CONSUME
The tension was held a little too long and you get bored for a moment, but that doesn’t stop the payoff of the show going live. You really root for it. Not all, but some of the representations were great. Even if the look wasn’t quite right, the essence was there.
THOUHGTS
I love high quality software.
…like, really love it. Probably more than most people.
I check the iOS App Store updates multiple times a day to see if someone wrote interesting release notes. I follow a Mastodon hashtag for #TestFlight so that I can see if people are working on something interesting. I’ve been closely following companies like Panic and the Iconfactory since the mid/late 90s. I’ve also scoured Mastodon’s @indieapps.space instance to find new software. I daydream about paying for Flighty even though I’m not currently flying enough to justify it, just because it’s good software. I’ve given talks internationally at conferences (I’m stretching it — once in Canada) about how we need more culture in our software.
And when bloggers started listing their “Default Apps” for various categories, I read over 350 of them. So I want to list mine, but I also found in reading through them all, the interesting stuff is on the fringes of the main categories, so I want to focus on that, too.
I also want to mention how much it leaves a hole in my heart when good software dies. I still feel frustrated every time I use email (RIP Sparrow and Mailbox) and use banking apps (RIP Simple Bank) — both killed off through acquisitions. When platforms get weird and kill off 3rd-party apps, I care enough that I leave the platforms (RIP Apollo, Twitteriffic/Tweetbot). It pains me that I feel unsatisfied when I use the Wikipedia iOS app and know that there used to be a better 3rd-Party app (RIP V for Wiki, though I’m working on something that scratches my itch in this space). All of this makes me really worried about Arc and their VC path.
Writing this is part of my grieving process over those “Dead Apps”, but I’m also wanting to hear what holes you have. Does anyone grieve over losing good software?
NOTES
It’s gotten very good! I’m sure that there are features that note-fiends will say are missing, but it hits every note I need.
NOTES
It’s gotten very good! I’m sure that there are features that note-fiends will say are missing, but it hits every note I need.
NOTES
It’s gotten very good! I’m sure that there are features that note-fiends will say are missing, but it hits every note I need.
NOTES
It’s gotten very good! I’m sure that there are features that note-fiends will say are missing, but it hits every note I need.
NOTES
It’s gotten very good! I’m sure that there are features that note-fiends will say are missing, but it hits every note I need.
Media
After 6 months of serious and strenuous evaluation, the BrumBrum Academy is proud to announce the Brummies for 2009. Previously: 1, 2
Boom Shadow by Nino Moschella
2nd album from the guy who I anticipate new work from the most. It’s a near-guarantee that I’ll love every piece of music that he puts out.
Good City for Dreamers by General Elektriks
It’s been a while since their last release, but he picks up right where he left off 6 years ago.
Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future by The Bird & the Bee
Easily the closest I get to pop in my listening habits, but I think I’m a sucker for Greg Kurstin’s production
Runners Up: Carried Away by the People Under the Stairs, BLACKsumers’night by Maxwell, The Ecstatic by Mos Def
Star Trek by the J.J. Abrams
After the new Batman movies and this, I’m hoping that folks are figuring out how to properly handle summer blockbusters.
In The Loop by Armando Iannucci
Hands down the best use of swearing in the last decade. Even better than the TV series.
The Informant! by Steven Soderbergh
My favorite thing about this movie is that this guy really exists.
Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli
I remember the author from one of my favorite super-hero graphic novels back in ’88, but I’m glad to see that 20 years later he’s done his first self-written graphic novel.
Nothing
I didn’t realize it until I started this list, but what the hell has happened to me?! I apparently stopped reading this year. Asterios Polyp is the only book that I can remember reading the whole thing. I mean, I read a few things that were published before 2009 which don’t count, but still…
Man… I better clean up my act.
Media
Once again, it’s time for the BrumBrum Awards honoring excellence in various media over the course of the last year:
Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw
I think this is the largest graphic novel I’ve ever read, coming in at 720 pages. I kinda imagined that this was a book by Noah Baumbach in which Noah was able to grow beyond the rut he got in with Margot at the Wedding.
Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
I grabbed this because I was particularly interested in Dane Cook’s parallels to Steve’s stand-up career (not really). And I’m a sucker for any tidbits I can find on the Jerk.
A Practical Guide To Racism by C. H. Dalton
The perfect book to keep by your side when you need to inflame the racial hatred that you’ve worked so hard to hide away.
Runners Up: Burma Chronicles by Guy Delisle, More Information Than You Require by John Hodgman, Blue Pills: A Positive Love Story by Frederik Peeters
The Way I See It by Raphael Saadiq
Not as innovative as his first release, but still is probably tied for the best album out of the recent Motown revival along with…
JIM by Jamie Lidell
The first guy I know about to do the whole modern Motown sound came out with a close to perfect album. Every track is solid.
Metropolis: The Case Suite by Janelle Monáe
I have a strong feeling after hearing this album that she’s going to be huge, with crossover appeal to a number of audiences. She’s supposed to release another EP in Q1 of ’09.
Oracular Spectacular by MGMT
More rock like this, please.
Runners Up: Droppin’ Science Fiction by the Mighty Underdogs, Shine by Estelle, Doomtree by Doomtree, New Amerykah, Pt. 1 by Erykah Bad
Bigger Stronger Faster by the Chris Bell
I went into watching this movie against steroids in competition to now not knowing what to think. Might not be as superbly told as Man On Wire for a documentary, but it had more of an impact on me.
Let The Right One In by Tomas Alfredson
I thought about this movie for a couple days after watching it. The two 12-year-olds in this do just as good of a job as most of this years nominees.
The Dark Knight by Christopher Nolan
A little bit of an obvious choice, but that doesn’t stop it from being hella good.
Runners Up: Slumdog Millionaire, Role Models, The Wackness
Media
I recently finished “Born Standing Up“, Steve Martin’s memoir about the beginning of his career. Martin’s “The Jerk” has been my favorite comedy since I was in high-school; but there is a relative a dearth of information about this classic film. So I decided to see what I could dig up. Below is a few random interesting things I could find about “The Jerk”. If you have any more additional interesting information on this film, please post it in the comments and I’ll continue to update this post. I’m dying to find more out about the “nine weeks and five days” scene…
The mansion shown in the film was actually two Beverly Hills mansions. The outside shots were taken at the same mansion (map) that was used in the Godfather and the Bodyguard, and was once owned by William Randolph Hearst. It is currently for sale for “what may be the most expensive residential property listing in the US.”
The interior shots were filmed just a year after the owner at the time, Sheik Al-Fassi, took over the mansion (map). After moving in, Al-Fassi proceeded to redecorate the mansion in the tasteful ways depicted in the film. He even painted flesh tones and pubic hair on all the Greek statues within the property. In the course of this 3 years owning the property, he adopted over 100 stray cats. The year after the Jerk was filmed, the property was torched by an arsonist, while onlookers reportedly yelled “Burn, burn, burn”. Al-Fassi was rumored to be secretly detained in Riyadh by the Saudi government for years following the Gulf War for airing radio messages in Bagdad in support of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. He passed at the age of 50 in 2003.
Written in 1926 by Billy Rose and Lee David. Recorded by Gene Austin in 1927. Popularized by Patience and Prudence in 1956.
The song was performed in the Jerk by Lyle Ritz. Ritz was a studio jazz bassist during the 60′s and 70′s. In ’58 and ’59, he recorded two jazz ukulele albums and then didn’t touch it professionally until the Jerk in ’79. Since then, he didn’t put it down and was recently introduced into the Ukulele Hall of Fame in June of ’07.
Ukulele Chords for “Tonight You Belong To Me”. Alternate voicing and video for playing the song on ukulele.
Gene Austin – Tonight You Belong To Me (1927):
Patience & Prudence – Tonight You Belong To Me (1956):
Steve Martin & Bernadette Peters – Tonight You Belong To Me (1979):
Bird & the Bee – Tonight You Belong To Me (2008):
The Bird and the Bee are two of my favorite artists and coincidentally just released this on their new EP.
UPDATE (4.24.08) – From “Steve Martin, The Magic Years.” Regarding the performance of this song:
Steve purposely wrote the part for [Bernadette Peters] in The Jerk. David Picker, who was a Paramount executive and the co-producer for The Jerk, said, “The fact that they knew and loved each other made the scenes in the movie work even better.”
From Born Standing Up:
It was a joy to work on the movie and the script. Our goal in writing was a laugh on every page. But my favorite line in the movie was an ad lib, one that is mildly obscured by traffic noise in the finished film. My character, Navin Johnson, is hitchiking in Missouri, headed for the big city. A car pulls over, and the dirver asks, “St. Louis?” “No,” I answer, “Navin Johnson.”
I was injecting stage material into the screenplay, including a bit that was taken directly from the end of my act, first developed at the Boarding House. On stage, I would exit through the audience, saying, “I’m quitting, I’m leaving and never coming back, and I don’t need anything, nothing at all, well, I need this ashtray.” I would collect doodads from the tabletops until I finally disappeared out the door. The bit appears in the final film as I forlornly leave Bernadette Peters and my movie mansion.
