WKRN is having one of their Video-Blogging 101 Seminars again. I went to the first one, and it was pretty cool, so check it out if you can.
I also got roped into babbling in front of a camera for this commercial (WMV) for NiT, so if you go, put on a clean shirt, comb your hair and, you know, shave.
This is the rockinest song ever. You can buy it here -- you know, uh.. if you want to.
By the way, Billy Joel called -- he wants his verse back.
UPDATE: Oh man, these guys are playing in Franklin in November along with Lee Fuckin Greenwood. I am so there.
UPDATE 2: This can't be real.
UPDATE 3: I'm sorry, but this is like the funniest shit I have ever seen in my life. Check out this song, Trickle Down:
If the rich man didn't spend his cash on cars and boats and planes
There'd be a lot of average Joe's out of work today
His dollar helps America's economy to thrive
The rich man keeps the working man working and alive
And then there's this gem from You Can't Racial Profile:
Well, I ain't never seen a grandma
Strap dynamite around her waist
Or put explosives in her slip-ons
And try to blow a plane to outerspace
As a matter of fact every terrorist act
That's taken place in the friendly sky
You must understand has been by an olived skinned man
Between 18 and 35
Amanda had a few Bloc Party songs that I had liked, so I went ahead and grabbed Silent Alarm from emusic (the end of the month song-purge).
I am digging it quite a bit, although I am on the second listen and I am already tiring of it a little -- it might not be an album that holds up to repeated listens. But, I am liking it. Everyone is saying it, but it definitely reminds me a lot of Gang of Four, and something else I can't put my finger on. I am tempted to say Blur, but I think that's just because his voice sounds a little like Damon Albarn (and the british accent doesn't hurt).
when I was a teenager.. I used to listen to A Tribe Called Quest a lot more (it was mandatory for my generation, actually.)
Jackson informed us that today is Tribe Called Quest day at work. Well, I'm not at work, but I am obliging, anyway.
It's been a while since I thought about ATCQ, actually. These guys get credit for breaking a lot of new ground -- including, let's face it, bringing hiphop to a lot of white people.
I pretty much stopped paying attention to ATCQ after Midnight Marauders when I discovered De La Soul (which regrettably has also proved to be a deadend as of late, but I digress). A lot of people pinpoint Beats, Rhymes and Life as the downfall of the tribe, but I actually can handle some of this album -- it's not that bad. The Love Movement really represents the epitome of depressing sell-out to me. Not shameless sell-out, but rather self-conscious sell-out. In those stupid white suits and the half-hearted attempts at *bling*. They clearly tried to sell out, but they didn't want it. The result? A very lame attempt at selling out, and a terrible album.
But let's not dwell on the future when we have the past. Low End Theory? Molto bene!
CNN has this article today:
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - There are 700,000 more millionaire households this year than in 2004, according to a survey released Wednesday.
...
This is the third consecutive annual increase, although this year's growth rate is far more modest than the 33 percent increase seen in 2004.
Weird, it's almost like there's something consistently driving that growth.
"There usually is never one thing that drives the (number of millionaires) up or down," said Jeanette Luhr, manager of the TNS research study. But, she noted, the millionaire households didn't grow rich overnight.
Actually, there is one thing. Uh, inflation? Hello?
So, a few months ago I was bugging my dad to remember what was on this particular CD I had -- I knew it was a Schumann piano concerto, but there was something else on it. I was trying to find out because I remember it being my very favorite classical music ever. I googled my heart out, bugged my dad repeatedly, all to no avail.
Yesterday, I realized that .. I still have the CD -- that I still have CDs at all. I sorta forgot about those. How embarassing.
So, yeah, I ripped it to mp3. Happy times. The CD is a great combination of music. The Slovak Philharmonic with Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor, and Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor. Two really kick-ass pieces on similar themes. I love it.
Mazda has beaten the rest of the auto industry to the punch by eliminating four harmful heavy metals from all of its cars -- lead, hexavalent chromium, cadmium and mercury. This is no surprise, considering the new Miata, which is bigger, badder, better and faster, and still only 22lbs heavier than the previous generation. You can't do that with lead, no sir.
Donald Sensing, on the anti-war movement:
With last weekend’s protest extravaganza in the nation’s capital, it is appropriate to revisit the topic. Almost three years ago I said that the “peace movement” isn’t really about peace and that the protest industry falls into two main camps. First is the “Down With America” camp populated with the sort of people George Orwell described in his essay, “Notes on Nationalism,” of May 1945. Their
"... real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States."
First: nice ellipses, Don. I am currently reading Hitchens' book on Orwell, so I noticed something missing from this quote right away. Orwell's original quote began "There is a minority of intellectual pacificists, whose real though unacknowledged ...", which was conveniently excised from Donald's excerpt.
Second, Orwell was talking about pacifism, not anti-war sentiment in general. So, I hardly think that Orwell's description of a minority of two-faced pacifists is sufficient justification to claim that the peace movement doesn't have good intentions.
Sensing ends with:
It is one thing, and necessary, to hold our elected officials accountable for what they do on our behalf. It is quite another thing to call for victory by the enemies of the United States, who would have sought our destruction whether Iraq had been invaded or not.
Who is calling for victory by the enemies of the United States? Donald, you're tilting at windmills, man.
"The president believes the government should be limited not in size, Jon, but in effectiveness. In terms of effectiveness, this is the most limited government we've ever had."
--Daily Show correspondent Rob Corddry
Reason has an odd matchup they are billing as a 'battle royale' between Milton Friedman, John Mackey, and T.J. Rodgers on the subject of corporate philanthropy. Odd, because Friedman, with his obvious reputation for economic clout is matched with Mackey, who, while he runs a successful company, is evidently no economist. The result is sortof like watching a whiffle-ball match between Jose Canseco and Woody Allen. There's an obvious advantage, but the result is meaningless because they're just batting around whiffleballs -- moral platitudes, rhetoric, and baseless assumptions. There's really not a drop of actual analysis -- either sociological or economic -- of the ramifications of corporate philanthropy. They're not playing hardball, here.
I didn't actually get to T.J. Rodgers' bit, because I was alread thoroughly bored halfway through Friedman's rebuttal and my bath was getting cold. Sorry, T.J.!