Recently in Review-Recommendation Category

I've always thought of Michael Bay (Hollywood director of the Transformers and more notably and notoriously of Armageddon and Pearl Harbor) as more of a film-processing machine than as a director. Before you get ahead of me here, this isn't a slam, and I'm not here to rip on Pearl Harbor, though it may well deserve it. I've never shared the consuming hatred that most film buffs have for Bay, though many of his films have been sub-par. To me, Bay exists to translate screenplays into slick-looking, quick cut action loaded films, and in this way he mirrors Hollywood very closely. When he is given a good script like "The Rock" he creates a good slick-looking, quick cut action film. When he is given a script that is mediocre, he creates a mediocre slick-looking, quick cut action film. And when he's given a script like "Pearl Harbor", well we've all seen what happens then.

Sometimes books can change your mind, sometimes they can tell you what you already knew, sometime they can make you question everything. And sometimes, they can do all three, and change your life as a result.

Here are 3 books I recommend without qualification, that together have helped to form (or at least self-clarify) much of my world view. Much of it was something I already knew somewhere inside me, but like magic, the act of reading it in these books concretized what I knew in my head into something solid and real. And so ....

If you've never experienced Longform Improvisation, you really should get out and do so. And look at this, here's your chance:

Quoted from Chuck:

Starting Thursday, Sept 16th, Men in Shirts will be debuting their new, two
man longform "The Abyss" at the Improv Inferno's (www.improvinferno.com)
"Cat Fight" in Ann Arbor. They spent the summer working on their deepest
and darkest improv in preparation for this show and they are now ready now
to unveil it to you, their favorite fans and audience members. They will be
pitting this new form in a competitive format against T.P.R.O.F as Improv
Inferno's first guest competitors.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a
monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into
you."
--Friedrich Nietzsche

If you're not particularly familiar with Longform, let me try to fill you in (and reassure you that it has little in common with "Whose Line Is It Anyway?"

Some of the visitors here may remember back to the days of Internet Wine and Roses when Echo Radio existed. In a marketing plan that could only have come in the tech bubble dotcom insane late 90's, Echo.com offered a great streaming radio station. You could rate different songs and then it would adjust the playlists for your personal station to match your tastes, which it did quite well. It did well enough that I discovered several bands I had never heard before which I absolutely loved, and several more which I had heard of, but not actually heard and found out that I either loved or hated. Even cooler was that it was set up almost like an IM client, so that you could see the people you referred and other friends that were online listening at the same time and jump in and listen to their station with their own peculiar tastes for a change. I remember several pleasant nights listening to Bill's "Jello Puddin" station.

All of that sounds pretty normal and reasonable, right? Here's the goofy part: They gave you money for listening. Only in the dotcom era. For every however many minutes you listened they would award points, which could be redeemed for Gift Certificates or even bigger prizes. They didn't really check whether you were listening either. AND, if you referred other members, your points went up quicker, and you got a rake from your underlings points.

So, after discovering several bands I really liked I subsequently got several CD's (fo free!) to match. In the summer of 2000 there were very few seconds that my computer was not playing Echo. (And I was actually there listening for most of it.) I think it was the same for Bill and Amanda both of whom I got hooked (or they got me hooked, don't remember who found it first).

Given this brillian business plan I don't really need to explain that they went out of business within a year. But several friends got new CDs and a couple more got free 5.1 Cambridge Soundworks speaker sets.

Fast Forward to 2004: While I know better than to expect money for nothing in the modern slightly more sane US economy (that's only available for CEOs), I still miss the format, and several times since Echo went under I've been wishing I could get my station back, cause it was just the way I liked it. Enter Yahoo LaunchCast! A very similar interface and plan, just no free money. Brings me back and its great to be able to hear a station with tastes as varied as mine. I've just started listening, so I need some more time to tweak before its perfect, but its pretty awesome already. (Thanks, Charli, for finding it!)

Note: Echo still exists actually, although they seem to have given up the radio thing. They are involved in some 7-way investment from Music Retailers to explore ways to tap the digital market. Best of luck, Echo, sounds a little more sane. Do watch out for them, as they were ahead of their time with a great interface and design way back in 1999. There could be enough smart people involved that they could be the next thing to take on and supplant iTunes.

For those of you who are past afficionados, I just wanted to announce that Tuesday Morning Quarterback is back from the long Pro-Football offseason, and can be found here.

For those of you not so informed, Tuesday Morning Quarterback is a pro-football column. This, by itself is only vagulely interesting. The interesting part is that it is a Football column written by Gregg Easterbrook, a member of the Brookings Institution, Senior editor of "The New Republic", and Contributing editor of the Atlantic Monthly, who's other publishing credits tend to be about environmental and public policy or space science. He brings an interesting slant to the game, and by now (his fourth year I believe) he has brought with him a ridiculous amount backstory, including new names for almost all of the teams (highlights include the Seattle Blue Men Group, the Tennessee Flaming Thumbtacks and of course the Chesapeake Watershed-Area Indigenous Persons) and several "Running Items" included in each column (like the New York Times Final Score Score, This Weeks Star Trek Complaint, and Obscure College Score of the Week.) By this point, the column stretches across several screens. Its an interesting read, especially if you follow football at all, despite the daunting length.

One of the more interesting features is that his column has moved (mostly unchanged) to at least four different homes (Originally formed on Slate (I think, it's where I found him anyway) then to ESPN, then to Football Insiders, and then finally to NFL.com.) So the interesting question will be, can he make it a whole season at NFL.com or will he move again?

Notes:
Easterbrook Bio Page

Easterbrook was also the other of the excellent "Easterblogg" hosted on The New Republic. Unfortunately he gave up on it after about a year, but it would not be unfair to say that I have tried to approach my writing here with some of the same spirit he had in his blog. So for that, at least, I thank him. Which isn't to say I didn't disagree with him quite often (I did) and which isn't to say that I'm not still burned by his failure to correct some errors in his description of gravity in his November 10th article, and which isn't to say that his take on Kill Bill and the furor following it wasn't embarrassing. But it was a great blog.

It seems likely that most of you have already seen this, but if not, go ahead, its silly, pointless political fun, that doesn't really seem to take sides.

Jib Jab - This Land Is...

Also I saw a thing on the company, which is two guys who make advertising videos. So even if you've seen it, head back anyway to increase their advertising revenue.

For those who were contemplating the Jeopardy! Drinking game, here are the official rules.

In making the changes to the site, I also signed up on AllConsuming.net. It's a pretty cool site with bloggers specifically in mind. It tracks reading lists for you and provides an easy interface to display them and get recommendations from friends and such, along with comments. I think its pretty cool. ( In case you aren't particularly observent, that's it right there

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Chuck (my friend, and fellow geek, and fellow (far better than I) improv actor, and fellow etc.) put it up on his blog site and I decided to steal it. Thanks, Chuck.
It's also kind of interesting to watch how the most popular books change daily. For instance, after the recent TV version aired recently, Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time has shot up to top 5.

Author Hubert "Cubby" Selby, Jr. died on Monday. He was best known for his novel, "Last Exit to Brooklyn" (1964) which was an extremely dark exploration of the rougher side of life, considered by many to be a continuation of the American novel writing traditions started by Henry Miller and Burroughs. He may also be familiar to many people for his novel "Requiem for a Dream" (1978), recently made into a film version by Darren Aronofsky.

Its kind of cheating as an entry, but Magnus sent me this and I thought it was great. Not only is it a flash movie that has a plot and is genuinely interesting for more than 5 seconds, it is also a comic fan-boy obsessed reworking of Clerks, with decent approximations of Kevin Smith dialogue, which I'm certain could have been done much worse.

Heroes

This is probably the best Flash movie I've seen, although I should qualify that a little, since Joe Cartoon and Homestar runner, while amusing, when judged as movies indepently are pretty crappy. So really, there's a lot of room to go, but its an interesting step.

I'm not a particularly big comic fan but the material here isn't too advanced, so most general readers should get the idea of it (although the comicnerds will laugh more often).

Just a quick recommendation to read this Easterblogg entry, which I think is an important call to reason amidst the histrionics of the Democrats over the "smoking Presidential Daily Brief". While the Bush Administration may have handled its terrorism policy poorly or perhaps failed to address the problems that already existed (neither of which has been proven so far), suggesting that a one-page document saying that Al-Qaeda wished to attack inside the US should have incited any major action in the governemnt is both overblown and irresponsible.

Note: I just made a PR (Personal Record) for longest sentence.

If you're looking to eat out near Auburn Hills this coming Monday or Tuesday, then you can do so to help a good cause. The local Leukemia and Lymphoma Society will receive 20% of proceeds at Max and Erma's in Auburn Hills this Mon/Tues (12, 13, or Easter Monday as its known in GM). So not only can you get a good meal and help a good cause, but I just saved you from fighting over what to eat.

I think I ate at Max and Erma's and it was pretty good, but that was a long time ago so I can't give anything but a lukewarm review. Anyone out there have input?

Go here for the flyer you will need to print out and bring with you to the restaurant (should be up later today).

Also
Max and Erma's

Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of America

Team in Training (if I could recommend one experience in life to every person on earth it would be to participate in Team-in-Training or one of the many similar charity athletic programs. A few of the many other programs are listed here. There are few things in this life that can offer the same level of satisfaction for such a relatively small outpouring of effort. 6 months of work and pain and hell, in exchange for something wonderful you can carry with you the rest of your days, that can't be taken away.)

The music for March is Things in Herds.

This is the first entry in what will be semi-regular recommendations for interesting movies, music, books, and assorted other things. I'm going to start this month with the film Chuck and Buck.