Hey MumboJumbo-ers, as you’ve undoubtedly noticed, being the keen and perceptive types of readers you are, I’ve put up a new theme on Mumbo Jumbo. That said, there are *lots* of bugs I need to work out still, but nothing that should disturb your reading experience too much save for some missing images. Please bear with the site as I transition to this sleek new theme and hopefully get it up and working soon. I was simply getting too tired of the cluttered old layout and think this will be a major improvement. Enjoy!

Pretty fun little clip – though I think they got it a little off…

FT”A”:

Just Imagine (1930) Directed by David Butler. El Brendel, Maureen O’Sullivan, John Garrick, Marjorie White, Frank Albertson.

Just Imagine is a humorous science-fiction movie musical presented by Fox Film Corporation in 1930, directed by David Butler, to console audiences distressed by the Great Depression.

The film was set in the year 1980, and it depicted the conventional expectations of technological progress associated with that “distant future” date. A large dirigible hangar was used to house a huge, detailed, large-scale model of a modern city, complete with suspension bridges between towering skyscrapers, multi-lane elevated roadways, and a flock of flying machines flitting around above the city as another level of traffic. To modern viewers, the city resembles an implausibly exaggerated version of 1930s New York City.

The plot involves a man from 1930, who is experimentally revived from the dead by a team of physicians who have no interest whatsoever in him after he awakens. Two young men who have observed the process as guests of one of the nurses kindly take him in hand and show him (and the audience) the wonders of 1980. He also gets to travel to Mars, which turns out to be inhabited by friendly humans, each of whom has an evil, otherwise-identical twin.

Now here is something amazing – Coldplay, one of the best selling, record breaking rock artists of the current decade, a huge money-maker for their record label, EMI, has released a completely free live album, without any DRM in it this past week.

I’m pretty sure some pigs just touched down in a nearby airfield, but then again, the media has been telling us about swine flu for sometime, hasn’t it?

All puns aside, this is truly an amazing and progressive move from a label that has traditionally been rather litigious. Is this a sign that record labels are truly ready to stop treating file-sharers as ne’er-do-well pirates and start treating them like fans and customers?

Truth be told, I’m not a huge fan of Coldplay. I tend to like music that’s much edgier and a lot less progressive/less suited to clear channel radio.  That said, I did download this album and am giving it a good listen. Perhaps Coldplay will even gain another fan from this?

The “cd” is a live album and comes as a zip download with 9 tracks and album art. All you have to provide in exchange is an e-mail address, which they promise not to spam or sell.

The album is 192 kpbs mp3’s and sound really crisp and clear, actually. Ideally, I would have liked to have seen some more download options, specifically some kind of lossless audio, but let’s not forget – a major label just released an entirely free album.

This just goes to show that the record industry is finally beginning to embrace the future instead of fighting it. The likes of Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead clearly blazed a new trail and now traditional media is beginning to follow. The future is looking a little brighter.

Download Coldplay – LeftRightLeftRightLeft

I found this little gem of a program the other day and just wanted to share it with you all!

It’s no secret that Mac OSX has one of the most streamlined and usable desktop interfaces around, which is why it’s features are so often emulated on other platforms. Gloobus-Preview, a new program from sole developer Jordi Hernàndez does just that by offering up a powerful new plug-in for Ubuntu in the same vein as OSX’s Quick Look. The end result is a sleek little program that’s not only helpful and convenient, but sure to impress your tech-savvy friends.

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Neglected and Forgotten by Neglected and Forgotten from Flickr

Hello dear readers,

I realize apology posts are the worst, but I feel I must for the lack of posts here on Mumbo Jumbo. Things in my life have been a bit haywire, between travel and trying to find stable full time employment. Anyway, I want to let you know I have a full site upgrade planned soon to make MJD better than ever, and I hope to keep bringing you great tidbits from around the world wide web for a very long time. Take Care!

-Bob Cornero

Hey guys, I just wanted to take some time out to compliment an absolutely excellent and talented musician named Fred Baty and his project entitled Crepusculum, Latin for sundown. Please download his Sky Diaries EP, which he is generously offering for free.

