The Origin of The Chipmunks. "Ross Bagdasarian Sr. (who went by the stage name "David Seville") was an actor who appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window and on Broadway in William Saroyan's Time of Your Life. He wrote novelty dialect songs, including Rosemary Clooney's huge hit "Come On-A My House", and released a few records but his successes never seemed to result in very much money in his pocket. He bought a tape recorder with his last $200 and played around with shifting the speeds, coming up with a novelty song titled "Witch Doctor". He got the single released and two weeks later, he found himself appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show performing the song. The success of "Witch Doctor" gave him the idea of creating characters with sped up voices, so he quickly knocked out a Christmas demo titled "The Chipmunk Song" and took it to record executives Simon "Sy" Waronker, Theodore "Ted" Keep and Alvin "Al" Bennett at Liberty Records." [more inside]
posted by ocherdraco on Oct 11, 2009 - 39 comments

Fly Guy, the fourth installment of the Simon's Cat series. [more inside]
posted by MaryDellamorte on Jul 26, 2009 - 19 comments

"Necronomicons: The Scariest Book in the World" - A talk given by Daniel Harms, author of the Encyclopedia Cthulhiana, on the history of the Necronomicon(s) - taking in Abdul Alhazred, John Dee, assorted aquaintences of HP Lovecraft, some rather dodgy sounding occultists from the 70s and a man known only as Simon. Previously.
posted by Artw on Jun 21, 2009 - 24 comments

Colorshift is an interesting twist on Simon Tatham's Net game. Rather than creating a network to a single "power" node, you have to manage multiple colors, and mixing colors in crafty and devious ways.
posted by boo_radley on Jun 5, 2009 - 11 comments

Reviews and thoughts on the Battlestar Galatica finale, and a few answers from show creator Ron Moore
posted by Brandon Blatcher on Mar 21, 2009 - 440 comments

SLYT: Paul Simon and his brother play Davy Graham's 'Anji'.
posted by RussHy on Sep 21, 2008 - 12 comments

Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue was an animated drug prevention television special starring many popular cartoon characters from American Saturday morning television. Airing in 1990 and financed by McDonald's, it was simulcast on all three major American television networks. The VHS home video edition of the special also opened with an introduction from then-President George Bush Snr and Barbara Bush. And thanks to the wonders of the interwebs, you can watch the whole thing here. And you really should. After all, where else are you going to get to hear cartoon characters like Garfield and Winnie the Pooh talking about smoking crack and shooting juice? [more inside]
posted by Effigy2000 on Dec 3, 2007 - 48 comments

Margaret Talbot's wonderful profile of David Simon, the creator of "The Wire." Simon said, he and his colleagues had “ripped off the Greeks: Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides. Not funny boy—not Aristophanes. We’ve basically taken the idea of Greek tragedy and applied it to the modern city-state.” He went on, “What we were trying to do was take the notion of Greek tragedy, of fated and doomed people, and instead of these Olympian gods, indifferent, venal, selfish, hurling lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no reason—instead of those guys whipping it on Oedipus or Achilles, it’s the postmodern institutions . . . those are the indifferent gods.”
posted by geoff. on Oct 15, 2007 - 34 comments

Watching music ^4:38 videos is a good ^4:07way to learn a language ^5:02, odd thing is I was ^2:44 hoping to ^3;03 learn Spanish ^59:58. Emilie Simon of La Marche de l'empereur fame sings for us. All from the glorious youtube. Other than the last one from the rather better google.video.
posted by econous on Dec 4, 2006 - 8 comments

Brian Eno is the godfather of electronica, the inventor of ambient music, and producer of the best work by bands like the Talking Heads and U2. Tchad Blake has helmed the mixing board for Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, Soul Coughing and the Bad Plus, to name just a few. Paul Simon is one of the most recognized names in pop music both for his work with Art Garfunkel and for his fusion of American pop music with African and South American music. Surprise is the the album they collaborated on, the new Paul Simon record featuring Eno's signature sonic landscapes all over it, and the entire lovely thing, complete with liner notes, is available to listen to on Simon's website.
posted by eustacescrubb on May 9, 2006 - 69 comments

"Taryn Simon: The Innocents" Is an exhibition at MOMA's P.S.1 Contemporary Arts Center, of large color photographs of innocent men jailed for crimes they did not commit, exonerated by DNA evidence. For most of the photographs Ms. Simon posed each man at the scene of the arrest, the scene of the crime, the scene of misidentification or the scene of the alibi.
posted by jdaura on Jun 24, 2003 - 6 comments