Weezer’s new video for its catchy tune “Pork and Beans” hit YouTube last week, garnering 3.5 million views even before it aired on MTV. The video features people who became known for their often embarrassing moments caught on video and sent around the world. Viral video stars from the Daft Dancers to the South Carolina contestant for Ms. Teen USA (one of my personal faves) are featured.

Wired caught up with the video director Mathew Cullen, who explained the rationale behind video.

Weezer sent us this song, and we immediately got the idea. [”Pork and Beans”] is this amazing song about being happy with who you are. That’s exactly where it came from. There’s never been a time like now, thanks to YouTube, where people can put themselves out there. So I embraced that concept.

I wanted the video to be a celebration of that creativity. I wanted it to be redemption for those who’d been unintentionally embarrassed by the power — there is a sense of that for those who were shamed by it.

So, you are off to your favorite music festival this summer. You’ve got your high priced ticket, you’ve got a car load of friends, and you’ve got your cheap family size tent which you might trash and throw away. One young, entrepreneurial fellow in England, James Dunlop, noticed that many people abandon their ripped and muddy tents to the trash man when the festival is over (it is estimated that 15,000 tents were abandoned after Glastonbury 2007. It tends to rain at many of these English festivals) and he decided that there must be a better, more environmentally friendly way of accommodating festival goers. There is, and he calls his venture Myhab, and it’s a cool, albeit rather expensive, way to enjoy a big music festival, with minimal hassles, and with a few luxuries thrown in.

Myhab is a reusable/recyclable, luxury accommodation service for festival-goers, that is an affordable, green alternative to a soggy tent. The myhab service saves festival-goers the hassle of taking and pitching a tent. It also helps the organizers by reducing the number of orphaned tents they have to get rid of. Myhab is the new way to enjoy festivals.

It’s a great idea. Since the myhab shelters are set in their own little village on the festival grounds, they offer all sorts of amenities like showers, 24-hour onsite help and lock boxes for valuables.

“We offer festival-goers an ethical, eco-friendly, luxury accommodation service,” says James. “Myhab is for anyone looking for a more comfortable and convenient alternative to a tent, as well as anyone trying to reduce the amount of un-recyclable waste they produce at each event. We’re all about making the festival-goers experience a more enjoyable one.”

Myhab is only in England at this time, but something like it would be a perfect fit for the big U.S. festivals, of which there seem to be more added to the calendar every year.

These days, more and more people seem to be into turning trash into treasure, whether it’s art, clothing, furniture, etc. This week, the WebUrbanist takes a look at the trend of recycling used shipping containers into live and work space.

Used shipping containers often pile up due to the expense of returning the empty containers to their home country. It can be cheaper for a company to simply buy a new one instead of having the old one returned for re-use. Now, architects and designers are beginning to find other uses for these materials. Aside from some of the cool housing examples depicted by WebUrbanist, they also cite a London hotel made from stacked shipping containers.

The company, called Travelodge, says that constructing a hotel this way is 25% faster and 10% cheaper than the more traditional construction methods. Also, construction is much quicker, because all that has to be done is to fit each container together like it was a giant Lego set.

In addition to speed and cost, hotel guests may get an added benefit from the steel containers: the inability to hear everything going on in the room next door.

100 million trees are logged every year in Canada just to make newsprint.

According to CBC, there are better alternatives. And one publisher, Canadian Geographic, is showing the way.

The magazine–published by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society continuously since 1930–is printing its annual environment issue on paper made from wheat, a first for a North American magazine.

The wheat-straw pulp used in the making of the issue was imported from China, where papermakers have been using wheat and rice for centuries.

Environmentalists are making the case for a new domestic paper industry, pointing to the 21 million tons of wheat straw produced by Canadian farmers annually–enough paper for 20 million magazines.

Robert Mondavi died on Friday at the age of 94.

According to Eric Asimov’s piece in The New York Times, Mondavi “was a hard-driving perfectionist for whom less than the best was unfulfilling.”

Mondavi left the family business, Charles Krug, at 52 and set out to remake himself and Napa Valley wines in the process. He succeeded.

In his 1998 memoir, Harvests of Joy his says mission was “to do whatever it took to make great wines and to put the Napa Valley on the map right alongside the great winemaking centers of Europe.”

Asimov describes what it took:

Mr. Mondavi signed business deals with the Rothschilds and the Frescobaldis, European wine royalty, and, one generation removed from penniless immigrant, he walked among them as royalty himself. He kept expanding his business, and eventually it went public and became the Robert Mondavi Corporation. He became a philanthropist, donating millions to create the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science at the University of California, Davis, and Copia: The American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts, in Napa.

Almost forgotten in the dissection of the rise and fall of the Mondavi wine empire are his wines. Mr. Mondavi and his sons, Michael and Tim, who worked with him for many years, always clung to the Old World vision of wine’s place at the table. When in the late 1990s Napa cabernets began to grow in size and weight, some critics asserted that the Mondavis had missed the boat by sticking with their leaner, more lithe style. But the Mondavis defended their wines, and tried to make the case for elegance and finesse over size and power.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said Mondavi was “a tireless entrepreneur who transformed how the world felt about California wine, and an unforgettable personality to everyone who knew him.”

California wine is a $20 billion-a-year industry.

If you’ve ever had a taste for some greasy spoon grub late at night, then you’ve probably found yourself inside a loud, fluorescent lit Denny’s at one time or another. Late night is the time when many a rocker pours into Denny’s after a gig. Denny’s took notice of this, and officially embraced the rock tribe with a new program geared at feeding hungry, touring bands. In return Denny’s gathers some cool street cred, and all for the price of a Grand Slam breakfast a few times a month for a starving rock band out on the road:

Denny’s, the casual food chain, is getting into the music business via its just launched “Adopt-a-Band” program. Participating touring bands can eat at Denny’s for free at any time, and will have content featured on the Denny’s microsite dennysallnighter.com, including photos, bios, tour dates posted, and one streamed song.

Denny’s association with rock and roll is actually solidified by the fact that the Denny’s on Hollywood’s famed Sunset Strip is actually called “Rock ‘n’ Roll Denny’s” due to its close proximity to some of the most famous rock clubs and bars in the United States. On any given night at Rock ‘n’ Roll Denny’s you are bound to see a member of some quasi-famous band or a B-list celebrity scarfing down some late night grub.

“In value driven times, we know that bands obviously need to eat. We felt good about being able to offer support and have people out there drumming up support,” said Michael Polydoroff, director of sales promotion and licensing, Denny’s. “We looked at a myriad of bands, posted on Sonicbids.com back in March and worked with Filter to narrow down the list. We were looking for great brands who have a huge online following and who will work hard for us.”

Also, to keep the employee’s happy, they ran a contest geared towards the Best Denny’s Late Night Server:

Denny’s held a nationwide contest for their best Late Night cooks and servers who, if chosen as the winner, would be taken on an all-expense paid trip to Sasquatch! Music Festival [Denny’s is a sponsor] in Quincy, Washington May 23-26 to staff the special Denny’s Lounge that’s being constructed on the campgrounds.

Mmm, sounds cool, but “staffing the Denny’s Lounge” sounds more like an all-expense paid trip to go to work, instead of a free trip to rock out with R.E.M.

[via Billboard]

This is a incredibly cool stop motion “ambiguous” animation done on walls in Buenos Aires, Argentina, by an artist who calls himself Blu. It is titled Muto and took months to paint, film and edit.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Talking Heads’ frontman David Byrne has long been associated with experimental music and art. His latest project takes music into the world of architecture and interactive experience. Beginning May 31st, Byrne’s Playing the Building installation opens at the Battery Maritime Building in New York City.

The interactive installation essentially converts the former ferry terminal into a giant musical instrument. Various devices will be attached to everything from the building’s pillars to its water pipes, allowing visitors to create sounds.

According to Wired:

“I’d like to say that in a small way it turns consumers into creative producers,” Byrne explains on his official site, “but that might be a bit too much to claim. However, even if one doesn’t play the thing, it points toward a less mediated kind of cultural experience. It might be an experience in which one begins to reexamine one’s surroundings and to realize that culture — of which sound and music are parts — doesn’t always have to be produced by professionals and packaged in a consumable form.”

The exhibition is free and will run through August 10th.

Sabina Land and Daniel Bauman are Swiss installation artists known for work dealing with architecture and space. They invite people to step inside the work and become a living part of the installation.

One of these installations, Everland Hotel, is currently perched high atop the Palais de Tokyo, a contemporary art museum in Paris. The hotel comes with an incredible view of another beloved architectural marvel that was once maligned by locals, the Eiffel Tower (According to Wikipedia: French novelist Guy de Maupassant — who claimed to hate the tower — supposedly ate lunch in the Tower’s restaurant every day. When asked why, he answered that it was the one place in Paris where you couldn’t see the Tower).

Everland is a Hotel with only one room including a bathroom, a king-size bed and a lounge. The bounteous dimensioned room represents the subjective dream of a hotel: the architecture, the playful details, as well as the request to steal the golden embroidered bath towels. All Everland guests are partaking in the project.

Also the concept for operating the hotel was defined by the artists. All facets are important constituents of the artistic idea: The room can be booked for one night only, the mini-bar is fully stocked and included in the price, breakfast is delivered to the door and a record collection stands at ones disposal.

The duo originally created Everland Hotel as an installation for the Swiss Expo 2002. Then it lived on the designers rooftop and was used as a guest room for four years. It spent a year perched on top of the Gallery for Contemporary Art in Leipzig, Germany, before moving on to its current location overlooking Paris. The idea was to create art that intersects public and a private space. The artists also enjoy the idea that the hotel travels, like its guests. It can live anywhere, hence the name, Everland.

The retro design of the hotel is the pure ’60s ideal of futureland: smooth, swooping curves and no hard lines.

Since Everland Hotel only has one room, booking is tight (according to the website, the hotel is currently booked solid). But if you get a chance to stay a night, the view, and the experience, is hard to match.

Everland Hotel is living in its current location until October 2008.

Writer, Chuck Lorre, is an agitator. He’s also the creative force behind one hit TV show after the next–Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, Dharma & Greg, Roseanne and Grace Under Fire. Thus, he can get away with stuff. Stuff like inserting this copy into his shows’ credits:

CHUCK LORRE PRODUCTIONS, #211

When I began writing these vanity cards, I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day they would be the subject of an extensive article in The Wall Street Journal (or as I like to call it, The Depressingly Inevitable Next Step Toward the End of a Free Press in America, Thanks a Lot Rupert, Journal). But I digress into a bitter diatribe on the profit-fueled degradation of journalism that spells the end of any hope for rational debate in this country from my initial point — which is, gratitude for all the attention my cards are receiving. I mean, let’s face it, a vanity card, by definition, is merely an exercise in personal vanity. The truly legitimate production card at the end of each episode belongs to the Warner Brothers Corporation. They’re the monolithic, multi-tiered, entirely un-integrated, boy-did-we-make-a-colossal-boo-boo-with-AOL entity which owns the facility we shoot in, deficit-finances production, distributes the shows around the world, and most importantly, maintains the shaky book-keeping necessary to hide the profits while blowing a fortune on Speed Racer. But once again, I digress. I should also add that I am aware and deeply appreciative of the blogging that goes on around my cards. I do occasionally lurk at various web sites to see what folks are saying. I enjoy the discourse while simultaneously feeling a deep, nagging fear that any of these people might someday learn my home address.

1st Aired: 12 May 2008

Here’s another vanity card form Lorre:

The cards only appear on screen for two seconds, but DVR technology lets viewers to pause to read them.

[via The Wall Street Journal]