I’ve become absolutely obsessed with Tecktonik dancing since Eliza’s posting. It’s still obviously a work in progress, individually colored by the dancers but there’s a lot to like here.
I think Lektra’s (the girl in the “Best of” video) take on it is not only highly imaginative but absolutely stunning. I’m already formulating some sort of plan to visit France (my aunt already lives there) and see what I can do to learn it for myself.
Anyway, thank you for the post Eliza, although unintentional, it has inspired me to take dancing far more seriously than the private enterprise I considered it before.
This is probably the first and last time we’ll hear of Ectomo changing any lives. We’ve touched plenty of you, sure, but you wouldn’t remember that.
Good fortune to Tao, and anything to be of service.
It’s Tuesday, the bastard child of the week; not far enough removed from Monday to escape the scorn that wells up from the return to work and not close enough to the next weekend to elicit the joy of a journey’s last leg. In an effort to improve your Tuesday Ectomo presents you with the exuberant gesticulations of this corpulent man. May his child-like jiggling serve you well.
The hits just keep on comin’ folks. This time our diminutive dancer has some real star power behind her, bumping and grinding along to the Amy Winehouse hit, Rehab and her friend in the mask has an expanded speaking groaning role.
Seemingly sprung from a single video depicting a French teenager having a seizure in his basement, dance movement Tecktonik has taken root in Euroyouth. They love sneakers, shitty hair, neon clothes, and busting moves absolutely everywhere. The irony here is so recursive, that even trying to puzzle out where to draw the line between “cool” and “stupid” is giving me hives.
In all honesty, I do not know much about Brazil and while I would love to take the easy way out and just blame America’s woefully inadequate educational system, the truth is that I am just lazy. Therefore, my impressions of what I am sure is a wonderful country is limited to the lonely excesses of my youth meaning that, as far as I am concerned, Brazil is a sunny land comprised solely of beaches overflowing with gorgeous women who will partake in the most filthy erotic acts with you, if you have a camera. At least, that’s what I knew. Now, however, another facet of Brazil’s vibrant culture has been revealed to me, in the form of a dancing, lilliputian transvestite and her dancing partner. Wearing a bondage mask.
Go on, don’t be shy. They dance for you.
Update: Arthur points out in the comments that this is from Chile which, while in South America, is not Brazil.
While in America chains like Pizza Hut® and Domino’s® advertise their consumables with footage of slathering, half-starved, middle income families, clawing hungrily for the new Cheese Injected Deep Dish Obscenely Large Meat Fister’s Pizza With Cheese And Meat™, the Japanese chain, Pizza-La®, takes a different tact. In their ads, animated, anthropomorphic pizza ingredients dance behind a boy with a slice of pizza for a head. This is all well and good until the end where, having extended thanks to his topping friends, said dancers turn their backs on Slice Boy, condemning him to a lonely, black existence. Food can be so cruel.
It’s Friday so just sit back, relax, and watch James Brown, his man breasts glistening through an obscenely low v-neck, his legs clad in the widest and finest of flared pants. Watch him as he dances for he dances for you, Ectomo.
From the 1983 film Mantrigari Viyyankudu comes “Manasuku Dosthi”, an amazing song with a killer bass-line and equally killer moustaches. Witness our moustachioed hero as he confronts surprised old people, wields a huge glowing sword, and throws down the meanest dance moves to ever grace the screen. Prepare yourself for the unstoppable force of nature who is, Chiru.
If you’re wondering why there are no new episodes of The Maxx you may blame Viacom who, at some point yesterday, swept through YouTube and removed them. Ah well. There is plenty of strangeness left to fill the void. Witness, and be entertained:
• First up is Paranoia Agent, the television series from anime filmmaker Satoshi Kon. If you have never seen any of his work, do not let the seemingly nonsensical opening throw you off, this is one of the most mature and intelligent series done in the past few years. Beware the boy with the golden bat…
• Ah FLCL, also known as Fooly Cooly, a series that was decidedly nonsensical. There are few ways to describe this short, six episode series, that would give you any impressions of it other than “Whaaaa?” which is, most likely, the same reaction you’ll have after having watched it.
• Musical Interlude! If you are uninterested, now would be a good time to refill your bowl of Cocoa Puffs or use the restroom. Our show will resume momentarily.
• Two episodes of Courage the Cowardly Dog, “Cabaret Courage” and “Freaky Fred”, which follows a long tradition of worthwhile cartoons by appealing to adults as well as children, without frightening/confusing/boring the latter. “Hello, new friend, my name is Fred. I said, my name is Fred; the words you hear are in my head. I say, I said, my name is Fred and I’ve been very NAAAUGHTY.”
• The Real Ghostbusters, the first episode, entitled “Knock Knock”, written, as many of the first two seasons were, by J. Michael Straczynski. Before the series lightened up in the third season, in order to appeal to a wider and younger audience, this show was, at times, genuinely scary and always brilliantly animated. That quality of animation is especially apparent here.
In a culture of casual nudity, cheap beauty, and non-stop supermodel rollerdiscos, what can a man do to get noticed? How can he draw slitted eyes away from mirrors, and fellow sapphic sphynxes, long enough to make any sort of impression? When personality, looks, and tiger speedos just don’t cut the mustard anymore, what else is left?
Reanimator II, which I have not seen, apparently made a bid for a top single with this jaw-dropping work of pop-musical genius. I blame Stickypig for this. Why couldn’t he have just rickrolled me, like fucking Christ intended?
This week on Noise du Jour is all about monsters, horror, and spookiness. A little post-Halloween nepenthe as we travel through holiday hell.
The surreality of a cross-continental missed connection, performed in distressingly autistic mime by the Prime Ministers of nerd rock. I see an allegory for internet romance here, and also a plaintive description of the alienation felt by the type of person I imagine Flansberg and Linnell to be. That is, my type of person.
It’s positively surreal to see DEVO - DEVO! (and, for that matter, Ray Charles) - starring in a promotional video for Pioneer’s brandnew LaserDisc system…which, for all you kids too young to remember the 1980s, were basically just CDs the size of old vinyl records. The world’s most anti-corporate band has become hucksters for a dead-end technology.
Only DEVO would do the video dressed in suits, bow-ties, and weird one-eyed, spaz-haired skullcaps. Now that’s what I call a sales video.
BE STIFF! It’s hard to believe that 1) Saturday Night Live used to be funny; and 2) DEVO was once regarded as the future of music. Here at Ectomo, we believe heartily in Devo’s theory of de-evolution! I may only speak from personal experience here, perhaps because I am the only member of the staff who lives in the wilds of southwestern Pennsylvania and routinely ingests mutagenic materials for Fun and Profit, but I have seen de-evolution in action: both in my neighbors, and in myself. My newly-grown semi-prehensile tail clearly demonstrates a step backwards–but not so much as my realization that Devo’s cover of “Satisfaction” describes visually, musically, and conceptually my entire love life.
*Le sigh* I guess I’m just a spud boy, looking for a real tomato. You’d think things would’ve de-evolved enough by now that I’d be able to find on every street corner spud girls being stiff, through being cool, to get me jerkin’ back and forth…but not, it was all just wind in sails. ARE WE NOT MEN?! Sadly, we all still are. Nothing but a bunch of damn new traditionalists bound by our duty now for the future. As a transhumanist, I know that someday…someday I’ll be a mechanical man and be above all this human BS, but until then…I’m just a blockhead.
In sheer defiance of the World Wide Web Consortium's will, Ectomo was designed using a non-web-standard font. Luckily, it is included in the excellent font pack released by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, which can be freely downloaded in Mac and PC formats here. Ectomo should still look fine without it, though.
