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Release Date: August 05, 2009
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Release Date: September 29, 2009
Genre: Rock
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Discover New Music

  • Supermodified

    • 10 out of 10
    • Amon Tobin
    • The genius is in the beats. Amon Tobin creates fantastic, groovy beats behind beats. "Supermodified" rolls through your expectations of breakbeat music, and turns them up a bit. It's a mellow album, p
  • The Stooges

    • 8 out of 10
    • The Stooges
    • Another pillar of my musical foundations, The Stooges' first album is one those records whose influence far outweighed its popularity. Like The Velvet Underground & Nico, hordes of people wh

  • Life's Rich Pageant

    • 8 out of 10
    • R.E.M.
    • In the long series of R.E.M.'s evolution, this album (finally?) showcases their ability to capture on tape what had been happening in the live for years: heartfelt, sweat-filled performances that just
  • Zooropa

    • 10 out of 10
    • U2
    • This record is perhaps U2's finest hour, yet it has been forgotten as a strange by-product of the ZooTV tour's overload, and is generally regarded by most fans as a poor effort. It is this sentiment t
  • Priest = Aura

    • 10 out of 10
    • The Church
    • Another of my all-time favorites, Priest = Aura is one of those rare albums where every song is simply fantastic, and a testament to how good pop-rock can be.

      Each song immediatel

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Free on iTunes

Ninjas, Dancing Dirty, and Ghost Gobbling

You know what? I’ve been doing this all wrong.

For weeks now I’ve been telling you all about the free videos that appear weekly on the iTunes Store. That was OK and all, but the freebies I’ve been looking at is hardly all there is. It’s like looking at the tip of an iceberg and saying, "gee, it’s kinda small, ain’t it?"

From time to time I’ve dipped into the video podcast area to clue you in on some interesting stuff, but I’ve been doing the video podcast area a great, and you, intrepid reader, disservice because, really, that is where the free meat is.

I’ve already told you about the National Park, and National Geographic short vids, but that’s only a tiny peek of the treasures hidden away in the video Postcast area of the iTunes Store. So, from now on I will include at least one look at a video podcast jewel, and there are some real gems in there too.

For instance: Is there a great question burning a hole in your grey matter? You know, some query for which the rejoinder must be so profound that your very perception of the world as you know it would be forever altered. Life and all its mysteries would miraculously be revealed as a single unifying thought once you receive your answer.

But who could you pose such a question to? Who would possess the depth and breath of knowledge and the ability to articulate a response in an easily understood yet meaningful way?

Who, in other words, could you ask?

Why, Ask A Ninja, of course!

Yes, it’s amateurish. For sure the ’ninja’ in Ask A Ninja is just some guy dressed up in a black ski mask. Heck, the guy ain’t even Japanese! But watching Ask A Ninja is kind of like eating a triple decker bacon, mushroom, and swiss burger and a side order of cheese fries (mmmmm! Cheese fries!) immediately after your doctor has warned you away from such fair; you know it bad for you, but you do it anyway.

Thankfully, each episode is only about 3 minutes long; any longer and you might be prompted to bash your iPod on some pointy rocks. So go ahead, try an episode. I triple-dog-dare ya!

Speaking of daring, how daring would you have to be to dress up in drag with Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo and parade around for a hour and a half on the big screen, especially if you are a Hollywood action hero/heart-throb/dancer? I’d say you’d have to be pretty dang daring, and extremely secure in your manliness, but that’s just what Patrick Swayze did in the movie To Wong Fo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar.

And how do I know this useless tidbit if information? I watched the movie, of course (which may or may not say something about how comfortable I am with my sexuality, but Wesley Snipes was strangely captivating as Noxeema Jackson), but I also heard the movie mentioned during an interview with Patrick Swayze on Quest, a CNN show featuring Richard Quest (shame his parents didn’t name him ’Johnny’, but I’m sure he’s heard that before).


Richard Quest with Patrick Swayze

Who is Richard Quest and why should you care?

Well, Richard gets to go all over the world talking to the famous, the not-so-famous, and the infamous while checking out sites and doing cool stuff. (Man! I wish I had his job!) In one recent episode Richard get chummy with Mr. Swayze and we learn all sorts of interesting things about the guy who got all muddy with Demi Moore in Ghost, and flung Jennifer Grey around in Dirty Dancing. Other episodes has Richard doing the tango, and getting Botox injections.

I don’t know why you would care, other than that you might find the show as entertaining as I did. Subscribe to Quest. It doesn’t suck.

Finally, I’d like to direct your attention to another iTunes Store freebie, a downloadable demo of the venerable quarter-eater of the 80s, the Grand Dame of Mazes; Ms. Pac-Man.

You knew Apple offers games for the Video iPod, right? It’s actually a pretty decent, albeit a rather small selection of arcade-type games that seem made for the iPod’s scroll-wheel. Ms. Pac-Man, for instance, uses the compass coordinates of the scroll-wheel to simulate an arcade joystick. It doesn’t take long to get the hang of using the scroll-wheel in this way and soon you’re gobbling ghost with the best of them.

Ms. Pac-Man for the iPod is a faithful rendition of the arcade hit too, including all the music and sounds you are familiar with.

And the game just looks gorgeous. There’s something about the purity of the cartoon-like graphics and simple, but challenging game play that keeps this little lady’s number on the 5-star list in my little black iPod.

The demo only lets you play one round, but it’s likely enough to incite that Ms. Pac-Mania that you thought you were so over with. The game is only five bucks, after all, and you know you want it. Go on... (evil laughter fades)

More freebies on the iTunes Store (with direct links):


Vern Seward is a writer who currently lives in Orlando, FL. He’s been a Mac fan since Atari Computers folded, but has worked with computers of nearly every type for 20 years.

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