Fiction Reading This Summer

I read a bunch of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels this summer, not really in order though.  It’s just a wonderful series, funny, but a coherent enough fantasy world that you care about the stories and the characters.  I wish I’d had these to read when I was a kid. I’ve also been reading John Scalzi’s novels lately.  He’s a fairly “lite-science” science fiction writer and pretty efficient at telling a tale (things happen! characters move!). They’re good reads and the 3 part “Old Man’s War” series is good fun.  I’m in the middle of reading Zoe’s Tale, which is a re-telling (so far) of parts of the …

Mashup of Annie Lennox Solo: Backwards, Forwards

Annie Lennox let DJ Earwig at her master tracks to create a single mashing-up various songs from her solo career.  The resulting single/video Backwards Forwards is really good.  You can hear the other songs in it but it’s definitely something new too.youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fht_R7ELZZs?rel=0 While I’m posting about mashup video I’ll sneak in here a re-post of the buzzed about clip-up video from April that takes the music mashup to infinity and beyond — Mother Of All Funk Chords — remixed by Kutiman from pre-existing YouTube clips. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tprMEs-zfQA?rel=0

Sita Sings the (C) Blues

Nina Paley’s animated Sita Sings the Blues looks amazing (all I’ve had a chance to see is the trailer though) but who knows when any of us will get to see due to copyright issues with the song compositions (not the performances – they are in the public domain).  Check out more details on Nina’s blog here and watch the interview below to get the whole story.  Actually click here for Nina’s post on her current effort to get the film out to the public — she still needs to raise about $50,000 dollars to pay off rights holders. UPDATE …

Jay Z and Me Got 99 Problems

I ain’t a passed the bar but I know a lil’ bit enough to know you ain’t illegally searchin my shit. Actually I’m pretty sure I transcribed at least some of that wrong. I’ve been listening to the Grey Album (Black Album + White Album = Grey Album). It’s good. It’s also illegal under current copyright at applied to music sampling. A lot of discussion concerning the Grey Album seems to be focused on preservation and expansion of fair use (including parody) to reuse snippets of existing art to create new art. The more I chew on this I realize …

Sports News

2002 Soccer ReCap Another year of soccer and although I didn’t get to see as much MLS soccer as I would have liked, thanks to the miracle that is TIVO I saw just about all of the Korea/Japan World Cup. There’s not much you can add about the World Cup: a great cup, dramatic upsets, a solid final between two futbol giants and a nice performance from Ronaldo that caps his return from the still bizarre disaster of a performance in the France 1998 final. The United States made tremendous strides at the Cup. What’s interesting is the MLS season where from …