Betty & Megan & Don & Ambition

MMP Review Submission: Thresholds, Electorate Seat Rules, Overhangs 2.6

Final version? Let's hope so.

The Emotions' Flowers

A fabulous song from the '70s that was one of the first products of The Emotions' alliance with Maurice White and the rest of the EWF crew. In the disco era that followed, The Emotions became an alternative, female front end for EWF, much as Sister Sledge often did for Chic, and Samantha Sang and Yvonne Elliman, and, ahem, Andy Gibb did for The Bee Gees.

People who want to run down the disco era often focus on one-hit-wonders (i.e., to emphasize the period's insubstantiality or ephemerality say) rather than on this sort of multiple hit-factory substructure of the time, where each of the productions centers were strongly continuous with other, usually more well-established music genres such as soul and funk (think of Quincy Jones and Gamble and Huff as other centers in this regard) and electronic music (in Moroder's case). Disco was no accident. It 'had to happen' just as much as punk did. Talent and ambition had piled up in strange corners of the industry and was ready to spill over by 1978. And it did.

MMP Review Submission: Thresholds, Electorate Seat Rules, Overhangs 2.3

Update: Superceded by ver 2.5 here.

Japan in 1980

32 years later...and, even live, they still sound like they're from the future! Genius.

Misheard Lyrics: Enchanted's That's How You Know

I hear the best couplet from Enchanted (2007)'s show-stopper as:

You've got to show her you need her
Don't treat her like a Magritte-uh

Apparently the real lyric is

You've got to show her you need her
Don't treat her like a mind-reader

Sigh. I know the official lyric makes more immediate sense, but my mishearing is much better thematically, where it counts. Note that Enchanted (2007)'s charm confirms the common wisdom that 2007 was a movie year for the ages: even the very silly movies were pretty great (OK, the last act of Enchanted is everything you fear it might be, so 'pretty great' is stretching it: it's two thirds of a pretty great film.)

Note that THYK missing out on the Best Song Oscar at the hands of Once's 'Falling Slowly' was a bit of a crime. While Once (2007) itself was pleasant enough, FS always struck me as a pale imitation of slow Radiohead stuff like 'Fake Plastic Trees' and 'No Surprises'. The problem for THYK appears to have been at least partly electoral in nature: Enchanted got three of the five song nominations, which almost certainly led to a division of support. I conjecture that if THYK alone had been nom'd from Enchanted then it would have romped home (esp. if Eddie Vedder's 'Guaranteed' from Into the Wild (2007) had picked up one of the now open nom slots, thereby dividing Once's 'indie' support base).

The Women of 'The Other Woman', Mad Men S05E11

Mad Men's pivotal, Season 5 Episode 11 ended with a terrific musical flourish: The Kinks' immortal 'You Really Got Me' from 1964, which cuts off over the credits. It seemed like a good idea to put together a montage starting with the song's entry point in the episode but then continuing on for the whole song.

Talk Less, Say More's Sky Over Everything

A nifty track from a new-to-me band that overall sounds a bit like Fad Gadget and Chris Knox (vocals may require some acclimatization in other words!), a bit like Talking Heads, and a bit like The Beta Band. Their (net-only) label has made their whole album England Without Rain downloadable here. Take up their offer; you won't be disappointed.

Materials on Poly-marriage

My 'Ratios Argt' paper criticizing the best standard argument against PM: that PM unbalances marriage-partner pool ratios. (I also briefly review and reject all other standard anti-PM argts.):

A google drive pdf link for the Ratios Argt paper.

My 'Intrinsic Problems' paper providing (finally) a sound argument against PM (albeit one that's pretty complicated):

A google drive pdf link for the Intrinsic Problems Argt paper.
The Chapters (17-22) from my Marriage in Law book that these papers precipitated out of: