A lot of people don’t know this, but the Red Army actually invented the idea of a dance off:

I just bumped into Yatta for the first time in years. Yatta!

Easy Rider, salad the mall!

Ringo looks mostly perturbed by having to make this ridiculous video:

Via Reddit.

In 1977 Elvis Costello busted into his own Saturday Night Live performance to play Radio Radio:

In 1999 he busted into a Beastie Boys Saturday Night Live performance to play Radio Radio:

Beware performers, your Saturday Night Live performance could be next.

How is it that the 1980s robot dancing ever fell out of style?

I wonder how long the guitarists had to rehearse their synchronized moves?

Via Cynical-C.

David Sedaris describes the wonderful, WONDERFUL Christmas tradition in the Netherlands. It’s crazy and racist!

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

Here’s a video I took while riding in a Tuk Tuk in Cambodia near Angkor Wat:

On my TV today:

The drainage system in Siem Reap, Cambodia doesn’t seem to be up to traditional international standards:

There was one channel on TV in Japan that showed complicated math (and physics?) problems for at least two hours one morning. I request that someone who knows math kindly solve all of the equations:

I attended a baseball game in Japan between the Yomiuri Giants and the Hanshin Tigers. When you buy tickets in Japan for a baseball game, they ask you which team you’re rooting for and seat you within the stadium based on that question. For my game, all the Tigers fans were on the third base side of the stadium, and all the Giants fans were on the first base side. This was done to facilitate the organized chanting that goes on throughout the entire game without stop. They sing, they chant, they wave flags, they bang sticks together… the whole time.

It was hard to watch the game what with all the fun of well organized and stadium-wide chanting.

I have a few video clips from my travels which I haven’t done anything with yet. I’m going to start putting them online in the next few days. Here’s the first, the tuna auction in Tokyo’s Tsukiji Fish Market:

It was surprisingly sing-songy.

I really enjoyed this song/video by Tim Minchin about a certain six letter taboo word containing “a couple of Gs, an R and an E, an I and an N.” The sync is off, but the song is still enjoyable:

Via YesButNoButYes.

Hey, look at me, I know someone running for the North Dakota state Senate:

Do I know anybody else who lives in North Dakota?

My brother linked to an old interview with the Wachowski brothers with one point about The Matrix that I found particularly interesting:

[Concerning the a]gent training where woman in red dress appears
People don’t realize how important this scene is. Because we are all staring at the woman in the red dress! There’s actually twins and triplets that we hired in that scene. And all of the clothes are based on black and white costumes, like nuns, chefs, brides, sailors. We had the idea that Mouse just doubled people instead of making originals. But we couldn’t afford to do it digitally, so we ended up hiring as many doubles, or as many twins, as we could find in Sydney. It was kind of like a bad dream on the set.

There’s something fundamentally sad about going through a lot of effort to do something interesting, only to have it go totally unnoticed by everybody. It must happen all the time in movies, where a point is conveyed in what the director thought was a subtle, but elegant, manner, only to go totally unobserved. I’m sure they’re probably used to it, but it still seems sad. Directors’ commentary tracks on DVDs probably help fix this a little bit.

Anyway, here’s the scene. Now that you know there are triplets in there, can you see them?

I still can’t.