Check it out, here’s me duplicating some of the art on my public web-site, Banksy to prove I am the real Banksy.

See. Clearly I am Banksy as that signature which I just wrote looks exactly like the one on the main Banksy site.

Yup, the whole being British thing and living in the U.K. was just a ploy to throw you off my scent. Though I’ve preferred to perform my art in anonymity, I must now come out and declare myself publicly to prevent that hack Robin Gunningham from getting the credit for my brilliance.

Here’s the me replicating the infamous gorilla from my menu page.

See. Identical.

Even the purple will make sense now. It’s a shout-out to my real public high school, the Boston Latin School, whose fine art department and classic education made me the rebel I am today.

So once again, do not believe the Mail on Sunday when they “report” that Robin Gunningham is Banksy.

No, I am Banksy.

I will now retire to my own personal island for I am rich.

Oh, and here’s one of my favorite Banksy / Adam Pieniazek pieces:

Don’t believe me?

Are you Banksy?

My vote will not go to the McCain-Obama Demopublicans Republocrats but at least Obama can speak and write well. The McCain essay whines about Obama and offers no new information or strategies. Here’s an idea, let’s “surge” Iraq with “our” entire population! Surely then violence would drop to record new lows!

Quick, everyone surge!

Here’s three pictures of the mini flash flood it caused on my street in Dorchester.

My step-dad asked me if I looked outside and since it had only been raining for a few minutes I hadn’t but that quickly our street was covered in water:

The water came down so quick that the whole street overflowed covering the sidewalk with water going a quarter way up car tires.

A mini-van leaving a wake.

Video:

We really needed the rain here in Boston to drop the temperature and we got a lot of water in a very short time. I heard through the grapevine that it was over two inches in just twenty minutes!

My elbow is still a bit tight and sore from the fall I took a few days ago so this morning I’ll share a few more videos from Revver with you.

Daily Greens 86 – Workin’ For The Weekend

One positive benefit of rising gas prices, four day work weeks! Hopefully 4 day weeks are a trend that will continue as workers will be more productive with that extra day of rest and our economy will benefit from healthier people who are not cooped up inside their office five days a week.

No Paine, No Gain

A look back at Thomas Paine and his positive influence on the USA. Should we look to radicalism in our modern times for solutions to our great economic, educational, and environmental issues?

Where is your hippie “hope” now?

A satirical video about Barack Obama crushing the dreams of young kids hoping to become the next star athlete or musician. Personally, I think it’s about time schools integrate rap music into the curriculum and teach students how to use musical equipment in a music class rather than ignoring kids’ interests and discouraging them from following dreams. Sure, everyone won’t make it as a musician or athlete but by providing these kids a venue in an educational setting it could help keep them involved in the rest of their education.

Newspapers

Rest in peace newspapers, you’re simply not efficient or useful anymore. Nearly all of my news comes from the internet, which I’m finding is now much, much more accurate than the generic, corporate run newspapers. Plus, there’s no need to consume a bunch of paper to get a few stories I might find interesting when I can just use the internet to get the most updated version of the story and communicate instantly with others about the story. Attempts by the newspaper industry to adjust without adjusting draws similarities to the movie and music industry, both of whom are still struggling to understand our modern world.

Recycle An Old T-Shirt into a Sexy Bikini

I’d call this reusing more than recycling but in either case it’s a great tip for the ladies out there. We reuse our old shirts as rags around here but since it’s just cloth there’s more than one or two reuses for them.

That is all, folks. Have a great weekend!

Do you watch Battlestar Galactica? No. Then you are an idiot.

– Dwight from The Office.

The show The Office has had many memorable moments, but it’s best moment came in reference to another show, the best show on TV right now, Battlestar Galactica.

Why is Battlestar Galactica the best TV show of all time? Ten reasons come to mind.

• 10. Season 3′s cliff-hanger

How intense was that cliff-hanger? I’m still on edge from it and it was over a year ago, that’s how intense. Starbuck comes through the clouds and looks at Lee Adama, tells him she knows where the mythical Earth is and we fly through space until we get a shot of that unmistakable blue orb we call home. Will they get to Earth? Will it be our Earth in present-time? So many tantalizing questions that I really hope get answered.

• 9. It’s a great example of how to make a good remake.

They paid tribute to the old Battlestar Galactica but at he same time didn’t simply update the special effects and call it a day. BSG is a complete revamping of the show to match current events. Countless shows and movies try, few succeed. BSG goes above, beyond, and past the original (which was also of top quality).

• 8. It’s the best genre ever.

For centuries, the best books have been written in the science fiction genre because it can encapsulate all other genres and has nearly no limitations. Battlestar Galactica is a shining example of political, philosophical, dramatic, and romantic story lines being given focus in a science fiction setting.

• 7. Awesome music – One of the best remixes of All Along the Watchtower ever.

• 6. It’s the 1984 of our time.

George Orwell’s 1984 was a critique on the British empire and a warning of the future written in that period’s most popular medium. BSG portrays the Iraqi occupation with through a flipped perspective and critiques our ever increasing reliance on science and technology over humanity and is a warning for us to not give over all power to robots.

• 5. They don’t milk it. One last season to rule them all.

Countless shows and movies go on for far too long, deteriorating into a mess far removed from the original fans fell in love with (The Simpsons). BSG is going out on their own terms without dragging on endlessly. You’ve got to hand it to everyone involved with the show for ending it while the content is still fresh and not simply beating the show to death to get a few extra bucks.

• 4. Smart, strong, and sexy women.

You can’t have good science fiction without sex and BSG has tons of it, even going so far as to give us some freaky-deaky robot human relations.



• 3. Awesome, amazing, breath-taking, photo-realistic special effects. Wow.

If you like explosions and fire-fights, you’ll love this show. Check out this clip of the Battlestars coming to the rescue of the humans who are under Cylon occupation. Youtube’s video quality does not do it justice but it’s impressive nonetheless.

• 2. Smart, strong, and sexy women that can be duplicated infinitely.

That’s right, there’s an endless supply of these three women in the BSG universe.



What, you want another reason?

• 1. Epic storytelling, epic acting, epic directing, epic producing, epic TV.

My words really can’t explain how well made this show is. Do yourself a favor, head over to scifi.com and check out this 8 minute recap of the first 3 seasons and then tune in to the SciFi channel tonight at 10 PM eastern and watch the best TV show ever made. I can’t over-hype this show.

Late to the Battlestar Galactica phenomenon? Don’t worry you can still catch up on previous Battlestar Galactica seasons (as well as the excellent mini-series and feature film) at Amazon.com:

• Battlestar Galactica (2003 Miniseries)
• Battlestar Galactica – Season One
• Battlestar Galactica – Season 2.0 (Episodes 1-10)
• Battlestar Galactica: Season 2.5 (Episodes 11-20)
• Battlestar Galactica – Season Three
• Battlestar Galactica – Razor (Unrated Extended Edition)

Another nice feature is the ability to edit clips right on Hulu and embed the trimmed down clips on a site. When you click the embed clip button, a screen comes up with a scroll bar at the bottom that lets you decide where the embedded clip should start and where it should end. Already I wish youtube had this feature, as it’s very handy when you just want to show someone a part of a clip, not the whole video. Here’s how the editing screen looks:

Pretty cool eh?

The same editing feature is available under the share button, where you can e-mail your friends a link to either the full original video or an trimmed down clip. It all works smoothly and quickly. Quite impressive.

Check out this clip from the end of the Family Guy episode, Play it Again Brian:

Hulu would be better if the advertisements just scrolled at the bottom of the screen or played in a sidebar while browsing the Hulu site, but as is they’re about as un-intrusive as can be. One very irritating part of the advertisements is that many times the same ad gets played over and over again through the course of an episode. While it’s not too annoying while watching a short 20 minute episode of The Simpsons or Family Guy because there’s only two or three ads, it becomes very annoying over the course of a 40 minute episode of The Office. Hulu needs to figure out someway to rotate ads around or require advertisers to submit more than one ad. In either case, seeing the same ad five or six, or even more times over the span of 40 minutes quickly destroys any urge to buy the advertised product.

There is also a HD Gallery on the site which streams high-definition videos. Right now this collection of high-def videos is limited to ten movie trailers but the quality and speed of the streaming is very, very impressive. If they’re able to upload full-length HD movies and shows Hulu is going to receive tons and tons of traffic from people like me who have a nice big monitor with a limited amount of HD content to view online. Though, if movies were to get interrupted every twenty minutes by an ad it might not be such a big hit.

It’s still early but my experience with Hulu has been great so far. Over time I hope Hulu alternates advertisements so it’s not the same ads over and over again. Another big concern is whether they’re able to stay afloat financially without increasing advertisements. Have you had a chance to explore Hulu? What did you think?If not, want to?

Score: 3.5/5

Derty
The album starts out with one of my favorite songs, which is a great song all unto itself, but gets extra points for introducing Bill Simmons’s podcast. It’s been a lot of fun watching this song progress from his YouTube video to a more refined version posted on his blog to this album cut. Since Ronald describes this song so well, I’ll let him take over:

“It’s got a real dirty sound, like a rusty steak knife cutting through a well aged steak.”

Damn right it does RJ. Who needs soap when dirty sounds this good?

Score: 6/5

Neptune
Ronald switches gears from the viciously loud Derty to the slow and gentle cascades of Neptune. Though it’s a bit slow for my tastes, it has been growing on me. The synthesized violin on this track and Ronald’s mad piano skills complement each other so well you’d think there’s two other musicians in the room with him. Nope. It’s all Jenkees!

