This week’s HV cast is for Earth Day. The Administration moves beyond Hydrogen Powered Automobiles. Another experiment in the crytomusicology of Presidential Patter. Produced by Jesse Boggs, “Hydrogen People” (mp3 2:05):

Check this line-vector simulation of a hanging cloth, writ by JRC313.com. Pull it with the mouse (click-drag), let go, and watch it swing — cheap e-thrills via a “physics library” of code; here’s some screenshots:

Spoken-weird artiste Ken Nordine has a buncha videos posted. This one’s “Cliche Heaven”:

They’re from his DVD The Eye is Never Filled, all part of Word Jazz.

WFMU’s Beware of the Blog: Only Fidel Can Provide Candy posted four video “excerpts from what is possibly the greatest propaganda film ever, Ron Ormond’s 1971 commie-bashing If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?. Be forewarned, the commies do some awful things to these poor kids, and it can get kind of revolting. Portions of this film have been sampled heavily by Negativland, including their classic Christianity is Stupid.”

…AKA Arial and other clones. MOMA is holding a commemorative exhibition to celebrate what has become the most widely used typeface in the world.

As a graphic designer and occasional typographer, I have preferred to avoid Helvetica. Not because it is a bad typeface. To the contrary, it is one of the cleanest, most readable ever designed. But its ubiqity and, to a degree, sterilility, compel the use of other typefaces.

Details

Some more info related to the comments posted:

It’s interesting that they mentioned in both the WaPo article and Helvetica film synopsis how much it has been used for signage. I immediately thought of Frutiger, which was commissioned expressly for signage - first for France’s Charles de Gaulle Airport - but now it’s what’s used in Switzerland. Frutiger is also a Swiss designer. I think it’s a more aesthetically pleasing typeface, particularly in heavier weights.

Like Helvetica clones, such as Arial, Frutiger has been closely copied by Adobe’s Myriad and Microsoft’s Segoe:

There’s a buncha great Chet Atkins vids @utv, like “Chet Atkins - Mr. Sandman (TV 1954)”:

Saw Chet in the 70s here in MT. Ranked among my most memorable concerts, and audiences: The men arrived in suits, boots and bollos; the women in beehives, a la B-52s, ‘cept these t’weren’t no new wavers, quite the opposite, a wave as old as wind thru the wheat, everyone come to see a country pickin’ legend . Want more? Try “Dark Eyes” and Don McLean’s “Vincent.”

What we thot was a radio series turns out to be a research project: This American Life Completes Documentation Of Liberal, Upper-Middle-Class Existence.

Says senior producer Julie Snyder: “There is not a single existential crisis or self-congratulatory epiphany that has been or could be experienced by a left-leaning agnostic that we have not exhaustively documented and grouped by theme.”

So, where’s that leave pubradio when it’s hippest hour is now Onion fodder?

In the comments to the Young Folks post here last week, a couple HV producers (AnnH and JMenj) linked to some immensely amusing videos, Loney, Dear’s “I Am John”: