http://hipsterhandbook.com/quiz.html  ¶ 4/18/2003 05:46:54 PM

  -----Original Message-----
From: george@mail.zoomedia.com [mailto:george@mail.zoomedia.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2003 11:00 PM
To: george@mail.zoomedia.com
Subject: something you might enjoy


Hello,

This is a short movie that I put together with some friends.

http://www.memelab.com/msterror
If you like it, please feel free to pass it on to others that might like
it too.

If you're on a modem, it might take you a few minutes to see it.

Hope you're well,
George



  ¶ 4/18/2003 02:58:37 PM

  Please check out the video for "Oklahoma" from Michael Leon's new LP/CD...it's a cool video, like blasted Terry Gilliam and Peter Max...


http://www.commonwealthstacks.com/pages/oklahoma.html  ¶ 4/17/2003 01:54:52 PM

  SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/pop/117835_remainders17.html

Best-selling authors play out rock 'n' roll fantasies with their own band
Thankfully, they're not quitting their day jobs

Thursday, April 17, 2003

By JOHN MARSHALL
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER BOOK CRITIC

Amy Tan is usually a model of designer style and decorum. The best-selling San Francisco writer, famed for "The Joy Luck Club," makes appearances in clothes apropos of Vogue: flowing shawls, silk blouses, long skirts, all these fine threads hiding any suggestion that there might be a woman's body beneath.

But a couple of times a year, Tan dons a get-up suitable for a leather bar: thigh-high vinyl boots, a micro skirt, a skin-tight tank top, a bejeweled collar and oodles of exposed epidermis.

Tan does not confine this hot-bod attire to her own boudoir, but instead stomps onto stages across America, trusty whip in hand, and soon croons those immortal words, "These boots are made for walking, and that's just what they'll do."

"Amy Tan goes right outside her Amy Tan act," observes cohort Ridley Pearson, "and becomes a complete and total crazy."

Then there is Scott Turow, the buttoned-down Chicago attorney and writer known best for "Presumed Innocent." This esteemed member of the legal profession, a Harvard law graduate, usually follows Tan on stage. Turow's bookjacket-familiar thinning hair is obscured by a curly wig as big as Las Vegas, this rhythmless white-collar guy, amid the wailing Trogg-ian guitars, shouting out, "Wild thing! You make my heart sing!"

These are not case studies of best-seller-induced dementia infecting some of the country's most popular writers. These are fully indulged rock 'n' roll fantasies played out, in shocking shamelessness, by those who have sold 150 million books.

It's the Rock Bottom Remainders, appearing at a benefit next Wednesday evening at the Experience Music Project. Some of writing's elite are at it again, banging heads and occasionally the right notes as the world's most literate bar band.

"This band plays music," crows humorist Dave Barry, the Remainders' spiritual leader, "as well as Metallica writes novels."

The difference is chutzpah. Metallica would not dare to write novels, what with their requirement for coherent sentences in some semblance of order. A piece of white paper is a pretty scary naked place. But the Remainders have no compunction about playing music. High volume, high jinks and beer can cover all sorts of flubbs, gaffs and goofs.

Besides, the difference between a decent rendition and a great rendition of "Gloria" is discernible to only the most highfalutin eustachian tubes, especially amid the sweatin' hordes on a dance floor, one of two requisites at any Remainders gig.

"We don't play concerts," bass player Pearson emphasizes. "If there are seats in a row, we don't show. There's got to be a dance floor and beer at our gigs. Because the more people drink, the better we sound."

That is not to suggest the Remainders -- who take their name from the book trade term for unsold volumes -- sound as bad as a books-on-tape version of "Moby Dick." A Washington, D.C., critic even went so far as to describe the group's playing as "nearly respectable." That's because more than a couple of the 50ish Remainders have rock bands in their sordid boomer youths, back in those distant days before necessary stage equipment included reading glasses to decipher song playlists.

