RASHOMONIC.com

Friday, February 20, 2004

squeeze

Not sure what I think of Bob Herbert's "Dark Side of Free Trade":

The middle class is in trouble. Globalization and outsourcing are hot topics in this election season because so many middle-class Americans ... are worried about slipping into a lower economic segment themselves.

American workers are caught in a cruel squeeze between corporations bent on extracting every last ounce of productivity from their U.S. employees and a vast new globalized work force that is eager and well able to do the jobs of American workers at a fraction of the pay...

No one really knows what to do - not the president, not John Kerry or John Edwards, and most of all not the economists and other advocates ... of unrestrained trade and globalization.

:: 12:45 PM [+] ::

english

Found "You should speak in English!" via George. I went to college there in Fairfax, one of the richest and most ethnically diverse parts of the U.S.


:: 1:19 PM [+] ::

blue note

Speaking of Blue Note ... just finished reading Richard Cook's book on the label. Toward the end he talks about Greg Osby's work and talent. So I listened to this and now I wanna hear more.


:: 10:51 AM [+] ::

independent

My friend Matt who works with me at BzzAgent sent this piece, "The Faux Life With Norah Jones - Debunking the pop star's "word-of-mouth success," around the office.

The conventional take on Jones is that she's a homegrown success who prevailed in an era of pre-manufactured and overmarketed pop stars. The truth is a little more complicated. Beginning about six months before Come Away With Me was released in February 2002, Blue Note Records sent out advance copies with breathless testimonials ...

This type of promotion worked well among a crucial part of her fan base: college students, aging baby boomers, and sensitive writer types—people who think of themselves as independent and open-minded ... So how do you market one of the best-selling artists of the past decade without making her willful fans feel as if they're being spoon-fed a star? By continuing to pretend you're not marketing her at all.

:: 10:27 AM [+] ::

foundation

AHH reports on Amir doing a good thing:

The Roots' drummer, Amir "?uestlove" Thompson recently revealed that he has embarked on a goal to create a foundation that honors the pioneers of Hip-Hop. "I'm on a one man mission to start a foundation that will honor the the forefathers of Hip-Hop, especially Kool Herc," Thompson told the Dallas News.

Thompson said the fact that most Hip-Hop fans are ignorant to the role Kool Herc played in creating Hip-Hop didn't sit well with him. "There's no reason why the man who invented Hip-Hop should be working for Fed-Ex right now," Thompson added.

:: 8:27 PM [+] ::

seeing things

Last night Bonnie and I caught the second half of the Hollywood-centered episode in the PBS special "Beyond the Color Line," a four-part series traveling through Black America with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. I've been surprised by how much the bits and pieces that we've seen over the last couple nights have left me thinking. We're gonna buy the DVD to see the rest and share it with friends.

:: 9:31 AM [+] ::

home

The Post's Colbert L. King riffs on the "color sickness" past and present from a D.C. standpoint:

With our growth in self-esteem as a people, we are slowly getting past our color sickness. The most visible sign is the growing presence of couples with sharply different skin tones. The African American middle and upper classes are no longer predominantly light-skinned preserves.

Sadly, though, some of us haven't managed to learn the lesson that the content of our character, not color, is what counts. There are still families around that won't let their children bring home dark-skinned suitors.

:: 4:43 PM [+] ::

two sides

The Times has a good story on a buried treasure of D.C. folk culture:

The diggers were Dori Hadar, 29, and Frank Beylotte, 32, friends from Washington who met a year ago at a Salvation Army store while mining for funk and soul gold. "I went to a flea market, and there was a huge record collection there, at least 20 boxes," Mr. Hadar said, recalling the morning of the discovery ... Nearly all the albums were credited to an unknown black musician named Mingering Mike, and dated from 1968 to 1976.

Mingering Mike's dream, he said, was to be known for his music, and for his songs to inspire people. Thus, he tackled subjects like the growing drug problem in the United States on the cover of "The Drug War" and compulsory military service in his apocryphal reissue of an apocryphal soundtrack to the apocryphal film "You Only Know What They Tell You."

A recurring theme, which appears on the album "The Two Sides of Mingering Mike," is the choices that one had to make during the Vietnam War era between military service and civilian life. The logo for his spurious Decision Records label depicts two hands, one reaching for a microphone and the other for a gun.

Too bad this guy won't reveal his identity. I'd love to see a short documentary film get made about Mingering Mike.
:: 2:17 PM [+] ::