has the 21st Century produced ANYTHING worth remembering yet?

don't mention LOTR (written in 1940s, films conceived in 1996), or Harry Potter (first book written in the 1990s), or The Matrix (first film, 1999).

most recent case in point, a radio station doing "mix hits" that plays on the next door quickie-mart I get my coffee from.  They were advertising that they played the best songs from the 80s (Men Without Hats' Safety Dance), the 90s (I Get Knocked Down, But I Get Up Again), and Today.

For today, they played a cover version of Supertramps' Give A Little Bit, written in 1977.

So far, the best pop song written in the 2000s by a group that became famous in the 2000s, was 1985, an intentional play for a retro-oriented crowd.

So where's today?  What has come out so far in the 21st century by groups that weren't releasing stuff in the 1990s that's actually worth listening to?

Anything?

didn't think so...

posting here but the context is kinda elsewhere...

I'd have posted these in the particular thread, but LJ's marking that as "closed to read-only for maintenance" and I'm not in the mood to wait.

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On the BBC's selection of Michael Moore and George Soros to do commentary on election night:

ok, i'll grant you that was also a plea for "ratings" rather than for fact or truth.

surprising considering that the BBC is state-supported through license fees...

but the Beeb has increasingly looked at "ratings" to make decisions even when ratings don't determine their income/budget the way it does in america through advertising rates...it certainly was the reason Dr. Who was finally pulled in 1984 and 1987...

and actually, consider this: the boob at the beeb (light drama dept) who finally killed dr. who, Michael Grade, because of "ratings" and "audience numbers", is the guy in charge at the Beeb today.

it might explain that selection, actually.

either that or the BBC aren't taking this election seriously. :)

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My reply to his reply to me concerning media bias and my going on a rant here...

Ok, first off I apologize for letting emotions get to me again.  There are personal reasons I hate this administration and everything they've done, not limited to my 5 months on the unemployment line as a direct result of the Iraqi war and the appointment of John Pointdexter to DARPA.  Much as I try to stay somewhat objective, I fail to.  With this administration, I probably always will.  Had that Wormwood clone Karl Rove not been involved and McCain been nominated and eventually elected, the emotions that make these conversations tricky and painful would never have come about.

I realize (and recall from our in-person conversation) that the selection of facts to actually publish and report on and editorialize on in the first place is also a bias in and of itself.

But consider these 2 possibilities.
( details trimmed to reduce real estate...if you've read it, great, if not, i still think its good... )

(side note, yes soapbox returns one last time: )
And when we end up with only 2 or 3 giant companies controlling all of the information that we see, we end up with a system where the FCC and Michael Powell has the capability for far more forms of censorship to "protect the American people". (His exact words, following his complaint about the Supreme Court restoring the consolidation restrictions)

So I say again, Mr. M Powell: Why do the American People need protection from what little free press and free media we have left?

a couple of scary halloween cartoons...

And I have to give this one credit in that its one of the few cases where I *really* don't like Kerry's approach.

ah, memories...

As Dork Tower talks about Leisure Suit Larry returning for XBox and PS2...

anybody actually remember "Soft Porn", the text-only (Zork-like) game for Apple II that LSL 1 was a graphical version of?

update: The Interactive Fiction Archive has the original Apple game, along with a DOS port and a rewrite using Inform to create a Z5 version playable by any system that can play "Zork" (including Mozilla and Firefox directly (hint: gnusto was the name of a spell in Enchanter)).

anything it takes...

including fooling the public impression of the u.s. military using photoshop?



image taken (according to the source I got it from) from one of the Bush-Cheney commercials currently running in the battleground states...

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Update from a contained comment: Accoring to CNN, it was a video editor who did that on his own initiative as part of removing a podium from the image when he just just supposed to be focusing on the boy waving the flag.

ok, no conspiracy here, nothing to see, move along ;-)

(to quote Doonesbury's congressmen reviewing Nixon back in the day, "Darn, I thought we had him" "yeah, if only he would, like, knock over a bank or something.")

Stan Rogers on Morris Dancers...

Morris dancers, for those of you who don't know, are cute people who dress up in little white suits with green sashes and pork-pie hats with feathers. They tie sleighbells to their feet and they strap long white hankies to their wrists. In any eventx There's nothing really alarming about Morris dancers; they're actually quite harmless.

Except that from time to time they will arm themselves with some kind of cudgel or bludgeon or some kind of blunt instrument. And they will gather in a knot or a mob known as a clot, or a team. And they'll gather in kind of a mystic circle and, to the accompaniment of accordion and violin, they will rhythmically and ritualistically hit each other again and again and again, with these sticks.

This is supposed to be some form of British fertility ritual, or some form of entertainment, or something. Anyway, this next song has the sort of knuckle dragging Neanderthal beat that Morris dancers really love to dance to.

From his usual intro to a song called "The Idiot". Go fig.