Barry, long before he elevated sophomoric humor to Pulitzer Prize-ian heights, rocked through Haverford College in a group called Federal Duck. Mystery writer Pearson played in folk-rock groups all the way into adulthood and beyond. And Mitch Albom, long before his "Tuesdays With Morrie," attained that musical grail sought by so many groups -- paying gigs in actual Holiday Inns.

Nor are the Remainders above drafting some legitimate musical talent to provide the distinct hint of professionalism. Past "ringers" have included Al Kooper, Warren Zevon and even Bruce Springsteen. The current ringer is Roger McGuinn, founder of the legendary Byrds, member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and willing co-conspirator to the Remainders' rough-hewn party act, which he describes as "a happening, a circus."

"With all their self-deprecating humor, people might think they'd be lousy but they're actually pretty good," McGuinn says. "Plus nobody expects them to be musically wonderful, so there's no risk involved."

Things may seem riskless now, but not back in 1992 when San Francisco book publicist Kathi Kamen Goldmark came up with the notion of forming a rock group with best-selling authors. So many of the authors she escorted on book tours through the Bay Area seemed to harbor rock star fantasies that she thought she would unveil such a group at that year's national convention of independent booksellers held, appropriately, in the shadow of Disneyland.

It was to be a one-time gig for a one-time ensemble, but the Remainders soon showed that it is difficult to keep a bad group down, or perhaps that the allure of "Double Shot of My Baby's Love" is darn close to eternal.

Subsequent Remainders performances were arranged on practically an annual basis. There was a Remainders rock video, a Remainders CD ("Stranger Than Fiction"), a Remainders book ("Mid-Life Confidential: The Rock Bottom Remainders Tour America With Three Chords and an Attitude"). And the band's composition has undergone shifts in personnel, some permanent, some temporary (Stephen King will not be appearing in Seattle because of, believe it or not, writing commitments, which causes Barry to harrumph, "Letting work get in the way of this -- the nerve!").

Most of the accouterments of rock stardom have now come the Remainders' way, even occasional pieces of girly underthings thrown to them on stage, although Remainders' sources reveal that the pitchers of bikinis, bras and thongs are paid to perform that form of idolatry.

Remainders groupies, though, seem in short supply. Tan professes to have never been approached, despite her dominatrix stage posings.

"Unfortunately, groupies never seem to find me, although that may be my own fault," she says. "As soon I get off stage, I slip back into a high-collar Mandarin dress and slip out of the dressing room like the demure Chinese woman I am."

Barry, at least, professes occasional groupie encounters.

"What I have found," the 55-year-old humorist says, "is that our groupies are aging librarians and, even at my advanced age, I can outrun them pretty easily."

SEATTLE LINEUP

Dave Barry, humorist: "We don't prepare a great deal for our gigs. We feel that one of the things that makes us unique is we don't spend a lot of time harping on what we're going to do on stage. A much bigger concern for us is where we're going to go afterward for dinner."


Ridley Pearson, mystery writer: "There's no room in this group for people who take themselves even 4 percent seriously."


Amy Tan, lit-fiction queen: "Our typical song has no redeeming social value; it's not about increasing literacy or having a better relationship between a mother and a daughter. Our typical song carries the message: Don't cross train tracks if you're making out with somebody in the car."


Scott Turow, legal thrillermeister: "I set the bar really high in terms of shamelessness; I'll do just about anything on stage. But then lawyers regularly make fools of themselves, especially trial lawyers who are often dreadfully embarrassed. Having a jury not believe anything you've said in a six-week trial makes it easy to withstand the humiliations of making a fool of yourself on stage."


Roger McGuinn, real rock star: "We play several Byrds songs with the Remainders, including 'Mr. Tamborine Man,' 'Eight Miles High,' 'Turn, Turn, Turn,' 'Rock 'n' Roll Star.' I still enjoy playing them, especially when the audience is groovin'. These are not one-hit wonders; they are good songs. 'Turn, Turn, Turn' is my favorite -- I like the lyrics, which convey a nice feeling that things are on track. It's a great tune."


Other Seattle-gig Remainders: Journalist Mitch Albom, popular novelist Greg Iles and group originator Kathi Kamen Goldmark.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

P-I book critic John Marshall can be reached at 206-448-8170 or johnmarshall@seattlepi.com.

