Category Archives: Kultcha

Everyone who's ever had a bad airline experience will enjoy this revenge video, United Breaks Guitars by the Sons of Maxwell.

Spotted via BoingBoing which has more background on the video. Apparently this is the first in a trilogy of videos that will help blacken the United Airlines brand.

And it's catchy too.

This Akoha thing has some potential to be a grownup craze, somewhere between grown-up Pokemon Cards and a real-life Second Life.

Basically, it's a card-based game where players do kindnesses (at least in version 1.0) to others and score points for doing so. Being the recipient of a kindness (e.g. a small gift) enmeshes you in the game as you have to log into the Akoha site to acknowledge receipt of the card and the kindness. Then you can track where the card has been…and it's now yours to play on someone else…but they you're out of the game unless you buy some more cards.

And like any good Pokemon game, there will be ways to buy a bigger deck. (And for organizations to commission special decks and use them in promotions….) Going Pokemon one better, once you amass enough points, you will get the power to design new cards (“missions”).

There's something attractive about the idea of channeling power-madness towards acts of kindness, but I can also see this getting out of control. And I can image some social attacks: a small gang gets together and pass cards around to each other without actually giving away cups of coffee in order to amass points, but perhaps there's a rule limiting the number of cards you can inflict on one person.

The FAQ addresses some of the obvious questions, including “Doesn’t Akoha turn sincere acts of kindness into insincere ones?”

It seems like one of the founders of Ahoka is Austin Hill, who've I've known since before the Zero Knowledge days. I don't know whether to be peeved or relieved that he hasn't sent me a deck yet. Mostly relieved, I think. Although it might be fun to design a card that said, Represent someone pro bono in a foreclosure action.

So I encountered a link to Orthodox Celts – Star Of The County Down, and enjoyed the video:

But the accent was a tiny bit funny — were these maybe Australian expatriates? — and come to think of, these are not very most Irish looking group I ever saw, but then again they said “Celts” so maybe they are Scottish?

But I did like the name — Orthodox Celts. None of this modern music for this crew. Take that, you Pogues. And I liked the drinking song, and Far Away, and some of the others.

Is there an Amazon CD? No, there's none. Odd.

Well, what does Google say? There I learn that Orthodox Celts are “Belgrade's most popular Irish & Celtic music band.” OK, that explains the accent and the look. But it sure sounds like damning with faint praise, or at least small frog, microscopic puddle, but no … Wikipedia tells me that the OC are part of a genuine cultural phenomenon:

Formed in 1992, Orthodox Celts are part of the musical phenomenon that came up in Serbia during the 1990s. The band performs Irish folk music combined with rock elements. Their music led to a popularisation of Irish and Celtic music and other aspects of Irish and Celtic culture in Serbia. Despite their unusual sound the band is currently one of the top acts of the Serbian rock scene and has influenced several younger bands, most notably Tir na n'Og and Irish Stew of Sindidun.

A big-time Irish music scene in Serbia. Who wouldda thunk?

It's especially amazing given that, as far as I know, the Celtic influence on Serbia ended when Rome was at its peak. The Scordisci — who may or may not have been ethnic Celts, but seem to have been part of a Celtic political constellation — had their capital at Singidunum (now Belgrade) in the 3rd century BCE, but the Scordisci faded from history more than 2000 years ago, after the Romans conquered them, and the rest of the Celts were pretty much gone from most of mainland Europe before the fall of Rome.

Via Orin Kerr, I learn that Koyaanisqatsi, the movie version of one of my better-liked and more-played CD's is now available on YouTube – all 1:26:04 of it!

I like Philip Glass's music. But I've rarely gone for visual pairings with either Glass or Eno or other music of that modernist, and sometimes minimalist, sort. I know that Koyaanisqatsi came into being as a film score, but to me it's always been a musical composition deracinated from film. I liked Einstein on the Beach when I saw it at its first revival at BAM (even though it was far from new, a decent fraction, maybe 10%, of the audience walked out after the first part, which amazed me); that alone has been a somewhat harder to listen to without the visual, perhaps because it is so long and has so much repetition and near-repetition.

But anyway, something to watch as soon as I have a spare hour and half. Whenever that is: We got a TV for the first time about a year ago, and I though, that's it, we'll be TV zombies, our intellectual lives are over. Hasn't worked out that way: I hardly ever watch it except when folding laundry, and the very occasional taped episodes of Stewart or Colbert.

Although, to be fair, the hard drive on the DVR is filling up with old movies and new episodes of things I plan to watch Real Soon Now ™.