My Top Three Commencement Addresses

Northwestern University finally held their commencement ceremony on Friday, so I think every possible member of the Class of 2010 has now officially graduated. Before the pomp and circumstance are too distant from everyone's minds, I wanted to share the three best commencement addresses I've ever heard. And, no, they do not include the addresses at my two NU commencement ceremonies (John McCain in 2005 and Barack Obama in 2006). It's amazing how much more heartfelt and eloquent speakers can be when they're not running for President of the United States...

If you don't have time to read/listen to these right now, be sure to bookmark them for further study. They are exceptionally well-written and contain tons of insights to chew on.


#3 Wynton Marsalis, Northwestern University, 2009

Our tour of commencement excellence (commenxcellence?) begins in Evanston, where the announcement of jazz prodigy Marsalis as speaker was greeted far too frequently by "Who's that?" from students. Due to a pending monsoon on the day of the ceremony, Marsalis had to shorten his speech, reading only the first and last pages. Even so, I was blown away by the force of his ideas, the eloquence of his prose and the awesomeness of the New Orleans ditty he played to close out his address.

EXCERPT: "See, we are always in the process of becoming ourselves. So, enjoyment – whatever it means to you – is something to pursue. Just like you lay out plans to be rich or in shape, plan to be happy. When something makes you happy – chase it. And if you’re not good at it, work on becoming good at it. And if you can’t be good at it, be happy being bad. The positive frame of reference and the power of affirmation create good health. Affirm people around you, and you will be affirmed."

VIDEO: Watch Marsalis's abbreviated speech and see him wail on his trumpet.

AUDIO: Fortunately, Marsalis agreed to record a full version of his speech, which I urge you to download and put on your iPod. I know I did.

FULL TEXT: Read it all here.


#2 David Brooks, Wake Forest University, 2007

I forget exactly how I came across this speech, but I liked the fact that so much wisdom was delivered with so much humor. I also really liked his definition of journalist.


EXCERPT: "Now, commencement is a ceremony when the university gets a rich and successful person to tell you that being rich and successful is not that important. Well I've got bad news for you. I'm not that rich and I'm not that successful. But I have been around successful people. You see, I'm a journalist. If you go to a stadium and you see the crowd doing the wave, there are some people who just sit there watching. Those people are journalists. We lead boring lives while hanging around people who lead interesting lives."

AUDIO: Click here to download the MP3 of the speech. This one is also on my iPod.

FULL TEXT: Read it all here.


#1 Tony Snow, Catholic University, 2007

This is the most powerful commencement address I've ever read. Delivered just a little more than a year before Snow succumbed to colon cancer at age 53, it's written with the compelling combination of faith and wisdom that so often seems to manifest itself in people who are staring down the barrel of a gun and wrestling with their own mortality. There's no multimedia version of this one, but it's well worth reading.

EXCERPT: "And once you realize that there is something greater than you out there, then you have to decide, "Do I acknowledge it and do I act upon it?" You have to at some point surrender yourself. And there is nothing worthwhile in your life that will not at some point require an act of submission."

FULL TEXT: Read it all here.

So those are my favorites. The best part about commencement addresses is the fact that there is a new batch of wisdom being unleashed on graduates every year. What other fantastic and inspiring commencement addresses are out there?

Who Needs the Olympics? Not Us!

Everybody loves the Summer Olympics. I understand that. But this year there seems to be even less love than usual for the Winter Olympics and you have to wonder why.

I remember a time not so long ago when the Winter Olympics were as culturally cool as their summer counterpart. And it wasn't just because Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding made for sensational tabloid headlines--people were legitimately interested in Kristi Yamaguchi and Michelle Kwan. Figure skating was the winter version of gymnastics and Team USA was golden. Other events were big, too. Remember Bonnie Blair? Of course you do. Can you name anyone on the 2010 Team USA Speed Skating Team? Me neither.

So why are the Winter Games so scorned these days? Aside from the fact that our culture now encourages the immediate cynical scorning of anything as quickly and often as possible (usually in 140 characters or less), I think the real reason behind our general Olympic malaise is the fact that we have become desensitized to competition.

The Olympic Games used to be the main venue for watching your talented fellow human beings perform feats of strength, precision, grace and athleticism. They'd head into the arena/rink/slope/course/etc., perform their skill for the judges and--panting from the exertion--wait for the scores to be handed down. The process was repeated for each participant and the drama built to a blistering crescendo until the Olympic medals were finally distributed. People tuned in to see the triumph of the human spirit and the culmination of years of hard work and training.

Now you can turn the TV on any night of the week and see any number of contests that follow the model outlined above: American Idol, The Amazing Race, Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance, America's Next Top Model, Survivor, The Biggest Loser, The Apprentice, Wipeout, American Gladiators, and on and on...

In these cases, the coveted Olympic Gold comes in the form of a record deal, a large cash prize, an impressive amount of weight loss or simply 15 minutes of fleeting pop culture fame. The scale is decidedly smaller than the international stage of the Olympic Games, but it still satisfies our need to watch someone achieve something extraordinary and be recognized as such on a continuum against others in their field.

In fact, we like this better than the Olympics. Anybody with vocal chords can try out for American Idol. The formal training is slim to none, so the gold medal seems much more attainable. Singing? Of course I can do that! Training on ski slopes for years and years? Don't be ridiculous. What do you think I am? An Olympian?

After watching regular people get rewarded for more down-to-Earth feats every week, the Olympics just don't hold the same high place in the American consciousness anymore.

I think it all comes down to one question: How can the Olympic Committee expect anyone to care about the Luge now that we've seen Donny Osmond do the Lindy Hop?

The Fleeting Novelty of the Novelty Christmas Song

This is a big year for the most famous novelty Christmas song ever, as it is the 30th anniversary of the immortal, much-maligned "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer."

Good Morning America did a segment on the tune, but annoyingly doesn't allow you to embed their videos, so you'll have to go to their site to watch it.

After hearing the back story, I actually appreciate the song a little more now. I've followed a strict "turn it off" policy for the last several years, but seeing Dr. Elmo, an old retired veterinarian who recorded the song for his friends and never expected it to go anywhere, the whole thing is a bit more palatable. It's not his fault the radio drove his song into the ground.

Also, I had somehow never seen the 1983 music video.

Novelty songs are aptly named, as the novelty usually wears off after a few listens. Nevertheless, I've heard a few over the years that have stuck with me and are worth dusting off once every Christmas season.

In no particular order, here are my Top 5 Novelty Christmas Songs. Don't overdo it.

Sketchy Santas: Best. Christmas. Site. Ever.

Who's got a beard that just won't stay?
Sketchy Santa's got a beard that just won't stay!
Who makes children run away?
Sketchy Santa makes children run away!
Beard won't stay!
Run away!
Must be Sketchy! Must be Sketchy!
Must be Sketchy Santa Claus!

Today I was pointed to the best Christmas Web site I'll probably ever see in my life. If you're on Facebook, Twitter, G-Chat or anywhere else that I have an account, I've already shared it with you and you probably passed it on to others, but it's worth re-posting here, too.

Sketchy Santas!




There's too many of them!



It's horrible, but you just can't turn away.



Is that even a Santa?!


I think the Web site's tag line sums it up quite nicely: Santas be sketchy.

Hear the Distant Music of the Hounds

I came across the passage below in a random Christmas Treasury book of essays that I found at my local library. The piece is entitled The Distant Music of the Hounds and it was written by E.B. White in 1949.

Despite being 60 years old, the text is eerily prescient of the way Christmas is so often perceived in our own times. It made me realize that the hectic distractions of modern life that I often assume are byproducts of 21st century living were just as present in previous generations--even if the distractions had different names and were less technological.

The passage isn't that long, so I really think you should read it and then try to live it:

"To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year. There was a little device we noticed in one of the sporting-goods stores—a trumpet that hunters hold to their ears so that they can hear the distant music of the hounds. Something of the sort is needed now to hear the incredibly distant sound of Christmas in these times, through the dark, material woods that surround it. “Silent Night,” canned and distributed in thundering repetition in the department stores, has become one of the greatest of all noisemakers, almost like the rattles and whistles of Election Night. We rode down on an escalator the other morning through the silent-nighting of the loudspeakers, and the man just in front of us was singing, 'I’m gonna wash this store right outta my hair, I’m gonna wash this store...'

