PRESENTS

One of our Canadian readers, Ben, periodically sends me presents. I’ve shared some of these with you in the past. I got two more from him yesterday “from the filthy bowels of the internet.” Once again, these are too cool to keep to myself.

The first is a Pingu. I didn’t know what a Pingu was. Now I know. Pingu was a British-Swiss stop-motion claymated television series created by Otmar Gutmann. The show was about a family of anthropomorphic penguins at the South Pole. The series ran from 1986 to 1998, and then again from 2004 to 2005. But Pingu is not dead. A dude named Lee Hardcastle continues to make Pingu’s for his YouTube channel.

Last week, Hardcastle uploaded a Pingu re-make of John Carpenter’s 1982 masterpiece, The Thing. This was Ben’s first present to me yesterday. If you’re a fan of that movie, as I am, it’s a blast to watch, because Hardcastle succeeds in boiling down the plot of the movie into about two minutes, and the claymation effects he uses are ingenious. It won’t mean nearly as much if you’re not familiar with The Thing, but you might still like it.

And speaking of The Thing, there was a “prequel” movie that came out late last year (also called The Thing) telling the story of what happened at the Norwegian base in Antarctica leading up to the events that began the Carpenter movie. Did anyone see that prequel? Is it any good? As for the second present . . .

It involves Rage Against the Machine. I still like me some Rage, even though the music is pretty dated. The George Mason University pep band (known as “The Green Machine”) also like them some Rage. Mike Nickens, affectionately nicknamed Doc Nix, is the band’s director, and he put together a mash-up of a couple of Rage songs. The band’s practice performance of the mash-up was caught on film, and it went viral on the internet.

The YouTube clip has over 1.5 million views, so you may well have already seen it. If not, check it out. It rocks. There’s a chick in red playing the flute who really gets her headbang on. Actually, the whole crew, including the band director, rock out. Yeah, band geeks are still band geeks, but this video proves that like geeks in general, band geeks can be cool. Or at least that’s what I think. I may be influenced by the fact that I’m a geek. It’s possible you will watch the video and react like this:

Here you go . . . presents from Ben to me and from me to you.

Metal is coming soon, by the way . . .

Thanks Ben.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToCq_c3wOM8