{"id":463,"date":"2006-08-06T17:14:26","date_gmt":"2006-08-06T17:14:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/08\/06\/total-eclipse-of-futurism\/"},"modified":"2006-08-06T17:14:26","modified_gmt":"2006-08-06T17:14:26","slug":"total-eclipse-of-futurism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/08\/06\/total-eclipse-of-futurism\/","title":{"rendered":"Total Eclipse of Futurism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at Making Light, the Nielsen Haydens stumbled upon<\/a> a video of the Hurra Torpedo version<\/a> of the Bonnie Tyler\/ Jim Steinman kitsch masterpiece “Total Eclipse of the Heart,”<\/a> which absolutely boggles the mind. Of course, the weird thing is that their re-invention isn’t actually any weirder than the original video<\/a>, which Teresa also attempts to explain<\/a>. All this together inspired Matt McIrvin to one of the best post titles ever<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the really fascinating thing about this is the “explore more videos” feature on YouTube. From the original video, you can find links to several live<\/a> versions<\/a> of the original, which isn’t too surprising. You can also find an amazing number of homemade videos of the song, edited out of footage of an astonishing<\/a> variety<\/a> of cartoon<\/a> and videogame<\/a> characters, and also River Phoenix movies<\/a>. And beyond that, you can also find the song being sung by a school choir<\/a>, drunken idiots<\/a> of both genders<\/a>, and lip-synched by shirtless frat boys<\/a>, two guys in a living room from the 70’s<\/a>, and, broadening the search to include Google Video (via a link in comments<\/a> at Making Light), upside-down mouths with faces painted on the chins<\/a>. And that barely scratches the surface– Google Video has a whole slew of other versions to offer.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, this is the answer to Charlie Stross’s query about why nobody writes near-future SF any more: because this is what you have to compete with. Presented with revolutionary, world-spanning communications technology, and the ability to instantly retrieve information from an astonishing array of sources, and send it to any of a truly mind-boggling number of people, this is what we use it for.<\/p>\n

Futurism never stood a chance.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

(Incidentally, I’m not saying this is a Bad Thing. This kind of inspired lunacy is the glory of the Internet. But, really, find me the science-fiction writer who predicted this…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at Making Light, the Nielsen Haydens stumbled upon a video of the Hurra Torpedo version of the Bonnie Tyler\/ Jim Steinman kitsch masterpiece “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which absolutely boggles the mind. Of course, the weird thing is that their re-invention isn’t actually any weirder than the original video, which Teresa also attempts… Continue reading Total Eclipse of Futurism<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,37,29,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-pop_culture","category-sf","category-silliness","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}