I Give Him a Pound - Oh I Mean I Shake His Hand

Classic.

Neil Young and Paul McCartney do "Day in the Life" live

It's great to see our musical heroes enjoying themselves, and this is a good example - Neil Young plays the classic Beatles song live in Hyde Park and Paul comes out to sing along. Talk about two guys who are at ease with themselves as they get older... I know Paul was always very competitive with the Beatles' contemporaries, and Neil Young was supposedly a pretty controlling guy to work with as well, but here they just seem to be enjoying each other and having fun. Imagine if they had done this kind of thing in the 60s!

Unnecessary Tooth Zoom - Waaaaaaah!

This is pretty wild - zooming into a tooth, you can see the structure of enamel and even the atomic structure of one of the crystals that make it up. Good reminder to brush your teeth - the enamel is porous, and your body only makes it once.

HAARM: Healthy Americans Against Reforming Medicine

This is awesome - and depressing too. It's Awe-pressing.

Hot Dogghetti

Take dried spaghetti, stick it in a hot dog (sliced or unsliced) and boil.

Isaac Hayes was Straight Up Gangsta

Came across this gem today, Isaac Hayes' version of "Walk On By" - super dope. Sampled in Biggie's "Who Shot Ya," this has to be one of the funkiest covers of one of the least funky songs of all time - miles away from the Dionne Warwick original. Between the music, the mid-century modern set, the Afro chorus and Hayes' outfit, it's sensory soul overload.

John Tesh is Awesome

Who goes to a John Tesh concert? I have no idea, but this is pretty cool - live on stage, he plays the original demo of the theme from NBA on NBC, and then he and his band just demolish the song live. Where's Marv Albert? And no, that's not G.E. Smith on guitar.

The Real Wyld Stallyns

Hey dillweeds, try plugging in the guitars first!

Happy Holidays from Diamond Dave

Call your friends and wish them well with these choice bits from the accapella of "Runnin With the Devil". You'll be glad you did!

I'm In a Dancing Mood

Just got back from vacation, and I'm feeling pretty good. Here's some sweet music for a sweet holiday season and an even sweeter New Year. Could be a rough one, but just remember, you don't need money to feel irie. Take it away, Delroy Wilson!

DnB vs. Church

This is kind of disrespectful, but still worth a look - someone mashed up video of a Baptist Church with audio from a DnB rave, and it really works. No offense intended to any baptists, and I gotta say... your church services are off the chain!

Bizarre Skate Video - Beez

This is my kind of skate video - weird and wacky. Lots of innovative tricks, going for originality if not technical skill. Gotta give these guys credit for extreme creativity.

This is Why DJs Should Use RECORDS

This is what the world will look like if all DJs switch to using laptops. I don't want to live in THAT world.

Lil Jon / Strawberry Shortcake Mash Up

Warning: the audio is NSFW. This is a great mashup though!

Penguin Escapes from Whales

Watch this video if you want to feel happy! This kooky penguin is being chased by a pod of HUGE killer whales, and finally he takes refuge in the cameraman's dinghy! He's just sitting there surrounded by people, like "what?" That penguin's got balls.

Justin.tv - DJ Mudfoot Show #2

(Note: I deleted the video from this page because I couldn't get it not to auto-play.)

This Justin.tv thing is perty cool. The other night I fired up the laptop and started broadcasting, then I got on AIM and invited some old friends from the Betalounge - we ended up having a little late night mashup session with folks dialed in from Northern California, Maine and Tokyo! The above video is a clip, the entire show is archived on my justin.tv channel. You'll notice a couple of things - one, the audio and video quality sucks. That's because I'm out in the garage on a weak wi-fi connection, I gotta do something about that. I think I'm going to take a 100-ft ethernet cable and run it out my front door around the back to the garage.

The other thing you'll notice is me getting up close to the camera and grinning. That's because I'm chatting with 2 old friends, who used to do the same thing with me in 1996! It was a complete blast from the past. Back then we used an ISDN modem and realaudio, we were laughing because while this is much easier now, the audio quality was about the same. I'm going to fix that!

