pop-culture

Article

The Red Balloon

In 1956, French filmmaker Albert Lamorisse created The Red Balloon, a fantastical short film in which a boy (played by Lamorisse's son Pascal) discovers a sentient red balloon. The balloon follows the boy through his daily life, and (no spoilers!) other kids become jealous, eventually causing other balloons to get involved. I saw this Technicolor film in school as a child, and it enthralled me, particularly the final shots -- which you'll recognize as a likely inspiration for scenes in the Pixar movie... READ ON

Article

Futurama 2: What 1964 Thought the Future Would Be Like

At the 1964/65 New York World's Fair, General Motors brought us Futurama 2, its vision of the not-too-distant future. In this futurist ride envisioning the future, lunar bases were a fact of life, weathermen lived at the South Pole in Lost-style bunkers, lasers cut down trees, and seaweed farms provided abundant food as "aquacopters" mined the seafloor. Deforestation via gigantic "factories on wheels!" Deep sea mining! What could possibly go wrong? This was the second version of Futurama; the... READ ON

Article

The Late Movies: Halloween

It's Halloween, in case you hadn't noticed. Let's look at my favorite Halloween-ish videos! Tim Burton - "Vincent" From 1982, narrated by Vincent Price. An amazing tribute to Edgar Allan Poe. It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown - Trick or Treat I was always the kid who got the... READ ON

Article

Kryptos: The CIA Cipher Hiding in Plain Sight

Kryptos photo via Wikimedia Commons Kryptos is an encrypted sculpture installed at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It's a set of huge copper plates with enciphered text carved into them -- for example, one segment reads TWTQSJQSSEKZZWATJKLUDIAWINFBNYP, though it looks a lot nicer in context. Although the sculpture was installed in 1990, it took until 1999 for someone to actually decrypt part of the message: of the four segments of text, three were decrypted (complete with intentional... READ ON

Article

Inside Monsanto's House of the Future, 1957

In 1957, Monsanto demonstrated its vision for future housing, emphasizing one word: plastics. Its House of the Future was displayed at Disneyland from 1957 through 1967, and it envisioned a future home from the then-distant future of 1986. The house featured lavish conveniences including a microwave oven, ultrasonic dishwasher (for plastic dishes, of course), "cold zones" to replace refrigerators and freezers (with a special zone for irradiated foods), and dimmable ceiling lights -- and that's just the... READ ON

Article

Making Dinosaur Sounds for Jurassic Park

How do you make a dinosaur roar, when we have no idea what dinosaurs actually sounded like? The sound designers for Jurassic Park recorded living animals and combined them. In this short video, we learn a little about field recording, sampling, and the art of making an extinct dinosaur roar. Keep an eye out for the super-sweet 90s computer plus Synclavier in the audio studio. According to this very blog in 2006: "T-Rex’s roar was a remix of sounds from a crocodile, a lion, a tiger and a baby... READ ON

Article

Peter Cushing and His Miniature Soldiers

Peter Cushing is famous for his roles in the Hammer films, his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, his roles in Doctor Who films, and later as Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars (among many other roles). The man had some nerd cred. And he totally painted miniature soldiers and played with them, just like us. (For the record, I was six years old when I got into pewter minis, and about twelve when I gave 'em up. Ahem.) In this short British Pathé news reel, we catch up with Cushing at home, painting his... READ ON

Article

Happy 27th Birthday, Nintendo Entertainment System

In Feel Old Again news, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console went on sale 27 years ago this week in North America. Yes folks, it was October 18, 1985 when Nintendo Fever first invaded the living rooms of America. The NES came in two bundles to start with: the Deluxe Set ($199.99 - R.O.B., NES Zapper, two controllers, Gyromite, and Duck Hunt), and the barebones Control Deck ($89.99 - two controllers and no game -- adding on Super Mario Bros. was $10 more). I had neither of these bundles -- my... READ ON

Article

Making Nirvana's "Nevermind"

In this Classic Albums documentary, we learn how Nirvana's Nevermind was made. It does get into the (now well-trodden) Nirvana backstory, which is fine, but the best gems here are interviews with producer Butch Vig. When we see Vig, he's either telling stories about the making of the album (which are interesting) or sitting behind the console, mixing tracks live (which is downright awesome). I thoroughly agree with the opinion of the View Source blog on this (emphasis added): ... The genius of the... READ ON

Article

How Did the Game Genie Work?

The Game Genie was the technological holy grail of my Nintendo-playing childhood. Here was a device that would let me play Super Mario Bros. with infinite lives, or get infinite rockets in Metroid. Here's exactly how it worked, and how people are still using it today. Plugging In From the start, the Game Genie was marketed as a "game enhancer," though there's a fine line between "enhancing" and "cheating." In short, it was able to modify games at startup, so you could change them in ways that made... READ ON