-over the box below, push play and sing-along with Natalie..

HAPPY IN PARAGUAY – by DJO

What happens when people with too much time on their hands dub over old Star Trek TNG episodes with things that it looks like the actors are saying but they’re really not.

All of a sudden, I’m kind of a hero.

I was just sitting here last night perusing various websites and minding my own business, when Cody came in for a brief visit before bed.

He’s Joanna’s nine-year-old son. Joanna is coffeesister’s cousin, who we’re staying with for a bit before forging on to San Francisco.

Cody asked, “Watcha doin’?”

I quickly closed the window that displayed the lingerie models.

“Just looking at angels” I said, somewhat truthfully. It was what popped into my head at the moment.

“What kind of angels?” he asked.

“Blue angels” I replied, less than truthfully. It was all I could think of.

“I want to see!”

He plopped down next to me, so I called up YouTube and typed in “BLUE ANGELS,” knowing full well I’d get videos of the Navy’s precision flying team in action. Sometimes – not always, but sometimes – I’m a fast thinker.

Cody’s eyes grew to the size of F-18 Hornet intakes after the first minute of the first video I played for him – it turned out he’d never seen them before. He’d never even seen fighter jets in action. He hasn’t even seen Top Gun, due to that pesky R rating.

“Are those professional pilots?” he asked.

I explained to him how they’re US Navy fighter pilots who rotate onto duty as Blue Angels, and that they do a “tour” for several years with the team before going back to being regular fighter pilots. I told him that they’re not only professional, but that they’re the best of the best, undergoing rigorous training and testing that most pilots wash out of. Only a very small percentage get to be Blue Angels.

Then I had to explain to him what regular Navy fighter pilots are and how they land and take-off from aircraft carriers in the middle of the ocean. I showed him videos of that, and then I showed him close-ups of F-18 Hornets and told him how they can fly faster than sound.

Now he wants to be a fighter pilot.

We haven’t told his mom about this. Coffeesister and I are renting a room from her for a bit, and want to stay in her good graces. Thank god she’s too busy most of the time to read this blog.

But aside from how his mom is going to react, I feel as though I’m a bit of a hero just for introducing a nine-year-old boy to The Blue Angels. When I suggested that he should ask his dad, who lives nearby, to take him to a Blue Angels air-show he hit Mach-one on the excitement scale, so we looked at their website to try and get a show schedule for 2010 but they don’t have one posted yet.

Moments later he went to bed with Blue Angels on the brain.

Perhaps someday he will be a Navy fighter pilot. Maybe even a Blue Angel. Probably not, because at nine he has a lot of years ahead of him to sort that stuff out, but what if?

I’d love to still be around, and be at that first exhibition show he participates in. I’d love to have him introduce me to his teammates as the old man who showed him the vintage YouTube videos of the Blue Angels back when they flew Hornets. He’d tell them I was the one who ignited the spark, and maybe I’d even get a ride in the backseat of his very own F-57 Spitwad with invisible shields and warp-speed capability.

One never knows, but one can always hope.. and dream.

With our move to San Francisco drawing ever nearer, I’ve been doing some research and brushing up on the geography, current events and history of the city.

I’ve been going there my entire life and even lived there briefly in the late seventies, but it doesn’t hurt to augment what I think I know with actual facts, now does it?

While doing my homework I stumbled across a great video called Lost Landscapes Of San Francisco by The Long Now Foundation, which is a series of historic pieces of film – primarily home movies – that have been restored and edited together in an approximately hour-long presentation that you’ll find in its entirety here.

While watching one segment, which was shot from a cable car that trundled down Market Street in 1905, I wondered what Google Street View would have for me if I were to punch in the addresses that would put the 2009 Google camera car about where the 1905 cable car was at any given point in the film.

The San Francisco Ferry Building served as an awesome reference for this because, even though it was built in 1895, it’s still standing – and the cable car camera operator in 1905 kept it in the shot as they headed toward it.

I also went elsewhere in the “Lost Landscapes..” video and grabbed a couple of screen shots from 1941 which also show the Ferry Building.

The result of my total digression from actually learning anything other than a few photo-editing skills are as follows..

Market Street with the Ferry Building at the end. It’s the tall structure that is the only constant in all of these shots.. everything else  changes drastically over time. This is from the 1905 film..

From roughly the same point of view in 1941..

And then as seen on Google Street View in 2009..

A shot closer to the Ferry Building, taken towards the
end of the 1905 film, as the cable car approached the building..

Then another shot from 1941..

And finally, a 2009 screen grab from Google
Street View that’s as close as I can get it..

They renovated the end of Market Street so that it now veers to the right
instead of going all the way up to the Ferry Building. Please note
that palm trees are not indigenous to the  San Francisco area
(too cold) – you won’t see any in the old films.

