Bloodshed Old and Bloodshed New

About a Recent Civil War Battle Re-Enactment
About Today's Homocide, at a Shopping Mall where I happen to visit about once a month or so. They have two okay game stores (CM & Sci-Fi City).

Writer's Block: The Beatles

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Pop music ceased to be relevant to me about fifteen years ago. The problem is that there is no single "pop music" anymore. Even Billboard split their charts due to complaints that one genre of pop was overwhelming all the others.

I think, right now, in some hellhole club in a city nobody's heard of, there is a band who could emerge and challenge the world of music like the Beatles did. Perhaps they're hometown heroes now. Perhaps they're just scraping by, playing other groups' songs at parties. But even the Beatles needed a Brian Epstein for business savvy and a George Martin to recognize and refine their artistic strengths. (Hmm...I don't know exactly where I'm going with this thought.)

Back when I was a teenager and a student and pop music spoke to me, I thought I saw some trends in music coming...but my ideas were completely wrong. Because of rap's reliance on technology and pre-recording, musicianship is being lost as a pop asset. My hope was that there would be a renewal in the appreciation in a band that plays its own instruments live. Perhaps the new computer games will train a generation of pop musicians, but how quickly can the trend bear fruit?

It Gets Weirder

Update: The Knoxville Center Mall Shooting...and the legal controversy being generated.

Practical upshot: an alleged pillar of the alleged community was there carrying his alleged pistol. In a building where the law says only law enforcement officers are allowed to be armed!

Life On Mars--The Yankee Version: Premiere

Hey.

I still haven't seen the original British version of this series, but everything I heard about it sounded good, and so my bar on this new series was pretty high. I told myself I probably wasn't going to stay with it if it didn't knock my socks off. But so far it looks like it will deliver.

Yes, they played the David Bowie song. It was on the 8-Track deck on Sam's 1973 car (a Chevelle Super Sport) in the scene when he woke up.

I don't know if anybody else catches them, but here and there I see homages to the crime dramas of the era (Kojak, Starsky & Hutch, SWAT, Adam-12, Dragnet, etc.). Heck, I even see a little of Barney Miller!

More to come.

FP

PS: I tried to access the official website of the show and couldn't get very far. I guess they have embedded "features" that aren't dial-up friendly.