The clip below is the artist himself, and he gives a sample of what his album sounds like:

Click the picture or link to download the free music from his site:

My brother recently informed me of this great film, Darius Goes West. It’s the story of a teenager who is living with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy who embarks on a journey west with his friends to get MTV’s Pimp My Ride to trick out his wheelchair. It’s a touching and inspiring story about a courageous young man who seeks to live and enjoy life unrelentingly, despite the fact that he’s never even left his county before in his life. Everyone needs to see this film, and I don’t say that lightly.

The movie has already won numerous independent film awards. Best of all, all the profits from the sale of the film go to research to help cure this disease, which currently has a 100% fatality rate, with most individuals dying in their late teens or early twenties.  It is also surprisingly prevalent in this day and age, and can literally happen to anyone as it is not related to heredity.

The film is currently distributed on DVD for 20 dollars. 17 of that goes to research. 3 goes to the publishing costs of the DVD. Please check out and support this film; spread the word. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

http://www.dariusgoeswest.org/

Again, I’m slow in writing about this, but if you have an iPod you need to fill with great, free music, please direct your attention to the SXSW 2009 festival’s torrents.

Every year since the beginning, SXSW has made every song they play at the festival freely available on their website.  For the past two years, all the MP3’s have been collected by generous users into gigantic torrents for our downloading convenience.

This year, there are 6 GIGS (!!!) of music for a total of 1267 free (and legal!) songs divided up into 3 torrent files. You can grab the torrents here.

For more information of the music and torrents, please see torrentfreak’s original posting.

And on what is perhaps a more humorous note, one intrepid writer has listened to *ALL* the songs and posted 6 word reviews for each of them here.

Enjoy!

I’m a little slow in posting this, but I definitely was right when Trent Reznor hinted on his Twitter feed that NIN would be releasing a new album to promote their next concert series, this time with the reunited Jane’s Addiction and Tom Morello’s new project, Street Sweeper.

It’s a solid EP featuring 6 hard tracks. Of course, this won’t be for everyone as NIN and their ilk are one of those groupd you either love or hate. Great to see big name, forward-thinking musicians releasing free content. The free download is available at http://ninja2009.com/

This just reminds me of something straight out of Napoleon Dynamite. Only sometimes life is stranger, and you can’t think up things like this. Anyway, I got a real kick out of it. Enjoy your Monday – at least you’re not in small claims court!

Good news, everyone! MJD is going to be here a little while longer, same bat-time, same bat-channel. I was able to get the funds going to keep everything up and running.

I’m also looking into making major renovations to the site when I get a chance. This basically means finding a new theme and tweaking it until I’m content. The current one we have, while decent, is a bit too cluttered for my tastes. If you can recommend any wordpress themes you think might be good for MJD, please let me know!

Of course, this all happens in my spare time, which is few and far between at this juncture in life. I’ll keep you all posted and keep coming back/spreading the word!

The author of what could possibly be the greatest blog on the planet (no, not boingboing.net, blast you Cory Doctorow! *shakes fist at the heavens!*) has just recently had a brithday and as such, I’m giving you all the gift of music!

Well, actually, someone else made it, but it’s free to download.

Kutiman, a funk artist has made an entire album from remixed youtube videosentitled Thru You. It’s actually pretty amazing; some are calling it the birth of a new artform (but anyone who’s read Lessig knows we’re just living in a remix culture and that this is a natural extension of that).

Anyways, check out the sweet site here: http://thru-you.com/

Also, the tracks have been compiled and are pretty well seeded on The Pirate Bay, should you want the mp3 album: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4762807

I’ve got a lot of music on my radar lately… but this little blurb from Trent Reznor on his twitter has me excited:

Also, be sure to watch http://www.ninja2009.com/ which goes live next Friday 3/20 – who knows what might be there?

New album perhaps?

Parts 3 and 4 are after the jump.

Everyone has been touched in some way by this recession. I’ve been graduated since last May and have only been able to get freelance work here and there (and I have Oxford in my resume!) If you want to understand the recession going on right now, follow these three men, Ron Paul, Peter Schiff (who predicted this entire mess years ago to a T!), and Lew Rockwell. They are the only ones who seem to know how to do anything in Washington.

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Ron Paul should have been elected this past November. Everything he said is coming true. Join the Campaign for Liberty if you feel that same!

I first got interested in The Watchmen when I heard Zach Snyder was going to be directing. I thoroughly enjoyed his take on the Zombie movie with his remake of Dawn of the Dead and 300 was a brilliant epic. As such, I’ve been reading through the Watchmen graphic novel in eager anticipation of the film, which gets released today. But this video will be funny to anyone who has watched the film (or grown up in the 80’s – doubly so to those who have done both), which I’m hearing is amazing.

I want to take a minute to tell you about a great film that I’ve recently seen. This is, hands down, my favorite movie at the moment and I can’t wait to see it again. Full disclosure: this review is not sponsored in any way. I’m genuinely, freely plugging this film.

Coraline is the story of a lonely girl moving into a new house and starting life over with her mother and father, both of whom are somewhat inattentive writers.  To escape her boring and dreary life, Coraline goes into another world, a magical mirror version of her own world.  That’s all I’m going to say about the plot because I don’t want to ruin anything. The story is written by Niel Gaiman and follows his children’s book of the same title.

The film itself is only available to watch in 3D and I have to say it’s the only film I know of worth watching in 3D. It’s largely a character piece, with a heavy attention to detail and design. I’m not even sure I can rightly call it a film as much as an experience in and of itself. I haven’t been that swept up in a movie in a long time. It’s an utterly beautiful, whimsical, entertaining  and original work of art that’s good for both kids and adults (though perhaps not kids younger than 5 or so due to some scary imagery).

If you have a chance, please see this film. Stop-motion is a dying art and I love to see it put into practice by the master, Henry Selick, the director behind The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach.

Trust me on this: everyone else is going to be crowding in to see Slumdog Millionaire now that it’s won 8 oscars. The theaters will be peacefully empty and you’ll be able to enjoy this overlooked masterpiece!

Flickermood 2.0 from Sebastian Lange on Vimeo.

I’ve recently begun working in After Effects, experimenting on my own, so I can appreciate this piece on a deeper level, knowing how much time and computing power it must have taken to animate all this. This is beautifully done.

Hello everyone,

Well, I’ve been on hiatus for a while, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. I’ve recently completed a whole screenplay and have been in the process of getting it read. I’m hoping to be able to spend some more time on Mumbo Jumbo Daily in the near future, whatever iteration it may come in; be it here at this URL or on a Wordpress.com URL.

Needless to say, I hope everyone is doing well and weathering this economic climate. I know I’ve been getting by alright (could be better, but hey! I’m not complaining!)

Anyway – I hope to resume bringing you excellent and intriguing stories, and I hope you keep checking back for more. Thanks!

-Bob

One of my favorite television shows of all time is Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel.  If you’ve never watched it, it’s a bit of a gross-out fest at times, but then again, it takes a lot to gross me out so it doesn’t really bother me all that much.  Mike Rowe is the host and he tackles every dirty job with a vicious wit and aplomb.

In this speech, Mike reflects on one of his dirtiest jobs, and everything it brought to his attention.  The speech is hilarious and thought provoking and available in HD – in other words, well worth your time.  Enjoy!

Hi everyone,

I realize I haven’t posted here for a while; things have been rather crazy in my life.  Like most people, this economic downturn hasn’t been too kind to me.  I’ve been out of work since November and am cutting costs everywhere.  This includes the site.  I will not be able to afford the renewal costs in March unless I find a job between now and then.

If you’ve noticed the severe lack of posts lately, it’s because I’ve been occupying my time trying to find work and fill in odd jobs here and there.  I honestly never thought that after 4 years of college and everything I’ve done, including my medical training and post-graduate religious studies at Oxford, my media internships and work experience, that I wouldn’t be able to find a job.  But alas, here we are.

What will happen to Mumbo Jumbo Daily?  Well, I will save the site databases as best as I can – all the articles and comments – and try to transfer them over to a free Wordpress.com account, if that’s even possible.  That means the URL of this site would change, and if/when it does, I will let you, faithful reader, know.

Thanks for all your support in this.  Mumbo Jumbo Daily isn’t going away – it’s just changing, like so much else during these tough times. I hope things work out so I can continue to write here.

In good news, however, I’ve been working on two projects on the side.  I’ve been writing up a fantasy story novel which I can best describe as a mix between a Tim Burton animated film and an American Tall Tale, set in a New England fishing community.  Expect truly amazing things from that story.

Likewise, I’ve also begun working on a screenplay.  But this is very hush-hush.

So stay tuned.  I will keep you all updated on the status of the site, and let you know what changes, if any, will be necessary in the future.

God Bless.

-Bob