Alanis does Peas
Confession: Before this morning, I wouldn't know a Black Eyed Pea from a garbanzo bean. (I thought Fergie was former royalty currently working for Weight Watchers.) I do listen to some modern music (loved MIA) but I'm way on the periphery of hip-hop and rap. (Is there a hyphen in hip-hop?)

Today I caught the Alanis Morissette parody of Pea song My Humps (via Unapologetic Nonsense ). I remember the song, released in 2005. Never thought much of it and never really listened to the lyrics until I watched Alanis. Luckily this wonderful web had the original available and it's sexist as hell not to mention equating breasts with "lumps" and the link of that word to cancer.

Morissette turned it on it's head. She brought some drama to it. She makes you think about issues like objectifying women and mainstream music promotion of sex. I like it.

The version I link (there's several at YouTube) has had 2M hits since 4/2. Comments are worth browsing too. No matter what you think of the Morissette version or the Pea version, it has started a conversation. That's good.

Original by Black Eyed Peas

Labels: music, youtube

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 7:14 AM |

 
Redux: Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us
Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us is the cool video by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University. I blogged about it recently.

In terms of my Web beliefs, I like his "Web is us" ideas. I see that to mean an ever-expanding "us"; the Web today isn't the same Web tomorrow. The potential of mixing and remixing and mashing up global cultures and ideas is awe-inspiring and why we need low-cost hardware and access.

I love the music too. It's "There's Nothing Impossible" by Deus and available for free.

I revisited the video today at YouTube and discovered there have been two drafts of the video with a final version on the way. Prof. Wesch is gathering comments and revising especially factual errors. There is also a transcript and high-quality version available. (See his blurb that displays next to the video at YouTube to get all the links.)

He has posted a version at Mojiti where you can add comments directly to the video. This is an interesting idea that gets to be less interesting in practice. It would probably work better with a limited commenting group.

Labels: web2.0, youtube

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 11:38 AM |