Thursday, March 3, 2011
20th Century History with Prof Joel
This was an enjoyable exercise we did recently: dissect Billy Joel’s song “We Didn’t Start the Fire” and provide commentary or personal associations on the topics covered.
Josef Stalin – Insiders said that Lenin kept this guy around because he had a superhuman ability to bureaucratic work. DMV employees the world over rejoice.
Malenkov – Ruthless Soviet politicians were a rouble a dozen. I’ve never heard of this guy.
Nasser – Egypt was once the powerful nation on earth. Now this?
Prokofiev – Monotov’s Private Opera
Rockefeller – Rockefeller was rich in a way that Gates and Buffet can only dream of.
Campanella – We can’t even understand what racism was really like
Communist Bloc – Novels about a land war with Eastern Europe? C’mon
Roy Cohn – It’s scary that the government really can ruin you like in the movies
Juan Peron – South America is a tragically romantic place. Africa is just tragic.
Toscanini – Conductors? I guess I’m not smart enough to get it.
Dacron – Sailing? EAST COAST BIAS!
Dien Bien Phu Falls – 9/11 was a tragedy, but how many thousands of battles resulted in more deaths?
Rock Around the Clock – Being young rules
Einstein – His early letters are so intense, full of the scientific equivalent of piss and vinegar. I can’t help but love.
James Dean – Died young. Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain offer clues.
Brooklyn's got a winning team – Baseball sucks, but in the decades before basketball developed a mythology, the history of baseball cannot be beat for readability.
Davy Crockett – It takes unbalanced people to lead us up out of caves. The pioneers were this type of person.
Peter Pan – Literally, a fairy
Elvis Presley – See “James Dean”
Disneyland – See “Peter Pan”
Bardot – Racquel Welch was the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen, but I won’t argue with you if you say Brigette Bardot.
Budapest – This place STILL looks like they just got done strafing bombing runs during WWII.
Alabama – See “Budapest”
Khrushchev – I wonder what would have happened if the U.S. had engaged in a little more theater in regards to the USSR.
Princess Grace – The first reality TV star
Peyton Place – Never heard of this book.
Trouble in the Suez - Wish I’d never heard of the Middle East. Booooring.
Little Rock - using the screaming eagles to get 9 students into high school? i've said it before and i'll say it again. the south sucks.
Pasternak - Russian Authors can suck me sideways
Mickey Mantle - i also like [girls with] small hands
Kerouac - try re-reading that shit. what rambling incoherence. it's like going back on a chat between me and jardon at any point from 2005 on
Sputnik - all is not right with america
Zhou Enlai - a bomb on a plane? c'mon. if you want to kill somone, just kill them. don't act like a james bond villain.
Bridge On The River Kwai - british world war 2 movies? i'll wait for john wayne
Lebanon - xtians vs. muslims round 80gabillion
Charles de Gaulle - dude's got a lot of stuff named after him
California Baseball - dodgers leave brooklyn and the giants leave the polo grounds. there are still old people and their kids that hate these teams for leaving. two teams leave for california and the next closest team is in kansas city? it's like the left their fans for a new planet.
Starkweather homicide - don't know why specifically but there's something very exhilarating about spree killers. and something very hot about women losing control and going nuts. (i'm fucked)
Children of Thalidomide - i'd rather put leeches on my body than go to a doctor before 1972
Buddy Holly - what's with these homies dissing my girl? or the day the music died, if you are my mom
Ben Hur - first epic i ever saw. heston is the hammiest fuck since porky pig and his only redeeming role was in wayne's world (maybe 2?) but that movie has stuck with me for a long time. also reminds me of when mr. burns gives judah ben hur some water in his biopic directed by señor spielbergo.
Space Monkey - what is wrong with us? we act like children so much of the time it's a wonder we even have a different word for them (Able died four days after the flight from a reaction to anaesthesia while undergoing surgery to remove an infected medical electrode.)
Mafia - a long love affair.
Hula Hoops - you know, for kids!
Castro - i was going to say something along the lines of "what if castro hadn't been cut by the major leagues?" but it turns out that shit was just rumors, so i'll smoke a cigar and dump the ashes on the people of cuba once the embargo is lifted.
Edsel is a no-go - Ford spent $400 MILLION dollairs (in the 50s!) to develop this car and launch it on a lebron james type decision platform. the edsel will never be forgotten, thanks in part to will shortz and marketing 101 classes.
U2 - do i talk about a pilot surviving after his plane was shot down or do i talk about the absolute failure of a SPYPLANE being espied and shot down?
Syngman Rhee - CIA sucks, no two ways about it. (hi guys!)
Payola - The term Payola is a portmanteau from the words “pay” and “Victrola. isn't this legal now? wait, who cares about the radio? i get my new music from car commercials.
Kennedy - this kid was going places. with bottle full of back pain meds and a bimbo on each arm.
Chubby Checker - come on baby
Psycho - one of many popular and well made movies about ed gein. they actually buried that car in the movie and left it there.
Belgians in the Congo - pobre africa.
