Return of the Randomness

In my ongoing attempt to get back to regular blogging, I'm trying to bring back things that worked in the past. Longtime readers may remember the Friday random ten posts -- ten songs randomly shuffled out of my MP3 player, along with some similarly random observations. So here goes.

1. Arcade Fire: “Black Wave/Bad Vibrations”
2. Beck – “Minus”
3. Bela Fleck – “Jamie Lynn”
4. Charlie Parker – “I’ll Walk Alone”
5. Meat Puppets – “Flaming Heart”
6. Bob Dylan – “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”
7. Clint Black – “Nothing’s News”
8. Mothers of Invention – “Take Your Clothes off When You Dance”
9. Peasall Sisters – “In the Highways”
10. Patti Smith – “Kimberly”

Of all the discs I picked up during my Nashville country phase (and Nashville country's early-90s period of not absolutely sucking), by far Clint Black's first two discs have best stood the test of time. They were informed by the real-life break-up of a long term relationship. Then Clint met and married D-list actress Lisa Hartman and his music went sappy and predictable. Lisa Hartman, the antimuse.

Some other stuff.

Of all the badness of Bobby Jindal's Republican reply to pseudoSOTU, one bit that got relatively little attention was his mocking of "Something called 'volcano monitoring.'" You would think that if any governor would understand the importance of monitoring potential sources of natural disasters, it would be the governor of Lousiana. But then he seemed to think that the sum of Katrina was all the government's fault.

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne was in town this week for an Akron Roundtable appearance. He did a dispatch-from-the-heartland thing for his column previewing pseudoSOTU.

I'm working finally bringing the sidebar up to day. I've dropped attempts at a comprehensive Akron blogroll and am keeping that list (labelled "Locals") to people who I read fairly regularly. Along with the new linkety goodness, take away a favorable review to Blogger's newish blogroll feature. It's easy to use, easy to import feeds from my Reader and you get updates about the latests postings on the blogs listed.

I've been watching Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse." I think it's fatally flawed. Whedon's great strenghts are developing compelling characters, giving them great dialogue and watching relationships among them ebb and flow. Hard to do all that when the show is about people whose personalities get wiped and rewritten every show. Whedon in interviews enthuses about the episodes in the can, so maybe he's found the solution to the problem. Wait and see.

Top Chef wrapped up its season this week. SPOILER ALERT. Hosea edged out heavily favored Stephan for the title. Carla was going strong, but Casey from Season 3 was her sous chef and gave her bad advice which she unfortunately followed. Casey is now the first chef to choke away two titles. Imagine if Carla had asked her to chop some onions.

My best Google search referral this week -- and best in a long time -- "crocodile racing proponents."