I don't listen to a lot of hiphop but growing up where I have I've certainly heard plenty.  What stands out to me the most about this clip is just how mundane and surprisingly mediocre the performance is.  Maybe he's better in the studio, but his monotonous rapping on the flatted seventh, and seemingly bad sense of rhythm stand out to me.  I figure, if you don't have to worry about hitting the pitches, at least keep your rhythm tight and crisp.  This guy is a super star?  Really?

Again, I am far from a connoisseur, I just expected better quality.  Maybe he just had a bad mix in his in-ears or something.  And remixing such a cliched old classic rock anthem, it all just feels so...pedestrian, and devoid of groove or funkiness. 

As for will women voters take notice?  Errr, probably not.

"Forget Kristen Stewart, What About Rupert Sanders..."

We might do well to forget both of them.  The gossip hounds adore this sort of thing, which sells magazines and gets ratings, but as others have mentioned, nothing about this is either scandalous or out of the ordinary.  It just happens to be that the more infantile of the fans of the series can't get it through their heads that these two people are not their characters, but merely actors. 

The exalted status actors enjoy in our society is befuddling; we don't really care what our gas station attendants and website designers do in their private lives.  What a richer culture we would have if we could all just say, who cares? But I suppose, papparazzi gotta eat, too.

So some of you can see the Emperor has no clothes, too?  I have always been a bit mystified by the adulation laid at his feet...not that I find his music all that repulsive, just so wonderfully mediocre and mundane.  It would be like finding out that a large swathe of America viewed The Monkees as the greatest musical geniuses of the 20th Century.

And despite the aptness of the definition above, one loses all the richness of the term without the context of the character. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minor_The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_characters#Agrajag

I should just point out, that though a member for over a year and a on-the-wings Ricochetista for much longer, this is one of the few times where I am motivated to slog through the somewhat clumsy login system to actually post!  I get a bit of a giddy rush from seeing those unaccustomed to Doogie Adams getting acquainted with what is probably my favourite character of his, nasty little beast though he is.  He was the only character voiced by Douglas Adams in all of the radio series, the Dirk Maggs productions used his voice from the audiobooks. 

I get the same kind of rush when I wander on here and find P.G. Wodehouse being referenced.  I don't require that my tastes in literature and otherwise be reinforced by my peers, but it is a pleasant feeling.  Now if you all start discovering the virtues of the musician Ustad Vilayat Khan it will start to be too weird a coincidence.

BTW, Agrajag was and remains my screenname for when I play WWII shooter games, obviously referencing my tendency to not be very good at them....

I know this is outside of the requirements, but W.C. Fields in 1934, "It's a Gift".  I could quote altogether too much of this movie, and its a bit of a family tradition, my father and his brothers born in the late 40s, early 50s.  Hope I can imbue my kids with an appreciation for it, as I'm not sure my brothers share my love for it.

Of that specific range, Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune are my favorites.  Although the aforementioned Ikiru is an excellent example of Kurosawa's other great actor, Takashi Shimura.

As a bassist this was often the tune where I'd take a solo (electric fretless).  Fun song, though the chord changes were so bloody chromatic and surprisingly elusive at times, I still haven't really got it down.

Only latin jazz tune I have a softer spot for is Manha de Carnaval.  And maybe, Blue Bossa (Joe Henderson).

I would agree with James that there is a cultural strain deeply bred into the British aristocracy for "noblesse oblige".  Imagine the guilt of white American liberals watching PBS pledge drives, and refine, deepen, and cement that over centuries and you have that British sense of obligation and patronage that (at least, traditionally) pervades the upper class.  But even so, by every account I've heard Americans are certainly not stingy with private giving.  The attitudes may be slightly different, and we may chafe at giving certain types of unnecessary "handouts" admittedly, but our upper class is quite free with the checkbook generally speaking.

The British monarchy is a lovely thing in its present form...not terribly controversial or political...handled with grace and restraint...not threatening towards personal liberty...and generally a uniting force where both right and left leaning folks can feel a sense of uniting nationalism (the good sort!) and pride in country.  Long life to Her Majesty.  The Prince of Wales on the other hand does not engender any enthusiasm in me for the coming decades of British monarchy. 

