Sights & Sounds

Here I am back in action after a holiday that included such highlights as a fever of 173F and losing my voice completely. Before I get things rolling here, I feel I should warn you about what you are about to read. After reading this post, you will likely ask yourself the following questions: “Does Jeff K work for a living?” The answer: “I do”. Next you might say “Then he has way too much time on his hands”. However, I assure you that the following theory and experiment took no more than one hour in total.

You read correctly, as a man of science, I have again decided to test out a theory. Every once in a while a strange thought will come across my brain and…well... I will try and walk you through how I came to the following tests.

MySpace is a great place to discover music, so, what I will often do is poke around the site for a while listening to music I haven’t heard before. I have found that the best way to filter through the junk is to go to the MySpace pages of bands/artists you already like, and then check out their friends and the people leaving comments. One day I was on the Lotus Child MySpace and I noticed that someone named Gina Loes had left a comment. The picture showed her with an acoustic guitar so I thought I would check it out. Sure enough when I clicked my way to Gina Loes' MySpace there was some music to be found, and I actually quite enjoyed it. All of the songs have anywhere between 12 and 212 plays. So, barely anyone has actually dropped into this page. Next I found myself clicking my way to Jason Molina’s MySpace page, who I really enjoyed. This clicking from MySpace to MySpace can go on forever if you let it, and you can find some pretty great undiscovered musicians out there on the Interweb. It is a bit sad, actually, that there is so much great music out there that you will likely never hear. In fact, you will probably never hear your true favorite song.

In any case, I got to thinking, you really can click from MySpace to MySpace endlessly to where you would probably end right back to where you started. This led me to wonder if everyone in MySpace actually is connected. Next I started thinking about the “Six degrees of Kevin Bacon”. This is the theory that any actor/actress can be linked to Kevin Bacon through film roles in only 6 degrees of separation. Naturally, I had to then wonder, could I link someone from MySpace to Kevin Bacon’s MySpace… makes sense… right? Why not start with Gina Loes who is basically unheard of on MySpace with only a little over 2000 profile views. Guess what, it took me a matter of minutes to link Gina Loes Myspace to Kevin Bacon’s in 6 degrees. Here is the break down:

1. Gina Loes is friends with Lotus Child

2. Who is friends with U2

3. Who is friends with Megan Light

4. Who is friends with Chip Greene

5. Who is friends with John Corbett

6. Who is friends with… wait for it… KEVIN BACON

To be honest, this kind of blew my mind how easy this was. I figured I must have been lucky, so, I emailed Luke (an external source) and asked him to give me the names of two polar opposite people on MySpace. My plan was to link them together in six degrees or less, and then possibly link each one to Kevin Bacon. What were the two names he came up with? Barack Obama and Rob Zombie. Pretty great choices. I can’t think of even one thing that Obama and Zombie have in common. I am sure there is even a joke somewhere here… but I can’t think of one.













So, after about 20 minutes, here is what I came up with...

1. Barack Obama is friends with Third Eye Blind (That is kind of bizarre isn’t it? Third Eye Blind is actually on Barack’s top friends list)

2. Who is friends with Hip Hop Lives

3. Who is friends with Demetri Martin

4. Who is friends with Tom Papa

5. Who is friends with… who could it be… Rob Zombie

That didn’t even take 6 degrees… now how about Kevin Bacon?

1. Rob Zombie is friends with Tom Papa

2. Who is friends with Demetri Martin

3. Who is friends with Hip Hop Lives

4. Who is friends with Tom

5. Who is friends with Hugo

6. Who is friends with… it couldn’t be... yes it could… Kevin Bacon

And lastly…

1. Barack Obama is friends with Third Eye Blind

2. Who is friends with Tom

3. Who is friends Hugo

4. Who is friends with … not already… only 4?... that’s right… Kevin Bacon

That one was especially easy. Again, this didn’t even take very long. None of these relationships even required me to click past the first page on any of the friends lists. Also, I am pretty sure some of these could be shortened to even lesser degrees of separation if I wanted to spend the time.

So there you have it, I am really not sure what this proves. Honestly, in doing this, I really did forget why I was doing it. I guess just to prove you can link anyone to anyone on MySpace. This actually led to a brief argument between my wife and I about Facebook. She spends more time on Facebook than can possibly be healthy. I told her that I was positive I could link her Facebook page to Kevin Bacon. She disagrees. If it wasn’t for my absolute hate for Facebook, I would prove her wrong… but this will have to wait until I can bring myself to actually browse the site.

There is one more observation that I feel I should bring forward from this whole study. You may already be aware of this, but here is one thing that became very clear when clicking around on MySpace… there are a lot of scandalous pictures! If you go by all the pictures, MySpace is made up of 33%-47% hot chicks. I would argue that this is probably not an accurate representation of the real world. Just to prove this finding, check out this list of friends from the Hip Hop Lives MySpace. There is a minimum of 10 semi-erotic photos on this page. Seriously, what is the deal with all the half-naked women on MySpace? It is ridiculous.

Now on to something a little lighter, here are just a few links that may keep you entertained for a few minutes if you happen to be bored… which if you are reading this, you probably are.

- Lets start with a few Conan O’Brien Clips:
Clip 1 - The Rock Band stuff is hilarious. Also, I am a big fan of Conan’s writers-strike beard. Apparently he is not shaving until the strike is over. Apparently Letterman has a strike beard as well.
Clip 2 - Chuck Norris is Back!
Clip 3 - Conan surprises people on their tours through his studio during the strike.
Clip 4 - Here is a bit of classic Conan. Norm MacDonald is hilarious.

- Do you have an hour to kill? If you do, here is a film which actually includes performances of every single song on the new Radiohead album. I am a pretty big fan of the new album, so I think this is great. This is just another example of how unorthodox Radiohead is. They actually posted a video with every song off their new album. Crazy. Also, if you happen to buy their new album you will find that it only costs $7.99. Why so cheap? Because it comes in a folded up piece of cardboard. In this envelope you will find the cd, two stickers with instructions on how to place the sticker onto a plastic cd case, and a cd book with the lyrics that can be placed into a cd case. So basically, they provide you with everything you need to make a normally packaged cd, except for the plastic case. Strange.

- Check the skills of this drummer. Mario Bros 2 like you have never heard it before. The part at 2:05 is awesome

- If you think I have too much time on my hands, check out this guys clips on Youtube - here and here.

- How about a couple clips from Jimmy Kimmel.
Clip 1
Clip 2

- And we better balance thing up a bit. I gave you some Conan and Kimmel… here is some Letterman.

- I still haven’t decided if this is actually funny or not yet. You be the judge.

- And, we might as well finish up the links section with this clip, that should have women around the world cringing. Another step backwards for feminism.

Before I sign off for the week, I feel I should also mention a movie recommendation. I recently saw the film Once - which is currently available on DVD, and it was outstanding. If you are a fan of independent films, Damien Rice, and David Gray… then this film is for you. Once is what they call a “modern day musical”. About 60% of this movie is music. However, don’t fit this in with what you have previously categorized as a musical. Basically the story follows Guy (Glen Hassard of the Irish band “The Frames”) who is a struggling musician. He meets Girl (there are no names… the leads are Guy and Girl) who plays the piano and she inspires him to record a demo. The majority of the movie is them playing songs. Again, if you like folk/acoustic type music like that of David Gray and Damien Rice, you should like this movie, if nothing else, for the music. I was going to link some songs from the movie, but I feel that if you heard the songs before hand, it would take away a bit from the film experience. If it wasn’t for a bowl game that I had to watch, I might have actually watched this movie twice in a row.

And there you have it… do I have too much time on my hands?

Jeff K.