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WaPo Reviews WMP11

Rob Pegoraro, The Washington Post's personal technology editor, reviews Microsoft's Windows Media Player 11, which MS claims, possesses an ease of use and simplicity to match iTunes." As if MS would recognize ease of use if it bit them in their text assembler.

First, WMP11 teams up with über-hip MTV and its own MSN store for the music store function. BMAFG! MTV?

It gets worse. Urge, as the music store is called, is so crippled, er, connected to WMP11 that you can't shop there or even play Urge selections on anything else! (Nor can you easily shop anywhere else.) Once installed,…

The Top 25 X-Men?

Over at IGN.com, Hilary Goldstein and Richard George have compiled a list of the top 25 X-Men characters. Granted, it's a shamelessly blatant tie-in to Friday's release of X-Men III: The Last Stand, but it also points to what I suspect will be that movie's biggest weakness, judging from the trailers I've seen.

There's just too much back story to the X-Men—the complete mythos of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters is even vaster than the Buffyverse! That there could even be 25 X-Men, much less a top 25 should be a big fat clue, no? What's next, the top 10 female X-Men by bust size? No,…

Listening to the Music

Music was playing,
so I sat there, quietly.

She walked into the room and noticed me. With deep interest and a bit of urgency, she asked: "What are you thinking about?"

I've learned that "nothing," as an answer, isn't good enough. So I searched for the truth. What was I thinking about? What was the truth?

I was thinking about the bass, how thick and round it sounded. I was thinking about the guitar riff, wondering why they'd placed it there, instead of there. I was thinking of the effect used on the vocals, imagining that they'd applied it in order to conceal…

VQR on Little Nemo

I remember when The Virginia Quarterly Review was the perfect panacea for insomnia, but something has happened to that august publication: It woke up! These days, it has become a must-read, from Art Spiegelman's latest multi-chapter opus to well-written articles such as this one on Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland.

If you don't know McCay's dreamy, gorgeous artwork, check out the example-packed entry on Little Nemo in Wikipedia.

Carl Zimmer Has a Blog

Just what I need—another daily stop on my Internet rounds. Zimmer, an alarmingly prolific, vastly entertaining science writer, has a knack for explaining complex ideas simply enough for me to grasp. Check out his coverage of the Homo floresiensis (Hobbit Man) brouhaha.

Jazz Wars Go Calypso

Moistworks has a great post on the "lost to history" NYC bebop wars, which have left a historical record by spilling over to the Caribbean and migrating to London, where—wait for it—"they were fought by proxy, in the streets of Notting Hill, by a host of Trinidadian stick-fighters and calypsonians."

This is new to me—and the musical examples are great.

A Heinous Hairdo Is Creeping Back Into the Limelight

The real horror of The Da Vinci Code? It's Tom Hanks' hair.

Lost In Translation

English comedy doesn't work in German—and that's no joke. Blame it on a "geographical accident."

Your Mother is a Vampire

I'm listening to Margot & the Nuclear So and So's now. They sing songs about vampires and kittens, mice and clowns. You might like them. Their story is one of poverty and despair and desolation thwarted by sudden friendship, a burst of creativity, and life on the road. It sounds familiar, but then not. They make music with trumpets and cellos and keys.

Damn, I love trumpets and cellos and keys.

When the trumpets and cellos and keys come in, I kind of just want to die. Either die or dance. Jump out the window and dance until I die.

The music comes in…

LPs More Popular Than CDs?

Well, that's what The Business says. Reading the article, I suspect the answer is one we audiophiles have known all along: LPs are cooler than CDs and all the hip kids dig 'em. Still, it's nice to read an upbeat article on the music industry for a change.