|
|
|
|
Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Meh. Helen Wheels once told me she loved veggies.
Lady Gaga’s latest epistle in V addresses her interest in sports and why she enjoyed Moneyball, which she of course tackles by discussing her love of pearls. “I thought of the pearl during my exploration of ‘the game’ because as an accessory, pearls are the most game-changing and timeless of them all,” she writes. After a joyous pearl-buying spree, Gaga had a chance to reflect.
I lay down on the airplane back from Japan, tossing around some dashi, fondling my pearls. I watched the movie Moneyball for the first time. I began to laugh and smile as [Brad] Pitt talked romantically about the game. I suddenly imagined that my pearls were teeny-tiny baseballs. When a player hits a home run, the baseball is flung into an abyss of enigma and screams so great. It travels so far that only rarely is one caught in the bleachers. Where do these balls go? Where do all these wins get encased? Are they in a heavenly baseball land floating around for players who pass to acknowledge? Or do they disappear?
|
Bookmarks
You must be logged in to view your Bookmarks.
Hot Topics
Newsblog: JM Catellier: Is Pedro Martinez a First Ballot Hall of Famer? (98 - 4:30pm, May 21)Last: cardsfanboyNewsblog: [OTP-May] Politico: Congressional baseball game, May 1, 1926 (3735 - 4:30pm, May 21)Last: Johnny Sycophant-Laden ForaNewsblog: Dollar Sign on the Glistening Muscle: Scouting Ballplayers in 1980s Playgirl (18 - 4:28pm, May 21)Last: zonkNewsblog: White Sox Ace Chris Sale Eats and Eats and Eats Without Gaining Any Weight (50 - 4:27pm, May 21)Last: depletionNewsblog: OMNICHATTER for MAY 21, 2013 (9 - 4:27pm, May 21)Last: botemanNewsblog: Posnanski: Jeff Francoeur and ANT (24 - 4:27pm, May 21)Last: DA Baracus is gritty and hits with RISPNewsblog: OT: The Soccer Thread, May 2013 (1039 - 4:20pm, May 21)Last: DA Baracus is gritty and hits with RISPNewsblog: Barry Bonds: Detroit Tigers' Miguel Cabrera 'the best' ... but not better than me (48 - 4:14pm, May 21)Last: snapper (history's 42nd greatest monster)Newsblog: OT: NBA Monthly Thread - May 2013 (1010 - 4:14pm, May 21)Last: CFBF Hates HyphensNewsblog: WaPo | Ryan Mattheus breaks throwing hand punching a locker, adds to bullpen disarray (5 - 3:55pm, May 21)Last: snapper (history's 42nd greatest monster)Newsblog: SB Nation: Five lost scouting reports (6 - 3:55pm, May 21)Last: Pat Rapper's DelightNewsblog: Sherman: Mets' roster of rubbish makes it impossible to evaluate Collins (46 - 3:47pm, May 21)Last: if nature called, ladodger34 would listenNewsblog: Joe Maddon calls ump's position 'baseball anarchy' (17 - 3:46pm, May 21)Last: GodNewsblog: Slate: The Dreaded C-Word (13 - 3:41pm, May 21)Last: Der_KNewsblog: Yanks, Manchester City awarded MLS expansion team (15 - 3:29pm, May 21)Last: Pat Rapper's Delight
|
|
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
1. CFBF Hates Hyphens Posted: February 25, 2012 at 01:22 AM (#4068367)Nothing wrong with odd. As long as it's genuine, instead of the manufactured crap that was Marilyn Manson. (he might be odd now, but his first ten years in existence in the media, he was fully a corporate created vision of what odd is)
was Marilyn Manson.is Lady Gaga.Certainly weird, but not corporate. He had most of his gimmick pretty well locked down when he was just hanging out at the Plantation Fashion Mall around 1991 or so.
Not saying she isn't manufactured either I guess, I didn't clarify it. Just wanted to go off on my Marilyn Manson rant. I even like his music, just accept that he is basically a corporate created version of 'weird' created to sale to a niche market. Everything he does is calculated marketing.
Ugh.
Here's the full quote from Ms. Germanotta. Sort of funny that 100 years later, she's a less extreme version of Gertrude Stein. It struck me that the modern era is now more than 100 years old today if we accept that "On or about December 1910 human character changed."
Pop/modern culture for the last 20 years has been remarkably static. I wonder if that's just my perception, though. There have been a lot of advances in communication since then.
I like about 6 of his mainstream songs(and I think two of them are covers) . Have never bought an album from him and doubt I would listen to the whole album anyway.
Remember kids, drugs are bad, mkay.
Not just your perception.
I can't respect anyone who doesn't wear an onion on their belt.
Really? A vanity fair article? That's so 1994...
Is that what the Beatles song "Glass Onion" is about?
I thought you weren't supposed to handle pearls more than necessary, because the oil in your skin breaks them down. Or is that not right?
I love electronic dance music. Even that isn't so much different than 20 years ago though, there's just more of it. Mashups are a fairly contemporary phenomenon however.
Lady Gaga has a couple of good songs, she can actually sing as demonstrated by some a cappella performances, her heart is in the right place on social issues, and her Funkadelic-meets-Playskool-Factory get-ups are consistently hilarious. She "walked" the Grammy red carpet inside a giant translucent egg. Only a churl could dislike her.
I think they trend 'indie hipster' more than they do 'old'. Meanwhile, me and a few others hide in our metal corner...
About 10 years ago, my then-GF walked me through a bunch of the different dance-music genres - house, electro, drum & bass, etc. - and I could hear the differences, right then.
The next day, I couldn't distinguish them anymore. I figure it's on me, in the same way people who don't know anything about classical or jazz think it's all the same.
Yes. If I can choose between a performer who puts on a Show, and a performer who just appears in whatever they had on that day and sings the songs, I'll take the Show every time.
My god man, are you trying to start another Pavement thread?
For music, the evolution 1992-2012 pales in comparison to 1972-1992 and even more when you think about the sea shift between 1952-1972.
Those who associate daring music with youth (like #13) are infected with a 60-70's meme, itself a sign of old-fashionedness. Everybody who listened to "Venus in furs" back in the day are over 60 now, all the old punks are 50+.
I'm nearing middle age and I find little in today's pop to be irritated over*. Someone who graduated in the early fifties wouldn't have the same smooth ride over the next twenty years.
*) Well, there's autotune, #### you Cher.
Sure but during those time frames you had explosive growths in musical equipment, communication, and technology. But I'll also say that 1992 music is dated and you can tell 1992 and 2012 music apart and it isn't even close. Today's world has also seen a major change in the music world because of communication and technology.
One may not like the music but that doesn't mean the music didn't change a lot.
The top album of 1992 was Automatic for the People. "Man on the Moon" could have come out this year and would have been a hit. The number 2 album was The Chronic. I don't know enough about hip hop to say whether it would still be successful, but Dre is still one of the biggest producers in the industry, which makes me think it would have been.
I'd say there's been a big move since 1992 in the sheer variety of music that's in the pop arena.
I guess there's always been niche music genres, but it seems like back then the vast majority of young folk listened to 2 or 3 types of music. Now there's endless types of music that have fairly wide circulations.
If it came out in 1952 or 1962 or 1972 it would have been a hit as well. I'm not sure how that is relevant.
but Dre is still one of the biggest producers in the industry, which makes me think it would have been.
The Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, . . .
I'd say rap, hip-hop, R&B, and dance have changed a great deal.
Sure, they have changed, but in 1972 hip-hop didn't even exist. Drop \"#### tha Police" 20 years back in 1968 and it would be an utterly alien object.
I absolutely agree with it. At least as far as fashion, movies, music and literature are concerned.
Literature, frankly, doesn't seem to excite people like it used to. Harry Potter was an unbelievable phenomenon, but writers no longer seem to serve the public intellectual role, no Tolstoys or Twains, nor do they have big personalities like Norman Mailer or Ernest Hemingway did. I'm not sure why this is, but if you don't have writers making news and starting arguments, then the medium is not getting pushed forward in the same obvious ways.
Fashion, I think, is clear. The longest-running trend that still surprises me is the popularity of low, baggy pants among the urban youth. When is that going to go away?
Movies have certainly changed, but the last 20 year chunk has clearly been more stagnant than previous intervals. The fact that the current dominant Hollywood trends are sequelmania and nostalgia for the 80's illustrates the point that artistic ambition is on the wane. You also have the phenomenon of an ever-lengthening divide between "good" movies, which are released in the winter for Oscar consideration, and "profitable" movies.
I find music tough to evaluate because it has proliferated into so many subgenres. (Agreed with #33) That the pace of musical innovation has slowed seems almost inevitable ... it isn't easy to make the type of leaps that pop music did between, say, 1965-1980 when you aren't in the infancy of an art form. Not to say it's impossible (just think about how exciting the art world must have been in the early 20th century), but it shouldn't be expected. A high percentage of the indie music I listen to has a nostalgic feeling to it.
But then again you have video games and television, which are light years ahead of where they used to be.
It isn't like we just invented the tie or the shoe or the coat and yet the argument put forth was that era X was distinctive from era Y while still wearing ties, shoes, and coats.
One of the longest running trends in mens' fashion was dress shirt, tie, coat and hat. It lasted for about 70 years in American history. Just because somebody wears baggy jeans for awhile doesn't mean fashion hasn't changed radically. I'll also say that baggy jeans is not the king it once was. Skinny jeans are taking over and have taken over in a lot of places.
Hell, is anybody wearing the multi-colored leather jacket nowadays? The issue at hand was never that people completely and totally change their ways in every thing but that they have distinct differences between the two and that most certainly holds true between 1992 and 2012. Take a snapshot of Beverly Hills 901210 or Saved by the Bell and compare it to whatever the hell they watch nowadays and the fashion and hairstyles are completely different.
And that's the biggest thing-the multiplication of channels through which culture can move has given us more access to a greater variety of work. The arena has been expanded.
This multiplication also lets us look backwards at stuff which we hadn't heard when it was released/created. Sure, it's easy to say that the Decemberists are derivative; but would we have ever heard the stuff that they get their inspiration from 20 years ago? Possibly, but it would have been much harder to locate.
I like classic disco though. Especially the "Best of Italo Disco" series.
The high-quality serialized TV series we have nowadays, which are easily accessible after their air dates (unlike the high-quality TV miniseries of earlier years, like "Shogun" or "The Thorn Birds" or whatever), appeal to the people who would otherwise be talking about major novels.
I'd say, like music, the biggest change is a move towards more options. Blatant generalization, but in the past it seemed like you expressed yourself through dress by how closely you stuck to the normative standard. But now you express yourself through dress by adopting one of the many different style personas available out there.
Personally I go with the "stuck in 1992" plaid jackets and unbuttoned shirts over top "please don't treat me like an adult" 50 cent printed t-shirts*, and (due to my location) "I'm an annoying American" baseball caps.
*since we're on the topic of rap, I mean the cost of the shirt, not the dude.
Which intervals represents the bigger differences?
Hip-hop:
1972 - non existent
1992 - Dr Dre
2012 - Lil Wayne
R&B
1952 - Ray Charles
1972 - Marvin Gaye
1992 - TLC
2012 - Beyonce?
Nobody is saying that things are absolutely stuck, merely that the pace of change has slowed.
Yeah I'd say a big cultural trend in the past ten years is the emergence of television as a respected art form. Not that there wasn't great television before, but it seems like, for audience and creators, treating television shows as an art form as valid as film is becoming standard practice.
1972 -
non existentGil Scott-HeronCongrats, you found one of the few guys that was kinda sorta rapping in the early 70s. He's an influence and antecedent, but his music was not "hip-hop." The term and phenomenon followed years later. The Ramones were influenced by The Velvet Underground, that doesn't mean that punk existed in 1968.
I'll agree that the MC Hammer whackiness started dying down at that point as well as "mom jeans" and such but even in the mid to late 90's our choice color schemes, patterns, what we matched things with, and the shape of our clothes were different than nowadays. I don't think the stuff that you see on Friends or Seinfeld is radically different but the longer those shows ran the closer to our times we get. I remember being a kid in the 80's and watching TV shows and movies made in the 70's and stylistically we were pretty close in a lot of ways.
I recently watched The Odd Couple and The President's Analyst and both movies capture a lot of typical people out on the streets of NYC. Yeah their clothes looks a bit different but it doesn't look radically different than say 10 or 15 years later.
Michael Crichton seemed to have a back for starting arguments, and his personality was certainly unique. He's dead now, so I guess your argument stands, but up until that time he was moving debates on climate change and genetic engineering.
Yes, that's true, and advancing those arguments with his books.
Ok, sure, but he's not a novelist or artist in any sense.
That really, really, really isn't the same as literature.
I think this hits it. This kinda came up in the Greatest Current Rock Band thread as well: with so many ways to listen to music (/obtain reading material/watch entertainement/etc.) it's just that much harder for any change to become widespread enough to become a cultural reference megalith. Insofar as there are titans, it's because they're left over from a bygone age of titans (Radiohead, Metallica, etc.) or are squatting in the space created by said titans (Lil Wayne for Dr. Dre, etc.)
