The first is Pandora. This is seriously the coolest thing since sliced bread. I can’t believe I didn’t find it sooner. The folks at the Pandora site can give you the details on how it works, but basically it’s a website that lets you create your own radio stations, which play music geared to your particular tastes. Simply enter a singer, composer or even a particular song, and it will play a collection of tunes that have similar qualities. The mixes aren’t always perfect, but you have the option of giving each song a thumbs up or thumbs down to help it figure out what your likes and dislikes are. To me, this is the perfect compromise between real radio (which always plays too many songs I don’t like along with only a few that I do) and a mix tape (which always plays songs I like, because I’ve chosen the songs, but is always the same). For those of you who have iPods (which I understand is just about everyone in the world except me), this is probably no big deal, as you can get the same thing by shuffling your tunes, but for poor, iPodless folks like me, this rocks.
Next up – YouTube. Of course, this is nothing new. I’m sure just about everyone has gone to YouTube to watch funny videos that circulate via email, to see video of a friend’s new baby or a relative’s graduation, be it from preschool or college. All of that stuff is there, and then some. But I only recently discovered that YouTube can also provide glimpses of our collective and personal histories, and by that, I mean scenes from particular movies or TV shows we all remember, defining moments in sports or politics, music videos from the days when that’s what MTV actually showed. I’ve been able to take my own trips down memory lane and view a few things that were meaningful to me, and apparently meaningful enough to someone else to put them up.
For example, Brian Boitano’s gold medal performance in men’s figure skating at the 1988 Calgary Olympics. Say what you will about figure skating (and having been a skater myself, and a fan of the sport for most of my life, I’ve heard just about all of it), but in these four and a half minutes, you see a dream realized. You see a person achieve what he has devoted his time, energy and spirit to for a decade or more. You see an athletic and artistic performance that is about as close to perfection as it comes. You see laser-like focus and determination in his face at the start of the program, and you see unbounded joy and pride at the end. Just watch. For an equally passionate and perhaps even more beautiful performance, check out Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean’s performance of their famous “Bolero” free dance at the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo. They received perfect 6.0’s from all 9 judges for this one, and with good reason. (As an added bonus, for those of you who are skating afficianados like me, you’ll enjoy the commentary of the one-and-only Dick Button on both clips.)
Finally, a movie and a book that I think are worth mentioning, as I’d love to see both of them get a wider audience. I rarely have time to see a movie that isn’t animated these days, nor do I get around to reading many novels (which is a shame, since before I became a crazy knitting fool, I was a crazy reading fool). The movie is Swing Vote, starring Kevin Costner, who also bankrolled the film. I understand the movie has gotten mixed reviews, and I can see why, as it’s a bit hard to suspend disbelief enough to buy into the premise, which is that a glitch with an electronic voting machine leaves the decision as to who will be the next president of the United States up to a single individual. Plausible? Not really, although the events of the election in 2000 make this closer to reality than any of us ever thought it could be. In any case, I think the movie does a great job of showing what’s wrong with politics in America, and what’s going on with the electorate. I saw it before the addition of Sarah Palin to the Republican ticket, and I think it’s even more telling in light of all the insanity that has followed (don’t even get me started on my thoughts about that). More importantly, though, the movie made me laugh, it made me cry, and it made me think, and to me, those three things are what make a movie worth watching.
The book is The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. You may have seen it at your local Starbucks recently, as they were featuring it as one of their literary picks. That’s how I found out about it – I picked it up and read the jacket while waiting for my coffee. Again, a very implausible premise – the main character and narrator of the book is a dog. The book also prominently features auto racing, of which I am most definitely not a fan. In my mind, those were two pretty big strikes against it, but something also seemed appealing to me, so I requested it from the library, and just finished reading it a couple of days ago. This, too, passes the laugh/cry/think test, especially the cry test (Rob found me a sobbing mess on the couch when I read the ending). The storyline is a bit predictable, many of the characters are stereotyped, and it’s got its share of sentimentality. But the narrator Enzo is so wonderfully crafted. For those of us who are dog people, it’s like finally getting to find out what’s going on inside those furry little heads, and it indulges my secret belief that our four-legged companions understand and feel much more than they’re usually given credit for.
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