What exactly is the funk?
"Well, it's funky," says Todd Boyd, a professor at the University of Southern California known for his expertise in race studies, cultural politics and hip hop culture. "But beyond that, I don't know if I can describe it. But when you hear it, you know what it is. And, perhaps more importantly, you know it when you feel it."
So begins a four-minute piece on NPR's All Things Considered describing a new documentary entitled We Want the Funk! from PBS' Independent Lens series about, well, the funk.
Directed by Stanley Nelson and Nicole London, Funk goes all the way back to the 1950s in search of a way to define and describe a genre that's hard to pinpoint but easy to feel. Luminaries such as George Clinton, Ahmir 'Questlove' Thompson, and David Byrne lend their expertise and opinions to the project, with Clinton himself explaining how he evolved from straight-ahead Motown into turning this mutha out.The documentary was released on April 8. You can watch the whole thing at PBS.org, and check out the trailer below. I, for one, want the funk.
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husky gameday! we start district play missing our best player, who's traveling to north carolina to participate in a college showcase tournament. word has it that our opponent is in a similar predicament, so tonight's game against the heritage pride (no comment) promises to be a scrappy affair.
Time for the role players to rise up!
Not sure honoring funk is going to help get NPR out of the crosshairs of the nihilists in dc, but good on them, I guess.
I'll be checking out the funkpiece!
it's funky!
The documentary is BS if Juan Carlos is not one of the people interviewed
fred couples is 65. he shot a 71 at augusta today, tied for 10th. he could play that course with his eyes shut.
if you dig instrumental funk, check out my "ain't it funky now" playlist on spotify. kenny burrell, jimmy mcgriff, charlie hunter, the meters, budos band, orgone, jimmy smith, herbie hancock, richard "groove" holmes, etc.
also, lately i've been into the acid funk album "shack-man" by medeski, martin and wood.
what name is that under, professor? i'd dig that.
your huskies shook off a sluggish start to score a pair in the second half and defeat our cross-town rival, 2-0. highlight of the evening was two minutes into the second half when the lights went completely out. the softball coach turned off the wrong lights, killing a promising attack for us. kids spent the entire time waiting for the lights to come on dancing and playing, super loose. we played our asses off from that point forward. it'll henceforth be known as 'the lights out game'.
Good on the dancing huskies.
Also, I appreciate the timing of this post to coincide with the golf tournament going on this week in Augusta, birthplace of one of the funkiest cats to walk the earth.
I guess Ben Bernanke is kinda funky
Good guess, but judges are looking for someone just a bit more funky than BenB.
I believe rootsy refers to Soul Brother No. 1, but there are more well known folks from Augusta than I realized.
My daughters volleyball team won in straight sets last night to go to 4-0 on the season. As i've mentioned, shes one of just three 7th graders so she's a backup. However, the coach put the backups in for the entire second set so she got to play a bunch and played well.
The real highlight was how happy she looked on the court. As I'm sure some of you know, there's hardly a won point in volleyball without some sort of celebration. My daughter isn't generally into that sort of thing - she has no time for all the softball dugout chants, loathers group texts (we're talking hundreds of unread texts) and just a good bit of all the middle school girl stuff. So it was pretty cool to see her smiling wide as her and her teammates danced and celebrated aces and other points.
I think we all remember that middle school can really suck sometimes so seeing that joy was wonderful. We'll see if that carries over to softball field tonight. Prediction: doubtful.
Good stuff, Mark
And the Augusta answer is obviously Hulk Hogan
zdaughter had health today and it was the greatly dreaded puberty lesson. The class is taught by two goofball men in their early thirties. I can't remember each of their names so I refer to them collectively as Funkhouser (the one guy's name is something like Funk and the other guy's name is something like Shithouser), as in "What nonsense did Funkhouser do in class?" zdaughter did not want the Funk(houser) today.
I have a good friend named Calvin Funkhouser. His Dad’s name is Rusty Funkhouser. I was once stopped at the Canadian border with Calvin because border patrol thought his name was fake.
Tobias Funke
Rusty Funkhouser sounds like a euphemism for a sex act.
Really surprising that zdaughter didn’t want zcommentary on the puberty talk at school. A real puzzler.
Speaking of zdaughter, she turns 11 this week so we're getting her a phone for her birthday. She's probably too young, and she doesn't really want one, but it makes our lives easier if she has one and her friends have them so we're acting now before the tariffs revert. Although Trump called off the phone and pharma tariffs, Howard Nutlick went on TV this week and said they're coming back, although he didn't say when, so the rest of zfamily might get new phones now at a $111 penalty (instead of waiting 4 months when we are eligible for a new phone with no penalty but might be eligible for a 125% tariff). And why the hell are they tariffing drugs? That just drives up costs for Medicare and Medicaid.
In other news, about 6-9 months ago I told zmother, in passing, that I need to cancel zstepfather's long-term care insurance (because he's dead) and that I won't bother to renew her life insurance when the next bill comes (because I'm her beneficiary and I don't need her money, she should save it for her own use). Somehow this got garbled in her brain and I just learned that she canceled her long-term care insurance. I suggested that we reverse that move and she got upset with me. "You said to do this! I wrote it down!!"
rory took his foot off the gas on 13. hope that doesn't come back to bite him.
this is hard to watch
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