With the end of the semester, I have returned to my life of obscure hours working for minimum wage as I prepare my bank account for the September tuition bill. A few days ago I watched This Is It after my dad suggested I should watch — admittedly, I never was big on Michael Jackson (of course, with the exceptions of “Thriller,” “Billie Jean,” and “Man in the Mirror.” I couldn’t find the DVD I had planned to watch, either. So I fired up the DVD player to watch This Is It. I am usually out of the pop culture loop when it comes to movies, and I expected a gimmicky movie that was produced only to cash in on the death of a legend.

Instead I discovered an engrossing story about what would have been and what once was. Even if MJ’s greatest days were beyond him, the This Is It tour really looks like it would have been a spectacle. A fitting end to the career of a king. It was a pleasant surprise to watch a creative genius at work. Backup dancers and supporting musicians flocked from around the globe just to audition for the ultimate opportunity of performing on stage with the King of Pop. Now I know why. Jackson knew his entire catalog, and he knew every last note and how he wanted it to sound. Being able to bring together a team of performers to harmonic perfection is no easy task, and to me it speaks volumes that MJ was still sticking with live guitar, live backup vocals, and live keyboard in an age when it seems like most rock and pop acts are using some kind of backtrack. And despite his perfectionism, MJ kept in good spirits and built a fantastic rapport with his entire crew. Not to mention that at age 50 he could still sing and dance with more skill than I could ever have in my wildest dreams.

Besides revealing just how talented Jackson was, the movie also put me on a mini Michael Jackson binge. I discovered Earth Song, which is both melodically pleasing (I could listen to Michael hit those high and grief-stricken notes all day long) and dreadfully moving, particularly if you watch the video.

I’m glad I live in a country that values free speech, and where people respectfully listen to each other’s opinions and have civil, respectful conversations. Oh nevermind, I forgot that I lived in America for a second… Hearing that a Tennessee driver used his SUV as a weapon against someone’s Toyota Camry because it had an Obama-Biden bumper sticker on it kind of makes me afraid to open my mouth and say anything about anything ever again. I suppose this is why my dad never put any political yard signs or bumper stickers on his property. Apparently he was right: some people really will destroy your property if they disagree. The staggering thing about this story is not that someone with a differing political viewpoint caused some very expensive property damage to both his own and the victimized vehicle, but that the victims were both in the Camry at the time. It sounds like attempted vehicular manslaughter to me. And that’s a frightening thing: are we so caught up in passionately disagreeing with each other that we are willing to kill each other out of disagreement? Then again, maybe it isn’t so surprising, considering how racial and homophobic slurs, and also spitting on Congressmen are becoming popular political tactics…

I truly hate politics. Or at least the people who lace them with hatred and violence.

Generally speaking, I am not a big fan of pop music. I instead prefer the full albums by bands like the Decemberists or Radiohead. I’ve also been a a avid follower of Kid Cudi and Drake over the past year or so. Beyond old hits from Michael Jackson, I largely ignore pop music.

It’s impossible to ignore Lady Gaga, though. Her pop music and rise to fame over the release of singles rather than albums do not match my usual entertainment palate. Certainly I’ve had a blast dancing to “Poker Face” and even had a fairly long attachment to “LoveGame,” which was always a welcome pick-me-up when working at 3 a.m. by myself. Beyond these short phases, I have largely ignored Lady Gaga, however, beyond seeing her eccentric outfits in Rolling Stone nearly every month.

For all of my efforts to avoid the majority of popular music like the plague, the “Telephone” music video is admittedly brilliant.

Nearly ten minutes of brilliance. Often, I find that music videos are simply videos of the band playing the song in a cliche setting. Videos that do attempt to tell a story are usually quite lame. Gaga has no such troubles. This might be blasphemous, but the only other video that comes to mind as being this epic is “Thriller” by Michael Jackson. I’m not going to say Gaga has topped the late Jackson; it’s still far too early to tell how this video will meet the test of time, and while Jackson awed viewers with slick dances and unmatched choreography, Gaga goes for shock factor by doing things no one else would ever imagine. If nothing else, this video’s NSFW components are a brilliant marketing scheme. Without some extreme censoring, there is no way this video will ever be shown during daytime TV, but in the age of the Internet, anything goes.

There will most certainly be plenty of complaints about the sexual content in Gaga’s video, and also about the poisoning of an entire restaurant of patrons. I’ve already seen comments on YouTube and iTunes decrying the video, as Gaga fails to be a good role model. I find such comments naive, as Gaga’s sexual prowess is nothing new. Any parent that thinks Gaga is a good role model for younger or preteen girls is in need of serious help. From the eccentric, provocative clothes Gaga wears in the public spotlight to lyrics of previous songs expressing the desire to “ride your disco stick” and “bluffin’ with her muffin,” there is nothing appropriate about Lady Gaga appropriate for children.

