Cool Sights: Grip Up.

When it comes down to it, which are you going to go to war with?

Cool Sights: Forget Them Not.

In a world of fickleness and the “it” issue, it’s easy to forget about people who still need all of our help. Not to say that Haiti is the only place where we can offer our assistance. Rather, it is a symbol for all the people in places that have been ravished and who have been forgotten because the stars weren’t doing telethons for them. We’re all people, kid, and that makes us family. And my mama always told me that you only get one family, so you should whatever you can to take care of them.

Cool Sights: The Furious Five x Guess Who

Guess Who from Kirsten Lepore on Vimeo.

It’s exactly what you think it’s. Another day, another phenomenal stop motion animation vid. How this is not an internet sensation is utterly above and beyond me. Kirsten Lepore put in absolute work. If you ever read this Kirsten, just know you have a huge fan in Providence that would jump at the chance to make magic with the motion. Stop motion, that is. Heh.

Cool Sights: Out Of A Forest

Out Of A Forest from Tobias Gundorff Boesen on Vimeo.

Yesterday, I was made aware of this video put together by Tobias Gundorff Boesen and his animation partners that is just awe inspiring, dazzling and any other adjective that you could use to describe the incredulous wonder I felt when I initially viewed it. I don’t even want to ruin the surprise of the story line and the plot before you watch it, so I’ll just tell you that it’s (brilliant) stop motion animation and it’s set to the song “Slow Show” by the National, who were kind enough to let Boesen use the song. Watch, enjoy, and be absolutely floored. Mucho Gracias to my homie Nat who let me know about this.

Cool Sights: The Greatness, His Airness

Inspiration comes from all places. Images, weather, friends, sports . . . it can all mean something if you catch it at the right angle. Michael Jordan was as pivotal a figure in my life as Michael Jackson or Jay-Z, in that he was the athletic personification of unbridled greatness. There are basketball players, there are great basketball players, and then there was Mike. I watch highlights like these just to get me in that mood where your mind goes, your body loosens and everything comes as instinct. Mike had it, man. Mike had it.

At The Moment: Live From The Bush

I am Liberian, if you weren’t aware, and just as much as the food is apart of my culture, so too is the slang. My mother calls it the “broken english”. Injected with emphasis and humor, I dare anyone (even if you’ve never met a Liberian) to hear it and not be entertained. Deron and Winnie are friends of mine and they’ve put together what they call The Bush Report, a analysis of anything they deem worthy delivered in pitch perfect Liberian english. Enjoy and laugh. I might have to get a skit . . .

Cool Sights: Fear.

All there is to it.

At The Moment: Bobby McFerrin

Bobby Mc Ferrin – Don't Worry Be Happy
Uploaded by malika83. – News videos hot off the press.

I’m quite sure that unless you’ve been stricken with deafness for the entirety of your existence, you’ve no doubt heard this song. “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” is the ULTIMATE feel good song. I would accuse anyone who could hear this song and not smile as being the definition of pure and unbridled evil. However, the heinous nature of not being a fan of this song is not the point of this post. If you are like me, and I would imagine that some of you are in this respect, then you are unaware of the fact that there are absolutely NO INSTRUMENTS being played in this song. I shall repeat, there is no actual instrument being played in the song above. Take some time and listen to it again. You should notice now that every sound that you hear is coming from Mr. McFerrin’s vocal chords. Now, I don’t know about you but when my homie Saint Pat made me aware of this, I was floored. P exposed me to the guy’s catalogue, and while he is a talented jazz musician, the more amazing feats of his artistry (at least in my opinion) are when he is utilizing the sans-instrument mode of creation. And that is not even to mention the sheer gall it takes to actually put out a full disc of nothing but your vocal arrangements and know that, while it was unconventional, the results were undeniable. Go right ahead. Search his name. Buy. Download. And be astonished. I know I am.

Ed. Note: Saint P also told me about Mr. McFerrin’s pentatonic scale experiment at the World Science Festival and I knew I had to include it. Dig.

Cool Sights: Cheez Doodle Farewell

Morrie Yohai, the creator of the famous Cheez Doodle, passed away on July 27th. The Wise Food Co. ran the above ad in the NY Post recently and i thought, since we all probably have loads of childhood memories that involve Cheez Doodles, it was only fitting that you see the brilliant farewell ad to the corn snack creator.

Cool Sights: Nuclear Sound

I can’t really explain this as it should be so, just read:

“Visualization often wins out over sonification when it comes to making data clear. But sound has one key advantage: it can make time and scale apparent, by tapping directly into our perception of forward time.

Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto, born well into the Nuclear Age in 1959, uses that property to chilling effect. The sounds in “1945-1998″ are made still more unsettling in their rendering as tranquil, musical sounds rather than explosions. Quietly, World War III is waged not in wartime, but in the 2053 nuclear explosions that erupt mainly in thermonuclear tests (led, ironically, by the United States). This isn’t just political noise, either; the scale of thermonuclear tests has made virtually everyone reading this site a child of the fallout of the testing age, quite literally. And this falls on the anniversary of the deadly blasts detonated by the US to close World War II.

The 2003 work was dedicated as a kind of universal message, thanks to its rendering in sound:

This piece of work is a bird’s eye view of the history by scaling down a month length of time into one second. No letter is used for equal messaging to all viewers without language barrier. The blinking light, sound and the numbers on the world map show when, where and how many experiments each country have conducted. I created this work for the means of an interface to the people who are yet to know of the extremely grave, but present problem of the world

Sound, after all, can convey real messages, not only about our past and tragedy, but about our future.”

When you get caught up in the sound and colors of it all, try and remember that they represent a nuclear explosion. It makes the happy sound and graphic a bit more . . . grim, don’t you think?