I'll start with films, George Clooney is not just a pretty face.
Syriana by the writer of the movie "Traffic" (and by the production company clooney and friends have built) is made to give you nightmares. Not for the faint of heart (it has some graphic brutality) but gripping, enlightening, and chilling. Very very good.
Good night and good luck (another one of clooney's films) is quite good as well. A black and white historical recreation of the McCarthy era in America and Edward R. Murrow's role in bringing intellect and patriotism together into reasoned discourse. Almost hard to follow sometimes just because the newsmen were actually erudite on TV. I think the closest we have today to someone of Murrow's ilk is John Stewart.
I also just recently saw a show on pbs that looks to have been produced by a company set up by Murrow's sidekick, Fred Friendly (clooney in the movie). The show was called "In the Balance," it was the best example I've seen of a true "gaming" of a serious issue by the participants that would actually have to cope with disruptions in public life. I wish public servants were required to watch this, and take part in this sort of simulation as a pre-requisite for being elected. Fred Friendly noted that these seminars were... "not to make up anybody's mind, but to open minds and to make the agony of decision making so intense that you can escape only by thinking."
While I'm on a clooney-fest, rent "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" it's about the host of The Gong Show, who of course was also an assassin for the CIA. Sam Rockwell is perfect and the film never quite tells you if this is a true story or not, but its a fun flashback for those of us who stayed home sick and watched Gene Gene the Dancing Machine do his stuff.
Ok, Sam Rockwell reminds me of "Three Kings," another "worth renting" movie (this one about the first Gulf War). Marky Mark can act and this one is a gritty behind the scenes take on what the soldiers really did over there (of course it seems tame and childlike when compared to Syriana).
Ok, so I'll end with a book about the disputed area between Pakistan and India (called Kashmir) to round out my tour of world events in media. "Shalimar the Clown" by Salman Rushdie is a rich immersion into the dreamland that was the inspiration for the stories about shangri-la, heaven on earth, and is now a charred blast furnace of nationalism, extremism, and futilism (at least it all seems futile and bleak). This is the first book I've read by the author and it rings with flowery language and vivid details. It is essentially the story of a small village of people who lived for many years in peace (and the village was made up of christians, jews, muslims, and hindus), plying their trade as entertainers and were then caught up in the nationalistic disputes of their neighbors (who of course each claimed Kashmir as its own, killing it to save it apparently) and their neighbor's friends (America, Europe, etc.). A nice companion piece to "The Wind Runner," if you're finally waking to the impact the middle east has (and will have) on our world.
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Sunday, November 27, 2005
books 'o' the month
Non-fiction
"A Million Little Pieces" by James Frey is brutal, blunt, and refreshing (I'm reading Rushdi's "Shalimar the Clown" right now and the comparison in writing styles is jarring... Rushdi is flowery and poetic, Frey doesn't even bother with sentences sometimes... much more stream of consciousness). James wakes up on a plane with a hole in his cheek and missing his four front teeth. His true story climb out of a lifetime of addiction (to just about everything--he's only 23 at the time that he's checked into rehab but he's been drinking, smoking, doing crack, heroin, meth, or some sort of drug since he was a preteen) is tragic. I'm pretty sure I've got the right kind of personality/genetics/whatever to fall into the life he had and only didn't by the grace of god and more than a bit of luck. Scary stuff that is so immersive that I finished the book feeling like I had just awoken from a fever dream of addiction and rehab myself. Reminded me of "Requiem for a Dream," in some ways (a cautionary film I can't say I enjoyed but I can say should be required viewing in high school). Read it.
Fiction
"The Atrocity Archives" by Charles Stross is a totally fun spy-nazi-mathematical holes in the universe-geek-meets-girl-saves-universe-while-maintaining-company-servers-secret-british intelligence-arm-demons-beware-fantasy. This one would be a great movie.
On the subject of Charles Stross I finally got around to reading one of Joe Hughe's suggested readings, "Accelerando," it was serious brain-upload singularity stuff. Enjoyable read and totally different than the atrocity stuff.
A good example of the writing in "Accelerando?"
"Opposite the bench is a wall occupied from floor to ceiling by bookcases: Manfred looks at the ancient, low-density medium and sneezes, momentarily bemused by the sight of data density measured in kilograms per megabyte rather than vice versa."
It starts with a guy who has an idea a second and gives them away to help other people become rich (post-dot-com-style), includes the requisite uploaded lobster brains in space and ends with his great great grandkids fleeing the solar system in the hopes of surviving economy 2.0 (somewhere in there people become currency, people upload so they are immortal, and the solar system is converted from raw matter into a matrioshski layered--think russian nesting dolls/dyson spheres--brain of computronium, the better to dream bigger dreams I suppose).
Its downloadable for free here if you like that whole digital thing. Worth the read (I think I read much of it before in short story form so I wasn't totally blown away by it, but if you're interested in the social aspects of this sorta future society you'll eat it up).
"A Million Little Pieces" by James Frey is brutal, blunt, and refreshing (I'm reading Rushdi's "Shalimar the Clown" right now and the comparison in writing styles is jarring... Rushdi is flowery and poetic, Frey doesn't even bother with sentences sometimes... much more stream of consciousness). James wakes up on a plane with a hole in his cheek and missing his four front teeth. His true story climb out of a lifetime of addiction (to just about everything--he's only 23 at the time that he's checked into rehab but he's been drinking, smoking, doing crack, heroin, meth, or some sort of drug since he was a preteen) is tragic. I'm pretty sure I've got the right kind of personality/genetics/whatever to fall into the life he had and only didn't by the grace of god and more than a bit of luck. Scary stuff that is so immersive that I finished the book feeling like I had just awoken from a fever dream of addiction and rehab myself. Reminded me of "Requiem for a Dream," in some ways (a cautionary film I can't say I enjoyed but I can say should be required viewing in high school). Read it.
Fiction
"The Atrocity Archives" by Charles Stross is a totally fun spy-nazi-mathematical holes in the universe-geek-meets-girl-saves-universe-while-maintaining-company-servers-secret-british intelligence-arm-demons-beware-fantasy. This one would be a great movie.
On the subject of Charles Stross I finally got around to reading one of Joe Hughe's suggested readings, "Accelerando," it was serious brain-upload singularity stuff. Enjoyable read and totally different than the atrocity stuff.
A good example of the writing in "Accelerando?"
"Opposite the bench is a wall occupied from floor to ceiling by bookcases: Manfred looks at the ancient, low-density medium and sneezes, momentarily bemused by the sight of data density measured in kilograms per megabyte rather than vice versa."
It starts with a guy who has an idea a second and gives them away to help other people become rich (post-dot-com-style), includes the requisite uploaded lobster brains in space and ends with his great great grandkids fleeing the solar system in the hopes of surviving economy 2.0 (somewhere in there people become currency, people upload so they are immortal, and the solar system is converted from raw matter into a matrioshski layered--think russian nesting dolls/dyson spheres--brain of computronium, the better to dream bigger dreams I suppose).
Its downloadable for free here if you like that whole digital thing. Worth the read (I think I read much of it before in short story form so I wasn't totally blown away by it, but if you're interested in the social aspects of this sorta future society you'll eat it up).
