I think you can vacuum up more information and stimulation in 15 minutes walking through warblogs than two hours flipping through the cable and traditional network news. And if you do decide to channel surf, a tip: You’ll feel somewhat less filthy and a bit more informed if you spend more time with Jennings / Brokaw et al than with the younger, more sensationalistic reporters on Fox / CNN.
But don’t try and combine blogging and TV news – the mothership doesn’t like that.
Music: Pixies :: Silver
NY Times, Washington Post, and CS Monitor are still tops though. Most blogs are still junk, or if they’re any good they tend to point to these sources to back up their opinions.
I don’t mean to imply that many/most blogs are doing journalism that replaces “real” journalism (though that does happen sometimes). Most blogs, as you say, point to journalism elsewhere and add their own commentary – this the blogging paradigm. So the point of my post was really a way to say that the filtering mechanism of the bloggers does a great job of bringing the really interesting stuff to the top.
Personally, I rely mostly on AP news wires and the BBC online news to keep somewhat up to date, plus the occasional link I stumble across.
The TV newscasts (I only get broadcasted program at the moment) are useless.
Scot, I thought you thought the Pixies were overrated?
Anonymous – I do (think the Pixies are overrated). Am I therefore not supposed to listen to them?
Not at all. You can listen to whomever you choose. I just think it’s curious that you give — in your opinion — an overrated band the pub that goes with being in the Scot Hacker blog.
I could never figure out how a guy who has (A) consistently excellent taste in music and (B) an appreciation for Dada art would not “get” the Pixies. Bands that have ripped them off include Nirvana, Nada Surf, and Weezer (to name a few). Do you not like Salvador Dali?
Not sure what you’re driving at with the Dali refernece — are you saying there’s something surreal about the Pixies?
Nirvana? I don’t “get” them either, sorry.
Ooh…let’s leave Nirvana for another time (preview: see them as a pop band, not a punk band).
Dali’s experimental film “Un Chien Andalou” was the inspiration for much of Black Francis’s songwriting on “Doolittle”. I haven’t seen it, but this guy has:
http://www.film.u-net.com/Movies/Reviews/Chien_Andalou.html
“Doolittle” is rightly regarded as the Pixies’ best album although hard cores will argue for “Surfer Rosa” and “Come on Pilgrim”. Check out “Debaser”, the opening track of “Doolittle”, and listen for references to slicing up eyeballs. That imagery is right out of “Un Chien Andalou”.
I think Francis, like Dali, was trying to get at existential ideas of the surreal and the absurd — fairly highbrow stuff for a 3-minute pop song.
It never would have occurred to me to regard Nirvana as a punk band…
Un Chien Andalou is by Luis Bunuel, not Dali (both are surrealists). Sure, Black Francis may have watched it and may call it inspirational, but that does NOT make the pixies a surrealist band, not even remotely so.
I can tell you I’m listening to I’m listening to Bartok right now, I can even say Bartok inspired me, but that doesn’t make this an avant-classical weblog ;)
I am a fan of the pixies but I must admit to being a bigger Dali and Bunuel fan. May I please just comment if Fransis Black is going to quote one of the most famous film titles of all time, he could at least quote it correctly. It is not Un chien Andalousian it is Un chien andalou. Although i do agree he is a fantastic song writer and is an inspirational character, I must request he learns to spell, nay copy correctly.