So … did you watch the Grammy Awards? My family watched most, and with expectations set suitably low it was not a bad time. Spirited performances by Kendrik Lamar and Imagine Dragons easily offset the awful Katy Perry vocals, bland Taylor Swift showing, and plainly lip-syncing Pink. But the real question is … how did Spotify do predicting winners?
Today, Apple’s homepage celebrates 30 years of the Mac. For those of us who have ‘been around’ – and even more so for those of us who bought and used an Apple ][ before the advent of the Mac, it is at once surprising that so much time has passed and unimaginable that we lived without the convenience of computers.
This weekend the Grammy Awards present the music side of insular industry self-celebration and back-patting. Trying to figure out who wins in the post-Esperanza Spalding years is as much about who the industry needs to ‘reward’ as anything else. But the folks at Spotify have used data gleaned from their streaming service over the last year to make predictions!
Dancing Stormtroopers? This needs a good caption. “Twerkus interruptuss?” “You know you are in trouble when Darth Vader has to step in.” “Moves like Chewie?” “Use some taste Luke…” “Where’s Princess Leah when you need her?” “I don’t think I will ever be able to look at a Stormtrooper the same way again.” Via Elite Daily
We were watching the glitz and glamor of the Golden Globes tonight (don’t judge us) when a commercial aired that stood in stark contrast to the superficiality of red carpets. It was Bing’s “Women of 2013” commercial, and it was a beautiful love letter to the strong women of 2013. Want to learn more about the women featured in the video? Microsoft has more details and resources on all of them on a special Bing site.
The Governor of New Jersey is in a bit of hot water and currently trying to do damage control. I won’t comment on him or his staff’s behavior but one thing became clear as he spoke. We warn young people that anything they post on social media “is forever” and, as the Governor and his staff have just learned, email is too. Yes, their callous emails about traffic jam payback were there for the taking and, once found by reporters, made public. It was, as the governor put it, “abject stupidity”. Even more stupid was outing their “abject stupidity” into…
Are you a Game of Thrones fan? I am! And if I lived in (or was passing through) Santa Fe, New Mexico any time soon, there is a good chance that I would be privy to something amazing — Season’s 1 – 3 of GoT on the big screen, with guest appearances from George R. R. Martin, himself!
I remember when Doom came out in late 1993, because I’d already gotten hooked into the first person genre with Castle Wolfenstein 3D the previous year. But no one was expecting what came next – during 1994 suddenly the game was everywhere being played by anyone with a powerful enough computer. This week the landmark game turns 20 years old.
My Facebook feed recently exploded with snarky jokes; I was chatting with friends that I haven’t talked to in months, while Sarah and I were laughing so hard at Facebook that I worried we might wake the baby. What’s so funny? NBC’s live interpretation of “The Sound of Music”.
When I looked at the catalog of recordings from The Who, I mentioned that they were about to launch a ‘super deluxe’ version of their classic rock opera Tommy. Now that it has arrived, and I’ve had a few weeks to listen to it thoroughly, I wanted to check back. My thoughts? It is at once essential, solid, and throw-away.
Sometimes it is easy to be cynical and assume that young people are only seeking the quick and easy path to pop stardom – many are working hard to become the next generation of truly great musicians. Combining passion for the music with hard work and research, here are a few videos by one young guitarist you will definitely remember!
Quick, what was your first job? Something entry-level and basic? Would you want to be defined by it, no matter how embarrassing or how much success you’ve enjoyed since then? CNN sure thinks so, based on their ridiculous profile of Kat Cole, the president of Cinnabon. Or, as CNN sought to define her, former “Hooters” waitress.
There’s a saying that impact and influence are not measured by sales. While true for jazz, it also holds in the rock music world. Soft Machine was a creative psychedelic rock group founded by Robert Wyatt and toured with Jimi Hendrix. Wyatt went on to record some tracks while staying with The Experience that document his creative and influential style.
I wrote up my visit to the Henry Ford Museum after being there with Ford last January. Among the amazing things I saw during my visit was the actual car President Kennedy was riding in when he was shot 50 years ago this week. More amazing? It was put back into service, and other Presidents rode in it.
The ongoing joke about the finale of “Breaking Bad” was that it would end with Walter White in witness protection as Hal from “Malcolm in the Middle”, as both roles were played by actor Bryan Cranston. A recently leaked video that Forbes thinks is a legitimate special feature from the Breaking Bad DVD set looks at a similarly themed ending to the show! Yes, this video is an homage to the end of Newhart, and whether it’s a legitimately sanctioned video or not, it’s amazing to see Jane Kaczmarek and Bryan Cranston become Lois and Hal one more time! via…
Back in 2010, as The Beatles catalog was about to land on iTunes, I looked through all of their major releases and some solo works. This week we celebrate the release of ‘Tommy: Deluxe Edition’ from The Who, so I thought it would be fun to step through their catalog and look at all of the major releases.
When I was a kid my mother overpaid for scalped tickets for the King Tut Exhibit. I was still captivated when, years later, I again saw the exhibit in Cairo. New evidence tells us Tut died in a chariot crash! (Drunk chariot races= bad idea.) But there’s more… Like his mummy spontaneously combusting. It is a fascinating read on Smithsonian.
I am slowly working my way through Doctor Who; I just watched the fourth season episode “The Unicorn and the Wasp”, when the Doctor and his traveling companion Donna meet Agatha Christie. The episode is amusing all by itself, but what really had me cracking up was the end …
Over the last week we’ve lost two visionary artists in very different musical genres; two men whose names might not have been household names and who might never have burned up the pop charts, but their impact was broad and far-reaching, and who will be sorely missed. Those men were jazz drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson and rock musician Lou Reed.
Way back in the summer of 2006, my mother took my boys to the Boston ‘10th Anniversary of Pokemon’ event. That Pokemon had sustained popularity that long was stunning, but now we’ve hit a new milestone as the latest games – Pokémon X and Y for Nintendo 3DS – sold more than 4 million copies on October 12th and 13th.
While I reject the argument that anyone is FORCED into piracy by … well, anything – I do recognize that some people want to see the latest movie as soon as it comes available for home viewing. The problem is sometimes they cannot rent or buy that movie digitally, and as a result choose to pirate rather than not watch. A new site called PiracyData.org takes the latest Bittorrent data on the most pirated films, and matches that up with the availability information from Canistream.it – which is an awesome site to check movie availability in a single location, by…