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Author Archives: Andrew Bloom
No One’s Gonna Love You: Cee Lo Green vs. Band of Horses
Cee Lo Green, who covered the song "No One's Gonna Love You" by Band of Horses.
Recently, Cracked’s Robert Brockway wrote an article discussing cover songs that stole the show from the original. He concedes at the get-go that it’s a mission where the “rules are subjective and everybody hates each other by the time it’s over,” but the exercise is still a worthwhile one. As he describes it:
“The point is to think of a cover song that just completely stole the show from the original artist, not necessarily because of its quality, or arrangement, or performance, but because the cover has an intangible something that more fully embodies what the song should have been.”
There’s something I have always appreciated about cover songs. I grew up in a time where remixes were slowly becoming the well-populated domain of DIY DJ’s, and the internet featured a wealth of music and lyric repositories that made it easier than ever for people to put their own spin on a favorite song. The spirit of the aughts was to not only take the old and make it new again, but to make it personal.
Posted in Music, Other Art and Culture
Tagged Band of Horses, Cee Lo Green, Covers, Cracked, Remix Culture, The Eighties
8 Comments
Eating Crows and I Told You So’s: Jason Garrett and The 2011 Dallas Cowboys in Review
Eight-and-eight, .500, out of playoff contention. These are your 2011 Dallas Cowboys. A team that had every opportunity, right to the very last game, to put naysayers like yours truly in their place. A team that had every chance to show they were ready to take the next step. It’s a bitter taste. It’s bitter to see a team with so much potential, so many times when it looked like they were coming into their own, to end their season in absolute mediocrity.
Four months ago, I wrote about why Jason Garrett, for all his talents, is the wrong man to lead the Dallas Cowboys to the promised land. I presented some criticisms and made a few predictions. Now, with a couple of weeks to digest the 2011 Cowboys season, it’s time to look back and see what was accurate, what missed the mark, and more importantly, what happened to the Dallas Cowboys this year.
Posted in Sports
Tagged Dallas Cowboys, DeMarco Murray., DeMarcus Ware, Dez Bryant, Jason Garrett, Jason Witten, Miles Austin, Rob Ryan, Tony Romo, Tyron Smith
1 Comment
Zombie Poetry
Today, the New York Times did a story about a new anthology of Zombie-related Poetry. While it’s a bit peculiar to think of flesh-eating monsters as a subject fit for bards and authors, there is certainly something artistically appealing about zombies. George Romero, the father of the modern day zombie film used them to represent prejudice, consumerism, xenophobia, and more. Indeed, as the Times article points out, there’s something about the idea of a mindless drone of a creature that lends itself to metaphor and symbolism. To that end, I thought I would take a crack at a piece of Zombie Poetry myself…
The Top Ten Songs I Was Stuck on in 2011
When we started this tradition last year, I mentioned that as New Years Eve starts to roll around, you’re apt to see a number of “Best of 2011” music lists. I have no issue with these lists, and I think it’s great to look back at the best new music of the past twelve months. But this sort of thing doesn’t capture experience that most people have with music in a given year. In the past year, I discovered plenty of great music, some of it from 2011, some of it from decades ago, and everywhere in between. In that spirit, I present to you, in no particular order, the Top Ten Songs I Was Stuck on in 2011.
Posted in Music
Tagged adele, ben gibbard, bright eyes, death cab for cutie, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Florence and the Machine, flynt flossy, rolling in the deep, snoop dogg, Steven Page, the lonely forest, The Mountain Goats, They Might Be Giants, Third Eye Blind, turquoise jeep
1 Comment
The New NBA: Preserving the Freedom of Free Agency
“I want my freedom. My goal is to control my own destiny. And as you’ve seen in my career, I’ve never been in a position to do that. I know some teams out there are saying, ‘Oh, Chauncey will be great in mentoring’ and I’m tired of that. I’ve got a few good years left to play, and I’m not trying to come in and sit on the bench, or be a mentor. I’m not going to be that guy. I want to go somewhere and win. I want to choose.” – Chauncey Billups
Welcome to the players’ revolution. The tide is changing in the NBA and across professional sports, and the result is players taking an increasing role in deciding where they go and who they play for. At the heart of this sea change is that central desire – to have that freedom to choose.
Posted in Sports
Tagged Basketball, Carmelo Anthony, Chauncey Billups, Chris Palmer, Chris Paul, Dallas Mavericks, David Stern, Denver Nuggets, Eli Manning, Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, Los Angeles Clippers, Los Angeles Lakers, Manny Ramirez, Miami Heat, Michael Jordan, NBA, New Orleans Hornets, New York Knicks, San Antonio Spurs, Wayne Gretzky
8 Comments
The Simpsons – The Man in the Blue Flannel Pants (s23e07) | The Andrew Review
Parodies are often a gamble. You have to hope that the audience understands the reference, and enjoys the in-jokes and homages to other works. If not, you have to hope that the story or characters you’re referencing are solid enough to provide the backbone of an episode on their own, otherwise you are asking for a call-and-response that the audience doesn’t know how to answer.
