GRABBINGSAND

Lovely birds in a sunny corporate park pond.

Did everyone else see this article in Businessweek? Pretty interesting stuff, even if you are tired of being constantly reminded that a trip to the movies might cost more than the movie ticket itself. What caught my eye most of all is a quote in the second paragraph, right below the rather annoying banner ad. If you don’t remember, I’ll repeat it here:

What the country needs is “a national strategy,” Bush said. “And the most important component of our strategy is to recognize the transformational power of technology.

The words we choose betray our mindset. Or rather, they reveal our mindset. Catch that? Transformational. What the President wants to say is simple. Technology can bring about massive change. Certainly. Of course, it can. Yet his choice of terms is incredibly telling.

Transformational. Do a Google search on that word alone. You’ll see links to prayers, self-hypnosis, self-helps and other life affirming sources. And we learn more when we add “-ist” as a suffix, as in Transformationalism or Transformational Christianity.

His other options? Transformative. Transforming. Neither of these have the same religious overtones as transformational, though transformative does tend to surface in discussions of clairvoyance and psychic phenomena. Transformative has even been used to describe the President himself, though I believe a more apt word for that particular article would be divisive or possibly polarizing.

It would be easy to brush his choices aside, to think of it in the same light we offer an actor who misses a cue or ad libs an unsure line, but this President is nothing if not consistently “on message.” Whether he manufactures his own terms or is prompted professionally, very little drops from his lips without careful consideration of audience, mood and intention.

Sometimes a gimmick creeps into your work. Sometimes, such gimmicks are fun.

Hence, my rather encyclopedic review for Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

(Oh, come on. It was an easy joke. And actually, Serenity is not now. It arrives on September 30. The trailer, however, is up and available for viewing. So go. Get to it … and if you’ve never seen Firefly, the original Fox-cancelled show, you really should.)

And by the way … training is over. My rather non-communicative status is over too.

Yes. I am still in training. All day, every work day.

And yet, two new reviews were posted over the weekend. One is for the new street-racing diversion from Rockstar Games and the other is for a cable-free Xbox controller. The great thing is that I was able to critique one while using the other. If only I could work that into my movie reviews.

“Yeah, I’ll come see your new Adam Sandler remake of a Burt Reynolds movie, so long as you bring me your finest popcorn, as massive carbonated sugary beverage and maybe some nachos. You know, for comparison’s sake.”

I mean, just think of the efficiency!

For your morning’s reading, I offer the following items:

• My sadly negative JIVE review of the latest Will Smith release, written as a letter to the artist.
• My surprisingly positive JIVE review of the new McConaughey film, Sahara.
• An observation on revealing — written for Skirt Magazine by the very talented Kayt.

Enjoy.

I shall play as well, but by my own rules.

On the rough wet grass of the back yard my father and mother have spread quilts. We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and I too am lying there….They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet, of nothing in particular, of nothing at all. The stars are wide and alive, they seem each like a smile of great sweetness, and they seem very near. All my people are larger bodies than mine,…with voices gentle and meaningless like the voices of sleeping birds. One is an artist, he is living at home. One is a musician, she is living at home. One is my mother who is good to me. One is my father who is good to me. By some chance, here they are, all on this earth; and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth, lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of the night. May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble; and in the hour of their taking away.

- excerpt from James Agee’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915″ (1948)

Agee’s essay reappeared seven years later as the introduction to his Pulitzer-prize winning novel, A death in the family. In 1960, Tad Mosel adapted the novel for the stage, calling it All The Way Home. It, too, won a Pulitzer.

Want to sell something? Anything? Arrange an audience with Oprah. And if you doubt the power of the Holy Queen of Daytime, just take a look at this up-to-the-minute chart from Amazon:

Who the hell? Devo?!? No. Not even.

When he’s not berating carefully selected auditioners for Fox television, Simon Cowell pretends to be a modern day Maurice Starr. So Il Divo is Cowell’s own version of NKOTB, only older, better dressed and operatically-trained. Before yesterday afternoon around 4pm, nobody on this side of the Atlantic had any idea who they were. In less than an hour, the O’Faithful met them, heard them, and were convinced that they were the best thing they’ve ever seen on God’s green little Earth. And now Il Divo is the number one seller on Amazon.

This doesn’t surprise me. All too well do I remember weekday afternoons spent behind the counter at WaldenBooks, fielding phone calls from frantic viewers who’d just received their latest instructions from the Almighty O. “Do you have the new book that there Deepak Chopra / Stephen Covey / Tony Robbins / [insert smiling motivational speaker here] fella? He was on Oprah, y’know, and I just got to read me some o’ him!”

The worst of them all was Robert James Waller, an absolutely unknown regional author whose little bridges book spent months collecting dust on our “local” shelf. Or it did … until he showed up on the O Show. We were out of them within seconds of the show’s credits, leaving tons of rabid housewives distraught and standing stunned in the middle of our store.

“Didn’t they tell you?!? Why aren’t you prepared?!? He was on OPRAH, for God’s Sake!!!”

(more…)

I Grew Up Here.

Google Maps has satellite imaging now. Even with all the work I have on my morning plate, I couldn’t help it … I had to find my house, and then the house I grew up in. This is a Flickr-annotated snapshot of my formative neighborhood.

Inspired by Matt, found via MeFi.

Went home this weekend. My dad needed a new television, so we ended up at the Wal-Mart of greater metropolitan Fort Oglethorpe. A frightening place. While we were weighing our options and waiting for unseen product to be retrieved from a secret back room — there is another story here, actually — I noticed something in the CD aisle.

Featuring the combined talents of Jennifer Nettles, Kristen Hall and Kristian Bush, Sugarland is a verifiable super group. The fact that they all came up through the Atlanta music scene of the 1990s makes it even sweeter. So spotting them on top of the CDs in my hometown Wal-Mart was more special than a department store sighting ought to be. I had to buy it.

Nettles used to be half of Soul Miner’s Daughter — some might say the better half. While any show at Eddie’s Attic used to be relatively worthwhile, SMD shows were something just this side of a holy revival. More than once did I stake out the door at Eddie’s on a show-day afternoon, just to make sure I was there at 4pm to reserve my entry four or five hours later.

The first time I saw Kristen Hall was at a David Wilcox show. He was playing the Variety Playhouse and she opened. Later, she joined him. Her songs were honest, poignant, funny. And with that, I added her to my list of local must-sees.

I’ve never seen a Billy Pilgrim show. Even still, one of my prized CD possessions is pre-Billy Pilgrim release by band founders Andrew Hyra & Kristian Bush called St Christopher’s Crossing.

I thought about going into the evolution of this musical goodness, but why? Let the songs tell a story.

• Andrew Hyra & Kristian Bush - “For Kim’s Sake” (1991)
• Kristen Hall - “Let It Rain” (1994)
• Jennifer Nettles - “Story of Your Bones” (2000)
• Kristian Bush - “Only You” (2002)
• Sugarland - “Baby Girl” (2004)

(As usual, right-click and save these songs locally before playing. And if you like what you hear, go buy the CD.)