... your rear car window is held up with duct tape. And today it rained, causing it to fall down.
So there I was, sprinting out to my car during my break, wrestling with the window in the downpour, trying to get it to stay put, so I could tape it back up.
I got pretty wet.
Good Lord.
(Graphic at left from Despair.com.)
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Where are the antiwar songs? Politico.com wonders:
An unpopular president, an unpopular war, a restless young generation eager for change — all the elements of a mass protest culture would seem to be present in this election year.Read the whole thing.
One thing is missing: a mass culture.
The Vietnam era produced an entire genre of anti-war and cultural protest songs, the best-known of which became anthems of the age.
Iraq and the Bush presidency have inspired lots of music in this tradition — but nothing that has gained a large popular audience or is vying to be a generational anthem.
Music, say some sociologists, is just one manifestation of a more fundamental trend. Opposition to the Iraq war, which commands strong majorities in the polls, has not produced mass marches on the Pentagon or shut down college campuses.
The reasons are varied, including the lack of a military draft and much lower casualty figures than were suffered in Southeast Asia 40 years ago. But another big factor is the fragmented nature of how Americans live and communicate — with no clearer example than how we listen to music.
The trend was highlighted this month when Warner Music’s Sire Records issued a 30-song soundtrack for the anti-war documentary “Body of War,” the release timed for the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. The album includes musical heavyweights like Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder and 62-year-old Neil Young, who has contributed to the anti-war songbook for both Vietnam and Iraq.
Despite the project’s star power and its appeal to multiple generations, its format — the concept album — has, for the most part, been left for dead. People today download their favorite songs from multiple albums at a time, unlike in the '60s, when an iPod would have looked like something from the set of Star Trek.
Back then, says Robert Thompson, founder of the Institute on Popular Culture at Syracuse University, protest music was inescapable.
“Those songs, whether you were listening to them in your dorm room or whether parents were upset that their kids were listening to them in the basement, you were hearing them,” Thompson said. “Those songs were the soundtrack of that period. They were in the air literally, and people had to come to grips with them.”
In today’s culture, Thompson added, music consumption tends to take place in a narrow channel.
“Now it’s completely possible for songs that are getting huge distribution one way or another amidst their core fan base to remain completely unnoticed to a fully intelligent and aware American,” Thompson said. “Back in the pre-digital, network era, we all fed from the same culture trough, whether you liked it or not .”
The biggest reason why today’s protest music is failing to echo broadly, some cultural critics believe, is not just a shortened attention span on the part of music fans, but the move to an all-volunteer military. Compulsory military service during Vietnam meant millions more families felt they had a stake in the debate.
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I am currently enjoying the DVDs of the first season of the F/X series DAMAGES. Glenn Close is terrific! I realize when I watch a show like this, how starved I am for women characters my own age, even if they're mean cutthroat lawyers. Obviously, the entertainment situation for women my age is dire.
Me and Mr Daisy are still arguing over whether No Country for Old Men deserved the Oscar for best picture. Mr Daisy still prefers the Coen Brothers' Blood Simple period.
Good movies? Need recommendations!
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Listening to: Santana - Everybody's Everything
via FoxyTunes