This is one of the most surreal and entertaining things I have seen in a long time! It’s, apparently, a Thai commercial for Sylvania Light Bulbs featuring a bunch of incredibly odd ghosts.

There’s no point me explaining it, just watch! (thanks Harsh!)

The Rock-afire Explosion were an animatronic band comprised of anthropomorphic animals that played in Showbiz Pizza Place restaurants in the USA through the 1980s. After closing down many of these setups found their way to enthusiasts. Here’s one such setup, performing MGMT’s Electric Feel.

Perhaps even more obscurely, a documentary is currently being produced about car-salesman Chris Thrash, a guy who recently purchased the rights to Rock-afire Explosion with an aim to resurrect them and the Showbiz Pizza Place. (via Penny Arcade)

Some of the folks that I work with at NixonMcInnes have been working on this rather fun widget for Oxfam, who are appearing at various festivals through the summer, to find out what gets your knickers in a twist most: poverty, climate change, apathy, injustice or doom merchants.

Feel free to grab it and stick it on your own site, myspace page or whatever else it is you kids are using nowadays.

What would have Guitar Hero been like if it were released in the early 80s? I’d imagine something very much like this! I particularly like the grating (but familiar) “game over” sound. (thanks Dave!)

‘Warcraft’ Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing ‘Warcraft’

While firing up World of Warcraft today for the first time in months (funnily enough to use as a chat client to see if a friend was around, not to play!) I noticed that Blizzard had announced Diablo III.

An intro trailer and all the usual bits and bobs over their site but, most interestingly, a pretty hefty introductory video to the gameplay. Rather lovely it looks too, introducing the Barbarian and Witch Doctor character classes (there’ll be three more, in both male and female flavours) it looks rather WoW-inspired — no bad thing — with lots of lovely touches like destructible scenery which can used to the player’s advantage.

And, oh yes, walls of zombies! I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this one.

Ok, yeah, this kind of happened a few months ago now (brace yourselves, you’re going to hear that a lot over the next few weeks!) but it’s still worth mentioning. Previously only available to paying subscribers, comic artist James Kochalka has made the archives of his wonderful daily comic journal, American Elf, free to access. That’s nine and a half years worth of sketchbook life!

They’re also available as a series of books, I have a copy of the first one which compiles the first five years and it’s a lovely big tome. The second volume, which collects 2004 and 2005, is also available and volume three will be available in November.

First of all, apologies if you arrived here excited by the pretense of the crappy (yet oddly endearing) 1980s cartoon of the same name. Here’s something very arguably better. Adam Phillips, the guy who created the superb Bitey Castle shorts, has been commissioned to produce a number of brief animated cartoons to promote the new 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons.

Episode 1: The Beholder (above)
Episode 2: The Gnome and the Teifling
Episode 3: The Mindflayer

He’s working on a fourth as I type.

Meanwhile, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins over at Penny Arcade and Scott Kurtz from PvP have put together a podcast of, essentially, eight hours of them playing Dungeons and Dragons around a microphone. With the wrong people this really could be the dullest thing on earth but it somehow manages to remain entertaining throughout the four half-hour and a bit podcasts they’ve already put out. Stick this link into iTunes or your podcast grabber of choice: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/rsspodcast.xml or, iTunes users, try this - more here, though you’ll need to sign up for a free account to access the pages.

They’re also doing a little strip to accompany each show.

And, oh ok… If you insist.

Oh hi… are you still here?

I’ve been a little bit more than busy recently and quite a lot of dust has settled all over the furniture here at Antikewl Daily. I’ve been such a bad blogger that I’ve sometimes found it easier to twitter cool stuff or simply email other bloggers so the cool stuff doesn’t go to waste! Here’s a great example of that. It’s an awesome animation by Italian artist Blu (thanks Edd!) and I meant to blog about it ages ago. You’ve probably seen it already by now.

Right, this is going to stop right here! From now on I pledge to post here at least twice a week. Not a massive target, granted, but I believe that if I aim low I’m bound to at least nearly hit it form time to time! You never know, I might even get around to shoving that new design up one day as well…

If you’re reading this, thanks for sticking around!

P.S. If you’re into the whole twitter thing, Antikewl Daily has a twitter feed as well.

Remember Atari? They used to be good. Actually they were rather great and pretty much defined my childhood. Anyway, Kotaku do too and have uploaded a rather cool catalog of Atari stuff from 1981.

Those sure were the days…

Ex-Test Icicle Lightspeed Champion performed their track Galaxy of Lost Souls in full Star Wars garb at this week’s NME Awards show. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a video of it online anywhere but did instead stumble across this gem. Lightspeed Chamption performing the Imperial March and Star Wars theme. Lovely.

Update: There’s now a video of them performing at the NME Awards on YouTube. Enjoy.

“Artoo and the shiny guy.”

“Obeekenobee sometimes moves things around. Sometimes he disappears.”

I think becoming a parent has made me go soft… but isn’t this adorable? (via Geek Parenting)

Yezzer has been working all hours on something, but wasn’t allowed to tell me anything about it. Now that Alice has spilled the beans over at Wonderland and Kotaku are all over it I can finally check it out… and it certainly explains a few things!

Created to accompany the Channel 4 TV drama City of Vice around the beginnings of the police force in Georgian London, Bow Street Runner is a Flash-based game reminiscent of those point-and click “multi-media adventure games” like Return to Zork in the 90s. Except that it’s actually good (and on a web page instead of 5 CD-ROMs).

