Happy holidays from Boing Boing tv! Continuing in our retrospective of favorite episodes from our first year:

Each year, David Silverman (director of the Simpsons Movie, and longtime director of the TV show) illustrates holiday cards for friends and family. Xeni visits him in his home studio for a re-enactment of the craziest years in holiday cheer, complete with tuba carols.

( Flash embed above, and here's a direct MP4 download link. )

Walter Robot, aka Bill Barminski and Christopher Louie, produced this video for Gnarls Barkley's new track "Mystery Man." Here are previous Boing Boing tv episodes featuring Barminski's work.

Butterflies, wah-wah pedals, and one-eyed yeti, ahoy! The Boing Boing tv crew is proud to return to the work of one of our favorite multi-media savants, Bill Barminski of Walter Robot Studios. The filmmaker, composer, illustrator and animator shares this new video work, a hypnotic flight of fancy for his music project, the Subatomic Nixons. Enjoy the "Hazy Day," and happy weekend, everyone. Special thanks to Barminski and Christopher Louie, and all of the Walter Robot team. Here are previous BBtv episodes featuring their work.

Today's Boing Boing tv is an installment of our ongoing BBtv WORLD series, in which we bring you first-person glimpses of life around the globe.

From the 17th to 19th centuries, millions of African people were sold
 into slavery, transported on ships 
to the Americas. With them came spiritual traditions 
including Voudun, which we now 
know as “voodoo.”
 Its roots are in the Dahomey kingdom 
on the West Coast of Africa, now the country of Benin.


In today’s episode, I 
travel to Benin’s port city of Ouidah,
 one of the most important slave trade ports, 
and a center of the Vodoun religion.

We visit the Temple of Pythons and learn about Voudun religious practices, and witness some of the most important sites in the history of the slave trade.

We walk along a beach that was the single most highly-trafficked embarkation point for West African slaves headed over the Atlantic to the Americas. One million people were forced on to ships here, many transported to Haiti and Brazil, where Voudun transmuted into voodoo and Candomblé.

Outsiders called this region the Slave Coast. Ouidah's residents today call the former boarding platform on this otherwise idyllic beach the Gate of No Return. -- XJ

(Photos: Xeni Jardin, CC license)

BBtv is launching a series of episodes featuring author, PC, and minor television personality John Hodgman, as the world waits breathlessly for the launch of his new book, MORE INFORMATION THAN YOU REQUIRE . We have read it, dear viewer, and it is splendid.

Today, the debut installment of Boing Boing tv's SPAMASTERPIECE THEATER, which Hodgman himself describes as the dramatization of "true tale[s] of romance, adventure, infamy, and low-cost prescription drugs, all culled from the reams of actual, unsolicited emails, received here by us and people like you -- what we call SPAM."

We'll be releasing more of these in the coming weeks. Each one is composed exclusively of actual, unadulterated, unsolicited email. Like virtual raw foodists, we would not think of cooking perfect fruit that falls so gracefully from the internet's tree of life.

We hope you enjoy. { fade to black, fade in Hodgman in the library chair, surrounded by spam ephemera}

A note from our musical director: The adaptation of Jean-Joseph Mouret's "Rondeau: Fanfare" (1735) which opens today's episode was remixed in flagrante 8-bit by Hamhocks Buttermilk Johnson.

The Boing Boing tv crew continues their hard-earned snooze in the sands of a swingers' resort on the south shore of Mars today, but we're revisiting the best of the show while we slack off in outer space. (Robot! Bring me another red Rover martini.)

Today, we feature the work of animator, filmmaker, and music video director Bill Barminski, a longtime Boing Boing fave.

Above, "Drive In," a soothing ambient work I like to watch before bedtime.

Another beloved Barminksi joint is below, S.E.X.Y. R.O.B.O.T.: Pinker Tones music video by Walter Robot.

Here's a link to all of the BBtv episodes which have featured Barminski's work.

My favorite appears in the second half of this BBtv episode: the "Fuji Apple" animated short from Barminski's production team Walter Robot, with music by Boards of Canada (song: Roygbiv, from "Music has the Right to Children.") I could just watch that over and over again, and I often do.

Boing Boing tv is taking a week off for organic yak-yogurt wrestling on a private Himalayan island; we leave you to enjoy some of our crew's favorite past episodes in the meantime.

"Gem sweater diva" and midwestern maven Leslie Hall has appeared twice on our show. The video featured above is a tour diary she recorded just for us. If you like that, check out our backstage visit with her during a stop in San Francisco, below. "With these shoulder pads, I have the strength to destroy villages, homes and crops."

Original BBtv posts:
* Leslie Hall: Dear Diary
* Leslie Hall: ceWEBrity, gem sweater diva, jammer of jams.

The Boing Boing tv crew is taking this end-of-summer week off from production, so we're revisiting some of our favorite episodes from the last couple of months -- fun stuff you may have missed.

Today: John Behrens and "Omega Recoil" build giant Tesla Coils. Their work explores how electronic fields can be excited in the environment, and their creations become the centerpieces of interactive public art performances.

Some of the tinkerers and performers in this SF Bay Area-based collective were previously associated with Dr. Megavolt, an electrical art project which...

[featured] a person in a metal mesh suit interacting with artificially generated lighting. The Doctor sets objects on fire with electricity originating from large Tesla coils, spars with the electric arcs and exhorts the audience to worship the elemental force of electricity.

Team Boing Boing tv was live and in effect all weekend long at the first Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival in San Francisco's Golden Gate park. The event was a blast, and we interviewed many amazing artists here. BBtv's UK-based music correspondent Russell Porter hopped across the pond to join us for hijinks and great music, the first of which is this conversation with David Hinds, the frontman of legendary roots reggae band STEEL PULSE.

(special thanks to Wayne and Bre for use of their magic bus; air travel generously provided by Virgin America.)

Related Boing Boing tv episodes:

* Primus: Xeni interviews Les and Ler (music)
* Kaki King, guitar hero: performance, interview with Xeni (music)
* BB Gadgets' Joel at Outside Lands: Crowdfire deconstructed
* Carney at Outside Lands - a "Boing Boing tv Bus Session." (music)
* Boing Boing tv backstage at Outside Lands: (Xeni + Russell Porter)

Last week, eight American citizens were detained in Beijing for participating in pro-Tibetan sovereignty protests near the site of the 2008 Olympics, with Students for a Free Tibet. Two videobloggers who documented those protest and guerrilla art installations evaded detention, and spoke to Boing Boing TV on Friday Beijing time about why they were there, what they witnessed, and why it mattered.

Jay Dedman and Ryanne Hodson of Ryanishungry.com spoke to us over Skype from a hostel in Beijing. One of the actions they documented in photo and video was the hanging of an "LED throwies" light banner, below, which read "FREE TIBET." We agreed to hold this Boing Boing tv episode until after we received word that they'd safely left the country. They have returned home, so I am posting the piece today.

Correction: Yesterday, we posted news that 6 Americans who'd been detained were now released and on their way to Los Angeles. Turns out that in fact, a total of 8 were detained -- the last two, from a later protest, a photograph of which is posted below (Thanks, NF and Students for a Free Tibet).

Previously on Boing Boing blog:
* UPDATE: US citizens detained in Beijing over Tibet protests are released, returning home.
* Beijing and Tibet: GRL's James Powderly, Brian of "Alive in Baghdad, 4 other US citizens receive 10-day jail sentence
* Beijing update: New detentions, 6 US protesters missing, Tibetan protesters in Tibet reportedly shot dead.
* Beijing: "Alive in Baghdad" videoblogger among US citizens detained in pro-Tibet protests
* Beijing: Five US activists detained after lighting up "Free Tibet" LED Throwies banner near Olympics site
* GRL's James Powderly detained in Beijing for planning pro-Tibet "L.A.S.E.R. Stencil" art protest

Related episodes of Boing Boing tv:
* BBtv WORLD (Tibet): Inside Lhasa
* Vlog (Xeni): Tibet report - monks forced to participate in staged videos.
* Vlog (Xeni): Tibet's uprising and the internet

Boing Boing tv is live and in full effect at the Outside Lands Music and Arts fest in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. The gates haven't opened yet, but when they do, some 180,000 people are expected to pour in over three days to see bands like Radiohead, Beck, Wilco, Primus, Tom Petty, Manu Chao, Black Keys, Ben Harper, and dozens of others, plus some cool tech-art experiments we'll be digging into.