Saturday, October 22, 2005
Backstory: Race Riot
He had funny hair. His mom said he said the same about me when I hugged her at his funeral. It was 1977 or 1978 when we first really began hanging out, Rose Royce was the heavy rotation favorite or maybe the Bee Gees with their Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, certainly the ever popular Sir Nose Devoid of Funk was making the rounds. He was the resident music and dance expert and he was on a mission to teach me to dance. We (known to each other as nip, wetback, and potato farmer) and he (kunta was the current favorite) would roam to his one-bedroom apartment after school (his mom raised him alone, having moved them to our neighborhood in a quest to escape the daily shootings of the west side) and shuffle through the steps in anticipation of the next party, the next get together, the next chance to look cool and make our moves with the ladies. When all else failed (I was not the most rhythmic) the secret of course became waiting for the slow dance (even white kids could handle the slow dance). "Reasons" by Earth Wind and Fire was 9 minutes long and by far the best slow dancing, move making, song around. During the spring he played the matchmaker as we wandered through the school yard, our female associates and we a safe 3 or 4 paces apart during the negotiations over mickey and his interest in a certain girl (and are you interested in him?). Of course as schoolyard romances go, it only lasted a short time. The summer was filled with nights of "reasons," "wishing on a star," and "more than a woman" and lazy days of walking the alleys, and biking along the waterfront. Our gang was inseparable. Near the end of the summer, while I was away at scout camp, I lost my first love to an older man (he was 14 and apparently a don juan who had swept her off her feet with his sexy accent and smooth basketball moves). That was also the summer Majdi (another kid in our class) was shot in the head for walking down the wrong alley and flashing the wrong gang sign; Jerrill's mom was undoubtably having second thoughts about their flight from the west side to the north. Oddly that was how life seemed to go, wonders of the world one minute and tragedy the next.
High school came and Jerrill (now called Bucky after another famous Dent) became a beloved athletic star, brainiac, and counselor to one and all. We learned how to drive together, we held our friend's head when he retched his guts out over a lost girl and too much tequila. When one of our other friends (the aforementioned nip named Bri) and I spotted him at the end of our high school hallway during room change (a year after our school entered the desgregation era by bussing in all the kids from the west side) we almost started our very own race riot. Bri had greeted Buck by shouting "Hey! Kunta!" innocently enough, or so we thought... apparently other people took race seriously. Having grown up as a smartass group of token irish (potato farmer/whitebread), black (kunta), mexican (wetback), japanese (nip), vietnamese (ho-chi min city), spanish (spic) kids, it was lost on us (still is).
Bucky and I went our own ways for college (he to the University of Chicago, me to the University of Illinois). We both married our college sweethearts and he decided to become not only a financial futures broker for Stanley Morgan but also a lay minister for his church. He had three children and a beautiful wife. He hosted monthly "how to be married" classes at his home (teaching my wife and I the odd and wondrous differences between men and women and the power of washing people's feet, of leading by serving).
Twenty years (though it seems like only a few short moments ago) after showing me the hustle and the truth about people with funny hair, as Jerrill related bouts with his now constant companion (he called it "Tumy" but we all knew it to be a rare terminal cancer at the base of his spine), he paused for a moment... and smiled... the light in his eyes lit up the entire room.
His funeral service a few weeks later was the most joyous and profound celebration of a life I have ever experienced. We were all sad beyond words at the senseless loss of our friend at such a young age, but more than that we were the luckiest people in the world to have shared his life.
That's the way of the world.
High school came and Jerrill (now called Bucky after another famous Dent) became a beloved athletic star, brainiac, and counselor to one and all. We learned how to drive together, we held our friend's head when he retched his guts out over a lost girl and too much tequila. When one of our other friends (the aforementioned nip named Bri) and I spotted him at the end of our high school hallway during room change (a year after our school entered the desgregation era by bussing in all the kids from the west side) we almost started our very own race riot. Bri had greeted Buck by shouting "Hey! Kunta!" innocently enough, or so we thought... apparently other people took race seriously. Having grown up as a smartass group of token irish (potato farmer/whitebread), black (kunta), mexican (wetback), japanese (nip), vietnamese (ho-chi min city), spanish (spic) kids, it was lost on us (still is).
Bucky and I went our own ways for college (he to the University of Chicago, me to the University of Illinois). We both married our college sweethearts and he decided to become not only a financial futures broker for Stanley Morgan but also a lay minister for his church. He had three children and a beautiful wife. He hosted monthly "how to be married" classes at his home (teaching my wife and I the odd and wondrous differences between men and women and the power of washing people's feet, of leading by serving).
Twenty years (though it seems like only a few short moments ago) after showing me the hustle and the truth about people with funny hair, as Jerrill related bouts with his now constant companion (he called it "Tumy" but we all knew it to be a rare terminal cancer at the base of his spine), he paused for a moment... and smiled... the light in his eyes lit up the entire room.
His funeral service a few weeks later was the most joyous and profound celebration of a life I have ever experienced. We were all sad beyond words at the senseless loss of our friend at such a young age, but more than that we were the luckiest people in the world to have shared his life.
That's the way of the world.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
A meal and some munchies (ok more books)
File "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini under "brutal and beautiful" maybe under "glass impregnated kite fighting in the streets of kabul," either way, read it. It made me wonder what other rich cultures have been blown apart lately and turned into poster children for the warhol five minutes of fame rule of trivialization. Sad but ultimately optimistic.
"Forty Signs of Rain" by Kim Stanley Robinson. Yes topical since its about impending global warming and the flooding and politics that come along for the ride. A bit hollow though (I get through the whole book and think... ok... so.)
"Anansi Boys" by Neil Gaiman (yup he's got a movie out this weekend too called MirrorMask) is about two brothers who have to cope with having a trickster god as a father. Fun, light superhero/origins sorta read set in present day london.
"Camouflage" a new book by Joe Haldeman was one of those read it in a day or two, alien(s) living among us, character studies.
What the hell am I gonna read now?
"Forty Signs of Rain" by Kim Stanley Robinson. Yes topical since its about impending global warming and the flooding and politics that come along for the ride. A bit hollow though (I get through the whole book and think... ok... so.)
"Anansi Boys" by Neil Gaiman (yup he's got a movie out this weekend too called MirrorMask) is about two brothers who have to cope with having a trickster god as a father. Fun, light superhero/origins sorta read set in present day london.
"Camouflage" a new book by Joe Haldeman was one of those read it in a day or two, alien(s) living among us, character studies.
What the hell am I gonna read now?
Sunday, September 18, 2005
2005 aiga design conference last day
Saturday was a full day at the conference. Highlights?
1. Paula Scher, Pentagram; and Ben Karlin (writer), The Daily Show with Jon Stewart talked about the labor of love that was the 2.5 million selling America: The Book. They showed quite a bit of the process from initial sketches to literally hundreds of comps (for things like the cover, which Warner Books pushed them to make the type much larger and the picture of John far more dominant than they ever imagined AND where they had John S. posing with a gold headed eagle--later photoshopped to white--- because bald eagles are banned from use in photography as endangered species). The spread of the supreme court justices naked (actually nudists from a colony with photoshopped heads) got them banned at Walmart and a spot at the top of the best sellers list for 49 weeks. If they could combine this sort of humor and visualization of ideas with Sarah Vowell's true (and hysterical) historic journalism about our country it would change the face of history education in our country, seriously.
2. Ze Frank (who helped out with our Experience Design Conference a few years back) claimed to have been selected as the lead designer for the homeland security administration (he wasn't) and basically did a schtick on crappy design and in particular safety cards in airplane (why doens't the card ever show you what happens AFTER you've deployed the rafts and the sun goes down?... that's a whole other card...
3. Bill Strickland (My wife Lynn was a resident artist at Bill's Manchester Craftsmens Guild for a number of years when we first moved to the city so I've heard about him and attended some amazing openings and performances there but never seen him speak) not only choked up the entire 2000+ crowd with his autobiographical story of hope in the inner city facilitated by hands on education in the arts coupled with respect (his point was that art is a portal for poor, disenfranchised members of our society to find relevance, value and success) but also effective shamed the bellyaching "gee no one ever listens to designers, we want a seat at the table, how can we possibly help effect positive change in the world" defeatist element of the design community into understanding that the hard parts are easy (when asked by a visiting school teacher how Bill was able to get fresh flowers into his school he replied "I grab my truck and go to the store and buy them" and the easy parts are sometimes the hardest (ex. he planned on convincing senator heinz into funding a little bit of his carpenter/workman training center, John asked him if he could build a chefs school so Heinz could cover their equal opportunity requirements by having some black chefs to hire... Bill said "well, we don't really know anything about cooking," John said "what if I gave you a million dollars...." to which Bill replied, "looks like we're going into the cooking business," at which point they invited world class chefs to teach cooking, insisted that all students get to eat the gourmet cooking for lunch everyday and then he invited someone from Bayer (of asprin fame) to stop by for some salmon at his chef's school and by impressing the guy from Bayer so much with the cooking steamrolled it into a pharmaceutical training school and later a computer school, care of HP's lunch visit for salmon not to mention x number of jazz emmys after dizzy gillespie heard about the place... being agile enough to not only make the opportunities happen but to follow through and roll with the flow to actually get something done takes work). This was only a small part of the sorta unbelievable story of a poor boy who at 16 learned how to throw clay while listening to jazz greats in the classroom of a teacher who actually gave a shit, went on to pull kids off the streets to teach them and as of this writing is on the verge of launching art/technology centers in a number of cities based on his learning. 22 years being open, no vandalism, no security systems, world class facilities (they record their jazz records in a space designed by Paul Simon's sound engineer for free), tons of kids through college on full ride scholarships and a few earning advanced awards, a few block from where the same kids go to school amidst iron bars, armed security guards and grafitti laden school houses, can the rest of us please get off our a--es? His secrets included expecting people to act civilized in a civilized environment, expecting art and leading edge topics to unite disparate cultures rather than divide them, and blatantly asking for help from rich people and in a way exploiting their need to assage their guilt and their hope to find a way to spend money on something that actually could be effective. He has created a shadow local government from the ground up, while everyone stood around hoping that those poor people would just go away. I can't do his talk justice so I'll stop now and end with two quotes:
A. "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -George Bernard Shaw
B. "Never doubt that a small group of committed individuals can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
4. During the conference main session each day there were short interstitial presentations about design techniques (like collage, camera absentia, etc.) and today's best one was the idea of using a polaroid camera to create a film by shooting a hell of a lot of still shots and then stacking them up... (great if you have stock in polaroid)... I'm not convinced that the sample shown was actually done this way but it was so well done that I'm not sure if I care (each one of these interstitials culminated with a "Its been done before" example, I think this was both to celebrate some of the amazing work being done out there and to remind people that these sorts of experimentations have been around for quite a while so stop being so precious with your theoretically groundbreaking "big idea" for technique... someone already did it... like most conceptual stuff plenty of people have thought of just about any thought, its what you do with it once you think it that counts....) in this case it was a music video for Breath Me by Sia and directed by Daniel Askill (the song used at the end of Six Feet Under's Show finale)... see it here (small) or or here (large).
5. Colin Drummond of Crispin Porter + Bogusky (350 person ad agency in florida who do all the fighting chicken/fiberglass burger king and minicooper brand things) talked us through the process they used to research and define the differentiating factors of a minicooper and how they exploited media in non-traditional ways to drive the launch of the mini in the US (with a budget that was 15 percent of the budget that VW used for the beetle launch). Examples? they mounted minicoopers in malls as if it were coin operated rides (you could really get in them)... of course the price for a "ride" was $16k in quarters. They also did the fake robot builder website (robots built out of mini's are spotted in the english countryside ala the yetti), the CCC (the counter counterfeit commission to stop people from buying fake minis) and my favorite one, they negotiated (for 30k which is a pittance in Ad land) with the Weekly World News to use BatBoy (their best "property") in a promotion in their newspapers across the country (Batboy was on the cover along with a speeding mini crossing state lines and being chased by cops... apparently when he was spotted he grabbed one and ran... poor kid). Their point was to make the mini an icon rather than a fad. His icon building list?
A - Defining look (think absolut bottle). Mini has a contrasting roof so use it.
B - Unique ability to elicit an emotional response "Show them the car."
C - Take on and transcend characteristics from outside their catagory. imac=candy. (Associate the mini with a bulldog)
E - Icons have a unique "defining" differentiator in their catagory. The MINI is ranked among porsches for handling and exhileration BUT they're super cost effective (16k), so play up the fun/cheap angle.
F - An ability to connect with and reflect the values of a broad user base (so not a small demographic based on age, but rather based on attitude).
6. Sagmeister preached happiness which sounds so lame when I type it now, but he has always been inspiring and coupling Bill Strickland's bootstrap life improvement with Stefan's often simple but deviously clever (it is hard not to smile when you see the work he does and inspires in his students) design work and manifesto on creating things that bring a smile was the culmination of a powerful day (his list to himself of "lessons learned" in seeking happiness included something along the lines of "stop complaining and act or just forget it," and "being bold has worked for me.") To give you a sense of the sorts of things he's been doing with his students, he asked them to design something that would make someone close to them happy, design something else that will make a small group happy and design something that will make a large audience of people they didn't know happy. One team put a small viewmaster style thingy out on the street across the way from a major downtown building and when people looked into the viewfinder their blinking eyes where video'd and played back as a giant pair of eyes looking out through windows and blinking near the top of the building for the city to see (I suspect that the view was out into the city from the top of same building). Another designer did a day planner that was thick enough (enough days) to cover your entire life from birth to death (87 years geing the current average), with a handy bookmark strip to help you see how much more life you had ahead, or how little time you had left... the book had a spine that was about a foot thick.
6. The last part of the conference was the gala party at the Museum of Science. Yes I finally got to see Mathmatica by Charles and Ray Eames (can someone please stop telling people that "experience design" started when the dot.com boom began?) if you get to Boston, go to this place. There is more to say about the party but until I get the pictures from the camera loaded up I'll suffice it to say that we spent the evening as an entourage/pr/comedy troupe (well, in our own minds we were amusing) for a conference celebrity. More to come.
1. Paula Scher, Pentagram; and Ben Karlin (writer), The Daily Show with Jon Stewart talked about the labor of love that was the 2.5 million selling America: The Book. They showed quite a bit of the process from initial sketches to literally hundreds of comps (for things like the cover, which Warner Books pushed them to make the type much larger and the picture of John far more dominant than they ever imagined AND where they had John S. posing with a gold headed eagle--later photoshopped to white--- because bald eagles are banned from use in photography as endangered species). The spread of the supreme court justices naked (actually nudists from a colony with photoshopped heads) got them banned at Walmart and a spot at the top of the best sellers list for 49 weeks. If they could combine this sort of humor and visualization of ideas with Sarah Vowell's true (and hysterical) historic journalism about our country it would change the face of history education in our country, seriously.
2. Ze Frank (who helped out with our Experience Design Conference a few years back) claimed to have been selected as the lead designer for the homeland security administration (he wasn't) and basically did a schtick on crappy design and in particular safety cards in airplane (why doens't the card ever show you what happens AFTER you've deployed the rafts and the sun goes down?... that's a whole other card...
3. Bill Strickland (My wife Lynn was a resident artist at Bill's Manchester Craftsmens Guild for a number of years when we first moved to the city so I've heard about him and attended some amazing openings and performances there but never seen him speak) not only choked up the entire 2000+ crowd with his autobiographical story of hope in the inner city facilitated by hands on education in the arts coupled with respect (his point was that art is a portal for poor, disenfranchised members of our society to find relevance, value and success) but also effective shamed the bellyaching "gee no one ever listens to designers, we want a seat at the table, how can we possibly help effect positive change in the world" defeatist element of the design community into understanding that the hard parts are easy (when asked by a visiting school teacher how Bill was able to get fresh flowers into his school he replied "I grab my truck and go to the store and buy them" and the easy parts are sometimes the hardest (ex. he planned on convincing senator heinz into funding a little bit of his carpenter/workman training center, John asked him if he could build a chefs school so Heinz could cover their equal opportunity requirements by having some black chefs to hire... Bill said "well, we don't really know anything about cooking," John said "what if I gave you a million dollars...." to which Bill replied, "looks like we're going into the cooking business," at which point they invited world class chefs to teach cooking, insisted that all students get to eat the gourmet cooking for lunch everyday and then he invited someone from Bayer (of asprin fame) to stop by for some salmon at his chef's school and by impressing the guy from Bayer so much with the cooking steamrolled it into a pharmaceutical training school and later a computer school, care of HP's lunch visit for salmon not to mention x number of jazz emmys after dizzy gillespie heard about the place... being agile enough to not only make the opportunities happen but to follow through and roll with the flow to actually get something done takes work). This was only a small part of the sorta unbelievable story of a poor boy who at 16 learned how to throw clay while listening to jazz greats in the classroom of a teacher who actually gave a shit, went on to pull kids off the streets to teach them and as of this writing is on the verge of launching art/technology centers in a number of cities based on his learning. 22 years being open, no vandalism, no security systems, world class facilities (they record their jazz records in a space designed by Paul Simon's sound engineer for free), tons of kids through college on full ride scholarships and a few earning advanced awards, a few block from where the same kids go to school amidst iron bars, armed security guards and grafitti laden school houses, can the rest of us please get off our a--es? His secrets included expecting people to act civilized in a civilized environment, expecting art and leading edge topics to unite disparate cultures rather than divide them, and blatantly asking for help from rich people and in a way exploiting their need to assage their guilt and their hope to find a way to spend money on something that actually could be effective. He has created a shadow local government from the ground up, while everyone stood around hoping that those poor people would just go away. I can't do his talk justice so I'll stop now and end with two quotes:
A. "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -George Bernard Shaw
B. "Never doubt that a small group of committed individuals can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead
4. During the conference main session each day there were short interstitial presentations about design techniques (like collage, camera absentia, etc.) and today's best one was the idea of using a polaroid camera to create a film by shooting a hell of a lot of still shots and then stacking them up... (great if you have stock in polaroid)... I'm not convinced that the sample shown was actually done this way but it was so well done that I'm not sure if I care (each one of these interstitials culminated with a "Its been done before" example, I think this was both to celebrate some of the amazing work being done out there and to remind people that these sorts of experimentations have been around for quite a while so stop being so precious with your theoretically groundbreaking "big idea" for technique... someone already did it... like most conceptual stuff plenty of people have thought of just about any thought, its what you do with it once you think it that counts....) in this case it was a music video for Breath Me by Sia and directed by Daniel Askill (the song used at the end of Six Feet Under's Show finale)... see it here (small) or or here (large).
5. Colin Drummond of Crispin Porter + Bogusky (350 person ad agency in florida who do all the fighting chicken/fiberglass burger king and minicooper brand things) talked us through the process they used to research and define the differentiating factors of a minicooper and how they exploited media in non-traditional ways to drive the launch of the mini in the US (with a budget that was 15 percent of the budget that VW used for the beetle launch). Examples? they mounted minicoopers in malls as if it were coin operated rides (you could really get in them)... of course the price for a "ride" was $16k in quarters. They also did the fake robot builder website (robots built out of mini's are spotted in the english countryside ala the yetti), the CCC (the counter counterfeit commission to stop people from buying fake minis) and my favorite one, they negotiated (for 30k which is a pittance in Ad land) with the Weekly World News to use BatBoy (their best "property") in a promotion in their newspapers across the country (Batboy was on the cover along with a speeding mini crossing state lines and being chased by cops... apparently when he was spotted he grabbed one and ran... poor kid). Their point was to make the mini an icon rather than a fad. His icon building list?
A - Defining look (think absolut bottle). Mini has a contrasting roof so use it.
B - Unique ability to elicit an emotional response "Show them the car."
C - Take on and transcend characteristics from outside their catagory. imac=candy. (Associate the mini with a bulldog)
E - Icons have a unique "defining" differentiator in their catagory. The MINI is ranked among porsches for handling and exhileration BUT they're super cost effective (16k), so play up the fun/cheap angle.
F - An ability to connect with and reflect the values of a broad user base (so not a small demographic based on age, but rather based on attitude).
6. Sagmeister preached happiness which sounds so lame when I type it now, but he has always been inspiring and coupling Bill Strickland's bootstrap life improvement with Stefan's often simple but deviously clever (it is hard not to smile when you see the work he does and inspires in his students) design work and manifesto on creating things that bring a smile was the culmination of a powerful day (his list to himself of "lessons learned" in seeking happiness included something along the lines of "stop complaining and act or just forget it," and "being bold has worked for me.") To give you a sense of the sorts of things he's been doing with his students, he asked them to design something that would make someone close to them happy, design something else that will make a small group happy and design something that will make a large audience of people they didn't know happy. One team put a small viewmaster style thingy out on the street across the way from a major downtown building and when people looked into the viewfinder their blinking eyes where video'd and played back as a giant pair of eyes looking out through windows and blinking near the top of the building for the city to see (I suspect that the view was out into the city from the top of same building). Another designer did a day planner that was thick enough (enough days) to cover your entire life from birth to death (87 years geing the current average), with a handy bookmark strip to help you see how much more life you had ahead, or how little time you had left... the book had a spine that was about a foot thick.
6. The last part of the conference was the gala party at the Museum of Science. Yes I finally got to see Mathmatica by Charles and Ray Eames (can someone please stop telling people that "experience design" started when the dot.com boom began?) if you get to Boston, go to this place. There is more to say about the party but until I get the pictures from the camera loaded up I'll suffice it to say that we spent the evening as an entourage/pr/comedy troupe (well, in our own minds we were amusing) for a conference celebrity. More to come.
Friday, September 16, 2005
2005 aiga design conference day 1 (for me)
Just finished day one of the AIGA design conference,
no doubt the five best parts of today's general session were:
1.Barney Frank (a congressman) talked about the role government should (and shouldn't play) in our lives and how designers could make a difference, he was later joined by John Hockenberry (Dateline/NBC guy, very good MC for the event)for a bit of debate.
2.Design for Democracy designer Dori Tunsdall, Hockenberry, David Gibson (Two Twelve Associates... these guys had a chunk of plane land on their conference table across the street from the world trade center on 9/11), and Lori Ann Reed (head of AIGA/New Orleans... days after Katrina) talked about what designers could do to shore up the flagging social capital of our country... which made me think that we need to invent a special design forces corp that could sweep into a disaster area in a hummer outfitted with a giant banner making digital printer (ala the bookmobile that prints books on the fly) to post useful directional and informational signage (big print'm out banners that flack jacket wearing commandos could tear off and slap on the sides of whatever is left standing) for the evacuees and survivors so they can find safety (Lori Ann Reed noted that during Katrina there was really no way for her to tell if it was safe to go certain directions in town or what was truth and what was sensationalizm)... Hockenberry noted the old Civil Defense (CD) signage that used to instill a sense of assurance on us when we grew up... that there was a plan...he also wondered why cnn could have a graphic designer whip up a"katrina news" graphic so fast yet getting clear directions out of a disaster strewn town (that wallmart could get stuff to by the way even when the mayor/gov/et al. couldn't) was impossible...(though note to self, buy cans of spray paint for home just in case global warming makes my house into beachfront property and I have to write messages to the sky)
3. 2020... at key points during the session 1 minute was given to select designers to do whatever they wanted onstage in front of 2000 people... mixed results but great idea.
4. the point where DJ spooky showed this clip by Hexstatic (ft. Juice Aleem).
5. Michel Gondry's music video ("La Tour De Pise" BY JEAN FRANCOIS COEN) was shown as a short interlude... it was a stunning collage of words and letters "found" around a bustling country (france) that combined to visually spell out all of the words to the song. A great collection of his work is here (just buy it)... you know him, he did eternal sunshine, and a bunch of commercials and video for people like radiohead, chemical brothers, foo fighter, and bjork (human behavior was their first collaboration). See the trailer for the collection (unfortunately the trailer doesn't have the aforementioned video) here.
In the afternoon there were portfolio reviews (of student work) and smaller breakout sessions. I went to Horoshi Ishii's
tangible bits session, not surprising if you follow tangible computing (or are a practioner) but sooooo well articulated and fun.
Then we saw Christopher Walkens and Philippe Starck fighting over some free beer tickets at the evening happy hour (they knocked over John Maeda's wine glass just before tripping on rudy's distended ego), visited Adobe's booth which was covered with these things called Versa Tiles and ate dinner on the champs elysees (uh, no, boston right? hmmm,) ok... we pissed in the alley on a lexus and dined on hummus and fondue (eschewing the crab meat due to my delicate sensibilities).
no doubt the five best parts of today's general session were:
1.Barney Frank (a congressman) talked about the role government should (and shouldn't play) in our lives and how designers could make a difference, he was later joined by John Hockenberry (Dateline/NBC guy, very good MC for the event)for a bit of debate.
2.Design for Democracy designer Dori Tunsdall, Hockenberry, David Gibson (Two Twelve Associates... these guys had a chunk of plane land on their conference table across the street from the world trade center on 9/11), and Lori Ann Reed (head of AIGA/New Orleans... days after Katrina) talked about what designers could do to shore up the flagging social capital of our country... which made me think that we need to invent a special design forces corp that could sweep into a disaster area in a hummer outfitted with a giant banner making digital printer (ala the bookmobile that prints books on the fly) to post useful directional and informational signage (big print'm out banners that flack jacket wearing commandos could tear off and slap on the sides of whatever is left standing) for the evacuees and survivors so they can find safety (Lori Ann Reed noted that during Katrina there was really no way for her to tell if it was safe to go certain directions in town or what was truth and what was sensationalizm)... Hockenberry noted the old Civil Defense (CD) signage that used to instill a sense of assurance on us when we grew up... that there was a plan...he also wondered why cnn could have a graphic designer whip up a"katrina news" graphic so fast yet getting clear directions out of a disaster strewn town (that wallmart could get stuff to by the way even when the mayor/gov/et al. couldn't) was impossible...(though note to self, buy cans of spray paint for home just in case global warming makes my house into beachfront property and I have to write messages to the sky)
3. 2020... at key points during the session 1 minute was given to select designers to do whatever they wanted onstage in front of 2000 people... mixed results but great idea.
4. the point where DJ spooky showed this clip by Hexstatic (ft. Juice Aleem).
5. Michel Gondry's music video ("La Tour De Pise" BY JEAN FRANCOIS COEN) was shown as a short interlude... it was a stunning collage of words and letters "found" around a bustling country (france) that combined to visually spell out all of the words to the song. A great collection of his work is here (just buy it)... you know him, he did eternal sunshine, and a bunch of commercials and video for people like radiohead, chemical brothers, foo fighter, and bjork (human behavior was their first collaboration). See the trailer for the collection (unfortunately the trailer doesn't have the aforementioned video) here.
In the afternoon there were portfolio reviews (of student work) and smaller breakout sessions. I went to Horoshi Ishii's
tangible bits session, not surprising if you follow tangible computing (or are a practioner) but sooooo well articulated and fun.
Then we saw Christopher Walkens and Philippe Starck fighting over some free beer tickets at the evening happy hour (they knocked over John Maeda's wine glass just before tripping on rudy's distended ego), visited Adobe's booth which was covered with these things called Versa Tiles and ate dinner on the champs elysees (uh, no, boston right? hmmm,) ok... we pissed in the alley on a lexus and dined on hummus and fondue (eschewing the crab meat due to my delicate sensibilities).
Monday, September 05, 2005
Big Crunch
Well anyway, that was how I ended up holding the bottle that held the liquid that ended life as we knew it at 5:45pm on a Sunday morning in the year of our lord 2005. Looking back I realize that waking up that day, getting out of bed, was my one fatal mistake. Really it was the breakfast, I needed Cap' n' Crunch to scour away my palette and found none. I guess it was the choice of grocery bots. Or the coupon, yes, that had quite a bit to do with our current stateless state.
Although the new brand, the next thing in crunch had tempted me with its seductive concept. I didn't fall until the price, the coupon, the hunger, the morning of the beginning of the month, all conspired to lend a hand. Actually, the crunch alone -- the new, improved, I finally fell for it, no milk needed, self-soggying, self-repairing, self-refilling, practically self-chewing Cap' n of tomorrow's bowl of love -- didn't really do it.
It was me, not reading, too early, just need me some of that new crunch, counter-indications be damned, gen-gineered milk buying, mixer of things best left unmixed, me.
Although, in hindsight, I think Microsoft, Genentech, Kelloggs, and Farmer Brown at the dairy, even the damn fool Cap' n himself could have thought a little harder about the costs and benefits of this new synergistic 2%.
I still think that if I could find my spoon, and mobilize my buddy list, we could overcome my runaway breakfast before it reaches the earth's crust. I only wish the self-repairing roof of my self-despairing mouth could keep up with my accelerated need for speed. But I'm no friend of Von Neumann Bucky-ball-viral-Cap' n' Crunch, and Microsoft-Genentech Skim. THE THING IS, THEY DON'T MIX. I only wish the warning label was a little bigger, or my bottle of self-fulfilling moo a little smaller, or the supply of carbon atoms in the solar system a little more unlimited, or a little less appealing to all those tin-pot despots of the spoon and bowl.
Although the new brand, the next thing in crunch had tempted me with its seductive concept. I didn't fall until the price, the coupon, the hunger, the morning of the beginning of the month, all conspired to lend a hand. Actually, the crunch alone -- the new, improved, I finally fell for it, no milk needed, self-soggying, self-repairing, self-refilling, practically self-chewing Cap' n of tomorrow's bowl of love -- didn't really do it.
It was me, not reading, too early, just need me some of that new crunch, counter-indications be damned, gen-gineered milk buying, mixer of things best left unmixed, me.
Although, in hindsight, I think Microsoft, Genentech, Kelloggs, and Farmer Brown at the dairy, even the damn fool Cap' n himself could have thought a little harder about the costs and benefits of this new synergistic 2%.
I still think that if I could find my spoon, and mobilize my buddy list, we could overcome my runaway breakfast before it reaches the earth's crust. I only wish the self-repairing roof of my self-despairing mouth could keep up with my accelerated need for speed. But I'm no friend of Von Neumann Bucky-ball-viral-Cap' n' Crunch, and Microsoft-Genentech Skim. THE THING IS, THEY DON'T MIX. I only wish the warning label was a little bigger, or my bottle of self-fulfilling moo a little smaller, or the supply of carbon atoms in the solar system a little more unlimited, or a little less appealing to all those tin-pot despots of the spoon and bowl.
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Backstory part 2: My seester
It began innocently enough, we had walked out onto the porch and discussed the characteristics and properties of a jump to wisconsin, the headwind, drag and associated gravitational effects seemed minimal from our hacienda on the shores (or not too far away from the shores) of lake michigan in the idle county of cook on a summer in the city of chicago. She said she could do it in one jump and proceeded to climb the railing to take flight and as she departed for points west (having little understanding of the directionality or position of our porch with regard to the land of cheese and beer) in a graceful but ultimately ankle breakingly tragic arc we all decided that flying maybe WAS for the birds. How we were later blamed for pushing her off the porch and onto the waiting brick border of our garden (a garden in name only since dirt was the only flower our family could grow) we will never fathom, we few noble men, we 3 brothers in crime where innocent... innocent I tell yah. She was tall and we called her "bossman" and taunted her when she wasn't protecting us from the bullies and roustabouts and 2 bit irish catholic parochial school bastards that hunted us poor public school saints. We had our own harrowing adventures (she and I) with our tank/baby-sitter/gram who smoked 500 packs of cigarettes a day, and liked us to nap so she could get a break from our experiments in creative house destruction. To this day I haven't smoked anything (more than tires on one of our legion of vintage automobiles) because of a promise Alanna extracted out of me during one of our gramtastic adventures. It seemed that at the age of 8 or 9 our grams smoking was the most interesting thing in the world and we didn't let up in our questioning of the activity until said tankgirl of the aughts dragged us into the kitchen, tossed two cigarettes onto the burners of the stove to light them and shoved them into our (now humble please get us outta here dear god don't not that yikes) mouths. "There!" gram grunted as fire shot from her eyes, "Smoke." Huddling in our room afterwards my sister made us each tearfully swear to never, ever touch the cancersticks (it was fairly obvious that smoking would lead to thick pseudo irish accents, shelalee clubbings, and fire shooting out of your eyes while you accosted small children and snored the shingles off of fine victorian homes of distinction and we wanted nothing to do with it). Our promise seemed to work until I broke both arms in a fateful revisiting of the porch railing (this time atop an 8' unicycle of my own design, but that's another story) was rushed to the emergency room, doped up on painkillers and dragged out, arms in casts to my first "explorer" party by said sister bossman confidant teen rebel trying to cheer up the numb 16 year old on his second day off for summer vacation. She smoked? She drank (so did I as my casts became canvases for duct taped beer cans and hastily scrawled "get wells" from the neighborhood scouts of distinction)! But.... we.... made a promise. The teen years were enlightening and growing up was a joy... but smoking? Luckily it didn't last long (youthful rebellion was writ small in our family because there was little to rebel against as we were mcmani against the world more than anything else). She was ultimately my secret weapon against becoming a complete social outcast, she still surprises me (I'm the one who could climb mountains as a youth, the monkeyboy of rogers park, and she's the one who now runs marathons while I make epic movements of bits and bytes as I exercise my fingers and fain health in the downward spiral of a body well past any sort of expected expiration date). I don't see Alanna much anymore, in our family where there was never really a goodbye or a hello, never a stranger that didn't become a friend/freeloader/dinner guest, never a need to call because life just happened and you were together when you were and love was a birthright and a waiting hug in our mother's arms (even when she was too weak to walk and we were gargantuan ogres of early middle gauge), but I know she's somewhere out there, the new center of gravity of the bombastic clan mcmani (because all the boys are so blind and callous that we'd be hardpressed to care for anyone but our own damn selves), bossman lives.
books for the end of summer
More books? Yes, I don't sleep and I just started a little vacation.
Bidness?
"The World is Flat" - A short history of the 21st century (just buy the damn book and read it, its fast and has real case studies into why the 21st century is going to be a wild ride)...
"Freakonomics"... fun collision of statistical analysis and politically incorrect questions (does naming your kid a funny name change his life? did Roe V Wade make the crime spree of the 90's plummet? why do crack dealers live with their moms?) ... the world's leading young economist collaborates with a number of researchers to ask how the world really works (versus how we'd like it to work).
Recreation?
I probably mentioned this somewhere else but if you haven't read Neil Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle" or "Cryptonomicon" you're missing out (this is only for those people who actually enjoy reading, alot...) he likes to write and digresses and cross cuts and does all sorts of flourishes along the way. Learn about where the word assassin comes from, how money became money, the dangers of being a woman in 15th and 16th century europe, the birth life and death and rebirth of Isaac Newton, the beginnings of computing and various wars carnage and wordplay.
Speaking of assassins... "The Partly Cloudy Patriot" and "Assassination Vacation" both by Sarah Vowel were just plain fun ramblings about our own sordid american history. Who knew that if abraham lincoln's son showed up in town, a president would die (3 did including lincoln himself). Or that the people who brought us fine cookware today started as a sex cult in the northeast devoted to town-wide sex (a sacrament of God) but sadly not love.
"Middlesex" by the guy who wrote the Virgin Suicides is absorbing and quixotic. About a couple coming to America from Greece at the turn of the last century (and doing not so smart things with their homegrown genetic laboratory of a family) and the outcome of such tinkering in a small suburb of life called middlesex.
"Fortress of Solitude" by Jonathan Lethem is a bittersweet (oops sounds like a book review) snapshot of growing up in NYC in the 70's. Any of Jon's books are delectable (he does absurd ones too). Damaged and broken characters (I just described us all) try hard to grow up amidst the "brickhouses" and gangland hijinks of the inner city. I note "brickhouse" a classic song from the times because the main character has an ear and a love for music. The main character is also a superhero after a drunk falls from the sky and gives him his ring (did I mention that part yet?)
"Motherless Brooklyn" also by JL is a detective thriller with a twist. The main character has tourette's syndrome and he and his brothers (all homeless boys who grew up in a home for unwanted children) are on a quest to solve a murder. Funny and sad and beautiful.
"The Men Who Stare at Goats" by Jon Ronson (the guy who wrote the most prescient and comically tragic book about extremists... pre 9/11... and who they think are after them... called "Them: Adventures with Extremists"). This time he looks into the true story of a covert part of the government that stare at goats (trying to burst their hearts), walk into walls, dress like flower power commandos and generally try to do things telekinetic and odd for their country.
Speaking of Jons, "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" is a pretty impressive tale of almost true history about magicians in the early times (maybe 1600s or 1700s?) of england. I don't generally like fantasy but this one is compelling.
"The Dante Club"... a fun "who done it" based on dante's inferno and the real life characters that tried to bring it to america back in the early 1900s... murder mystery for people who like litter ahh chew uh.
"Never Let Me Go"... by the guy who wrote "Remains of the Day".... about kids raised in a private academy for some sort of shadowy purpose. I didn't really get into this one too much and kept waiting for something more to happen... but you with your smaller brain and prehensile tail may find it compelling.
"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" was good. Autistic sleuth tries to figure out who killed a neighborhood dog. Really well done with an intriguing taste of what its like to be autistic in a world where everyone else can filter out the noise.
Sci-Fi Fluff (obviously this list is drifting that way by this point so...)?
Charles Stross has some pretty hard sci-fi stuff going on (kinda ian banks english dry wit)... "Iron Sunrise" and "Singularity Sky." Good read if you're looking for escape.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.'s "Flash" is also pretty good fluff, its set in a world where product placement is king and politicians have figured out how to manipulate minds with it (no surprises) and there is the requisite exmarine do gooder caught in the middle of a conspiracy, modified by a shadowy "Q" like AI and on the run...
Just got Kim Stanley Robinson's "Forty Signs of Rain" but haven't started it yet...
(I'd say "stay tuned" but I just don't post stuff very often.... so go grab a snack).
Bidness?
"The World is Flat" - A short history of the 21st century (just buy the damn book and read it, its fast and has real case studies into why the 21st century is going to be a wild ride)...
"Freakonomics"... fun collision of statistical analysis and politically incorrect questions (does naming your kid a funny name change his life? did Roe V Wade make the crime spree of the 90's plummet? why do crack dealers live with their moms?) ... the world's leading young economist collaborates with a number of researchers to ask how the world really works (versus how we'd like it to work).
Recreation?
I probably mentioned this somewhere else but if you haven't read Neil Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle" or "Cryptonomicon" you're missing out (this is only for those people who actually enjoy reading, alot...) he likes to write and digresses and cross cuts and does all sorts of flourishes along the way. Learn about where the word assassin comes from, how money became money, the dangers of being a woman in 15th and 16th century europe, the birth life and death and rebirth of Isaac Newton, the beginnings of computing and various wars carnage and wordplay.
Speaking of assassins... "The Partly Cloudy Patriot" and "Assassination Vacation" both by Sarah Vowel were just plain fun ramblings about our own sordid american history. Who knew that if abraham lincoln's son showed up in town, a president would die (3 did including lincoln himself). Or that the people who brought us fine cookware today started as a sex cult in the northeast devoted to town-wide sex (a sacrament of God) but sadly not love.
"Middlesex" by the guy who wrote the Virgin Suicides is absorbing and quixotic. About a couple coming to America from Greece at the turn of the last century (and doing not so smart things with their homegrown genetic laboratory of a family) and the outcome of such tinkering in a small suburb of life called middlesex.
"Fortress of Solitude" by Jonathan Lethem is a bittersweet (oops sounds like a book review) snapshot of growing up in NYC in the 70's. Any of Jon's books are delectable (he does absurd ones too). Damaged and broken characters (I just described us all) try hard to grow up amidst the "brickhouses" and gangland hijinks of the inner city. I note "brickhouse" a classic song from the times because the main character has an ear and a love for music. The main character is also a superhero after a drunk falls from the sky and gives him his ring (did I mention that part yet?)
"Motherless Brooklyn" also by JL is a detective thriller with a twist. The main character has tourette's syndrome and he and his brothers (all homeless boys who grew up in a home for unwanted children) are on a quest to solve a murder. Funny and sad and beautiful.
"The Men Who Stare at Goats" by Jon Ronson (the guy who wrote the most prescient and comically tragic book about extremists... pre 9/11... and who they think are after them... called "Them: Adventures with Extremists"). This time he looks into the true story of a covert part of the government that stare at goats (trying to burst their hearts), walk into walls, dress like flower power commandos and generally try to do things telekinetic and odd for their country.
Speaking of Jons, "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" is a pretty impressive tale of almost true history about magicians in the early times (maybe 1600s or 1700s?) of england. I don't generally like fantasy but this one is compelling.
"The Dante Club"... a fun "who done it" based on dante's inferno and the real life characters that tried to bring it to america back in the early 1900s... murder mystery for people who like litter ahh chew uh.
"Never Let Me Go"... by the guy who wrote "Remains of the Day".... about kids raised in a private academy for some sort of shadowy purpose. I didn't really get into this one too much and kept waiting for something more to happen... but you with your smaller brain and prehensile tail may find it compelling.
"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" was good. Autistic sleuth tries to figure out who killed a neighborhood dog. Really well done with an intriguing taste of what its like to be autistic in a world where everyone else can filter out the noise.
Sci-Fi Fluff (obviously this list is drifting that way by this point so...)?
Charles Stross has some pretty hard sci-fi stuff going on (kinda ian banks english dry wit)... "Iron Sunrise" and "Singularity Sky." Good read if you're looking for escape.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.'s "Flash" is also pretty good fluff, its set in a world where product placement is king and politicians have figured out how to manipulate minds with it (no surprises) and there is the requisite exmarine do gooder caught in the middle of a conspiracy, modified by a shadowy "Q" like AI and on the run...
Just got Kim Stanley Robinson's "Forty Signs of Rain" but haven't started it yet...
(I'd say "stay tuned" but I just don't post stuff very often.... so go grab a snack).
Monday, May 09, 2005
Reading I've been doing over the last 6-9 months...
Books I've recently finished...
"Unbelievably Loud and Incredibly Close".... best book of the year so far. Heartbreaking and bittersweet, funny and endlessly inventive 9 year old new yorker who loses his father in the twin towers tragedy spends the novel trying to figure out if his father (who loved to lead his son on wild treasure hunts with obscure clues) left some sort of message for him. The book also intercuts the story of his grandparents as world war 2 survivors coming to america....
Good example of kid's clever mind? he invents a birdseed shirt so that people who work in high rises could jump out the window and pigeons would attach themselves to the shirt to eat and fly the person to safety... giant LED ticker tape displays on the top of ambulances so that as they pass below you (manhattan apartment dweller) it could sense that you're looking and if a friend is inside the ambulance it could say "don't worry, I'll be ok" or "I love you, give julie a hug", etc.
I also read his first book (Jonathan Safran Foer) "Everything is Illuminated".... its going to be a movie this summer. Not as captivating so if you read it and stopped... go buy Incredibly close...
"Naked Pictures of Famous People" jon stewart's book of absurd short stories of him visiting and hanging out with various famous people (when hanging out with kennedy and his family kennedy's mom has 3-05 more kids and tosses the rejects.. those without dashing looks... under the stairs)... it was ok, but America the Book is better.
"The Wisdom of Crowds"... a fascinating book about the four main elements of successful group decision making with real world studies across a variety of decision-making types of things... (best real world example.. a sub was lost, the guy looking for it gave 5 different types of people, oceanographer, sub captain, weatherman, etc.... all the info he had... fuel consumption, last known heading, etc. then averaged the results and when the found the sub it was 30 meters from the answer)...
good companion to a fluffier book called "Blink"... pretty pop psych kinda thing about how people make nearly instant decisions and how/when they make "good" ones... fun if you don't know the state of this sort of art... good example? it turns out that the first rule of improvization is "go with it" if someone comes up to you during improv and says something like "oh, I see you lost your leg" the immediate reaction is to deny it... if you go with it, it usually turns out to be funny (because unexpected and often absurd)...
"Time Travelers Wife" (worth reading, fun with meeting yourself and teaching you how to steal stuff.... since time travelers can't bring their clothes or wallets with them). Very engaging, my baby loved it too, so that's gotta mean something.
David Sedaris's new book of stories (he just kills me). If you want to read about screwed up families you can do no better than reading this book (too lazy to walk 5 feet to see the name of the book tho.... just google it, uhh, wait I could google it.....must....slide mouse...reach open new window....button and type amazon.com... ). Its called "Dress your family in Corduroy and Denim" and then there is this aref plus some kind of incredibly overused punctuation thingy and http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0316143464/qid=1093698692/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/102-2253528-5735300?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 and then another something something.
ok, I'm just saying that blogger could make my life a little easier by not punishing me for using a mac(ignore this if you don't get it).
David's best known as a contributor to this american life. My favorite book of his is "Me Talk Pretty One Day"
Devil in the White City is amazing history. All true, fine testament to what humans can accomplish (both evil and wonderful). Set in my hometown circa 1890 when they built the world's fair (right after paris did the whole... oui, we have built a big tower and eeet eeez an eyefull.)
Iron Council by China Mieville. I don't like fantasy as a rule, but this guy can write good stuff (gritty london circa 3000 years in the future after some sort of bad thing happened). Everything I've read by him is really fun. his unofficial homepage here
Dune: The battle for Corrin. Ok, I've been rereading all of frank herbert's stuff, and all of his son's prequels and I think I'm just about done. This one is a bit formulaic and might have been generated by a computer somewhere inside of google (you know that new "sets" thing that will write a book for you if you list three or four books that kinda are like the book you want).... but if you have neurons to waste go for it.
I also reread a bunch of Ian Banks stuff (Consider Phlebas, The State of the Art), he's got such a dry evil brit wit. If you're a reader, try to find Feersum Endjinn. About a generation ship that has been sailing for a very long time (hint the title is an example of the entire warped language that you'll have to read throughout the book, since english doesn't stay the same over a very long period of time).
"I thought my Father was God"... a great collection of "true" stories collected by NPR for their national stories project (actually a great idea, they asked listeners to send in short true life stories and then each week read them out loud).
Also I just bought my son "stranger in a strange land".... should I have done that? I seem to remember thinking that this was a good book for someone once they where an adult (I think I read it in my teeens). At least he'll learn how to grok.
"Unbelievably Loud and Incredibly Close".... best book of the year so far. Heartbreaking and bittersweet, funny and endlessly inventive 9 year old new yorker who loses his father in the twin towers tragedy spends the novel trying to figure out if his father (who loved to lead his son on wild treasure hunts with obscure clues) left some sort of message for him. The book also intercuts the story of his grandparents as world war 2 survivors coming to america....
Good example of kid's clever mind? he invents a birdseed shirt so that people who work in high rises could jump out the window and pigeons would attach themselves to the shirt to eat and fly the person to safety... giant LED ticker tape displays on the top of ambulances so that as they pass below you (manhattan apartment dweller) it could sense that you're looking and if a friend is inside the ambulance it could say "don't worry, I'll be ok" or "I love you, give julie a hug", etc.
I also read his first book (Jonathan Safran Foer) "Everything is Illuminated".... its going to be a movie this summer. Not as captivating so if you read it and stopped... go buy Incredibly close...
"Naked Pictures of Famous People" jon stewart's book of absurd short stories of him visiting and hanging out with various famous people (when hanging out with kennedy and his family kennedy's mom has 3-05 more kids and tosses the rejects.. those without dashing looks... under the stairs)... it was ok, but America the Book is better.
"The Wisdom of Crowds"... a fascinating book about the four main elements of successful group decision making with real world studies across a variety of decision-making types of things... (best real world example.. a sub was lost, the guy looking for it gave 5 different types of people, oceanographer, sub captain, weatherman, etc.... all the info he had... fuel consumption, last known heading, etc. then averaged the results and when the found the sub it was 30 meters from the answer)...
good companion to a fluffier book called "Blink"... pretty pop psych kinda thing about how people make nearly instant decisions and how/when they make "good" ones... fun if you don't know the state of this sort of art... good example? it turns out that the first rule of improvization is "go with it" if someone comes up to you during improv and says something like "oh, I see you lost your leg" the immediate reaction is to deny it... if you go with it, it usually turns out to be funny (because unexpected and often absurd)...
"Time Travelers Wife" (worth reading, fun with meeting yourself and teaching you how to steal stuff.... since time travelers can't bring their clothes or wallets with them). Very engaging, my baby loved it too, so that's gotta mean something.
David Sedaris's new book of stories (he just kills me). If you want to read about screwed up families you can do no better than reading this book (too lazy to walk 5 feet to see the name of the book tho.... just google it, uhh, wait I could google it.....must....slide mouse...reach open new window....button and type amazon.com... ). Its called "Dress your family in Corduroy and Denim" and then there is this aref plus some kind of incredibly overused punctuation thingy and http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0316143464/qid=1093698692/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/102-2253528-5735300?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 and then another something something.
ok, I'm just saying that blogger could make my life a little easier by not punishing me for using a mac(ignore this if you don't get it).
David's best known as a contributor to this american life. My favorite book of his is "Me Talk Pretty One Day"
Devil in the White City is amazing history. All true, fine testament to what humans can accomplish (both evil and wonderful). Set in my hometown circa 1890 when they built the world's fair (right after paris did the whole... oui, we have built a big tower and eeet eeez an eyefull.)
Iron Council by China Mieville. I don't like fantasy as a rule, but this guy can write good stuff (gritty london circa 3000 years in the future after some sort of bad thing happened). Everything I've read by him is really fun. his unofficial homepage here
Dune: The battle for Corrin. Ok, I've been rereading all of frank herbert's stuff, and all of his son's prequels and I think I'm just about done. This one is a bit formulaic and might have been generated by a computer somewhere inside of google (you know that new "sets" thing that will write a book for you if you list three or four books that kinda are like the book you want).... but if you have neurons to waste go for it.
I also reread a bunch of Ian Banks stuff (Consider Phlebas, The State of the Art), he's got such a dry evil brit wit. If you're a reader, try to find Feersum Endjinn. About a generation ship that has been sailing for a very long time (hint the title is an example of the entire warped language that you'll have to read throughout the book, since english doesn't stay the same over a very long period of time).
"I thought my Father was God"... a great collection of "true" stories collected by NPR for their national stories project (actually a great idea, they asked listeners to send in short true life stories and then each week read them out loud).
Also I just bought my son "stranger in a strange land".... should I have done that? I seem to remember thinking that this was a good book for someone once they where an adult (I think I read it in my teeens). At least he'll learn how to grok.
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