Every show of ReBirth of a Nation is a new live mix. So Sally and I saw different shows when we each saw the show earlier. What I saw and danced to at the Creative Commons Birthday was different from the Spoleto show that Sally saw and the show that we saw together with Tucker last night at Memorial Hall was different yet.
People seemed amazed that Spooky does a new live mix at every show, but then as a DJ he’s used to changing his show each time and to trying to read the audience.
This clip was not what we saw exactly but it does give you a flavor of how Spooky remixes the Griffith film. More music, sheet music, photo show, and an essay by Spooky about Rebirth can be found here.
Roger Ebert, in the best less than book length take on Birth, notes that Griffith himself cut the movie in many different ways over time and that the fragility of the film often resulted in prints of different lengths being shown each night. Ebert tells us, at the end of his article, that Griffith “once edited a version of the film that cut out all of the Klan material, but that is not the answer.”
Category: Amusements (Page 18 of 31)
Things that are amusing

Four feeds from San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral:
- Subscribe to the Choral Eucharist Sermon feed
Copy and paste link into iTunes or other Podcast manager:
http://www.gracecathedral.org/mp3/sermon/sermon.xml - Subscribe to the Sunday at Six Sermon feed
Copy and paste link into iTunes or other Podcast manager:
http://www.gracecathedral.org/mp3/sermon6/sermon6.xml -
Subscribe to The Forum feed
Copy and paste link into iTunes or other Podcast manager:
http://www.gracecathedral.org/mp3/forum/forum.xml - Subscribe to the Daily Meditation feed
Copy and paste link into iTunes or other Podcast manager:
http://www.gracecathedral.org/mp3/dm/dm.xml
The FAQ is here, but the root URL is redirected to the usual Google home page. “Return to Google Secure Access Installer” also returns you to the usual Google home page.
Inside Google tells us more.
This Friday, DJ Spooky will bring his Rebirth of a Nation show to Chapel Hill. This remix of NC native DW Griffith’s “technically groundbreaking, but explicitly racist 1915 film.” Spooky (aka Paul Miller) says “I hope to create a counternarrative, one where the story implodes on itself, one where new stories arise out fo the ashes of that explosion.”
I saw a very early cut of this project at a Creative Commons Birthday and Sally saw an early complete performance at Spoleto in Spring 2004. This Friday we get to see it together at the newly refurbished and remodeled Memorial Hall.
My run in with DRM killing a legal use yesterday nearly killed a presentation. The distributor of Occupation: Dreamland asked me to set up to show part of the movie from a DVD he had burned. We were in a state of the art classroom with a great new DVD player, computer hookups and several projectors. I can do this.
Simple to place the DVD in the DVD player and hit play. Or it should be. But that happened was that the DVD was never initialized in the player. Out of desperation, I pulled out my PowerBook and stuck the DVD in there. Apple gave me a nice message telling me that a “Country Code” or “Zone” I forget which was needed. They suggested using 1. I did.
Everything then worked fine after that — except that the lights and screens and curtains didn’t like me changing devices so much. They went through several amusing gyrations as I tried testing between the DVD player and laptop.
The aggravating thing here is that we had a wonderful legal DVD copy with a wonderful legal and approved use, but the code (as Lessig warns us) nearly locked us out.
The battle over zoning DVDs was mostly fought five years ago. Here we were with a completely allowed use and we were stymied — almost but not defeated thanks to Apple.
But this is an incomplete thanks, as Cory explained in January, you only get so many region changes before Apple permanently fixes the Zone so that it will never change again. They are not required by law to do this (according to Cory).
Avast, mateys! International Talk Like a Pirate Day sits on the horizon like a drunken parrot. Awk! Arrg! Thar she be lessen a fortnight away! Monday September 19!
Prepare with these great ibiblio resources these songs, this book, this book, and The Queen of Pirate Island and this ship.
And check out this great Blackbeard site.
Photo from the Catacombs of Paris (WebMuseum) by Craig A. Merriman.
And use this non-ibiblio resource for your typing (thanks to Greg Cox).
Over on the ibiblio blog, Bret Dougherty points us to the partial resolution of the mysterious and net.famous stolen laptop of Jasper Rhine. The front story was complex; complete with highly inventive threats, but the back story, which awaits further resolution, seems to have a bit of fantasy as well. The story Bret found is still active at SFGate as I write this.
Apples and oranges perhaps. But here is the Google Blogsearch for ibiblio (4,786 posts as of 9/16) and here is the technorati search (only 507 posts as of 9/16).
Jeff Pomerantz has been testing out Google Blogsearch too.
WCHL brought The Stephanie Miller Show to Carrboro. As Consort to the Council Person, I got to go to a bit of the show this morning. I had other commitments and missed lunch with her, but Eric Muller was delighted to take my place there.
The On the Road manuscript scroll has arrived in Chapel Hill — all 120 feet of it. But Jennifer Ferris reports that only 48 feet of it are unrolled in Wilson Library. The exhibit room will feature some of UNC’s unique and rare Kerouac materials as well. Now thru December 17th.
Not in Gallery but taken in Tyndall Galleries and to be arranged and updated later at Jane Filer’s photo site. Here are a few in the meantime. We managed to fool some friends who were working the box office for the Deep Dish Theater just down the way.
