HILARITY! Ricky Garvais on Hitler, Nietzsche, and Nursery Rhymes

Golden Globe winning actor and comedian Ricky Gervais of hit BBC show "The Office" discusses the Holocaust ("Not a traditional subject for comedy, the Holocaust. I'll give you that."), Nietzsche, and the cryptic morals of nursery rhymes with extraordinary intelligence, dignity, and comedic timing. If you've got some time, definately take a couple minutes to buffer these videos to the end. You will not be disappointed. This is smart, irreverent comedy at it's best! Enjoy!

Hitler Speaks With Nietzsche (from "Politics" )




Interpreting "Humpty Dumpty"

Random Facts Meme

So now that I've been tagged by not one, but two, different bloggers (Aspazia of Mad Melancholic Feminista and Larry Hamelin of The Barefoot Bum) , I guess I should finally participate in this meme.

First off, we have the rules:

• We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
• Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
• At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
• Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

And now my eight things:

• The first five and a half years of my academic life (Kindergarten onward) were spent in the public school system. Then, I switched to Greenwood Friends School in the middle of my fifth grade year. Now, after three and a half years at Greenwood, I am once again enrolled in the public school system, as I will be starting public high school this fall.

• I studied violin for three and a half years before quitting to focus on guitar a little more than a year ago, studying first with the string teachers at my public elementary school and then with Marcus Smolensky of Bucknell and Susquehanna Universities.
  

• I live, and have lived for my entire live, in a house without any broadcasted television. No cable, no annoying rabbit ears, nothing.

• Even though I have no cable, I actually very much enjoy several TV shows that I follow avidly through Netfilx, DVD boxed sets, iTunes subscriptions, and generous friends who tape things for me. Favorite shows include the Sopranos, the Office (BBC and NBC), Dirt, Friends, and (I'm blushing just revealing this) Grey's Anatomy. Also, my parents have a thing for bad British dramas, and they are constantly Netflix-ing shows like BallyKissAngel and Cracker.

• I have NEVER cried at a movie. Never. My friends think I'm dead inside.

• I can honestly say that there isn't any style of (secular) music I actually dislike, except maybe Country'n'Western (although Chuck Klosterman pretty much convinced me otherwise in his essay on the topic.)

• I discovered a couple of weeks ago that I seem to have a thing for charismatic, gravely-voiced folk/roots singers. I consider myself a fan of Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Daniel Lanois, and Chris Whitley, just to name a few. And Dr. John and Leo Kotke, but I'm not sure if they fall into the same category.

• And finally, today, June 27, 2007, is my fourteenth birthday.
  

Now I've got to tag people. Ughh, I hate this part...

SteveG
M. LeBlanc
Dr. Violet Socks
Jeremy dePrisco
Madman In The Marketplace
QuakerDave
Tomas Nadlehoffer

Okay, my part of the meme has been fulfilled!

Hip-Hop and White America

I have been thinking a lot about the Don Imus scandal lately. While I realize this is somewhat of a delayed reaction, it actually sort of fits a pattern in the way I experience news and politics, especially when this "news" or political intrigue has to do with popular culture or celebrity gossip. I normally find ways to ignore these delectable items of news (and so resist formulating opinions on them) while they are firmly in the limelight, but as soon as they have faded into the woodwork and disappeared from the Internet news headlines, I begin to reflect on these events I had somehow managed to ignore. So I have been thinking about the Don Imus scandal lately, and especially about the recent flurry of attention being given to racist and sexist lyrics in rap music. And the one thing I have reflected upon the most is the use of the word "nigger" in rap music and other forms of black American art and culture.

The use of the word "nigger" in predominately black hip-hop and rap music seems to be something that everyone has a strong opinion about, even to the point of making it a pseudo- political issue. I have never really had a problem with the common use of the word by black singers, musicians, rappers, and other black cultural figures, simply because much of the music and art that employs the word comes from a strong sense of hardship and persecution, whether from the back-breaking poverty of inner-city ghettos or at the hands of a bigoted, privileged white society. The word "nigger" is a direct symbol of this racist persecution and a reminder of black Americans' heritage of hardship, and the event of a persecuted group taking the very word that is a symbol of their persecution and turning it into something positive is not an unprecedented incident at all. The gay population of the eighties and nineties warped the derogatory term "queer", long used an an insult against gay and lesbian individuals, into a positive word of pride and encouragement, and the white, working-class, urban youth of '60's and '70's Europe twisted the insulting "punk" into a word that would define them and their culture for decades to come. To me, it seems only logical that a group as persecuted as black Americans would create some sort of culture from the decades of bigotry they have had to endure.

Unfortunately for my argument, though, it is hard to disagree with the fact that hip-hop has moved from the street corners and inner cities of black America into the dorm rooms, car stereos, and boomboxes of thousands of white, middle class youth. And it is apparent that many of these middle-class white youth have adopted the norms of black culture as their mantra, thus once again finding a way to incorporate the word "nigger", hurtful rather than empowering on their lips, into a white society cleansed of that kind of language by Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. It is just this kind of paradox that led Don Imus to say the deplorable things he did, and just the same kind of paradox that allows rural, white America to idolize black rappers and comedians, while still displaying a frightening level of day-to-day racism and fear of minorities.

New(ish) CD: Tim Armstrong's A Poet's Life

If this album had been recorded by anyone but Tim Armstrong, there's no way it would have been considered punk rock. Rather, it would have been considered what it is: one of the most important modern reggae albums to be released in years, and the CD on which the versatile Tim Armstrong comes full circle, from his early ska/reggae-inflected punk with underground legends Operation Ivy, to his work with the iconic street punk band Rancid, to his recent recordings with rap-punk outfit the Translators, and then back to this, his solo album, on which he combines elements of all these groups to create something more vital than much of what he has already accomplished. Armstrong reportedly released the record because "Rancid Punx have a streak...since 2000 [we] have released a new album every year", and for this, his first solo album, he chose to work with Los Angeles reggae unit the Aggrolites, a powerhouse of LA reggae musicians whose inspired music perfectly complements Armstrong's original compositions and artfully fleshes out his complex arrangements.

All the songs on this record were penned by Tim Armstrong, and lyrically they touch upon many of the same places Rancid and OP Ivy have in the past, such as the tales of jubilant debauchery in songs like the hip-hop-tinged "Oh No" ("There's gonna be lots of people getting high tonight/...I spend all my time chasing women around"), "Take This City" (Hittin' the city all night long/...Coming up, Work it up, Got a light?, Smoke it up, Zig-zag?, Roll it up."), and "Hold On" ("Fast women, cocaine and booze/The roughest of the roughest ain't got nothing to loose"). Rancid's lyrical influence is also very apparent in the stories of poverty and loneliness throughout the album, best exemplified in the brooding "Among the Dead"("It's California but it ain't sunny/And all my dreams came crashing down/I'm out on the streets, got no money/Got no band, ain't no one around"). However, Armstrong writes outside of his typical punk-rock lyrical mold on several songs, instead opting to write declarations of love and devotion, more common in reggae than punk rock. In the love-struck reggae number "Hold On", he sings as his chorus "I'm gonna hold on to you as long as I can/And if you choose to leave me girl, I'll understand/But I'm gonna hold on to you as long as I can", and in the anthemic "Translator" he takes the voice of a regretful lover, singing as his refrain "I only wanted what was best for you." There is also a surprising lack of political lyrics throughout this album, the most political of the songs being the catchy "Inner City Violence". Overall, Armstrong delivers his lyrics with calm and poise, and with little of the anger that was characteristic of former Armstrong vocalists Jesse Michaels and Lars Fredrickson.

