SharedThought

Roger Ebert comes through with a money quote:

Movies are an empathy machine, drawing us into other lives, allowing us to identify with those of other races, genders, occupations, religions, income levels or times in history. Good films enlarge us, and are a civilizing medium. Bad films narrow us. No films at all impoverishes us.

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times, September 10, 2008.

Found on the Freakonomics blog:

The Monkey Chow Diaries

Can a human subsist on a constant diet of pelletized, nutritionally complete food like puppies and monkeys do? For the good of human kind, I’m about to find out. On June 3, 2006, I began my week of eating nothing but monkey chow: “a complete and balanced diet for the nutrition of primates, including the great apes.”

As of Day 3, tester Adam Scott’s poop smells bad and he’s craving open-faced turkey sandwiches.

Update: Adam Scott’s also got a blog where he has a bit more detail on his monkey chow diet.

There’s a great article in today’s New York Times about a lawsuit between Dale Chihuly and a former employee cum competitor. Chihuly contends that Bryan Rubino is knocking off his glass designs and wants him to stop. It’s an interesting portrayal of Chihuly’s glass empire and contains such interesting bits as this: due to a surfing injury, for the last 27 years Chihuly hasn’t blown any of his own glass creations! I’ve seen a number of Chihuly installations, and really like his work, but I agree with one of the “experts” quoted in the article: Chihuly is bound to come off poorly in this endeavor. I imagine the public feeling a little bit like Dorothy when, after pulling back the curtain, she discovered the Wizard of Oz was someone rather ordinary.

Bigger news than today’s NSA spy poll is this: Ex-Teen Idol Leif Garrett Gets Jail Time! And boy did he not age well.

I feel bad about this. I really do. Every time I see Olympic speedskater Shani Davis with his skating hood on I think of Frozone, the ice-throwing superhero from the Incredibles. See for yourself.

I’ve posted about Eugene Carriere’s Mother’s Kiss before. I saw it in Atlanta as part of a traveling exhibition of the Pushkin Museum’s collection. After seeing it in the show I was disappointed that I couldn’t find an image of it anywhere on the web. Eventually I found and posted a picture of the painting taken by someone who saw the Pushkin show in Houston. Several years later, after a bit more searching, I’ve found that prints of the image are now available for purchase at art.com. So there you have it.

This is how I and 55,000 others spent Independence Day at the Peachtree Road Race. Somewhere between the start and finish of the race, I developed a case of tendinitis in my right ankle. I limped from the finish line to the medical tent only to be told that they couldn’t tape my ankle because they didn’t have any athletic tape! After a little badgering they gave me an aircast that allowed me to hobble away and collect my t-shirt. Despite everything, I had fun and I’ll be back next year.

Thank you for the music, the songs I’m singing
Thanks for all the joy they’re bringing
Who can live without it, I ask in all honesty
What would life be?
Without a song or a dance what are we?
So I say thank you for the music
For giving it to me

Abba, Thank You for The Music

OK, to explain the dead space: I was lost in music. More specifically, I’ve spent most of my free time over the last several months ripping and organizing my music collection using Apple’s iTunes. I started off putting a collection of about 200 CDs into iTunes. It took a couple of weeks to get everything encoded. It took several more weeks to add album art and to get everything labeled and organized. Then came the big events – a 40GB iPod for Christmas and the Rolling Stone issue listing the 500 greatest albums of all time.

The Rolling Stone list came out on December 11, 2003. It both validated and ridiculed my music collection. It elevated guilty pleasures from my collection, like Madonna’s Music, (RS # 452) to the level of high art. On the downside, however, when you find out you own fewer than 20 albums on the list, you start to question your taste in music.

The list is comprehensive, covering all genres of music except classical. It has been criticized for being too centered on music of the 60s (I count 110 albums from the decade), and for excluding rap (I count 28 albums). I tend to agree that the list trends toward music and artists from the 60s and 70s, but I understand how this can be the case. Part of the test of an album’s worthiness is how it holds up over time. In another 20 years the list will surely be different. As for the rap on rap, I don’t see it. Rap comes out ahead of other genres like country (14 albums), and jazz (6 albums), so based purely on numbers it’s hard to find merit in the criticism.

For me the list served as a road map to musical discovery. I started to acquire albums from the list to fill out my collection. I was surprised by how much I liked the early Rolling Stones, particularly Exile on Main Street (RS #7). I’m sure this is sacrilege, but I also was surprised at how funny I thought Bob Dylan sounded (he reminded me of Eddie Murphy doing Buckwheat on SNL). After a few rounds of buying music off of the Rolling Stone list, I now have about 50 of the top albums. Apart from the physical albums, however, I have acquired something much more valuable. I have music!

This is where the iPod has been a gift from God. Thanks to the iPod, my music is accessible. I listen to it in the car, at work, and at home. I listen to music now far more than I ever did when my music was just on CDs. It has added a whole new dimension to my life. So, Apple and Rolling Stone: thank you for the music!

Here is the Rolling Stone list with dates and genres added. Here is the same list in Excel spreadsheet format.

Yesterday, the Washington Post did a review of the latest crop of music downloading software and rewarded Apple’s iTunes the best in show ribbon over Napster and Musicmatch. I downloaded and installed iTunes for Windows last week and have been using it regularly since then. I’ve purchased music and been able to move files back and forth between machines. The interface is elegant and easy to use. It brings together in one place everything you need — from playing, ripping and recording CDs to purchasing and downloading music.

The only complaint I have is that the program wouldn’t recognize my old Windows Media files (not too surprising there, however), and wouldn’t allow access to its CDDB feature to pull down any track information on my old .mp3 files. It clearly prefers you to re-import or purchase your music using the iTunes frontend. There also appears to be a bug in the way the software displays track time for music ripped using a variable rate codec.

Despite the few glitches, I’m so impressed by the program that I’m going to willingly re-import my existing CDs into the iTunes library. I’ll also be looking to pick up an iPod for the upcoming holidays! I encourage you to check it out!

NPR scores again! Last week NPR reviewed Erin McKeown’s new album Grand. The segment included an interview with the artist interspersed with cuts from the album. Here’s a real audio sample of a cut titled born to hum. I went out on Saturday and bought the album. It’s a great record. McKeown’s got a great voice and is a truly talented song writer. Here is how she describes her latest work:

“i love all kinds of music, and i think most people are like that. i love to move to music, i love to be surprised by music, so i wanted GRAND to be all these things NOW. . . . GRAND is my dream of what a record could sound like, of what i am interested in as a writer, what i want to be my contribution as an artist. you cant ask much more of your latest project.”

You can check out other samples of the album here. If you like it, you can buy it here.