Nine Inch Nails Tour History Tracks Concerts Users Have Been To
PHOTO: Trent Reznor - NIN|JA Tour @ Mansfield, MA, 06-03-2009 on Flickr by acidpolly CC BY-NC-SA
I’ve written previously about Setlist.fm, “a wiki-like service to collect and share setlists.” Today, I discovered Nine Inch Nails Tour History, a similar site geared exclusively toward tracking Nine Inch Nails performances. This comes to us from the fine folks at The NIN Hotline, who are celebrating their tenth anniversary today, and it’s NIN geek’s dream come true.
Not only does NIN Tour History track the concerts I’ve been to. It also tracks the number of times I’ve heard certain songs live, and more. Check out my profile here.
Comic Comfort
I’ve been thinking, lately, about the unique way that geeks are set up to comfort themselves as a result of our tendency to collect things. It’s an idea, not surprisingly, born out of one of those difficult periods everyone goes through. Let me set the scene.
Cutest Mega Man Ever
Maybe this is just the Dad in me, but I think YouTube user craineum’s video of his son dressed up as Mega Man is pretty darned awesome. Thanks to Geekologie for linking this up. It pretty much turned my day around, at least for five minutes.
New Footage from HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE Keeps Turning Up
New footage from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince seems to be popping up every day now, and the HP-geek in me is about to die of overexposure to awesomeness, or of Awesome Sauce poisoning, or something. First, there was the clip of the first five minutes that has been up and down on YouTube all weekend. And now, there are new clips from Yahoo UK and from a French preview that’s found its way onto YouTube.
My favorite bit comes from the Yahoo UK footage.
McGonagall (to Harry, Ron, and Hermione): Why is it, when something happens, it’s always you three?
Ron: Believe me, professor, I’ve been asking myself the same question for six years.
As I mentioned in today’s FiveCast, Stephanie and I are listening to The Deathly Hallows audiobook right now during any and all long trips we take, and I’m listening to the entire audiobook sequence during my walks to and from work. What are you doing to psych yourself up for the arrival of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince?
Geek Force FiveCast 183: Harry Potter, Etc.
In which ECC geeks out about Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and more on a dreary Monday morning.
More Michael Jackson Links
I’ve been trying all day to avoid doing another Michael Jackson post. I’m not exactly sure why, since the site is about what our authors are geeking out about at any given moment, and right now I’m geeking out about Michael, but I’ve been trying not to do it. But I’ve been listening to MJ tunes all day, and collecting links all day, and I just have to share.
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Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic has the best written tribute I’ve yet seen. He writes:
He was everything our culture worships; and yet he was obviously desperately unhappy, tortured, afraid and alone.
I grieve for him; but I also grieve for the culture that created and destroyed him. That culture is ours’ and it is a lethal and brutal one: with fame and celebrity as its core values, with money as its sole motive, it chewed this child up and spat him out.
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The Drunken Misanthrope has a piece of a different kind, one about losing the symbols of your youth, a message that is extra-poignant when you consider that yesterday we also lost Farrah Fawcett:
...remembering all this weird, archaic, pleasant stuff from my childhood, I actually started to tear up. Not for Michael Jackson, of course, but for myself. When the symbols and icons of your youth die, it’s like shutting the door to a room you wish you could go back into.
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Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls played “Billie Jean” at a concert last night, in tribute to Michael, and The Music Slut has video (albeit pretty crappy video). [UPDATE (07/02/2009): Here is a better video.]
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Jason Kottke includes video of Michael’s 1995 MTV Music Awards performance in his post, calling it his favorite Michael Jackson performance.
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And, lastly, Boston.com has an interesting piece on how the New England Patriots owe their three Superbowl Championships, in part, to Michael.
Geek Force FiveCast 182: Old Friends
In which ECC geeks out about socializing with old friends.
Rest in Peace, Michael Jackson
Before I ever geeked out about anything traditionally geeky, I geeked out about pop music, and about Michael Jackson specifically. There’s no excuse for the crimes against children that he may have committed, if he did indeed commit them, but there’s also no excuse for the way in which the media dogged him until his dying breath—I’m looking at you, Entertainment Tonight, you pack of scum-sucking fuckholes. But, I don’t want to focus on that stuff. I want to focus on what I think we should focus on with any artist, regardless of the artform, and regardless of the artist: I want to focus on the art. I want to focus on the music that made my day as a kid, and that still makes my day now.
So, enjoy the vid I’ve posted above, of Michael performing “Billie Jean” at the Motown 25 concert. Or don’t. If you hated the man, then just come back tomorrow when we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled shenanigans.
And hey, if you’re looking for something a bit more lighthearted, do remember to check out the Nine Inch Nails OeuvreBlog entry where I tied NIN’s “The Becoming” together with MJ’s “Smooth Criminal.”
Preview of MARVEL DIVAS #1
My first great love in comics was New Warriors, and one of the leads in that book was a redheaded mutant called Firestar who had first appeared in Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends on TV. Firestar hasn’t been used much by Marvel Comics of late, owing mostly to her decision to retire during the Civil War crossover. But she’s back in the spotlight in a new Marvel book called Marvel Divas and I hope that one of you kind souls will donate some funds to the Five so that I can go pick it up. Newsarama has a first look at the first issue, which drops next week.
What do you think? This could be a really fun ride, right?
iPhone Porn Comes to the App Store?
One year and one day ago, I blogged about a Time magazine article that predicted pornography would be the next big thing on the iPhone. Today, the news from Macenstein (by way of Mashable) is that there is finally an App in Apple iPhone App Store that features nudity. It’s called Hottest Girls [iTunes link] and you must be at least 17 to download it. You must also be a complete and utter moron, because you could get what you’re getting here for $1.99 entirely for free just by typing the word “boobs” into Google. You can get much worse, actually (or better, depending on your point of view).
The day may come when the adult industry brings actual pornography to the iPhone, but it is not this day.
