Posts Tagged ‘popularculture’
Arthur C. Clarke Passes
It is sad to hear that the great author Arthur C. Clarke has passed away. Although he was 90 and lived a long fruitful and prophetic life, he will be missed. Few have matched his accomplishments.
Rest in Peace.
Life is a Long Playing Record
Hoping to prove once and for all that cover of the LP record album (long playing record for you youngn’s) was, and still is truly more interesting than a boring old CD cover in a plastic shell. I present this video (found recently on YouTube) as evidence marked as Exhibit #1 to bolster my case…
Enjoy!
Pop Goes the Year
Personally I can’t think of a better way to digest a years worth of music in one bite. Behold DJ Earworm’s latest: “United State of Pop.” Another Mashup for aural pleasure.
[click on the link above to access the song in glorious MP3 format]
Now you too can enjoy reminiscing about good old 2007 while doing your best to act cool while avoid the ever-present urge to make bad pop references , Let everyone else insist they really can “Party like a Rock Star.” You know you are better than all that. Yeah, that’s right…
A Twitter Twitch
In the past few days I started playing around with Twitter, the short burst~a blog slash social networking tool. I must confess that I lurked a while before I started posting. Not being a heavy user of text messaging (my 35 yo sister annoys me with her habit) I was not sure of the appeal, but I’m trying it anyway.
I have found a couple of friends on the service so far, and I have played with it a bit, and it is sort of fun. I have heard that Twitter can be addicting, that, for me at least remains to be seen. Maybe when I have discovered more friends / acquaintances / net shadows on the service to follow, I will the itch to Twitch ~er~ Twitter. In the mean time, I’ll experiment.
Should you feel the desire to checkup on me ~ follow wiredgonzo.
To read another take on whether or not Twitter Matters, check out this post and associated comments on the CivicMatters blog.
“It’s a Scientific Fact”
It’s a scientific fact that if you search long and hard enough (and scarify having an actual life enough…) the time will come when the most embarrassing moments of your childhood will come back to haunt you.
Case in point? Songs that I used to be forced to listen to back in 2nd, 3rd, and fourth grade elementary school have now found a home on the Internet, just to haunt me and frighten my children.
Witness: “It’s a Scientific Fact” by Hy Zaret and Lou Singer immortalized on their Singing Science Records LP “Space Songs” produced in the 1950s.
You can listed to “It’s a Scientific Fact” here in glorious MP3 format. For more on the Singing Science Records go here.
Roommates
It’s cheesy, it’s a waste of a good three minutes and it’s on MySpace.
MySpace’s first attempt at original video programming is a 3 minute per episode production of “Roommates” a “video blog” featuring recently graduated college girls on the prowl and starring in their own reality show. It’s boring drivel and the only redeeming thing I think it has going for it is that it is fake.
I am sure that it will catch on… after all this Fall’s new television line up includes a new comedy series based on the equally cheesy 30 “Caveman” second television spots by Geico. So why not put fake Reality TV on Myspace?
I can’t wait for MySpace to introduce the first in a series of inevitable Roommates inspired ringtones. I am sure they too will be a big hit. I am sure it won’t be long before I can hear them being played between commecials every time I slip and turn on the Top 40 radio station in my car.
Of Bootlegs, History, and All that Grooves…
Way back in 2002, Tom of freakytrigger fame wrote this entry giving a bit of history and context to the whole bootleg (craze?) genre of music perculating at the time.
Hey! Call me hip if you want to (…or tell me it’s time to look into a hip replacement…) but I just stumbled on this stuff myself this last year. Yep… that’s me you see up there on the highwire with walker and an iPod, getting all getting my groove on with my edgy self…
Anyway… now that I am about over being the last guy to stumble into the party, I am enjoying discovering some of the (old &) new bootlegs, mashups, and bastardpop out there.
Excuse me while I wrap myself up in my earbuds again…
Department of Obvious Conclusions
Fresh from the Department of Obvious Conclusions…
A recent study researchers at the Universities of Texas and Michigan concludes that
“‘adolescent gamers spent 30 percent less time reading and 34 percent less time doing homework’ than their non-gaming counterparts.”
This, according to story was reported on United Press International, refering to the original journal article in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
[ Read more about it here on Physorg.com ]
The only intelligent conclusion (err comment) I can make about this article is “well duh! I could have told you that.” Anyone who raises, teachs, knows, or even was a teenager in the past two decades could have told these researchers this information.
I hope that no one spent a heap of money funding this particular study. Aren’t there any endangered red-bellied seersucker tree frogs out there somewhere that need hordes of graduate students to spend their spare time counting and observing the behavior of their amorous mating pairs? Wouldn’t this make a better study for our beloved instutions of higher learning wishing to pursue Federal Funding?
Lets leave the study of the incredibly obvious to the politicians and statisticians at the Government Accounting Office where it belongs.
And She Was…
by Talking Heads
Certain songs, certain albums, certain groups define an era. I can’t speaking for everyone else in my generation who survived the 80’s as to the impact the Talking Heads had on their own existence, but I know that this album meant something to me. The Talking Heads barely made an impact on FM radio back then, but they found their way to my tape player some how, some way I can’t quite recall how. Once they did, I wore out more than one of their tapes in my car and songs like “And She Was” and “Road to Nowhere” always managed to make it on my road trip mix tapes.
Times have changed. I don’t make road trip mix tapes any more, it’s all about MP3 playlists now… but whenever I stumble across “And She Was” listening to whatever my truck or on my computer I always stop, listen, and remember very fondly 1985 and a certain someone who was very integral to my scattered life back then.
And whenever I hear…
The world was moving and she was right there with it
(and she was)
The world was moving she was floating above it
(and she was) and she was
I will always wonder whatever became of…
Gonzo Shugged: Galt Aureus
I grew up in the era when as a music the desire to discover new bands meant trolling the local clubs in every city and town one found oneself in after dark, trading mix tapes and bootlegs with friends, in dark alleys, or both, dialing down and over to the left on the FM dial to find the better college radio stations and reading the locally disrespectfully delightful music rag for tips on who is up and coming. Now days new bands and artists find their audiences on MySpace and other sites such as TagWorld. Times have changed and our choices are broader and less tied to a locale. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
I miss the rags, but I am willing to click my way through the muck to find the occasional new band that excites me. Today's potential find is San Diego, California's Galt Aureus. I have only had the pleasure of sampling two of their songs, both resontated with me on a Sunday evening. I look forward to hearing more from them in the future. This as of yet unsigned band lists among it's literary influences Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and it's musical influences the Foo Fighters and Mahler. You can find them online at:
Enjoy!
