"Anyone else get a little bugged when people say Dylan has a bad voice?"

"I love what Leonard Cohen said about his voice: 'Most music criticism is in the nineteenth century. It’s so far behind, say, the criticism of painting. It’s still based on nineteenth century art–cows beside a stream and trees and ‘I know what I like.’ There’s no concession to the fact that Dylan might be a more sophisticated singer than Whitney Houston, that he’s probably the most sophisticated singer we’ve had in a generation. Nobody is identifying out popular singers like a Matisse or Picasso. Dylan’s a Picasso — that exuberance, range, and assimilation of the whole history of music.'..."

A discussion at the subreddit r/bobdylan.

The top-rated comment is so Reddit: "I find it the opposite of annoying. You’re telling me what your depth is as a music listener and what level of convo I should be expecting and how to respond accordingly. It gets rid of the guess work."

Dead comedians on tour: Andy Kaufman and Redd Foxx, the holograms.

Alki David, the billionaire behind Hologram USA made the announcement and said his company is "working with other estates of famous funny guys and funny girls, these just happened to be amenable estates who see the vision."

Mr. David said that the hologram shows... say, Andy Kaufman lip-syncing the “Mighty Mouse” theme on... “Saturday Night Live”....

Noting that Malcolm X had known Foxx before his stand-up fame and described him as “the funniest dishwasher on this earth,” Mr. David said, “We’re going to have a scene with Malcolm X. We’re going to have various notable names featuring in his story.”...

The company is preparing holographic versions of Billie Holiday to perform at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, and of Whitney Houston for a worldwide concert tour next year..... “There are an awful lot of dead celebrities,” [David] said. “There are an awful lot of dead people with a lot of followers. The fresher the memory, the bigger the star.”...

Bonus red meat for pedants: The director of the licensing agency said that the dead celebrities "literally come back from the dead."

I'm hesitating to publish this because it's pretty obvious that David wants to provoke those who find this kind of entertainment disgusting. It's a virality strategy, and it gets out the word for the kind of people who do think it's cool to have the illusion of somebody they love come back from the dead (and don't give a damn about the right and wrong uses of "literally").

So I'm going to distance myself. Oh, the absurdity of "amenable estates who see the vision" and the sad comic deafness of the phrase "famous funny guys and funny girls." They're dead. They're not funny at all. And Malcolm X isn't funny dead or alive.

Justice Thomas decided long ago never to walk in anyone's shadow.

I burnt out trying to read (and blog) all 5 of the Obergefell opinions yesterday. I was getting annoyed slogging through the Chief Justice's long cogitation about restraint after getting through Scalia's relatively playful romp through the topic (and the frustrating fuzziness of the majority opinion), and I just couldn't get to the work of Justices Thomas and Alito.

But let me finish the task I assigned myself and move on to live-blogging my reading of the Thomas dissent (which is joined by Scalia):

The Court’s decision today is at odds not only with the Constitution, but with the principles upon which our Nation was built. Since well before 1787, liberty has been understood as freedom from government action, not entitlement to government benefits. 

This is an excellent beginning, highlighting the main problem with using substantive due process — the idea of fundamental liberties (the "right to marry") — rather than equal protection. It's easy to see that the government is subject to equal protection limits as it hands out benefits, but maybe liberty should have only to do with being left alone to do what you can do on your own without interacting with the government.

So I'm very interested in what Thomas has to say about equal protection (which I think makes the most sense as the basis for the right), but he has almost nothing to say. He drops a footnote early on, observing that the majority says it's using equal protection, but it's "clearly" only using it "to shore up its substantive due process analysis." I agree, but when you're finding a right, one is enough. If you're rejecting the claim of right, you need to reject both grounds. Thomas should at least have articulated a legitimate government interest to be advanced by excluding same-sex couples from the legal institution of marriage. In my view, it cannot be done. (Listen to the oral argument to hear the ludicrous implausibility of the connection between the government's asserted interest — that children grow up with their biological parents — and the restriction of marriage to opposite-sex couples.)

Want to hear Whitney Houston's exuberant 80s pop song "How Will I Know" slowed way down, sad, and sung by a guy?

I thought not, but here it is anyway. I liked it.

For reference: here's Whitney.

Cissy Houston's harsh memoir about her daughter Whitney Houston...

... may have something of a homophobic theme. I read the linked article because it's linked at Drudge: "CISSY DISSY: Whitney Houston's Mom Writes Unflinching Memoir..." The article characterizes the book, but all the interesting material comes from interviews that have been available for a while, so the article might not represent the book accurately. ("Nippy" = Whitney.)

Houston moved out of the family home an into an apartment with her friend Robyn Crawford at age 18. Crawford was gay, and Cissy did not like her. “What made Nippy’s move particularly hard for me was her decision to room with Robyn Crawford in an apartment in Woodbridge, New Jersey. She knew how I felt about Robyn, but she was determined to live with her anyway. It wasn’t that there was serious tension between Robyn and me— we just didn’t see eye to eye. Still, we tried to be respectful of each other and of our places in Nippy’s life, and we figured out how to give each other the necessary space. We had our love for Nippy in common, and though we rarely agreed, we were at least able to keep things from being too uncomfortable when we were all together.”

Later Crawford moved with Whitney into her big mansion in Mendham, New Jersey. “Early on, Robyn Crawford nicknamed me “Big Cuda”— short for barracuda— and that suited me just fine. The name stuck, and from then out, whenever I’d be coming somewhere to see Nippy, people would warn each other that Big Cuda was coming.”

But it was Crawford who had the guts to tell Cissy about Whitney’s drug problems early on, long before Bobby Brown arrived on the scene.

Seems like it's Crawford who has the interesting memoir material.

If you're going to bury a half-million dollars in jewelry along with the dead body...

... you really shouldn't tell the whole world about it. And if your solution is a round-the-clock security guard... well, why would that guy be enough to hold back the nefarious grave-robbers?

Absurd!

Come on, everyone in the world, let's all go to the New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey today.

There's a big funeral, and you're all invited.

Oprah Winfrey will be there. And Alicia Keys. Dionne Warwick. And the love of a lifetime, Bobby Brown.

"Appropriately, Adele’s ascension happened during one of the dullest Grammy ceremonies in recent memory..."

"... a tour de force of bumbling anti-imagination hampered even further by the death of Whitney Houston the day before the show, which left producers scrambling to fit in raw tribute with shimmering and gauche spectacle."

The NYT's Jon Caramanica, carps about the dead diva, hampering from a bathtub.

AND: In other Grammy news, how many people tweeted that they'd let Chris Brown beat them up?

I'm glad The Grammys...

...  weren't too much about Whitney Houston dying. It wouldn't make any sense to overshadow Adele, whose night it was, who seems like a sweet person, who said "snot," which seemed to amuse the crowd immensely. I liked The Band Perry. Paul McCartney was okay, still slim and spry. Good of Springsteen to play with him in the end, on "The End." I was happy to see Brian Wilson still sitting upright... and Glenn Campbell able to remember the words as he journeys into the sunset of his life. Most of the music I could barely put up with. Lots of flashy lights. Costumes. Hugely long eyelashes. I know: It's for the kids. But this was the first time I'd ever watched The Grammys. Oddly enough. Wanted to see what they'd do about Whitney.

ADDED: And then there was Lady Gaga, always only in the audience, with her head encased in thick black netting. She didn't win anything last night, but she got to see — through that net — all the elaborate stage acts that seemed to want to be like her — notably Nicki Manaj — caught in her net. But it was Adele everyone likes now. The one lady standing center stage, emoting in music. I guess we'll be getting more of that, as the followers-on look to catch the next wave.

"At the end of another song, Brown shouted 'I love you, Whitney!'..."

"... and blew a kiss to the sky, looking visibly teary."

Despite their volatile relationship, Houston told Oprah Winfrey in 2009, "I loved him so much...He was my drug. I didn't do anything without him."

Whitney Houston.

RIP.

She had the... perfect voice, and the perfect image: a gorgeous singer who had sex appeal but was never overtly sexual, who maintained perfect poise....

But by the end of her career, Houston became a stunning cautionary tale of the toll of drug use. Her album sales plummeted and the hits stopped coming; her once serene image was shattered by a wild demeanor and bizarre public appearances....

Very sad.

ADDED: The first video