Harry Hutton links to a music video (via Sullivan). Probably a general rule of thumb might be that the male singer should have less cleavage than the female. (By the way, this doesn’t look or sound American to me – does anyone know where it’s from?)
Back to the midwest, which I (if not others) always find a pleasant alternative. Iowahawk is, well, the man. Anyway, the winner of Iowahawk’s Iowahawk Hoosegow Honey is Jesika – who is, indeed, quite attractive. Those that find that contest in bad taste may be entertained by his “Hungry Like Naomi Wolf” retro. Of course, rarified sensibilities might be offended by his treatment of butt-cracks & the victims of feminist voyeurs.
Reading Hutton’s complaint about the Yanks and Colombia: “They’ve been having a quagmire ever since they got independence from Spain, and I resent the way these Americans try to claim the credit for everything.” I laughed out loud. This would probably not seem quite as funny to someone who had not just subjected themselves to about half of a Booktv session with Morris Berman. Those guys (and I suspect he’s about my age) figure since they are in decline & since most of us are beginning to suspect the seventies didn’t work, the only conclusion must be that America is heading toward the dark ages. One of the problems with my generation is a lack of humility.
So, Berman argues, China’s economy is beating ours, Europe’s science is topping ours, our medicine isn’t nearly as good as Saudi Arabia’s (if sick, he tells us, we should hope to end up in an emergency ward in Riyadh). We have, he declares, chosen the faith of the dark ages over the science of our founders. Oh, well, it is the usual argument by the usual suspect. And he makes it with stunningly researched anecdotes from Jay Leno. (And, yes, he does teach at a university – though he is not a full prof.)
This generation (well, I guess, my generation) identifies with America (in a peculiar self-hating way) and, therefore, ignore terrorist attacks on other countries (numbers mounting every six months). Hutton’s cynicism is sometimes a bit much, but tonight I laughed. Academics who argue they see a broader world and other Americans as provincial look at 9/11, 7/7, etc. etc. and see only failures of American policy. They can not, apparently, imagine the motives of others. Part of the problem with boomers are their failures of imagination, but that tends to happen when it’s always just about them.
(I screwed up Colombia/Columbia again – sorry about that.)
Great words in stage direction:
“Probably a general rule of thumb might be that the male singer should have less cleavage than the female.”
That should be engraved somewhere Ginny. Maybe on their tombstones. Was that Abba?
Important information on Harry here. You were warned Ginny.
Holy cow!
(By the way, this doesn’t look or sound American to me – does anyone know where it’s from?)
Well, if you go to the YouTube page you find that it was a Finnish duo called Armi and Danny. Danny’s the one with the cleavage. Apparently Armi came to a sad end. If you google “Armi and Danny”, in an effort to see what became of them, you mostly get links to this video. Now that’s sad.
In the early days of music video, they saw that they had this cool new concept, but weren’t clear on what to do with it. Kinda like the early days of web commerce. I like the pathetic gratuitous stab at a Star Wars aesthetic, and I really like the tune. The rest sucks, though.
…most of us are beginning to suspect the seventies didn’t work…
The Seventies? Are you sure you don’t mean the Sixties? The Seventies were never about working; they were about partying down while waiting for the inevitable nuclear war/ice age/pollution/plague to kill us all.
…Europe’s science is topping ours…
Isolated data point: In my field, in the last year or so, over a third of the jobs advertised on our professional society’s jobs page have been abroad. Last month it topped fifty percent.
That’s jobs abroad with foreign institutions, not jobs in the US with foreign institutions, or vice versa. For an American professional society.
I worked abroad for three years, and between homesickness, low pay, and the (correct) feeling that I was not advancing my career, I swore I wouldn’t do it again.
Angie,
That is interesting – by abroad do you mean Europe or in general, abroad? If this is more broadly true, it seems significant.
Actually, I did mean the seventies. But all that is screwed up since history doesn’t always take appropriate care to make its changes at decade divisions. I think 60’s and I think of Jackie’s pillbox hat as well as bringing flowers to San Francisco. 1960-65 was what guys like that think didn’t work; 65-75 was when they thought things did work – we got out of Viet Nam, Nixon was impeached, they got laid regularly, pot was everywhere but still, well, pushing the boundaries – you get the picture. Things moved awfully fast between 1963 & 1967.
Also, I’m impressed by the work you did on the video.
I think the choreography is better in my kids Wiggles videos than that one.
…by abroad do you mean Europe or in general, abroad?
Abroad. I didn’t bother to break it down by outside countries. But in my field, “abroad” means essentially Europe and Australia. There are good organizations in other locations, but they’re generally in collaboration with US or European institutions.
Also, I’m impressed by the work you did on the video.
Pfft! Videos don’t play worth a damn for me when they’re downloading, so I just let them download and replay them. This one wouldn’t. Clicking in the video field led me to the YouTube page, which gave me most of the info. So it was all pretty much by accident.
I shouldn’t let that kind of Secret Science Technique leak out, should I?
Europe’s Science is beating America’s? In the highly technical jargon of the professional scientist: WTF?
China’s economy is beating ours? On what measures? 900 mm peasants and millenia of corruption and clan politics is one heck of a drag on progress.
The thing I can’t stand about the Boomers is their falure to question their own assumptions. Even the scientists, who are supposed to be trained to do that. I lived in the dang USSR in part to see if my long-held beliefs were true. Where is that spirit in the Boomers? They still demonize and villify their opponents. I admit that if I had been born 100 years earlier and watched J.D. Rockefeller at work, and witnessed scenes such as Cripple Creek, I’d probably be far Left of where I am today, and rightly so. Where is that admission with the Boomers?
Oh, I forgot – there was no history that counted before the 1960s.