This was the biggest problem with tonight’s episode of The Simpsons, “The Man in the Blue Flannel Pants.” The episode is essentially one long reference to AMC’s Mad Men, the award-winning drama about advertising executives in the 60’s. In this episode, Homer becomes the accounts manager for the power plant, wearing under the daily grind of glad-handing and schmoozing with the plant’s clients. The homage is replete with a guest appearance from Mad Men’s John Slattery as the outgoing account manager. Unfortunately, despite the fact that it has been on my list for some time, I have never seen Mad Men, and it made the episode feel a little threadbare to me.
Posted in Television, The Simpsons
Tagged amc, Bart SImpson, don draper, Homer Simpson, John Slattery, mad men, parody, The Simpsons Season 23
4 Comments
How to End the Simpsons – Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind (s19e09)
Someday, The Simpsons is going to end.
As a diehard fan, even one who has some significant misgivings about the current state of the show, that’s a tough pill to swallow. The Simpsons has been on as long as I’ve been watching television. Even at its lowest lows, it’s been the small screen version of comfort food for me, and sooner or later our favorite family will sign off for the last time.
If show runner Al Jean is to be believed, that might not be for another twenty-five years. Still, the day is going to come, and I think it’s close on the horizon. With the recent contract negotiation, standoff, and finally renewal through Season 25, the end of the show appears to be on the minds of those who work on and produce it. Whether it’s threats to pull the plug in order to prompt salary cuts or requests for a share in the back end profits of the show, those involved seem to have a not-too-distant endpoint in mind.
This begs the question – how do you end a show that will have been on television for a quarter of a century and produced more than five-hundred episodes? How do you sum up, honor, and conclude twenty-five years worth of adventures? It’s a tall order to say the least.
Jason Garrett's Offense: Progress Without Paydirt
Many scoffed when I questioned Jason Garrett’s offense in my prior article, Five Reasons Jason Garrett is the Wrong Kind of Guy to be the Dallas Cowboys’ Head Coach. Many of the problems I have with Garrett’s offense, like difficulty holding a lead, difficulty withstanding a comeback, or failure to use the team’s offensive weapons to their highest potential, are difficult to quantify. Some issues, however, can be illumunited through looking at the numbers the offense has put up under Jason Garrett. To that end, I put together a chart with some key statistics from JG’s five years as the Cowboys’ Offensive Coordinator that shows one of the biggest problems with Garrett’s tenure as OC – that his offense can gain yards, but has trouble scoring points.
Each cell in the column contains the relevant statistic. The number in parentheses to the right of the statistic shows where that year’s Cowboys team ranked in the NFL in that particular category. Obviously the data for 2011 is incomplete at this point, and with nine games left to play, those numbers could change dramatically. Nevertheless, they demonstrate the problems the team has been having this year and how those problems are consistent with what has come before.
Posted in Sports
Tagged Dallas Cowboys, Dez Bryant, Jason Garrett, Jason Witten, Jerry Jones, New England Patriots, NFL, Tony Romo
9 Comments
5 Unexpected Inconveniences of European Travel
Certain bumps in the road are expected when embarking on a European vacation. Jetlag is a pain; the language barrier is always tricky, and doing one’s best to enjoy, but not offend, the culture of another country can be a delicate tightrope walk. You plan your trip, read your guidebooks, and do your best to prepare for these foreseeable hurdles. Some difficulties, however, take you by surprise, and all you can do is scramble, improvise, and cope. These are inconveniences like…
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Posted in Other Art and Culture
Tagged AIr Conditioning, Bathrooms, Colosseum, Credit Cards, Euro, Europe, Florence, Italy, Madrid, Plaza Mayor, Restaurants, Rome, Spain, Termini Station, Travel, Uffizi Museum
3 Comments
Steve Jobs: It’s Hard to Mourn a Stranger
Steve Jobs died yesterday after a prolonged battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 56.
It’s sad when a vibrant man dies of cancer at the age of fifty-six, whether he is the C.E.O. of a multi-billion dollar company or just somebody’s father. Steve Jobs is no exception. Whatever one’s feelings about his life or his work, another human being has passed, and that is worth a moment of pause.
But as I read the lionizing facebook statuses and the glowing retrospectives recounting Steve Jobs’s life, I am puzzled by the emotional attachment to this man with whom few us had any real connection. I did not know Steve Jobs. I have never met Steve Jobs. He has had hardly any impact on my life beyond the iPod I purchased a number of years ago. Though his passing gives me a brief instant of sad reflection, I am otherwise largely unaffected.
Apparently, I am in the minority. And it’s not the first time.
Posted in Other Art and Culture
Tagged Apple, Celebrity, Death, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Michael Jackson, Pixar, Steve Jobs
5 Comments