In what may be considered by some to be an incredibly extreme attempt to copy Boing Boing, I have the utmost pleasure in announcing the birth of Milo Jefferson May. He arrived after an extended labour (that I will not go into detail of for fear of digging up already buried memories of a delivery bed that transformed into what can only be described as a futuristic torture device, ventouse caps and blood, lots of blood) at 1:59pm today, weighing in at 7lb 14oz.

Both Cassie and Milo are now doing well.

I’m off to bed to enjoy my last uninterrupted nights sleep… ever!

Over two hundred people freeze for five minutes inside NYC’s Grand Central station.

I didn’t give any instructions in advance. I just told everyone to be doing something realistic and not jokey. One guy dropped an entire briefcase full of papers the second before he froze, leaving his papers scattered before him for five minutes. Many froze midway through eating or drinking. A few froze while taking off a jacket. One couple froze kissing.

(via Kottke)

I always love looking at optimistic views of the future from the past… and here’s a good one. The Usborne Book of the Future: A Trip in Time to the Year 2000 and Beyond, which was originally published in 1979. Chapters include “Robots: Science and medicine”, “Future Cities: Homes and living” and “Star Travel: Transport and travel”. (via Boing Boing)

It reminds me of the old EPCOT attractions from Walt Disney World like Horizons and Spaceship Earth that were also built around that time.

If you like this it’s also worth checking out the Paleofuture blog for all kinds of fantastic retro visions of the future.

I had read about this some time before Christmas, but hadn’t checked it out until today. RCRD LBL is an online network of record labels by Engadet/Gizmodo co-founder Peter Rojas and Josh Deutsch from Downtown Records… which sort of poses as a kind of blog thing.

A lot of the music is free to download as DRM-free 196kbps MP3s and bands are paid through the website’s sponsorship. You’re welcome to download anything you like from the site and use it in any non-commercial way you want under a Creative Commons license.

The whole thing is stuffed full of RSS feeds to allow you to follow pretty much anything you’re interested in following and Ivan Pope will love that they have whole bunch of widgets to grab, like this little fella (which, uh, sadly seems to break with the Antikewl Daily stylesheet. Oops! Hopefully they’ll fix that at some point!)…

It’s always interesting to see new distribution ideas in the twisted and scary world of the music industry and I’ll definitely be keeping my eye on this one to see how it pans out. (via Wired)

“There aren’t enough Youtube video re-posts around here,” you say? Here’s another one.

Mike Long, a self-proclaimed “social rocktivist”, plans to perform once dance a day around the world and post each video up on YouTube for the next two years. I can’t think of a better idea. (via It’s Nice That)

Normal service will resume shortly.

With a slight danger of AKD becoming a YouTube video dumping ground, here’s a clip of Cornelius performing Count Five or Six live on hipster kids TV show Yo Gabba Gabba.

There’s a higher quality version of the video over at Jezebel.

With Bill Murray.

“It’s such a sadness when you think you’ve seen a film in on your fucking telephone.” (via Boing Boing)

Here’s a bunch of albums I liked in 2007 in no particular order. There’s more than ten, and I probably missed some really good ones.

The Fiery Furnaces
Widow City
Thrill Jockey Records
thefieryfurnaces.com
myspace.com/thefieryfurnaces
Ex-Guru music video
Fabchannel: Live show video

Modest Mouse
We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
Epic
modestmouse.com
myspace.com/modestmouse

Kings of Leon
Because of the Times
Hand Me Down
kingsofleon.com
myspace.com/kingsofleon

The National
Boxer
Beggars Banquet
americanmary.com
myspace.com/thenational

Battles
Mirrored
Warp
myspace.com/battlestheband

Justice
†
Ed Banger
myspace.com/etjusticepourtous

Arcade Fire
Neon Bible
Rough Trade
www.arcadefire.com
http://www.myspace.com/arcadefireofficial

The Go! Team
Proof of Youth
Memphis Industries/Sub Pop
www.thegoteam.co.uk
http://www.myspace.com/thegoteam

New Young Pony Club
Fantastic Playroom
Modular
wearepony.com
myspace.com/newyoungponyclub

!!!
Myth Takes
Warp
chkchkchk.net
myspace.com/chkchkchk

Of Montreal
Hissing Fauna, are you the Destroyer?
Polyvinyl
ofmontreal.net
myspace.com/ofmontreal

Simian Mobile Disco
Attack Decay Sustain Release
Wichita
simianmobiledisco.co.uk
myspace.com/simianmobiledisco

What have I missed?

In what’s now becoming an annual tradition, here’s what last.fm considers my top 20 most listened to artists of 2007. Some serious surprises in there. I’ve listened to a lot of music this year and some of these I hardly remember hearing at all.

1. The Fiery Furnaces
2. Beastie Boys
3. New Young Pony Club
4. Kings of Leon
5. !!!
6. The Go! Team
7. Cansei de Ser Sexy
8. Broken Social Scene
9. Prefuse 73
10. Hot Chip
11. Death From Above 1979
12. The Arcade Fire
13. Ratatat
14. Four Tet
15. Klaxons
16. Ikara Colt
17= Man or Astro-man?
17= Disney
19= Django Reinhardt
19= Justice
19= MSTRKRFT

Massive oddities include Disney (playing the Musical History of Disneyland just once accounts for 65 tracks!) and Django Reinhardt (his haunting version of La Mer/Beyond the Sea from Bioshock made me search out more by this Jazz great. More Bioshock soundtrack tips here, incidentally).

Some old favourites like Man or Astro-man? and Ikara Colt have re-entered as well, thanks to iPod shuffle.

I love this site. A daily cartoon created from the most random archive illustrations.