Friday Nerd Links

Since it's Friday, I thought I'd write a quick post to share a couple of neat video-related items that I've found on the web....
The first one has been around for a while now, and all Nintendo geeks should have heard about it. I'm talking about the guy who made a video of himself playing the theme song from The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. See, some kid from Sweden put together an impressive unplugged rendition of the song, and it's attracted over a million YouTube hits in the last year or so:

He's friggin' brilliant (seriously -- a look at his other videos will demonstrate this fellow's unique talent). I've mentioned before that Wind Waker was my favorite Zelda title, and one of the reasons why I've always found it so immersive is its excellent score. I've actually spent hours making CDs of the Wind Waker soundtrack to bring along with me on long car rides, and Freddy (that's the Swedish guy's name) has captured the joy and beauty of its main theme perfectly. I smile every time I hear this. It almost makes my eyes well up....

Oh, and the other video thing I have today is a movie site called ShowFlick.com . It's a YouTube-ish service where public domain films and cartoons are posted for the enjoyment of one and all. I love public domain content. Whenever I get the chance, I search the shelves of my local Dollar Tree store to find cheap collections of long-forgotten movies and animated shorts that no one really owns. Most of them are crap, but it is possible to stumble across a few gems. Heck, even when they're bad, I still find them interesting. For instance, let's take some old movie like Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter. Who made it? What motivated them? What happened to those people? I want to know.

Same goes for old cartoons. Did you know there was a series of animated shorts called "Tom and Jerry" produced years BEFORE the cat and mouse Tom and Jerry that the world knows so well now? The original Tom and Jerry were two humans featured in a bunch of films made in 1932. I wouldn't have known about them if not for the fact that DVDs of their shorts can be bought at the Dollar Tree. To me, that's fascinating. I love this stuff.


So, yes -- I recommend ShowFlick to everyone who wants to view such classics as Revolt of the Zombies, Queen of the Amazons, and Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory absolutely free. Who WOULDN'T???

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