who watches over you?

This may been the finest piece of marketing ever to grace my Facebook sidebar.

cry of the electric mouse

Submitted without comment:

(ubiquitous Wikipedia link)

just waiting for my girl from another world

What happens when you combine Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami, American actress Kirsten Dunst, and vowelless director McG over a classic ’80s hit from one of my favorite bands?  Would you believe it’s this?

(Warning: contains images not safe for work or family.)

(via BoingBoing, who just referred to “Murakami” in their post, and thus had me thinking they meant Haruki Murakami, which made even less sense.)

I’m not really sure how I feel about this video.  Dunst’s cover doesn’t bring a lot musically, but I don’t think that’s the point.  The trio seems to have set out to make something more like a short film, but it has no sense of narrative or flow.  Magical Girl Super Kirtsen doesn’t have a consistent character–in one shot, she seems lost and outside of reality, in the next she’s flirting with the camera like we’re real and everyone else is outside.  There’s some cultural statement lurking under the surface–not just about being an outsider, but about how we relate to pop culture, how foreigners can become engrossed in what is commonplace to locals (BoingBoing talked a bit about this recently), but the quick-cut, non-linear film never manages to get to the point.  I give it an A for concept, C for execution.

For contrast, here’s what an actual Vapors video looks like:

every bird you ride, every place you hide, every donut you–d’oh

Sorry, guys, it’s been an off week here at The Elephant–a lot on my mind and nothing on the page.  Here’s some highlights from double-guitar virtuoso Zack Kim to keep the blog from blowing away:

Here’s his full youtube stream, I think there’s something for everyone in there.  See you all next week!

gawrsh

This is making the rounds (BoingBoing, Neatorama, Morgan [hi, Morgan])), and you know how I love a good bandwagon:

thursday sumo: old school stereo

Back in October (when the Elephant was hibernating), Pink Tentacle posted a set of wonderful animated stereoviews by early Japanese photographer T. Enami, including this one of a handful of rikishi displaying their kesho-mawashi:

(Click through to check out more of Enami's photographs, and other shots of vintage sumo and other scenes of old Japan, from Flickr user Okinawa Soba.)

It’s a fascinating combination of stillness and motion, depth, and not-quite-natural color.  Also, the dude on the left moved during the exposure, dooming him to an eternity of ghostly half-existence.  Scary.

For our edification, I also decided to do a little ImageReady work so we could check out the embroidery in more detail, which is not a phrase I ever expected to type:

too easy humming songs

I think this is my favorite Monkees song.  I’m probably the only one here who has a favorite Monkees song, huh?  I mean, if we don’t count Daydream Believer?*

(Video is from an episode of the TV series, thus it is even more nonsensical than it might otherwise be.  Also, Mickey’s little scat bit is looped once, presumably to make room for antics.)

( * I originally mistyped this as “Daybream Believer”.  I’m gonna put an attribution/share-alike license on that phrase, if you guys feel like using it for like, a children’s cartoon or something.)