Great drums make the pop song. It’s not just the pattern and the rhythm, it’s the way the drums are recorded and mixed. They can be big and deep or flat and harsh. There is no one sound that’s right. For example, check out the beginning to the track “The Fallen” off Franz Ferdinand‘s sophomore [...]
Pass the ketchup, please.
It’s really sad, the cultural divides that separate us… On the occasion of the State of the Union address, the Washington Post today profiled Randolph, Utah, where Bush received 95.6 percent of the vote in 2004: “Patty melts! No one makes patty melts anymore,” [the customer] is saying to the counterman, Ryan Louderman, who knew [...]
The race begins.
Oscar nominations were announced this morning. The big winners were Brokeback Mountain, Crash and Good Night, and Good Luck. I’ve seen all three of these, and Brokeback is the one to beat (in my opinion). Terrence Howard‘s Best Actor nomination for Hustle & Flow was a surprise. George Clooney is having the best year of [...]
Mickey? Just quit it.
Mickey Kaus can be quite annoying when he hops up on a soapbox and stays up there so long you want to push him off. For some reason, the pro-Brokeback Mountain crowd annoyed him, so he’s been sniping at the movie for weeks. TMFTML points out that Kaus said the film would never do $50 [...]
“Monkeys is de cwaziest peoples!”
There’s this hot new band from England… There’s always one, isn’t there? Unless it’s a hot new band from New York City. You wouldn’t describe Sufjan Stevens as hot; that’s because he’s from Michigan and his big album of last year was about Illinois. (yeah, yeah, irony — I know he lives in NYC now…) [...]
“Jack you’ll never lack if you can quack like a duck.”
I’ve always thought it was kind of cool the way Terry Teachout refers to the “Teachout Museum,” which is what he calls his personal collection of art. This is a potentially pretentious sort of reference, but he makes it work. This past weekend, I was shopping in an antique store and I saw this painting. [...]
Blame game
There has been a lot of interest in the D.C./Baltimore area about a terrible incident on Tuesday of this week, when an 8-year-old boy shot and wounded a 7-year-old girl at a day-care center. On Thursday, there were further details about how the boy’s father showed the boy how to handle and fire the .38 [...]
Creative (perhaps) “writing” (?) — Part 3
I continue to be baffled and/or appalled at the combination of superficiality and unintelligibility offered on the AIM Today home page. In our latest installment (Read part 1 and part 2), someone’s gone link crazy. Here we see a promotion of The Cosmic Diet and a reference to being “on your way to taking up [...]
“And die behind the wheel…”
Steely Dan? Is that what I’m reduced to? Christ, what’s next — posting James Taylor songs? Discussing the relative merits of New Edition and New Kids on the Block? (Although there’s a fascinating discussion to be had on how Maurice Starr is the black Colonel Tom Parker.) I blame it on girish. He discussed The [...]
Does it matter how one consumes?
Terry Teachout in the Wall Street Journal on e-books: Yes, I miss the bookstores of my youth, and I’m sure I’ll miss the handsomely bound volumes that fill the shelves in my apartment as well (though I won’t miss dusting them, or toting them around by the half-dozen whenever I go on vacation). The printed [...]