Category: Music

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Weezer – Pork and Beans Music Video

So I got this music video from Digg: Weezer – Pork and Beans. Besides the fact it’s quite a catchy song and I’ve had it on loop for the past 8 hours, the music video was awesome. It has tons of internet memes and I’m curious if all them are the real thing.

Here’s the list of videos reference (collected from Digg comments and other sites):

The ones I quite haven’t figured out are:

rainbow socks
Rainbow Socks?

unknown internet memesspaceshipdancing gorillas and duck
So there’s a spaceship, a trio of dancing cg animation of what I assume to be gorillas and a duck with a purple hat, a panda, and some naruto like guy?

Update: Jon commented that the panda was from the Sneezing Panda video.

Update #2: While going through YouTube’s All Time Most Viewed videos, I landed on kicesie’s videos, and her icon is a girl with rainbow socks on the couch. I’m going to assume that’s what Weezer was going after with the rainbow socks girl in this video: Best Sex Ever!!!

Update #3: While searching for most viewed videos with “sword” or “ninja”, I landed on this: Urban Ninja, which featured a guy wearing a black shirt with a red 天 (sky) on his back:

urban ninja

But he doesn’t wield a sword, so I don’t think he’s the one featured in the video. The only video game/anime character I can think of that has a 天 on his back is Akuma (Gouki) from Street Fighters:

akuma - hd remix

However, Tera agrees with me that the guy looks more like he’s from Naruto.

Update #4: Thanks to chloe for pointing out they also referenced the video clip of where several guys throw and catch rayban sunglasses with their face, as shown in the video where the Mentos “scientists” throws a goggle and the GI Joe character catches it.

Update #5: Thanks to Schmuel for pointing out that the Donald duck and the dancing gorillas were from a serious of 3D rendered Disney character videos made with motion capture: Worst. MoCap. Ever.. You can see more of these videos on doctorlegua’s YouTube Channel. Apparently these were made with some software called iClone.

Update #6: Thanks to Bryan for pointing out the UFO/spacecraft video: UFO Haiti

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Moccona Quest (Cinderella Ad)

So Tera showed me this ad: Moccona coffee: Quest Cendrillon Cinderella. I don’t usually blog about advertisements (well, unless they’re on my site), but this ad was just too good that I wanted to share. The music was just so amazing and I spent hours trying to find it but only to hit a dead end. The story the commercial tells is also really sweet. If you don’t want the commercial to be ruined, skip to the next paragraph. Or else read on and be spoiled! [Begin Spoilers] It’s similar to the Cinderella glass slipper story, where this guy goes around town with a glass cap trying to find the coffee jar which the cap fits in. One by one, he rejects woman after woman, but ultimately finding the one and only girl. I guess one can only imagine how awesome the party must’ve been if someone dropped their coffee cap. ;p [End Spoilers]

There’s actually a longer version (80 seconds vs 60 seconds) on their homepage: Moccona Coffee – Never settle for less than special. At first I didn’t notice any differences, but as I watched them side by side, I realize that it showed more of the women’s responses.

While searching for the music, I found this page: Moccona Coffee in Quest for Romance

The Quest was developed at M&C Saatchi, Sydney, by creative director Ben Welsh, art director Michael Jones, copywriter Lizzie O’Hara-Boyce, agency producer Rod James.

Filming was shot on location in Montevideo, Uruguay, by Noah Marshall via The Sweet Shop, with director of photography Ian McCarroll, and producer Tony Whyman.

Post production was done at Digipost and Fin Design in New Zealand.

Moccona is a brand of coffee produced by the Dutch corporation Douwe Egberts and popular in Australia and New Zealand. The coffee is regarded as one of the superior brands in the market. In my household Moccona jars are kept to store nuts and confectionery. The lid does look as though as it could have been formed by the sea.

Inside the comment area, M&C Saatchi posted:

Thanks for the comments guys. The music was created for us by composer Elliott Wheeler through Nylon Studios in Sydney. We’re soon going to post an mp4 on the moccona.com.au website that you’ll be able to download. For a ltd time there’s also a longer (80sec) version up there.

