The Phantom City

I think we can all see that Beyonce let Kanye win at Connect Four. Check out the winning row.

Link courtesy of Best Week Ever.

We saw part of the Concert for Diana yesterday, and it looked like it went pretty well, given the difficult nature of huge live events. I had a few thoughts run though my head while watching, though, and figured I’d share them with an interested audience:

• Realizing they weren’t promising music Princess Di liked, I still found it interesting that several of the acts weren’t known ten years ago. The list might have reflected the princes’ musical tastes as well, but I kept thinking it partially looked like the artist list you would get automatically from the BBC and VH1 for any concert.
• Speaking of which: Fergie? Really? And she didn’t do London Bridge? When is a better time?
• I didn’t catch this part, but why would English audiences care if Ryan Seacrest and Randy Jackson were there with Simon Cowell?
• Josh Groban did a remarkable job fighting off Sarah Brightman during their duet.
• Oh, Rod Stewart. That’s why they didn’t fill the entire concert with acts Diana liked.
• In case you were wondering about Donny Osmond and dozens of kids wearing Chickenshed shirts, here you go.
• Drop It Like It’s Hot. Pharrel Williams, everyone! A big round of applause! He’s really captured the spirit of the event!
• Oh, good, Kanye West is here. He’ll straighten it all out. “Now I ain’t saying she a Gold Digger, but she ain’t messing with no broke…” Oh, that’s not good.
• For the first time in my life, I felt sorry for Ricky Gervais.
• And Elton John was finally able to take the stage to finish off the concert — he opened as well. This time he’ll do Candle in the Wind for the first time since Diana’s funeral, right? Nope. Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting.
• Wait, when did Diana die? Oh yeah, Saturday night.

Anyway, I’m kind of picking on it, but like I said, it worked well. Much more smoothly than Live 8. I just wonder if everyone was told what the concert was for?

Hmm, looks like Maxim came out with its Hot 100 (supposedly straight), and AfterEllen.com responded with a lesbian version. Let’s see how they match up with a…uh…“random” list of five women.

Yep, looks like my interests aren’t well-represented on either list, but more closely on the Maxim side based on the numbers. However, I was surprised at how much easier it would be to pick a second five from the AfterEllen list. C’mon, Maxim, you seriously listed Lindsay Lohan (#1, no less), Fergie (#10), and Shanna Moakler (I’m not going to bother looking that up) in your top 100? Combine that with Second Life avatars, and it’s just wasted space.

Or perhaps “Fergie Ferg” fails words. Fergie, from the Black Eyed Peas, in her first solo video.

I didn’t think anything could compare to the lyric “lovely lady lumps,” but she somehow surpasses it with this song. At least people could pretty accurately guess what the lyrics meant in My Humps. In this song, what the heck is her “London Bridge?”

Update: YouTube pulled the video. Of course, someone uploaded it again immediately here.

Sigh…They just don’t get it. You always sacrifice your work life first.

Courtesy of Google Video

The Onion’s AV Club checks out some songwriters who aren’t really into the details.

Link courtesy of EdCone.com

Orange County Weekly does its best:

So that’s right dude, meet me at the bleachers
No principals, no student-teachers
Both of us want to be the winner, but there can only be one
So I’m gonna fight, gonna give it my all
We learn that it was a “dude” who gossiped about Gwen. She challenges him to a fight at the bleachers. If he imagines it will be a fair, one-on-one fight, he is sadly mistaken. Gwen and her aforementioned “pack” will pounce on him like rabid wolves.

However, I’m pretty sure the explanation can only be found by watching the video, along with other recent Gwen Stefani videos: She’s insane…but, at the very least, she is no Hollaback Girl.

Link courtesy of Adam M

Another modest proposal from U.S. Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters. This time she proposes eliminating the current section of law that allows musicians to record covers, as long as they pay a fee. She proposes that a private organization set the rules and rates.

Ms. Peters seems to be making this sort of grand gesture a habit.

Link courtesy of the Lessig Blog

Apparently McDonald’s ad company wants to pay rappers to mention the Big Mac in their songs. (Yeah, I checked the date, and they would have been a bit early for April Fools. Now that doesn’t mean the Daily News didn’t get fooled.) Rappers could get $1 to $5 every time their song is played on the radio.

I wonder if that would include Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock’s song It Takes Two. After all, this was one of the lines: “I like the Whopper, f*** the Big Mac!”

Link courtesy of Metafilter

So, some companies are planning to compete with iTunes by offering a music rental service, where you can get unlimited tracks for a monthly fee but those tracks will die if you do not have a current subscription to the service.

While I can see some advantages — trying out new music, getting rid of songs you never listen to — I’m wondering why the same companies that can’t compete with iTunes in the first place think folks will drop the “I bought it, it’s mine” mindset given to us by years of buying CDs, records, and tapes? And for that matter, why should we? Record companies obviously did well off of it. Can you imagine being the customer service person who has to explain to a customer why half their collection just stopped working?

I probably shouldn’t be so cynical about it. At least they’re trying new business models in response to new technology. However, a lot of media companies are trying to move towards an information rental society, and this seems like one more idea from that bankrupt concept. (Did I say “a lot of media companies?” I guess there aren’t really a lot, anymore.)