Not content to keep funding expeditions of Westerners to learn about Tanna, in 2007 the National Geographic funded an expedition of five men from Tanna's
Prince Philip movement cargo cult to visit England, stay with families, and eventually meet Prince Philip himself whom they revere as the son of their God. Jimmy, who was a member of the expedition and the narrator for the film has posted the video on his
youtube account.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
In 2009 the Travel Channel aired Meet the Natives: USA, which brought five men from
another group from Tanna to the United States. Their tribe within Tanna reveres Tom Navy, an American World War II sailor who generations ago had taught the inhabitants to live in peace. The Tanna ambassadors were taken across, visiting five states, and eventually meeting former United States Secretary of State Colin Powell and verifying with him that the spirit of peace taught by Tom Navy lives on in the current U.S. President, Barack Obama. While visiting with a family on Fort Stewart, a US Army Major-General conferred a World War II Victory Medal and an Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal upon the chief in representation of the contribution the people of Tanna in World War II.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Be sure to look for Jimmy's responses to questions in the mercifully uncharacteristic youtube comments
[more inside]
posted by Blasdelb
on Oct 31, 2011 -
16 comments
For your listening pleasure, I present to you the
Zelda Rag, performed (with no prior practice) by Tom Brier. When that gets old, there's also a ragtime adaptation of the
horse race theme from the Ocarina of Time that is not to be missed. And if Zelda's too easy, you can try the theme from
Ghosts and Goblins. And, finally, an actual rag from Final Fantasy VI:
the Spinach Rag.
[more inside]
posted by kaibutsu
on Dec 26, 2010 -
22 comments
"Tammy Wynette was quite wrong when she sang 'Sometimes it's hard to be a woman'. It's not. It's always hard to be a woman. Especially if you're a man." Hard-hitting journalism from
The Daily Mail. [more inside]
posted by miss lynnster
on Sep 20, 2007 -
55 comments
Those crazy
Scientologists are at it again. This time, a New Zealand website owner has been
ordered to relinquish his clever domain name,
scienTOMogy.info under threat of legal action. The site, an ugly-looking collection of
links to
other Scientology-debunking websites, serves as a clearinghouse for information about one of the church's most notorious members, Tom Cruise. CoS claims the domain is similar enough to their
official website address to be
confusing to Internet users.
posted by wakko
on Oct 19, 2005 -
42 comments
St. James Infirmary, in a funereal, no lyrics, brass-band version underlies a persistent scrum of half-remembered songs about New Orleans rising in concert with the waters, lapping at the sandbags of my mind. Up front,
Tom Waits (
I Wish I Was in New Orleans) and
Randy Newman (
Lousiana 1927) are duking it out for time at the piano, elaborately filigreed chords overlapping and changing the dominant lyric at the moment of harmonic convergence, while in the background
Arlo Guthrie (
The City of New Orleans) warbles about a train ride.
Professor Longhair and/or
The Dixie Cups (
Big Chief,
Iko Iko) sort of amusedly fight to keep sliptime with the martial drums from Jimmy Driftwood's
The Battle of New Orleans (caution: embedded quicktime) behind the whole toxic soup of sonic residue. I'm sure the stew will grow more dense over the next couple weeks.
Got a New Orleans song to toss into the waters?
posted by mwhybark
on Aug 30, 2005 -
45 comments
The making of a D-Day tradition... I immediately get
goosebumps when I hear the score of
Band of Brothers...I'm not sure why, maybe it was my local connections (
Dick Winters,
Bill Guanere,
Albert Blithe,
Babe Heffron,
Thomas Meehan,
Ralph Spina,
Harry Welsh, and
Robert Strayer are all from Philadelphia), the surrounding suburbs, or Pennsylvania), or maybe it was because the original airings took place in the shadow of 9/11 (the premiere was September 9th, 2001, with the D-Day drop occuring in the second episode, Day of Days, on 9/16/2001), but this series will ALWAYS have a special place in my heart. Everything is done so beautifully, from
the special effects, to the sound,
the music, to the dutiful translation from
Stephen Ambrose book to the screen. It's certainly worthy of the
9.5 out of 10 that IMDB readers had given it. Every year now since, either HBO (On Demand - you have to subscribe to HBO plus have digital cable) or
the History Channel has played
Tom Hanks' and
Steven Spielberg's masterful WW2 epic. You can think of it as Saving Private Ryan, but 3 times as long. Even if war movies are not your thing, I can almost guarantee that they will see the human side of the soldier and becomely deeply invested in the characters. Follow the men of Easy Company from training and the running of Currahee, to the parachute jump on D-Day, through the liberation of Europe, the horror of a German concentration camp, and eventually to the end of the war, to Hitler's mountaintop retreat. I'm not the only one - check out the numerous fan sites to BoB (forum shorthand for Band of Brothers)
here,
here, and
here, as well as entries on
TVTome,
Wikipedia, and
Television without Pity. If you want to try before you commit to watching the whole thing, I'd recommend the episodes
Day of Days,
Crossroads, and
the Breaking Point.
posted by rzklkng
on Jun 4, 2005 -
24 comments
Fitness to Practice is a collection of songs written and performed by Amateur Transplants, two practicing doctors from the UK. The album consists of
original songs as well as witty parodies of songs originally performed by among others
Tom Lehrer and
The Jam (mp3 links). The lyrics contain a lot of medical in-jokes, but the humour is broad enough to appeal to everyone.
posted by bap98189
on Mar 31, 2005 -
9 comments
Giving Credit where credit is due. For your Friday browsing pleasure, may I present the staff at NPR's CarTalk. Enjoy!
The Conclusive, Definitive, Official Dewey, Cheetham, & Howe Staff List
In the good old days, we had an engineer and a rotary telephone with a couple of buttons on it. We pressed a button and--BINGO-- someone was on the air. Of course, it was usually a wrong number...but that's the price you pay for simplicity.
Now look at the mess we're in! Thousands of people on the staff...all trying to do less work than us. What a revoltin' development this is. Look at all these employees!
But despite our huge payroll--we're always hiring. So if you know of someone who may be worthy to join our crack(ed) staff, send his/her/its name and potential position to the Car Talk Plaza Personnel Department via e-mail to Dewey, Cheetham and Howe.
posted by nofundy
on Jun 27, 2003 -
10 comments
The Tom Waits Streaming Event. Anti Records is streaming both of Waits' new albums in their entirety, each in turn for three days starting today, prior to their release. Is the home listening booth for whole cd's a common marketing tactic now?
posted by liam
on Apr 30, 2002 -
24 comments