The guitar-playing of Aggrolites members Jesse Wagner and Brian Dixon really shine on this disk, as they provide tasteful, melodic lead-lines as well as inspired rhythmic duets with organist Roger Rivas that serve to create liquid, kinetic musical texture underneath Armstrong's vocal. Their guitar playing is best used in calm reggae numbers like "Hold On" and "Translator", in which their melodic atmospheric playing serves to add new dimension to the songs. They are also allowed to shine as soloists in several places, giving their most memorable solos on the aforementioned "Hold On" and the jubilant reggae stomp "Take This City".

The first thing a listener hears when putting on this album is Armstrong's heavily reverb-ed voice demanding to know if we are "ready for this". After listening, I have to say yes. We've been ready for this for a long time, the record on which Tim Armstrong finally steps out of a band and displays his musical gifts on his own. Definitely find a way to get this album; it should be a pretty easy task since it is being offered for free download on Armstrong's Myspace page and on other services. Armstrong describes it as "our way of saying thanks, for all the support over the years."

iPod: "Pass me one of those?"

I apologize that I have been so negligent in my blogging lately, and I confess that I didn't even realize how long it had been until I noticed the date of my last post. (Is it possible it's actually been over a month?) I have been busy during this absence, though, graduating (just from Greenwood, don't get excited), playing a lot of music, submitting a couple things for publication, and wrapping up a recording project I've working on. (If you're interested in hearing some of the stuff I recorded, and have some free time to spend waiting for the audio to buffer, you can check it out here.) And, above all else, over all musical endeavors and academic achievements, I got an iPod.

A couple of years ago, Chuck Klosterman wrote an interesting piece in Spin Magazine (November 2004) entitled Living In Stereo, essentially a glorified love letter to his broken iPod, complete with clip-art graphics and everything. His basic thesis: that the iPod, instead of isolating its users like the Sony Walkman, allows them to engage and interact with the outside world in new and revolutionary ways. Basically, the iPod allows anyone with a laptop and a 2GB Nano to create a personalized (and event specific) soundtrack to their lives. Constant music, all the time. (I guess it is worth it to mention here that he might actually have a point; I'm using mine to listen to the Beatles' "Paperback Writer" as I compose this post.) Maybe this is the reason you can tell so much about someone by the contents of their iPod. But regardless as to whether this is the reason or not, the fact remains that by looking through someone's iTunes library you are offered an informative and very private window into someone's life. For example, I got mine used from an anonymous PayPal user, and even though all the songs had been deleted, I still feel as if I have a pretty good idea of his or her musical tastes. The bass boost was pumped to a level that horribly distorted everything, even at very low volumes (think Rick James's bass tone), and the EQ was twisted into a mangled tonal jumble even Jay-Z wouldn't have approved of. And when I connected it to the computer, it informed me that the iPod's former owner had creatively named it KanyeLover07. Hip-hop listener? I'd think so.

But potential for music snooping and personality profiling aside, it is hard to argue with the fact that the iPod is one of the most innovative advances in popular technology since the internet. But there is another innovation that is overshadowed by the iPod, an innovation that almost singlehandedly ceased to make portable music players isolating machines and turned them into social devices. This innovation is the invention, and subsequent popularization, of the ear-bud headphone. It didn't take long for consumers to realize that hey, the speakers kind of suck, you can't push any volume whatsoever, and it's kind of uncomfortable to have a speaker actually shoved in your ear, but all that was overshadowed by the realization that with these headphones, not just one, but TWO people can listen simultaneously. And when you've been riding iPod-less to and from from school forty-five minutes each way for three years, this pleasant realization comes in handy. Just a quick smile, a flattering comment, and the hopeful "Pass me one of those?" started two years of sharing the wealth of music on the iPod of the person next to me. I guess the way music is experienced has come full circle, from social event, to private experience, to social event again. And that's thanks to the iPod. (Now who knows how to upgrade from 2GB for less than a hundred dollars?)