Tonight is the Second Friday Art Walk in Chapel Hill. As part of the ArtWalk there will be walking art. Artist Jane Filer has prepared large wearable masks (which are also for sale) and some people, including some you know, will be wearing them (one at a time) between 6 and 9 pm at Tyndall Galleries in University Mall.
Sally reminds me that about Phil Levine’s wonderful Labor Day poem, What Work Is. Max Leach recorded Levine reading the poem a while back and we put it online soon after as part of the Internet Poetry Archive.
About half a dozen people have sent me notes about or links to The Interdictor, a blog that is now called the Survival of New Orleans blog includes picture feeds (astounding fire pics) and lots and lots of comments and many on the ground observations.
I am not a big sports fan and even less a fan of football. That said the News and Observer’s web cartoon of NCSU’s head football coach Chuck Amato influenced by Napoleon Dynamite (not Elvis Costello but the recent movie) is very funny. Especially funny to me as I remember Chuck Amato as a student football player who lived in my dorm and indeed stuck his chest out a lot. Often it seemed like his body was defying gravity and I am certain that he could not see his toes when he walked.
TJ has just finished converting Roger McGuinn’s Folk Den to a new WordPress format and has improved the podcast rss to be even more happy in iTunes. [note this link uses the feed: tag]
Check it out.
During the Green Day concert the other night, Billie Joe pulled a band out of the mosh pit. He started by asking for a drummer and interviewing people from the stage: how many years have you played drums? how old are you? can you keep this simple rhythm? The lucky but somewhat timid drummer was then raised on stage and begin tapping with the help and instruction of Tre Cool.
Next was the bass player. A 16 year old guy was pulled up and set up with help from Mike. The father of the new bass sensation is looking for photos. If you have one, get in touch with David Menconi at the News and Observer .
Next after a longer set of teasing interviews, a young woman was pulled up to play lead. There was a lot of shuffling around and she was sent off to the side of the stage. A replacement was pulled up. This guy was unlike the rest. Blonde dyed spiky hair, dark glasses, black Ramones t-shirt, dark jeans, perfectly confident on stage, quickly strapped up into the guitar, immediately playing some blazing licks. And soon as was egging on the bass player and drummer as he posed and walked the stage and took a mike and begin to add harmony and back up vocals.
At the end of the song, Billie Joe brought the young woman back to center stage and gave her the guitar that had been used to play lead. The Ramones wearing guy grabbed the mike and shouted something like “I don’t need your guitar; I’m in Good Charlotte!” But from what I can find, Good Charlotte was in the UK or just back.
Does anyone know of this mystery guitar and have any idea what he said? Is he a regular part of the show, hitting the stage as a ringer each time?
What if Steam Boat Willie had been a a taxpayer-funded film starring Captian America during the Vietnam War in 1971 asks Internetworker Alex Wilson in his movie, “All’s Fair in Love and Police Actions.” [i haven’t watched this yet so this is a note to do so. Alex warns that it might be offensive]
A current net.meme is the 1977 music video of Tommy Seebach playing Apache. Yes it’s bad. Very bad. Scantily dressed Euro chicks dance as Indians around the fringed Seebach for far too long.
But this was not the end for Seebach. In 1979 when he won the Danish Melodi Grand Prix with Disco Tango and represented Denmark (his home which in part explains the unconvincing Indians and fringe) in the Eurovision Song Contest. Tommy was to represent Denmark in 1980 and 81. Tommy was one of only two bands to have won the the Danish Melodi Grand Prix three times.
He died of a heart attack brought on by alcoholism at age 53. Even though dead, he entered the Grand Prix in an entry that caused some scandal in 2004. A “Kopiband” called the “Tommy Seebach Show” tours Europe as well.
Green Day’s show was not only about professionalism (despite being a punk band, well sorta in the beginning) and spectacle (flames, lights, confetti, water, etc) but also about audience involvement. From posting SMS messages to projected screens (yes ours got posted) to pulling audience members on stage to form an impromptu band with chants, waves, call response and rushes toward the crowd inbetween.
preshow – phone pix and sms messages from the crowd posted on screens
jimmy eat world – okay and energetic
giant pink rabbit – okay, not giant just some one is a rabbit suit teasing the crowd with small pink rabbit toys and dancing to the Village People’s YMCA then disolving into the Ramones’ Blitzkrieg Bop That Ho-Hi-Let’s Go would recur throughout the night.
American Idiot – many better set lists on the net which i will find in a bit
Jesus of Suburbia
Holiday
Saint Jimmy
Shout in the best James Brown style disolving into Stand By Me then back to Shout
Wake Me Up When September Ends
Minority
Maria
Blvd of Broken Dreams
Cover of Queen’s We are the Champions
Time of Your Life
[more to be said later — off to meeting]
Just what I needed another messenger service, but here I am as smalljones (same as my Gmail address). I need buddies to test it out, so drop me a note there — not Gmail but Google Talk. It supports numerous clients including GAIM, iChat, and Psi. See the Google Talk pages for set up info. There is also a custom Google Talk client for Windows.
Note: The audio portion of GTalk only works with the official Google Talk client for Windows.
Rumor: Is Google Talk a prelude to Google buying Skype?
Note: iChat to iChat using the Google Talk server (not the client) supports audio chat.
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