Media Art Net | Müller, Matthias: Home Stories

I added this post because the previous post now leads to a dead link. The found footage film in question, Home Stories by Matthias Müller, is made up of a number of clips sourced from old Hollywood movies. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that Mr. Müller would issue a copyright takedown complaint to YouTube. You see, it’s all right for him to make derivative works from any copyrighted material he sees fit—but to then turn around and make THAT work available on YouTube would be just…what?

Fair-minded? Rational? Not hypocritical? I’m not sure. Something like that.

The only thing worse than artists who scream Stop Thief! over copyright issues are remix artists who scream about it.

Yeeeee-Haaaaaaw!

I heart these photos by Matthew Porter so hard.

Super Goof-Off Time

Getting “ready” in the morning.

Open Letters: An Open Letter to the Marketing Lady in My Office Who Asked Me What My Major Was in College, and When I Said English, Responded With, “You’ll Never Get Anywhere With That.”

Dear Marketing Lady, Yeah, I’ve heard that.  Well actually, I’ve just seen that sentiment expressed in gentler terms in Newsweek. English majo…

The House I Live In

“

Let’s say it this way, cause it’s more honest. Instead of saying, Let’s get rid of all these drug addicts and drug dealers and once we throw away the key on them we’ll solve this problem. Why don’t you try saying it to yourself this way:

All these Americans that we don’t need anymore, the factories are closed, we don’t need them, you know, the textile mills are gone, GM is closing plants, we don’t need these people. They’re extra Americans, we don’t need them. Let’s just get rid of the bottom fifteen percent of the country. Let’s lock them up. In fact, let’s see if we can make money off locking them up, in the short term. Even though it’s going to be an incredible burden for our society, even though it’s going to destroy these families, you know, where these people are probably integral to the lives of other Americans. Let’s just get rid of them.

You know, I mean, at that point why don’t you just say, Kill the poor. If we kill the poor we’re going to be a lot better off. Because that’s what the drug war’s become.

”

— David Simon, creator of The Wire, in Eugene Jarecki’s searing documentary The House I Live In

You'll never believe where I heard last week's most shocking joke

I grew up listening to A Prairie Home Companion, the long-running NPR variety show that is basically now The Lawrence Welk Show for baby boomers. I don’t listen to it much these days, but it keeps coming on and this past weekend I heard the beginning of the show, broadcast last week from Austin, Texas.

In his opening, recapping the horrible week we all just had, Garrison Keillor praised first responders, in particular those who lost their lives in the horrific industrial explosion in West, Texas. Then he talked about last Monday’s Boston Marathon attack, in which a pair of Chechen brothers allegedly used crude pressure-cooker bombs to kill and maim spectators. Keillor continued,

"Then there was the disgrace of the United States Senate which this week did not distinguish itself [wild applause]. They voted down a bill which would have required a permit to carry a pressure-cooker loaded with ball bearings, nails and black powder in a black nylon bag. They voted that down, though most people in this country would favor such a thing. They voted it down because the National Pressure-Cooker Association said that if criminals are free to carry pressure-cookers in black nylon bags that are loaded with ball bearings, nails and black powder, then honest citizens should as well. It was not a great moment in the U.S. Senate. It’s hard to think of their last great moment. But there they are, they’re ours and we’re responsible for them."

This is a frank, angry, in-your-face piece of agit-comedy, shocking in its proximity to tragedy and a pointed moment of speaking truth to power from a humorist more used to cracking wise about country-style biscuits. Keillor has actually always used his platform to fire barbs at our shiftless, corrupt politicians, but never in a way that has actually shocked me.

What it proves is that Garrison Keillor answers to no one. As a dedicated watcher of The Daily Show, I don’t think even Jon Stewart would have made a pressure-cooker bomb joke last week, as much as he took Congress to task for its disgusting failure to enact even the minor, common sense gun control legislation that the whole country wanted. I don’t think anyone who had any masters at all could have made such a joke without reprisal.

We are all so afraid of giving offense—first we have to take offense. And then we can turn it around and speak. This is a time for taking and giving offense.

Hyperlapse

Smething called hyperlapse. Very cool.

Short doc about John Baldessari

A Brief History of John Baldessari

I think I’d prefer this to Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman’s other recent work, Paranormal Activity 4, though, to be fair, I haven’t seen that one.