Bullet control

Chris Rock offers a solution to America’s gun control debate — watch here.

The 20 worst pop songs ever

So you’ll notice my Top 10 best pop songs list didn’t get very far. What qualifies as “popular” and “pop” was too difficult to figure. Crap is much easier to recognize.

I’ll go ahead and ruin the suspense by christening “Summer Girls” by LFO the absolute worst pop song ever recorded. Rancid Chinese food couldn’t make me as sick as this song does.

Next up, in no particular order, “Waiting for a Star to Fall,” featuring every bad 80′s pop cliche.

Of course i must make room for Phil Collins. I could include his whole catalog, but “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight” (by Genesis, to be exact) ranks as the absolute worst. Yes, even worse than “Sussudio.”

Again, your nominations are welcome. We have 17 songs remaining to bash. I’m looking in your direction, Loverboy.

Noted and quoted

Brian Williams introduced the Cho collection as “what can only be described as a multi-media manifesto.” But it can be described in other ways. “The self-serving meanderings of a crazy, self-indulgent narcissist” is one. But if you called it that, you couldn’t lead with it. You couldn’t rationalize the decision.

Peggy Noonan, exposing the media’s comfort with sensationalism.

How they thought it would be

(Via several sources)

A fascinating article from The Ladies Home Journal, circa 1900, about what life would be like in the year 2000. Among the predictions:

Prediction #11: No Mosquitoes nor Flies. Insect screens will be unnecessary. Mosquitoes, house-flies and roaches will have been practically exterminated. Boards of health will have destroyed all mosquito haunts and breeding-grounds, drained all stagnant pools, filled in all swamp-lands, and chemically treated all still-water streams. The extermination of the horse and its stable will reduce the house-fly.

Prediction #16: There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary. Spelling by sound will have been adopted, first by the newspapers. English will be a language of condensed words expressing condensed ideas, and will be more extensively spoken than any other. Russian will rank second.

Prediction #17: How Children will be Taught. A university education will be free to every man and woman. Several great national universities will have been established. Children will study a simple English grammar adapted to simplified English, and not copied after the Latin. Time will be saved by grouping like studies. Poor students will be given free board, free clothing and free books if ambitious and actually unable to meet their school and college expenses. Medical inspectors regularly visiting the public schools will furnish poor children free eyeglasses, free dentistry and free medical attention of every kind. The very poor will, when necessary, get free rides to and from school and free lunches between sessions. In vacation time poor children will be taken on trips to various parts of the world. Etiquette and housekeeping will be important studies in the public schools.

Prediction #28: There will be no wild animals except in menageries. Rats and mice will have been exterminated. The horse will have become practically extinct. A few of high breed will be kept by the rich for racing, hunting and exercise. The automobile will have driven out the horse. Cattle and sheep will have no horns. They will be unable to run faster than the fattened hog of today. A century ago the wild hog could outrun a horse. Food animals will be bred to expend practically all of their life energy in producing meat, milk, wool and other by-products. Horns, bones, muscles and lungs will have been neglected.

Onion du jour

“This American Life” gets a classic skewering:

Producers of the long-running Chicago Public Radio program This American Life announced Monday that they have completed their comprehensive 12-year survey of life as a modern upper-middle-class American.

In what cultural anthropologists are calling a “colossal achievement” in the study of white-collar professionals, the popular radio show has successfully isolated all 7,442 known characteristics of college graduates who earn between $62,500 and $125,000 per year and feel strongly that something should be done about global warming.

“We’ve done it,” said senior producer Julie Snyder, who was personally interviewed for a 2003 This American Life episode, “Going Eclectic,” in which she described what it’s like to be a bilingual member of the ACLU trained in kite-making by a Japanese stepfather. “There is not a single existential crisis or self-congratulatory epiphany that has been or could be experienced by a left-leaning agnostic that we have not exhaustively documented and grouped by theme.”

Added Snyder, “We here at public radio couldn’t be more pleased with ourselves.

Colbert vs. Penn

The actor says it’s our fault that Muslim extemists are blowing themselves up. I’d like to think, in the spirit of the show, that Penn is parodying himself, but I’m afraid not.

YouTube du jour

Be afraid, be very afraid, of Tony, a 25-year-old Backstreet Boys freak — watch here.

