Have you heard of this bizarre product from Microsoft. Basically, all those budding vocalists out there can sing into your computer and Songsmith will provide the music. That is a pretty nifty idea. But, like so many nifty ideas Microsoft fails to deliver anything remotely like what we imagine. Instead of quality sound samples we get MIDI. MIDI? Yes, MIDI, in this day in age.

But what happens when you take the vocal track from some of the most iconic music? Just listen to the first minute if you can to see how horribly Songsmith hacks apart these classics.

First, Roxanne by the Police. This is as close as it gets to sounding good.


But it gets so much worse. SO MUCH. Listen to We Will Rock You by Queen


But the winner has to go to Love Shack by the B-52's. This doesn't even sound... like... what the fuck?



edit:

holy shit... Van Halen the lounge act.

If you are reading A-Ha I think this would make an excellent storyboard for your comeback music video.

Buffalo is a little rough around the edges, but a beautiful city. We have some absolute gems in this town and many homes of the middle class from the turn of the century have more character and charm than in other cities. Architecture is clearly part of what makes this city so beautiful. With the Darwin Martin house and renewed talks (and endless studies) about the Richardson Complex a phrase I keep hearing is "architectural tourism". Tourists will flock to the city. Bringing with them money for hotels, restaurants, and entertainment venues. Why the Richardson/Olmstead Complex website even says that architectural tourists "spend a great deal more than the average visitor to the area."

So, I decided to google this architectural tourism to see what sort of pony shoes other cities were putting on to draw money spewing tourists. First result: flickr. Ok, a fluke. Second result: Buffalo as a Museum. What followed was a series of sites on the various cities of Italy. From the tower of Pisa to the Vatican. We are so fucked.

I have to assume that our local organizations are taking us for a ride, inventing this brand of tourism. I always wondered, who are these tourists? Who gets a yen to go see the work of their favorite late 19th century architect and make a whole vacation out of it? More so, can these people exist in such numbers as to justify spending this kind of money of fixing up crumbling buildings?

Now, I firmly believe that fixing up the gems is essential to bringing back this town from the dead. But not to draw a dozen tourists to gaze in wonder at an insane asylum, but to draw business and keep people here. Our mentality seems to be we have passed our prime and our best years are behind us. So, we wont tear down a few run of the mill homes to build a hotel. We will jam up a successful business expansion over two years because that means ripping down a home with a faulty foundation. We are scared to damage already damaged specters of our golden age.

makes me wonder if our benefactor has abandoned the Statler Tower yet.

No,

Thank the heavens, I am not going to go on about having a viable local TV station here in Buffalo. No, that would be much to crass and I am sure the Buffalo Rising readerhip has already contemplated how to get millions to move here with the finest in public access. Rather, a moment to highlight some of the finest in local TV adverts.



John Waters. I understand your work now!



rap music. It sells clothing. Dinette sets? Not so much.



That crap.. it just boggles the mind



Already I want to move millions to Rockingham county!

I love filth.

Too bad I will be a good puritan that weekend.

Hey everyone,

Looks like our beloved Senator Clinton was just confirmed by the Senate as Secretary of State. So now the ball is in Gov. Patterson's court. Who will he appoint?

Names like Caroline Kennedy and Andrew Cuomo have been circulating from the beginning. But people like Brian Higgins and Byron Brown have been getting focus here.

Who do you think is going to get the appointment?

Patterson is not very popular right now. And if his budget slices and dices every program he is going to be even less popular. He very well may face a primary challenger next year and Andrew Cuomo is just the man to do it. Appointing him would take Patterson's biggest challenger out of the game possibly.

The other way he could play the popularity game is to appoint Kennedy. The world adores a Kennedy and having an ally like her in the Senate could mean both a boost in popularity and a fund raising machine in Washington who owes Patterson big time.

I would like Higgins to get it, but I doubt he will.
I would not like Brown to get it, and I doubt he will.

Kirsten Gillibrand is a congresswoman from just outside Albany. She is white, she is a woman, and she is marginally upstate (Albany is its own economic and cultural morass that has issues different than the burnt out hulls of Buffalo/Rochester/Syracuse). In political games things like race and gender are a big deal. She would be a good choice, and an ideal compromise candidate.

So, throw your imaginary money on the table. Who are you betting for?
My Monopoly money is on Gillibrand. Why? Because this is the season of optimism in the face of a gathering storm.

1) It is a strange day when you feel bad for Cheney
2) Aretha Franklin still has it and she isn't ever going to let it go
3) Rick Warren has such a gay beard, and I am not talking about his wife.
4) I now know why so many people like Rick Warren: he is an idiot
5) Poetry can still alienate, uninspre, and take far too much time.
6) John Williams, please stop. Just. Please.
7) Obama made the first shout out to atheists at an inauguration.
8) Jospeph Lowery's benediction was so good even non-believers gotta shout "amen!".

In light of Obama's inauguration I found this old poem to be especially moving.

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

-Langston Hughes

So,

There is a comedian with cerebral palsy who goes on this Norwegian weekly satire show and sings to famous songs with his own brand of lyrics.



On one hand, it is freakin' awesome that his guy is out there performing and making people laugh. On the other, what are they laughing at?



He is raising awareness of cerebral palsy, but it is very uncomfortable territory. He is making jokes about his condition. We shouldn't be afraid to laugh at the miseries of life, but that needs to be balanced by a certain respect so it doesn't become LOLtard crap. I am really not sure what to think of this guy, but I am pretty certain this sort of thing wouldn't fly in America. Ya, once the Kennedy's had put this issue to us and Corky was on TV. But the subsequent political correctness has pushed issues of size, race, gender, ability, etc to the side for fear we will offend.

Folks who know or work with people with disabilities, what is your opinion?

Hi,

The only thing I read in the New York Post is the pun for their leading front-page story. In fact, sometimes for fun I like to imagine what their headline would be for colorful historical events.

Trotsky: "Don't Pick Me!"
Louis XVI gets ahead of himself
Mishima spills guts to gov

But someone recommended yesterday's editorial and I was surprised.

"The state of our state is perilous," Paterson warned. New York faces its "gravest" challenge "in nearly a century."

No argument here.

Thing is, Paterson has said this before. And nowhere in his 63-minute speech did he suggest what to do about it.

Rather, he rambled on about what he termed an "epidemic" of childhood obesity - scarcely noting that New York's fundamental problem is its scandalously obese government.

We are in a financial crisis, no doubt. But currently New York ranked second among states with highest state/federal tax burden. How is it that other states are able to do just fine without the benefit of already taxing the shit out of people? Why did Patterson make this budget before the stimulus package hits the financial institutions who's poor year caused this financial crisis in Albany? With Medicare being gutted by the budget, is Patterson hoping that federal medicare dollars make up the difference? Why is Patterson against a millionaires tax that would cut the deficit in half?

The answer to all of those questions is 2010. That is when Patterson is up for election and by looking at some early poll numbers the governor has every reason to be concerned. He will face a primary challenger and he possibly will face Rudy Giuliani in the general and the poll numbers, compiled in November before the budget shit hit the fan don't look good for a man who had very good approval numbers just a few months before that. Patterson is going to need every Millionaire SOB to bankroll him instead of Rudy.

We know we are buried in a mess. I believe government can have a positive role in fixing the mess. But Patterson is not leading when we need it most. He is offering no vision for a new New York. This sort of politics is exactly why we are hemorrhaging people and companies every day and we can't stop the bleeding like this.