Album Review: Preservation: An Album to Benefit Preservation Hall
When I think of New Orleans, Mardi Gras is not the first thing that comes to mind–jazz music, beignets, and the Battle of New Orleans enter my mind long before Mardi Gras does. Does that make me odd? Perhaps a little, but I like it that way. But one of my favorite things about New Orleans, and perhaps America, is the historic and prolific Preservation Hall, an unpretentious music venue that charges $10, features music every night of the week, and has a great house band, simply named The Preservation Hall Jazz Band.
Aside from touring, the uber-talented Preservation Hall Jazz Band has been working with some of music’s biggest and most innovative names, including Tom Waits, Pete Seeger, Ani DiFrano, Merle Haggard, Andrew Bird, Jim James, and Louis Armstrong, to create Preservation: An Album to Benefit Preservation Hall, which features Dixieland standards ranging from “La Vie en Rose” to “Old Rugged Cross” to “Tootie Ma is a Big Fine Thing.”
The outcome of the collaborations is an album so deeply infused with the essence of New Orleans that you’ll want to don your best Cajun accent and cook like Emeril. Or you’ll just speak some broken French and heat up some Uncle Ben’s.
Whichever you choose, Preservation: An Album to Benefit Preservation Hall is well worth the $13.99 you’ll spend on iTunes AND the proceeds go to benefit the venue and it’s music outreach program. Honestly, how can you say no to that?
Note: Seeing as today is Mardi Gras I asked my classmates if anyone knew where I could get a King Cake…and none of them knew what I was talking about. Disappointed.
Knitting Silly
Literature as Video Games
Instead of playing video games growing up I read. A lot. I was one of those kids that went to the library multiple times a day and asked to be grounded in seventh grade so that I could read all weekend without being interrupted by my neighborhood friends who did not understand my love of reading. So, my knowledge of literature is solid. Of video games, not so much.
However, I, along with 54% of the television viewing audience, saw the Super Bowl commercial for the video game version of Dante’s Inferno. And I’m not sure how many of you thought twice about that, but I sure did. At first I was appalled–how could someone possibly relegate the amazing text and sarcasm and judgement that Dante poured into his manuscript to a stupid video game?
But then I had a second thought–why shouldn’t someone make it into a game? Giving the player the opportunity to be the narrator of the Inferno allows he/she to experience what the narrator goes through in the text. And once the player (gamer? I really don’t know the jargon here…) realizes how intense and creative the story and characters are perhaps they will be interested in actually picking up the dense text and reading it. Hell, maybe they’ll even have a deeper connection with the story because of their experience with the game.
With this thought, I began thinking of other epics and books that could make cool video games. Check ’em out after the jump.
1) Homer’s The Odyssey
Homer’s epic about Odysseus’ twenty year journey to return home would make a great video game. There are scantily clad women who kill men, an angry cyclops, and a gods and goddesses who intervene along the way.
2) Homer’s The Iliad
If you have The Odyssey why not the more intense, battle driven Iliad? You get to fight. And kill things. A lot.
3) Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
My first inclination for the Middle Age era of literature was Beowulf, but there’s already a video game version, thanks to the film that came out sort of recently. But, Canterbury Tales isn’t a shabby alternative. Although this isn’t an action-packed story, it would still be fun to have the player journey through every short story. Or it’d be really boring. Let me know in comments.
4) Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels
There are giants, names of lands that are impossible to pronounce, pirates, a flying island, magicians, ghosts, and the satirization of the court of King George I. Any objections?
5) Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Traveling down the Mississippi River on a raft with Huck and Jim in the post-Civil War South? Why wouldn’t you want to play that game?
What other literary classics do you think would make cool video games? Let me know in comments.
TV Characters We Miss the Most
With the unceremonious boot of Bryan Batt (Sal Romano) from the Mad Men cast, we started thinking about other TV show characters that our favorite series have killed off, purged, or fired. While in Batt’s case there’s a chance we’ll see him again (He recently told GQ: “I wish I knew more, and it’s an odd limbo to be in, but that’s my situation. I did see him at the SAG Awards last week, and everything seemed fine. I’m just hoping they’ll use Sal for something in the new agency.”), in most instances once a character leaves, they’re never coming back. Ever.
Grab a tissue and join us as we mourn our most missed TV characters.
Read the full article on Flavorwire.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Snow
I’m a cold-natured person. I have more blankets than any 22-year-old should and I remain under said blankets year-round. Well, not all of them at the same time, but you get the picture.
Bethany Larson 