February 5, 2006

By Sheila Lennon / The Providence (R.I.) Journal

12:42 p.m. Saturday (Blogroll)

This is ten percent luck, twenty percent skill

Fifteen percent concentrated power of will

Five percent pleasure, fifty percent pain

And a hundred percent reason to remember the name!

The jingle goes so well with football that it leads into the action between commercials. But you may not know that Linkin Park / Fort Minor's Mike Shinoda wrote "Remember the Name" about making music with his friends. (Explicit lyrics) You can see the video and download a free MP3 of the song at the Fort Minor link. By the way, they played Lupo's last night.

These lines have become the tagline of lots of personal entries in lots of forums, applied to a wide range of personal passions.

It's one of those memes that may not be accurate — want to quibble about percentages? — but it sure is catchy.

Cartoonist Steve Harrison — Fabricari is his site — leads his Comixpedia bio with those lines.

(Cyberpunk typically deals with alienated loners in a dystopia. Postcyberpunk tends to deal with characters who are more involved with society, and act to defend an existing social order or create a better society.—  Fabricari is Postcyberpunk)

Thank you: Betty Friedan died yesterday on her 85th birthday. When I was 16, promising Mr. Tambourine Man I'd go wandering, The Feminine Mystique was the voice of the Mother who said, "We couldn't, you can, go, run!"

"A woman has got to be able to say, and not feel guilty, 'who am I, and what do I want out of life?' "

If you think that's self-evident and obvious, you can largely thank this "seminal" work of Betty Friedan for making it so. Her New York Times obit recounts her trail.

Links dump:

Rumours mount over Google's internet plan

Danish cartoonists fear for their lives

Is this a real Warhol?

10:46 a.m.

Farewell, Fernando Sant'Anna

Fernando Sant'Anna died suddenly, unexpectedly Monday at home as a result of a stroke. He was 42, played bass and leaves two children and an awful lot of friends. He was a happy man. His combined wake and funeral yesterday was awkward and hard and very sad. The open casket held somebody that didn't look much like him. (This scowling obit photo doesn't, either.)

At the very end, at the cemetery, it got real. Fernando's best friend Jim said he hoped Fernando was in a better place where Harleys aren't always breaking down. We laughed.

Fernando's girlfriend Erin gripped a paper and spoke elequently of the man she knew and how much he loved his children and cared for his friends. With guts and passion, she made it all the way through to an excruciatingly soft and sad, "Goodbye, my love" that broke everybody's heart. A profound silence broke into a group sob.

Fernando once sought me out to tell me he read this blog, that "it's all good stuff." Today he's become part of it, archived forever in the annals of the Web.