My Trip To United Nations HQ

I still have over 250 photos to sort and tag, but here's the video I took inside the United Nations Headquarters last week. It's Ennio Morricone conducting a full orchestra, in a concert reception for the UN's new Secretary General. We actually sat in the same seats the UN ambassadors sit in -- we were in the Palestine section -- complete with translation ear-pieces and desktop gooseneck microphones. It was pretty cool. More details will come in another post, when I have the photos sorted.

For now, enjoy this capture of the very first time Morricone performed "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" on US soil (technically, the UN is international soil... but we saw Morricone the next night at Radio City Music Hall... both venues are in NYC).

VICE's VBS.TV

Friends at VICE today launched VBS.TV, and it looks pretty impressive. With associations ranging from Brightcove to Spike Jonze, this is certainly one online video effort to watch.

VICE explains VBS.TV best:

VBS is an online broadcast network. We stream original content, free of charge and 24 hours a day. We carry a mix of domestic and international news, pop and underground culture coverage, and the best music in the world. People have used words like eclectic, smart, funny, shocking, and revolutionary to describe VBS, but we kind of just snapped our fingers in their faces and went, “Whatever. Tell us something we don’t know.”

With Academy Award-nominated director Spike Jonze (Adaptation, Being John Malkovich) as our creative director, original content from a veritable United Nations of contributors, and bureaus in 20 countries, VBS has hit the planet in a manner not unlike a massive global plague. Streaming on VBS’s signature “in-room” widescreen and remote, content will be available all the time, on-demand.

Basically, VBS will exploit every utopian vision the internet has thus far failed to live up to. Thanks for watching.

If that doesn't illustrate the vision enough for you, there's this YouTube clip they linked to as well, at the request of Spike Jonze, which reminds me how I used to be a big fan of Frederick McFeely Rogers and his Neighborhood.