Spinal Tap Frontman Nigel Tufnel Talks Stonehenge with National Geographic

You may remember last year that Spinal Tap re-united for the Live Earth concert in London. Now the band’s frontman Nigel Tufnel (aka Christopher Guest) is back in the spotlight again as part of a promotional campaign for National Geographic’s Stonehenge Decoded. Clearly the man is an expert on the ancient monument, and he shares his vast knowledge in a series of short interviews which you can watch now below.

 

 

 

How 10 Bands Got Their Names

1. Modest Mouse comes from the Virginia Woolf story The Mark on the Wall. There’s a quote that says, “Even in the minds of modest, mouse-coloured people…”
2. a-ha got their name because it means the same thing in multiple languages.
3. Duran Duran took their name from the villain in the movie Barbarella – Dr. Durand-Durand.
4. R.E.M. was named when Michael Stipe opened the dictionary and randomly pointed to a word.
5. The Pogues were originally called Pogue Mahone, which is Gaelic for “kiss my arse.” It was shortened later.
6. The Bay City Rollers, are, as you might suspect, named after Bay City, Michigan. But none of the band members are actually from Bay City (They’re Scottish); the city was just plucked from the map.
7. The Killers took their name from a fictional band. The “band” was featured in the New Order music video for their song “Crystal”.
8. 10,000 Maniacs adapted their band name from the horror movie Two Thousand Maniacs.
9. Steely Dan is named after an… erm… adult toy… in the William S. Burroughs novel Naked Lunch.
10. Flight of the Conchords came about when Bret, one of the band members, had a dream about flying guitars that looked like Concordes. He was telling the other band member about it and the name was invented. They went with “Chord” instead of “cord” as sort of a tribute to the Beatles who used “beat” instead of “beet”.

 

You can find more band name origins at this link.  As a fun bonus, try and spot the 74 band names hidden in the image below (Click on the image to enlarge):

 

 

Apple App Store

Tap into the Apple App Store and you’ll find applications in every category, from games to business, education to entertainment, finance to health and fitness, productivity to social networking.  These applications have been designed to take advantage of iPhone features such as Multi-Touch, the accelerometer, wireless, and GPS. And some are even free. You download them wirelessly and can start using them right away.

 

The App Store on iPhone works over cellular networks and Wi-Fi, which means it’s accessible from just about anywhere. Browse categories, do a keyword search, or take a look at recommendations. Then download and install applications directly onto your iPhone.

 

Buy an application from the App Store and you always have access to the latest version. iPhone tells you whenever an application update is available. When a red number appears on the App Store icon, you know how many updates are ready to download.  The App Store should be available on the iPhone and iTunes in July 2008.

 

Memorable Pop Culture Moments: The Last 25 Years

Entertainment Weekly has created a game to determine the most popular pop culture moment of the last 25 years.  To access the quiz, please click here.

New Apple 3G iPhone Commercial

iPhone 3G

Time to upgrade. Steve Jobs just introduced the all-new iPhone 3G ($199-$299). Besides the faster 3G wireless connection speeds and all of the previous revolutionary iPhone features, the new model also gets built-in GPS, better battery life (10 hours of talk time on 2G networks and 5 hours using 3G), a flush headphone jack, and iPhone 2.0 software with support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, the new MobileMe web suite, and a bunch of new downloadable applications from the iTunes App Store. The iPhone 3G also sports a new (and slightly thinner) glossy case in standard Apple black or white. Both 8GB (black) and 16GB (black or white) capacities remain. The iPhone 3G will go on sale July 11th in over 20 countries.

Apple’s Mobile Me Web Service

Apple’s MobileMe ($99-$149) is a new subscription-based web service that replaces the feeble .Mac service. Redesigned as “Exchange for the rest of us,” MobileMe delivers push email, push contacts and push calendars to your iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, or PC, keeping everything absolutely in sync and up to date. Also included with MobileMe is a suite of slick web apps that work and look just like desktop applications. Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Gallery (photos), and iDisk (sharing files) are all included. MobileMe will be released alongside the new iPhone 3G on July 11th.

 

The Pleasure of Being William Shatner

CNN posted a great feature today about William Shatner.  You can read it here:

 

Extended Clip From WALL•E

Stephen King’s “The Stand” Comic: Mike Perkins Video Interview

THE STAND artist Mike Perkins chats it up with Marvel.com to talk about bringing Stephen King’s epic story to live in comics, his creative process and much more!

 

Joining Perkins-who provides pencils and inks as well as variant covers-on the THE STAND are Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa who handles scripting duties, colorist Laura Martin, letterer Chris Eliopolus and cover artist Lee Berjemo.

Interview with Marsha DeFilippo, Stephen King’s Personal Assistant

Lilja’s Library posted an interview with Marsha DeFilippo, Stephen King’s Personal Assistant today which can be read here.