For those of you out there who have the theme song from Double Dragon, Excite Bike, Mario Bros, Mega Man, or Final fantasy burned into your brain from back in the day (even if that means yesterday), you’re not alone. 8-bit music, which takes tons of these nostalgic tunes from your favorite NES and GameBoy games and converts them into fast, fun, dance-tastic ensembles, has been revolutionizing the music industry across the world. Also known as chip tune, this wave of timeless new music is bringing back all of our inner geeks one show at a time.

We joined the folks on the forefront of this musical frontier at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco, where artists like Crash Faster, A Rival, and Anamanaguchi dive into the logistics of what it takes to become an 8-bit master and why this genre has become so popular! We know the secret and now you can too; watch and find out!!!

Episode links: Chiptune, Anamanaguchi, crashfaster, A_Rival

His albums have deep methologies that are often intertwined with each other. For example, Dr. Octagonecologyst introduces the character of Dr. Octagon, an extraterrestrial time traveling gynecologist and surgeon who is later killed by his nemesis Dr. Doom on a later record. Some of the most famous DJ’s in the world — Dan Nakamura, DJ Qbert, Kutmaster Kurt, DJ Shadow, etc. — have worked with KK, even right here in our fair city! Dan the Automator recorded and mixed Sex Style at The Glue Factory in San Francisco, California.

Kool Keith is not a Billboart chart-topping rapper, but he’s a master wordsmith, thinker and willing to take musical risks many rappers don’t even know are possible. Don’t be surprised if you find some of his characters or songs not to your liking. KK is a chameleon.
My voice is also in the beginning of a Princess Superstar song called “Kool Keith’s Butt.” So I’m a fangirl, I cant front.

in Part Two, KK gives me dating tips and talks to me about the limitations of technology.

Episode links: Kool Keith, Dr. Octagon, Dan the Automator

If you’ve ever thought “KISS is my favorite rock band” and/or “Man I wish I was someone else today,” then you have something in common with hip hop legend Kool Keith. Because Mr. Keith Matthew Thornton aka Dr. Octagon aka Dr. Doom aka Kool Keith aka Robbie Analog aka Clean Man aka Mr. Green aka Willie Large aka … well, we don’t have time or space to name 60 of the master rapper’s aliases. But he started out with the Ultramagnetic MC’s, a Bronx-based hip hop group that every head knows well.

When Kool Keith was in town to perform a show in San Francisco at 111 Minna, I called the promoter and was lucky enough to get the interview. This meeting was not the first time I met KK. My first introduction to him was in NYC in the fall of 1999 when he was on his Black Elvis tour. I also met his parents and helped him tie a cape around his neck and watched as he threw fried chicken at the audience.

Keith and I sat in his Marriot hotel room bed for an hour, so we had to cut the interview into two parts. Please enjoy Part One. In Part Two next week, we will cover Keith’s fashion and Dating Tips.

Episode links: Kool Keith, Dan the Automator

We imagine that many of you, our esteemed viewers, have stood in front of a mirror and played air guitar until your fingers bled. San Francisco’s own Veronica Belmont is an air guitar champion. So it’s only natural that the Air Championship gods create a more (or less) challenging category of Air Sex! Air Sex Championships? Yes!

It all started in Japan, where drunk lonely guys decided to entertain themselves by making love to imaginary partners while clothed and listening to music. The activity took off in more ways than one, with championships held in more than one country. And just try NOT to search for “Peer Pressure” on YouTube. A certain ottoman gets extremely lucky.

Here is GETV’s expose of the Air Sex Championships as they passed through our fair city. The sweat, the drama, the athleticism. Enjoy.

Episode links: Air Sex World Championships, Air Sex Comes to SF, Veronica Belmont on Air Guitar

An epic naval battle of amazing proportions! “Amazing” being miniature and “epic” being, well, let’s just say we had to wear eye goggles. Really! The incredibly talented seamen hand-crafted the robotic warships and controlled them from the side of Maker Faire ocean with radio remote controls, shooting 1/4″ diameter steel balls from their ships’ torpedo tubes. The ship models are replicas mostly from World War II, but one brave soul brought out his tiny pirate vessel. The battle known as Axis vs. Allies, meaning that all the ships had at some point in history fought for either side, in World War I or II. Founded in 1986, Western Warship Combat Club puts on all kinds of events, as we learned from Dan Rygasewicz, a founder. Dan also said that if you have ever put a firecracker in a toy boat in your bathtub, you will know exactly why playing with toy boats in the water is so mesmerizing.

