I’m feeling sadness for Haiti (text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to American Red Cross relief for Haiti) . . . and also for the following two “trivial” events because they represent and reflect larger cultural issues for me: City Lights Records closing and Conan O’Brien’s last show.

Conan O’Brien

Last night most of America tuned in to watch Conan O’Brien’s last show on NBC. Conan’s grateful closing monologue and “Free Bird” finale was a perfect ending to “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien.” He went off the air playing his guitar with a huge grin on his face. That guy’s a class act.

Too bad “The Tonight Show” is dead now. Feels like a nail in the coffin. Is anyone really going to watch Leno again? Really? When we have the Internet, Letterman and so many other TV channels?

I was inspired by this quote from Conan’s closing monologue:

“Please don’t be cynical. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”

Dear Internet, Conan is today’s everyman. “I’m With Coco,” yes. (I’m also a little sad that the world is losing Conan’s Super Mario Bros. set backdrop.)

Where will Conan end up? On a late-night talk show on another network this September? On the Internet? For Conan O’Brien’s core audience (age 18-34), “the time slot is being replaced by a URL.” Read more: “Bye, NBC. Hello, Internet?”

City Lights Records

The end is near. I haven’t lived in Pennsylvania for over eight years now, but this is still important to me. My favorite independent record store, City Lights Records (off Penn State campus), is closing after 25 years. It’s sad, but not unexpected. City Lights is (was) State College’s last record store. I spent countless hours there. The closing of the store is the closing of happy memories that I won’t ever be able to revisit physically.

Read local coverage in The Daily Collegian and The Penn Stater (with video).

This comment by a user named Chuck really resonates with me: “I have mixed feelings towards the digital revolution. And it’s obviously here to stay. But there will always be a soft spot in my heart for those stores that influenced my listening habits.”

Late night comedy

Similarly, I have a soft spot for those creative comedians who were funny enough and cared deeply enough to influence my own sense of humor. “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” was a staple of my television consumption during high school and college. Though, during college, my TV watching started to approach zero. I also enjoyed David Letterman on both NBC and CBS for years, throughout my childhood and adolescence.

Even though I didn’t watch much of “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” until January of this year, I am eager to know where Conan will land next and will probably tune in (if only on Hulu or similar). It’s strange how all this controversy between millionaire entertainers and network executives created such a genuine outpouring of support from the American public (working class). Strange that it even caused me to watch a network television show for the first time in a long while, if only for two weeks. But, I have to say, it was really fun, enjoyable television.

Michael Ian Black argues that Conan O’Brien has inexplicably become a modern representation of Norma Rae—someone who stands up and does the right thing in the face of corporate injustice. I think most of America feels that way. An unlikely hero, sure.

Digital revolution

As for independent music stores, if Penn State University and State College, PA can’t even manage to support one small basement record store anymore, then I can no longer deny that the halcyon days of rifling through stacks of obscure CDs (and vinyl, for some) and discovering new music via artwork and physical forms have ended. Those days ended years ago, of course. Plastic discs are a dying medium.

I can’t remember the last time I actually bought a music CD. I always hated how much physical space my huge music collection took up. But I also have such fondness for these days gone by. Each collected disc was potentially precious and meaningful. Albums mattered. Today I have more MP3s than I know what to do with. It’s hard to give any artist or album the proper amount of attention . . . and the gigabytes of MP3s continue to grow. The solution is to keep buying bigger hard drives on which to store all of this music and figure it out later.

I guess right now I’m feeling a little nostalgic for the illusion of simpler times. (And I’m starting to veer off topic.) I’m thinking of days before presidential administrations agreed with the RIAA and openly supported “file sharing damages of up to $150,000 per track.” The time we live in is certainly a transitional period for all media industries and entertainment products. But so long as independent artists are able to survive this cultural turmoil and continue to inspire our lives, we’ll come out all right. I could ramble some more about these issues, but instead maybe I’ll give one of these MP3 albums a second or third listen.

