M Is FOR MASHUP - March 27th, 2019
Mashups For People Who Like To Look
By DJ Useo
Sure, mashups are an audio experience, but some of the best mixers provide additional fun with a video version. For those of you who like to look at your mashups, too, here's a swell batch of useful links.
01 - Video Edit By Panos T. Mashup By Happy Cat Disco. - "2019 Megamashup (Polaroids)"
( www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgxOwRy2P8U )
02 - Dynamo and Vincent - "SWEET BUT PSYCHO (The Megamix)" - Gaga, Dua, Ariana, & More"
( www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUavP1m4XIg )
03 - Pogo - "POGO Live 18.01.19"
( www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCKeMlC6nYg&t=1s )
04 - Smash - "Set Fire To Smalltown Boy" ( Bronski Beat vs. David Guetta, Martin Garrix & Brooks vs. Adele )
( www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZFAUD3tjQc )
05 - Xam - "Played To Me" ( Safri Duo vs. Ellie Goulding )
( www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBi8fV3R9Vs )
06 - DMRofATOZ - "Mashin' Schmashin' a Teaser Taste Trailer Nilsson Flow"
( www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_59D8y1L2o )
There's plenty more tracks of this nature to see, but I reckon that'll do y'all for now. Come back next Wednesday for more "M Is For Mashup'.
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Trump's Kakistocracy Is Also a Hackistocracy (NY Times)
The invasion of hucksters has reached the Federal Reserve.
Catherine Conroy: "Margaret Atwood: 'When did it become the norm to expect a porn star on the first date?'" (Irish Times)
The Canadian author on shades of feminism, the #MeToo criticism against her and Ireland's 'bad' abortion laws.
Stephen Poole: The rise of robot authors: is the writing on the wall for human novelists? (The Guardian)
Artificial intelligence can now write fiction and journalism. But does it measure up to George Orwell - and can it report on Brexit?
AN INTERVIEW WITH PHILIP K. DICK (1977) - By Yves Breux and Francis Luxereau (Scraps from the Loft)
As I said in the Rolling Stone article on me, when I came home and found my house consisting of nothing but rubble, ruins, chaos, broken windows, smashed doorknobs, blown open files, I said, "Thank God, I'm not crazy. I have real enemies." It's a tremendous relief to discover that somebody really is after me.
Phil Hoad: How we made The Full Monty (The Guardian)
'I knew we wouldn't be able to show any genitals. I realised I should shoot from the back, with a row of bums' - Peter Cattaneo, director
Cincinnati Babyhead: Noir/Crime Flicks (WordPress)
Here's a few Noir/Crime flicks that I've listed. All worth a watch. Dated throw backs. But they all have something that makes them watchable. Cool characters, they look great, great lines, memorable performances. Character actor city. Some cornball dialogue and some forgettable stuff but that's part of the charm. Lots of bad guys and gals. Black and white cinematography, lots of shadows and cigarette smoking. A few punches to the head and plenty of lip locks. A genre in films that I really dig. Crime and more crime. Turn down the lights, get some snacks and turn the clock back a few decades to catch some of these entertaining films. "So ya think you're a tough guy huh?"
Alexis Petridis: "Pop's great adventurer: how Scott Walker reached the heart of darkness" (The Guardian)
Few pop stars went the artistic distance that Scott Walker did - and from the middle of the road to its further edges, his work was always extraordinary.
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Presenting
Michael Egan
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
from Bruce
Anecdotes
A common occurrence at many classical music concerts is discovering that the program is incorrectly printed. Unfortunately, this happens even at the highest level of the music world. Famed conductor Sir Thomas Beecham once told his audience during a concert: "Ladies and gentlemen, in upwards of fifty years of concert-giving before the public, it has seldom been my good fortune to find the program correctly printed. Tonight is no exception to the rule, and therefore, with your kind permission, we will now play you the piece which you think you have just heard."
Leonard Bernstein was rehearsing Falstaff when the trombone choir failed to hit a note in unison. This surprised Maestro Bernstein, as it wasn't a hard note to hit in unison. Caricaturist Sam Norkin was watching rehearsal, and from his seat, he could tell what the problem was. The music stands of the trombonists did not contain the music of Falstaff; instead, they held such reading matter as the Racing Form, the National Enquirer, Reader's Digest, and the sports page from the New York Daily News.
Opera singer Leo Slezak's son Walter toyed with the idea of becoming a composer. Unfortunately, he was not a very good composer. Once, he wrote a flute solo that was 64 bars long. His music teacher examined the solo and then asked, "When does the flute player breathe?" On another occasion, he tried to write an opera titled Nero, which opened with Nero fiddling while Rome burned. Unfortunately, Walter didn't know what to write to follow such an exciting beginning.
A Hollywood producer wanted Arnold Schoenberg to compose incidental music for the movie version of Pearl Buck's novel The Good Earth. To get Mr. Schoenberg interested, the producer described a scene - a storm rages, an earthquake occurs, and in the middle of all this, the character Oo-lan gives birth. After the very vivid description, Mr. Schoenberg asked, "With so much going on, what do you need music for?"
Among the many debts that we owe to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is that he inspired Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky. When Tchaikovsky was about 10 years old, he saw a performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni; the opera so impressed him that he decided to devote his life to music.
After George Bernard Shaw heard a young Jascha Heifetz play the violin, he sent him this note: "Young man - Such perfection annoys the gods. You should play one or two wrong notes after each performance to appease them."
While dancing with the Diaghilev Ballet, young ballerinas Alicia Markova and Alexandra Danilova used to be taught privately by George Balanchine, who hummed marches for them to dance to because they didn't have a pianist.
John Banner of TV's Hogan's Heroes used to perform at state fairs with a rock and roll band while dressed in his Sergeant Schultz ("I know nothing! I see NOTHING!") uniform.
Enrico Caruso, the great opera tenor, once appeared at a benefit with comic Joe Frisco, who told him, "Don't sing 'Darktown Strutters Ball' - I use it for my finish."
George Frideric Handel composed some Royal Fireworks Music for a fireworks display honoring King George II. The evening was spectacular - the fireworks box caught on fire.
Ludwig van Beethoven concentrated on the important things. His young student Carl Czerny often would show up for a piano lesson, but Beethoven would cancel it because he was busy composing.
Famed conductor Arturo Toscanini enjoyed listening to music on records - while listening, he had a habit of holding his baton and conducting.
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
JD is on vacation.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Working off a flash drive & forgot to load some images. Sigh.
Writers Fire Their Agents En Masse?
WGA
The Writers Guild of America on Tuesday unveiled details of its plan for April 7 - the day writers may be ordered to fire their agents en masse - asserting that a patchwork of online resources, managers, attorneys, replacement agents and writer-to-writer networking will enable writers to continue to find jobs and negotiate terms without their customary representatives, albeit with bumps in the road.
Nothing of this sort has ever been tried before, and some skeptics compare the abandonment of representatives to Brexit, with the implication that writers will come to rue the day. But the WGA expressed confidence in its plan.
"There will be difficult moments," acknowledged the guild in a posted FAQ. "But our goal is to get through staffing season and whatever period of time it takes to make a fair deal with the agencies. Our industry will not grind to a halt.
Our ideas and our words will still have enormous value, and the work we all love to do will continue."
"If your agency doesn't sign the Code of Conduct and is no longer able to represent members, you will not have to sever the relationship alone," says the FAQ. "All you have to do is electronically sign a form terminating your representation agreement. The Guild will deliver the terminations to the agency in a group."
Some writers have been with their agents for decades; others are newer to the relationship. Agency sources have suggested that some writers who fire their agents might never be welcomed back. The Association of Talent Agents did not immediately offer comment. The WGA and ATA were scheduled to meet Tuesday afternoon in ongoing bargaining over a new agreement.
WGA
Recreated Iconic Titanic Scene
Martha Stewart And Snoop Dogg
Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg are gearing up for the season three premiere of their hit VH1 series Potluck Dinner Party. And the unlikely dream team is drumming up anticipation in the best possible way-by recreating the most iconic scene from Titanic. You know the one.
The promo opens with Cιline Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" as Stewart gives her best Jack Dawson impression and stares pensively on the open seas countertop. As Snoop-aka Rose-enters, they assume *the pose.* The chorus picks up, the kitchen transforms into a ship bow, and the windows burst open with an ocean breeze. "Open your eyes," Martha whispers.
Here's where the pair took a bit of creative license. Kate Winslet's classic line, "I'm flying" gets an update: "I'm frying," Snoop says, two french fry baskets in hand. "Martha, I'm frying." Is it weird that I got more emotional watching their version than the original?
Of course, this isn't the first time the co-hosts have reenacted a classic. In 2017, Snoop and Stewart promoted the sophomore season of Potluck Dinner Party with a Ghost-inspired teaser. Yep, things got steamy with that pottery scene. Except they swapped out the clay wheel for something more on theme-chocolate cake. The real question though...whose recipe was it? In January, we put the two to the test and the results were surprising.
Martha Stewart And Snoop Dogg
"Portrait of Dora Maar"
Stolen Picasso
A Dutch art detective dubbed the "Indiana Jones of the Art World" has struck again, finding a Picasso painting worth 25 million euros stolen from a Saudi sheikh's yacht on the French Riviera in 1999.
Arthur Brand said he had handed back the 1938 masterpiece entitled "Portrait of Dora Maar", also known as "Buste de Femme (Dora Maar)" to an insurance company earlier this month.
The discovery of the rare portrait of Maar, one of Pablo Picasso's most influential mistresses, is the culmination of a four-year investigation into the burglary on the luxury yacht Coral Island, as she lay anchored in Antibes.
Two decades after its theft and with no clues to its whereabouts, the French police were stumped -- and the portrait, which once hung in the Spanish master's home until his death in 1973, was feared lost forever.
It was yet another success for Brand, who hit the headlines last year for returning a stolen 1,600-year-old mosaic to Cyprus.
Stolen Picasso
Remake In The Works
'Guys and Dolls'
The stage is set for Guys and Dolls to make a big-screen return.
A new adaptation of the classic Broadway musical is in the works at TriStar, which has acquired the rights to the original Damon Runyon short stories and the musical with music by Frank Loesser, as well as the remake rights to the 1955 film adaptation from the Samuel Goldwyn company.
Set in Depression-era New York, the story centers on a high roller and a small-time gambler as they try to lock down a date and a location for a floating craps game. The 1955 movie, which featured Loesser standards including "Luck Be a Lady", starred Frank Sinatra, Jean Simmons, Vivian Blaine and Marlon Brando.
Guys and Dolls premiered on Broadway in 1950 and won five Tony Awards including best musical. It was revived in 1992 for a production that starred Nathan Lane, Faith Prince, Peter Gallagher and Josie de Guzman. The revival was nominated for eight Tonys and won four.
Guys and Dolls is the latest musical to get the movie remake treatment. Steven Spielberg is in production on his West Side Story remake for Fox, and the movie version of Stephen Schwartz's Wicked landed a 2021 release date from Universal, which is also set to release the Taylor Swift-starring Cats in December.
'Guys and Dolls'
Stunt Cancelled
Nasa
Nasa's plans for an all-female spacewalk have fallen through - at least in part because the agency doesn't have enough spacesuits that fit the astronauts.
Early this month, Nasa announced that Christina Koch and Anne McClain would take part in the first-of-its kind mission on 29 March, walking outside the international space station (ISS) to install new batteries. In the past, missions have been all-male or male-female.
But in a press release on Monday, Nasa said its plans had changed, "in part" due to a shortage of outerwear. McClain had "learned during her first spacewalk that a medium-size hard upper torso - essentially the shirt of the spacesuit - fits her best." Only one such top can be made by Friday, the agency said, and it will go to Koch.
The first woman to perform a spacewalk was the Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya, 35 years ago. More than 500 people have been into space, but only 11% have been women, Reuters reported. But Koch and McClain were both part of Nasa's 2013 class, which was half female.
Fitting for spacesuits is a tricky business, according to Space.com, since microgravity makes you taller. McClain tweeted this month that she was 2in taller than when she launched.
Nasa
Hallucinations
Psychedelic Drugs
Rainbow fractals, otherworldly faces, melted limbs - any of these hallucinogenic sights might seem to be the result of a visual system in overdrive. But new research suggests that hallucinations may come, instead, from a visual system with too little to work with.
The new study was done in mice, so it is only a first step toward understanding how hallucinations happen. But hallucinogenic drugs seemed to put the primary visual region of the mouse brains into a weak, disorganized state, the study found. Neurons fired feebly, with strange timing.
And without good information coming from this primary processing region, the brain might try to fill in the blanks itself, said study researcher Cris Niell, a neuroscientist at the University of Oregon.
"The brain might start over-interpreting, or misinterpreting," Niell told Live Science. "And that could end up as a hallucination."
So far, that idea is just a hypothesis. Niell and his colleagues were interested in studying the role of a particular receptor, the serotonin 2A receptor, in the visual system. These receptors play a role in perception. Hallucinogenic drugs like LSD or psilocybin (the active ingredient in "magic mushrooms") target these receptors, which also seem to be involved in the hallucinations experienced by people with schizophrenia.
Psychedelic Drugs
Prime-Time Nielsens
Ratings
Prime-time viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen for March 18-24. Listings include the week's ranking and viewership.
1. "60 Minutes," CBS, 10.25 million.
2. "The Voice" (Monday), NBC, 9.88 million.
3. "NCIS," CBS, 8.46 million.
4. "This is Us," NBC, 7.65 million.
5. "God Friended Me," CBS, 7.53 million.
6. "NCIS: Los Angeles," CBS, 7.16 million.
7. "American Idol" (Sunday), ABC, 7.08 million.
8. "Survivor," CBS, 7.06 million.
9. "Grey's Anatomy," ABC, 7 million.
10. NCAA Men's Basketball Tourney: Minnesota vs. Michigan St., CBS, 6.49 million.
11. "Bull," CBS, 6.42 million.
12. NCAA Men's Basketball Tourney: N. Dakota St. vs. Duke," CBS, 6.22 million.
13. "FBI," CBS, 6.17 million.
14. "American Idol" (Monday), ABC, 6.11 million.
15. "The Voice" (Wednesday), NBC, 6.109 million.
16. "911," Fox, 5.97 million.
17. "Ellen's Game of Games," NBC, 5.69 million.
18. "The Big Bang Theory," CBS, 5.61 million.
19. "Station 19," ABC, 5.55 million.
20. "The Resident," Fox, 5.15 million.
Ratings
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