© 1998-2003 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
  ¶ 4/17/2003 01:47:44 PM

 
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0316/edwinter.php

Education Supplement
by Jessica Winter
Are You a Koan Head?
Get Your Lego Skills in Gear: Acing a Job Interview Just Got More Puzzling
April 16 - 22, 2003

(illustration: Anthony Freda)

uch like the U.S. government, Microsoft tends to consider itself exempt from standard operating procedure, as its antitrust woes have indicated all too well. And Bill Gates's baby certainly doesn't follow the usual script in selecting staff, as illustrated in William Poundstone's forthcoming book, How Would You Move Mount Fuji?: Microsoft's Cult of the Puzzle (Little, Brown). The Redmond, Washington-based behemoth gets some 12,000 résumés monthly; if lucky enough to be plucked from the herd, an aspiring 'Softie journeys to headquarters for a day-long interview mill. Current employees pummel supplicants with confounding math and logic puzzles, occasionally jacking up anxiety levels with openly rude behavior.

They also volley an eccentric type of non-quantitative question, resembling a Rorschach blot or a Zen-koan parody: How would you make an M&M? Which U.S. state would you remove? How would you design Bill Gates's bathroom? After long hours of straining the mind's muscles to the limit, the exhausted candidate may feel he's not only been asked how to move Mount Fuji, but lugged it across Honshu on his back.

Until a few years ago, such trial by fire only posed a concern for applicants to Microsoft and other software firms looking for the proverbial outside-the-box thinkers. Increasingly, though, the "cult of the puzzle" has infiltrated investment banking and management consulting. (On the job-search site Vault.com, the subject heading of a post to the law-school message board last August read, "Logic games are kicking my arse.")

In a telephone interview from his home in Los Angeles, Poundstone says, "Particularly with the economic downturn, people are looking at which corporate cultures have succeeded. Microsoft seems to have weathered this pretty well compared to all the other dotcom companies, and part of it seems to be an ethos of an extremely competitive workplace."

As Poundstone writes in Fuji, "The uncertainties of a wired, ever-shifting global marketplace are imposing a start-up mentality throughout the corporate and professional world. That world is now adopting the peculiar style of interviewing that was formerly associated with lean, hungry technology companies." Odd as these lines of inquiry might seem, they're designed to gauge flexibility and creativity in problem-solving, not to mention how quickly and persistently your synapses can fire under stress. For more and more job seekers, it's no longer enough to research a target company and prep a few flattering anecdotes.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


As Fuji makes clear, Microsoft did not pioneer the idea of interview as sudden-death braintease. Nobel laureate William Shockley, the racist, paranoiac, and brilliant founder of the short-lived Silicon Valley pioneer Shockley Semiconductor, used logic puzzles in hiring his engineers in 1957. Hewlett-Packard was doing it in 1979. "As with so many other things," Poundstone writes, "Microsoft seems to have appropriated an idea that was already in the air and made it famous." The pressure cooker of an MS interrogation, wherein mental duress is often compounded by intimations of hostility or humiliation, aims to replicate the Gatesian office environment, depicted in Fuji as a secretive frat house for workaholics with penchants for practical jokes and anger mismanagement.

"From their early days they had a nerd-hacker ethos; you were basically hired on your ability to sit in a cubicle for 18 hours a day drinking Pepsi and eating Doritos," Poundstone says. "I don't think they've really changed that much. The terminology they use is 'Bill clones.' Part of the reason they ask these puzzles is to see if you fit into their corporate culture."

Evidently, more companies want to be like Bill. The 2003 edition of the get-a-job bible What Color Is Your Parachute? still contends there are only "five questions that matter." (E.g., "Why are you here?") But Marcy Lerner, VP of content for Vault.com, says that finance and consulting firms have been adapting the MS template for about five years now. "The classic Microsoft question is 'Why is a manhole round?' " she says. "We've heard that one from all sorts of companies."

