Tuesday Links

1. Should student-athletes be paid? That question has been asked forever it seems like. My initial reaction has always been "no" because I have a hard time seeing how that process would work and because many student-athletes get free educations. But I understand why some think they should or at least the student-athletes who  bring big bucks to their schools and the NCAA. This study puts their worth at six figures! That's something to think about.

2. I'm not a Trekkie or a sci-fi person period, but it's kind of cool to look at the Star Trek gadgets that are no longer fiction.

3. After the first weekend of college football, I kept seeing references to how awful Maryland's uniforms were. I did a little Internet search and found this. Oh my!

4. I'm a nerd. I love trivia, especially the pop culture kind, so it makes my heart happy that VH1's Pop Up Video is returning. Here's the first video.

5. I hate beauty pageants, but the commentary during the swimsuit portion of the Miss Universe Pageant was hilarious, you have to admit.

Old Links

Remember how I whined about being busy? Yeah, still true. However, I did save a some links a few weeks ago, but didn't post them. But they're still cool/interesting even if the info's a bit old.

1. Anne Hathaway raps! I love her.

2. A Cleveland Indian's player was going to miss the birth of his child. Until his teammates stepped in to help.

3. The University of Miami is in deep trouble with the NCAA because a felon alum confessed all the illegal stuff he did for the school to the NCAA. Fascinating reading!

A Music Channel that Actually Plays Music - Seriously!

Maybe everyone has heard of Palladia and I'm just seriously late to the party. It's happened before. But since it's new to me, I had to share. I "discovered" Palladia few months ago. It's an HD channel grouped with MTV AND VH1 in the channel listing in my cable system. As we all know, MTV and VH1 stopped caring about music a long time ago, so I'm ecstatic that Palladia exists.

All those MTV Unplugged and VH1 Storytellers episodes? They've found a home on Palladia.* Since I figured out the channel was there and what it was, I've watched concerts featuring Lady Gaga, Adele, Usher, Sara Bareilles, Kanye West, and Cee-lo Green. And those are just the ones that immediately popped into my head. There are more.

I watched a documentary chronicling the lead-up to the release of Beyonce's latest album 4. It was fascinating to watch if only to hear her talk about why she decided to relieve her father of his managerial duties. She said she wanted to gain more control over her career. Is that spin? I'm sure to a certain extent it is, but as Beyonce is very private and doesn't publicly address issues like this often, it was nice to get an explanation directly from her.

A few weeks ago, I watched Madonna's Truth or Dare. Although it's twenty years old, I'd never seen it. I was fascinated.

Madonna seems remarkably unaffected by her fame. I kept wondering if she did a sequel today would she still come across that way. She did a show in Michigan and said she loved being home, which is funny because she basically makes England home now and people make fun of her for faking a British accent.

Also, I loved how she said she found it weird that celebrities assumed a level of friendship with her and other celebrities just because they happened to be famous.

Anywho, I make it a point to stop by Palladia to see what they're showing when I'm channel surfing. For those who don't care about the pop and R&B scene, they show a lot of other stuff like country, classic rock (there was a ZZ Top concert on a few days ago), and indie rock music. I'm not into bands like Mumford & Sons, but if you are, know Palladia isn't ignoring them.

And they show videos, too. As someone who was raised on BET, this makes my heart happy.

Basically, Palladia has something for everybody. Yay for its existence! It's totally epic and awesome.

*Funny enough when I went to Palladia's website, I saw that it was owned by MTV and VH1. Guess that explains why the channel has the rights to air all those old concerts. And maybe why MTV and VH1 are fine with airing so little music these days.