But I don't think that means popular style is stuck on repeat; it means that popular style has fractured in a novel way, and that in itself is a dramatic change. The fact that I can create professional-sounding digital music on my laptop using freely available software, upload it to youtube, share it instantaneously with friends or put it on my inexpensive mp3 player in a vast digital playlist -- to me that is way bigger than Neil Young to REM or whathaveyou.
That really, really, really isn't the same as literature.
But isn't this evidence of the medium changing?
Huh? No. I am talking about the medium of artistic literature. Political books have been published since the very beginning.
I'm not really sure what you're getting after, McCoy.
Well, maybe it means that artistic ambition in Hollywood is on the wane. But it's cheaper than ever for filmmakers to make and distribute artistically ambitious indie-type films. We don't need Hollywood for that. We need Hollywood for flicks with expensive special effects, big-name stars, trademarked characters from our youth, etc.
Basically post 55 sums it up. What we do, what we value, what we like has changed and has changed radically and rapidly. A certain segment may whither or even die but that doesn't mean another segment or 50 didn't come along take its place.
That the modes of consumption and production have changed so radically is amazing, and very important, but I think it's a separate conversation from the one about shifts in artistic style. This is actually the very first thing that the Vanity Fair article addresses.
> On edit: sometimes. Obviously the rise of the DVD and Tivo made a big difference in the artistic ambitions of TV writers.
The same phenomenon is starting to be seen in the relatively new mediums of TV and video games.
A small cable channel like AMC has been able to create many critically acclaimed and popular original series on small budgets. 10 years ago, only the HBO type of cable channels were able to produce original TV content like that, and 20 years ago all original content came from the 3(4) powerhouse networks.
Besides the amazing popularity of rehashed Madden and COD-type video games, over the last ~5 years there has been a dramatic increase in the popularity and artistic value of independent and small development house game productions. Technology has grown to the point where it can be relatively cheap (compared to say 10+ years ago) to develop a polished game in a small team and distribute it via the web, PSN, Xbox live, or Itunes.
No way. When I started listening to the radio in 1994 or so, it seemed like half the songs on the Top 40 were things like "Run Away" and "Rhythm Is A Dancer" and "What Is Love?" and Technotronic and C+C Music Factory. It basically got replaced by rap music for dancing purposes for a decade or so, and now non-rap dance music is more prevalent again.
The last twenty years have had an unprecedented digital revolution, and that has basically overshadowed everything else. To say that art has not changed is ridiculous. We've seen groundbreaking changes in forms of art: video games as interactive theater, blogs as literature, online comics and short videos, collaborative online communities, etc. Television is more complex and more dramatically pushes the envelope.
We've also gotten an entirely different level of exposure to other cultures through the internet. Our senses are overwhelmed with more content than we could process in a lifetime. A lot of it is stuff that isn't necessarily new, but just new to us.
I will give you that oasis ('91-95). I was thinking more about 80s freestyle (TKA, Cover Girls, Marc Anthony v.1.0) -- upbeat, breezy music that received relatively little airplay beyond NY, Philly, Miami, Chicago, and LA. Additionally, even top DJs/producers like Tiesto and Kaskade got little MSM attention until very recently.
I guess I disagree that they are separate. The meaning of an artistic style depends on the way that people are experiencing the art. At very least, the modes of consumption and production help define what a "style" can be.
For example, I'd say an important new "style" of popular music is eclecticism, and that this is mostly happening at the listener level rather than the musician level. I think if a typical person from 20 years ago were, say, transported into one of the coffee shops I like to work at they would remark at the range of musical genres played in short succession.
Featuring the worst lyrics ever: "I'm as serious as cancer, when I say rhythm is a dancer"
“But I can guarantee you one thing; we will never agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis. So I won’t bother saying goodbye to his corpse. I will say goodbye to you.”
How dare you insult Turbo B, the second-greatest rapper from Pittsburgh ever.
Biff, hijack-ish question. I'm belatedly dipping my toes into metal waters, and and seeing three bands this spring I've heard good things about but haven't really listened to - Meshuggah, Baroness, Opeth. Any recommendations for good starting points on any of those bands?
This rhyme is stolen from Rakim, who often appears on Best Rapper Ever lists:
I got a question, it's serious as cancer
Who can keep the average dancer
Hyper as a heart attack nobody smiling
Cuz you're expressing the rhyme that I'm styling
I don't know anything about the middle one, but for the other two the recommendation would be pretty similar: start in the middle. After they had mastered what they were trying to do but before they started branching off into other genres and/or got too pretentious and complex.
So the albums "Blackwater Park" for Opeth and "Nothing" for Meshuggah.
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main