maybe this is what they really meant by 'Technicolor Sneeze'

While driving around listing to the local pop station on the radio, I noticed that a lot of the songs were just mashed-up versions of other songs. Which got me thinking.

Are there ever new ideas? Or are they just combinations or modifications of older ideas?

If we look at this dilemma from Hegel's perspective, then new ideas are really just a synthesis of old ideas (as Transcendentalism was viewed as a synthesis of Puritanism & the Enlightenment), or as a reaction against old ideas. Hegel believed that when the new ideas were a reaction against old ideas, they were just the opposite. So maybe if the new thoughts were the opposite of the old ones, then they were original.

But wait. According to Georg Christoph Lictenberg, "To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation." So maybe that theory doesn't work.

The Modernists would say that it's impossible to know whether any of your ideas are original or if they came from someone else. So I give up. This has gotten too academic, too quickly.

* * *

So while it's debatable whether or not mash-ups are creative/original/an art, they are definitely a current trend. Back to the radio again. Here's some songs that I can think of that have at least an influence the mash-up (in no particular order)

Right Round -- Flo Rida
S.O.S. -- Rihanna
Sugar -- Flo Rida
Goodbye -- Kristinia DeBarge
Live Your Life -- T.I. & Rihanna
Let's Go -- Trick Daddy
Help -- Lil Wayne

Ice Ice Baby -- Vanilla Ice (oh wait...he claims he didn't borrow that beat from Queen and David Bowie. Right.)


But while many artists sample one song (and usually pay the royalties to use it) and add some of their own material, others solely do mash-ups. One of the most infamous is Danger Mouse's The Grey Album, which is a mash-up of an a cappella version of Jay-Z's The Black Album & samples of instrumentals from The Beatles' White Album. EMI has tried to prevent the album from being released, but you can find it here.

Much lower-fi version of two-artist mash-ups are the millions you can find on youtube. Some are pretty good, like benmusic89's "I Kissed Right Round A Girl" & pyromaster500's "Just Crushcrushcrush." Some, not so good. 12ADDICT's mash-ups are about 50-50, with high points being "I Gotta Closer Feeling" & "Vertibad."

By far, the most elaborate mash-ups I've ever heard are by a guy who calls himself Girl Talk. Each song on his album contains parts of at least ten other songs. It's ridiculous. Even better, to avoid lawsuits, he has made his album Feed The Animals available online (where you can name your own price). One of the best parts of this is just trying to figure out what songs are sampled in each track (if you get stuck, wikipedia lists them out here).

So Danger Mouse, Girl Talk, and the youtubers can mash up music. But what about videos? That's where Eclectic Method comes in. This group from London combines music videos, clips from tv shows, and even bits of popular youtube videos. The interesting part about these guys is that their work seems more like a study of pop culture than simply following the latest trend. It sounds trippy, but it really seems to work.



So is the mash-up vomit, or a masterpiece? Who knows.

You have a talent for causin' things pain Son. Be a dentist.

A few days ago, I took a trip to the dentist, and I realized something. No sane person enjoys going to the dentist.

Once a year, we pay someone to tell us the finer points of brushing our teeth, the importance of flossing, and if we're lucky, to fill in a few cavities. Why? I'm not quite sure. Of course we'd like our teeth to look presentable, but is it really necessary to have braces until every tooth is perfect, or to have our teeth polished with that terrifying little tool?

By far, the part of the dental visit that bothers me the most is dealing with the dental hygienist (who, by the way, does most of the work on your teeth). Without fail, when having my teeth scraped, the hygienist manages to shank my gum, or, on occasion, my lip.

The hygienist also gets to polish the teeth, using an instrument first created by the Nazis for torture, but later adapted into a tooth buffer by filling it with sand. This sand is even flavored, with such choices as Scalding Mint and Cough Medicine Cherry. When this tool is used, the grit builds up in one's mouth, usually on the tongue (intensifying the flavor!). To counteract this, the hygienist uses a small tube to suck every last drop of moisture out of your mouth, uses another tube to put a few drops of water in the mouth to try to rinse the sand out, and then uses the first again to dry the mouth more than before. But not all of the sand ends up on the tongue. Depending upon the individual hygienist's skill, one may be fortunate enough to get sand stuck in the lip, the nose, and if they're dealing with an expert, the eye.

After polishing, the hygienist has one last chance to revel in schadenfreude*: the fluoride rinse. You are given a cup full of a red or blue liquid that might as well be Socrates' poison hemlock. You are asked to drink half, but, unable to "mental measure," you usually end up taking about 3/4. You are then told to swish this for thirty seconds, but instead of letting you see the clock counting down until the end of suffering, it is hidden from your view, making the burn feel eternal. When you take the other "half," there is so little liquid that it's hard to even swish it, so you fake it to keep from having your dental hygiene further critiqued.

After all this, the dentist comes in, looks at your teeth for about two minutes, and if no cavities, you're home free. I thought he was the one with all the years of schooling!

While it doesn't take extra years of schooling to become a hygienist (University of Phoenix now has a program), it does take a certain personality. One important component is enjoying having long conversations with yourself. When the patient's mouth is filled with tools, hands, or a combination of the two, they can't respond to your questions, but there's no need to end the "conversation!" Although talking to yourself may qualify you to work at a dentist's office, even more important is being at least slightly sadistic. Little Shop of Horrors was not far off with the character of Orin Scrivello, DDS. Watching people squirm is part of the job description.

This won't hurt a bit...



*taking pleasure in other people's pain (yes, the German's have a word for it)