I'm here with our UK-based music correspondent Russell Porter, and the entire BBtv crew over the next 4 days. We're posting this episode from inside a giant rock star tour bus *very* generously loaned to us by friends of the blog

We ran around yesterday in a golf cart with the guy who created Outside Lands, Rick Farman of Superfly Productions. We spoke with him for this episode about the idea behind this festival, and what it takes to put together something this huge and complex. Events like this are a virtual world of sorts -- only with lots of real live breathing humans.

We're parked about 100 feet away from the main stage. It feels strange to be so close to something so big before the gates open. All night long, production vehicles and golf carts full of loading guys buzzed around; as I type this there's an eerie quiet before the opening chords explode. This is going to be fun.

Tech notes: the tall eucalyptus trees next to our bus (this is a gorgeous park, remember!) are blocking our satellite dish, so no WiFi in the bus right now -- instead, we're jacked into EVDO cards on MacBooks, on which BBtv editor Wes and segment producer Derek edited this piece last night. I'm pleasantly surprised at upload speeds on this card (it's a Verizon Rev-A). Stay tuned for more video from the BBtv bus at Outside Lands!

(special thanks to Wayne and Bre for use of their magic bus; air travel generously provided by Virgin America.)

Related Boing Boing tv episodes:

* Primus: Xeni interviews Les and Ler (music)
* Kaki King, guitar hero: performance, interview with Xeni (music)
* BB Gadgets' Joel at Outside Lands: Crowdfire deconstructed
* Carney at Outside Lands - a "Boing Boing tv Bus Session." (music)
* Steel Pulse founder David Hinds at Outside Lands (music)

A short film by monochrom about a man who dies, is reborn, and sprouts gills. Created by Harald Homolka List, Johannes Grenzfurthner, Evelyn Fürlinger (link to monochrom site for this film, here are other short films from them in German).

Previous work from monochrom on Boing Boing tv:

* Monochrom: Economic Recession Wisdom from Sock Puppets.
* Monochrom's "Kiki, Bubu, and the Self"
* Nazi Petting Zoo
* Fisch Interview
* Orwell's 1984 deconstructed by puppets
* Monochrom's Marxist sock puppets
* Monochrom: MyFaceSpace, the musical
* Monochrom: Campfire at Will
* Monochrom: Falco Stairs
* Monochrom: Bar code artist Scott Blake / Falco stencil memorial
* Human USB Hack / Very Simple Motor
* Mark's Curie Engine / Monochrom's love song for Lessig

BBtv guest teen haxxor correspondent 5t311a teaches us how to do guerilla t-shirt silkscreening, as described in Cory Doctorow's novel Little Brother, and as detailed in a recent series of Instructables posts. (Thanks, Charis Tobias!)

Boing Boing tv guest correspondent Todd Lappin (R) and cameraninja Eddie Codel (L) trek to the Long Now Foundation's first-ever Mechanicrawl event, and bring back tales of early analog computing, fantastic timepieces, and impossibly eccentric mechanical things.

First, Todd speaks with the Long Now Foundation's Alexander Rose about a 10,000-year mechanical clock dreamed up by supercomputer designer Danny Hillis.

Next, we listen to a prototype chime mechanism that will ring ten bells in a different sequence each day over the next 10,000 years. Brian Eno and Danny Hillis came up with the algorithm, and a team of tinkerers crafted the contraption to tap out time on a series of Tibetan bowl gongs.

Todd has a photoset with snapshots from the Mechanicrawl adventures. See also this previous Laughing Squid post.

(Special thanks to Karen Marcelo for image shown in video still)