The Top 100 Cover Songs.

I love Retrocrush, and I'm just finishing the 99th podcast, which is about the top 25 of the Top 100 Cover Songs. If you haven't heard Robert Berry's podcasting, you really need to listen. He's got a hilarious voice and delivery style: adorably nerdy. He's pretty knowledgeable and articulate too. And I like a lot of his choices, though all 100 could easily be different songs. Here's the whole top 100 (with lots of YouTube clips). Don't miss #57: Crispin Glover's "Ben."

"'Strawberry Fields Forever' builds ... into a psychedelic swirl ... of 'Hello Goodbye,' 'Baby You're a Rich Man,' 'Penny Lane' and Piggies.''"

Are you listening to the new Beatles album "Love," the soundtrack for the Cirque du Soleil show? I am.

"I had fresh ears -- if you can have fresh ears to the Beatles -- and my job was to make things different,'' said [George Martin's son Giles] Martin, who was born in 1969 as the band was breaking up.

The rules were simple: Beatles tracks only, no electronic distortion of what they recorded, and no newly recorded music. The single exception was a string arrangement, written by original Beatles producer George Martin, to accompany an acoustic version of Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps.''...

I'm disappointed,'' [Beatles biographer Bob] Spitz said. "Not by the end product but by the fact that they are the Beatles' songs and overdubbing them and massaging them allows other people to impose their own creative ideas on something that was so immediate and of a particular time. I thought that legacy was virtually tamper-proof, until now.

"Once you meddle with something so fixed in the public's mind, you will risk having a failure on the proportion to Twyla Tharp doing Bob Dylan,'' Spitz said, in a reference to the musical that closed this month after less than a month on Broadway.

Is risk-taking inherently bad? You have the record. Judge it! Is it bad? I find it quite amusing. It's fun to encounter the lovable snippets -- e.g., the initial chord from "Hard Day's Night" -- out of place and leading to something surprising. It's nice to have the cool part of a song -- e.g., "Hela, heba helloa/Hela, heba helloa" -- extracted from the dross that is the rest of the song -- "Hello, Goodbye."

Let's look for some more opinion. There's this:

[I]t's exhausting.... There are 26 tracks which take elements from 130 different songs, whether it's a whole song or a guitar lick or a drum beat.

Some of them vaguely work as a curiosity, but are pretty obvious - Tomorrow Never Knows is one of the most mind-bending pop songs ever written (never mind that the group came up with it way back in 1966), but if you were going to mix it with another track, then Harrison's similarly Eastern-leaning Within You Without You is staring you in the face.

There are tweety birds in the background of an a capella Because. They place a live version and the studio version of I Want To Hold Your Hand over the top of each other. Drive My Car gets caught in a traffic jam with The Word and What You're Doing. Immediately after what is possibly the most famous sustained guitar chord in modern music (from the opening of A Hard Day's Night) comes possibly my favourite drum fill of all time (from The End on Abbey Road), and they're both bolted on rather clumsily to the front of Get Back.

Why? Martin is like a master chef, and these songs in their original form are gourmet meals, but Love takes these delicious dishes, pours them into a blender, hits the puree button, sticks a straw in it and asks you to suck.

And there's this:

[M]y skepticism was evaporated about 10 seconds into the album. "Love" is a work of art from original Beatles producer George Martin and his son Giles that keeps the spirit of originality and inventiveness that the Beatles poured into their songwriting and recording.

What the two Martins did is nothing short of audio voodoo. They've created the ultimate Beatles "mash-up." Combing through all the Beatles original master tapes, they grouped together songs of the same tempo, same key and same feel and layered parts of some songs into the middle of others. For example, the intro to "Get Back" is Ringo's rollicking drum solo from Abbey Road's "The End." "Blackbird" segues seamlessly into "Yesterday." Vocal harmonies from "Hello Goodbye" float throughout the background of many of the songs. I got a huge kick out of hearing the solo from "Taxman" inserted into "Drive My Car." And who knew "I Want You She's So Heavy" would make an absolutely perfect outro to "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite?" Those examples merely scratch the surface of the mix-and-match approach that makes this album brilliant.

And:

Every fibre in my Beatles-freak being warned me not to be excited about the new Beatles album, Love....

[R]emixing all these classic tunes – as the soundtrack to a Cirque de Soleil Las Vegas show – is like messing with Picasso, or cut-and-pasting Tolstoy. Why do it?

Here's the answer. It's brilliant....

Love begins with the exquisite harmony vocals from Because floating in the ether. Then comes – what's that! – the closing chord from A Day in the Life played backwards so that it builds to a crescendo, followed by that unmissable opening chord from A Hard Day's Night, then Ringo's drums from The End, before somehow slipping in to Get Back as if that's the way it had always been done.

That magically segues into Glass Onion, seamlessly blended with hints of Hello Goodbye and what must be bits of brass reconstituted from Pepper. Nothing is real, indeed....

Play it without looking at the track listing and feel the buzz when you recognise what that tape-flipped-backwards choir is that leads to Something, or the guitar part from Blackbird turning into Yesterday.

And when Being for fhe Benefit of Mr Kite meets the heavy riff from I Want You and parts of Helter Skelter, the effect is totally in keeping with the spirit of The Beatles and the way they pushed the envelope of studio technology in the first place.

Enough. The point is made.

"I mean no disrespect."

Says Andrew Sullivan, chided by a Mormon for his post about Mormon undergarments. Here's the post. Do you buy "I mean no disrespect"?

ADDED: And here's an earlier post. Sullivan is so sure of himself on the subject of religion. He seems to think he knows just where it's right to dish out contempt about religion. But his contempt is mostly for religious people who he thinks are too sure of themselves. [ADDED: But that is exactly his character flaw.] In this case, it seems that Mitt Romney's opposition to gay marriage makes it morally upright for Sullivan to attack Mormons:

Mitt Romney will surely provide a fascinating glimpse into the Christianist mindset in the coming two years. He will be the candidate for the Christianist right, but he's not a Christian. And many Christianists may well recoil at the man's Mormon faith.... I'm sorry if I have little sympathy for Romney's plight. Live by fundamentalism; die by fundamentalism.

I wonder how many people "recoil" at Sullivan's sanctimonious pronouncements about "Christianists." He's become so devoted to that word of his. Does he not notice how snide and hostile it feels even to people who are not fundamentalists?

AND: I just noticed that last-linked post is titled "The Mormon Question." Wow. Is that tone deaf!

ONE MORE THING: The word isn't "sacreligious," as Sullivan has it at the first link, it's "sacrilegious." The word is not related to "religion":

Sacrilege’s Latin etymon was formed of sacer, “sacred” and legere, “to gather or steal”; sacrilege is “the stealing of sacred things” or doing other violence to them.

AND ANOTHER THING: Lest you freak out and think that last thing is meant as more of a put down of Sullivan than it is. I'm just talking about etymology and spelling.

AND: Glenn Greenwald is such an idiot. Am I supposed to respond to this foolishness? Glenn, you moron, in case you didn't notice, Sullivan is mocking Mormons in general. That's what bothered me. I don't object to the word "Christianists" if it is used fairly to refer to something that is the equivalent of "Islamists." I use the word "religionists" myself. See here, here, here, and here. Words like this mean something and have a place. The key is to use them in the right place. I criticize Sullivan when he shows a hostility toward ordinary religious people who aren't trying to bully their way around the political world. There are distinctions to be made here. Why not take a little trouble to try to understand the person you are criticizing before you write, you disreputable slimeball? (And your writing is putrid.) [But I do love the pathetic jealousy of your post title.]

EVEN MORE: From the good Glenn, Glenn Reynolds, linking here:

WELL, YES. Glenn Greenwald is extraordinarily lame, even when he's writing under his own name.The problem with the term "Christianist" isn't that it adds "ist" to the end of a religion. It's that, by parallelling "Islamist," it is a deliberate attempt at conflating people who oppose gay marriage -- or, apparently, Madonna's schlocky posturing -- with people who blow up discos and mosques, and throw gay people off of walls. That's the kind of execrable moral equivalence engaged in by the Soviets and their proxies, and it's the sort of thing that Andrew Sullivan used to oppose eloquently, before he started to engage in it himself.

Indeed. And it should be noted that using "Islamist" is a way to avoid using the word "Muslim." The idea is to distinguish a dangerous subgroup from the much larger group of ordinary religious people. I see "Islamist," "Christianist," and "religionist" all as useful terms to refer to political actors who rely on religious ideology. But the usefulness of the terms depends on making careful distinctions. You have to be careful not to drift over into the expression of hostility toward a religious group, as I believe Sullivan has been doing with Mormons. More generally, he simply is so hot about the gay marriage cause that he apparently really is willing to express contempt for the groups that stand against it. I support gay marriage and am much more socially liberal that most religious people, but I think it is terribly important to be respectful toward people with religious beliefs.

UPDATE: I have a new post on the subject here.

"But he's quiet, introspective, even paranoid. He's a very wound-up guy. But I don't think he's a racist."

The real Kramer reminds us that Michael Richards is not the real Kramer.

"I know the public is smart enough to realize that Michael Richards' personal actions in no way reflect on the character he portrayed on television or me, Kenny Kramer, the real person that the character was based on."

I know the public is smart enough... That's touching. Makes me think of: "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

"The central principle of spin: However bad the trouble you're in, you can generally make the other side look worse."

From a description of Christopher Buckley's book "Thank You for Smoking," from a list of the 5 best books about PR.

A man who saved us so much time.

H. Donald Wilson, the man who thought up Lexis-Nexis, back in 1969, has died:

A turning point for the acceptance of Lexis came in the early 1970s, when Mr. Wilson arranged for a skeptical audience at the Supreme Court to use the new system. The Lexis system found more cases than the court clerks found by using manual research methods.

Sounds like a scene from the movie "Desk Set"... except in the movie -- spoiler alert! -- the human beings beat the computer.

Bunny Watson: I don't smoke, I only drink champagne when I'm lucky enough to get it, my hair is naturally natural, I live alone... and so do you.

Richard Sumner: How do you know that?

Bunny Watson: Because you're wearing one brown sock and one black sock.

See? People are better. But thanks for the machine!

Why the wine ads don't mention the benefits of resveratrol.

They don't want to litigate:

In 1991, some aggressive winemakers sought to trumpet the health benefits of wine, but they were quickly shut down by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which then regulated the industry at the federal level. Even the industry’s trade organization, the Wine Institute, counseled against promoting wine as a health drink....

“We put on a back label, that wine is healthy and recommended in the Bible,” [Michael Mondavi said]. “The B.A.T.F. sent us a cease and desist letter and made us change the label even though we went back to Washington and showed them the scientific evidence and read them the Bible passages.”

The article doesn't identify the passages. There's this:

Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do. Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil. Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun— all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.

And this one, which is less grand but actually makes a health claim:

Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses.

Audible Althouse #72.

It's a new podcast! It's about: how I don't want to be called "Ann," what it means to be "Conservative Blogress Diva," the Krash of Kramer, my message to Jerry Seinfeld, the effect of the Kramer Krash on Borat, dressing like Bob Dylan, anorexia, horrifying 80s music, plastic surgery for your kids, and... "Rigoletto."

Stream it right through your computer here. But all the divas and the guys who can sing a cute aria subscribe on iTunes:

ADDED: Here's the Wikipedia entry for the song "Sussudio" (which I revile on the podcast), which I see was "was ranked number twenty-four on VH1's '50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever.'" The other song I rail against in this podcast is "I'm the Only One" (which I was forced to endure while sitting in a dentist's chair this week): "Please baby can't you see/My mind's a burnin' hell/I got razors a rippin' and tearin' and strippin'/My heart apart as well...."

YET MORE: I'm not actually mad at people for calling me "Ann," just slightly annoyed at people who criticize me for calling myself "Althouse."

O.J. on eBay.

There's a selling frenzy on of O.J. Simpson's canceled book "If I Did It." Here's a current auction, with the bid now over $60,000. Can you honestly say that if you had received a review copy you would not be trying to sell it? The question is: Who's buying? Or are these "fictitious bids to ruin auction"?

UPDATE: eBay seems to have taken down the book auctions.

Doesn't Althouse watch any reality shows anymore?

Now that TV seems to be the subject of the day -- TV and leftover squirrelage (≈ squism) -- you may be thinking: Doesn't Althouse watch any reality shows anymore? The fact is I do. Even though I haven't been blogging the weekly episodes, I have two shows that I'm following. (That seems to be my pattern: I like to have two reality shows to watch.)

1. "Top Chef." Great characters this season. The Thanksgiving episode was sublime, with Anthony Bourdain's exquisite insults ("Flintstonian"), Sam pushing Frank's buttons -- toothbrush on the floor! -- to make him terrorize little Marcel, Betty finally revealing the horror behind her ever-present toothy smile. Yummy!

2. "Survivor." I'd avoided watching this show since the first season, but the controversy about dividing the teams up by race made me tune in, and the characters kept me hooked. It's been interesting to see how members of the original (race-based) teams have behaved when the teams have realigned. Obviously, the editors have crafted what we get to hear about racial alliances, so we haven't heard the contestants say much about it (though they did let us hear white people talk about reforming their original team). But we are in a position to observe and talk about it on our own, which I think the producers intended. Ostensibly, however, they want us to see -- and they've edited it to highlight -- that everyone is an individual.

"I found myself saying 'these girls don't look all that thin...'"

A Television Without Pity comment on the HBO documentary "Thin," about a treatment center for anorexics:

[O]ne of the most disturbing things was when I found myself saying "these girls don't look all that thin..." and I realized it is because everyone woman on television is so skinny now that I didn't see anything out of the ordinary about the women on the show. (until they undressed anyway) This is such a rampant problem it's boggling.

Absolutely right! I tuned in expecting to see some lurid images of scarily emaciated women, but they all just looked like the usual actresses we see all the time and think of as pretty. What's going on out there? Are all the actresses we're so fond of these days actually -- like the women we see in the documentary -- spending their private moments leaning over the toilet vomiting out their last meal?

Is "Seinfeld" ruined? (My advice to Jerry.)

David Bernstein has started a conversation over at Volokh Conspiracy about whether Michael Richards' racist rant makes his Kramer character unwatchable.

I happened to try an old episode of the show the other day. The TiVo had dragged in the "real and... spectacular" episode, which begins with a lot of Jerry and Elaine. I wasn't really thinking about the Michael Richards incident. I was just passing the time, fooling with the TiVo. But when Kramer came in, after a few seconds, I turned it off. You know, there's usually a Kramerless beginning, and then, at some point, Kramer makes his entrance. Traditionally, you'd get a real lift at that point. The whole arc of the show is now screwed up!

But I'd love to see one more episode of the show where we discover that Kramer is a racist. We were always learning just one more odd fact about Kramer -- his first name, some hobby, some arcane field of knowledge, some impressive skill. And we were always tantalized by the unknown: What does the inside of his apartment look like? How does he support himself? Why don't we ever encounter the oft-referenced Bob Sacamano? And -- as one of the commenters on Bernstein's thread says -- the idea of the show was always that the four characters were not good people. We may have loved them, but it was not because they were purely lovable. So it would actually seamlessly fit with the show to have an epilogue episode where we learn that Kramer is evil.

Come on, Jerry. You like to push the envelope. Do a reunion show where we discover Kramer is a racist!

(Does anyone remember the old parody -- I think it was in the National Lampoon -- about "The Andy Griffith Show" where a black person comes to town and we learn that the lovely Mayberry folk are all racists?) [IN THE COMMENTS: Someone reminds me that it was in RAW, the comics journal, and drawn by Drew Friedman. I did have the Friedmanesque pictures in my head when I wrote this post. I must have the old copy of Raw around somewhere, as I never threw those things out.]

(And on the question whether a racist sitcom character could be lovable: That's a conversation we had back in the 70s when "All in the Family" came out. Is the answer different today?)

Looking back on the Thanksgiving squirrel.

I hope you had a good Thanksgiving. What did you have?

Squirrel, because it's not only different, it also happens to be the only type of animal my boys and I shot while out hunting at my parents' farm recently. No wild turkeys, No wild boar, no deer to grace the Thanksgiving table, but the more unusual Thanksgiving squirrel. After we cleaned them my dad made me take them home so I decided to toss them into the freezer where they would wait alongside the turkey for the Thanksgiving dinner.

Holiday.

The commenters on the previous post claim to be suffering from withdrawal on account of low Althouse bloggage today, so let me give you another picture:



I seem to be specializing in green. Check the pictures in the previous two posts. And I seem to be anticipating the next holiday on this holiday. Should I say holly day?

It's in the mid-50s today, here in Madison, Wisconsin. So it's not as if I'm buried in snow and longing for the green of summer. It seems rather green here right now, especially after I raked all the brown leaves off my lawn today.

Hear that? I finally raked the leaves! I've been feeling bad for weeks... almost months... because of my failure to deal with the leaf situation. I'd been on the verge of calling my lawn/snow service people and hiring them to do the leaves for me -- and I've never hired anyone to do my leaves -- and then wavering, thinking that it's more trouble to call and arrange for them to be done than to just do them myself. Two interchangeable chores, and me not doing either.

But this morning, it was warm and sunny, and I finally did it. Doing the leaves, I got a chance to see things in the yard that I normally overlook. Like that rabbit hole. (I kind of fell in it. Not big time. Just would have sprained my ankle if my foot were smaller style.) And I noticed that the little holly bush had grown lots of red berries. So I cut a few sprigs -- they weren't boughs of holly -- and put them in a glass on the glass table.

Then I noticed the shadows and got out the camera:



After focusing on the hard shadows, I was able to perceive the soft light effects in the room:



The leaded glass made subtle rainbows on the painted cabinet.

Beauty is everywhere.

Thanks.

Oh, my! There he is!

It's the Thanksgiving Squirrel!



Keep safe everyone. Boil your meat well.

The Thanksgiving fish.

Godspeed on your trek to Grandmother's house! May the fish be crispy and the squirrel succulent!