I got home very late last night after my talk in New Paltz, the cold that I’ve been developing for the last week has hit full strength, and I’m giving an exam this morning. So here’s something completely silly: Which sister do you prefer?Market Research For bonus points, guess which of these songs I have… Continue reading Musical Poll: Sisters
Category: Music
Musical Poll: 99 ___?
It’s the last week of the winter term here, so here is a totally serious and important music-related poll question: Which do you prefer?survey software (OK, maybe the end-of-term craziness is making me just a tiny bit punchy…)
Bill Simmons and Chuck Klosterman to Wreck My Productivity
As has been mentioned numerous other places, ESPN is backing a new Bill Simmons project, which basically sounds like a pop-culture blog network kind of thing, headlined by Simmons and Chuck Klosterman. I saw this a while ago (I think I may have tagged a press release for a Links Dump), but was reminded of… Continue reading Bill Simmons and Chuck Klosterman to Wreck My Productivity
A Not Entirely Original Observation About Popular Music
I picked up a few albums off “Best of 2010” list a few weeks ago, and have been listening to them on shuffle play a lot. These included Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Which is kind of a rough one for shuffle play with SteelyKid in the house– I keep having to skip… Continue reading A Not Entirely Original Observation About Popular Music
Guess-the-Lyrics: Unusual Rhymes III
A somewhat surprising number of people asked for a return of the guess-the-lyrics posts in the who are you? thread, and it seems like a good Friday activity. So, as with the previous rounds, each of the following gives a pair of rhyming (or at least intended-to-rhyme) phrases from a pop music song in my… Continue reading Guess-the-Lyrics: Unusual Rhymes III
Best Music of 2010
I’ve shifted the iTunes shuffle from the Christmas-music playlist over to the top-rated songs of the year playlist because, well, it’s the time of year when anybody with any pretension of writing about pop culture does some sort of Top N list to wrap up the year. And, since I’ve got “pop culture” right up… Continue reading Best Music of 2010
Notes Toward a Unified Theory of Modern Christmas Songs
As is often noted, most modern recordings of Christmas songs range from utterly bland to excruciatingly awful. There are some that sorta-kinda work, though, and a bare few that are brilliant: In the interest of promoting, you know, music that doesn’t suck, it’s perhaps worth taking a look at what makes the good songs work.… Continue reading Notes Toward a Unified Theory of Modern Christmas Songs
Annual Request: Christmas Songs That Don’t Suck
As you can see from the picture at right, we’ve got our Christmas tree up, waiting to surprise SteelyKid when she comes home in a couple of hours. This also means it’s getting toward the time when I switch over to the holiday music playlist on iTunes. Christmas music is, of course, a problematic genre.… Continue reading Annual Request: Christmas Songs That Don’t Suck
25 Years of Great Albums
It feels a little weird not to be doing a Short Story Club entry, so here’s a different sort of pop culture item: Over at EphBlog, my classmate Derek Catsam has decided to break up the carnival of reactionary politics by commenting on great albums, jumping off from Spin‘s Top 125 of the Last 25… Continue reading 25 Years of Great Albums
Poll: Greetings
I don’t think this one requires any explanation: Hello:customer surveys Staying up watching the Giants game last night was not conducive to getting anything useful done this morning.