http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl461mVrMFo

Boing Boing has long ago interviewed Peter Serafinowicz, so this might not be the freshest video to share with you. But there’s so much material in Peter’s back catalog that you might have missed this gem.

Context: On Peter’s BBC comedy series (excerpts of which are easily available on YouTube), he frequently imitates Ringo Starr’s “lugubrious” speaking style. Here’s his Ringo remembering being asked to do a James Bond theme (remember that Paul McCartney did the theme to “Live and Let Die”).

UPDATE: Another casualty of Snowpocalypse 2010, the “Future of the Book” discussion has been postponed. With luck it will be rescheduled soon.

Next Thursday, the Pittsburgh Contemporary Writers Series at Pitt’s Creative Writing program will hold an event of primo interest to me: a discussion titled “The Future of the Book,” featuring Sven Birkerts and Maud Newton, moderated by Cathy Day.

Sven Birkerts

Maud Newton

Sven Birkerts and Maud Newton
The Future of the Book: a discussion moderated by Cathy Day
8:30 pm, Thursday, Feb 11th
Frick Fine Arts Auditorium

Over the years, Maud Newton’s blog has become known among publishers, writers, and agents for its smart literary talk and her devotion to reading and writing.  She has been cited in a range of publications including New York magazine, The Scotsman, The Guardian, the New York Times, and Poets & Writers. Newton is particularly skilled at finding and posting links to lit bits that other sources miss, such as a previously untranslated Roberto Bolano story. Newton has written for The American Prospect, and contributed book reviews to The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post Book World, the New York Times Book Review, and Newsday.  Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared various journals including Narrative, Maisonneuve, and Swink.

Sven Birkerts is the author of several collections of essays, including The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age (Faber and Faber, 2002). He has taught writing at Harvard University, Emerson College, Amherst College, and most recently at Mount Holyoke College. Presently, Birkerts is the Director of the Bennington College Writing Seminars. Birkerts reviews regularly for The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, Esquire, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and other publications. His other works include An Artificial Wilderness: Essays on Twentieth Century Literature (William Morrow, 1987), The Electric Life: Essays on Modern Poetry (William Morrow, 1989) and My Sky Blue Trades: Growing Up Counter in a Contrary Time (Viking, 2002).

Sven Birkerts had an opinion piece in The Atlantic last year, “Resisting the Kindle,” so I presume he’ll be presenting the “e-books will destroy mankind and all that is good” point of view.

Maud Newton has many great qualifications and achievements, but I think of her as the blogger who inspired me to start blogging all the way back in 2003. I’m super-excited she’s coming to talk on this subject — or honestly, about anything at all. She posted on her blog last year about e-books: “When is a book not a book?“

The event is open to the public and free; see the full PCWS schedule here.

Whether you’re able to attend in person or not, I plan to liveblog the event, and I’d love for you to follow along and chime in. There will be a post on this site next Thursday with a CoverItLive widget where you can read my notes, make comments, add media (I think…), etc. Or you can tweet and tag your tweets with #futureofthebook and they’ll appear in the widget too. Very futuristic, no?

FOLHA FRESCA (Fresh leaf), originally uploaded by jonycunha.

I posted on the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra blog today, “Fresh.”

I wrote about the lovely performance I attended Friday, the PSO performing Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 2 and Haydn’s Violin Concerto No. 2 with soloist Gil Shaham. In classic blogging form, I spent much of the post talking about myself, but it was to make a larger point (honest!).

This weekend’s concerts also included Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, which was so lovely I didn’t know what to write about it. I think I’m storing up a bunch of Mahler thoughts that will come bursting out one of these days.

Video: Julie London – Cry Me a River

Video: Julie London – My Baby Just Cares for Me

Video: Julie London – You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To”

Video: Julie London – Bye Bye Blackbird

William Holden & Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday

The highlight of my weekend was seeing a classic film I hadn’t seen before: Born Yesterday, starring Judy Holliday and William Holden. I’m not sure how I missed this one in the past. Judy Holliday is outstanding in this, coarse (check out her shouting “What?” in the clip above) yet sexy and sweet, and smarter than anyone thinks. She’s the prototype for all the not-so-ditzy blondes in film — Legally Blonde, Clueless, any early Goldie Hawn movie.

The plot hasn’t aged too well. With its focus on the evils of business trying to influence government, it looks pretty naive these days — or maybe it could serve as a reminder of how things ought to be. But the characters are as fresh as ever.

The gin game scene from Born Yesterday

Trailer for One Too Many Mornings

Each year it becomes harder for an independent filmmaker (or anyone) to release a movie. Making a movie is hard; distributing it is nigh on impossible.

So it’s interesting to see a filmmaker taking the simplest approach and releasing a movie straight to DVD and to web purchase and download. John August featured the micro-budget One Too Many Mornings on his blog and highlighted their distribution strategy (brief overview post; brief review post), and in the comments of the first post he, blog readers, and the film’s director Michael Mohan are having a discussion about how the film was financed and made, the web software being used to market and distribute the film, and more. Terrific info for anyone in indie film, but also thought-provoking for anyone creating media and considering alternative or straight-to-the-public distribution (fiction and nonfiction, video, podcasts, art).

I particularly love the bundles in which you can buy the DVD. In the Limited Edition Deluxe Package ($34.99) for example, you get a piece of the film’s set: “Yes, literally a scrap from the upholstery of the couch used in the main set of One Too Many Mornings.” It comes with a certificate of authenticity. Buy it now!

The first horror movie I saw in a theater was Halloween 2. I had seen nothing as terrifying before, and it scarred my psyche. One major result was that I could no longer hear the song “Mr. Sandman,” which was featured in the movie. Previously I thought of it — if I thought of it at all — as a light pop hit; now it had become a harbinger of extreme danger.

Today on last.fm I heard for the first time a newer version of the song, performed by the San Francisco band Oranger. “Hey,” I thought, “this is pretty good. Kinda rockin’. Maybe now I can finally overcome my irrational fear of Mr. Sandman.”

Then I looked up the video:

Oranger – Mr. Sandman (Stubbs the Zombie)

It seems that Oranger’s “Mr. Sandman” is on the soundtrack for the Stubbs the Zombie video game.

I may never sleep again.

I had dinner last night with a friend visiting from out-of-town, and eventually the conversation turned, as it will, to philosophy.

Which philosopher’s view is closest to yours? my friend asked.

I said I can’t remember any more which philosopher said what, but that I probably agreed with the thinking of one of the guys in Monty Python’s “Philosophers Drinking Song.”

Never heard of it, my friend said.

Never heard of it? Shock, surprise, lamentation! A classic Monty Python sketch, and so useful if you need a sing-along during a long car ride.

“The Philosophers’ Drinking Song,” Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl

Of course, this doesn’t address the question of which philosophy comes closest to what I believe. Fortunately, the Internet is here to help us answer that question:

My “Ethical Philosophy Selector Rankings”:

1. John Stuart Mill (100 %)
2. Epicureans (90 %)
3. Aristotle (87 %)
4. Jeremy Bentham (82 %)
5. Aquinas (75 %)
6. Ayn Rand (75 %)
7. Kant (71 %)
8. Jean-Paul Sartre (67 %)
9. Spinoza (65 %)
10. Prescriptivism (58 %)
11. Cynics (51 %)
12. David Hume (51 %)
13. Stoics (51 %)
14. St. Augustine (47 %)
15. Ockham (45 %)
16. Thomas Hobbes (42 %)
17. Nietzsche (41 %)
18. Nel Noddings (38 %)
19. Plato (37 %)

Interestingly (to me), John Stuart Mill has always been the name I have trouble remembering in the Pholosophers Drinking Song. After today, I shall never have that problem again.

Which philosopher do you most agree with?

UPDATE: If you can’t quite recall what it is that John Stuart Mill proposed, his philosophy is known as utilitarianism. Summary from Wikipedia:

Mill’s famous formulation of utilitarianism is known as the “greatest-happiness principle”. It holds that one must always act so as to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, within reason. Mill’s major contribution to utilitarianism is his argument for the qualitative separation of pleasures. Bentham treats all forms of happiness as equal, whereas Mill argues that intellectual and moral pleasures are superior to more physical forms of pleasure. Mill distinguishes between happiness and contentment, claiming that the former is of higher value than the latter, a belief wittily encapsulated in the statement that “[i]t is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.”

John Stuart Mill entry in Wikipedia.

“Queen Bitch” live, 1972

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