See you in September, Coco.

Bumbershoot was really fun this year, except for the rain.

You might want to check out the new “Hot Chicks in Black & White Flicks!” series from Secret Sauce. Remakes include 12 Angry Men and On The Waterfront. I like the Raging Bull one best, but I was mildly amused by all of them.

Also brought to you by Secret Sauce is this live-action trailer for My Little Pony: Reign of Buttercup Sprinkles. I, for one, welcome our new pony overlords. Total worldwide pony occupation in less than six hours!

Take a look at this Quentin Tarantino Movies topic at Cracked. Note: If you haven’t seen Inglourious Basterds, you can skip over that column to avoid spoilers. I loved the “Tarantino on Pop Culture” section. Hilarious. But you should also really watch Inglourious Basterds. It’s awesome.

These are two cool music videos at Vimeo:

• “Bathtub IV” by Keith Loutit (song is “Clementine” by Megan Washington)
• “White Swan” by Sil van der Woerd

Photographer Palla has created some amazing kaleidoscopic images of Japanese cityscapes.

Funny animals and science

This BuzzFeed article isn’t that great, as I’ve seen animals looking more disappointed than these guys, but it’s cute: Extremely Disappointed Animals.

Also from BuzzFeed: Mother Nature crying in a glacier in Norway.

Very funny: Cat Showers In Sink.

Ah, good ol’ Laser Cats. How could I forget about you? Ignore the article and just watch the embedded “SNL” videos if you haven’t seen them.

This is an interesting article: “Maori legend of man-eating bird is true.” In this same vein, I watched a “Mega Beasts” episode on Discovery Channel about the so-called Terror Bird (large carnivorous flightless birds that dominated during the Cenozoic).

Here’s a little more science: “Evolutionary mutation is caused by oxygen.” A quick quote: “DNA damage by oxidation is the primary cause of mutation.” I find this stuff fascinating.

I’ll end with this fontastic graphic detailing the exact stroke differences between Arial and Helvetica (via swissmiss). Neat.

Dogs and cats

This video is kind of awesome: Bizkit the Sleep Walking Dog. Poor dog.

At last. My life is now complete: When poodles turn into peacocks (12 pictures). Sigh.

Oh no: How to properly massage a cat.

This is a cute kitten (on a weird Japanese TV show): Kitten eyebrows.

Movies

The new and upcoming movies below are all on my “To See” list.

• Check out the trailer for Christopher Nolan’s Inception.
• I guess I’ll need to watch “Alice” out of morbid curiosity. (This is the Syfy miniseries, not the Tim Burton movie.) Weird.
• This might be good: Leap. At least it caught my eye.
• The latest Miyazaki film Ponyo should be amazing, once I get around to seeing it, right? Wait. Why do they play the dubbed version of Ponyo in U.S. theaters? Dammit, Disney. Apparently this song (in Japanese) mutated into this awful English version. Horrifying. Also, the boy singer is named Noah Cyrus . . . is that Miley’s brother?! Oh no, there are more of them! Why doesn’t he sound like he’s been drinking whiskey his entire life as well? And the girl is the sister of the Jonas Brothers. What?! No! Sorry, guys, but I have to go die now. If you hear an Auto-Tuned scream in the distance, that was me. Miyazaki!

Check out this cool movie blog: Three Frames.

Photography and randomness

I enjoyed this tomato-themed photo journal: “This Town Is Red All Over.”

Personal photography note: I currently have a backlog of photos to upload to my Flickr account. But no, I haven’t abandoned my “365 Days” photo project. I’m still taking at least one photo every day. I’ve just gotten lazy about taking them off of my camera. Plus, there was a whole glut of praying mantis photos from August 19 that I wanted to sort though. That’s the bottleneck that started my apathy about uploading. Someday I’ll catch Flickr up.

