Leebron talks pop culture: Lady Gaga, rad, fetch, Bieber hair and Inception vs. Avatar
Rice Thresher: Are you familiar with the Harry Potter series? Which Hogwarts house would you believe the Sorting Hat would place you into?Leebron: Gryffindor. I think I'd be in the same house as Harry Potter, my fellow wizard.
RT: Do you know who Lady Gaga is?
L: Yes.
RT: How did you first hear about her?
L: By listening to the radio station that my son likes to listen to.
RT: What's your opinion [on Lady Gaga]? Is there any song in particular that you like from her?
L: Some of the music I like. I'm not much on song names. I sort of listen to it when it comes on, but it's not something I'd run out to buy. I can recognize certain songs [but] I sort of lump her together with a bunch of other artists on the same station since they only seem to be able to play three songs in somewhat random order.
RT: From my understanding, you do interact with the undergraduates quite often through various lunches and what not. What are some of the slang words you have heard from our generation or at least that you perceive belong to our generation?
L: All I know is the word "awesome" gets used a lot. I don't know; most of the people I talk to, including students and my kids, use English that sounds more or less normal to me. There are probably some words that are slang in that, but it's hard for me to kind of pick something out of the air and say, "There's a generational slang word."
RT: So if I listed a word, could I maybe get a yes or no? Hip?
L: Yes.
RT: Fetch?
L: Nope, not a clue. I don't know.
RT: Rad?
L: Yeah.
RT: I guess this really depends on the age of your children, but do you know what Bieber Fever is?
L: Sort of. I mean, I know who Bieber is. My kids are 11 and 13. Neither of them seems to have emerged as Justin Bieber fans.
RT: Do you find that to be a relief?
L: I haven't listened to enough Justin Bieber, but I find a lot of the music lacking musical or lyrical distinctiveness . The station my son listens to [plays] Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Kay-sha [Ke$ha]. Justin Bieber strikes me a little more as my daughter's thing, which is the Disney Channel stuff, which I think is just awful. Awful music, awful dramas, in general, awful ... I'm jealous of [Bieber's] hair though.
RT: Describe what you perceive as some of the current fashion trends on the Rice campus, male or female.
L: People seem to dress in a very relaxed manner ... instead of people wearing real sneakers or shoes, [I see people] just wearing flip flops. I notice a little more in some of hairstyles - you know, peaked hair, [which is] another thing I'm jealous of. I got nothing to peak.
RT: If you had to generalize the type of music college students listen to today, how would you describe it?
L: There's a lot what I would call techno pop, which I had a debate with my son over what the term means. So I don't know how much college students actually listen to that. What they're sort of bringing in out of high school years is a lot of music that seems to me not quite anchored in the rock and roll spirit. On the other, if I listen on Fridays to Sid Rich - if that's an indication [to the type of music college students listen to] - I find it really heartening. Sid Rich seems to broadcast a pretty wide range of music, more or less starting with '60s music . and so a lot of times I actually like the music Sid Rich is blasting. So it seems to me the best music from the '60s is still listened to, and again, I think there's fair amount of diversity where there's also the hip-hop and heavy metal stuff.
RT: Do you watch any mainstream television shows, as in "Glee," "Dancing with the Stars," "American Idol," etc.?
L: Oh, God no. I mean "American Idol" and "Dancing with the Stars" would be absolutely no at this time. "Glee" I haven't had a chance to watch. The show I've seen the most of, [which] my son is fixated on, is "The Office." So a lot of "The Office." Sometimes on airplanes, I watch "House." I do watch whenever I can the "Daily Show."
RT: Which movie do you think was better, Avatar or Inception?
L: I think it depends what you're looking for. I thought Inception was a really interesting, complicated, confusing movie, which you almost wanted to see again. There was too much happening to figure it all out the first time . Avatar, I think, will become one of those movies, a little like Star Wars, that changes how we think about going to the movies in terms of what the visual possibilities are, 3-D possibilities. I saw [the movie] in IMAX. I think cinemagraphically and sort of technically, I think Avatar was a watershed movie. As plot [goes], Inception was much more interesting. And I also really liked Distinct 9 - it was a very interesting movie.
RT: That's all of the questions I had prepared for you today.
L: I feel like I just took a test that I flunked.
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