Posts Tagged: Van Halen
And Now He's Dead
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Andre Cassagnes, 1926 – 2013

| February 4th, 2013

"Mr Cassagnes saw the potential for the toy when he noticed, while working with metal powders, that marks in a coating of aluminium powder could be seen from the other side of a translucent plate." —Andres Cassanges, whose invention L'Ecran Magique ("The Magic Screen") debuted at a Nuremberg toy fair in 1959, before being licensed by The Ohio Art Company and sold in America as "Etch A Sketch," died in Paris on January 16th of as-yet-undisclosed causes. He was 86. For about thirty years of my life I thought Van Halen had written an awesome rock song about Etch A Sketch, until last year, when I saw [...]

It's Science!
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Watch A Jumping Spider Dance To Impress A Prospective Mate And Name A Newly Discovered Species

| July 25th, 2011

“So the female wants to say no but he puts it in big bright letters 'new and improved.’ He’s basically finding loopholes in her sensory system.” —University of British Columbia zoologist Wayne Madison explains the increasingly complex mating dance of the male jumping spider to The Last Word On Nothing's Anne Casselman. Madison discovered a whole new species of jumping spider in Ecuador, and you can help name it!

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Everything Old, New Again: Yo La Tengo v. Van Halen

| July 30th, 2009

While the Fiery Furnaces are turning into Kiss, we are finding more returns to the Golden Age of Everything. Check the video for "Here To Fall," the new single from Hoboken living-room tunesmiths Yo La Tengo: beautiful, mesmerizing, deeply artistic in the way that the slow-motion footage of skywriters and kaleidoscopic editing capture the poignancy in Ira Kaplan's lyrics about the great leap of faith that is love. Yeah, well….

Awl Music
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The First Video That Meant Something To Me: Van Halen's "Panama"

| September 10th, 2012

Part of a series for the new Awl Music app.

For a 12-year-old boy, this video had it all: a cool airplane, jumping, kicking, spandex, karate, cops, chest hair, head hair, hot chicks, motorcycles, booze, screaming fans, rhythm gymnastics. It was the perfect music video for the confused sexuality of puberty. My friend Sam and I would watch this video on his VCR and act it out together. If you got to be David Lee Roth, you also had to be Michael Anthony. If you were Eddie Van Halen, you also had to be Alex Van Halen—a measure cooler than Michael Anthony but then again Diamond Dave was [...]

Culture and TV
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Van Halen Seeing How Much Of An Album Can Be Recorded In The Short Blips Of Time They Can Bear To Spend In A Room With David Lee Roth

| August 10th, 2010

"Most recently, the band toured with founding brothers, Eddie and Alex Van Halen, its original lead singer, David Lee Roth, and Eddie's son, Wolfgang, playing bass. The group is currently in the studio recording an album with Roth that is due for release in 2011." -I saw them play in Atlantic City three years ago and it was great fun. (The pre-recorded keyboard part for "Jump" played at the correct pitch that night.) But the world needs a new album from the original Van Halen line-up like David Lee needed those white fur après-ski boots 30 years ago.

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Van Halen's Original Logo

| May 1st, 2009

Maybe if Van Halen had gone with their original logo I would have learned algebra instead of spending all my time in class trying to draw that frigging VH.

What a World!
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Another Idea For Opportunistic Etch A Sketch Marketing Campaign

| March 30th, 2012

"I expected it to go away like everything else in the news cycle. We had all kinds of headlines, but we wanted to steer the direction of the conversation in a little bit more of a positive direction.” —Ohio Art Company president and CEO Larry Killgallon discusses a new ad campaign designed to take advantage of a Mitt Romney's advisor's remarks that his candidate's positions were "almost like an Etch A Sketch." I would have thought Killgallon was right in his original expectation. I mean, the product in the news now is Skittles, right? But, who knows, maybe this thing's really got legs. Either way, [...]

What a World
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Strip Club In Old Schoolhouse Puts New Twist On Town Vs. Gown Tensions

| May 20th, 2010

A new strip club in south-central Illinois is operating out of a long-unused schoolhouse that, according to the Chicago Tribune, was once a place "where people gathered to sing hymns, attend 4-H meetings and sell homemade pies." But after the Pioneer School was sold off for a mere $36,000 to local entrepreneurs who transformed it into The School House, the place had its "homey Midwestern feel" wiped clean. Out were the 4-H meetings; in was "a poster titled 'Class Rules' that reads 'Keep hands off dancers'" and a VIP room inside what was once the teachers' lounge. The hymns are still there, though, thanks to people who protest the [...]