Score: 4/5

Canon in D Remix
Whoah, this track starts off sounding like quaint ballroom music and turns into a steadily building crescendo of synthesized guitar, piano and violin. You start off thinking what the heck Ronald and before you know it you’re playing air guitar. A soaring stroll through a synthesized land of rocking out.

Score: 5/5

Clutter
Jenkees drops the glassy beats quickly and cleverly. Constantly tantalizing with what seems like a million glasses of water, being banged away on by a small army of clinkers.

Score: 4/5

Super-Fun
Is it just me, or would this song sound right at home in a Japanese role playing game, along the lines of Final Fantasy? Though it’s not quite my cup of techno-ish tea, the song builds to a fiery and rousing electronic symphony.

Score: 4/5

The Rocky Song Remixed
This song just might get Slyvester Stallone to make another Rocky movie, which actually makes it lose one point. Rocky Balboa was OK but it’s got to STOP!

Score: 4/5

Snap
Some marketing company is going to offer Ronald buckets of cash to use the first 30 seconds of this beat in a commercial. Luckily for us, the rest of the track is just as good. A catchy beat with diverse enough changes to keep your interest over the whole track. Love the tapping of keys on a keyboard. Tippity tap tap!

Score: 5/5

The Sunfish Song
Ronald Jenkees comes at it hard on this song, with a thundering piano and thriving bass, this track is pleasantly chaotic. His talent at manipulating the piano to his mind’s content shines on this track.

Score: 4/5

Loui
My comment yesterday, “A slow jaunt through a dreary landscape with hopeful peaks” explains it pretty well. Ronald takes us on a techno-ish journey here and builds and drops the mood of the song continuously while still maintaining a coherent vibe of hope.

Score: 5/5

Gold Spinners
Funky, energetic and soulful. Smooth from start to finish, like a nice cold beer after a long day’s work, this song just makes you plain feel good. A synthesized saxophone casually pokes in through Ronald’s smooth piano notes and warm beats. It’s got the feel of a salsa song which the soul of a blues song, it’s one of my favorites from start to finish.

Score: 5/5

Remix to a Remix
Begging for a talented hip-hop lyricist, this beat is hot.

Score: 5/5

Almost Undamaged – So good I bought it twice. It’s the perfect beat for walking around your city or neighborhood on a warm summer afternoon, there’s thing this called soul that is sorely lacking from many modern musicians, but gigabytes of Ronald’s comes through on this track. Parts of the song have this clapping type noise that almost sounds like a train chugging along down the tracks, and that seems to be the flow of the song, to keep pushing forward, because everything is all right.

Score: Infinity/5

56K

Please hold my calls cuz I’m using the phone
Dial up modem analog connection.

Rap about 56K modems = comedic genius. Nuff said.

Score: 5/5

Ain’t No Thang

Here Ronald takes a look at rap culture, laid over a classic hard southern beat. Ronald pokes fun at the extravagant rappers who rap about their blinged out cars and piles of cash by rapping about his situation:

My cash, my jewels, my car it ain’t no thing

We also see Ronald can’t afford no speeding tickets:

Tapping on my brakes to the sound of my beats
I got the red lights blinking at the sight of the heat

Ronald’s not gonna win any awards for his rapping, but it’s all about having fun and it’s easily apparent he’s having a blast on this song.

Nuh uh. You cant coax me to floss.

Even though Jenkees doesn’t sample music, he does get a lot of inspiration from The Neptunes beat on Drop it Like It’s Hot on this track. Synthesized tongue clicks…wow.

Score: 5/5

[Edit: Ronald corrected me on a few of the lyrics and I thought I'd post it here for accuracy's sake: "The real lyrics: tappin on my breaks to the sound of this heat (just meant the heat coming off the track)..can't coax me to flow (can't trick me into rapping) But don't change a thing (unless you want to). The lyrics don't make much sense anyways, and it still makes me laugh!!" Thanks Ronald!]

As the scores above show, there are no duds on this album. The YouTube videos and Ronald’s blog previews gave us all expectations about this album and built the hype to epic proportions. Ronald smashes past all those expectations and delivers a soulful, energetic record of thoughtful beats. He says it’s all about having fun, but there is a level of authenticity streaming throughout these beats that shows thought rarely seen in today’s commercialized music world.

Ronald says more here with his beats than many artists say over their whole careers. He pours himself into his music and shares it with us all, hoping we’ll like it but not catering to us. Well, Ronald, we love it! If anything, it’s not enough fun! You’ve got the album down, now it’s time for the Ronald Jenkees world tour!

The Ronald Jenkees self-titled debut album is available at the music store on his blog Amazon.com for the bargain price of $10 $8.99, with individual tracks price at $1. Check it out now!