:: Thursday, May 01, 2003 ::
Friday Five time
An easy blog topic for a busy Friday, accomplished with the help of three compadres (the married couple CF and JF, and fellow co-worker MHS) over lunch at my favorite Chinese place.
1. Name one song you hate to admit you like.
CF: "That Cheryl Crow and Kid Rock Song" (something about putting a picture away).
JF: "Anything by Prince."
MHS: "A Backstreet Boys Song but I can't remember what it's called." (She later remembered. It's, "I Want It That Way.")
AC (me): "Can't Touch This," by MC Hammer.
2. Name two songs that always make you cry.
CF: "Last Kiss," by Pearl Jam, and "a Goo Goo Dolls song from 'City of Angels'." (We're not very good at remembering the details.)
JF: Is too much of a man to get teary-eyed by a song, but two that make him "feel emotional and introspective" are" "Leader of the Band," by Dan Fogelberg, and "Silver Thunderbird," by Mark Cohn.
MHS: "Tears in Heaven," by Eric Clapton; "Last Kiss," by Pearl Jam.
AC: "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," by Gordon Lightfoot; "Ode to Billy Joe," by Bobbie Gentry.
3. Name three songs that turn you on.
(Warning: A few of the song titles below contain explicit language.)
CF: "Torn," by Natalie Imbruglia; "I Wanna Sex You Up," by Color Me Badd; "Down for Whatever," by Ice Cube ("because it makes Joel happy").
JF: "Two B*tches," by Too Short; "Face Down, A** Up," by 2 Live Crew; "Sex Machine," by James Brown.
MHS: "Something by Barry White, the Little Biscuit's theme song from 'Ally McBeal'"; "I Touch Myself," by the Divinyls.
AC: "Love to Love You Baby," Donna Summer; "Back Dog," Led Zeppelin; "Let's Get It On," Marvin Gaye.
4. Name four songs that always make you feel good.
CF: "Landslide," both the original (Fleetwood Mac) and cover (Dixie Chicks); "American Woman," both the original (Guess Who) and the cover (Lenny Kravitz; "Hakuna Matada," from "The Lion King"; "Love Shack," B-52s.
JF: "Down for Whatever," Ice Cube; "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting," Elton John; "Shout Out," Core Project; "Don't Worry, Be Happy," Bobby McFerrin.
MHS: "Blister in the Sun," Violent Femmes; "Goodbye, Earl," Dixie Chicks; "Brown-Eyed Girl," Van Morrison; "All I Wanna Do Is Have Some Fun," Cheryl Crow.
AC: "I Feel Good," James Brown; "Let the Good Times Roll," The Cars; "You Can Call Me Al," Paul Simon; "Genius of Love," Tom Tom Club.
5. Name five songs you couldn't ever do without.
CF: "At My Most Beautiful," REM; "Stuck in a Moment," U2; "Beloved Wife" and "Ophelia," Natalie Merchant; "Hey Baby," unknown.
JF: Theme from "Star Wars"; "Change," Blind Melon; "Intergalactic," Beastie Boys; "Let It Be," Beatles; "Plug Tunin'," DeLaSoul.
MHS: "Crash (Into Me)," Dave Matthews Band; "Closer to Fine," Indigo Girls; "Margaritaville," Jimmy Buffet; "Take Me to the River," Talking Heads; "Wonder," Natalie Merchant.
AC: "No Compassion," Talking Heads; "All Along the Watchtower," Jimi Hendrix; "Hey Hey, My My," Neil Young and Crazy Horse; "I'm So Bored with the USA," The Clash; "Rhapsody in Blue," George Gershwin.
Feel free to add your own in the comments form, below.
:: Andrew 13:52 + ::
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An online book-release party
Fiction writer and blogs4God moderator/contributor Kathryn Lively cordially invites us all to an online book-release party for her latest work, Saints Preserve Us. Bonus link from Lively's party: documentation of her pilgrimage to the grave of Lewis Grizzard. I'm wondering if Lively's real name isn't Kathy Sue Loudermilk (who, as all Grizzard fans know, was Miss Collard Festival Queen for seven years running).
:: Andrew 09:13 + ::
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TallSkinnyKiwi: the spring collectionIt's bright. It's springlike. It looks just like the peel of a kiwi fruit.Update: Now the blogskin is looking a lovely lemon yellow. Stay tuned for more updates as Andrew continues to tweak his blog. Or simply: Go check out Andrew Jones' new blog makeover. I'm glad other bloggers take the initiative to redesign their blogs from time to time. Don't expect a new look here. It's all I can do to update the blogroll every so often.
:: Andrew 09:00 + ::
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:: Wednesday, April 30, 2003 ::
A brief history of the legal thriller
"Whoever tells the best story, wins the case.” To many Americans, this modern maxim embodies the pivotal role of the lawyer: control of the narrative. Whether drafting a contract or laying out evidence in a courtroom, the lawyer's ability to manipulate language determines the outcome of the client's case. Many would argue that the law’s language, arcane procedures, rules and conventions are purposely made mysterious by its practitioners. What could be more natural than for lawyers and legal stories to have been instrumental in the creation of the mystery novel, and particularly, the subgenre legal thriller?
So begins a fascinating, informative and (despite the "brief" in the title) lengthy essay on the history of the legal thriller. It's written by Marlyn Robinson, a reference librarian at the University of Texas' Tarlton Law Library and creator of a fascinating website, the Law and Popular Culture Collection at Tarlton Law Library. Fans of legal thrillers could lose themselves for hours in this site. (I've already lost a good 45 minutes surfing through its online stuff. Check out lawyerly quotations from popular culture (a personal favorite is from Professor Kingsfield of the '70s TV series "The Paper Chase": You come in here with a head full of mush and you leave thinking like a lawyer), or the library's database of more than 600 law movies.
Site backed into from a link at BookFilter.
:: Andrew 08:47 + ::
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William Gibson gives up the blog
This has got to be a disappointment to William Gibson fans, but he's going to soon pull the plug on his blog. According to Wired News: "Gibson is currently winding up the book tour in Ireland and Britain. Once it is over, he'll end the weblog, he says. 'I have to go do whatever it is I do, to find the next novel,' he said. 'Writing novels is pretty solitary, and blogging is very social.'"
That's cool by me. Go ahead, William. Quit your blog. That'll make one less book author in the blogosphere to compete with. Next on my list: Andrew Sullivan. Now all I have to do is get all their readers to come to my site.
:: Andrew 13:56 + ::
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Postironicism
Interesting review on the fall of irony in pop music, from Culture Is Not Optional. The author cites trends in music -- from U2's 2000 epic to more modern offerings by Nas (God's Son), Springsteen (The Rising) and Billy Corgan (Zwan) -- to argue that pop musicians are moving away from its pre-9/11 irony. This is nothing new -- plenty of stories proclaiming the death of irony cropped up after 9/11, and recently RelevantMagazine.com addressed the same issue (in "The Spiritual Side of Rock," by Steve Beard -- but the CINO piece, by Grant Elgersma, focuses more on reasons behind the changes rather than simply report on the increased seriousness of pop music.
U2 had a conversation with Wim Wenders that made them think too much irony is not good for a society. Nas was affected by the death of his mother. Bruce Springsteen was encouraged to get back into the ring when a man yelled “We need you, Bruce” a few days after the attack on New York. Beck broke up with his girlfriend and probably just exhausted his mocking attitude during Midnite Vultures. Pearl Jam was affected by September 11 and its aftermath. Trent Reznor got older and busier. PJ Harvey found a great guy. The Chili Peppers have kids and became more reflective. Mick Jagger wanted to do his own record his way.
Elgersma continues:
Whatever the reasons for this apparent spiritual movement in music, it is important that we see it, that we recognize something’s going on here. There does seem to be a trend toward renewing a sense of unbridled positivity in society and restoring euphoria to its rightful place as an acceptable emotion. As with all cultural changes, there is a temptation to immediately jump on board with the new. But in these times, as much as any other time, it is still our task to separate the wheat from the chaff, to distinguish between that which promotes life and that which leads to death.
Link via Gideon Strauss, who recommends a visit to CINO's message boards. (And who mentions that the latest issue of Comment, the journal he edits, is now online.)
:: Andrew 13:45 + ::
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:: Tuesday, April 29, 2003 ::
Wired spoke too soon...
