Jupiter Jazz

Look beyond here and find a more interesting there — online, I mean.

• Pajiba reviews the Tracy Jordan feature film A Blaffair to Rememblack.
• The newspaper industry begins to implode right before the eyes of June Casagrande.
• A review of one of the strangest movies I have ever heard of: the made-for-TV wonder The Twonky.
• One hundred well-illustrated film posters. (via Stale Popcorn)
  
• A kickass collection of public domain book illustrations: Granda’s Graphics.
  
• Anatoly Liberman on the seeming lack of logic directing English spelling.
• Weird architecture in the U.S.
• Merry Swankster breaks down Okkervil River’s “Plus Ones,” the lyrics of which mean more than you might have realized.
• In defense of American Dad — and I have to say he makes some valid points.
• The curious tendency for video game protagonists to be depicted as darker and grittier has the series progresses.
  
• Watchmen goes manga — shades of Watchmen Babies.
• Eight awkward Berenstain Bears books.
• Daisy — that is, the female counterpart to Donald Duck — is apparently kind of a ho.
• Bjork explains how her TV works.
• New Kaiser Chiefs single bears a passing similarity to “Five Little Speckled Frogs.”

And finally, from the always phenomenal PCL LinkDump, is an early version of the Muppets singing “Mah Nà Mah Nà.” A reworking, featuring the Birdo-like Snowths, would become the first-ever sketch aired on The Muppet Show.

This above sketch features “Little Anything” back-up singers and a prototype version of the character Bip Bippadotta, whose name sounds a lot like the lyrics song before the “mah nà mah nà.” But it’s the “mah nà mah nà” part that Bip sings. The finalized version of the character appears in the more familiar version of “Mah Nà Mah Nà” with the Birdo-like Snowths singing back-up.