The thing about the Oxford comma is that some assholes will be doctrinaire, and make a big deal about it. They’ll scold you! This is stupid, but at the same time, the Oxford comma is a great weapon for clarity. Use it right, your reader will know.
This video offers no clarity. But this could be the best song about grammar I know.
So pleased to have an opportunity to tell my favorite personal rock ‘n’ roll story. Better than working with Ian MacKaye, better than going coast-to-coast in a van with an Italian hardcore band, better than anything.
The story takes place at TOUT Wars a few years ago. I always hang with Mike Salfino and, until recently, we’d always stop at a couple record/CD stores down in the Village during the course of the weekend.
Mike has a close musical bond with his daughter who was a freshman in college this year. She’s way smarter than anything I’ll ever produce. But I’m not sure about close musical bonds with your offspring. The kids hate the parents’ music and vice versa seems the natural order of things and I’m just fine with that.
So Mike is rambling on about Vampire Weekend, a current favorite of his daughter’s. We get in one of the record stores and he goes up to the hip guy at the counter and asks if they have any Vampire Weekend. The guy replies, “What, are you a 14-year-old girl?” Mike then says something about the guy he’s with thinks Turbonegro is the best band in the world. The guy looks at me and does the “his eyes to me” hand gesture indicating Turbonegro as the best band in the world doesn’t strike him as a silly idea at all.
Can’t say I’ve ever felt so musically satisfied in all my life.
I dunno. My niece Lindsay did her senior project (she is off at Davis now too, with Diane) that was a video to the tune of “Waterloo Sunset.”
She does like Vampire Weekend. I have their first disc, and it is poppy, but maybe a bit too fluffy. No crunching guitars, or anything.
Actually, most of my friends kids like what they like, but they like a lot of what I like too. Maybe it is a Berkeley thing?
Anything that draws attention to good grammar is, however, a good thing.