Speaking of Flickr, these are some nice photos: X-Ray Funnies (mainly X-ray shots of gaming consoles).

I was amused by this crazy, over-the-top video game trailer: “New Serious Sam HD trailer is the best trailer ever.” I think it works for the jaded, demented consumers demographic.

This site is kind of awesome: Truck Spills. I like the Doritos spill on the beach.

Here is some YouTube video evidence that Zach Galifianakis may be the best young comedian alive: appearing as a 1700s comedian on the Comedians of Comedy stand-up comedy tour, as himself on The Michael Showalter Showalter (for CollegeHumor.com), and as Seth Galifianakis on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

Also, here’s another 8-bit cover album! Kind of Bloop is an 8-bit tribute to Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue.

I love the last panels of these Comixed entries: Good at his job, It was an “accident” and Khan hates spoilers. I can’t wait to not watch “Heroes” when it starts up again. No, I probably will. No! It’s terrible . . . and yet.

Here are some useful articles and handy resources for web developers:

• “Create your own private Twitter site using WordPress“
• “Automate Your Home Using ioBridge and Twitter“
• jQuery Week Calendar, inspired by Google Calendar
• “List of Really Useful Tools for CSS Developers“
• “HTML 4 Considered Harmful“
• URI/URL escaping chart

Social media

This is interesting: “Social Media’s Effect on Learning.”

Maybe we shouldn’t quite finish digging the grave for MySpace: “MySpace to Unveil Integration With Sites Around the Web, Using Open Standards.” Now under new management!

Technology

From New Scientist: “Innovation: Award-winning product design of 2009.” Products include a tastable cookbook and the Haptic Reader (which makes non-Braille books accessible to the blind).

The age of artificially intelligent, conscious machines is coming: “Smart machines: What’s the worst that could happen?”

But this is already terrifyingly here: “Britain To Put CCTV Cameras Inside Private Homes.”

All of this kind of leads into: “Mayan End-Of-The-World Prediction Spurs Debate.”

Entertainment

On YouTube: VintageTVCommercials is an online resource for public domain TV commercials of the 1950s through the 1980s. The NimporteQui.com channel has some pretty funny videos. And cyriak’s channel has some interesting animation.

You can also watch episodes of  “Dr. Tran” at YouTube. It’s quite a good cartoon.

I like Monkeybicycle, a literary journal and website.

David Rees vs. Jamba Juice

David Rees, creator of the Get Your War On webcomic, is not happy: “No Justice, Part II: Boycott Jamba Juice!” I like some of the comments to the Boing Boing article: “Jamba Juice accused of stealing ‘Get Your War On’ artist’s work“:

• RyanH: “people are upset with Jamba Juice for being no-talent classless dicks. Not due to any belief that they have done something illegal.”
• Anonymous: “The only way this could have have been a lazier steal – is if they had called it ‘Get your juice on’. . .”

Funny. And also lame.

I’ll leave you with this: “Water Soluble Bikini Is One Cruel Prank.”

Most addictive YouTube videos of all time
(that I can remember at the moment, what with all my ADHD hey what’s that?)

1. “I’m On A Boat” and more from The Lonely Island
2. AutoTune the News #2 and more episodes from schmoyoho
3. “Cooking by the Book” A Lil’ Bigger Mix by Mastgrr. It’s a piece of cake to bake a pretty cake! Also see the “Bananaphone” remix from HatPerson
4. Rap Chop! It’s Vince with Slap Chop! Also see Press Hop (sports soundbites) and more from djsteveporter
5. Might Putty Dub!,  Billy Mays kaboom! dub and more informercial dubs from Jabo0odyDubs
6. The Black20 Trailer Park: 300 – PG Version (AKA “Caketown”)

In addition to loads of other funny 300 parodies (like LisaNova does 300), I would also be remiss to not mention the dozens of “Dear Sister” parodies.

Must stop self from watching these again. Perhaps a 12-step program?

