December 4, 2008

YouTube Wrapup: Kermit Sings LCD Soundsystem, Pole Dancing Robots, Mashup Mayhem, Walrus Saxophone Action

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Okay, after that brief foray into serious music (allegedly), we could use a bit of nutty internet video-style distraction. If you’ve ever wondered what hipster band a Muppet should cover, why strippers weren’t more mechanical, how to mix 8,000 songs together with a thimble, or what walruses do in their spare time, click “continues.”

Kermit the Frog – “New York I Love You” (LCD Soundsystem cover)

You know, this Simon Owens doesn’t really get Kermit’s nasally voice right, but even so, the very idea is worth four minutes of your time: the closing track on the New York band’s Sound of Silver has a kind of Sesame Street simplicity about it, and Kermit’s “It Ain’t Easy Bein’ Green” melancholy is a perfect fit for the track’s disillusionment.

Pole-Dancing Robots at MuTate London Exhibit

mojo-photo-polerobots.jpg

I can’t seem to embed this, so go over to the BBC’s web site to watch a bit of this piece at a London gallery that features “All Is Full of Love”-slash-I Robot-style automatons gyrating for your technosexual pleasure. They’ve even got a DJ!

ECC’s Giganto Faux-Touchscreen Mashup Performance Screen System

From Mark Gunderson of the Evolution Control Committee (who probably have the most right of anybody to resent Girl Talk’s success in a medium they really do a heck of a lot better, but he’s actually just super nice and mellow about it all) comes a crazy mashup contraption incorporating a Nintendo Wii, a rear-projector, a thimble, and, um, an F-15 fighter jet. Not that last one. Either way, this guy is the MacGuyver of mashups.

Walrus “Plays” the Saxophone

And from the Huffington Post, it’s, uh, a walrus taking a toy saxophone in his flippers, holding it to his mouth, and swaying back and forth ecstatically to recorded music for a few moments while his trainer does a really embarrassing dance behind him. What is Arianna smoking over there?

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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