Ben Eaton conjures up images of driving a rusty pickup down some county back road separating Iowa grazing pasture from late August corn. A greasy quality permeates music comfortably seated in vintage blues musicians of some bygone era. Two tracks are available on Eaton's own site, (you can listen to parts of the entire album on CD Baby where the album is for sale) provide a solid introduction to this Iowa local who is bringing his brand of swamp-juice infused lyrically textured sounds to smoky saloons. If you long for the days of AM radio featuring the sounds of both country and western, Ben Eaton's songwriting will satisfy your nostalgia.
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http://members.dslextreme.com/users/davidroel/
You can't love sci-fi without knowing the name Philip K. Dick. The author's exploration of the mind as a significant part of future technological evolution is a theme repeated throughout his writing. That I'm aware of, very few audio interviews with PKD exist. David Roel of Enormous Vibrating Eye discovered an informal collection of thoughts from PKD in a stack of tapes loaned to him by a friend. The interview, complete with background television and children playing, is available in its entirety as downloadable MP3 files or in a Bit Torrent.
http://jakeludington.com/comicbookthemovie
Released in 2003, this is possibly one of the best underground films ever released on the Miramax label. Mark Hamill directs and stars as a high school teacher and world's foremost expert on the Commander Courage comic book. Hamill's character, Donald Swan is hired by a movie production house to consult on their upcoming Commander Courage movie, joining the film producers on an adventure to the largest comic book convention in the U.S. Hamill is absolutely hilarious, he's obviously studied many of the fans from Star Wars conventions past, as he blends in as Donald Swan almost too perfectly. Swan comes off as both naive and genuine, at times making you forget Comic Book is staged and not a true documentary. The movie stars many movie and comic book heroes (of the writer/artist variety), which makes viewing a treat on many levels. Tons of bonus material, including interviews with Stan Lee and Hugh Hefner, make this a must have addition to any geeks collection of DVDs.
When a new scientific discovery is made, we rarely remember the people who made it happen. The faces in front of a movie camera are remembered far longer than any of the visionaries who put movies together. And craftsmen almost never see recognition outside the trade groups they participate in. To ignore the stories of these visionary thinkers is to ignore an important piece of world history. PeoplesArchive attempts to capture these stories, through a series of video interviews ranging from childhood reminiscences, to military duty, to the life's work that put them in the history books for all time. Learn about many of the world's great treasures told in their own words. Registration is required, but the content is free. All video is in QuickTime format.
http://www.microsoft.com/winme/0405/22606/Teched_Realworld
It's a little known fact that the Microsoft execs have a great sense of humor (no I'm not talking about any of the bugs in Windows). Anyone attending the bigger conference events, like PDC, TechEd, or WinHec, gets treated to a well-produced humorous video generally featuring Steve Balmer and Bill Gates humiliating themselves on camera. This particular video is exec free, but certainly funny enough to warrant a few minutes from your schedule.
The boys of summer are launched into what might be the most interesting season in years. Roger Clemens and the Astros are going to give the Cubs a run for their post-season money, with the Rocket already becoming the oldest player in history to win 5 games in April. Barry Bonds is hitting home runs at a pace that requires more talent than an injection regimen could possibly provide. If you happen to have a premium subscription to MSN, you can catch all the action at home, work, or the local Starbucks. This site deals with baseball games past, specifically hitting and pitching stats from 1871 thru the end of last season. Download the entire database, to help make trade decisions in your Rotisserie league or fuel arguments over who the best all-around third baseman was. There's also a selection of entertaining opinion pieces on topical subjects relating to America's Pastime.
Take a break from work or forwarding the latest in a long line of bad jokes to catch up on some of the most entertaining countdown lists on the Internet. These sometimes irreverent, generally sophomoric lists put imitators to shame, delivering hours of productivity lowering entertainment. You'll laugh, you'll groan, and you just might find something better to forward to your friends on those lonely evenings in front of your CRT.
http://kill-bill.cz/game/index.php
I'm still dragging my feet about seeing Kill Bill volumes 1 and 2. My movie going days are severely limited thanks to an insane publishing schedule, so several hours of revenge just haven't made it into an open time slot yet. I did find this cartoon-violent flash game from a Czech game developer. The object of the game is to defeat sharp-dressed attackers in sword play before they get you. Things get confusing as some of the previously defeated baddies come back and distract from the new and more dangerous villians. The entire site is in a language other than English, but the rules are reasonably self-explanitory. Click the left button to start the game and use the arrow keys to defend your character.
Link love to Boing Boing
The Electric Company was the show I most looked forward to as a kid. The funk beats and catchy songs fooled my generation into believing we were being entertained, while teaching us grammar, phonetics, reading basics, and even manners. The show is long since off the air, the 780 episodes living on as nothing more than a memory. Fortunately, a small fraction of the show's best material is available via The Electric Company MP3 archive; featuring both MP3 recordings of some of the musical numbers and postage stamp size QuickTime videos of some of the better animated sketches. I'm guessing the site does not have permission to distribute this material, but a lack of reruns or DVD boxed sets means fan sites are the only alternative.
Cool Blue mixes the best of songwriters new and old to streaming radio. With a playlist including Frank Sinatra, Norah Jones, Richie Havens, Duke Ellington, and BB King, mixed with a host of names I either never knew or have long since forgotten; this station is musically diverse enough to keep most listeners entertained for hours. Cool Blue may not rev up the after work Friday party, but the mix of jazz, blues, Motown, and more contemporary light melodies is the perfect backdrop for just about anything else you might choose to do while listening to music. The only way you can tune this in on a traditional FM dial is to move to Auckland, which isn't feasible for me just yet, so I'll listen via the available Windows Media stream.
