It starts with a simple, relentless drumbeat, punctuated with a catchy, almost tribal woodblock sound. Then the pulsing synth starts and you just feel the whole rollercoaster lurch away from your feet and you drop into a throat-hitching freefall, esophagus rippling while your heart screams with ecstasy.

It samples a bunch of the awesomest movies ever like Blade Runner, A Clockwork Orange, Scarface.

Maybe it sounds like steam rising off a jungle or a low, purple-red sun rising in a time-lapse movie of a highway jammed with traffic, fog burning away. It sounds like aerobics, but the cool kind. Like the aerobics in a montage from a very inspirational Hollywood movie about training to whip somebody’s ass in a dystopian future. There’s one thing that’s very clear about the hidden message in this song, though: there’s a great big busy productive world happening out there, and just for this one day, you want no part of it.

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The Japanese robots at the Kennedy Center’s “Robotopia Rising” exhibit are cute, cuddly ambassadors from a future packed with smiling, happy plastic slaves. Japan’s massive aging population is creating a need for robotic elder-care assistants, machines that can remind the aged to take medicine, turn them in bed, or alert working adult children to problems at home.

This makes perfect sense for a culture that worships its ancestors, loves technology and has evolved economically to the point where family can no longer afford to care for family personally. “Robotopia Rising” asserts that Japanese robots are made to emulate their pop culture, equal parts Astro Boy and Hello Kitty. Here in America, we just chuck our old folks into crooked homes and get back to making actual Terminators as quickly as possible.

“Robotopia Rising” is part of a larger exhibit at the Kennedy Center, “Japan: Culture + Hyperculture,” and it’s easily the most magnetic part. I didn’t see a lot of wide-eyed toddlers and balding geeks like me lingering breathlessly over the admittedly gorgeous lacquer sculptures in the hallway, or straining to touch the gorgeous textile artwork with trembling, sweaty fingers.

I’ve created a photo gallery from the show here … and as usual, there’s much, much more after the jump …

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The Hell Fruit
Originally uploaded by Gems from the Collection.

Life is good, but hadn’t a damn thing worth writing about happened in a little while. Here’s a batch of links to tide you over and make that workday whistle right by …

When people talk about art as a religious experience, they invariably invoke Michelangelo, Da Vinci, or Greek statuary, as though God stopped speaking to people hundreds of years ago and this art are well-read love letters from a long-dead romance. Fuck that. When I look at great sci-fi art I feel the earth slip away and get chills that radiate from the back of my skull all the way down my arms.

See if you can look at this incredible gallery from British pulp-mag artist Ron Turner without calling a tattoo shop.

Robotics engineers have invented a robot that can not only perceive rhythm but dance to it. From an article in the New Scientist:

Psychologists have shown that people are more engaging when they synchronise their movement to their voice or to the voice or movement of another person. Michalowski argues that robots will need a sense of rhythm if people are to accept them. “In the future you are going to be talking to some robot and just the ability of the robot to nod to what you are saying will make it easier to interact,” he says.

Check out this video of that cute little fluffy robot, dancing to Spoon. If marshmallow peeps could dance like that, they might appeal to our hearts and escape our gnashing jaws each springtime, surviving to populate the entire planet.

Way out, deep in outer space, cosmic bullets are piercing a giant cloud of space gas. There’s a cheap joke in there somwhere, but I can’t quite find it … Anyway, from Space.com:

Each bullet [image] is about ten times the size of Pluto’s orbit around the Sun and travels through the clouds at up to 250 miles (400 kilometers) per second—or about a thousand times faster than the speed of sound … As the bullets plow through the clouds, they leave behind tubular orange wakes, each about a fifth of a light-year long.

The photo is like, the best Trapper Keeper cover ever.

True dat: 16 things it takes most of us 50 years to learn

According to a number of sources, the I (Heart) Huckabees set was an utter emotional trainwreck. Director David O. Russell is widely reported to be brilliant, demanding and exasperating in equal amounts, and he and Lily Tomlin tangled like hell on the set. Defamer and WFMU’s Beware of the Blog have more detailed posts on the matter, both well worth reading. Even if you don’t read the posts, plug the headphones in and watch one of the best spontaneous displays of truly rotten behavior that I have ever seen:

Defamer posts:

Tomlin Vs. Russell: The ‘I Heart Huckabees’ Outtakes
Lily Tomlin On That Whole ‘Huckabees’ Deal

Happy Friday, people …