I felt the same way about this awesome mashup video in 2006: “Star Trek + Nine Inch Nails = Closer.”

LEGO Arcade, 8-bit design and Wimbledon

I liked this: LEGO Arcade. There’s much more great LEGO animation from MlCHAELHlCKOX where this came from, such as: Super Lego Mario (Level 1).

For some actual LEGOs, see the “bat country” scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas at Brickshelf.

Also, Philip DeFranco is a funny dude. Check out some of his YouTube clips.

Tokyo Zokei University’s Open Campus has a really nice web page design. I’m a sucker for the 8-bit aesthetic. Read more: “The Bestest College Webpage Ever.”

I’m looking forward to seeing what happens at Wimbledon. With Rafael Nadal out, will Roger Federer win his record 15th major and sixth Wimbledon title? Do Andy Roddick or Andy Murray have a chance? Will the Williams sisters meet in another final? Can anyone seriously challenge them right now?

Lastly, I am thinking of starting a “365 Days Project” on Flickr, beginning July 1. Currently contemplating possible photo themes and my motivation to commit to taking at least one (hopefully compelling) photo every day for a year.

Narwhal

Narwhal are interesting, with their helical tusks. Compare and contrast Weebl’s Stuff’s silly looping Narwhals animation to this report about the real-life sea creatures: “‘Arctic unicorns’ in icy display.”

Here are some other strange creatures: 25 Cool Obscure Animals, including vampire squid, tanuki and pistol shrimp.

Sesame Street censorship

I’m not sure there’s a funnier “censored” video than The Count Censored Edition, but Sesame Street Censored is pretty good too. Oh, the childhood memories.

Somewhat watchable/offensive cartoons

I can’t strongly recommend either of these shows (which were recently recommended to me by two different friends), but each episode only occupies 15 or 30 minutes of TV airtime, so it’s not a big commitment to see if you enjoy them.

The first 10 episodes (out of 13 total) of MTV’s short-lived “Clone High” (2002-03) are available via this YouTube playlist. The animated show featured high school-age genetic clones of famous historical figures. You can watch John F. Kennedy, Cleopatra, Abraham Lincoln, Joan of Arc, Gandhi and others during their awkward years. I like the pink-haired Joan of Arc character.

You may also want to try watching the aggressively unentertaining “Xavier: Renegade Angel” (2007-09) on Adult Swim. The show has a bizarre, hateful goodness. Oxymoron! I can’t decide if the show is philosophical or anti-philosophical. It’s so purposely awful and fast-paced. At least the episodes are only 12 minutes each.

World of Warcraft: Leeroy Jenkins

I guess it’s time to revisit the WoW Leeroy Jenkins Internet phenomenon. Why? Because I found these video clips on YouTube and I can’t resist mashups: Leeroy Jenkins & 300 Spartans and Leeroy Jenkins Remix. Amusing.

Music videos

It’s not new, but I enjoyed the music video for “Stress” by Justice (French DJs), featuring a French gang. It’s very well directed by Romain Gavras. It has a similar feel to The Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up” video by Jonas Åkerlund (which was banned by MTV and has also been banned from YouTube).

(Side note: The Prodigy recently released a new album, Invaders Must Die. Check out their YouTube channel for new videos.)

Amusing detail: Gangsters in the “Stress” video kick the crap out of a car radio when one of Justice’s own pop-style songs starts playing. The song is “D.A.N.C.E.,” which has a pretty good music video in its own right (and technically interesting), though I don’t love it.

(You should also watch this French “Stress” parody video, which pokes fun at the original video.)

Here is another cool, technically interesting video: “Robot High School” by My Robot Friend.

Sports and technology

Don’t throw out that old VCR! Try this: VCR Hack!

In sports research news: “For Free Throws, 50 Years of Practice Is No Help.” In 50+ years, the free throw percentage in basketball (college and NBA) has remained unchanged.

NCAA March Madness starts soon!