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Heavy Rotation: Band of Horses, Killers, Bon Iver

Posted on July 7, 2008

Just to keep y’all updated with what’s in heavy rotation in my iTunes/CD player:

The Band of Horses. These guys were recommended to me in 2006 and i choose to ignore all talk and hype and discover them on my own 2 years later. But at least now there are 2 albums for me to enjoy instead of 1. Most people like their frist more than their latest, but i actually LOVE their new stuff and just really like their old.

Ode to LRC (my favorite) Live version MP3
Is There a Ghost MP3

The Killers’ second album, Sam’s Town. This was considered a disappointment because it wasn’t as good as their first Hot Fuss but going back to it a second time, i’m actually really liking it. It IS very much a modern day Born to Run.

The River is Wild MP3

Bon Iver is the rage these days and while i think he’s generally a bit too mellow, he does have some songs that i really like. You should check it out if you’re looking to fall asleep with a smile on your face and a song stuck in your head.

Flume MP3

Wanted with Angelina

Posted on June 28, 2008December 4, 2013

I saw the movie Wanted last night with my sister in the beautiful Arclight theater in Hollywood. I was surprisingly pleased with the flick. However, i have some problems with it

Apparently McEvoy’s heart increases to 400 beats a minute and he gets a shot of adrenaline which allows him to view things slower and move much faster. This is cool – and makes him and the others somewhat of a chemically superior race. But there are problems with what i saw on the screen:

If you have more adrenaline, you can move faster which lets you whip a gun around, causing the bullets to bend. Ok, i’ll buy that. However, at the beginning and elsewhere in the film you see a bullet get shot from miles away from a guy sitting down in a chair and that bullet cruises through traffic like mouse to peanut butter. That doesn’t make any sense
Even if you can slow everything down to slow-mo, how the hell do you learn how to flip a car over and shoot a guy through a sunroof and land correctly. This isn’t about having more adrenaline – it’s just ridiculous
All the posters and marketing messages of the movie make you think this is an Angelina Jolie movie but it’s not. It’s a McEvoy movie. Of course he’s nowhere near the draw of Mrs. Pitt but i do feel misled
If your dad abandoned you 7 days after birth would you be really excited to live in his room and want to please him after his death? I’m not sure i would. McEvoy didn’t show any resentment at all – which seems pretty unrealistic.
If everything you’ve been told is a lie and then the people telling you it’s a lie turn out ot be lying. What can you believe? I’d feel somewhat distraught. Where was that? McEvoy seems to be sap in my mind. ‘

All this said, i actually really liked the movie for a few reasons. First, it was totally unpredictable. Sure you knew there would be some kicking of ass but you weren’t sure whose ass and how it would be kicked. It had hints of the Matrix with the wire-fu and McEvoy being "the chosen one." It’s nowhere near as good at Matrix but it’s some good popcorn fun on a summer day.

Twitter the most pure social network

Posted on June 27, 2008

Some social network thoughts…..

I’ve been using Twitter more and more lately and i have to say that i’m really enjoying it. I love the simplicity and ease of use. The fact that they limit the characters, is only text and is just a list of your friends thoughts makes it always interesting. Of course, Facebook used to be like that for me too. I’m not sure if it will ever catch on for the masses. The fact that only a subsection of my friends use it makes it more useful for me so i don’t get too many updates. I’m not sure if it’s fun enough for everyone just yet. I do think the mobile aspect of it could tip it over the edge. I wasn’t that into Twitter until i started doing it on my iPhone and then it became a must-have app. I still don’t see much difference between the AIM away-message, the facebook status message and Twitter other than the mobile/cell-ness of Twitter and the simplicity.

More and more i think facebook will develop into a utility instead of a place of expression. I think it will be like the yellow pages – where is a tool people use to look up people, find out about friends of friends and find phone numbers, emails, etc. It’s a social address and people directory. It’s a tool

MySpace continues to be about self-expression and i think that’s a good differentiator as they could never beat facebook at their game. However, i do believe self-expression can be done even better. Something like Uber or Virb or something could be better – if it had more of Tumblr-type experience int it. We did some focus groups the other day and everyone used both Facebook and MySpace. They liked Myspace b/c it really represented them – it was a good badge but they hated the sketchiness about it. “Too many old weird guys” they said. They had facebook b/c everyone had it and it was easy to connect but it didn’t seem like it was fun to them. It was interesting.

What are your thoughts

YouTube getting its ass kicked by Hulu?

Posted on June 18, 2008

I read an interesting post by Cuban called “Hulu is kicking Youtube’s Ass” where he argues that YouTube’s business model is broken and that Hulu has the only sustainable model going forward. He argues that because Hulu has rights to sell ads on their videos they are doing a much better job in revenue per video and revenue per user. Hulu is gaining momentum. Cuban argues that they might already have more monetizaable users and traffic and that by next year it will have more revenue than YouTube.

These are fighting words but it does lead to a bigger question of whether you can monetize users and self-expresssion. Web 2.0 is all about user created content but if that content is only that and not something that can be monetized – then do you have a big business? Facebook and MySpace have taken shots lately of not being able to monetize their huge traffic.

Almost as if YouTube heard the conversation, they announced today that they are removing the 10 minute limit on their videos for Partners. I could see them getting more into Hulu’s business as time goes on and licenseing more and more content to distribute and sell ads around.

Steely Dan Cover

Posted on June 17, 2008

This is a good tune i heard the other day. I love it when the old classics get a little facelift. It’s by Cryptacize

Peg by Cryptacize

Raconteurs – the new Led Zepplin?

Posted on June 10, 2008

I love Jack White. I think he’s the best guitarist of my generation. There is no wonder to me why The Rolling Stones asked him above all others to participate in their recent movie with them. He rocks. His band, The White Stripes, is really him with his wife who plays drums. It’s good but it could be so much better.

I think he got tired of playing by himself and he found himself some legit band members and formed a band called The Raconteurs. Their first album was average but their second and latest is the BOMB. Seriously, you want to rock out – this is the album for you. It reminds me of Led Zepplin II which has Whole Lotta Love and Heartbreaker. Some classic guitar rifs and good tunes. The songs Consoler Of The Lonely and Salute Your Solution do the same.

I can only hope their third and forth album continue to impress. We need more talented rock superstars. Check out the tracks below:

Consoler of the Lonely

Salute Your Solution

Nathan Myhrvold – Pretty Badass

Posted on June 8, 2008September 2, 2014

I just watched this video about Nathan who is quite an incredible guy who spends 18 minutes describing what he does. It’s a lot of very scientific stuff like:

Archeology – digitizing Easter Island statues and the pyramids
Inventing new nuclear reactors – which are more efficient and better than the current designs
Inventing meta-reactors which are really real invisibility cloaks
Bio-medical research – is studying the eyes
Building radio-telescopes and funding the SETI project. If you want the movie Contact, he describes that all the characters are based on real-life folks. He’s the creepy rich guy
Cooking – took a sabatical from Microsoft to study cooking in France and occasionally works at a Seattle restaurant
BBQ – he won the world championship BBQ prize
Paleontology – he’s discovered a T-Rex in a badlands

It’s just a video about him and how he loves to do a million things. As he says, the talk is “a mile wide and an inch deep.” But that’s how he operates. One thing that stands out is that he seems to be one of the bigger badasses alive. I’m happy that people like them are out there and trying to discover the past mysteries of the world and invent new ones. Pretty interesting stuff…

On The Road

Posted on June 6, 2008

I’m on the road quite a bit these days and meeting lots of new people. It’s fun and exciting. Because of it, i thought i’d give one of my favorite quotes from Kerouac’s book On The Road:

They danced down the streets like dangledodies, and i shambled after as i’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awwww!”

The Crue is Smart

Posted on May 31, 2008

Sure they’ve done some dumb stuff, but check this out – they released the single from their latest album, Saints of Los Angeles, both in the video game Rock Band and as download on iTunes, Amazon and elsewhere. In the first week it was downloaded 47,000 times on the Xbox alone compared to 10,000 times on iTunes and other digital download stores on the Web.

Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Grand Theft Auto – that’s where the action is. Smart

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