Author: Chris Barrus

The Top 10 Outsider Videos

So your copy of Heavy Metal Parking Lot is so mint you want to “jump its bownes” and the audio on your Senator Bud Dwyer Blows His Head Off video is so clear you can hear “hey Bud, Bud, don’t!” in your nightmares. You have punk Quincy, punk CHiPS, and a straight-from-TV version of the A.B.C After School Special: The Day My Kid Went Punk. You even made sure to own all three TV Carnage tapes in case your collection left out any Gary Coleman shit. You’re done, right?

And the top 10 are (which is kinda weird since they’re randomly selected)…

  1. Jan Terri – Rockin’ Video collection
  2. Anna Nicole Smith – Outtakes
  3. Peace and Love – the movie pitch
  4. Orson Welles – Paul Masson commercial
  5. Elton and Betty White
  6. Todd Weeks – Self-Defense Guru
  7. What I Really Want
  8. Best of the Worst Star Search Audition Tapes
  9. Martin Carlton Stunt Special
  10. Winnebago Man

What? No Jonathan Bell. The Orson Welles clip on that site is totally worth the link.

Airborne Holographic Projector

Can’t find the original article on the Sydney Morning Herald site, but the full text is here. The tech the article refers to was actually part of the USAF’s 2025 Report, which is basically a high-tech wish list of spook stuff.

We are in Baghdad in 1991, and something strange is happening. A hush falls over the city as a huge shimmering face materialises in the sky. Soldiers and citizens prostrate themselves as each hears the voice of Allah, commanding them to overthrow the evil and treacherous Saddam Hussein. Within minutes an angry mob is storming the palace as the guards flee…

This highly imaginative scenario was proposed by US Air Force (USAF) planners for a bloodless victory in the Gulf conflict. The idea of putting words in God’s mouth is not new. In the second century AD Lucian described a statue of the god Aesculapius that spoke to believers, aided by a hidden priest with a speaking tube.

The Baghdad plan involved projecting a giant hologram over Iraq. This kind of projection requires a mirror behind it. The scale of the project dictated a mirror several kilometres across up in space. So far the largest mirror developed has been 30 metres wide and present versions are too small to produce a convincing image at ground level.

If memory serves, I recall seeing an episode of The Bionic Woman that had this type of tech – only it was helicopter mounted and used to project images of flying saucers.

How Awful Is the Radio in Your City? Take This Simple Test

Listen to local radio for four consecutive hours (come on, you can do it!), randomly changing the station every so often. Start with 500 points, and add or subtract points as indicated for each occurrence of an event listed here. Then check your city’s score against the scale below–the lower the score, the more awful.

Dave Mandl’s site at WFMU has the entire test.