Dylan is music for people who are into image/idea/poetry/message before music.  I'm mostly ambivalent to him, not at all as hostile as others are here.  I'd rather listen to Subterranean Homesick Blues than, say, Maya Angelou reciting "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings". 

But Dylan's weak point is and always will be the actual music...melody, harmony, rhythm, etc etc etc, in which he is nothing to write home about.  So for types like me who are much more into the musical aspect of music (caring almost not at all about lyrics, look, message) Dylan isn't particularly inspiring.  Was he the biggest folk music star of the 20th Century?  Perhaps, but we don't give out awards for the best finger paintings or macaroni pictures either.  Well, actually I wouldn't be surprised if we did.

Obama's statement could've been justified if he'd said "the history of American pop music" or "folk music", but to leave it generally as American music is a laughable statement because of one word...jazz.

Allegedly Dylan introduced the Beatles to drugs, so we have that to thank him for at least.  Googoogachoo.

Give me old-looking and musical over fresh-faced and mundane any day! 

Ustad Vilayat Khan, in his own adaptation of raag Darbari:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdAj4o4jrgg

His brother Ustad Imrat Khan is my teacher, and in his upper 70s he still plays with great grace and lyricism.

Being a devotee of Hindustani classical music gets me weird points among many of my peers, as does my unending fascination with William "Bootsy" Collins, but both of those are genuinely pretty conventional, in the right context.  Same for Yes, although Tales From Topographic Oceans will strike the neophyte as at least "weird".  Steely Dan definitely has eccentric lyrics but is pretty polished and normal musically, if not common.

But in terms of music I still personally consider weird, there is Mahavishnu Orchestra - Birds of Fire, which is genuinely weird in a musically admirable sense, and for genuinely weird in a straight-up weird sense, you can't beat the forebears of Rammstein...the Slovenian group Laibach.  Laibach is one of those groups I'd almost have trouble confessing to listening to, they are so strange.  I think the idea of German tanzmetal just amuses me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zSRcFxZVAA

Well...not too terribly dirty.  Black Adder certainly flirted with the bawdy, and I recall a very old standup routine he would do as a clergyman discussing the Church's attitude towards, well, something that a discussion of which might violate the CoC!

I definitely agree that he hit the right note with the second Bean movie.  It was a proper Bean movie, about very simple problems, not unduly laden with overdone plot like the first more clumsy attempt.  His pantomimic opera performance of "O Mio Babbino Caro" was fantastic!

There's something about the Brits and having clever, well-educated comedians.  Stephen Fry (blisteringly funny in Blackadder IV), his cohort Hugh Laurie, the Pythons, the Goons, etc., a lot of very smart comics.  Although I'm sure they had no short supply of dull-witted gagmen too.

I'm a great fan of Black Adder (it took a while to get over the overabundance of puns and predictable jokes..."Baldrick, that's the somethingiest something since something something somethinged the something!" is pretty much the formula), his standup is great, and his deadpan delivery is fantastic.  Black Adder IV (the WWI season) is some of the best TV comedy ever made.

I first heard Dave Ramsey while snowed in, in a cabin in Sequoia National Park seven years ago, with nothing to do but scan the clock radio.  Later we bought into it and got out of debt, paying of tens of thousands in car loans and a bit of credit card debt.  It was a good feeling!  I don't take a dogmatic approach to his teachings, meaning, I'm not hyper moralistic about debt or anything, but I do see that they are practical and effective at fixing someone whose finances are basically broken and getting "broker".  They aren't the only way but the principles are good and they work.

On a somewhat related note, I appeared in a segment on his Fox Business TV show years back because I was awarded a "Plasty Award" for Best Plasectomy By Firearm.  Ironically we didn't do the video for the contest (of which we were unaware), just as a sort of outlet for our strange sense of humor...forgive the rambling, none of this was scripted:

Huntin' Plastic With Everett Sonstegaard
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1OVqKZymdg

Or, to combine the two, putting down the French!