Bo Diddley, Bo Diddley, Have You Heard?

So I've got a big recommendation for this Thursday afternoon. If you haven't already listened to it, that is. Check out "Girl Talk." Girl Talk is a guy who does remixes or mashups of popular songs, mostly hip-hop based, with "classic" hits. Classic is a word I use very loosely as some of the sample material is awful but he turns all of it into a wonderful album-long song that would fit in nicely at a club. Not a shitty club though. One of my favorite interchanges is the blend between Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U" and T.I.'s "What You Know About That." It's hard to believe these things would mesh, but they do and it's awesome. Even more surprising is that Girl Talk isn't facing hundreds of lawsuits because he puts this stuff out on CDs available most places and has done so for years, clearly without the original artists' permission. My only guess is that because he uses relatively small snippets of the source material he escapes legal requirements. That or he pays a lot of money for the rights.

I guess this can serve as a Vinyl Find of the Week post, too. This week I'll go with Bo Diddley's debut self-titled album "Bo Diddley." This was found along with the Chuck Willis album from like 2-3 weeks ago in a Marietta antique store. It's worth $250 and unfortunately has its former owner's signature across the top. No matter, it's in great shape and is one of the great early rock & roll albums ever made. It also makes me laugh. The first (and biggest) single off of this album was a song called "Bo Diddley." So if you're keeping up, that means "Bo Diddley" by Bo Diddley was on Bo Diddley. That is, the song by the artist was on the album. I love it. This is one of three Bo Diddley albums I'll have on here eventually. His early stuff is pretty valuable and I've inexplicably turned up three different records in this category.

Hmm, what else is going on? I've been reading a Chuck Klosterman book lately for the first time. I'll probably write more about it when I've read enough to adequately comment. I'm excited because one of my favorite books "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy (2006 Pulitzer Prize winning book) will be in theatres by the end of the year, sure to make an Oscar run like its predecessor, No Country For Old Men. Viggo Mortenson plays the lead and photos have leaked online. Very, very exciting.

Work has been insane lately. I've added "photographer" to my resume as I've been taking pictures for the South Fulton paper I write for. More work without more pay is never welcomed, but I like having control over the pictures and I am surprisingly good with the camera. The Vince Dooley photo(s) from last week's paper were mine and from now on most of the South Fulton photos will be mine as well.

I've got to try and see some more 2008 movies to blog about. I've really enjoyed keeping a running list of the movies I've seen this year and ranking them but it's so wildly (and unnecessarily) incomplete that I feel bad. I think I'll be checking out Tropic Thunder and Mamma Mia some time in the near future. The concepts behind each movie seem terrible, especially the morally repulsive Mamma Mia, but I'll do my best to put my biases aside.

Anyways, that's all I've got today. I think I'll start sharing more links in the near future to spice things up around here. Use the comments things below, even if there's nothing to say. Later!