Every Saturday in January, the National Geographic Channel is airing a new episode of Dangerous Encounters with Brady Barr. You may remember Barr from two years ago when he was famously bitten by a twelve foot long python. Well Barr has had time to recover an in the last episode in the series on January 24, he returns to that same cave again looking for rumored fifty foot pythons.
But before then, tonight Barr is on a journey to find the elusive Sixgill Shark (seen at right, so Spoiler Alert!: he finds them) which scientists have very little knowledge of the Jurassic sharks. Barr sets out to change that traveling to Central America, Puget Sound, Hawaii and 1,700 feet below the surface of the ocean (in the submarine seen at left). To put that in perspective, more people have seen the summit of Mt. Everest that been that far under the ocean.
Then next Saturday, Barr travels to South Africa to put satellite transmitters on crocodiles to see how they migrate after a dam threatens their current habitat and January will be on the hunt for the world’s largest salamanders which can grow up to five feet and eighty pound. I may go into further details about future shows later but until then, head over to the Dangerous Encounters website for these goodies:
"How to be like a gecko" Game: Take the Dangerous Encounters challenge and prove your gecko skills such as eye licking and wall climbing. How gecko are you?
Dangerous Encounters mobile trivia: Get your danger fix with weekly mobile trivia nd learn surprising facts about some of the world's most most menacing – and even some of the world's oddest – creatures!
Dangerous Encounters podcasts: Watch previews of Dangerous Encounters as Dr. Brady Barr travels around the globe on a series of death-defying, hair-raising expeditions to study reptiles and other creatures in their native habitats.
As someone who grew up with a heavy dose of Beavis and Butt-Head, I was a little weary of Mike Judge making a live action film. Granted Office Space was actually based on an animated short that was featured during Liquid Television but ended up turning into a first ballot Scooter Hall of Fame inductee.
Even though at the point I first seen the movie I had only worked part time in an office, I could see how brilliantly it portray the life sucking ability sitting in a cubicle for eight hours a day for extended periods of time where you only have mimesweeper to keep you sane (of course this was before the proliferation of the internet and time suckers like Facebook). But nothing stung worse than the passive aggressive bosses like Lumburgh or having six bosses who all point when you make a mistake.
And nothing cut too close more than Michael “why should I change my name, he’s the one that sucks” Bolton whose scenes I have lived out in my personal life multiple times like turning down my gangsta rap, which made up most of the soundtrack in the movie and my formative years, in the car whenever near an actual black dude. Also my freshman year in college I had a very old school printer, the kind that had the paper with the scrolls on both sides to feed into the printer. To keep the story short, finals week it wouldn’t print something and later turned into pieces similar to the scene in the movie.
The cast is pitch perfect from the dry humor of Ron Livingston (Band of Brothers), the previously mentioned Gary Cole (The Brady Bunch Movie) to the bumbling Stephan Root (Idiocracy) and even the smaller roles such as the guy that brought an “O Face” into the lexicon. Thank and many other lines from Office Space has had permanent place in my own personal lexicon over the past decade since it has been released.
Much apologies for being late on this but it does come before the end of the year. And even a day late, this may not be the definitive list that makes up the playlist on my iPod. To pull back the curtain of the 9th Green, typically I have two or three (or ten) drafts of the best songs of the tear before I am content with the results. I doubt I will ever change this post but maybe sometime in the New Year I will make a playlist somewhere for you to listen the songs and post that here. Until then feel free to dissect this list (and if you want to how all 189 potential songs actually ranked, shout me a holla and I will e - mail you my spreadsheet) and hope to see you all back at the 9th Green in 2009 when I have some major projects planned throughout next year.
First off, congratulations are in order Emily and Niv who both picked up Amazon gift cards for sending in their top ten lists and thanks to everyone else who also contributed to the list (check your e-mail that you sent your lists from if you haven’t got it yet). After sending all the ballots sent in this year through my patent pending algorism that makes the Electoral College seem reasonable in comparison, here is what it came up with. If you do not like the results start get ready to send in a list for 2009.
There didn’t seem to be a bunch of great mash-ups this year, but still plenty to create a list so here are the best that I have found the last twelve months even if some were actually created before 2008. Here is where I usually give my disclaimer of actually ever having or even hearing these songs for legal reasons, but since the RIAA recently admitted lawsuits weren’t the best course of action when it came to illegal downloading and gave up the practice I guess I know longer have to do that. Granted since Blogger doesn’t have a music upload service you will still have to scour Google if you are interested downloading these songs. Of course there are some links on my sidebar to get you started on your search. If you want the unaltered album version of the songs, on the second line I will list the main songs that make up the mash-up (note some have more songs than I’ve listed):
Last year I started a Best Performances of the year list mostly because of the overabundance of great performances at Live Earth. Despite the lack of any major cultural event, I thought I would continue the list for at one more year. Here the live performances that caught my ear this year. I have links to YouTube for those that have yet been pulled and there are even a couple that are sold on iTunes so check out the button for those.
1. Stronger/Hey Mama - Kanye West and Daft Punk (Grammy Awards)
2. Just Stand Up - Carrie Underwood, Mariah Carey, Beyoncé, Mary J. Blige, Rihanna, Fergie, Sheryl Crow, Nicole Scherzinger , Natasha Bedingfield, Miley Cyrus, Leona Lewis, Keyshia Cole, Ashanti and Ciara (Stand Up 2 Cancer)
3. Burning Up/Ray of Light - The Stooges (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony)
4. Slow Dancing in a Burning Room - John Mayer (Where the Light Is)
This may have been the easiest list to make ever because lets face it, there is nothing more entertaining than boob pong. After that it was a race for the other twenty-nine. I have embedded the first couple videos, the rest you can click the link to follow to YouTube and if you are interested in buying the videos, click the iTunes links.
After the most mediocre year last year (see 30 Best Albums of 2007) I thought 2008 was looking up while listening through the almost 200 potential songs that will appear in next week’s Best Songs of 2008 list. Despite being plethora of great songs, there were not really any great albums. There were plenty of good albums released in the last twelve months and here they are.
If you are interested in reading my original review of these albums, check out the link below the album and if you are interested in buying them on iTunes, click on the album link. If you want to buy the physical CD, head over to Scooter McGavin’s Amazon Store where you can order them there:
Every Saturday in January, the National Geographic Channel is airing a new episode of Dangerous Encounters with Brady Barr. You may remember Barr from two years ago when he was famously bitten by a twelve foot long python. Well Barr has had time to recover an in the last episode in the series on January 24, he returns to that same cave again looking for rumored fifty foot pythons.
Then next Saturday, Barr travels to South Africa to put satellite transmitters on crocodiles to see how they migrate after a dam threatens their current habitat and January will be on the hunt for the world’s largest salamanders which can grow up to five feet and eighty pound. I may go into further details about future shows later but until then, head over to the Dangerous Encounters website for these goodies:
, I was a little weary of Mike Judge making a live action film. Granted Office Space was actually based on an animated short that was featured during Liquid Television but ended up turning into a first ballot 
), the previously mentioned Gary Cole (
) to the bumbling Stephan Root (
) and even the smaller roles such as the guy that brought an “O Face” into the lexicon. Thank and many other lines from Office Space has had permanent place in my own personal lexicon over the past decade since it has been released. 