The miracle of Christmas is that, like the distant and very musical voice of the hound, it penetrates finally and becomes heard in the heart—over so many years, through so many cheap curtain-raisers. It is not destroyed even by all the arts and craftiness of the destroyers, having an essential simplicity that is everlasting and triumphant, at the end of confusion. We once went out at night with coonhunters and we were aware that it was not so much the promise of the kill that took the men away from their warm homes and sent them through the cold shadowy woods, it was something more human, more mystical—something even simpler. It was the night, and the excitement of the note of the hound, first heard, then not heard. It was the natural world, seen at its best and most haunting, unlit except by stars, impenetrable except to the knowing and the sympathetic.

Christmas in 1949 must compete as never before with the dazzling complexity of man, whose tangential desires and ingenuities have created a world that gives any simple thing the look of obsolescence—as though there were something inherently foolish in what is simple, or natural. The human brain is about to turn certain functions over to an efficient substitute, and we hear of a robot that is now capable of handling the tedious details of psychoanalysis, so that the patient no longer need confide in a living doctor but can take his problems to a machine, which sifts everything and whose “brain” has selective power and the power of imagination. One thing leads to another. The machine that is imaginative will, we don’t doubt, be heir to the ills of the imagination; one can already predict that the machine itself may become sick emotionally, from strain and tension, and be compelled at last to consult a medical man, whether of flesh or of steel. We have tended to assume that the machine and the human brain are in conflict. Now the fear is that they are indistinguishable. Man not only is notably busy himself but insists that the other animals follow his example. A new bee has been bred artificially, busier than the old bee.

So this day and this century proceed toward the absolutes of convenience, of complexity, and of speed, only occasionally holding up the little trumpet (as at Christmastime) to be reminded of the simplicities, and to hear the distant music of the hound. Man’s inventions, directed always onward and upward, have an odd way of leading back to man himself, as a rabbit track in snow leads eventually to the rabbit. It is one of his more endearing qualities that man should think his tracks lead outward, toward something else, instead of back around the hill to where he has already been; and it is one of his persistent ambitions to leave earth entirely and travel by rocket into space, beyond the pull of gravity, and perhaps try another planet, as a pleasant change. He knows that the atomic age is capable of delivering a new package of energy; what he doesn’t know is whether it will prove to be a blessing. This week, many will be reminded that no explosion of atoms generates so hopeful a light as the reflection of a star, seen appreciatively in a pasture pond. It is there we perceive Christmas—and the sheep quiet, and the world waiting."

via The New Yorker

That's right. My blog is the only place on the Internet where you can find a post as profound as this one preceded by Porky Pig singing Blue Christmas. You're welcome on both counts.

Ode to the Beatles

Like legions of Beatlemaniacs before me, I grew up on a steady diet of the Fab Four and there was no denying their ubiquity or their ability to write an infectiously catchy song.

Unlike the rest of the world, my introduction to the Beatles came via Alvin, Simon and Theodore. As a very young child, I received a combination cassette and record player for Christmas. The record player was the obvious winner in terms of fun, and my parents had graciously handed down a few of their favorite childhood albums. Mixed in among them was a particularly intriguing record entitled "Alvin and the Chipmunks Sing the Beatles Hits."

This was at the height of the 1980s Chipmunks Resurrection (Remember The Chipmunk Adventure? That's another blog post for another time...) and here I was unknowingly listening to a genuine Chipmunks artifact that had been released in 1964. All chipmunks aside, the songs they were singing were fantastic and already somewhat familiar to me from listening to the local oldies station. To this day, I can't hear the majority of those early Beatles songs (P.S. I Love You, Love Me Do, Do You Want To Know A Secret, etc.) without hearing the Chipmunks' version in my head.



Having only heard the Beatles catalog that the Chipmunks covered or the radio acknowledged, however, I didn't become a true Beatles fan until one fine summer in the middle of high school. I noticed my local library's extensive Beatles collection and decided to see if there were any other good Beatles songs that I hadn't heard before. Needless to say, there were a few. A few dozen, in fact.

I've spent most of the day with the Beatles in the background, pondering how a band could be so fantastically productive in such a short period of time. Without waxing too poetic, it seems like they have an appropriate song for nearly every emotion and every time of life. It's not just that you can find a happy Beatles song or a sad Beatles song. You can actually find a Beatles song that expresses the exact kind of happy or sad that you happen to be feeling at the time. I can't think of another musical group that even approaches that level of songwriting.

