Category Archives: Media & Entertainment

Radio: There will be no more new music formats

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Mark Ramsey says the last successful new radio format was the Variety Hits format, “Jack.” I barely remember that format (now 15 years old). Mr. Ramsey says there as been no new youth-based format on the radio fail in generations… and there never will be “but because the tastes are so fractured among millennials that there is no popular thread of music that isn’t already absorbed sufficiently well by an existing format.”

I’m not sure who would care about this theory besides someone who programs a radio station. He offers some insight into who listens to which formats and why but it all seems a bit… academic to me. Like reflecting on Mayan culture.

A thousand years is but an instant

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“A thousand years is but an instant. There’s nothing new, nothing different; same pattern over and over. The same clouds, same music, the same things I felt an hour or an eternity ago. There’s nothing here for me now, nothing at all. Now I remember, this happened to me before. This is why I left. You have begun to find your answers. Although it will seem difficult the rewards will be great. Exercise your human mind as fully as possible knowing that it is only an exercise. Build beautiful artifacts, solve problems, explore the secrets of the physical universe, savor the input from all the senses, filled with joy and sorrow and laughter, empathy, compassion, and tote the emotional memory in your travel bag. I remember where I came from, and how I became human, why I hung around, and now my final departure’s scheduled. This way out, escaping velocity. Not just eternity, but Infinity.”

From Waking Life by Richard Linklater (IMDb)

Arrival

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“Arrival” is a science-fiction parable in a distinctly more idealistic hopeful key than most movies in this genre, one in which the best solutions don’t necessarily materialize in a gun sight. It has a little action, a bit of violence and clenched-jawed jittery men. Mostly, it has ideas and hope, as well as eerie extraterrestrials who face off with a soulful linguist-heroine, Louise Banks (Amy Adams), the story’s voice of reason and its translator. She’s thoughtful, serious, at ease with her own silence and fears. — New York Times; The Atlantic review; Time review

Good movie. Don’t think it will do well at the box office because there was no car chase and you have to entertain the idea that time is nonlinear. But my kind of alien flick.

Michael Moore in TrumpLand

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michaelmooreI enjoyed this hour-long stand-up/one-man-show. I’ve seen several of Mr. Moore’s documentaries and liked some better than others. But none of them prepared me for this. If I had to pick one word to describe this… (I really don’t know what to call it. It didn’t feel like a documentary) I guess I go with “personal.” It felt like he was trying to speak “from the heart” as the expression goes to everyone in America. And to Hillary Clinton. Fuck it, there’s no way to describe this and I’d say just watch it but I’m guessing most folks have made up their mind about Michael Moore just as they have everything else (myself included).

I’m a little unclear on his objective. Can’t believe that many people will see this before election day. I watched it on iTunes. I’ll tell you what this reminded me of (a little), a Louis C. K. stand-up special. It was an hour of Moore standing in front of a theater full of people just talking to them. Some jokes, sure, but he really put himself out there. Left me feeling better and it only cost me five bucks.