Even though it’s the end of the year and my kids are finishing up their final projects (I got em workin’ right up until the last day;)), I managed to find the time to sneak in that graphic I linked to the other day, which illustrated the romantic (but not necessarily sexual) relationships between the students at a high school. I thought it was particularly relevant for them now, since they’re about to head out for the summer, with goo-gobs of unstructured time.
Obviously, I’m keeping a close eye on Cobb’s 100 Greatest Funk records. Sometime soon, probably this weekend, I’ll devote some time to actually thinking through what makes a record funky, and maybe trying to fine-tune my criteria for records that will qualify. Some initial questions I’ll be using to guide my thinking are:
Do “funky” records of other genres count? That is, when we talk about funk records, are we talking about records within the funk genre, or records that are funky, regardless of genre?
What traits boil down to the essence of funk? Bridging off the last question, thinking specifically about Sweet Sixteen by B.B. King, at what point would the instrumentation, particularly towards the end of the song, cease to be blues and begin to be funky? (Assuming that those two are mutually exclusive, and I don’t think they are)
Should hip-hop records count? Given that most of the songs are sample-driven, should we count the re-worked song or the original? For instance, we know that Redman’s Bobyahead2dis is based on Atomic Dog. The thing is, on Bobyahead2dis, the sample is distorted enough that it stands alone as a funky track on its own.
Of course, there are more questions and I’ll be exploring them at greater length later
How much is enough? One 15 year-old student in Philadelphia made a documentary trying to get at the answer.
By Kristen Graham
Philly.com Columnist
Springside School sophomore Zoe Greenberg asked a wide variety of youths how they viewed wealth and class distinctions in “Enough! A Kid’s Perspective.” It earned her the Princeton Prize for Race Relations.
The question that launched Zoe Greenberg’s amazing journey was a simple one: How much is enough?Three years ago, Greenberg began thinking about that question as part of her bat mitzvah project. She shot hundreds of hours of film and interviewed students poor and rich, black and white, boy and girl, to probe their perceptions of wealth and class. She turned her work into an 11-minute documentary, Enough! A Kid’s Perspective.
Personally, I think that should be a live question (as opposed to rhetorical). How much IS enough? I’ve had this discussion with some friends of mine from time to time, and frankly, the answer is hard. Particularly if I’m thinking about it from a Christian perspective. Now being American, I’m all about having the next, the latest, the freshest, the loudest, the fastest, etc. Part of the reason I’m doing summer school this year is that I’m planning to cop a desktop and maybe another laptop or two. (One for my daughter, one for me. I’ve been to the store and seen some systems with a terrabyte of memory. A terrabyte, young! My first pc had a 1G hard drive and I didn’t think I’d EVER fill that.) None of those purchases, with the exception of the laptop for my daughter is based in any way on need. I want another computer (or two…and a digital SLR) because I just want one. Meanwhile, there are people for whom the amount I spend on another piece of technology could literally make the difference between life and death, or at least being indoors and outdoors. At what point is enough enough, and at what point is it hoarding?
I just realized I haven’t even made a blind prediction for the Eagles this year. I’m probably less-clear this year than I have been in any of the last few. I seriously can’t call it, because I seriously don’t know what’s gonna happen with Donovan. If he stays healthy, I like them for 11-5. If he gets hurt again, it’s anybody’s guess. Hopefully, they’ll keep running the ball like they were. If they run the ball as consistently as they did when Garcia was in there and Donovan stays healthy? Son. We could be Bowling come February. But that’s a big if, bordering on IFF. We’ll see what it looks like after camp.
I think the Brokebacks are still the closest competition in the division, and they could definitely put together a good enough season to win the division and the conference. However, with a new, non-no-nonsense coach, I’m thinking that year 2 of the Owens Experiment may not go as smoothly as year one.
So completely off the top of my head, to be revised later, NFC East goes like this:
Eagles - 11-5
Cowboys 10-6
Giants - 10-6
R*s - 8-8.
Maybe I’m a homer, but I just can’t see this division being that bad. The R*s aren’t as bad as they looked last year. Campbell’s gonna give them a couple more wins. But like I said, we’ll get more specific later on.
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