In the posted YouTube video, Mocconateam posted:

Thanks for all the positive feedback – we’re glad you like the work.
The commercial was filmed in Montevideo, by a director called Noah Marshal from The Sweetshop (Aukland). We cast all the actors locally except for the hero and the blonde woman who came from Argentina. The music was by a composer called Elliott Wheeler who we commissioned specially for the job through Nylon Studios here in Sydney, Australia.

Since the music was “specially commissioned” for this advertisement, that means it’s no where to be found besides ripping it from the ad. I also wasn’t able to find the .mp4 file that they mention would be posted on their homepage.

Update: Thanks to Chriszam for letting me know that Moccona has released the mp3 for the track on their homepage. The mp3 is zipped up into a 1.2MB file: Download

Enjoy!

Update #2: blufindr pointed out the cute girl in the ad is Caitlin Stasey (an Australian actress that played Rachel Kinski in Neighbours).

Caitlin Stasey Cute Girl from Moccona Quest Ad (Cinderella)

I will admit they do look very similar and Moccona is an Australian coffee, though I still have my doubts. I did a search on Caitlin Stasey and Maccona and found nothing that linked them together. Also, the director noted: We cast all the actors locally except for the hero and the blonde woman who came from Argentina. The heroine isn’t blonde, so I would’ve assumed she was cast locally, meaning she would’ve been from Montevideo (largest city, the capital and chief port of Uruguay). Caitlin Stasey on the other hand was born in Melbourne, Australia.

Update #3: Thanks to marcus6 for identifying the mystery girl as Uruguayan actress Ana Lia Badani:

Ana Lia Badani

You can see more pictures of her on her official site.

Update #4: Looks like the removed the mp3 from their servers. Here’s a mirror: 01-Moccona-Quest.mp3. Enjoy!

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House, M.D.

Ohfuee had introduced me to House, M.D. a long time back, but I was never really a fan of hospital shows like ER or Grey’s Anatomy, so I never really bothered looking into it. However Xyon convinced me to give it shot and it has turned out quite interesting.. The fact that Xyon owns both season 1 and season 2 on DVDs gave me another incentive to watch. It meant I didn’t have to go “procure” them some other way.

You can blame House for my absence in posting blog entries for the past 2 weeks, but who besides Gregory House can make words like “me likee” and “thingies” sound cool.

I was also very intrigued by the intro music. Apparently the song is called Teardrop by Massive Attack. Once again it has that dramatic feeling that I like.

There was a funny thread going on at work. Someone had claimed they missed Monday’s episode of House. Someone replied saying he’d save him the time from watching it:

Someone was sick.
House tried to cure them but it was only 20 minutes into the show so the cure made them worse.
Then someone else tried to cure them, and House got mad. The second attempt was at 30 minutes so it didn’t work either.
Cuddy got mad, House made a pass at her and was rejected again.
The patient got worse and they couldn’t figure out why. Someone said it was an infection, someone else said it was a fungus, someone else said it was a tumor. None of them could prove it.
House came up with some great idea and everyone said it wouldn’t work but he did it anyway.
The patient got better and everyone was happy.
13 still doesn’t have a name.

Then there were these responses:

That must be a unique episode from the rest, neither MRI nor lumbar puncture was involved.

You forgot Lupus.

And of course someone shouted:

Spoiler space man!!!

I will admit that it does get repetitive, but then again, I watch Detective Conan religiously, which is 500+ episodes in and the theme is basically:

  • Someone gets murdered
  • Conan looks for clues
  • Conan figures out how the culprit did it
  • Conan tranquilizes Mouri Kogoro (Ran’s father)
  • Conan uses Sleeping Kogoro to explain the case (who would believe in a elementary boy?)

I sort of got screwed over watching Season 2. For some reason Media Center had listed them out of order (partly blamed by the My Movies plugin, partly blamed by the fact my file server doesn’t list files in alphabetical order). Apparently the 1st disc I watched was disc #5. When things started to not make sense like why *cough* needed an HIV test or how *cough* miraculously got cured with no explanation, I realized I wasn’t watching the DVDs for Season 2 in order. After resorting them, I was still wrong and actually ended up watching disc 2 out of 6 2nd to last.