Hemingway - he's a bit tight. his writing is definitely not tiiiiiight.
Eichmann - Yo Adolf, the Mossad ain't nothing to fuck with
Stranger in a Strange Land - never read it. sounds worthwhile
Dylan - Bob, it was time to hang up the spurs in '69. Srly, retire already.
Berlin - a place I'd like to spend more time in. especially when my pants don't look like this
Bay of Pigs invasion - Mr Kennedy, you can't win them all
Lawrence of Arabia - I'd rather hear about Lawrence of Alabia
British Beatlemania - Biebermania
Ole Miss - no comment
John Glenn - coolest job on earth (and also not on earth)
Liston beats Patterson - boxing, as a mainstream sport, is dead. Enter MMA.
Pope Paul - amazingly not the worst vicar of Christ we've had in recent history.
Malcolm X - Malcolm to George Wallace: "Where all the white women at?"
British Politician sex - tags: interesting bedfellows.
JFK - once again, you can't win them all.
blown away, what else do I have to say
Birth control - best economic tool and gender equalizer ever.
Ho Chi Minh - it staggering how little we (westerners) know about the majority of civilization (asia)
Richard Nixon back again - read Nixonland. or at least the first 3 chapters.
Moonshot - Billy Joel's apparent obsession with astrophysics is a welcoming sign
Woodstock - honestly, this wood have been a great time.
Watergate - sadly this little B&E far, far outshines Nixons worst crimes. Cambodia, for instance.
punk rock - this was a game of mine. then I turned 20
Reagan - I wish I was cognizant of politics at the time.
Palestine - step one: evacuate. step two: nuke. For real. I say give it the King Solomon treatment and see who cries uncle first.
Terror on the airline - zut alors! we missed one. srly, they let him out of jail?
Ayatollah's in Iran - theocracy is about to break
Russians in Afghanistan - ...and got their asses kicked all the way back to Moscow.
Wheel of Fortune - I watched it as a kid. I wish they would have played a double segment of Jeopardy instead
Sally Ride - NASA: we can do a lot with the smartest, most motivated people in the world. And, $471,000,000,000 helps
heavy metal suicide - best video set to rock music
Foreign debts - we haz some
homeless Vets - Portland and Anchorage are two miserable cities, weather-wise. Also, full of homeless. huh?
AIDS - prevalence rates get thrown around willy-nilly. But 1 out of 4 Swazis. Think about that for a moment.
Crack - yikes. no thanks
Bernie Goetz - did you say Death Wish?
Hypodermics on the shores - yikes. no thanks
China's under martial law - bleh ¶ 9:07 AM
Josef Stalin – Insiders said that Lenin kept this guy around because he had a superhuman ability to bureaucratic work. DMV employees the world over rejoice.
Malenkov – Ruthless Soviet politicians were a rouble a dozen. I’ve never heard of this guy.
Nasser – Egypt was once the powerful nation on earth. Now this?
Prokofiev – Monotov’s Private Opera
Rockefeller – Rockefeller was rich in a way that Gates and Buffet can only dream of.
Campanella – We can’t even understand what racism was really like
Communist Bloc – Novels about a land war with Eastern Europe? C’mon
Roy Cohn – It’s scary that the government really can ruin you like in the movies
Juan Peron – South America is a tragically romantic place. Africa is just tragic.
Toscanini – Conductors? I guess I’m not smart enough to get it.
Dacron – Sailing? EAST COAST BIAS!
Dien Bien Phu Falls – 9/11 was a tragedy, but how many thousands of battles resulted in more deaths?
Rock Around the Clock – Being young rules
Einstein – His early letters are so intense, full of the scientific equivalent of piss and vinegar. I can’t help but love.
James Dean – Died young. Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain offer clues.
Brooklyn's got a winning team – Baseball sucks, but in the decades before basketball developed a mythology, the history of baseball cannot be beat for readability.
Davy Crockett – It takes unbalanced people to lead us up out of caves. The pioneers were this type of person.
Peter Pan – Literally, a fairy
Elvis Presley – See “James Dean”
Disneyland – See “Peter Pan”
Bardot – Racquel Welch was the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen, but I won’t argue with you if you say Brigette Bardot.
Budapest – This place STILL looks like they just got done strafing bombing runs during WWII.
Alabama – See “Budapest”
Khrushchev – I wonder what would have happened if the U.S. had engaged in a little more theater in regards to the USSR.
Princess Grace – The first reality TV star
Peyton Place – Never heard of this book.
Trouble in the Suez - Wish I’d never heard of the Middle East. Booooring.
Little Rock - using the screaming eagles to get 9 students into high school? i've said it before and i'll say it again. the south sucks.
Pasternak - Russian Authors can suck me sideways
Mickey Mantle - i also like [girls with] small hands
Kerouac - try re-reading that shit. what rambling incoherence. it's like going back on a chat between me and jardon at any point from 2005 on
Sputnik - all is not right with america
Zhou Enlai - a bomb on a plane? c'mon. if you want to kill somone, just kill them. don't act like a james bond villain.
Bridge On The River Kwai - british world war 2 movies? i'll wait for john wayne
Lebanon - xtians vs. muslims round 80gabillion
Charles de Gaulle - dude's got a lot of stuff named after him
California Baseball - dodgers leave brooklyn and the giants leave the polo grounds. there are still old people and their kids that hate these teams for leaving. two teams leave for california and the next closest team is in kansas city? it's like the left their fans for a new planet.
Starkweather homicide - don't know why specifically but there's something very exhilarating about spree killers. and something very hot about women losing control and going nuts. (i'm fucked)
Children of Thalidomide - i'd rather put leeches on my body than go to a doctor before 1972
Buddy Holly - what's with these homies dissing my girl? or the day the music died, if you are my mom
Ben Hur - first epic i ever saw. heston is the hammiest fuck since porky pig and his only redeeming role was in wayne's world (maybe 2?) but that movie has stuck with me for a long time. also reminds me of when mr. burns gives judah ben hur some water in his biopic directed by señor spielbergo.
Space Monkey - what is wrong with us? we act like children so much of the time it's a wonder we even have a different word for them (Able died four days after the flight from a reaction to anaesthesia while undergoing surgery to remove an infected medical electrode.)
Mafia - a long love affair.
Hula Hoops - you know, for kids!
Castro - i was going to say something along the lines of "what if castro hadn't been cut by the major leagues?" but it turns out that shit was just rumors, so i'll smoke a cigar and dump the ashes on the people of cuba once the embargo is lifted.
Edsel is a no-go - Ford spent $400 MILLION dollairs (in the 50s!) to develop this car and launch it on a lebron james type decision platform. the edsel will never be forgotten, thanks in part to will shortz and marketing 101 classes.
U2 - do i talk about a pilot surviving after his plane was shot down or do i talk about the absolute failure of a SPYPLANE being espied and shot down?
Syngman Rhee - CIA sucks, no two ways about it. (hi guys!)
Payola - The term Payola is a portmanteau from the words “pay” and “Victrola. isn't this legal now? wait, who cares about the radio? i get my new music from car commercials.
Kennedy - this kid was going places. with bottle full of back pain meds and a bimbo on each arm.
Chubby Checker - come on baby
Psycho - one of many popular and well made movies about ed gein. they actually buried that car in the movie and left it there.
Belgians in the Congo - pobre africa.
Hemingway - he's a bit tight. his writing is definitely not tiiiiiight.
Eichmann - Yo Adolf, the Mossad ain't nothing to fuck with
Stranger in a Strange Land - never read it. sounds worthwhile
Dylan - Bob, it was time to hang up the spurs in '69. Srly, retire already.
Berlin - a place I'd like to spend more time in. especially when my pants don't look like this
Bay of Pigs invasion - Mr Kennedy, you can't win them all
Lawrence of Arabia - I'd rather hear about Lawrence of Alabia
British Beatlemania - Biebermania
Ole Miss - no comment
John Glenn - coolest job on earth (and also not on earth)
Liston beats Patterson - boxing, as a mainstream sport, is dead. Enter MMA.
Pope Paul - amazingly not the worst vicar of Christ we've had in recent history.
Malcolm X - Malcolm to George Wallace: "Where all the white women at?"
British Politician sex - tags: interesting bedfellows.
JFK - once again, you can't win them all.
blown away, what else do I have to say
Birth control - best economic tool and gender equalizer ever.
Ho Chi Minh - it staggering how little we (westerners) know about the majority of civilization (asia)
Richard Nixon back again - read Nixonland. or at least the first 3 chapters.
Moonshot - Billy Joel's apparent obsession with astrophysics is a welcoming sign
Woodstock - honestly, this wood have been a great time.
Watergate - sadly this little B&E far, far outshines Nixons worst crimes. Cambodia, for instance.
punk rock - this was a game of mine. then I turned 20
Reagan - I wish I was cognizant of politics at the time.
Palestine - step one: evacuate. step two: nuke. For real. I say give it the King Solomon treatment and see who cries uncle first.
Terror on the airline - zut alors! we missed one. srly, they let him out of jail?
Ayatollah's in Iran - theocracy is about to break
Russians in Afghanistan - ...and got their asses kicked all the way back to Moscow.
Wheel of Fortune - I watched it as a kid. I wish they would have played a double segment of Jeopardy instead
Sally Ride - NASA: we can do a lot with the smartest, most motivated people in the world. And, $471,000,000,000 helps
heavy metal suicide - best video set to rock music
Foreign debts - we haz some
homeless Vets - Portland and Anchorage are two miserable cities, weather-wise. Also, full of homeless. huh?
AIDS - prevalence rates get thrown around willy-nilly. But 1 out of 4 Swazis. Think about that for a moment.
Crack - yikes. no thanks
Bernie Goetz - did you say Death Wish?
Hypodermics on the shores - yikes. no thanks
China's under martial law - bleh ¶ 9:07 AM
