The Simpsons Season Finale

It aired on Sunday (er ...23rd May). Full of the satire that makes this show one of my favorites. Classic lines include:

(Teen comitting suicide): Why did they cancel 'Futurama?'

(Homer, on the subject of the layman starting their own news-sheet): Instead of one big-shot controlling all the media, now there's a thousand freaks Xeroxing their worthless opinions.

The New York Times (free subscription, required) has a good article about the episode. It talks about why the show still remains funny/endearing after 15 seasons. Which is mind-boggling. 15 years, these guys have cranked out like 350-ish episodes. Maybe more, who knows?

The Curse of Musician's Versatility

There are a lot of programs in the marketplace that allow PC users to catalog, tag, and organize their MP3 (or other media) collections. Programs such as Musicmatch, iTunes, Real, and Windows Media Player.

My common gripe across all programs in their lack of multi-genre tagging. Let me take a moment to explain what I mean. Take the heavy metal band, Metallica. They have a couple of instrumental songs ... like Orion (from Master of Puppets). My genre tags include Heavy Metal (which currently lists Orion) and Instrumental Rock. What do I tag Orion as? Instrumental Rock, since James Hetfeild doesn't sing? Or Heavy Metal, since Metallica firmly belongs in that genre? The same goes with artists like Joe Satriani (who sings on a few tracks, notably in his Flying In A Blue Dream album) - do I tag Ride as an Instrumental Rock song or a Hard Rock song?

What I would like to do is to tag them as belonging to both genres. I don't think this is possible under any current (mainstream?) software. I hope someone implements this soon.

JHU Commencement 2004

JHU being Johns Hopkin University.

Went down there on Wednesday night, returned on Friday evening. Bill Cosby (see bad photo below) was a funny speaker. He talked about the need for perseverance and self-confidence. You know, the usual commencement speech stuff. He used his own past as example, talking about how he struggled to be a successful comedian.

He left abruptly though. He said he was shooting a movie in LA. IMDb tells me he's the producer/writer of Fat Albert (2004). Dunno why the crowd cheered at that. Must be some reference to the Cosby Show.

Actually, IMDb also reports that he caused a some controversy last week. He "embarrassed the National Association For Advancement Of Colored People (NAACP) at a gala on Monday (17th) - by attacking lower class African-Americans.". The full article may be found in IMDb's news page archives for 21st May 2004.

More photos from the trip may be found at my photos.yahoo.com account. Details on request.

Sunday, May 23, 2004 at 04:55 PM

Bill Cosby was the guest speaker at John Hopkins' Commencement 2004.

On Campus at JHU