I recommend watching the video in its entirety even if you’re not familiar with San Francisco, just because it’s interesting to see how much things change over just a few generations. If you don’t have time for that, the cable car trip down Market Street is about ten minutes long, and it’s fun to count how many people almost get run over by other cable cars, horse-drawn wagons and those new-fangled motor cars in the days before crosswalks and traffic lights.

The answer, by the way, is a LOT.

I saw it on my webcam.

This was during a Skype call with Autumn, who is not a ghost (yet) but is actually coffeesister’s cousin’s daughter. We’ve known Autumn since the day she was born, and she’s now attending culinary college in San Francisco so that someday she can visit us and whip-up a really kick-ass dinner.

For those not familiar with Skype, it’s a modern-day picture phone system that you can use on your computer. You need to buy a webcam or have a computer with one built-in, but you download Skype for free. Once you have it you can use it either for plain old boring text chat, or you can call someone up and converse with them audibly while looking at them on the video.

This is a shot of Autumn and her dog from that same session the other night. I don’t remember if it was before or after the ghost, but you sort of get an idea of what Autumn looks like and you really get an idea of what her dog looks like.

When I called Autumn, I turned my webcam around so that she could see coffeesister, who was over on the sofa. This is a re-creation of Autumn’s view from that night.

Coffeesister is not on the sofa in this re-creation so you’ll have to pretend she is. Skype works so well that she was able to wave at Autumn and talk to her from way over there.

When I’m sitting at my computer during a Skype session I can see the person I’m talking to, who in this case was Autumn, and I can see what our own video stream looks like in a smaller window under it. So I could see coffeesister sitting on the sofa at the same time Autumn could see her.

Sometime during the conversation a black, misty mass in the form of a person walked from right to left in front of the camera between my computer and coffeesister. I was looking right at coffeesister in front of me, while seeing the view that the webcam was seeing at the same time. I couldn’t see it in person, but I saw it on the live cam view.

When it happened Autumn said, “Hey, who’s that?” She knew we were the only two here, so it kind of surprised her. It REALLY surprised me. I told her, “We’re the only ones here.. I think that was a ghost or something.”

Autumn said, “Cool!”

Coffeesister didn’t know what we were talking about, since Autumn and I were the only ones to see it. But upon being told of it she said, “Oh, probably just someone passing through.”

Here’s another re-creation – a video clip of that same view, emulating what the ghost did. It stars our cat as the ghost and you’ll still have to pretend that coffeesister is on the sofa, so I’m asking you to really stretch your imagination here..

Not seeing the video? click here

This will teach me to record my Skype sessions from now on so I don’t have to use cats as paranormal stand-ins.

1. Sneak into his place and install a hidden video cam that can see his desk.

2. Send him this video from CollegeHumor.com called “Web Site Story.”

Not seeing the video? click here

3. Record him watching it and isolate the section about two minutes in, where RhodesTer has fallen off his chair and is lying on the carpet in a hideous giggling fit complete with drool and snot bubbles.

4. Threaten to post your clandestine video on YouTube unless RhodesTer _______ (fill in the blank.)

..Avril Lavigne on ACID. What say you?

You’ve probably seen it. That’s the way viral videos are. But if you haven’t seen it, you need to.

I got up today feeling very down. I felt depressed and useless. I know it’s all an illusion, but so are the skating babies, who lifted me out of my doldrums and made me laugh. This is one of those commercials I’d make if I worked for a big, fancy ad agency and I had several million bucks to blow on a campaign. I like Evian water too, which helps. I hate it when an ad is brilliant but it’s hawking something that’s not, or something that I have no interest in and will never use.

But enough jibber-jabber. Pop the cap on an Evian and dig the hip-hop babies. Maybe they’ll make you laugh too..

..dedicated to my pal MCF, who admitted that he cried when the beloved Optimus Prime died in some film somewhere, or perhaps it was a cartoon, but whatever. It was pretty sad, you know?

MCF is thirty-something, single and lives with his parents. But he’s cool despite not being a giant robot.

At least I don’t think he’s a giant robot. I’ve never seen him.

Maybe he is.

UPDATE – MCF was kind enough to provide the original Optimus Prime death scene. Get the hankies out, folks (we know he didn’t REALLY die and that it was all just acting and stuff. But it’s awfully good acting.)

I’m testing this YouTube video plug-in that’s supposed to let your YouTube vids show up in your RSS feed, which mine haven’t been doing. So, we’ll see.

I’m using a video of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, because I like this song. So there.

Maybe the vid will show up in the emailing too. That’d be nice.

OOPS! Turns out the Yeah Yeah Yeahs couldn’t make it. Some lame excuse about disabled embedding. Good thing we have our back up band, all the way from Riverdale, HERE THEY ARE..

THE ARCHIES! (Geez I love this song.. so bouncy!)

Test.. test.. is this thing on?

Okay, OKAAAAY.. I know. Not fair. Turns out I can’t find a Yeah Yeah Yeahs vid that doesn’t have embedding disabled, so for those of you who were expecting something a little edgier, I present..

..THE KILLS