The Latest from Boing Boing |  |
- 1980s cartoon intros in other languages
- Man smuggled coke in Easter egg sweets
- Harry Potter actress in hiding after death threats
- My son sucks at Drop 7
- Wikileaks: traditional liberalism with balls?
- Inside a foie gras farm
- Coded message deciphered—nearly 150 years after it was written
- It's like Burning Man, but with ice, and in China
- New York City Blizzard time-lapse video
- Happy holidays from Bikini Bottom
- R. Crumb's Mr. Natural statuette carved from sandstone
- Glen E. Friedman photography show in SF thru Dec. 31
- Candid photos of Civil War battlefield injuries
| 1980s cartoon intros in other languages Posted: 28 Dec 2010 12:29 AM PST To clear the palate before we embark, here is Bernard Hoffer's instrumental Panthro's Theme, a splendid example of the sort of music addressed in this post. It is also among the greatest hidden gems of serious non-electronic disco to emerge post-Funkytown. Sadly, the Thundercats theme itself appears not to have been translated out of English, which leaves us with all the other cartoon theme tunes, which are mostly bad. Let us start in earnest with Ulysses 31. Refamiliarize yourself first with the English version, where the musical notes make sense but the lyrics do not. The ne plus ultra of foreign Ulysseses is Spain's Ulises 31, which heightens the English version's emotional landscape, then segues dizzyingly from booming male narrator to contralto female lyricist. The fundamental excellence of Denny Crockett and Ike Egan's pounding space disco maintains its sense of unity and place. Ulises 31 is the most successful imported television show in Guatemala, ever [1]. A high-quality recording is here -- perfect for your most disturbing parties. In the French version of Ulysse 31, our narrator sounds so bored you can almost see him throwing away his Gauloises and walking off after introducing the hero, muttering about how no-one understands his art. The energetic singing compensates superbly, however, especially when an unexpectedly masculine chorus kicks in. That said, a certain mental endurance is still required to get through the section voiced by Nono la petit robot. Germany's Odysseus 31 begins with a friendly storyteller, but the hoped-for awesomeness kicks in as soon as the lyricist boots the narrators offstage and the theme proper begins: Behold! The surreal nightmare of polish Ulysses 31 is at hand. The theme tune to Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds, already vigorously unpleasant in English and Spanish, is even worse in other languages. The Italians wins outright, however, by replacing the theme's instrumentation with a synthesizer that just goes right through your head. It is deployed over multiple extra bridges and solos not present in the original; they also managed to find even higher-pitched child singers and stretched it out to nearly four minutes in length. Dogtanian is also cringeworthy in France, Portugal and in Finland, whose rendition sounds like is was recorded on a Yamaha PSS-130 by drunks. There is even a Hebrew version of this immensely successful cartoon's theme song — one can imagine it occupying a place of honor alongside rubber hoses and damp towels among Mossad's most persuasive tools. If you've gotten this far, this Afrikaans edition of David the Gnome is a reward of magnificent proportions; so much so I can hardly believe that it is real: Returning to the era's real classics, we find that the french edition of Mysterious Cities of Gold -- the original! -- is very similar to the English. The co-produced Japanese screening, however, completely discarded Haim Saban's original theme in favor of a curious pop song by Nobuyoshi Koshibe: French also being the native language of Inspecteur Gadget's creators, one would expect that version of the theme to offer a similar level of quality to the English production. Fortunately this is far from the case! This version is available at the Amazon store as a high-quality MP3 Another Shuki Levi classic, Jayce and Wheeled Warriers, offers Anglophones 'abroad' all the pleasure of an 1980s hair band, but with the benefit of being unable to understand what they are saying. No tour of the 1980s TV toon landscape is complete without a look at Disney's saturday morning work, and it's true that the company translates its work widely and to high standard. This attention to maintaining vocal style, cadence and meter across languages is extraordinary, but has the unfortunate result of making every version rather similar. But here's Gummi Bears in Japanese: I had high hopes for a macho, Putinesque lead for Russia's localization of Chip 'n' Dale: Rescue Rangers, but it was not to be. Now, Around The World With Willy Fog. First, reacquaint yourself with the English version of this demented rendition of Verne's novel, for however long you can take it. One interesting thing about this show is that its cast of anthropomorphised animals is already an international ensemble; this allows each localization to embody crude ethnic charicatures without really offending anyone. For example, if this Englishman ever learns to speak Spanish, I shall try to learn to speak it as Mr. Fog speaks it here: My personal favorite, however, is Russian Willy. In Finland, the the little rat-creature, Tico, appears to vomit suddenly at the end of his line. Anyway, I started this post with the best of intentions, but by the far end of international Ewoks I was reaching for the Laphroaig, so it's probably best I stop. I'll leave you with He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, translations of which turn out to be surprisingly light-hearted compared to the English original. At least one season of Germany's showing received an appropriately muscular voicing, however. Here it is with helpfully translated English subtitles: Post your favorite cartoon curiosities in the comments! * According to a YouTube commenter. |
| Man smuggled coke in Easter egg sweets Posted: 28 Dec 2010 01:29 AM PST Esteban Galtes, 23, of Miami, was busted a few days ago for attempting to smuggle 14 pounds of Cocaine into the US from Colombia. He had packed most of it into Easter egg candies. Perhaps he would have been less suspicious if they were inside Christmas ornaments. "Feds: Smuggler caught hiding cocaine in Easter eggs before Christmas" |
| Harry Potter actress in hiding after death threats Posted: 27 Dec 2010 02:41 PM PST  Afshan Azad, the 22 year old actress who played Padma Patil in the Harry Potter series, has gone into hiding after receiving death threats from her family. According to BBC News, her older brother recently admitted physically attacking her - though CBS (via UK tabloid The Daily Mail) notes that at the time, he seemed to be more concerned with how the arrest would make his family look in public. The court cleared him and his father of the charges of making death threats. Apparently, Ms. Azad is dating a Hindu fellow, and this has angered her conservative Muslim family, and most notably her brother. AOL News has more details about the attack and death threats, as well as why Ms. Azad is refusing to testify against them. |
| Posted: 27 Dec 2010 02:27 PM PST  I know it's bad form to brag and all, but I can totally kick my son Ripley's ass at Drop 7. Sure you could argue that he's only 10 months old, but then you'd just be trying to steal my glory. Jerk. |
| Wikileaks: traditional liberalism with balls? Posted: 27 Dec 2010 02:53 PM PST  Photo:Reuters I have no idea what size organization is optimal for preventing leaks, but, presumably, it should be small enough to avoid wide-scale alienation, which clearly excludes big bureaucracies. Ideally, you'd want to stay small enough to preserve a sense of community, so that people's ties to one another and the leadership act as a powerful check against leaking.To make this point, Scheiber reminds us that Wikileaks' stated aim--making organizations operate more ethically--is a mainstream one: "It's easier for honest CEOs to run an honest business, if the dishonest businesses are more affected negatively by leaks than honest businesses," he quotes Julian Assange. Scheiber's argument seems to be that Wikileaks' disclosures could have more subtle and far-reaching effects on organizations than it expects. It's easy to make a meal of the "crushing bastards" side of Wikileaks, but that distracts us from the fact that it reveals things that should not be hidden from us if we take liberal democratic principles seriously. It might be reasonable to argue against such disclosures, but you can't claim those principles as your own and then call Assange a terrorist for soliciting proof that they've been shat on. And Scheiber's not the only person to draw unusual connections between Wikileaks' activities and mainstream politics. Writing in The Economist, Will Wilkinson's inane hostility toward Bruce Sterling acquires a halitosis-like force that makes sticking with it hard going. But he scores one good hit on Sterling's otherwise superb essay, which is that seeing everything about Wikileaks through the lens of hacker culture is a mistake. Assange's activities are in fact consistent with traditional liberal demands of government, and only converge with sociopathic cyber-utopian anarchism on paper: Liberalism was once a radical, revolutionary philosophy, but it has become hard to believe it. What is most intriguing about the WikiLeaks saga is not the pathology of hacker culture as envisioned by Mr Sterling's fecund imagination, but the possibility that Julian Assange and his confederates have made dull liberal principles seem once again sexily subversive by exposing power's reactionary panic when a few people with a practical bent actually bother to take them seriously.I'll be leaving on the mirrorshades of sociopathy +1 myself, but Liberalism isn't the only other vantage point Wikileaks serves. Take, for example, the "nothing new here" response to cablegate. Stupid as that is concerning specific relevations, it's true that most of the disclosures are of trivial events that are routinely and inappropriately classified as secrets. This is something conservatives and the left-libertarian netariat alike can hate equally: government growing in dumb, relentless symbiosis with the bureacracy of its own secret bullshit. |
| Posted: 26 Dec 2010 08:45 PM PST Can foie gras be Good? In this essay on the Serious Eats blog, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt takes a tour of a farm that produces foie gras and makes a case for why fattened duck liver—long the scourge of food ethicists—maybe isn't actually the product of sadistic torture. (Via Bora Zivkovic) |
| Coded message deciphered—nearly 150 years after it was written Posted: 26 Dec 2010 09:01 PM PST Just in case you didn't get enough of the American Civil War earlier today:
So, a bit late. The code was actually fairly easy to crack—a retired CIA codebreaker did it in a just a few weeks earlier this year. So why wasn't it deciphered sooner? Turns out, the message sat, for more than 110 years, in a jar, in the Museum of the Confederacy. Only in 2010 did museum officials decide to take the message out of the jar and see what it said. (Via Marilyn Terrell) BBC: Coded American Civil War Message in Bottle Deciphered |
| It's like Burning Man, but with ice, and in China Posted: 27 Dec 2010 11:00 AM PST  Above and below: tourists look at ice sculptures during a light testing prior to the Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival in Harbin, Heilongjiang province. The bricks look like pixels, don't they? The event opens on January 5, 2011, according to local media. Photographs taken December 25, 2010. More images below!
|
| New York City Blizzard time-lapse video Posted: 27 Dec 2010 10:16 AM PST |
| Happy holidays from Bikini Bottom Posted: 27 Dec 2010 10:15 AM PST  Kit Boyce, who painted some of the terrific backgrounds in Spongebob Squarepants, sent me this greeting card and said I could share it with the readers of Boing Boing. |
| R. Crumb's Mr. Natural statuette carved from sandstone Posted: 27 Dec 2010 10:06 AM PST  From the R. Crumb Newsletter: This statue is 12 inches tall, made of a light colored sandstone, and hand-carved in Bali. It is based upon the small 4.5 inch statue of Mr. Natural released in 1984. These statues were commissioned by Alex Wood, of Wildwood Serigraphs, who personally oversaw the initial production in Bali. Note that these are carved, not casted, so expect the texture and small irregularities of hand craftsmanship. Still, the statues are all remarkably similar for being hand-carved.Yours for $345. R. Crumb's Mr. Natural statuette carved from sandstone |
| Glen E. Friedman photography show in SF thru Dec. 31 Posted: 27 Dec 2010 09:57 AM PST [Video Link] If you find yourself traveling to San Francisco between now and New Year's Eve (or perhaps stranded there, as a result of the thousands of Snowpocalypse flight cancellations), do check out photographer Glen E.Friedman's FUCK YOU ALL show at Nine Four One Geary. Friedman is best known for his work from the '70s and '80s forward, documenting the roots of skate, punk, and hiphop subcultures (and the places where all three intersect). Above, a short video clip by Colin M. Day, in which Friedman and his sometimes-collaborator Shepard Fairey are interviewed before the opening of the show. Glen was smashed in the face for Christmas at the Venice skate park, first time ever after 35 years of shooting skaters. I caught up with him a few hours later, and he had a pretty righteous gash on his forehead. Read all about it here. But like a true pro, he kept shooting, before and during. One of the shots is below.
|
| Candid photos of Civil War battlefield injuries Posted: 26 Dec 2010 08:33 PM PST  On April 1, 1865, Alfred Lane was shot in the hip during the Civil War Battle of Hatcher's Run, Virginia. He died about a month and a half later, after the wound became gangrenous.This photo, and the description of the patient, come from a series of images posted to Flickr by Mike Rhode, archivist at the National Museum of Health and Medicine—which began its existence during the Civil War as the Army Medical Museum. The photos get a lot more graphic than this—both in terms of wounds, and general nudity—but it's an amazing collection that's mostly never been seen by the general public before, and which offers a rare, un-edited peek into the casualties of both war and early medicine. Both contributed to the death of people like Alfred Lane. From the University of Toledo Libraries ...
The gangrene, ironically, probably came from an infection Lane picked up in the Hospital, itself. How bullets were removed during the Civil War. Thanks to merrileeiam for Submitterating the photos! Image: Some rights reserved by otisarchives1 |
. There is, however, a suprise in Shuky Levi's original sound track: one of the toon's most oft-used interstitial tunes 
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers sensed something was a little off with candy for the wrong holiday, a spokeswoman said.
(REUTERS/Sheng Li)
| You are subscribed to email updates from Boing Boing To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment