Concerto for Beatboxer and Orchestra

This Friday sees the world premier of a new classical composition by popular modern composer Anna Meredith. However this is a score with a difference as Anna, in collaboration with top British beatboxer Schlomo (it's his real name), has incorporated 5 of the performance artists into her latest piece, Concerto for Beatboxer and Orchestra, playing at London Southbank Centre. The first problem facing the odd-couple duo was how exactly to score a beatbox performance as the vocal styling had grown from its hip-hop roots entirely by 'word of mouth' and has no formal notation. Undeterred Meredith and Schlomo have spent a year constructing their own, which they hope will gain wider adoption when the entire score of the new work is made available online for free following the first performance (FT).

The Southbank Centre has put up a 'teaser trailer' for the new work


And Schlomo's beatbox talents can be checked out courtesy of the BBC's Jules Holland Show.

Salamander Sam: Back in Action

As very few of you are probably aware, I have been away for a while. Now that I have returned from winter vacation I can start posting again, and I will start with a few weird things I have found around the internet over the past few months.

First, we have an ad that I noticed right here on Weird Universe:


I know Microsoft is evil, but getting their rival to link to their competing service? That's just terrible.

More >>

Go Ahead, Waste My Time

Yes, my title is a really lousy rendition of the "Go ahead, make my day" line as uttered by Clint Eastwood in Sudden Impact. But it's relevant because this post is about a website dedicated to some of the cheesiest lines ever spoken in action movies. The Quotable Action Hero blog is guaranteed to waste at least fifteen minutes of your life. So what's weird about it? It may just be a matter of opinion, but these are not your typical quotations. In fact, if the blog author didn't include the movie's name along with the quote, I would have no idea where most of these lines came from. What do you think?

Horse in a Hamster Bubble

Fast-forward to the 1:30 mark.

Floram Marchand

As magic tricks go, the "I can vomit wine" claim has died a deserved death. One imagines that neither David Copperfield, nor even Penn & Teller, will be reviving the spectacle of Floram Marchand any time soon.

Floram Marchand: The Great Water Spouter

In the summer of 1650, a Frenchman named Floram Marchand was brought
over from Tours to London, who professed to be able to 'turn water into
wine, and at his vomit render not only the tincture, but the strength
and smell of several wines, and several waters.' Here - the trick and
its cause being utterly unknown - he seems for a time to have gulled
and astonished the public to no small extent, and to his great profit.
Before, however, the whole mystery was cleared up by two friends of
Marchand, who had probably not received the share of the profits to
which they thought themselves entitled. Their somewhat circumstantial
account runs as follows.

More >>

Tempest Storm

Speaking of elderly performers, what of Miss Tempest Storm, apparently still stripping into her eighties?

The first video represents the present, the second the past. State your preference.

Family Guy Maize

Bob Connors, a farmer in Danvers, Massachusetts, took it upon himself to mow Brian and Stewie into his corn maze, with Fox's permission of course. Now he's looking to get the creator of "Famliy Guy" to come to his farm and do the voices of the characters, which shouldn't be too hard since Seth MacFarlane has family in the area. The Boston Globe/Connors Farm

Underwater Stripper

We've featured underwater weddings here at WU before, but who could imagine that there was once an underwater strip show?

The caption for this first shot from the Life foto archives reads: "Stripper Divena performing her act inside a plexiglas tank filled with water at Casino Royale Club,New Orleans, LA, US."

However, all did not end well for Divena, as we see from the second foto, captioned thus: "Stripper Evangeline Sylvas angrily breaks a water tank being used by a fellow stripper—a disruption that was not a planned part of the act."

MP3 Experiment

Back on May 23, Over 2,000 people gathered for the Sixth Annual Mp3 Experiment. Everyone had to download the same mp3 and at exactly 4:00 pm press play. Once the opening song finished, Steve (the voice on the mp3) tells you to do some crazy stuff. Too bad I don't live in New York, because this looks like a lot of fun.
Improv Everywhere

Wouldn’t That Be A Great Band Name?

I know you've had this thought at least once... you and your friends are sitting around, drinking a few brewskis (or shooters or whatever it is you drink). One of your friends says something completely off the wall and you think, "that'd be a great band name." Oddly enough, that is how some of the best known bands get their names. Other bands have their names chosen for them by record producers or managers (how boring). In the end, how a band gets its name seems to be as different from one band to the next as their various playing styles. Here is a comprehensive list, in alphabetical order, of some of the most popular bands in recent history and where their names come from. I admit that the list itself is not particularly weird, but the way some of the bands ended up with their current names definitely is.

All original content in posts is Copyright © 2008 by the author of the post, either Alex Boese ("Alex"), Paul Di Filippo ("Paul"), or Chuck Shepherd ("Chuck"). All rights reserved. The banner illustration at the top of this page is Copyright © 2008 by Rick Altergott.