DJ Mudfoot on Justin.tv

Kid Is Terrified Of Puppets

Wow this is really insane. This clip shows a kid watching a puppet show and completely losing it. I feel bad for this kid because the puppet show is obviously freaking him out in a major way, and nobody has the decency to go hold his hand or ask him if he wants to leave... but props to the cameraman who sat there getting the whole thing on camera. What is he doing to his friend? Make sure to watch the entire clip because the kid really outdoes himself by the end!

Touchgraph

I just noticed a lot of my friends on Facebook are sporting these new Touchgraph pictures, so I had to go check it out... it's an app that maps your social connections based on your friends and the photos you've been tagged in. This is pretty cool - I've seen similar applications but they were pretty elaborate and not available for free. The other thing that's great about this is the sheer amount of data available in a social network like Facebook - you could never get that by conducting surveys. Go check it out, it's definitely worth playing with. You can look it up on Facebook or just go to their site:

http://www.touchgraph.com

Mudfoot LIVE on Justin.TV

OK I am pretty excited to announce that I have a channel on Justin.TV. In case you haven't seen this site yet, it's like Youtube but for live broadcasting. Using their web-based 'broadcaster' I can DJ live from my garage and people can tune in and chat. I'll be on there in the evenings whenever I can, around 10pm US-Pacific time, spinning classic jungle and dubstep records and who knows what else.

This is pretty wild for me because I used to do a lot of 'webcasting' back in the day. Some friends and I founded the Betalounge back in 1996 and we used to spin live online every Sunday. I've done live DJ sets over the internet from clubs in San Francisco and New York, and I spun on the original internet pirate radio station in London. It used to take a lot of equipment and jury-rigging to pull this off... So it blows my mind that anyone with a laptop and an internet connection can do it now.

The Justin.tv site is not perfect, mind you... they have a lot of work to do. But it's still pretty amazing, and I'll be in there trying to make the most of it. So drop over there and check out my channel, add me as a friend, and hit me up in the chat when I'm broadcasting. Last night I talked to folks from Chicago and Seattle while I was spinning, it was great!

"DJ Mudfoot's House" on Justin.tv

Classic 8-bit Video Games and Post-Modern Kids

I recently got my wife to assent to letting the kids play some videogames at home - I have a bunch of games for myself, but she wanted to let them get fully proficient at reading first. I tend to agree, but I also want to play games with them! Our 7-year old, the oldest, is reading chapter books on his own, so he's good to go, but the other two are still 5 and 3 and it seems like a long time to wait. I'm waiting for the day when I can use them as an excuse to buy a Wii or a DS.

So the way I got my wife to agree was with two arguments. One, I said I'd only let them play classic, nonviolent games from the mesozoic era, like Pacman and Super Mario Bros. Two, this was during the LA fires and we were stuck inside all day because of the smoke in the air. My foot is firmly in the door now.

The great thing is, the kids love these classic games! I'm sure they'd love any games at all, but I think it's cool for them to get some exposure to the fundamentals - in the games that defined game genres, and experiencing that same kind of pixel-fueled rush that I did.

What I realized after playing "Vigilante 8" a long time ago with my oldest kid (he was sick), was that things that seemed intuitive to me in games were not at all intuitive to him. For example, a power-up: I explained to him that in order to repair his car, he needed to pick up a wrench. He said "pick up?" I said you need to drive through it. (The wrench is floating in the air, rotating slowly.) He didn't understand what I meant at all. I needed to explain that when you drive "through" that particular object, you "pick it up."

That's when I thought to myself, how do I know this stuff? Games have always had power-ups, right? Wrong. Pacman taught me how to pick up a power-up. The big dot makes you big! The little dots give you points.

So how do kids today learn about videogame conventions without playing simple, classic arcade games? I guess they figure it out somehow. But I think my kids will have some fun and gain some appreciation for how awesome games are today by playing the classics of yesteryear. Maybe they'll even prefer them.

(I should mention this as a disclaimer: my dad turned me on to the Marx Bros, WC Fields, old cars, bluegrass music, fishing and countless other things that most kids my age didn't know about. I think this is a good strategy, although it may lead to disappointment in the latest piece of crap from Disney or whatever.)