Martin’s line from the opening scene was taken from his act as performed on his first album “Let’s Get Small” (1977):
I started off at the bottom. I was born a poor black child. And all day long around the house, they’d sing the blues. Then I heard my first Mantovani record, and I knew that this is where it’s at for me. The kind of music I enjoy. These are my people. So I decided to become white. I had my cock shortened. Then I got a job as a television weather man.
Martin’s co-writer (Carl Gottlieb) has a cameo role as Iron Balls McGinty. He also had a hand in writing the first 3 Jaws movies and wrote the character development for “The Jerk, Too”
UPDATE (4.18.08) – From “Steve Martin, The Magic Years.” The author discusses his early adolescence with Steve:
In discussing the way people actually “did it,” Steve suggested that a man would put his “thing” in the woman and move it in and out. I objected to this theory, and expressed my belief that one should just insert “it” and leave “it.” Well, Steve was right (except in rare cases); nevertheless, his only description of “it” was simply “it.”
Since he apparently had one hand up on me in this in-depth biological debate (no pun indented), I then had to explain to him that the real terminology for this “thing” we were discussing was given to me by my mother when I was but a mere child. “It’s called your special purpose,” I told him proudly. His face widened with a wild and crazy grin, which from that point on was instantly plastered upon his countenance whenever anyone would say “special purpose” –whether it was a teacher or an innocent bystander at Disneyland (we would break up and nobody knew why).
Bill Murray filmed a cameo that was deleted. On the December 15, 1979 broadcast of “Saturday Night Live” (S05E07), Murray jokingly reviewed ‘The Jerk’, saying:
Which brings me to “The Jerk.” Steve Martin is a friend. As a matter of fact, I was in the movie but cut out of it. That doesn’t influence my opinion. The movie is a dog. There’s something missing. I don’t– Who it is, I can’t say.
Stanley Kubrick was impressed with Martin and was interested in having him play the lead in his adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler‘s “Traumnovelle“. Kubrick intended on making his take on the novel as a dark sex comedy. Kubrick approached several writers to take a shot at it, but the project never got off the ground until Kubrick recast the role in 1999 with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in what became “Eyes Wide Shut“.
The Jerk grossed over $100m on a $4m budget, and this convinced the world of television in 1984 to get a piece of the pie. A “made-for-TV” movie was made as a pilot for for a potential series staring Mark Blankfield of Fridays as Navin R. Johnson. It seems to take place in an alternate universe where Martin’s “Jerk” never happened. And there aren’t jokes in the movie as much as lucky occurrences that happen to Navin.
I found a copy of this and posted a torrent: The Jerk, Too (95min., 703MB, MP4)
Media
I’m a sucker for “Best of” lists, particularly if they come from my friends (hint, hint). Here’s mine:
Exit Wounds by Rutu Modan
Big time comic releases seem to be more sporadic these days in comparison to a couple of years ago, but this one fits the bill. Israelis with identity issues makes for good reading.
I Am America by Steven Colbert
Obvious one for me. I’m a sucker for anything that he does, as evidenced by viewing all 337 episodes of the Colbert Report (as of this writing).
Into Hot Air by Chris Elliott
It’s not as good as his last, but it’s still quite good. A cast of Chris Elliott, Kristen Dunst, Michael Moore, Martin Sheen, Tony Danza, and more set out to climb Everest.
Runners Up: Comedy By Numbers by Eric Hoffman and Gary Rudoren, Percy Gloom by Cathy Malkasian
Please Clap Your Hands by the Bird & the Bee
It’s just an EP with 5 songs, but each is pop perfect. The production is great.
Armchair Apocrypha by Andrew Bird
I probably spent more time with this album than any other this year. Even better than his near perfect And the Mysterious Production of Eggs.
Alright, Still by Lily Allen
My guilty pleasure. This is probably the popiest album that I’ve ever fallen for. I very much doubt a sophomore album that matches this.
Runners Up: Back to Black by Amy Winehouse, Snow Beast by Luke Temple, Version by Mark Ronson, Once by Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová, the Reminder by Feist
No Country for Old Men by the Coen Bros.
TENSE. It’s everything I liked about Terminator 2 but with more humans.
Hot Fuzz by Edgar Wright
I think this is a perfect comedy. Conceptual jokes, low brow jokes, high brow jokes. They all hit.
There Will Be Blood by PT Anderson
Anybody who can make talking about milkshakes that dramatic deserves to be called the best actor in the world.
The Ten by David Wain
LOT’S of “A” jokes. Mostly “A-/B+” jokes.
Runners Up: King of Kong, This is England, Juno, Once, Michael Clayton
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