This Week in Culture Shock
This week at Culture Shock we had it all - Wizards, Vulcans, new CDs, Internet Jukeboxes and even the Piano Man. So what have we learned?
* Goth and emo kids buying up the back catalogs of The Cure, The Smiths and Joy Division could get all the misery plus actual catchy hooks with...wait for it...Billy Joel! No, really. Hot funk, cool punk, doomed romances and midlife crises -- it's still rock and roll to him!
(Admit it -- this shot of Billy from his The Stranger album is as goth as the sleeve of any Joy Division LP)
* J.K. Rowling doesn't need magic to make fair use of her characters for scholarly works disappear. She has lawyers!
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(Rowling is seen here asking an excited fan: "You're thinking of writing about my books right now aren't you? Aren't you?! Damn right you're not. Now is that John with an 'h' or...?")
* Star Trek fanatics + new movie + Internet = Spoilerific!
* We're getting more Daniel Craig as Bond! Well..not more Daniel Craig. After the obscenely small swimming trunk thingies in Casino Royale, that'd be kind of difficult, frankly. But we're getting him in four more Bond movies!
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(This bastard is 39 years old. He must live on wheat grass smoothies, bench presses and 19-year-old supermodels. A picture like this does make you wonder, though -- is he hairy enough to be Bond? Sean Connery is quite a pelt to follow.)
* When media companies are suing you for stealing their content online, the content is worth billions of dollars. When they're arguing with striking writers about what they should be paid for that content's online use, it's not clear it's worth anything. Sounds like a daily show segment to me -- or, you know, it would have been but for the strike.
That's but a sampling of the wisdom we've imparted this week. I'll be gone for the first part of next week, but will catch you guys back here before Thanksgiving for some special online holiday goodness. Enjoy the tryptophan!
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