April 2014

Indianapolis Jones is led by singer/songwriter Nicholas Niespodziani. That's him jumping rope. Day-Glo, trippy, amazing rope.

And, as you can (maybe?) tell, this ain't his first experience with this underrated sport/artform — his old band Y-O-U made a mockumentary about fake rope jumping team The Flying Wallabies, presumably based upon his time in the Jumphound Gang, a competitive jump-rope team, and competering in the US Nationals of rope jumping. Which sounds like a goof, but really: What would anyone get out of inventing a fictional jump rope backstory? 

"Not Ghosts Yet" is also a family affair: Nick's sister Gina Niespodziani is part of directing/creative team Hey Beautiful Jerk, with Mark Szumski, and also chips in on the rope jumping.

This week learned several about Pharrell Williams and the music video "Happy"..

1. The worldwide reaction to the video moves him so much that it actually makes him cry. Yes, Oprah is involved here, and she tends to make lots of people cry, but still... The music video and what happened with it moved him to tears.

2. "Happy" is very eerie when you watch it without the music. Check it out. 

3. Apparently, as Spin dug into today, the video bears a striking resemblence to Girl Walk // All Day — a 2011 longform video that accompanied Girl Talk's All Day album. See for yourself in this split-screen comparison posted under the winky/fun title "Pharrell Loves My Work" by Girl Walk // All Day star, Anne Marsen.

It says something about our post-modern times that a 24-hour music video can be decried as a rip off.... And it's a shame that we can take a very clear example of a video breaking a song — Pharrell points out in the Oprah interview that the song received zero airplay or interest before the video went live —  and find a reason to invalidate it.

That said, they do look similar in that two minute compilation taken from one video that's over 70 minutes long and another that's 1,440 minutes long.