On a day like today, it's got to feel pretty good to be an ex-Beatle. The world is in awe of something you did more than 40 years ago and your creative contributions to culture are still affecting people on a daily basis. With the release of Beatles Rock Band and the remastered Beatles albums , all those never-played-on-the-radio musical gems are going to be revealed to a whole new generation of casual Beatles fans. Heck, I'm still discovering "new" Beatles songs that hadn't struck me before.

At a time when our country and our world are increasingly divided, it's encouraging to see that the Beatles haven't lost their ability to let us Come Together, at least for a day.

Potentially Related Posts:
How Rock Band Changed My Life
The Concert of a Lifetime

Newsflash: Tweets Are Pointless!

This just in! According to a recent analysis, 40.55 percent of the tweets flooding into the Twitterverse can be classified as "pointless babble."

Those of you who have not yet hopped on the Twitter bandwagon should probably consider that before signing up. As an avid Twerp (or whatever the singular form of "Tweeple" is), I can substantiate the above statistic. In fact, I probably contribute to it more often than not.

Unfortunately, the study didn't delve into why so many tweets are riveting and timely observations such as "I'm eating a sandwich," "It's so hoooooottttt outside," and "I really didn't want to wake up this morning. Le sigh."

Fortunately, I have the answer: There simply isn't enough of you to go around.

You're not that interesting. Neither am I. And the pressure to craft engaging blog posts, G-chat statuses, Facebook statuses, and Twitter statuses only reinforces that fact. Sure, we care about what we're having for lunch, but no one else really does, at least not all the time and via six different social network notifications.

But still, we soldier forward, self-publishing our comings, goings and clever bon mots to our world of online "followers," "friends" and "buddies." Do they care? I guess it doesn't really matter. The life of these status updates is almost non-existent anyway, with Twitter and Facebook feeds taking their cue from the weather in Chicago: Don't like what you see? Just wait five minutes.

The real question is, why are we spending so much time on other people's so-called pointless babble? If you're reading this right now, I guess you don't have the answer, either...

Just so this post doesn't seem completely negative, I'll close with a sweet little video that is social networking-related, but doesn't have much to do with the above discussion. It does contain a ukulele though, and that's reason enough for you to watch it. Fair warning: The song will get rather lodged in your head.

Stephen Colbert Considers Qatar

Many thanks to Xtine for alerting me to this little gem from The Colbert Report. Looks like Mr. Colbert is considering a trip to Qatar. Maybe he should read my blog...

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Where and When Is Stephen Going to the Persian Gulf? - Qatar
colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Gay Marriage Commercial

One More on Twitter

I really should have included this in yesterday's post. It's more than a week old, so it's kind of made the rounds already, but, if you haven't already, watch Old Man Stewart Shake His Fist At Twitter:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Twitter Frenzy

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

Lastly, I forgot to address another strange aspect of the micro-blogging service (Micro-blogging? Someone must have invented Twitter after coming across my long-winded, mega-blogging style): It makes some celebrities accessible to their fans in a way that the impersonal fan letter never could. There are a lot of fake celebrity Twitter accounts out there, but some of them are legitimate (or have really good ghost-tweeters) and the celebrities actually respond to followers who Tweet them.

Jimmy Fallon is making this the basis of his show on some nights (The Bryan Brinkman Experiment) and soliciting ideas from fans through his Twitter account.

Rainn Wilson might Tweet with you. Shaq, too. (No guarantees that you'll understand what he's saying though...)

Now do you want to join Twitter?

Why Didn't David Schwimmer Say Hello?

It was a long day and I have nothing of interest to say. Oh, wait. I was in the same room as David Schwimmer today, but I didn't know it until after he left. Does that count as interesting?

Probably not, but this does. Learn about the origins of the credit crisis with a slick video visualization:

Make Your Own Web Comic Strip

Have you always thought you should write for xkcd?

Stripgenerator (not nearly as dirty as it sounds) allows you to create your own Web comic strip and live out your cartoonist dreams through a simple drag and drop interface. Here's my effort:



OK, so apparently they don't embed very well.

While we're on the subject of comics, I recently came across a rather entertaining blog that basically re-posts daily comics and offers sarcastic commentary. It really makes you wonder if anyone actually reads traditional comic strips these days. Are people actually rushing to the newspaper each morning to follow the developments of an archaic comic's plot line?