Kunta Kinte’s Heroes

I think it’s pretty damn funny that my friend Heinrich grew up in Germany watching "Hogan’s Heroes." Imagine watching a German sitcom about a benign Southern slaveholder constantly being outwitted by his clever slaves? How do ya think that one would fly in our post-Imus culture?

Bullet control

Chris Rock offers a solution to America’s gun control debate — watch here.

The 20 worst pop songs ever

So you’ll notice my Top 10 best pop songs list didn’t get very far. What qualifies as “popular” and “pop” was too difficult to figure. Crap is much easier to recognize.

I’ll go ahead and ruin the suspense by christening “Summer Girls” by LFO the absolute worst pop song ever recorded. Rancid Chinese food couldn’t make me as sick as this song does.

Next up, in no particular order, “Waiting for a Star to Fall,” featuring every bad 80′s pop cliche.

Of course i must make room for Phil Collins. I could include his whole catalog, but “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight” (by Genesis, to be exact) ranks as the absolute worst. Yes, even worse than “Sussudio.”

Again, your nominations are welcome. We have 17 songs remaining to bash. I’m looking in your direction, Loverboy.

Noted and quoted

Brian Williams introduced the Cho collection as “what can only be described as a multi-media manifesto.” But it can be described in other ways. “The self-serving meanderings of a crazy, self-indulgent narcissist” is one. But if you called it that, you couldn’t lead with it. You couldn’t rationalize the decision.

Peggy Noonan, exposing the media’s comfort with sensationalism.

How they thought it would be

(Via several sources)

A fascinating article from The Ladies Home Journal, circa 1900, about what life would be like in the year 2000. Among the predictions:

Prediction #11: No Mosquitoes nor Flies. Insect screens will be unnecessary. Mosquitoes, house-flies and roaches will have been practically exterminated. Boards of health will have destroyed all mosquito haunts and breeding-grounds, drained all stagnant pools, filled in all swamp-lands, and chemically treated all still-water streams. The extermination of the horse and its stable will reduce the house-fly.

Prediction #16: There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary. Spelling by sound will have been adopted, first by the newspapers. English will be a language of condensed words expressing condensed ideas, and will be more extensively spoken than any other. Russian will rank second.

Prediction #17: How Children will be Taught. A university education will be free to every man and woman. Several great national universities will have been established. Children will study a simple English grammar adapted to simplified English, and not copied after the Latin. Time will be saved by grouping like studies. Poor students will be given free board, free clothing and free books if ambitious and actually unable to meet their school and college expenses. Medical inspectors regularly visiting the public schools will furnish poor children free eyeglasses, free dentistry and free medical attention of every kind. The very poor will, when necessary, get free rides to and from school and free lunches between sessions. In vacation time poor children will be taken on trips to various parts of the world. Etiquette and housekeeping will be important studies in the public schools.

Prediction #28: There will be no wild animals except in menageries. Rats and mice will have been exterminated. The horse will have become practically extinct. A few of high breed will be kept by the rich for racing, hunting and exercise. The automobile will have driven out the horse. Cattle and sheep will have no horns. They will be unable to run faster than the fattened hog of today. A century ago the wild hog could outrun a horse. Food animals will be bred to expend practically all of their life energy in producing meat, milk, wool and other by-products. Horns, bones, muscles and lungs will have been neglected.

Onion du jour

“This American Life” gets a classic skewering:

Producers of the long-running Chicago Public Radio program This American Life announced Monday that they have completed their comprehensive 12-year survey of life as a modern upper-middle-class American.

In what cultural anthropologists are calling a “colossal achievement” in the study of white-collar professionals, the popular radio show has successfully isolated all 7,442 known characteristics of college graduates who earn between $62,500 and $125,000 per year and feel strongly that something should be done about global warming.

“We’ve done it,” said senior producer Julie Snyder, who was personally interviewed for a 2003 This American Life episode, “Going Eclectic,” in which she described what it’s like to be a bilingual member of the ACLU trained in kite-making by a Japanese stepfather. “There is not a single existential crisis or self-congratulatory epiphany that has been or could be experienced by a left-leaning agnostic that we have not exhaustively documented and grouped by theme.”

Added Snyder, “We here at public radio couldn’t be more pleased with ourselves.

Colbert vs. Penn

The actor says it’s our fault that Muslim extemists are blowing themselves up. I’d like to think, in the spirit of the show, that Penn is parodying himself, but I’m afraid not.

YouTube du jour

Be afraid, be very afraid, of Tony, a 25-year-old Backstreet Boys freak — watch here.