Peter Friedman
Visiting Professor, University of Detroit Mercy Law School
Ruling Imagination: Law and Creativity
Pat Paulsen, a man over 40 years ahead of his time. Or a measure of how radically the culture has changed.
Go Saints!
No self-respecting Browns fan could root for a team that fled the city it belongs to in the middle of the night. And no self-respecting Browns fan could help but feel the Saints fans are among the few who can appreciate our loyalty.
Arlo Guthrie: City of New Orleans
The South Butt Answer to the North Face
For a brilliant combination of technical perfection, persuasion, and humor of a sort I’ve never before seen in an answer to a complaint, you’ve got to see the answer filed by South Butt to the complaint filed by North Face alleging that South Butt’s name and its slogan, “Never Stop Relaxing,” infringe North Face’s trademarks in its name and its own slogan, “Never Stop Exploring.” I will be forever grateful to techdirt for bringing this document to my attention.
The South Butt Answer to the North Face
Tom Waits: Jockey Full of Bourbon/Down by Law opening
Belle and Sebastian: Legal Man
Steven Colbert on Citizens United and Corporations as People
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Word – Let Freedom Ka-Ching | ||||
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The New Pornographers – The Laws Have Changed
Billy Bragg & Wilco: Against the Law
DJ Earworm – United State of Pop 2009 (Blame It on the Pop) – Mashup of Top 25 Billboard Hits
Is a music video with no original content “transformative” if I like it better than any of the top 25 hits of the year it samples and it explains partly why that is? I think so.
Happy new year!
It’s been an amazing year for me in all sorts of ways. A small one is that for the first time ever I got something like this: a nomination for a best law blog award — I think you can improve my chances by clicking on that little plus sign under the information on my blog and Brian Ledbetter’s name — thanks for the nomination, Brian!
And as a new year’s wish, here’s one of my favorite all-time mashups:
Bob Dylan: The Christmas Blues/No life is too minor to matter.
A child of questionable parentage, born into humble circumstances, in a provincial backwater, begins a short life that ends in an execution. Yet it is somehow the hinge of history. Christmas tilts the universe toward the humble. It asserts that every child, in every stable, deserves angel choirs and the tribute of kings. It means that no life is too minor to matter; that the stars are warm and sheltering; that desperate prayers are heard and heeded; that every quiet, unnoticed death disturbs the cosmos; that memory boxes filled by children hold relics of eternity.
Hat tip to Ray Ward.
Warren Zevon: Lawyers, Guns & Money
The Only Ones: The Whole of the Law
My bad. I only knew Yo La Tengo’s cover. Adrienne has, thankfully corrected me and I am grateful to have learned of the Only Ones. But still there is no way Billy Idol can be compared to Yo La Tengo.
Chris Whitley: Living with the law
Chris Whitley – Living With The Law (Official Music Video) – Click here for more free videos
Do your own American remix!
From my friends at Remix America, a site that provides free, online editing software that gives you the tools to remix the great words of our forefathers with the hot-button issues of today:
Friday Night Music Club: There’s no business like stealing bits from others
Let me repeat the immortal (and utterly unoriginal) words of The KLF as memorialized in The Manual (How to have a Number One the Easy Way):
Every Number One song ever written is only made up from bits from other songs. There is no lost chord. No changes untried. No extra notes to the scale or hidden beats to the bar. There is no point in searching for originality. In the past, most writers of songs spent months in their lonely rooms strumming their guitars or bands in rehearsals have ground their way through endless riffs before arriving at the song that takes them to the very top. Of course, most of them would be mortally upset to be told that all they were doing was leaving it to chance before they stumbled across the tried and tested.
And I presume you’ve heard Happy Xmas (the War is Over):
We really should give the last word to Negativeland: