"Steal Like An Artist" - Good Book

If you want to spend 1 hour of your life well.  Really well.  Then, read the book Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon.  You will like it.

Negotiating Change - Os Guinness

"Negotiating the changes feels longer and worse than the changes themselves because transition challenges our sense of personal meaning." - Os Guinness (The Call, 2-3)

When we switch from one trajectory to another, it messes with us.  It feels overwhelming.  A bigger picture (bigger purpose) might make it feel less overwhelming.  With a bigger picture the transition seems like an essential part of the bigger project as opposed to a disruption.

"The final aim of life is placed beyond life." - Alexis de Tocqueville (Guinness - The Call, 2-3)

Multiply Your Powers by 10...is it worth it?

Is it easier to go off and sacrifice your life (immediate)...or, spend 6 years investing your life in something difficult (...perhaps "study"...perhaps something else)...?  We always seem to want the quickest and the easiest...but, 10-fold power sounds nice.

"...these young men unhappily fail to understand that the sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easiest of all sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance, five or six years of their seething youth to hard and tedious study, if only to multiply ten-fold their powers of serving the truth and the case they have set before them as their goal--such a sacrifice is utterly beyond the strength of many of them." (Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov)

Steve Martin - Comedian, Actor, Musician, Philosopher of love...

I like this.  It's Steve Martin talking about his new album, Love Has Come For You.  (Check out the 2:00 mark of the video below.)

“I hear the line ‘love has come for you’.  I think that is such an unusual way to phrase something, because usually someone would say ‘love has come to you’.  ‘Love has come for you’ is this double entendre…meaning it has come for you as a blessing or it has come for…to take you…it has come to get you.” – Steve Martin

As a blessing      Come to get you

My situation: Conditioned vs. Claimed

"Believers are conditioned but not claimed by their particular circumstances." - Victor Paul Furnish (The Theology of the First Letter to the Corinthians, 62)

My circumstances will shape me.  That's great.  But, my circumstances don't own me, fully control me, or give me my ultimate identity. 

Music Preferences from Douglas Wilson

"...if we reject a form of music out of hand because it is not the form of music we prefer, then we are trying to kick against the variegated world that the triune God created. And if we are doing this in a spirit of musical snobbery, we are demonstrating that, however adept we are in the form we prefer, when it comes to music at large, we don't really know what its for."

http://www.dougwils.com/Musical-Exhortation/mozart-and-vince-gill.html

10 Best Movies I watched in 2011

Here are the 10 best movies I watched in 2011 for the first time...for those interested in such things.  I was a stuck a little more in the past than in previous years.  The most user-friendly in the list is The King of Kong, which I've recommended to almost everyone this year.

        

 
   
  

The Tobolowsky Files

My buddy Brett has provided a greatest hits list of one of my favorite podcasts - The Tobolowsky Files.

Here is the link:
http://brettwendle.blogspot.com/2011/09/tobolowsky-files-beginners-guide.html

He's listened to more of them than I have, but I would add this one to the list as well:
The Metamorphic Man

My Favorite Part of the Morning: Anderson Cooper - Gerard Depardieu

PopWatch's Summer Movie Body Count

I stumbled across this last week and thought it was amusing.  Mostly, because I find people who write sentences like this one amusing: "Hollywood is currently in the grip of a horrific PG-13 pandemic, which means many of the deaths that occur onscreen will be bloodless non-human deaths. This is because the MPAA doesn’t think a twelve-year-old should see a human being get comically decapitated, but they have no problem with showing the same twelve-year-old an image of Thor’s hammer slicing a Frost Giant in half. Hooray for ambiguously legislated morality!"

Here is their count.
Week 1: 88
Week 2: 155
Week 3: 187
Week 4: 191
Week 5: 264
Week 6: 269
Week 7: 299
Week 8: 308
Week 9: 386
Week 10: 388
Week 11: 566
(There are rules to their count, in case you are interested: http://popwatch.ew.com/2011/05/06/summer-movie-body-count/#more-137630)

There are many things that feel not-right about 1) the article(s) at Popwatch, 2) the amount of people we see killed on screen, and 3) how little we seem to notice it.  In regard to PG-13 movies, I think that they are frequently worse than R rated movies...probably more often than what we might think.  I wonder if the typical PG-13 movie maker falls into the category of Hollywood sell-out, let's-make-alot-of-money more often than the R-rated, there's-an-intended-message-here movie maker?  That (possibly unhelpful) question assumes that the better movie is usually the one trying to express something constructive than the one trying to provide a give-em-what-they-want buzz.

Here's their week by week list - http://popwatch.ew.com/category/misc/summer-movie-body-count/

Atlantic: What I Read

I found this Atlantic Wire series about 'media intake / what-people-are-reading' very interesting:

Here's the mothership: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/posts/media-diet/

And, a few to start with:
Neetzan Zimmerman
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2010/06/neetzan-zimmerman-what-i-read/19575/

Malcolm Gladwell
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2011/04/malcolm-gladwell-what-i-read/37077/

Maria Popova
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2011/07/maria-popova-what-i-read/39328/

Terry McMillan
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2010/04/terry-mcmillan-what-i-read/19999/

King Creosote & Jon Hopkins - Diamond Mine

I was exploring NPR's "25 Favorite Albums of 2011 (So Far)" last week and came across King Creosote & Jon Hopkins' Diamond Mine. It's worth checking out.

I can't describe the album any better than Mr. Bob Boilen, so here you go...

Diamond Mine does what audio does best: It takes listeners far from the here and now. This labor of love, seven years in the making, opens on a cafe terrace in a Scottish town. It's a few minutes before these soundcapes give way to the unique quiver of King Creosote and the scope of this collaboration becomes clear. This is storytelling through sounds and with song. King Creosote (Kenny Anderson) and Jon Hopkins describe this unusual record as the "soundtrack to a romanticized version of a life lived in a Scottish coastal village." This is a record for your late night, or for your quiet Sunday; put it on when you when you need calm, and be grateful that in a world full of speed, King Creosote and Jon Hopkins stopped and took their time. (Bob Boilen)

Some other thoughts on the album:

• More from Bob Boilen
• Folk Radio UK 

Currently Prophetic: "Feathers, Rain, and Cash"

The fine folks at the newly birthed podcast "Currently Prophetic", two episodes in, are already scraping the bottom of the barrel...as yours truly is represented with a song in the most recent episode.

http://currentlyprophetic.com

Shawn Mullins.  Johnny Cash.  Listen with respect...

The Ghost Of Johnny Cash

Together At the Creek

I thought this video turned out well enough to be share-able...



Thanks, Mr. M Dot Ward, for the music: Duet For Guitars #3

Clarence Clemons

This is as close as I ever came to Clarence Clemons.  One of the many things that was memorable about this show was being close enough to notice the tears running down Clarence's face as Bruce sang about 9/11.  The guy seemed to be everything he was advertised to be.  

Recommended Podcasts 1 - Cyber Dating & Second Life

Here are a couple podcasts I enjoyed over the last two weeks. They have a common thread which (I think) has to do with wanting to be heard, wanting to be cared about, and wanting to be unique/special.

Talking to Machines - Radiolab

http://www.radiolab.org/2011/may/31

Life 2.0 - NPR: On the Media

http://www.onthemedia.org/episodes/2011/06/10/segments/159314

New Bon Iver album - Streaming at NPR

I've listened to the new Bon Iver album a few times over the last week. It comes out on June 21st, but you can stream it on the NPR website. The voice blends so perfectly into mood of the music that it's basically an instrumental album in my mind. I find it soothing, relaxing, and full of other adjectives that you'd find on the various lotions my wife displays around the house.

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/09/136855313/first-listen-bon-iver-bon-iver

Helvetica vs. the World

The documentary Helvetica is about the typeface (a.k.a. font). I think it's also about culture, design, art, sticking it to the man, marketing, and social networking. I hope to watch it again sometime.

Favorite Song of the Week 5: "Wonderful (The Way I Feel)" by My Morning Jacket

"Wonderful (The Way I Feel)" by My Morning Jacket...off the new album 'Circuital'...which is excellent. And, of which you can get a free download of not-my-favorite song at their website. Go to www.mymorningjacket.com/circuital

(As of 6/3, Circuital is $5 at Amazon)

In regards to Wonderful, I picture a guy who has been a little beat up by life coming to a nice peaceful patch of time. And, he's not taking anything for granted. In fact, as the backdrop of where he's been lingers in his mind...maybe he's a little surprised, or maybe he's too exhausted from the ride to have anything but an honest appreciation of his current situation. Listen. Your life will never be the same.

Danger Mouse - Rome

The album that I haven't been able to get enough of this week is Danger Mouse's Rome. Rome is like listening to a familiar melody (Sketches of Spain) or watching a familiar movie (a spaghetti western). It's a nice feeling.

- Coming soon...U2 and Danger Mouse