American Madness

Some of you may be asking who is Harold Hunter, others may already know. In 1995 Harold Hunter became one of the faces representing youth in New York City in the movie Kids, a few years later he ended up in the Joan Osborne video “One of Us.”

Harold was a member of the early 90’s NYC skateboarding scene and part of the Zoo York team. Harold was last scene on TLC’s Miami Ink getting a tattooed tribute to WTC with the words NYC, Sk8 or Die. By the time this episode aired in April of ‘06, Harold had been dead for almost 2 months. On Feb. 17th of 2006 Harold overdosed.

This year Zoo York is one of the sponsors of the 2nd Annual Harold Hunter Day, a day in which Harold is remembered for his amazing skateboarding skills and his general good natured presence.

This year Harold Hunter Day will be this Saturday, May 17th. Zoo York is sponsoring The Harold Hunter Skate Jam forom 12-6pm at the Manhattan Bridge Skatepark and the Harold Hunter Party at KCDC in Brooklyn from 8pm to midnight. For more information you can check out the website.

Does anyone still remember a time when people predicted that you would be able to watch anything you wanted when ever you wanted? Any show on a whim? When we hit 1000+ channels people felt that was the way it was going to be, but it wasn’t. On-Demand costs money and there is a limit to the shows shown. iTunes wasn’t much better though had a lot more recent titles to choose from.

This year we had channels starting to ponder the iTunes model and they all started streaming most of their shows on the internet (a combination of pay-per-view and free content) though most of those streams were a bit choppy and interrupted by a ton of commercials.

Well, now we have reached a point where that any show on a whimis starting to look more like a reality- Enter Hulu. (more…)

Decent parody of the inspirational Obama video:

While so many news outlets are devoting headlines today to Brooke Astor passing away at 105, Merv Griffin also passed away this week at 82.

For anyone who now watches Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune the name is familiar, though the breadth of his career might not be. He started out as a singer in the 1950s and had a hit with “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts.” In the 60s he started his own day time talk show which premiered the same day as The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (though Carson lasted a bit longer on as a host, Merv was canceled after less then 1 season…).

Following the cancellation of his show, Merv turned to creating game shows and came up with everyone’s favorite answer and question game Jeopardy. Jeopardy initially had an 11 year run before being revived 10 years later as the game show we all know and love. Wheel of Fortune came to him in 1975 and has been on the air continuously since then. Come September we will be introduced to Merv’s newest show Crosswords, based on, you guessed it, crossword puzzles.

Two years after his first failed talk show he reintroduced it — this time adding in alchohol and celebs to the mix and he had a hit that was part Oprah, Part Jerry Springer.

Merv’s empire extended beyond just music and television. He had stakes in horse racing, hotels and casinos. According to Merv: “I was buying things and nobody knew … I never told anybody, because I noticed that when you walk down the street and everybody knows you’re rich, they don’t talk to you.”

I know we are a culture obsessed with fame. We look to celebrities constantly, trying to get the latest news and gossip about them. There are over a dozen magazines out there whose sole purpose is to keep us informed as to what celebrities are doing and not doing.

Which leads me to this one: When did it become newsworthy (or gossip worthy) to report about what celebrities are not doing? And I am not talking about drugs or who they are not sleeping with or no longer marrying, I am talking about the actual jobs of actors and actresses.

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Growing up in the 80s, the awesomeness of Back to the Future was just a given.

One of the things that made it all so cool was the DeLorean with the Flux Capacitor, what kid didn’t dream of one day growing up and owning that car, especially with its wing-like doors. Unfortunately the company closed down their production plant in Northern Ireland in 1982.

Now a company in Texas is working to start reproducing DeLoreans. DeLorean motor company has acquired about original DeLorean engines and own the trademarks and engineering drawings, starting this year will begin producing about 20 cars a year. After they run out of the original DeLorean parts they have from the 20 year old factory they think they will start making new DeLoreans from scratch.

Unfortunately none of the cars come equipt with flux capacitors making time travel in a DeLorean still just a distant dream, well unless you can find Doc Brown and an Oscar somewhere.

Have you heard of “America’s Army?”

It’s a video game designed by the Army that serves a couple of functions. It previously was only available for download, so right off the bat, they could identify you as some one with an interest in the army. The it got you used to the armies language, tools, machines, and mind set. if you downloaded enough episodes of the game you could even play with teams online, building a nice dynamic group of folks interested in the army who had the most basic of basic training in an effort to indoctrinate them into the army.

There have been a number of iterations of “America’s Army” (your tax dollars at work to build a bigger and better video game). Now, due to its popularity, you can not only download the game for free, but as Arcade Heroes reports to us, you can pay $.25 (okay, well the last time I paid to play an arcade game it was $.25 I am sure it will cost you at least $.50 if not more) to play it. Global VR is working with the U.S. Army to design and release an coin-op arcade game based on “America’s Army.”

There are a few questions to be to be asked in relation to this game, both supporting it and bashing it, like why is the military paying to develop video games is the military that strapped for cash that they need to resort to video games? and- this can’t be serious, can it? (apparently I can only think of negative questions, but I am sure there are some positive ones out there). This just seems like a total misappropriation of my tax dollars to me.

Maybe he thought he would be playing to the fans who like Apple because they think it is a socially conscious company. Maybe folks are just misinterpreting what he meant. Maybe he really did just mean it was Steve Jobs and not Apple as a whole, but when the head of Sony, Sir Howard Stringer called Steve Jobs greedy on the 12th a few people noticed.

Stringer was commenting on something Jobs said about record companies being greedy for wanting a to be paid for downloaded music. He followed it up by saying that Jobs is the greedy as he wants a world where only he makes money.

Well, who doesn’t? Frankly if I am going to invest in a business I want to know that the head of that company wants to corner a market, hold a monopoly on what ever they are doing and bringing in the most money for the company. frankly, if the head of Sony doesn’t get that, well then Sony isn’t getting my money.

Was, from what I heard, a pretty awful movie. So bad in fact it only had two sequels (I believe they were both straight to DVD, kind of like the Darkman sequels).

Skull-a-Day is a blog that features just that, anew skull image every day. Some of the images are user submitted, some are quite original (like the ASCII skull, super creative and detailed).

If you’re into skulls, check it out, some fun and creative images (and, of course, some you have seen before).

The Deitch Art Parade is scheduled for September 8th, running from Houston, down West Broadway to the Deitch Project’s gallery on Wooster, just North of Canal. The parade features tons of walking art, from performance pieces, to costumes, to walking sculptures, to floats, to balloons.

This year will be the third parade and each year they have been getting larger and larger. Last years parade included a performance by FischerSpooner (a group which Jeffrey Deitch had a hand in putting together) on a massive float, following the parade FischerSpooner also performed at the party that broke out on Wooster Street.

Jeffrey Deitch is considered to be a contemporary of Andy Warhol and (I believe) has been a SoHo fixture since the 60s.

If you have a great idea for the parade, now is your chance to submit it. There is an open call for submissions that wraps up July 20th. If you’re interested, don’t hesitate, download the application now!