Don't Stop Believing

Listening to: Janelle Monae, "Dance or Die." You've probably been reading about Ms. Monae everywhere recently, I know I have (in the unlikeliest of places too). I thought she came out a few years ago but turns out that was just an EP. Her debut album is garnering rave reviews and in an effort to re-jump on the wagon, I'm giving her stuff lots of spins. Dance or Die is so far my favorite, perhaps influenced by the mini-appearance of Saul Williams. And if you haven't seen Janelle's Tightrope video and the shuffle dancing, you should probably get to it. I mean, it's been months since it was big you know?

A few months ago I was pushing the magic of Google Reader on everyone. If you still aren't using it, well, what can I do? Today I'm here to talk about Reader bloat, a problem that affects everyone on some level or another. Organizing your Reader is a huge task, similar to cleaning up your MP3 collection. A task like this can literally take days and if you're anal like me, once you get started you can't stop. Periodically I try to do a spring computer life cleaning but I've somehow managed to let my Reader grow to epic proportions with no design or control. That had to stop. I could literally waste hours of my life cruising through my Reader, starring items for more in-depth reading, and then reposting stuff on my Tumblr.

When I returned from Europe a few weeks ago, my Reader was easily into the few thousands. After thinking about it a moment, I simply hit "mark all as read" and got back down to zero. What did I miss out from all those thousands of links and articles? I guess I'll never know will I? Fundamentally my life is probably unchanged but I do feel like it's important to keep on top of some news and events. Having a svelte, precision orientated Reader is the way to achieve success. First off, let me recommend Reeder, a RSS reader that is available for $2.99 and makes reading feeds on your iPhone that much faster. While it's not a significantly different experience from using the generic Safari Google Reader site, it is worth purchasing if you're a heavy RSS consumer.

Having said that, let's look at the challenge ahead of me. As of yesterday morning I had over 800 blogs or websites I was subscribed to. Eight freaking hundred. No human can go through that many things and stay on top of it. My immediate goal was to trim that number by half. The biggest problem I had was that I was a feed addict. I'd easily add five new feeds a day, anything that caught my eye and might be worth following. Sure I used a "temporary" folder to try to filter what eventually made it through but I wasn't diligent about keeping the walls up. New feeds would get tossed in without any review process.

Well, my friend Chris showed me this article about Patrick Rhone's RSS system and it was much needed. I love lists, I love ranking things, I love figuring out what should be ahead of what. Clearly I needed to reorganize my RSS feeds around this structure. Roll out the red carpet for some feeds, back of the line for the others. The problem was I needed to separate those hundreds of feeds into their respective subject matters first. My broad categories prior to this reorganization was "people, entertainment, writing/books, and geek." That wasn't going to cut it. Before I could figure out which feeds were my a-list, b-list, and so on, I wanted to tag my feeds topically.

Somehow I decided to go from four categories to like twenty. Overkill but Google Reader doesn't have sub-folders and I figured I might as well slice as thinly as possible. So my four folder system transformed into: People, Friends, Moblogs, Opinion, Art, Asian, Sports, Movies & TV, Music, Digital, Games, Comics, Books, Publishing, Writers, YA, SF, Friends (defunct), My Stuff, and finally Probation. What's the difference you might ask between say, books and publishing? Well some blogs talk about upcoming books, feature reviews and the like, while some blogs are just about the industry or how to get published. In fact, I might have left out a category for "writing" focusing on sites with writing advice and such.

This pretty much covers most of the sort of blog and sites I'm into at the moment. Now to do a little cutting. Anything not updated in the past three months or so I cut. It was hard, I'm not gonna lie, killing feeds that I'd hoped would update. I mean, that's the beauty of RSS, you don't need to be around every day watching for an update. Just throw in the RSS and be alerted when a post goes up. I couldn't bring myself to eliminate my friends' blogs, so I made a folder for their defunct blogs, just in case someone revives one and I need to send a quick "Welcome back!" email. I know, I have an unhealthy relationship with the past and how it intersects with hope. I'm working on it.

After all this work guess how many feeds I'm only down to? 587. That's right. I'm nowhere near my goal and after going through and being a crazy person and making sure the naming structure for each individual feed was consistent I've lost all steam and motivation. I'll have to rest knowing that a system is in place and I'll whittle my RSS collection to a manageable number soon. You'd think I learned my lesson with Reader after watching my Delicious tags go all wild and woolly earlier. But no, I never learn. Don't you make that same mistake.

Inception (2010)

So far Christopher Nolan has written the screenplay for Memento (adapted from a short story by his brother), Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Prestige, and Inception. There's a lot of quality mind blowing in there and Inception is probably the best of the lot. I'd normally have a ton to say about a movie like this but it's only fair for people to watch it with as little information as possible. This is one of those movies that will be jibber jabbered about for months and even if I have my quibbles with it, it's a spectacular way to spend two and a half hours.

You better hurry though because the hype is already huge and you're bound to hear things you'd rather not hear. We went Friday night and both 10:15pm showings were already sold out. Unbelievable. I had no idea this movie was going to open so big but it looks like it's going to be the summer blockbuster.

Inception features quite the incredible cast. Leo, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger (!), Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine, Lukas Hass, Pete Postlethwaite, and the list goes on and on. Somehow Tom Hardy as Eames basically steals the show. I've never seen Hardy before but he's like a Daniel Craig with charisma.

After you watch the movie, let's talk. But probably check out this link first, covering a few different theories. And then we'll figure out a few of our own. And then maybe we'll go watch it again.

Update: This is an interesting note about the music of Inception.

The Big One

Listening to: A River Valentine, "Next to You." I heard a snippet of this while watching My Life as Liz and just had to find it. I mean, the first few lines are: "When I wake up in the morning / And my breath just stinks so fresh / How you still think I'm beautiful / Even when my hair's a mess." Also, even though the show is sort of a fabricated sham, it's pretty great and I slalomed through all nine Liz episodes in short order.

From the network that brought you "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," it's the best new show on television, Huge! For the record, I have a friend who actually watches The Secret Life of the American Teenager, mostly when she's home sick from work as a high powered lawyer. It's her shameful little secret. I haven't seen much of Secret Life but the title alone makes it probably watch worthy.

I wonder what the new TGIF is now. You remember TGIF right? Four half hour comedies with the tentpoles being Family Matters and Step by Step? (By the way, I had no idea that TGIF was supposed to mean "Thank Goodness It's Funny.") George and I used to get so excited to start our weekend right with some light laughs, before we were forced to go to Chinese school and other lame things the next few days. Maybe TGIF was the entertainment highlight of our lives. I know, don't judge us; We weren't born in this country. Also, if you need to rewatch the Urkel Dance, it's right here.

Somehow I doubt kids nowadays sit around on Friday nights awaiting programming of any sort. I can't imagine why they would need to with everything online and cell phones and social lives already kicking in by middle school. Sometimes I forget to avoid the local strip mall on weekend evenings and end up getting slammed by 12-16 year olds just hanging out around the movie theater. There are so many of them and they all act so cool and with it, like their Friday night is going to be better than my Friday night. They're probably right actually, come to think of it.

Anyway, so I don't know who stays in to watch ABC Family but it would be a shame if you aren't slotting Huge into your DVR.

Winnie Holzman, the genius writer behind My So Called Life -- she also did the musical book version of Wicked -- is in charge of this show. She's co-producing and co-writing Huge with her daughter, Savannah Dooley. For those of you who don't know MSCL, well, we probably shouldn't be friends anyway. But if you were a fan, you'll be glad to note that Huge has the same mix of intelligent humor, wonderfully poignant moments, and overall tartness/painfulness that made MSCL work so well. While I don't see Huge becoming iconic like MSCL, it's so much better after just one episode than 90% of the stuff on TV already. Bonus move: casting the Hoff's daughter, Hayley, as one of the leads.

One of the Huge characters adds the slow "like" in-between most of his words, a very Rickey thing to do. I'm excited for more MSCL nods while watching the show. Another of those nods so far is Paul Dooley, who played Patty's overbearing and judgemental father, and has nearly the exact same role this time around. Sidenote: I saw Tom Irwin, who played Angela's dad on MSCL, in a bit part in the recent Grey's Anatomy finale. I wanted to cry for him that his career had devolved to playing a cop on the worst overly dramatic show on television. Then again, it's not like MSCL ran long enough to give any of the participants financial success or much of a follow up career. I mean, where's Rayanne been? Sigh. AJ Langer I miss you.

Anyway, get ready to kick back Mondays at nine to watch Huge with me. Or we'll just watch it separately online whenever we have time or whatever. Appointment television is so two decades ago.

The Sound of Silence

Currently pushing: The artist who did the inset illustration is Nanami Cowdroy, originally from Australia. If I could, I would link you to everything she's done because it's just great stuff. Google her or check out this compilation and you'll see what I mean. She combines a few familiar elements and themes -- graffiti, gold fish, paper cranes -- but makes it all her own. My friend just bought some prints of hers and I can't wait to see them framed and displayed on his walls.

One of the endorsements from Slate's Culture Gabfest this week was music critic Robert Christgau's reviews. Christgau is known for his "terse capsule reviews," often summing up an entire album in less than a hundred words. A comprehensive collection of his stuff is being collected at his site. Make sure to read the User's Guide to the Consumer Guide and his grading system before diving in.

As a sample of his stuff, I checked the bands I normally cite as my favorites: Alanis Morissette, Gang Starr, Jewel, Tribe, and The Roots. Then I started just throwing random bands in there and found gems such as Christgau's review of Warren G's "Regulate...G Funk Era."

"Where his homeboy Snoop plays a well-chilled sociopath whose indifference to pain is the centerpiece of his carefully plotted menace, Dr. Dre's kid half-brother is more like a mischievous seventh-grader. Giggling at Bootsy's funny glasses one minute, selling crack on the corner the next, he could go either way, or both in tandem. His cool and his tough are less practiced, less cocksure, hence more dangerous -- and more tragic. Teamed with the tunefully murderous Nate Dogg, he's nasty in a new, neurotic way. Giving work to the Twinz or Dove Shack, he's one more G."

There's a lot of great stuff in there, even if the reviews are light on the current stuff (mainly because they seem to be excerpts and maybe there are permission issues?). For example, there's only four words given to Jason Mraz and just one sentence for La Roux. Then again, maybe Christgau's just getting more concise as his reviews of John Mayer's oeuvre demonstrates that less is often enough. Recent reviews include A-minuses for Tegan and Sara, Girls, LCD Soundsystem and The National. Plus a sterling A for The xx, who I've been getting into.

The RSS feed for Christgau's MSN Music hosted reviews is a must add. It isn't easy to sum up an album, a movie, a book, a person, anything, in less than a hundred words but Christgau has made it an art form.

Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)

For some perspective, here are my reviews of Twilight and New Moon. Basically I thoroughly enjoyed the first one and was underwhelmed by the second. The third one is arguably the best in the series, mainly because there's more action all around and a bit more backstory for the other vampires. While I logically knew the vampy origins for Jasper and Rosalie were thrown in to give Jackson Rathbone and Nikki Reed something to do, I enjoyed the look away from the nauseating Edward-Bella-Jacob love triangle.

The entire movie is long shots of Robert Pattinson or Kristen Stewart looking forlorn or at each other -- nothing new there. I think I caught Kristen smiling once, probably understanding that she's past the halfway mark on these movies. Still, Pattinson and Stewart's beautiful faces are what fangirls (and fanboys?) came for so it's hard to be critical. I found myself reaching for the fast forward button during the emotional exchanges between Edward and Bella, hoping for the next bit of plot to unspool.

And the plot here wasn't bad. A newborn vampire army; lots of good looking CGI werewolves; Bryce Dallas Howard recast as Victoria, the red headed vampire out for revenge. Of course, the big attraction is Edward versus Jacob. I thought the absolute best scene was watching Edward and Jacob become semi-friends as Jacob happily snuggles up to a freezing Bella, keeping her warm in a storm. See, Edward's a blood cold vampire and can't offer her any warmth. Deep no?

Because I'm squarely Team Edward -- despite his overbearing personality -- I feel like Jacob is just a meddlesome home wrecker. Despite all her protests of "no means no," Jacob just keeps plugging on. She doesn't love you (as much), get over it! What's exciting is that I know what's coming in movie four so can't wait to see how they play that out on the big screen. Eclipse is probably the best movie of the three but without the push and character introductions of the original, I can't give it full marks.

Oh right, I hate Dakota Fanning. Is this a Tumblr already? fucknodakotafanning! I know it's wrong to hate a sixteen year old but I think she started off on the wrong foot with me in I Am Sam. Okay, I don't hate her, that's mean. But I want to gouge my eyes out when she's on-screen.

Freedom Flukes

Currently pushing: Longform.org is a great site with articles, past and present, that are well, long. I'd RSS them if I were you.

Our Friday night wrapped up with an episode of Whale Wars, you know, the show where crazy people people throw themselves (and/or bottles of butyric acid) onto whaling ships in an effort to curb commercial whaling. During most of this episode, they showed captain Paul Watson cunningly decide to navigate the Sea Sheperd through some ice floes in an attempt to ditch his Japanese tail. This genius idea resulted in the Sheperd getting stuck -- they were not equipped with an ice class hull -- and eventually emerging only to find that the practical Japanese ship had simply gone around and was now closer to them than before. There's obviously a lot of unintentional comedy in Whale Wars, but there's also some interesting questions raised.

Questions like: Wait, why are people still hunting whales? What are they providing us with in the 21st century? Is disabling whaling boats one by one the best way to dissuade whalers? Why are the boats using water cannons against each other? Especially ones with a range of about ten feet? Is it biased to only care (more) about magnificent endangered animals at the expense of less cute ones? Why is "Bob Barker" the name of one of the anti-whaling ships? That answer is easily answered at least.

For last month's book club, we read Moby Dick and I got a pretty detailed view of how whaling in the 1800's worked. When they say that Moby Dick has many pages of whaling information, many of them focused on whale physiology and the like, they weren't kidding. For me though, these asides were actually my favorite part of the book, even if they could have been separated out into a companion volume.

Melville's protagonist has a bit about how the population of whales wouldn't ever truly be in danger because the math didn't add up. A whaling ship might return after a two or three year voyage after snaring fifty whales. With the danger and effort required to hunt down whales (whose remains were used for all sorts of essential items), the thinking was that whales wouldn't be eradicated ala the buffalo, which could -- and was -- killed with much more efficiency.

Then along came more technology, which made it much easier to track whales, outspeed whales, and advanced weaponry. If we wanted to, we could probably wipe out our enemy, the whale, in a few years time. Thank goodness we have the International Whaling Commission to avoid this. Oh wait, membership (and a vote) can be gifted to you by the Japanese, even if you might be a land locked country or a country without any prior history of whaling. I learned that little fact watching "The Cove," which is as biased a movie as it is an interesting one. I'd recommend it if not for the total bullying idiocy demonstrated by the activists while making the film.

Over at Long Form, they have an almost 10,000 word long article about killer whales in captivity, "The Killer in the Pool." I don't know if you'd want to spend a few minutes reading it through but it's worth your time -- especially if you're an admirer of marine life like me. One of the questions raised in the article is if having killer whales in captivity has outlived their research usefulness. I'm a long time Sea World season pass holder (and love Shamu Cam), but maybe I need to reconsider where I stand on the issue. And not just because it's sad to see dorsal fin collapse.

Recently I've been thinking about my stance on sushi too. I gave up vegetarianism right before I discovered sushi and it's no coincidence I haven't gone back. Raw fish is delicious and healthy and probably my favorite food. The problem is, it's a lot of people's favorite foods too. This New York Times article talks about the end of bluefin tuna. I don't know what kind of tuna I eat, except that it's delicious. But it's stupid to eat something just because it's delicious right? It would probably be the right thing to give up eating tuna, or to give up consuming sushi altogether, but that sounds painful.

"Bluefin sportfishing’s rise, however, coincided with Japan’s export boom. In the 1960s and ’70s, Japanese planes stuffed with electronics unloaded in the U.S. and returned empty -- a huge waste of fuel. But when a Japanese entrepreneur realized he could buy New England and Canadian bluefin for a song, he started filling up all those empty cargo holds with tuna. Exposure to beef and other fatty meats during the U.S. occupation had already drawn the Japanese to appreciate bluefin’s fatty belly (otoro, in sushi terms). The Atlantic bluefin, the biggest bluefin, became the most favored of all. This appreciation boomeranged stateside when Americans started to develop their own raw-fish habit in the late 1970s."
-Tuna's End-

This is how it is nowadays, picking and choosing your moral ambiguities. Anti-diamonds, blood or otherwise, but pro-Shamu and sushi. There's no doing wrong or right, just doing whatever makes you feel okay. The facts justify the ends and we know what they say about facts. Or maybe that was stats.