I’m down to the final disc of season 2 and then I’ll have to decide if I want to continue watching House instead, or should I resume blogging. ;p

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The Device Has Been Modified

the device has been modified So I saw this on Digg yesterday and wanted to post it, but decided I’d watch an extra episode Shakugan no Shana of instead. But here it is: The Device Has Been Modified (stream video). If you want to download the 100MB HD version of this, you should be able to find the torrent in the upper left hand corner.

This is actually a cross of a fan-made Portal Song and World of Warcraft video footage. I wasn’t too impressed by the the video footage (unless someone actually did the animation themselves), but the song was super catchy. To describe just how awesome the song is, I’ve accumulated over 8 hours for the past 2 days listening to this song at work and at home. It’s just been playing on repeat. As RayAlome says:

Ray AlOm3: lol
Ray AlOm3: you and ur quasi-portal music
Ray AlOm3: yea i was thinking you might like it
Ray AlOm3: it had that dramatic film quality

And I agree. The music has that sort of grandeur soundtrack feeling to it and I guess that’s what makes it so awesome. I don’t think the robotic voice really did much for me, but I guess if it wasn’t portal related, I wouldn’t have found it.

The best thing, the mp3 is available for download for FREE: Victims of Science – The Device Has Been Modified

Apparently the lyrics were taken from the Portal game itself and mixed with a dance song:

Hello,
Hello, and welcome to the enrichment centre
Hello, and welcome to the enrichment centre
Hello, your specimen has been processed
Hello, your specimen has been processed
Hello, your specimen has been processed
Hello, we are now ready to begin the test proper
Hello
Hello

The device has been modified
The device has been modified

Hello, there you are friend
Hey hey, hey hey hey, put me down
I don’t hate you,

Well you found me
Congratulations
Was it worth it

The only thing you managed to break so far
Is my heart
This isn’t brave
It’s murder
What did I ever do to you
You don’t even care, do you

Please proceed into android hell
Android hell,

Weighted storage cube, destroyed
Weighted storage cube destroyed
Weighted storage cube destroyed

Thank you for participating in this aperture science computer aided enrichment activitiy
goodbye
goodbye

Are you still there

Okay, I just watched the 720p HD version and I understand the scenes a lot better now. Hehe. As noted above, you can download the HD version by locating the torrent link in the upper left hand corner.

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Dropkick Murphys Song Pack Free on Xbox LIVE Marketplace (Guitar Hero III)

Got this via RSS feed earlier this week:

Celtic punk will never be the same.

Guitar Hero III®: Legends of Rock will be kicking off the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations with a special free track pack from the popular Celtic punk band Dropkick Murphys.

Straight from the band’s sixth album, The Meanest of Times, the Dropkick Murphys pack will include master recordings of “Famous for Nothing,” “(F)lannigan’s Ball” and “Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ya.” The track pack will be available for free to download on Xbox LIVE® Marketplace.

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock downloadable content is instantly playable and available in the Downloaded Songs set list in ALL game modes (Career, Co-Op Career, Quickplay, Multiplayer, Practice and all Online modes). Check out the Marketplace regularly for the latest tracks.

It mentioned that it was free to starting from St. Patrick’s Day, but doesn’t mention any expiration date, so I’m going to assume this isn’t just some limited time promotion. Enjoy!

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Aerosmith’s “Dream On” Free for Guitar Hero III

After mentioning that I got Rock Band yesterday, Angel-grrl pointed out to me that for a limited time, I can get Aerosmith’s “Dream On” for free! You can read more details on Xbox.com. Sweet! Given that many of you come here looking for free Xbox Live Arcade Games, I thought I’d shared this with you guys.

Aerosmith always comes ready to rock.

“Dream On” was the first major hit for the rock band Aerosmith, appearing on their debut self-titled album in 1973. And now, avid Guitar Hero™ III: Legends of Rock players will be able to try out their chops on the power ballad, by downloading it free of charge from Xbox LIVE® Marketplace. The song track will be free for a limited time only: Saturday, February 16, 2 A.M. PT (approximately) to Monday, February 18, 2 A.M. PT (approximately).

The song is a free download through the weekend in celebration of the upcoming Guitar Hero®: Aerosmith® game. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith will be the first music-based game to feature a single band, and gamers will be able to experience Aerosmith’s GRAMMY® winning career, from their first gig to becoming rock royalty.

Update:
How appropriate that today’s Foxtrot comic strip is on Chamber Music Hero.

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Rock Band

It’s been awhile since my last post. Just been busy at work and tired overall. I know I still owe you a File Server post and a Hot Pot post. Those will still come, I promise.

Anyway some weekends ago, Tekman held a gathering at his place and I got to check out a bunch of new board games including Polarity (more info) and Shadows Over Camelot (more info). Wrexen brought over his Rock Band for Xbox 360 and I gave it a whirl and it was a lot of fun. So I decided to get one and began looking for deals.

I had a $50 Circuit City Gift Card (which I had redeemed through MyPoints), but Rock Band was $170 at Circuit City. And the fact I had to pay sales tax made it even worse. The best deal I found was at Buy.com for $150 shipped (after $10 Google Checkout discount). We were looking at $135 @ Circuit City (after GC) or $150 @ Buy.com. Wasting a $50 GC to save $15 sounded quite unreasonable.

So I started researching a bit more into Rock Band and noticed it only came with 1 guitar, 1 microphone, and 1 drum set. The game is a 4-player game and can support up to 2 guitars (1 guitar, 1 bass). So I started researching on how much guitars cost. Apparently Guitar Hero III guitars worked on Rock Band, but not vice versa, which sucked. They also didn’t really sell wireless guitars separately, unless you bought the Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock Bundle and one of the reason why I’ve delayed purchasing GH3 was the fact that the original set included a wired guitar.

Anyway, I decided I would get GH3 just for the wireless guitar and figure out what to do there. Everywhere I’ve checked, GH3 with the wireless guitar was $100, so even with sales tax, it made the purchase much more swallowable. In Chinese we have a saying: 吞的露 (In Catonese, it’s really keng dat lok, but I’m not really sure how to write keng). Basically it refers to something you can tolerate.

So everything was all set and I made my orders. The total came up to a little over $200, which wasn’t too bad. I got my packages on Tuesday and gave it a whirl. It was indeed true that the GH3 guitar worked on Rock Band, but the Rock Band guitar did not work on GH3. I actually liked using the GH3 wireless guitar more than the Rock Band wired one, and decided some time down the line, I’ll probably sell the wired Rock Band guitar and get another wireless GH3 guitar. I did noticed that the wired guitar had extra buttons closer to the base of the guitar. At first I thought that was just the difference between a bass guitar and a regular guitar, but Desperajo said the lower buttons were more for people who wanted to look like they were riffing.

I invited some friends over tonight and we rocked till almost 3am. I think we started at around 9pm. Since not much of the music has been unlocked, we were playing in band tour mode, and for some reason, after every song, it would need to connect to the server and upload data or something and that took a big chunk of time.

rock bandrock bandrock bandrock bandrock bandrock bandrock bandrock band

Actually, before we started playing, we watched the South Park – Guitar Queer-o (S11E13). A hilarious episode if you haven’t seen it yet. It actually prompted me to get the Kansas – Carry On Wayward Son song.

Throughout the night, people have been complaining about the drum beats weren’t actually matching the music and I recall there was some way to calibrate it. I went into Options > Calibrate System, but after selecting LCD, it didn’t give me any options for calibration. Thinking that there was no actual calibration, we continued playing. The drum beats seem to have come a eighth of a note too early, so often times you had to force yourself to ignore the music and just play by looking at the screen, which then threw off other people. Haha.

Anyway, I was searching for calibration solutions online and found these 2 guides:

Apparently instead of selecting LCD, there was this “manual” option hidden at the bottom. I haven’t followed the exact steps on calibration, but a quick calibration based on the simple on-screen instructions resulted in me being a much better drum player. Haha.

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Message From Your Heart – Heart Beats

So I was checking out this year’s Superbowl ads and saw this one: Kina Grannis – Doritos – Commercials. You might know Kina Grannis as the Digg Girl after she made this song/music video: Gotta Digg. Anyway, she won the Doritos contest by having the most votes online so she got a full minute ad during the Superbowl, advertising her new song Message From Your Heart, which is apparently now available on iTunes.

kina grannis - message from your heart Anyway, I was browsing through Digg earlier today and came upon this site that linked to the full version of her song (and maybe her entry to the Doritos contest): Doritos: Crash the Super Bowl Contest – Song: Message From Your Heart – Artist: Kina Grannis. Anyway, I found her method of making the beating heart sounds by tapping twice quickly continuously on the guitar was ingenious! I have no idea why they removed it from the Superbowl commercial, but I especially liked that part of the song. Having her say bum, bum, bum, bum, bum… as the heart beat sounds isn’t bad, but I’d prefer the tapping on the guitar.

Tap-Tap, Tap-Tap, Tap-Tap, Tap (repeat)

Just awesome!

UPDATE:
Speaking of which, you can check out the 2 new HD Movie Trailers that were advertised during the Superbowl:

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2 Hilarious Videos

Got 2 videos I wanted to share with you.

Mintys Comedian Of The Month May 2007 – Jim Jeffries –

This month, we take a look at Jim Jeffries. Jim is what is commonly referred to as “filthy”, but we don’t often get to see him saying exactly what he wants on TV. However, in this set taken from the comedy show “Comedy Blue”, Jim is given free reign to say what he pleases.

Please be aware that this video contains very strong language, and themes which are suitable for neither work, the easily offended, nor children. You have been warned!

RayAlome shared this with me a couple days ago and this guy Jim Jeffries is freaking hilarious. I cracked up multiple times throughout the video. Here’s some more testimonies:

omfg krunkie, i almost died laughing at that one – Artemyst

I was on the floor for a little of that – RayAlome

Do be warn however and this is vile and filthy and probably not work safe (NSFW). If you have kids, you’ll probably want to put them to beside or send them outside before you click on that link. Given that, I don’t want to divulge anything to weaken the joke, yet it’s so hard to not be intrigued unless you know a little something. Let’s just put in this way, it involves a pair of chopsticks, an egg, and a whole lot of shit.

Next, I saw this video off Ungsunghero’s newest blog entry: American Idol: We’re Brothers Forever –

A hilarious audition on American Idol featuring Renaldo Lapuz singing the now famous song “We’re Brothers Forever” during his try out. Watch the ending also, he looks like he worships Simon!

This guy all dressed up in what looks like a pimp outfit, with the name Simon on his hat, comes and sings this hilarious song: We’re Brothers Forever. Simon is right, he predicted this would be a one-hit wonder and it sort of already has. Do be warned that this song may be stuck in your head for hours, yet you shouldn’t avoid it just because of that, because it’s just so awesome! When the gang joined him in singing and started doing interpretive dancing, it just got that much more funnier.

Will he become the next William Hung? Maybe.

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ukms[z] – Reflections

So I was cleaning out my downloads folder and I found an anime music video that Artemyst had shared with me awhile back and I wanted to share it with you guys.

It’s titled Reflections by ukms[z]:

ukms[z] - reflections
(DivX/Stage6 mirror)

This AMV was first submitted to AKROSS, which I’m assuming is a Russian anime convention. It actually won quite a few awards.

The music video features scenes from Haibane Renmei and Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien. I’ve never watched Haibane Renmei, but if anyone out there recommends it (or not), please do tell. I watched Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien recently (also called Rumbling Hearts) and it was rather heart wretching to watch due to the love triangle.

Then there was the music, which was just awesome! After digging around and as some of the text suggested, the song is indeed Russian. The song is by Maksim, titled Do You Know? You can watch the music video on YouTube.

Belldandy asked if there was a version with the lyrics translated available, and searching on YouTube, I found: Reflections (HR) (Subtitled). I expected the lyrics to somewhat suck, but I was surprised. The lyrics actually matched and watching the video with the lyrics translated made me look at the video in a completely different angle.