When I was young and foolish (and going through my extended Dick Tracy phase thanks to the underrated Warren Beatty movie), I would look at the Dick Tracy comic every Sunday and try to follow the action. Unfortunately, there was no action. Every strip seemed to be a tired exchange of meaningless non sequiturs. Where were all the Tommy guns and cool villains? No Madonna, either. From that day forward I stuck with Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side.

Pluto Day in Illinois: It's a Planet Again!

Illinois politicians seem to constantly be reinventing themselves this year and now they've gone from goofy to Pluto. The Illinois General Assembly recently issued the following resolution that:

"as Pluto passes overhead through Illinois’ night skies, that it be reestablished with full planetary status, and that March 13, 2009 be declared “Pluto Day” in the State of Illinois in honor of the date its discovery was announced in 1930."

(via Discovery Magazine)

I think this is really going to turn things around for the little guy. We can only hope that the other 49 state assemblies will be brave enough to follow in Illinois' heroic footsteps and pass a similar resolution. Who cares about the economy? We've got a planet to reinstate!

The best part of all this is the fact that--in Illinois, at least--Pluto Day and Pi Day will give us the first recorded instance of back-to-back nerd holidays. How will you celebrate?

Yesterday's Tomorrow Today!

Thanks to my friend Julie's Tumblog, I was reminded of a wonderful site that is always good for a laugh: Modern Mechanix.

It's unbelievable that these articles and ads are not Photoshopped in any way, but actually ran in the 1930s and 1940s. It looks like the service described above was a veritable Match.com of yester-year. "No man is any good without a woman?" I'm not sure who this add is more insulting toward--the "anxious" and desperate women or the single men who aren't "any good."

Almost every post on this blog is a winner. Even the less-funny entries provide an insightful look into how people thought science and technology would progress. This leads to the age-old debate: Were people dumber back then? Or just more willing to get carried away by their curiosity? I tend to think it's the latter. Everyone is so sardonic and jaded today (myself included) that I don't think we're even willing to entertain the ideas that seemed plausible to the folks who wrote these articles. After all, some of these things were way ahead of their time! Cordless phone, anyone?

A few others:
If You Want the Ladies to Like You, Clip This Coupon

For Fun-Loving Executives

License Tag in Miniature Identifies Auto Keys

If you find other good ones, share 'em in the comments!

Jimmy Fallon Can't Reinvent the Late Night Wheel

I've been watching late-night talk shows for a very long time. When I was a kid, I would join my Grandma on many an evening in front of the TV for a nightly dose of Johnny Carson (near the end of his reign), David Letterman (when he had more hair) and Tom Snyder (before his show went off the air and he died). We didn't have cable, so I became quite an expert on late-night network TV.

Over the years, the names and formats of these shows have remained fairly constant, but the hosts have evolved significantly. I remember when Jay Leno took over for Carson (I've never been much on Leno) and when Conan took over for Letterman (I liked Conan immediately--before he was cool). I remember when Craig Kilborn took over for Snyder (I loved his "In the News" segment and didn't realize it was a holdover from his "Daily Show" days) and when Craig Ferguson took over for Kilborn (Call me crazy, but Ferguson is funny). Just when I thought no one could offer anything new to the post-prime time scene, Jimmy Kimmel came to town and I was hooked.

I hope I can one day say the same for Jimmy Fallon, but I don't think that day will ever come. It's completely unfair to judge someone on their first performance and I only watched about 15 minutes of last night's debut, so I'm not going to critique that. (For the record, I will say that having Robert DeNiro as the first guest just so Fallon could do an impression of him was probably not the wisest move. Fallon was so nervous that the impression wasn't that good and DeNiro was as wooden as ever. You could actually see Fallon sweating through his makeup during the interview. I hope future episodes will bring out Tina Fey or someone else who can help him scrub the blood out of the carpet.)

Even if last night's episode had been a masterpiece, I just don't think that Jimmy Fallon has the personality to make a dent in the late night talk show lineup. If you think about each of the hosts listed above, you are probably also thinking about a certain persona that they brought to their show. After spending several years in the public consciousness on SNL, Fallon still hasn't really established an intriguing persona. He talks fast. He breaks up and breaks character in sketches. He plays the guitar and sings. He does a few impressions. But none of those characteristics convince me that he is a worthy heir to the throne of Conan or commanding enough to steer a show of his own in a new direction.

Many talented would-be talk show hosts have tried and failed. This column seems to think that sheer determination can get Fallon through. I disagree. If you don't bring something new to the table (beyond Twittering with your fans), you're going to sink like Wayne Brady and Martin Short before you.

I like late-night talk shows and I want this to work. But I don't think it's going to. What say you?

Celebrity Redemption Through Comedy

It's incredible how easy it is for celebrities to reinvent themselves after they do something stupid that alienates their fans and the general public. And it appears that Jimmy Kimmel is more than willing to help scandal-smeared stars rehab their image with an effective dose of self-parodying comedy. Fortunately for us, the result actually is pretty hilarious.

First Jimmy Kimmel helps us forget all about Tom Cruise's crazy scientology documentary.


Then it gets even better. Remember when Mel Gibson got drunk and went on an anti-Semitic tirade? Nope! And you won't either, after you watch this inspired movie trailer.


This is truly funny stuff, but these videos also help you (and the celebrities) forgive and forget their troubles. If only it were that easy for the rest of us...

No Facebook For Lent: I'm Getting Smarter Already

The verdict is in from British scientists: Increased Facebook use is giving you a "baby brain." Quoth the Tribune:

Baroness Susan Greenfield, a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford, warned that the instant feedback and impersonal communication offered by social networking sites could drive human brains and behavior in negative directions.

"As a consequence, the mid-21st Century mind might almost be infantilized, characterized by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathize and a shaky sense of identity," Greenfield said Feb. 12.

Looks like my 40-day hiatus is coming just in time! I've previously discussed the issue of the Internet making us lazy readers and decreasing our attention spans, but I guess I haven't considered Facebook's level of culpability for turning my brain to mush. It's ironic that the study would find Facebook to shake a user's sense of identity. Maybe that stems from frequently changing your profile picture. If so, I'm in trouble.

Instant feedback? Yes. Impersonal communication? Sometimes. But I would argue that the seemingly mindless back-and-forth of photo comments, wall posts and status updates is simultaneously meaningless, entertaining and wit-sharpening (if done correctly). It also allows me to communicate--however briefly--with people who are no longer in my immediate social circle. I like that and wouldn't want to lose it.

On the other hand, "baby brain" aspect of Facebook is what compels me to sacrifice it for 40 days. My need to stay connected with far away friends is not served by the hours I spend every week reading the status updates and perusing the photos of people I hardly know. That's got to stop, before I start craving nap time and apple juice more than I already do.

How Rock Band Changed My Life

It happens once or twice every decade. Something comes along and changes the course of your life forever. For some people it's finding a significant other, buying that dream house or the birth of a child. For others, it might be a new job or a winning lottery ticket.

For me, it's Rock Band.



Aside from taking up the majority of my waking hours from Christmas Day through New Year's, this simple little video game has forever changed the way I listen to music.

And that's not just empty hyperbole. Every time I turn on the radio, I become aware of all the little things going on in the background of each song that plays. I'm listening to music on the micro-level now. I can pick out the bass line and appreciate a creatively timed drum fill. Perhaps this is obvious to more musically inclined people, but I enjoy a wide variety of musical genres and I never used to hear it.

I like to tell people that I am classically trained in guitar from the Northwestern University School of Music. It's technically true--I took a Beginning Non-Major Classical Guitar class during my undergrad days. I paid extra for it, received half a credit and can still play the chords (or pluck the notes!) to Auld Lang Syne. Once a year, that comes in really handy. Unfortunately, that's also about how frequently I actually pull out my guitar.

I had dreams of being the next Jack Johnson, but the Hawaiian surf seems further away than ever in the midst of a record-breakingly cold winter, plus I'm pretty sure Jack Johnson knows more than four guitar chords.

He can definitely play the F chord, which has prevented me from even attempting more songs than I can count. Look at that picture. How can you move your hands into that position quickly enough to strum that chord, let alone hold the strings down to get a quality sound? It's madness!

Enter Rock Band.

Can you move your hands up and down a guitar fret board? Yes. Can you distinguish between green, yellow, red, blue and orange? Yes. Well, congratulations, you're Pete Townsend!

