One thing we found at the SXSW trade show this week was a company called Myxer that lets you make your own ringtones, so we made a ringtone for "Panic"!
Now your phone can alert you to a "panic in the streets" whenever anyone calls you! It's free to download and use.
More from World Racketeering Squad at Myxer
What other songs should we make as ringtones?
Dave Stevens died yesterday. He was one of the greats of pinup art and comics, and his sexy linework was a particular favorite of mine when I was in art school.
I hadn't followed him lately so I was sad to learn about his battle with leukemia after the fact. He was a very cool guy.
Isaac
Human Giant is an excellent sketch comedy show on MTV. Its first season is out (I believe) on DVD and the second season is getting ready to start. It stars Rob Huebel, Paul Scheer and Aziz Ansari, all veterans of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in NYC.
They're featured in Random Rules in this week's Onion AV Club:
"Bawitdaba," Kid Rock (Huebel's iPod)
AA: You have "Bawitdaba" on your iPod still?
RH: Dude, here's the reason: We used to do a wrestling show at the Upright Citizens Brigade [theater]. Paul, you were in that sometimes. It was like a fake wrestling show, and this was the opening song that I would come out to. I was supposed to be the Vince McMahon-type. I owned the league. So I would come out at the beginning to this song. Somehow, this is still in my iPod. But that fucking show was the most unsafe. One time I had my wrists slit open by a tuna can. One of the comedians was doing this bit with a tuna can. She threw tuna all over the stage. So I went up to attack this girl and fake-fight her, and I got flipped. My wrists were slit wide open on stage, and I had to go to the emergency room.
PS: My character on the show was Huebel's archrival. In the final mêlée, I'm beating up Huebel, but his hand is cut open, and I'm hitting him over the back with a Nerf baseball bat repeatedly. He's just bleeding out in the worst way.
RH: That was shitty. I had no insurance and I went to the hospital. It was Friday night in St. Vincent's hospital—really down low on the totem pole. Unless you go in there with a gunshot blast to the face, you're going to be sitting around for a while. I remember hanging out in the emergency room for like three hours, just bleeding. It was crazy.
AVC: Did that ruin Kid Rock for you?
RH: No, Kid Rock ruined Kid Rock for me.
The wrestling show he talks about was called Piledriver. When I lived in New York I used to do sound for Piledriver every week, so it was my job to start the show with "Bawitdaba", which does indeed rock most righteously.
Huebel's character Dick Duffy was always hilarious, but the real star of the show was director Billy Merritt, whose wrestling legend "The American Dream" made a belated "surprise" entrance three-quarters through every show to the sounds of Eddy Grant's "Electric Avenue" and gave a monologue which somehow always ended up on the subject of Applebee's and their delicious riblets.
Those were good times.
The creator of Dungeons and Dragons failed his saving throw this morning.
Rest in peace, Gary. Rest in peace.
This company is developing a camera that takes pictures of faster-than-light particles, which they claim lets them photograph images that take place in the future:
?uestlove from The Roots loved this new Gnarls Barkley track so much he begged Danger Mouse to leak it, and here are the results:
From Stereogum.
Fresh from the worldwide international success of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, publisher and man-about-town Dean Learner launched his own talk show, brought to you live from his 5 million pound penthouse apartment in London.
Here it is: "Man to Man With Dean Learner":
