- Good evening.
I'm Taliesin Jaffe.
Known to some of you as executivegoth on Twitter.
Go back in your box, Greg.
Put him back in his box.
But yes, Percy is the (bleep).
I'm here today to talk to you about goth awareness.
It's important to know these simple facts.
Being a goth isn't just about wearing black or eyeliner.
It's not just about listening
to the Bauhaus or Sisters of Mercy,
or frightening churchgoing elderly when we wave hello.
It's about cultivating the darkness in your soul
and finding nourishment in the
inevitable heat death of the universe.
Goths are kind people, and usually quite happy.
We don't wanna eat you or your family.
We don't worship Satan. (laughs)
Oh, Satan.
Goths are people, just like you.
The difference is we embrace the darkness,
so you don't have to.
So remember, when you next see a goth,
don't splash them with holy water.
Thank them, for making all those (bleep) protesters
at Comic-Con feel uncomfortable and slightly aroused.
The (bleep) is this?
(electronic music)
So here's one of my favorite watering holes on the net.
Collative Learning is a film analysis website
run by a very subdued British man named Rob Ager.
I'm putting this in my boost
because film analysis is a hobby of mine
and I want more people to start
watching movies like this again.
In these videos, Rob pulls apart the structure of films,
looking for patterns, repeating metaphors,
and other layered contextual information.
If I were gonna start you anywhere,
I'd start with his spatial awareness
and set design videos about The Shining.
There's tons of stuff for The Shining and it is great.
That along with The Big Lebowski, Mad Max, Ghostbusters,
it's a film nerd's buffet.
The episodes are concise and fascinating,
and after watching enough of them,
you might find that your impulse to spew vitriol at films
has lessened in favor of actually wanting to explore
why certain choices were made.
Like the choice to all of this, just...
Just all of this.
Why? Why--
(electronic music)
Scopitones. Yes, I have a passion for these beauties.
Here's a rundown if you don't know what they are.
The music video existed decades before the invention of MTV.
Back in the 1960s, companies briefly produced
Scopitone video jukeboxes for bars all across the world.
You'd put in some change and you'd get your song played
along a with 16 millimeter film print.
Now, thanks to the internet
and some diligent work by scopitones.com,
these videos are available and they are a treasure trove.
If you can get past the giant dumpster truck
worth of 1960s gender politics,
mostly in the form of a cavalcade of bikini go-go girls,
or now likely someone's grandmother,
there are some real gems to be found,
especially in the French and Arabic catalogs.
I recommend buying a DVD collection for parties.
It's the perfect thing to run on the screen.
They're interesting, unfamiliar, and very short,
so no one will get mesmerized and sit down
to watch Cabin in the Woods for two hours
instead of mingling like a proper (bleep) house guest.
(electronic music)
Far off in the deserts of California,
there lies a toxic artificial lake called the Salton Sea.
South of the Salton Sea lies a demolished military base,
now taken over by squatters, called Slab City.
And within Slab City, there is a place called East Jesus.
Now on the surface, East Jesus is an art gallery slash
colony that you would expect to come across in Fallout 4.
There's no connected water, power or sewage.
All the art is made of trash, and most of it is dangerous,
including a giant teeter-totter of death,
and a spiked swing set.
Go a little deeper and East Jesus is a living experiment,
testing ways of creating sustainable communities
with food, shelter, water and power using nothing but trash.
While we discover new ways to make the future,
East Jesus is helping to find ways to improve
the lives of people in the most remote parts of the world
right now, using the waste we already have on hand.
You can support them on Patreon
or you can come see them on your next visit to California.
Get a tour of the art and tell them I said hi.
This is some of the trash art I plan on bringing next time.
Maybe I can build with it.
I can fix this, I can fix it somehow. I can--
I'm so sorry.
(electronic music)
That's it for this week, everyone.
Next week will be my final episode here on Signal Boost.
Until then, make sure to leave some of the things
you're crazy about in the comments below,
and share them with the rest of us.
And of course, share them with me,
@executivegoth on Twitter, and--
Hector should have stolen you, Greg.
We love the antenna more.
That's right, cry, cry.
That's goth.
Bye.
(somber piano music)