various things sort of related to recent classes

A) John Hodgman is a funny, funny writer. It's no hyperbole to say that The Areas of My Expertise is one of the greatest almanacs to ever consist entirely of false information. That's underselling it, really: anybody who likes dry, absurd humor needs to read it and maybe memorize the entire list of hobo names contained within.

B) The Blues:
That documentary we're watching about all those Mississippi guys who got rediscovered/uncovered by Fat Possum in the early 90s is reminding me how much I like that stuff. This really sounds like sort of a cliche affectation for a white middle-class semihipster college student to have, but that whole Stevie Ray Vaughan/Robert Cray/Eric Clapton 12-bar overpolished overlong guitar solo stuff bores me to tears. I don't pretend to know the first thing about "authenticity" in any sort of music. Chuck Klosterman has an essay about pop-country being more authentic in its working-class populism than the more traditionalist alt-country stuff, and as much as I prefer Steve Earle and the Drive-By Truckers to anything Toby Keith will ever, ever, ever, ever do, I have to admit he's probably right. But the point is that I feel like blues at its rawest is some of the most effectively cool, groovy music ever, and too many people's perceptions of it have been shaped by Blueshammer-style bullshit (again, "bullshit" being a totally subjective factor in this post!) that they'll never be able to dig on this music I really like. Go listen to any of those old Fat Possum guys--R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, CeDell Davis--or John Lee Hooker, or Lightnin' Hopkins, or Lead Belly, or Fred McDowell, or Robert Johnson, or Son House, etc. Howlin' Wolf in particular was cool as hell. If you're the sort of person who's ever wondered where Tom Waits and Captain Beefheart got their singing styles...you've probably already heard Howlin' Wolf. But that's beside the point, I guess.
Something that I find interesting is how I find those Mississippi guys waaaaaay more exciting than the wanky electric stuff because their music is more repetitive. Somebody like Eric Clapton--or John Mayer, God help us all--follows fairly predictable 12-bar AAB patterns, but these guys often eschew that altogether in favor of something even more basic. I don't know how that makes it more interesting. Maybe it has something to do with Steve Reich or Brian Eno? Gods damn it, I feel like a phony for even trying to talk about music that I know next to nothing about, but it always feels like a revelation when I find myself totally thrilled by music that I always used to basically think of as an irrelevant museum piece.

C) Hey, did you catch that "Gods damn it" in the last paragraph and think, "Maybe that was a Battlestar Galactica reference?" It was. I'll talk about that later because I'm stoked about the new season (apologies to everybody else in the class because I doubt any of you watch that show).