I know this isn't making me a better guitarist. Heck, it's not even helping me learn to read music. But I sure feel good when I'm shredding through the guitar solo in Ramblin' Man. And my drum fills on Spirit in the Sky are starting to sound mighty professional.

Best of all, Rock Band has given me a much greater appreciation for the musicianship that goes into the creation of a song. I have even more respect for the talent of musicians, and I feel like I'm finally listening to music the same way that they do--picking apart every layer of the composition and hearing how the layers recombine to create the same song that I've loved all these years. There's nothing fake about that.

Oh yeah, and I'm a pretty good singer, too.

Barack Roll: Best Use of the Internet Ever?

I just watched what should be the most viral video in Internet history, but it somehow still only has 600,000+ views on YouTube. Prepare to be Barack Rolled. Your life may never be the same again:



For any readers of this blog who are not familiar with the Internet-fueled prank of "rickrolling," it involves providing a link to one thing, but actually linking to Rick Astley's fascinatingly horrible 1987 chart-topper "Never Gonna Give You Up" or something that involves the song.

Exhibit A: This link to hilarious Muppet bloopers!

Events can also be rickrolled, as the song will begin playing while an Astley impersonator lip syncs along to the words.

Exhibit B: A college basketball game gets rickrolled.



Combining Obama and rickrolling? Sheer genius. Watch it again! You know you want to!

ShowBiz Pizza: The Documentary!

For readers of this blog who grew up in the Midwest, when I say the words "ShowBiz Pizza," the first thing that comes to your mind is probably the image of a large and horrifying robotic gorilla wearing a yellow sequined jacket while banging on a keyboard.

For readers who did not have the pleasure of growing up with trips to ShowBiz Pizza, you're probably already feeling left out.

ShowBiz Pizza was a 1980s birthday party destination for many a lucky child. It had very cheesy pizza, a ball pit, lots of arcade games (Skee-Ball!) and non-stop performances by the animatronic Rock-A-Fire Explosion band. Fats, the aforementioned oversized ape, led the band in a variety of songs over the course of your meal, along with Billy Bob the Bear and several other characters that I sadly somehow still remember the names of. I guess it made a big impression on me, both because of the terror it inspired and the fact that it was the 1980s and this was the most impressive--albeit scary--form of live entertainment that I had ever witnessed.

Fortunately for me, I grew up and moved past it. Some people have not.

Today I came across this post, which informed me of an upcoming documentary devoted to the subject of ShowBiz Pizza and the all-growed-up children who collect and rebuild the animatronics from the Rock-A-Fire Explosion bands. I first read about this phenomenon almost a year ago, but never took the time to blog about it. Here's the movie trailer, which will give you a better idea of what we're dealing with.




I'm all for nostalgic trips down memory lane, but is this really worth all the money and effort? Then again, maybe it is:

Google Is Making You Stupid (Me, Too)

The latest way to rage against the Google machine is to say that everyone is now dumber for having used it.

In an article for The Atlantic, Nicholas Carr argues that the ease with which we can find information online and jump from page to page is changing the circuitry of our brains and preventing us from engaging in the "deep reading" that we used to enjoy in the pre-Google era. Carr writes:

As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

And you know what? He's absolutely right. As a pathetic case in point, I didn't even read Carr's entire article, even though I'm interested in the topic and offering my own two cents on it now.

For an easier-to-read illustration of how short your reading attention span really has become, check out Michael Agger's How We Read Online. You don't read much of anything online, do you? You're scanning headlines, looking for bold text and pull quotes, and spending less than a minute on a page before a link takes you somewhere else.

When I graduated from college, I looked forward to having the free time to read quality books of my choosing and continuing my own personal education by reading. I was going to use technology to better organize the information I found online. Instead, my Google Reader has way too many feeds, making me a lazy reader. And Delicious has become my personal clearinghouse for viral YouTube videos and links to banal trivia. Things worth reading? They're few and far between.

Even this blog was meant to serve as a way for me to process my thoughts on all the brilliant and useful information that I read online or in all the books I would be reading for pleasure. But I can feel my mind being melded by Google's information overload and I can probably count on one hand the number of books I've read in the last year. At the same time, there is a long list of books that I've started reading and never finished. My online reading habits have overtaken my off-line reading habits!

It's well past time for me to turn over a new leaf, so I'm going to force myself to read something in its entirety. I just renewed my library card...now who has book suggestions?