OPINION
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
7A
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 19, 2008
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2008
GUEST COLUMN
Have any recent bands lived up to The Beatles' fame, talent?
The movie-musical "Across the Universe" featured 33 Beatles songs, which highlighted the band's social impact on the 1960s.
The musical, with all its sexy men and (less importantly) artistic brilliance, has me questioning whether my generation has produced an artist influential enough to be worthy of a movie musical 50 years down the road.
The Backstreet Boys had a long run of melting the hearts of 13-year-old girls. The band's song "Larger than Life," later became the tune for Viagra commercials.
The Backstreet Boys' greatest hits could be written into a musical rendition of Brokeback Mountain (as hinted by the band's song titled "I Want It That Way").
Still, there is something to be said for this boy band and the way the members shamelessly coordinated matching outfits.
And that something is "Tom Cruise."
Simple Plan's soon-to-be greatest hits could be integrated into a movie filled with outcasts, self pity and razors.
Actors for this potential musical would have to be recruited from the underground society of emo boys, also known as the women's jean department at Macy's.
Needless to say, the audience for the film would be reduced to the small population of boys without circulation in their prostates.
Sublime may have a shot at a trippy stoner musical, where the audience gets to explore life on the reefer.
Unfortunately. Sublime's songs are valued by kids across the United States and Canada (where the weed is better) who are too chemically and herbally messed up to remember the lyrics.
TYLER DOEHRING
But all is fair because Sublime was too chemically and herbally messed up to write the songs in the first place, hence the lyrics "I'm too stoned to write this song."
But what about Say Anything or other musicians of the indie rock persuasion who have provided my generation with the most awkwardly awesome ring-tones with the lyrics like "I called her on the phone and she touched herself?"
Britney Spears, who has continued to surpass new artists on the musical charts, and like Madonna, will most likely remain timeless.
Although with songs like, "I'm a Slave for You," "Hit Me Baby One More Time" and "Gimme More," her greatest hits are inspiration enough for a high-class musical porno starring her younger sister, Jamie Lynn Spears.
I am not sure there exists a general movie theme amongst songs influenced by phone sex and a skinny, mean man. Could this be a song written in reference to members of Simple Plan?
But this psychotic, previously bald vessel of talent may surprise the media.
After all, it's Britney, bitch!
Diet colas, artificial sugar will drown us
COMMENTARY
Sincerely,
Emily Gilley
Louisburg freshman
Many people believe government conspiracies or nuclear war will destroy mankind. But what if it is something much closer to home?
What if it is food?
I was on my Yahoo! homepage the other day (a healthy alternative to porn), and I found a video from ABC News. Diane Sawyer (again, a healthy alternative to porn) was interviewing a behavioral scientist from Purdue University, about a study conducted on rats.
The study was done to discover the effects of diet sodas. It seems the rats that drank diet sodas (their favorite probably being Diet Sewer Dew) gained more weight than the rats fed normal, sugar foods.
The scientist said two big studies found that drinking one can of diet soda a day can increase a healthy adult's risk of pre-heart disease, metabolic syndrome and weight gain by 30 to 40 percent.
Now I'm rethinking the "Do The Dew" slogan. It sounds more like the dew is going to do me in (coincidentally, also the plot synopsis for "The Sopranos").
The video and the more detailed article on abncnews.com say this could implicate more than diet sodas. The effects could possibly come from any food with artificial sweeteners because they change the brain's chemistry.
The body prepares itself for a huge calorie load when we eat sweets, but it is confused when it tastes the sweet diet soda but gets no calories.
I've heard rumors about the effects of diet sodas and artificial sweeteners before.
It's not the weight gain that scares me. I work out five times a week, climb the mountain behind Wescoe two or three times a day and jump up and down a lot when refs call unnecessary fouls on the basketball team.
But it's the idea that these sweeteners change my brain's chemistry that freaks me out.
Sugar cookies that call to me by spelling out my name in sprinkles
may make my hips bigger, but that's what fat does. Fat does not fool my body into thinking it's anything but a lump of heavy, useless material (Ironically, that's what a lot of us to do our mothers).
We need to stop drinking diet sodas. We need to stop eating anything with excessive amounts of artificial ingredients.
In moderation, there is nothing wrong with full fat, full sugar food. It is natural, real food made for our natural, real bodies.
To give a good analogy, let's use fake baking. Tanning beds will make you look tan, but you can still tell it's fake. It still exposes you to the same health risks that tanning in the sunlight has.
Jenny Hartz is a Stilwell junior in creative writing.
Our bodies are meant for sunlight, and sunlight in a certain amounts is good for the body.
I challenge everyone on campus to find healthy alternatives to diet sodas and any other drink with artificial sweeteners.
Just because we don't see the immediate dangerous effects of diet sodas doesn't mean they won't happen.
I know for myself it won't be easy. Now I have to find healthy alternatives to keep myself awake in class like sleep or sudoku.
once thought safe but now know are lethal, such as pesticides, radiation, boy band music, etc.
History is littered with events we
COMMENTARY
MP3 generation rules music's fate
Music as we know it is dying, and it will not be going gentle into that good night.
It's been a long time coming, but the industry has one foot in death's door, and the other shoved up some innocent listener's ass.
The problem is that the creation of peer-to-peer file sharing networks and bit-torrent sites has separated two sides of the industry that have been joined at the hip since the very beginning: the art and the product.
The Internet has revolutionized the way listeners get music. The age of record shops has passed, and the higher-ups in the biz have their knickers in a twist about it.
As a response to its impending doom, the Recording Industry Association of America has decided to do the only thing it knows how to do: squeeze every last cent out of its loyal listeners.
A band doesn't need a fragile jewel case and a disc anymore to get its music heard.
It claims to be doing this on behalf of artists who say they are suffering dearly from the illegal music sharing.
I am not surprised to find this sharp rise in concern for artist's pocketbooks now that the executive's slice of the pie is also shrinking.
According to music mogul Steve Albini on the music activism site downhillbattle.org, the record industry has been bilking its artists out of cash from the cradle to the casket.
Most of us have illegally downloaded at least a song or two from the Internet, and others have furnished their iTunes libraries with a plethora
Still, the situation has left students in some dangerous water.
of plundered tunes that freckle the web on par with porn.
Breaking the law has been a foundation of collegiate life since the dawn of time, and for those of us who consider it to be a nightly pastime, the invisible threat of the big bad record companies is hardly enough to slow our clicking fingers.
But as music lovers are finding out, the RIAA has many more resources than the Lawrence Police Department and one huge incentive: those all-important greenbacks.
This savage truth has caused people all over the world to seek a solution. Our neighbors to the north have come up with one I find to be the most promising. In a recent article published in the Chicago Tribune it was said that, "The Songwriters Association of Canada is proposing a $5 a month licensing fee on every wireless and Internet account in the country, in exchange for unlimited
Imagine how many more M.I.Ps would be dealt out nightly if Lawrence cops were paid on commission.
access to all music."
For hardly the price of a McDonald's Value Meal, we could listen to downloaded music without having the constant threat of legal action hanging over our heads.
The new system would put "$1 billion annually in the pockets of musicians, publishers and record labels," and the cash would be divived up among artists based on "how frequently their music is swapped."
Instead of being told what music to like by old suits who don't understand quality, this new system would allow the public to listen to their hearts desire and let popularity go to those who deserve it.
The record companies that once smiled at us from the center of vinyl discs have taken on a beastly nature.
In their twilight, they've become addicts, and it's up to us to intervene and take the industry in the right direction.
Lerman is a Highland Park, III,
sophomore in journalism.
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Where did Dr. Dre get his doctorate?
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I'm a bit confused as to why I'm paying $3,000 a semester and we can't even get a working hole punch in the Union computer lab
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Our frat castle is not the student ghetto.
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