So, Monday was my weblog’s first birthday. My guidelines were pretty simple, and I think I’ve kept to them. I’m going to make one exception today, and talk entirely about myself.
Parodeities
Randall Hyde is pioneering a new musical genre called Parodeities, biblical parodies of popular secular songs. The MP3 recordings are rough — Randall has no formal vocal training and he’s accompanied only by downloaded MIDI files — but the results are charming, like outsider art.
Highlights: “God’s Filled Ya” (Blue Oyster Cult’s “Godzilla”), “Welcomed by the Devil” (Guns ‘n Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle”), and “Takin’ Care of Jesus” (BTO’s “Takin’ Care of Business”). The cover art is cute, too. (via the Yeti)
Madonna's P2P Bombing
People who try to download tracks off of the new Madonna album from peer-to-peer networks will likely get an MP3 full of silence, prefixed by this short personal message from Madonna (150Kb MP3). More information from Dotmusic. Thanks to Tpoh.org for the file.
Update: Using the MP3 I posted, several people have created remixes that use the Madonna sample heavily.
VH-1 Co-Opts Singing Kitten Meme
You’ve probably seen these adorably amateurish animations featuring kittens lip-syncing White Stripes, Destiny’s Child and the Vines. Created by Rathergood.com’s Joel Veitch, the Flash animations started appearing on weblogs and discussion lists last August.
Well, someone at VH-1 just discovered it. In a short bumper promoting VH-1, the station co-opted the Flash meme for their own purposes. I created an animated GIF composed of six screen grabs from the commercial, which features two kitties and a chameleon performing Culture Club’s “Karma Chameleon.”
This wouldn’t be the first time that TV stations borrowed web-based memes for commercial purposes (see: Dancing Baby), but this might be the most blatant rip-off. The commercial is in the same limited-motion Flash style as the original Flash animations and uses the same kitten images. I hope you got a royalty, Joel.
Update: Um, nevermind. Joel confirmed via e-mail that he created the animations for VH-1.
Blogger Joins the Google Appliance?
Rumor of the Day: a little bird told me that Google is planning on integrating Blogger with the Google Appliance, and is courting media companies and portals to implement Blogger for their user communities.