#398: Topher Florence, "Some of My Best Friends are Black" (2010)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUc0vbSlanM

I warned y'all up front that I, unlike a real rock critic, will periodically declare -- not just declare, defend -- the greatness I perceive in some goofy novelty song or other. I haven't done that to you until now, but we might as well dive in at the deep end. "Some of My Best Friends are Black" is a hip-hop song by nobody I've ever heard of; or as portrayed, a hip-hop song by an argumentative computer refuting the nobody-I've-ever-heard-of's offhand dismissal of a TV show. The computer briefly describes, in rhyme, each of the two dozen black characters to have a speaking part in the 10-season run of the sitcom Friends. For extra topicality, the song came out six years after Friends was canceled.

I will talk about the lyrics -- and, it turns out, about the entire culture of gender- and race-based criticism, the nature of human memory, and two of my favorite non-sitcom TV shows, whee! -- but the beginning of my case is simple. I think "Some of My Best Friends are Black" is ridiculously catchy.

Black and Armond White and named all over

Had a pleasant walk last night around nearby Bennett College, and couldn't help enjoying the fact that this (historically black, high-quality) college features Race Administration Building (named for John H Race), Black Residence Hall (named for Ethel F Black), and B Player Hall.

Which reminds to wonder if my kids have figured out yet that the Brown Building, on Market Street, probably isn't named after its crayola-perfect color. (Probably isn't, I say -- I should check.)

It also put me in the mood for the movie I saw after, "CB4", a fun hip-hop mockumentary which claims, diagetically, to be "a rapumentary by A. White". The character A. White is, of course, a cluelessly enthusiastic white frat-bro sort. On the other hand, one of our leading real-life film critics is also named A. White. He's black.

#415: Xenia Rubinos, "Mexican Chef" (2016)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u1VAa1HBpM

Where disco music encourages athletic, flashy, gracefully stylized dancing --  y'all's Facebook suggestions from my Gloria Gaynor post have been much appreciated, and even caused three small transfers of money from me to iTunes -- I personally feel more comfortable moving to beats that encourage a bit more stomping, a bit more herky-jerkiness, or just some more straightforward swagger. "Mexican Chef" is from the second album by Xenia Rubinos. While she generally suggests to me what Bjork might have been like as a rowdy young NYC Latina whose Dad for some reason collected Emerson Lake & Palmer records [example]), this marks her first direct foray into just that kind of dance energy.

#421: Janet Jackson, "Velvet Rope" (1997)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeO4Da3J-sM

Neither the album Velvet Rope nor the title song were anything I expected, in 1997, to like. I've mentioned that my songs countdown is going to under-represent black artists; it's nothing to do with malice, and quite a lot to do with the simple fact that at least in the United States, white and black listeners are exposed to different musical traditions (on average, obviously with many exceptions, but my musical listening growing up at home was *entirely* white). One broad difference, as I perceive it, is a traditional white-music emphasis on composed melodies, versus a traditional black-music emphasis on dance rhythms, bass, and melismatic vocal improvisation. I had no use for Janet's Rhythm Nation 1814, nor do I now, and I wouldn't have expected to from the title (although the "1814" part sounds intriguingly specific; I've never figured out its referent, sadly, and the socially conscious lyrics throughout seem vague and limp to me).

Velvet Rope on the other hand puts more emphasis on tunes. Every song has a good beat,

Keeping warped minutes: on Popular Crime by Bill James

While this review will be unwieldy — I'm not sure I've ever reviewed something about which I had so many conflicted things to say — and parts of it will be negative, my basic attitude towards Bill James’s 2011 book Popular Crime is enthusiasm. It is fascinating, insightful, and fun. I recommend it highly.

It is not an easy book to summarize, and later I will take my time helping you through its odd structure. But to start with samples of its topics, my favorite sections include the ones where Bill James, who made Time Magazine’s list of the 100 Most Influential Thinkers in 2006, argues

* that Lizzy Borden was innocent (she never took an ax and gave her father forty whacks);
* that John F. Kennedy was accidentally killed by a Secret Service agent who was flustered by Oswald’s shots;
* that Sam Sheppard, the kindly doctor-on-the-run who inspired the TV series the Fugitive, in fact hired and collaborated with the killer of his wife;
* and that JonBenet Ramsey’s parents were definitely innocent of her killing, and likely framed by an intruder deliberately trying to ruin the dad’s life.

That would seem an immodest project already, perhaps. More ambitiously, and to varying degrees of success, James