Posts by Bob Munro
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Suzanne Vega looked at the ‘tribal’ nature of music choice in the New York Times last week.
Songs brand us a part of a tribe. We can pick and choose what tribe we belong to. Goth, emo, hippie, punk, folk, alternative, for example. “Mom! Why are you wearing all black?” my daughter recently shouted at me. “You look so emo!” “I always wear black,” I mumbled. “But we are at the beach!” she said. Well, maybe she had a point.
I am of Irish descent, among other things, but I feel it would be false of me to perform traditional Irish music, even though I find some of it very moving. When I worked with Mitchell Froom, I liked that he said, “I will reveal you to be the mutant you really are!” when he heard how I grew up and about the mixed bag of stuff I grew up listening to — from Woody Guthrie and Phil Ochs to Motown, Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. But perhaps one day I could do an album of Jewish folk songs in A-minor, or an album of cante jondo, which Federico Garcia Lorca wrote of; this would take guts. I love sad and tragic songs, and I love the sensuality of Brazilian bossa nova; perhaps my melancholic temperament could do justice to an album like this.
I remember walking down the street one day, wearing a Smiths t-shirt, back in the mid-’80s. I was headed for the subway station, and I had to pass through a crowd of black teenagers to get there. There were maybe eight or so young men, looking me up and down as I picked my way through them. My neck prickled with worry. What would they say? Would they call me a goofy white girl, or worse?
One of them snickered. My stomach dropped. Then another one sang out, “I am human and I need to be loved!! Just like everybody else does!!” Morrissey’s transcendental lyrics from “How Soon Is Now?” It was so unexpected that I burst out laughing. They knew the song! Then we all laughed, and the tension was broken. Maybe we were the same tribe after all. -
Whoops. Sorry about that. Pushed the wrong button too early.
I was just going to link to Andrew Sullivan who is still trying to nail down the evidence that Sarah Palin did have a baby.http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/12/a-fourth-pictur.html#more
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Russel, I will second what has been said above. You are jumping the shark delving into this.
Your whole social outlook is a womans right to choose. And yet you are such taking a self-righteous attitude. Sullivan is talking crap. Palin is the new VEEP choice. If they did not disclose she had a downs child you would accuse her of hiding the fact. It is a fact of her life. Get over it.
I do not think this is one of the low lights of your blogging career. I have been reading you since the start and I think it IS the lowlight.
Take your hands away from the keyboard.
As a journalist Andrew Sullivan will not let this one go for the simple reason that he still has not seen the evidence
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Because films are being discussed here could I mention Roger Ebert's 'evolution' into a major social critic in his journal entries. He is now using film as a starter to range across a broad swathe of interesting social issues. His comments section is nearly as interesting as PAS.
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One small advantage of the financial crisis is the emergence of lovely little used words. ’Trillion’ I think of as a sort of nonsense word that you used in the playground to mean ‘lots and lots’ or unimaginable numbers like the distance between galaxies.
John Key used the noun ‘contagion’ the other day. I love this word. It speaks of terrible diseases sweeping through whole populations. It’s in the traditional song, ‘Lone Pilgrim’ that Bob Dylan sings on World Gone Wrong.
The call of my master compelled me from home,
No kindred or relative nigh.
I met the contagion and sank to the tomb,
My soul flew to mansions on high.Go tell my companion and children most dear
To weep not for me now I'm gone.
The same hand that led me through seas most severe
Has kindly assisted me home. -
Not strictly relevant to this discussion but I’ll pop it in here anyway. Via Andrew Sullivan there is a link to a Bianco Research estimate of the cost (so far) of the U.S. bailout in relation to other big government spends.
If we add in the Citi bailout, the total cost now exceeds $4.6165 trillion dollars.
Adjusted for inflation it is more than the entire cost of World War II.
The only single American event in history that even comes close to matching the cost of the credit crisis is World War II: Original Cost: $288 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $3.6 trillion
The $4.6165 trillion dollars committed so far is about a trillion dollars ($979 billion dollars) greater than the entire cost of World War II borne by the United States: $3.6 trillion, adjusted for inflation (original cost was $288 billion).
Go figure: WWII was a relative bargain.
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Two miracles in one day. The Kiwis are World Champions and Stephen Jones has something nice to say about the All Blacks.
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Palin went presidential and 'pardoned' a turkey at thanksgiving and then was interviewed with turkeys being slauhtered in the background.
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While the All Blacks didn't exactly put up a cricket score
I think the BLACKCAPS would be quite chuffed to be 22/3 at this stage.
They are! And they are bowling!
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It wasn't uncommon for men to go from house to house asking to be given any work in return for food.
My mother grew up on a Central Otago farm, which survived the Depression, but she used to tell of visits by swaggers who in exchange for food and a night or two in the barn would do some work around the place.
Two of the songs on the Dustbowl Ballads by Woody Guthrie mentioned on page 4 are about The Grapes of Wrath.
The movie version came out the same year (1940) Guthrie recorded these songs, so I'm not sure whether the songs about Tom Joad are referencing the movie or the book but in today's New York Times O.A. Scott looks back at the movie and shows the clip of the small farmers being evicted off their land.