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I found this report really interesting. It’s from the MacArthur foundation and it’s a 2-page summary on some really significant findings about youth and how they consume and interact with digital media. Most importantly, it’s about how it’s not necessarily as bad as it’s been made out to be. This is something that most of us have known for a bit, but it’s always nice to have it scientifically backed up.
So I’ve stumbled on some fun things lately and added a few new links (on the blogroll to the left). Here’s a rundown:
BooHoo is a blog by Joe Dummitt. He’s the one who is living in Argentina and whose voice occasionally shows up in the Covers Project portion of this blog. Check out what he’s doing down South.
Brett Harmon is a close friend of mine who travels too much. He also does some good things in terms of design and photography. Check out his (huge array) of talents here.
Seminary Co-Op Books is a great book store in Chicago. I occasionally write book reviews for them, so check out their blog of wonderful, intelligent front table books.
And some things keeping me happy:
The Mountain Goats. Singing “One Fine Day.” He goes from playfully giggling to unbelievably intense by the end. I encourage watching this one straight through.
And here is The Mountain Goats playing “Cubs in Five,” this version especially poignant since it’s in Chicago.
Lyrics here.
Later on today, I’ll be making this trek. By plane, of course. And in about 2.5 hours, not 10.
As Against Me! (in their days before lameness) said, I’m going to, “the middle of America, cause six cylinders will take us farther than any president…”
“with the company of those friends, we drove on through the night, behind the wheel of Armageddon.”
Sometimes I wonder if there’s a secret game going on over at the Heave offices. There they are in Chicago, 800 miles away, giggling to themselves, gleefully coming up with ways to get me to write more embarrassing stuff about myself. Bastards…
This week’s RoundTable question was, “If you could travel back in time and pick one song to lose your virginity to, what would it be?”
I responded as such:If I were to be able to get all Marty McFly on myself, I have a feeling I’d have to throw Patti Smith’s debut Horses on as the younger me found his way past the waistline of his own first Gloria. When it comes to sultry and intellectual singers, the queen of late-70s New York and seminal riotgrrl cannot do any wrong.
The steady build from piano-accompanying vocals in shoe-dragger time to all-out rock anthem is a perfect punctuation for any landmark action and, lyrically, it doesn’t get much more base and primal than the lyrics penned by Van Morrison and taken over by Patti Smith’s uber-feminism. With piano-punching accents while Patti screams that she’s “knocking on my door” and getting ready to “take the big plunge” tangling with its simplistic and methodical beating of three brilliant chords, “Gloria” can even get the Chess team to saunter up to Varsity cheerleaders.
But honestly, there is no one in the world who doesn’t want the last words before the “culmination” (both in song and “action”) to be, “Jesus died for somebody’s sins… but not mine.” Sinning for six whole minutes of the most intense and visceral rock of all time… where’s Doc Brown? I need to borrow the Delorean. Check it out here.
And to read my fellow Heave-er’s responses, click here.
According to energyfiend.com, it is going to take me 78.09 cups of coffee in order to die. Realizing that there’s a possibility you could die from a defined amount of a substance you put in your body every day should be a frightening thing, right? For some reason, it’s comforting knowing that there’s no way I could ever fit 624 ounces of coffee inside of my body, and thus, cannot die from this habit. Thanks, fine folks at EnergyFiend! You’ve given me a reason to continue throwing money into the grinder.
I’m relatively unaffected by 62 degree weather. It seems that the majority of New Yorkers, though, have decided that this drop of only five degrees below a properly heated living space is reason enough to whip out the fashion scarves and full-length wool coats. One may parlay that this is a city-wide fashion statement – that Manhattan Island’s residents wish to don all their coolest winter wear first, in an effort to remain the trendsetting hub that has become central to New York’s image. I remain firm, though, that most of the people out and about today looked remarkably chilled, pulling collars close to their cheeks or shoving exposed digits deep into pockets, shoulders pushed up to their ears.
Whatever their reason, it’s this Chicagoan’s opinion (in nothing more than a light cashmere sweater) that the coldest thing about today was reading more of Woody Allen’s The Insanity Defense. While the weather couldn’t hold me back, the frighteningly familiar and rambling voice – with its frequent digressions down equally worn paths of philosophical masturbation and intellectual sex jokes – had me shaking in my Chuck Taylors.
I’ll be able to handle things if I end up short, ugly, and with the worst head of hair ever. But if I end up as nervous and salacious as he who portrayed Alvy Singer, I’ll plotz.
For HeaveMedia.com, I recently had to answer the question: What is your favorite use of a song in a film?
My answer:
No one can forget the good times that were 1985. Reagan reigned with a Hollywood-fist, we still believed those guys in Depeche Mode were straight, and Michael J. Fox not only taught us how to make-out with your mom, but he also tore a hole in the space-time continuum to make his own family more affluent while single-handedly stealing the rights to “rock-n-roll” from Chuck Berry and insulting African Americans everywhere.
That’s why “Johnny B. Goode” is my favorite use of a pop song in a movie. First off, no one can deny the absolute hilarity of Fox’s absurdly terrible lip syncing to Mark Campbell’s vocals. McFly is rocking what can only amount to the prime-time hipster attire, except he does it well (take note all you booty-shaking house-partiers and American Apparel addicts). The icing on the cake, however, is not the way in which Marty McFly has set into motion his own good fortune, effectively going against the single rule for traveling in the past (“don’t interfere”) and it’s not when he goes into a convulsion and rips apart a solo that Slayer would be proud of. No, it’s the brilliance of writer/director Robert Zemeckis and his idea to take “Marvin Berry” of the original band at the dance and have him call his cousin, “Chuck (Berry),” to exclaim, “You know that sound you’ve been looking for? Well, listen to this!” Nevermind the decades of rock and roll roots that African Americans had laid down. Never mind Chuck Berry’s status as a legend. Mr. Zemeckis, you and your Hollywood blockbuster can throw all that to the wind. Indeed, it SHOULD be an affluent white teen from Southern California who invents one of the greatest cultural movements in history: Rock And Roll.
All sarcasm aside, it’s a great scene, one of the best pop songs of all time, and an amazingly fun and clever movie all-around.
Listening to my iPod at work. I left it on Shuffle. Here is what played in a row just now:
Elliott Smith – Happiness/The Gondola Man
The Handsome Furs – Us Ones In Between
The Velvet Underground – Heroin
Bob Dylan – Workingman’s Blues #2
Thank you, Apple, for creating a device that somehow reads my brainwaves and instinctively makes playlists for me.
At the beginning of this summer, a roommate of mine, knowing that I had formerly been a runner in high school and sporadically during college, convinced me to register for the Nike+ HumanRace, taking place on Randall’s Island. Seeing as how I’d spent the past three weeks drinking wine, feeling sorry for myself, and acting like an imbecile along the Seine in Paris, I figured this was as good a reason as any for getting back into shape.
Training went as well as could be expected for someone in my condition. After purchasing a new pair of training shoes and reviving my gym shorts from their three-year hibernation amongst the mold and rot of the back of my dresser, I began running and lifting weights every other day. Admittedly, it took a while to convince the lifeforms growing along all my elastic waistbands and sleeveless t-shirts, but soon enough, I’d begun to quell both them and the screaming leg muscles I hadn’t used in over two years.
The hardest change was actually that of my diet.
It soon became apparent that, living in New York City, I was ingesting far too many meats and preservatives. Last summer, I (sort of) lived with a person who was a vegetarian. It occurred to me that, during those three months, I felt the healthiest I had ever felt: I was skating or biking every day, working at a country club (which meant carrying golf bags around), and eating almost no meat.
And so it began. The first in a series of diet changes. I started up with a bang, grilling onions, red peppers, and yellow squash, and served it to myself on a roll of French bread that had a mayo, lemon juice, and garlic mixture along with feta cheese melted to its insides. While delicious and providing for the next six meals (I’d failed to recognize the recipe was for a full commune of veggie-loving hippies), these sandwiches and their resultant eating habit didn’t rid my body of the daily fatigue in the backs of my calves, thighs, and especially my stomach.
I remembered what it was like as a runner in high school and I’d never hurt quite so much at the beginning of workouts. Sure, the pain always subsided by the end, but this was a disconcerting pain, as if my stomach was always trying to expel something that I’d put into it.
Since it wasn’t the meat and preserved, saturated fat-ridden foods, I moved on to my next bad habit: coffee. Continue Reading »
