Nuclear Monster

  •  

    Speaking of monkeys, Jesse David Fox has a great interview with some of the people behind the fantastic Planet of the Apes musical episode from way back in the Simpsons’ 7th season. The Simpsons’ musical composer, Alf Clausen, discusses how he tries to bring some seriousness to the show:

    I hearken back to something that was said to me a long time ago by a trumpet player who worked in the studios. He said to me, “You can’t vaudeville vaudeville.” The reason for that particular directive is that he said if you wanted to make something funny, you don’t use funny music to go there. You use music that is extremely serious.

    Clausen expands on that with his interview on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross:

    GROSS: When you’re writing a song parody are you trying to write it as if it were serious, as if it were really a Broadway show or really a movie theme?

    CLAUSEN: Absolutely, not only in creating the songs, but in creating the underscore music for “The Simpsons” and trying to give credence to the emotional content of what the characters are saying. I’m always extremely serious, and I think what happens is that the the listener and observer gets pulled into the situation more effectively once the music is serious, so that when the gag finally comes, the gag then becomes twice as funny.

    I think about the musical underscore for shows a lot, how they ham it up during emotional moments to further draw you in. It works.

    Fresh Air recently recompiled their old interviews with Simpsons creators and you can read the rest of that episode’s transcript, but really you should listen to it. Here’s the Overcast link for the episode.

     

  • Sarah Jeong (now of The Verge) contributed this article to Vice’s Motherboard. It’s about the continuing legal struggle for PETA to represent the monkey that took a selfie in PETA’s suit against a photographer who has my surname and gain copyright protection for works created by animals. It may also help animals, and people, in other fields:

    Well, it’s not really about monkey copyrights, actually. It’s about Cetacean and about making precedent that will let PETA sue on behalf of animals in more serious matters. And in PETA’s defense, the relevant case law is kind of not great. One of the cases that the judges mentioned during oral argument is a case about a “coalition of clergy, lawyers, and professors” trying to bring a lawsuit on behalf of Guantanamo detainees. It’s not all monkeys and selfies here, there really are larger ramifications to the principles that are being hammered out

  • PRI’s The World continues to have some pretty fascinating stories I wouldn’t otherwise come across. Recently The World told us about colorful taxi cab ceilings in India. Now, their Matthew Bell is covering this crossover between two of my favorite subjects, South Korea and doomsday cults, in Shinchonji:

    Lee, the director of the Bible study center I visited, says she has been a member of Shinchonji since 1999.

    “We offer a very deep course of study into the Bible,” she says. “This is different than other churches.”

    “The students would like to come to class seven days a week, but we limit it to five,” Lee says.

    “Shinchonji members are very successful in life,” Lee adds. And then, without being asked about it specifically, she says that some members of Shinchonji have had problems maintaining relationships with their families and keeping up with their careers. But she says such cases are the exception.

    Throughout my visit to the study center, a young Korean man in a jacket and glasses points a digital camera at me as I do interviews and observe the scene. When I say his filming is making me uncomfortable, he puts the camera down for a few minutes. Then, he goes back to filming me.

  • This is frankly insane, there’s a new video out from Nine Inch Nails and it’s got footage from Llamasoft’s Polybius.  Jeff Minter is Llamasoft and he has made many other trippy and intense action arcade games, most people would know him for Tempest 2000. Although Polybius is only available on the PlayStation 4, a Windows version is in development. The track in the collaboration video above, Less Than, will be on a new EP called Add Violence on the 21st of July. Less Than is available right now on Apple Music.

    This is after Nine Inch Nails also appeared on the renewed Twin Peaks:

  • Edmund McMillen of Super Meat Boy (I played and loved) and The Binding of Isaac fame has a new jam out, The End Is Nigh, in collaboration with his long-time collaborator Tyler Glaiel. It looks like another tough side-scroller, and it’s only available for Windows on Steam.