Paul Simon On His Lyrics & Songwriting

Coinciding with the release of a book collection of his lyrics to date, "Lyrics 1964-2008", Paul Simon sat down with Katherine Lanpher for a "ONE-ON-ONE" interview about his career, lyrics and songwriting. The interview took place Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at the Barnes and Noble bookstore located in Union Square, New York City, with a live audience present. Since I work in Manhattan, I had hoped to attend, but the timing (during work hours) proved inconvenient. Fortunately, Barnes and Noble (as well as enterprising You-Tubers) have recorded the whole interview on video.

If you're a Paul Simon fan (personally, he's my favorite songwriter, other than Paul McCartney) I think you'll find the interview fascinating and full of interesting details-- among other things, Paul tells funny stories about his early career, talks about his songwriting process, performs old songs like "The Only Living Boy in New York" and even a new song titled "Love and Hard Times". Great stuff!

You can watch a high quality video of the interview right here:



For videos put togther by fans, I've collected a bunch on this YouTube playlist: Paul Simon at Barnes and Noble in NYC- Nov 13, 2008.

Tags: Paul Simon, interview, lyrics, songwriting, Barnes and Noble, Katherine Lanpher

Unlikely Pals

This is hilarious... that rat really loves that cat!

And Now for Something Totally Different

UPDATE 12-31-08: I've discovered and I'm listing below still more sites for listening to music on the Internet. Now, some of the sites I've listed below are not new (such as AOL, Live365 or Yahoo Music), but they seem improved.

But many of the newer sites blend listening to music on the web with social networking (i.e., sharing music with others). It seems there's a lot of companies jumping on the bandwagon as they vie for market share and the consumer dollar.

Anyway, all the competition equals more and better choices for you and me (always a good thing).

Also, there's many different types of sites these days, as you can discover in this article, Online Music: 90+ Essential Music and Audio Websites. This well-researched and comprehensive resource lists music sites under the following categories: Internet Radio, Music Discovery Tools, Social Networks, Music Sharing Applications and Widgets, Music Marketplaces, Karaoke, Jamming, Remixing, Mobile Music Services, Music Charts, Artists Databases, Lyric Databases, Audio Conversion Tools and Miscellaneous Music and Audio Tools.

So, what's your favorite site?

Happy listening and have a Happy and Blessed New Year!

AOL Music (Check out especially AOL Sessions and AOL Radio)
Wolfgang's Vault ("Live" music- classic and contemporary concert recordings)
Jango (internet radio and social site)
Spinner (subset of AOL music)
Pandora
Slacker
Shoutcast.com
Yahoo music
MusicMesh
Deezer
Musicovery
Live365.com

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Just sending out a quick note to readers of this blog that I am still alive and well and continuing work on the next article in my series on healing that critiques the popular charismatic view. I hope to post it very soon.

In the meantime, here's some tips for those of you who enjoy listening to music on the Internet or while sitting at your computer. There are some great sites out there for this purpose, besides YouTube.

One site I've recently been using is Last.fm, which is well-organized and makes finding music very easy. You can create an account, then add artists or individual tracks to your on-line library/station, or create playlists of songs. You can even share your playlists and/or your station with friends. It's a terrific site and, best of all, it's FREE! UPDATE 12-19-08: Oops, it ain't free! But a subscription isn't too expensive either].. There's also a cool extension for Firefox users- Fire.fm- that gives "direct access to the extensive music library on Last.fm."

Another site with a similar concept is Playlist.com, also known as Project Playlist. Like Lastfm, one creates an account, searches for music by artist or track and then you can create playlists of tracks. A very nice feature is the widget you can create to share your playlist on your website, Facebook, Myspace or blog. My widget playlist can be found right here on Jordan's View-- just scroll down to the bottom of the blog.

"Start-Page" Wars- The Curse of the "Tweaker"

I am busy working on the next post in my first-ever book review series (click here to jump to the initial article), but didn't quite get the next post done in time to post tonight.

So I'll take a little fun break. Or what I find fun. Ha ha. You may not. I don't know about you, but I love to tweak my browser (Firefox, of course), and also, my "start page". You know, those pages that you can have on the Internet where you can add all the content you want, like news feeds, or local weather, or a little clock, etc.? "My Yahoo" is an example of one that's been around a long time. But the new start pages have really gone all "Web 2.0" in sophistication. So this gets a "tweaker" like me into trouble because (I hope you some of you know what I'm talking about) I'll tweak to get the browser organized just so, and fiddle with the home page till it contains just the information I want on it, and looks just right, and I have to load up my browser and home page with lots of buttons and widgets and doodads. I know, it sounds like I have too much time on my hands. No, but actually this kind of tweaking is more about function than aesthetics-- in the end it does make surfing and doing work on the Web a whole lot easier (really it does).

Anyway, several months ago I wrote about how I'd discovered and started using Netvibes as a home page. Now, I found out that Pageflakes offers very similar types of pages and functions, and of course, iGoogle and Live.com also want to "get in on the action". But how is one to choose from among the competitors? Well, here's an in-depth article from CNET in Australia to your technical rescue:

Start-page smackdown: Netvibes, Pageflakes, iGoogle and Live.com

Personally, I think I'll be sticking with Netvibes (by the way, please do check out my new ReformingChristianity.com- Netvibes Universe", and you'll get a taste of what I'm describing in this article. Besides, it's a whole world for you crazy Calvinists to romp about in). Still, knowing myself, it's inevitable that I'll sneak over and give Pageflakes a try one of these days... 'cause I can't resist tweaking.

P.S. Just found yet another cool start-page website with Web 2.0 features: www.odysen.com

For further information
This PC Magazine article analyzes and compares some of the same top start pages sites as the article mentioned in my post: The Best Start Pages on the Web
See also: Top 5 personalized start pages
The Top Personalized Start Pages
10 Ajax Start Pages To Consider
The Future of Personalized Start Pages

Plus: See my new Web 2.0 Start Pages links list

Tags: netvibes, pageflakes, iGoogle, Live.com, my yahoo, start pages, Web 2.0, Firefox browser

Recognize This Celebrity?

Hint: She's a singer, actress, pop star, dancer and cultural icon. She looks familiar, doesn't she?... OK, so she doesn't really exist. The image you're viewing is a "morph" image that combines the faces of Madonna, Gwen Stefani, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.

In other words, she's a Morph Thing!

Below, are her morphed "parents". In other words, the two images below, themselves pairs of combined celebrity faces, were morphed together to produce the image above. With all four faces morphed together, you get a very interesting face that actually looks quite real and attractive.

Madonna's Face Combined with Gwen Stefani:



Britney Spears' Face Combined with Christina Aguilera:



Here's more of the morphs I made:

Antonio Banderas' Face Combined with Denzel Washington:



Brad Pitt's Face Combined with Tom Cruise:



George Bush's Face Combined with Prince Charles:



Or how about this very strange morph? Elvis Presley's Face Combined with Ann Margaret:



Now, is this another example of "Web 2.0"? I'm not sure. It sure is another way of wasting time. But fun nonetheless. Check out Morph Thing, the online face morpher, and try out your own morphs. You can even upload your own images to experiment with.

Tags: Web 2.0, image morphing