Episode links: Western Warship Combat Club, Maker Faire

Travel with us back in time, back to Victorian days when men wore corsets, ladies wrote letters and the computers were steam-powered. What?? That’s right! Steampunk takes you back to a past that never was, and flies you in a dirigible to a future that will never be. What is steampunk? Take a look and find out!

Episode links: Steampunk [wikipedia], Steampunk Airmail Letter Project, Artist Suzanne Forbes, Maker Faire

The GETV crew ran into Utilikilt clad Alex Peake at Maker Faire because of a rumor that he was making Tactical Corsets! With beautiful model at the ready, Irina and Alex unzip the mysteries of this military grade corset. What’s a tactical corset you ask? Here’s how TacticalCorsets.com describes them:

Tactical Corsets are high-fashion, high-function clothes for empowered women! For too long, women have had to compromise practicality for beauty. Men got pants with cargo pockets and built-in knee pads, women got clothes whose only built-in feature was cuteness. But why should men get all the high-speed low-drag tactical toys? Tactical Corsets bring female operators MILSPEC features like MOLLE modular pouch attachment webbing and self-adjustable quick-release buckles in a load-bearing carrier designed to support the female form.

(Thanks to our guest editor, Wilfred Galila, who is hovering above the thin line between good and evil and in constant pursuit for the understanding of the human condition and man’s place in the cosmos.)

Episode links: Tactical Corsets, Alex Peake, Artist Suzanne Forbes, Cimmerians

Luke Jackson is a Canadian musician who recently collaborated with animator Murray John to create this music video, using stop motion photography and 2-D animation, for Luke’s song “Goodbye London”. Here’s what Luke has to say about the video’s production:

As far as the video itself is concerned, I approached London-based animator Murray John with the idea of creating a video that highlighted the bittersweet sentiment of the song’s lyric. I suggested that some of the video be very literal interpretation of the lyric, but that he should feel free to depart from that at will, which I think he did beautifully. He came up with the photo/animation idea as well as the characters and drafted a rough storyboard, most of which wound up in the finished piece. All the stop motion photos were taken around London, and Murray added the drawn 2-D animation using After Effects. There’s no actual video at all…it’s all photos. We never met each other until the video was almost finished, it was all done via email correspondence. I was in London on a family visit in May and he shot the photos of me for the start of the second verse.

You’ve heard this one before. Big faceless corporate giant who makes adorable product goes after small-time fanboy who loves adorable product. In this case, it’s the PEZ Candy Company suing Gary Doss, the owner and curator of a museum of PEZ memorabilia. Gary has run the Burlingame Museum of PEZ Memorabilia for 14 years and this isn’t the first time evil faceless PEZ has tried to shut him down. PEZ’s latest demand includes the destruction of Gary’s adorable oversized snowman dispenser of PEZ that you’ll see in this video.

Our tour of Gary’s museum of PEZ was shot 2 years ago, long before his current legal situation, so we’re rerunning it. Irina and iJustine, who happened to be in town then, take you on a tour of the amazing, wonderful and hopefully, longer lived Museum of PEZ Memorabilia.

Episode links: Burlingame Museum of PEZ (david), PEZ Candy Company (goliath), Boston Herald: Co. sues Pez ‘museum’, San Jose Merc News: All we are saying is, give Pez a chance, iJustine

Irina met Kevin Moore on Flickr a while back, swooning over a photo of his black kitty kat. Little did she know this geek was a specialist in a different kind of kitty! Turns out Kevin shoots, directs and edits adult movies. Who knew! With his nerdy background as a Unix admin, a wrangler of college intranet tubes for his buddies gaming pleasures, a WoW and Quake player, and a committed boyfriend to Nina — his one-time attention seeking girlfriend who let him take photos of her and charge cash money for letting other dudes see her nekkid! So, when we ran into Kevin back in Jan at the Adult Entertainment Expo, Irina sat him down for a dorky session of chit chat. Enjoy!

Episode links: Kevin Moore, Kevin’s Flickr Pix, AVN Adult Entertainment Expo