just something good to get your monday going…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzjLlqIuVhI]
just something good to get your monday going…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzjLlqIuVhI]
I am pretty sick of hearing about the Patriots, their quest to perfection and all that. I am forever destined to curse the entire Boston area for stealing all of the good Minnesotans. First is was David Ortiz and Doug Mientkiewicz going to the Red Sox, then it was Moroney going to the Pats and Kevin Garnett going to the Celtics. The final straw was seeing Randy Moss catching passes as a Patriot. It just drives me nuts. It’s as if Minnesota is the JV team to New Englands Varsity squad. It just hurts so much
I did like Klosterman’s recent article about the meaning of perfection and how Brady and the Pats relate. Check it out here.
Go Giants
I love this. Some high-school kid built a wooden bike. Everything is wood – even the chain. Pretty sweet (from Gizmodo)
This was a quote i found on Chris Anderson’s – the author of The Long Tail – and it refers to how search will be done in the future. The short popular stuff will be pre-loaded results by humans, the medium will be populated by friends and the obscure long tail is found by algorithms. The quote from the blog post is:
“The short head will be human, the fat middle social and the long tail algorithmic” Still, that single sentence is worth another book. I won’t write it, but I’ll bet someone else does.
It is an interesting way to think about it. Of course, it is all ad-supported and it does make a good case for Mahalo.
Which occasionally is me. So, i cannot rip on this site. Instead, i found myself updating it — almost too much. What is it? Chickipedia is a wikipedia type site about chicks. Chicks like Angelina Jolie, Keri Russell, Megan Fox, etc. It’s a site dedicated to turning you into a more sketchy version of yourself. That said, you should still probably check it out.
There’s a new novel by Chuck Klosterman who as many of you know is one of my favorite writers. While his past 4 books were all non-fiction, this new book, called Downtown Owl, is a fiction novel that takes place in 1983 North Dakota.
I think it’s a pretty good book and it definitely captured my attention. My big issue with the book is that it’s all description and details. There is very little interaction or plot. It’s a 300 page summary of a time and people in North Dakota with some interesting anecdotes. It’s funny, witty and well-written but it’s not necessarily a story.
That said, it’s very Klosterman-ish and has some great elements. As usual he explores deeply the frivolous. There are entire chapters about a theoretical fight between a hulking giant of a boy named Grendal and a smaller, wrong-side of the tracks type kid name Cubby who loves to fight. With a typical Klostermanish metaphor, the scenario is more than just a “who would win” but a nice little metaphor for what you believe in the world. Do traits like physical appearance or genes win out in our world or will characteristics like desire and passion? Peolpe will lean different ways and that debate is by far the best part of the book.
One thing i really like is how he sets up the small town feel. One character in high school relates Owl to the book 1984 – the Orwell book his class was assigned saying:
“Everyone knew everything. So how was ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ a dystopia? It seemed ordinary. What was so unusual about everyone knowing all the same things?”
“People always say that nothing changes in a small town, but — whenever they say that — they usually mean that nothing changes figuratively. The truth is that nothing changes literally: It’s always all the same people, doing all the same things.”
Discussing the differnce between literal thoughts and figurative is something Chuck loves to do. He’s typically done it with popular culture but in Downtown Owl he does it with a 1980’s North Dakota town. And it makes for a pretty fun read
Speaking of music (my last post was), a good blog post from Seth Godin about music lessons. To read it all, go here. The main points were:
0. The new thing is never as good as the old thing, at least right now.
Soon, the new thing will be better than the old thing will be. But if you wait until then, it’s going to be too late. Feel free to wax nostalgic about the old thing, but don’t fool yourself into believing it’s going to be here forever. It won’t.1. Past performance is no guarantee of future success
Every single industry changes and, eventually, fades. Just because you made money doing something a certain way yesterday, there’s no reason to believe you’ll succeed at it tomorrow.The music business had a spectacular run alongside the baby boomers. Starting with the Beatles and Dylan, they just kept minting money. The co-incidence of expanding purchasing power of teens along with the birth of rock, the invention of the transistor and changing social mores meant a long, long growth curve.
As a result, the music business built huge systems. They created top-heavy organizations, dedicated superstores, a loss-leader touring industry, extraordinarily high profit margins, MTV and more. It was a well-greased system, but the key question: why did it deserve to last forever?
It didn’t. Yours doesn’t either. Continue reading “Music lessons from Seth”
Do you know what the top 10 albums of 2007 were? Seven years ago the top 10 included ‘N Sync, Eminem, Britney Spears, Creed, Nelly, Backstreet Boys, and Destiny’s Child. These are all mainstream pop stars that everyone’s heard of and everyone knew that everyone was listening to this stuff. Last year’s top albums were:
In this list there are kids albums (#2 and #6), an album that went straight to Wal-Mart (Eagles), a country album (#9) and an American Idol (#5). The top album in 2000 sold ~10 million copies. The top album here had 3.5. It really is all niches nowadays. Nobody is going to kill it the way that GNR and the boy bands did.
I was hanging out with some girls this weekend who were pretty clueless about the football games going on. Thus, i thought it’d be a good time to replay an oldie but goodie. Here are The Sports Guy’s 10 Ground Rules for women when watching football with guys. (i can’t find his link otherwise i’d like to it)
The poet Billy Collins once observed that all babies are born with a knowledge of poetry, because the lub-dub of the mother’s heart is in iambic meter. Then, Collins said, life slowly starts to choke the poetry out of us. This it too bad. With that in mind, i thought i’d post one of my favorite poems that i like to read at the beginning of every new year. It’s Walt Whitman’s Song of the Open Road:
AFOOT and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.