Parents need to take responsibility for the media they allow their children to consume. To an extent, it is the role of media outlets to protect younger eyes from seeing inappropriate content, which is one of the reasons why increasing television violence in primetime and increased sexuality in child idols like Miley Cyrus are such troubling propositions. In the case of Gaga, unlike Miley Cyrus, her marketing does not seem to be as blatantly targeted towards children. Naturally the shock factor of Gaga will make her music and videos more appealing to younger consumers — Gaga’s music isn’t necessarily of low quality, but it doesn’t even come close to the level of entertainment she provides overall.

Lady Gaga is simply one hell of an entertainer. There is simply no denying this fact any longer. I might not be buying entire Gaga albums, but I’ll certainly be adding the “Telephone” music video to my collection once I can find a digital version without DRM.

It’s been quite awhile since I’ve put any content up on this blog. There’s a simple explanation: life moves on. I would put this blog low on my list of priorities at this stage in my life, and to me, that’s a good thing. I’ve learned just how extensive the addiction to media consumption is in my media effects class. The average American adult spends 2/3 of his or her waking hours consuming mass media of some kind. For me, I can personally say that I’ve spent more time on the Internet than is necessary. Certainly being involved in blogging and social networking for many years has played a considerable role in this. I hope to make a more worthwhile contribution to the blogosphere sometime in the near future, but in the meantime, I’ll be concentrating on my studies.

A little over the week ago, the clock struck midnight, and suddenly the world entered a new year, 2010 (or at least the Eastern Time Zone here in Michigan). I couldn’t help but feel incredibly underwhelmed, and not just because I had to be at work at 6 a.m. on New Year’s Day. New Year’s is the only time of the year when a party is required simply because of the time on the clock.

In the days of my youth, New Year’s Eve was exciting, because my parents told me it was exciting. And it was — we’d play boardgames, I’d get to stay up past my bedtime, and there were those fun little party trays with the crackers, cheese, and summer sausage. It was a special occasion, one of the few times my family would spend time together each year. As the years passed by, New Year’s became decreasingly exciting. Staying up until midnight was no longer a rare occurrence, and by this year, with many hours spent either awake past midnight or working third shift and going to bed at 6 or 7 in the morning, New Year’s was hardly anything to blink at.

Sure, I spent my evening at a friend’s house, we watched a movie, and just had some low-key fun. We felt bad for Dick Clark and watched everyone in Times Square kiss on TV. After all was said and done, the arrival of 2010 didn’t seem to matter. The clock struck 12, and low-and-behold, everything was exactly the same as it was at the end of 2009. Nothing magical changed my situation just because the calendar year changed. It’s a necessary event for the furthering of prosperity, as without changing years, it would be impossible to place events on a timeline in some kind of sequential order that had any meaning. But the arrival of 2010 alone cannot end corruption in politics, hunger in the Third World, or the global climate change problem. It’s up to us to change as much as we can in 2010. Maybe when 2011 rolls around, we can turn around and be proud of what was accomplished this year. If not, 2010 may be just as anti-climatic as its own arrival proved to be.

Watching the healthcare debate has become too frustrating for me to watch. Aside from my consistently loaded calendar which leaves me no time for news, I have become so disenchanted with politics that I refuse to follow its intricacies. I realize that I cannot tolerate any of them. The political nonsense that prevents any actual reform from being passed (and if this bill does pass, it will likely be gutted and largely ineffective. Achieving universal healthcare’s idealistic goals is not going to be a reality in the United States for a long time.) is made even more frustrating by the startling statistic that almost 60 million Americans were without healthcare of any kind at some point in the last year. There should be no debate about whether something should be done to rectify this situation.

This autumn, I spent a lot of time at the University Hospital here in Ann Arbor after suffering a broken finger playing basketball during Welcome Week. Naturally, such a small digit required complicated surgery and generated not-so-small bills. I’m lucky enough to be one of the minority of people in our world that has access to healthcare. Though a large portion of my expenses from doctor visits, surgery, and occupational therapy were uncovered, with at least a little help from insurance, the situation was made much more manageable. I shudder to think that there are many people who simply wouldn’t have access to this type of care. While hospitals routinely provide care to the uninsured, frequently these people receive either limited care or are denied the kind of extensive treatment I received. Accidents happen. In a country that leads the world in its assets, we should consider it a civic duty to ensure that everyone has access to these resources in times of need, much like every other first-world country does.

Certainly we can place some kind of reasonable restrictions or limits on these types of assistance, much as insurance companies can choose to deny claims. And if the system is designed correctly, doctors, nurses, and other health professionals should still be compensated (and compensated according to the health of their patients and the amount of training they have undergone or skills they possess). Unfortunately, such a drastic change would require nothing short of a revolution in a country with politics so entrenched in partisan and special-interest red tape.

Imeem had long been one of my favorite websites. It was the musical equivalent of a free lunch. It’s unlimited web streaming was entirely free, and users could upload songs, making it a sort of YouTube for music. Kid Cudi even dropped a reference to Imeem in the song “Cudi Get.”

It certainly was one of the prime examples of the “free lunch” web 2.0 has been providing me for quite some time. It’s an interesting business model, one that has not yet proven to be profitable in many cases. The vast amounts of free content available online includes newspapers, photos, videos, music, and web hosting. Imeem allowed people to avoid purchasing music, letting them stream songs for free online. The only tradeoff was the requirement of a free account, sporadic banner ads, and the rare commercial aired before a song would begin playing. MySpace Music employs many of these same tactics, but the interface is much more cluttered, it lacks user-uploaded content (say goodbye to mixtapes and leaked songs, at least on Imeem), and the audio quality is noticeably inferior.

Apple has also purchased LaLa this week, one of my favorite sites for music purchasing. 10 cents for unlimited streaming (not a bad trade at all) or 89 cents for an MP3. It is also important to note that both Imeem and LaLa have encouraged me to purchase music after listening and discovering sounds that were pleasing to my ear. It’s impossible to tell whether I want to actually download a song or not based on a 30 second preview. Imeem and LaLa allowed me to decide how best to spend my entertainment dollars. If LaLa should disappear, with the absence of any decent streaming website, you can bet I’ll be purchasing less new music than ever. So smooth move by MySpace and the record companies.

All consumers want is a model that doesn’t cripple files with DRM and has fair pricing that encourages more consumption rather than frugal or illegal downloading.

Watched the beginning of the film Charlie Wilson’s War in my Cold War Culture class today. I think one quote from Senator Charlie Wilson really summed up my feelings about politics over the last year or so.

Joanne: “How come the Congress says one thing and does nothing?”
Charlie: “Tradition, mostly.”

The fact of the matter is, I’m fed up with the very idea of politics. The ideologies of both Republicans and Democrats never seem to come to fruition. The notion that the two parties might actually do some public good and compromise with one another is an idealistic absurdity when compared with the reality of it all. Well-being of constituents never seems to be a priority — instead our government operates to please lobbyists, giving every action a nod to corporate interests. Money and power would not go hand in hand in a true democracy.

It’s why I now consider myself an Independent. Sure, I align with policy of the Democratic Party more times than not, and am disgusted when legislation such as healthcare reform must be gutted and rendered ineffective in order to pass through the political system, but I’m so sick and tired of politics, lobbying, and special interests that I refuse to openly support one party over another. For the time being, I simply feel that the Democrats are the lesser evil.

Snow is finally falling in Ann Arbor, which puts me in a charming winter spirit that evokes desire for hot chocolate and mellow Christmas music, and thus I arrive at my first lesson (on the blog, anyway) I can take away from freshman year.

When Swiss Miss says you only need to add hot water to their hot cocoa mix, they’re lying. It just tastes like chocolate-flavored water. But if you add Swiss Miss to hot milk, you develop a substance far too rich to be enjoyable. Best to compromise and add a little water.

This isn’t the first blog I’ve maintained in my 19 years on this planet. I’ve been a child of the technology age, the Web 2.0 generation. Even moreso than many of my peers — I’ve been using computers since before I can remember (ah, Windows 95, and I at least remember the existence of Windows 3.1). I’d largely pushed blogging to the wayside over my high school years, as free time dwindled, and work and calculus began to absorb almost all of my time out of the classroom. Surely I am a textbook Internet addict, and perhaps that is why I have returned to the blogosphere at the persuasion of one of my fabulous good friends. Perhaps it is worthwhile to start blogging again for my own sake. If others decide to follow me along my journey as an undergrad student at the University of Michigan — Ann Arbor, that’s awesome. If not, then at least I have some kind of time capsule of my years here.

Expect to find plenty of cliche advice and college stories here. Expect posts to dwindle in frequency as my classwork piles up over the course of each semester. Expect there to be no logical theme to this blog, as it likely will evolve to simply become a cornucopia of my life: experiences, music, friends, sports. If it crosses my mind and there is time to type, it may very well end up here. This post in itself is entirely cliche. Oh well, didn’t feel like getting my feet wet with blogging again without reintroducing myself. (As Troy McClure might say here, you may remember me from such blogs as DetroitWonk, Detroit Sports Unleashed, The Vast Wasteland, and Musings from Michigan).