Another of the mags I drug along for in-flight reading during my recent trip was Wired. It was the cover story on "The Matrix Reloaded" that prompted me to buy the thing, but as someone who works at a university that emphasizes engineering, I was drawn to the article about the demise of the MIT Media Lab. But then, today, while surfing blogdex (itself a quite useful Media Lab innovation), I discovered this. I think Wired owes the MIT Media Lab a big apology. Apparently the MIT nerds are still inventing great things for our world.
:: Andrew 13:30 + ::
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:: Sunday, April 27, 2003 ::
Airplane reading
Back from my trip. Got out of Denver, baby, yes I did. Enjoyed nice dinners and a good time with some professional colleagues from other colleges and universities. But the true highlight was the pleasure I derived from reading almost the entire issue of the latest Rolling Stone. This issue happens to be the magazine's commemorative 35th anniversary issue. (Speaking of commemorative issues, K Jo, I haven't seen that Joe Strummer memorial issue yet. Hint, hint.) It's all about American Icons, those images -- from the Fender Stratocaster to the Harley-Davidson -- that have shaped and come to symbolize American culture. (Attention David Hopkins: there's even a cool piece on The Superhero by filmmaker Kevin Smith, who also happened to visit campus today while I was flying home from Denver, darn it.) Anyone who's a student of pop culture should purchase a copy of this issue to read, reread, and blog about. (Or, you can just blog about how I blogged about it in this post, which is really more an excuse to procrastinate on returning phone calls and cleaning spam from my email accounts than anything else.)
Most of the stories in this special issue were written by guest contributors -- Bill Moyers on The Flag, Cameron Crowe (who I suppose isn't really a guest contributor) on The Backstage Pass, Ritalin/coke addict/author Elizabeth Wurtzel on society's addiction to The Pill (the pill, yes, but also all manner of pharmaceuticals -- and some of them are quite good. Wurtzel's essay on pharmaceuticals was fascinating, Cameron Crowe wrote with his usual understated humor and irony, and Jay Leno's insights on the Ford Mustang were more interesting than I suspected. Other pieces didn't live up to their billing. The lovely artwork couldn't keep Courtney Love's piece on The Blonde Bombshell from simply bombing, and Blink-182's Mark Hoppus, who wrote the piece on Homer Simpson, comes up with an interesting thought or two -- that Homer is "Everyman" isn't exactly revelation -- but mostly gives us silly lines like this one: "No matter what area of the country you live in, what kind of music you listen to, everybody loves The Simpsons, because they're the all-American family: They're yellow and they have four fingers." I guess you can get away with that sort of thing when you're a rock star and you're writing for a rock music mag.
My favorite piece thus far may come as a suprise to some of you. But Marilyn Manson's piece on The Dead Rock Star as American icon is terrific. He manages to capture the mystique of the stars who die in their prime, citing Jesus as the archetype for the Dead Rock Star mythology.
Jesus was the first rock star. The cross is the biggest, greatest piece of merchandise in history, bigger than any concert T-shirt. And Jesus was the first dead rock star. Like Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix, he became immortal by dying. A dead rock star becomes perfect, and he'll be that forever. He'll never change, never get old, never turn into something less great than at his peak, at the moment of his death.
I read that opening paragraph and though, man, I wish I could have written that!
Of course, for as long as I've been interested in writing and rock music, I've always wanted to write for Rolling Stone, and I've always felt slight pangs of jealousy whenever I pick up an issue and see what's been written there. I could do that, I smugly say to myself.
The other interesting thing about this special issue is that Rolling Stone seems oddly comfortable with itself as it ages into mid-thirties. It seems so odd to me that this magazine is now such an institution. Perhaps it's the world that has changed more than the publication. It seems RS lost its edginess long ago; maybe it's content cranking out music and pop culture news for aging Boomers and Xers to read and reflect on. This issue did have a nice, nostalgic quality to it, but when I think of "cutting-edge rock music publication," nostalgia isn't top of mind.
:: Andrew 16:51 + ::
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Put ... the ... Holy ... Hand ... Grenade ... down, I say
While killing time before my trip to Denver, I took a quiz and discovered that...
Mean lil fellow, arn't you?
What Monty Python Character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
Link via Mr. Wright.
:: Andrew 08:16 + ::
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Simon Dawes, 