When not Googling common questions and answers (for a good start, check out Chris Sells's site, sellsbrothers.com), prospectors may want to take a crash course in a discipline you might call quasi-math. "Some of these questions aren't brainteasers per se, but more like guesstimates," Lerner explains. "They might ask, 'How many traffic lights are there in Manhattan?' They might not have the right answer, but they want to see how a person would go about estimating the number. And then they might say, 'OK, can you give me another way you might come to that estimate?' "

But there's no way to cram for an interview that turns into a bizarre experiment in workers' playtime. "The most extreme example is when they just give you a sack of Lego blocks and you have to build something," says Poundstone, "and then when you're done, you have to explain why you built it."



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This past autumn, Yale senior Ilya Meyzin did the interview rounds at the top New York investment and consulting firms. (No Legos were involved.) Among the i-bankers, logic puzzles popped up only twice. Consultants, however, apparently exhibit much more enthusiasm for the wacky guesstimate—Meyzin got hit with "How many elevators are there in Manhattan?" and "How many people in the world are playing chess at this very moment?"

"Brainteasers that have [one right] answer are fairly stressful," reports Meyzin, who eventually took a job with an upstart consulting firm. "The key is to take one step at a time and play off the interviewer's reaction. Most of the time they realize it's extremely difficult to solve the problem on the spot, so they will hint whether you're on the right track or not. They want to see how fast and coherently you think under pressure, and how poised you remain when you're stuck—whether you panic or pick yourself up and attack in a different direction."

Obviously, the more possible answers, the merrier the candidate. By posing the elevator conundrum, Meyzin says, "The interviewer wants to see if I can make plausible assumptions and develop a hypothesis based on them. They're also looking for originality. When I got those I really tried to have a good time with them and show a sense of humor. Knowing you can be wrong by two orders of magnitude, and still give an answer the interviewer likes, definitely takes off a lot of pressure."

One of Gates's many mottos, immortalized as a book title, is "Business @ the Speed of Thought," and there are surely worse ways to assess a person's intellectual capacities than essentially asking him to think out loud. But Fuji's reservations about the puzzle paradigm might well be gleaned from one of its epigraphs: "To understand that cleverness can lead to stupidity is to be close to the ways of Heaven." (Spinal Tap fans, note the echo.) Poundstone explains, "One of the first reactions almost everyone has to Microsoft-style interviewing is 'Gee, people who can solve logic puzzles are clever,' and OK, clever is good, but does cleverness necessarily translate into real-world skills? If not, focusing on cleverness could be 'stupid.' "
  ¶ 4/17/2003 11:25:11 AM

  Lego Porn:

  ¶ 4/16/2003 08:23:52 PM

  No Puffery, 3D P. Diddy Planned [4/14/2003 10:55:14 AM ET]
  Rap star and businessman extraordinaire Sean "P. Diddy" Combs is eying another lucrative market to enter, none other than interactive entertainment.
    Combs and his lifestyle marketing company, , Blue Flame Marketing and Advertising of which Combs is CEO, plan to create a game where players can create their own entertainment conglomerate.
    A publisher is currently being sought for the pending title, which will feature exclusive new music and P. Diddy's likeness.
    Jameel Spencer, a president and partner in Blue Flame, commented, "The line between the entertainment and marketing and advertising world has virtually disappeared, and this new game will have Sean "P. Diddy" Combs likeness in a top of the line video game, which will reach the ever elusive youth and urban markets."
    A spokesman for Blue Flame told GameDaily that the game has been in the works, "since the beginning of the year or so," and was not a response to the recent pairing of Def Jam and Electronic Arts. "We've been looking at and thinking of doing this for a while."
    The spokesman added that Combs and Blue Flame "have a vision" and a firm concept for the pending game, one that has been fleshed-out and built-up by "creative folks."
  ¶ 4/16/2003 11:20:16 AM

  Skate Park ID archive  ¶ 4/15/2003 03:07:17 PM

  The Museum of On-Line Museums  ¶ 4/15/2003 01:35:25 PM

  Moby Grape on KCRW (need RealAudio)  ¶ 4/14/2003 01:55:51 PM