Reasonable? Music? On the internet? I don't believe you

The parts of me that get excited by economics, consumer law, and music got all a-tinglin' when I was reading this moderate proposal to solve music piracy.

Yes, I realize he actually references Swift's famous piece of satire, but I think his argument is honest.

First, he talks commodity to me about the nature of "selling" music:

When someone “purchases” Windows Vista, or the new Arcade Fire CD, is it really a “purchase,” no different than buying a hamburger, a car, or a t-shirt? No. Burgers, cars and T-shirts are “rival goods.” There are limited numbers of them, and there are significant production costs attached to both the creation and duplication of such goods. If you take a burger, or a Mercedes, that is one less burger/Benz for everyone else.

...

This is why everyone who has ever said “stealing music is exactly like stealing a car” or anything similar to that, is fundamentally incorrect. They are trying to inject their morals into what is, at this level, an economic discussion.

Next, he takes the music industry to task for their catastrophic blundering re: Napster

If they had vision, they could have thought something like this:

Wow, 60 million people in less than a year? Downloading how much? That’s amazing. If we do this right we can eliminate all of our production and distribution costs and become a pure profit business. How can we profit from this?

Instead, they thought something like this:

EEEK! Hippies are stealing my money! Assemble the lawyers!

...

The worst part of the success of the Napster litigation, is that it legitimized a new revenue stream — a revenue stream that, pre-Napster, no one would DARE utter aloud.

Suing your customers.

Then, he addresses faces the new reality of music consumption:

This is my thought: The Internet + P2P + Napster has completely blown up everyone’s concept of how much music someone can possess. Pre-Napster, very few people had 1000 CDs worth of music, or even 300 CDs worth. Very few people had the money and storage space to amass such a collection, or the wherewithal to seek it out. 300CDs used to be A LOT of music.

Now? Who do you know that doesn’t have a few thousand songs in their collection?

And, the best idea I have ever heard:

Now that the technology is available, what if the labels started to offer unlimited DRM-free downloads of their catalog for an up-front annual license fee of $240, or if they were brave, a $20 dollar a month fee with a cap on per-month downloading (let’s say 3000 songs per month)?

(Mass hysteria in the crowd.)

I would definitely pay $20 to have reasonable access to MP3s that you get to keep without all the DRM caveats of current subscription-based services like Napster. Obviously. Who wouldn't? Even with my extreme album fetishism--yes, I still like to actually hold the fragile, scratch-prone CDs, deal with flimsy jewel cases, read worthless liner notes, and reorder my albums to Icy-Hot my OCD tendencies a la High Fidelity--that'd be a hell of a deal.

First, I'd wipe out my 200+ album wish list, then immediately cancel the music subscription. Then, in a few weeks, I'd come crawling back with a whole new list of music I want. Then cancel again. Then come back in a few weeks. Repeat until I realize that it'd just be easier to keep paying the money and have access to music when I want it for a reasonable price.

And why should the music industry do this?

Do the labels (and film studios and software producers and etc.) want to foster a friendly, mutually beneficial relationship with their customers, with pricing and valuation of licenses for their products that reflect current technological realities and new cultural norms?

or,

Do they want to desperately cling to outmoded prices and valuations in the hopes of fictional trillion dollar profits?

Do they want to clog the courts with ridiculous, frivolous lawsuits?

Do they want to continue making an entire generation of kids think that “RIAA” and “Copyright” are curse words?

Enough said.

[Of Lattimorists, Goddamn Hippies, and the (possible) future of copyright law.] - Jefitoblog, courtesy of Idolator.

Why, the tyrant King George, of course!

Been watching The Office? You really should. Since Arrested Development ended, The Office is easily the funniest sitcom on TV these days.

Like this clip, which probably gave me the biggest laugh of the year so far, as Dwight tries to catch a Ben Franklin impersonator in the act:



In fact, any Jim/Dwight interplay is almost invariably the best part of any office episode, as this sneak from this week's episode shows:



Here's a nice collection of clips. My all-time favorite Jim/Dwight confrontation shows up around the 5:30 (2:20 remaining on the embedded player) mark:



I take it back. Jim mugging for the camera is the best part of any episode. Unless Creed is involved:





Or Toby...



It's a good show with a good variety of solid characters. You can't go wrong.

Things would be different if I ran the newsroom

Sad day yesterday at Virginia Tech. Thoughts out to all the people affected by this.

But allow me to say, if I were running the newsroom, things would be a little different. I know bigger death count numbers look good and all to grab attention, but stuff like this grab from MSNBC doesn't quite capture the feeling:



This grab from the New York Times is more accurate by separating the victims and the shooter...



And how would I do it if I ran things?



Yeah, I think that sums it up. I'd feel bad for the killer's family and all, but Jesus Christ on a pogo stick he killed over 30 people! Screw him.

In addition, I give my half-props to USA Today for this piece of page 1 design with the excerpt of the campus emails. It's half slimy and sensationalist, but half brilliant how it puts a spotlight on the chaos and confusion.

The soda is warm! High priority!

Great article in the Wall Street Journal today from the typically amusing Jason Fry about emails, MP3s, and copyright law. Consider it something to read in between page loads of the must-read 11+ page Thomas Friedman article from Sunday's NYT Magazine about the importance of environmentalism and going green.

If that all seems like too much, ya know, reading (ick!) for you, just enjoy this video linked from the Journal article, which should strike a chord (bad pun, sorry) with anyone that has ever worked in an office.

Shitty Mixtape In Action

Here's some wonderful lunacy from the gentlemen behind that new MTV show HUMAN GIANT (yes, it must be in all caps). The gist of it is the guys held a contest to pick 5 shitty songs for a mixtape. The tapes were judged for (poor) quality, and the loser had to walk around town blasting all the songs on a boombox. Must watch, especially if you didn't get enough Miami Sound Machine from this week's American Idol:



And, for the record, here would be my five songs I would absolutely not want to blast on a boombox (but since I'm a pseudo music snob, I've allowed a +1 slot for obscure indie tracks):

1. Goo Goo Dolls – "Iris"
2. Cardigans – "Lovefool"
3. Night Ranger – "Sister Christian"
4. Heart – "Crazy On You"
5. Avril Lavigne – "Skater Boi"

+1. Tegan & Sara – "Walking With A Ghost"


And since I never do music lists without a consult, here would be Scott's 5 +1:

1. Vengaboys – "We Like To Party"
2. Survivor – "Burning Heart"
3. Tiffany – "I Think We're Alone Now"
4. 4 Non Blondes – "What's Up?"
5. Verve Pipe – "The Freshman"

+1. Piebald – "American Hearts" (look it up on iTunes.... trust me)


By the way, while scanning my iTunes library, I rediscovered that I own the Woody Woodpecker theme... it's 3 minutes long!! How unreasonable is that?

[Full disclosure: I own every song mentioned here except Piebald--no one should own them. Just because I don't want to blast a song on a boombox is not a sign that I don't like it.]

Throw the (picture) book at her!

For your evening amusement, from Slate:

On March 28, Desre'e Watson, a 6-year-old kindergarten student at Avon Elementary School, had a bad morning. She cried. She wailed. She kicked. She scratched. She hit a teacher. That's what the police say, anyway.

The police? That's right. To subdue the unruly kindergartner, school officials phoned Avon Park's police department ("committed to enhancing the 'Quality of Life' of the community"). When the cops arrived, young Desre'e attempted to resist arrest by crawling under a table. But Avon Park's finest pulled her out, cuffed her, put her in a police cruiser, drove her to the county jail, and charged this 50-pound menace with a felony and two misdemeanors.

Read the whole article and--I'm salivating as I type this, it's so delicious--see the police report here. As Bill from Kill Bill would say, "I... overreacted."

Did you really need to get the police involved here? My dad used to tell a story from his days as a junior high math teacher. One of his delightful scamps forgot his Ritalin (or the mid-70s equivalent... I assume that would be cocaine) and started freaking out and trying to climb out the windows and tear down the curtains.

Dad, being a reasonable person, grabbed the monster, planted him on the floor, and sat on him until someone else came to take him away. Yes, sat on him. Kept the kid under control and almost certainly gave the class bullies enough ammunition for a lifetime of schoolyard insults. If it were me, I would have tried to fart on him too, but I'm not as classy as my father.

Seems more satisfying than being the teacher that got a kid slapped with a felony charge at age 6. The next parent–teacher conference? Awkward...

And now for something completely different, observe a sword opening a bottle:



Aren't slow-mo cameras neat?

The one where I cave into popular culture

One of my favorite movie and television review sites, Pajiba, weighs in on that whole American Idol Sanjaya brouhaha, with typically scathing and insightful results.

Although I only watch American Idol when there's nothing else on and I'm waiting for House, M.D. to get started, the 10-second-per-contestant wrap-up snippets at the end of the show have given me more than enough (as the article puts it) "17-year-old borderline-retard Sanjaya" than anyone needs, and, yet, he persists. Having hardly watched the show, though, I definitely agreed wholeheartedly with this (big quote... just read the article, it's good):

I’ve never been a fan of the way Simon, the drunk to his immediate right, and the guy from Journey tend to Breakfast Club the contestants — sizing each one up in an instant and branding him or her with one of a handful of generic and recyclable designations. (“The Soulful One,” “The Little One with the Big Voice,” “The Modern One,” “Justin Timberlake,” etc.)

This season, Gina Glocksen was “The Rocker.”

...

As much as I was still fully behind The Sanjaya Agenda and wanted nothing more than to see Stern put on a Guy Fawkes mask and detonate a pound of Semtex under Ryan Seacrest, I was secretly pulling for Gina to at least nab a place in the top four or five — an achievement that would all but guarantee her a record deal somewhere.

Last week, she was eliminated.

...

But as the axe came down on Gina Glocksen, as the stunned crowd began to shout in protest, and as she began to cry uncontrollably, and, in a tragically ironic coup de grace, as she was given the stage one last time and was forced to perform the same song she had sung the previous night, which happened to be Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile,” I found myself shaking my head — amazed at how the entire scene was just so perfect.

It was the perfect object lesson.

It was as if God himself — either as an “Idol” enthusiast or simply in keeping with his longstanding practice of crushing the insignificant for the hell of it — had come down from on high and engineered the ultimate ruthless comeuppance aimed at all those who dared to fuck with the natural order of things.

Having watched the clip of her getting voted off (embedding disabled? Boo!), I can't say I disagree with his assessment of its perfect irony. Keep watching the clip, though, because it gets better:

Once again, in an act of seemingly divine inspiration, the shot of Gina’s tear-streaked face as she toughed her way through the lines, “Smile, though your heart is aching,” and, “Though there are clouds in the sky, I’ll get by,” slowly dissolved to show the face of — him.

And I found myself suddenly filled with rage, and the overwhelming need to rip every fucking ridiculous hair out of Sanjaya Malakar’s stupid little head and shove them down his fucking throat — the one that had failed to produce one decent goddamned note all season.

...

Perhaps the only thing left is to once again invoke the words of H.L. Mencken:

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

Damn you, Pajiba, for applying such grandiose writing to a weepy girl on a shitty reality TV show and making me feel legitimately bad for her. Damn you.

Dear Yahoo!: For enlightenment, look within

Two internet advertising quips:

First, as the Consumerist blog points out, perhaps Yahoo doesn't need to look far for the source of the looming housing crisis:




Next, I received this prompt upon signing in to MySpace:



Needless to say, I didn't try to save Britney.

We're going to a laser show: a tribute to "Utopia Parkway"

Something's wrong with this picture: One of the nicest days of the year today, the kind of day where all the motorcycles and convertibles come out and everyone remembers that they liked going out for ice cream... and it'll be 24 degrees Thursday night. No fair! How am I supposed to drive around with the windows down blasting Fountains of Wayne (and Journey, of course) when it's sub-freezing? I guess I'll have to find ways to pass the time... In honor of today's release of the new Fountains of Wayne album "Traffic and Weather," I've decided to kick off a new recurring column: 47 life-changing albums that you must own, presented in no particular order whenever I feel like it. Those riders always get ya, don't they? Anywho, let's kick things off right with #16: Fountains of Wayne Utopia Parkway One of my missions in life has been to make Fountains of Wayne the bona-fied uber pop stars they deserve to be. Yeah, yeah, I know. "Stacy's Mom," the best simultaneous tribute to The Cars and MILFs ever written, was pretty big a few years back. In fact, here's the video: You're welcome. Favorite moment? The little eyebrow lift at 1:55 in time with the power chord hit. Brilliant. But the greatness of Fountains of Wayne goes deeper. You probably know more of them than you think. Remember that highly irresistible, so-catchy-it-only-leaves-your-head-upon-a-solid-bludgeoning pop nugget from That Thing You Do!? FoW's bassist Adam Schlessinger wrote that. This video also marks probably the first time an imaginary Columbus, Ohio radio station has been featured as a hitmaker in a music video (about a minute in). Was Steve Zahn in that movie? Hmm, I may have to revise my wholly unjustified hatred of him. On top of that movie gem, Schlessinger was also behind most of the music in this year's Music and Lyrics. If only the world knew that Hugh and Drew fell in love while writing a FoW song. Now that I've established that you already know and love FoW, allow me to introduce you to their best album, Utopia Parkway. This one is way up there in my "Most Played" playlist in iTunes. The title track starts, over stacatto piano and drums

Well I've been saving for a custom van and I've been playing in a cover band and my baby doesn't understand why I never turned from boy to man

And builds from there in full power pop splendor with starry-eyed wonder at the joy of playing in a band. The day I start my own cover band, this song is going to be my freaking anthem. The real strength of Fountains of Wayne is truly the eye for detail in the lyrics. Most songs are stories stuffed with odd specifics and exquisite details that help you relate to the protagonists. "Red Dragon Tattoo," for example, follows someone that gets an intricate piece of body art to impress an indifferent lady:

Will you stop pretending I've never been born now that I look a little more like that guy from Korn?

Or "Hat and Feet," which puts bad news from your significant other in terms relatable to anyone who's seen a Bugs Bunny cartoon:

You dropped a bomb on me I didn't even see Like a falling piano from out of a window Now I'm just a hat and feet. Flat on the sidewalk, stuck to the street.

Or the aptly titled "Laser Show"

We're gonna sit back. Relax. Watch the stars. James and Jason, Kirk and Lars. We're going to make our may across the galaxy. Then we're going to head back home on the L.I.E.

Their songs aren't just about dating, although they could almost certainly coast on that theme for another 60 years and still write more interesting songs than Nickelback ever will. No, they sometimes put the crosshairs on suburban malaise, like in the vicious "Valley of the Malls" (which should win some kind of award for the title alone):

God forgive the passengers if we should fail to find a penny fountain or a half-off sale I need a merchant, I've just started searching for the holy grail Fighting for the freedom from a common bond To be a barracuda in a guppy pond So little time for so many things to try on. And we're leaving all the road for dead We're getting tired of the twists and turns You gotta go when human nature calls We're driving through the valley of the malls.

By the time the album winds through the appropriately meta "Prom Theme" and the turned-to-11 bouncy "It Must Be Summer," the closing track "The Senator's Daughter" sends you off with a nice, longing lullaby, complete with acoustic guitar and mellotron:

I'm floating away on oceans of gray blue water I'm rising above, I'm falling in love with the senator's daughter

It was at this point that I willfully misheard that lyric as "I'm falling in love with Fountains of Wayne." Once you let Fountains of Wayne into your life, trust me, the days will seem brighter, food will taste better, and your salvation is guaranteed. Go forth. Bonus FoW treat: Although Utopia Parkway is one of my all-time favorite albums, I feel like I can't leave without mentioning that their all-time best song is on their third album, "Welcome Interstate Managers." That would be "Hey Julie," a syrup-y pile of soft percussion, acoustic guitars, and cuteness that makes me both go a big rubbery one and want to date some girl named Julie. Some soul was nice enough to put in a rudimentary music "video" on YouTube: