Favorite Jazz Vocalists

• Lady Day • Nat King Cole • Frank Sinatra • