Moby Giving Free Music Away

One of my favorite musical artists Moby announced in March he would be giving away a free copy of ambient sleeping music. I just had the chance to download it today, and boy is it relaxing.....

Wrigley Field's New Look

About two weeks ago, I went with a few friends of mine to see Chicago alternative rock legends Local H play at the Metro. (It was the twentieth anniversary shows of their pivotal record As Good As Dead.) The show was terrific.

But one of the more surprising treats was seeing some of the new renovations at Wrigley Field. I absolutely love what they have done to the outside facade. It looks like they are really going through their history books, and making Wrigley look like what it did in the 19 teens. Below are some pics I took.

Podcasting Idea

About a year ago my friend Steve Anderson and I developed an idea for a podcast. The name of this idea is: "The Looking Glass". This potential program would examine how people became interested in their hobbies. We even came up with a tagline. "The Stories Behind Personal Interests". I really like this idea. It's a way to explore a person's story through a very personal mechanism. We all have hobbies, and we all can talk about them. But how we got into them is a much deeper story. Usually a parent, friend, or teacher introduced us to them. And this is the avenue of story-telling that I really want to explore.

Thus far I've been able to produce two episodes. The pilot episodes explores how a man, William Kalush, became interested in magic and Harry Houdini. It's one of my all-time favorite audio pieces I've created. You can hear it hear because Blogger won't let me embed two SoundCloud players in a single post.

The second episode features a person by the name of Nick Soulsby and it tells the story of how he became a fan of Nirvana. This too is an episode full of fascinating stories, and it tells the Nirvana story from a unique perspective. You can hear it below.



One of the top podcasting networks in the work is a network called Radiotopia. It is the home to such great podcasts as 99% Invisible, Love+Radio, and Fugitive Waves by the Kitchen Sisters. About a month ago, Radiotopia announced a contest where you could submit you idea for a podcast, and if you won, you could potential have your podcast join the Radiotopia network. So I decided to do something outside my comfort zone, and earlier tonight (Tuesday, April 12th, 2016) I have submitted the Looking Glass to Radiotopia for consideration.

I don't know what will happen. But I am just really happy that I did it. Of course it would be great if I advanced in the process, but in the end it really doesn't matter. I'm still going to produce this program no matter what. I'm still going to uncover really exciting stories, and share them with the world. That's a real joy.

Arrow 11:59

www.cwtv.com

I literally just finished watching the latest episode of Arrow entitled 11:59. HOLY CRAP!!! What an episode!! This season of Arrow has been outstanding, and the primary reason has to be this season's villain Damien Darhk. He is a dastardly, file character.

This may sound weird, but this season of Arrow reminds me of a wrestling angle. The good guys just keep coming up short in defeating the bad guy every week. The bad guy is charismatic and down right evil. It is captivating and leaves on the edge of your seat every week. I cannot wait for Darhk to get his comeuppance. Such wonderfully done television entertainment. What an enjoyable journey it has been thus far.

If you haven't watched Arrow this season due to the lack lust third season, find it on Hulu immediately and start binge watching. You will not be disappointed.  It is a prime example of superhero storytelling at its finest.

Music That Puts a Smile on Your Face

This past week has been a pretty stressful week. Luckily the week has ended on a positive, and what was a stressful situation can now fade away into a memory. To help myself celebrate I put a Fats Domino record on my turntable. Domino's music... I can't say enough about it. It is almost impossible for me to listen to him without a big smile on my face. It's just happy music, and puts me in a happy place.

To help everyone get into a happy place, I present Fats Domino.

New Single from Yeasayer

Over the weekend I was listening to SiriusXMU. While I was going about my business, a song came on the air that stopped me dead in my tracks. (I love when a song is that powerful to do that to you.) The new single from Brooklyn band Yeasayer called: "Silly Me".

The best way I can describe this song is old school 1980s New Wave meets LCD Soundsystem. It's dance-able, hip, and catchy as all hell. I'm making a bold prediction that this could be the song of the summer.

Do We Over Use Ideas?

Photo Credit: Amazon.com

I'm currently reading a wonderful collection of essays written by Christy Wampole entitled: "The Other Serious". The essays primarily focus on "big picture" ideas. Thus far, it has been a fascinating read, and I encourage everyone to check it out. One essay I would particularly like to focus on is entitled: "The Great American Irony Binge" Wampole explores whether or not American culture is over using irony. (Spoiler Alert: we are.)

According to Wampole the primary culprit for this over use of irony is social media and the Internet. I don't want to go too much more detail pertaining to her reasoning for this hypothesis because I think you should read the essay. But I will say that Wampole does an absolutely elegant job supporting her hypothesis. It's truly a captivating essay.

I read this essay two days ago, but I'm still thinking about it. A single idea keeps popping into my head, and that is if people read more, particular books, would this problem even exist? With digital media, anyone can have a blog, podcast, or video series. Which is great. It's democratizing the media. But with all of the positives, there is a drawback that society didn't take into account. Creating truly good media is hard. It takes years of training and practicing to understand how to organize thoughts, the acts of stories, and which is the best way to present said story/idea. Just because you can do something, doesn't necessarily mean that you should do. That's one of the benefits of the "professional" media. Not everyone is published, or broadcasted. Theoretically this portion of the media should be the best of the best. (This previous statement is always up for debate.) 

So how does all of this tie back into people reading more. Well, since we now have limitless creators, we tend to spend more time on the Internet. We as a society are always looking for new ideas, forms of entertainment, and what have you. The Internet is home to the aforementioned, unfortunately however, it is also home to complete chaos and negativity. Thoughts aren't always completely organized or thought out. There's also a general nastiness that exists online that unfortunately can be contagious for a few. And quite frankly, the Internet is home to information overload. An individual can't always process everything that is being thrown at them.

A printed book is different though. It is only home to a select amount of information. And yes some of that information can and is negativity, just like the Internet, but I feel that it's a little more self-contained. Ultimately I think that the knowledge you obtain from a traditional book is so much more long lasting than information that can be changed at the drop of a hat. Case in point, I'm still thinking about the ideas Wampole presented in her essay. I cannot remember the last time this has happened to me with Internet content.

I don't think that we should completely abandoned the Internet, or that everything on here is bad. But it may be a good idea that every once in awhile we diversify how we get our content. It doesn't always have to come from the Internet.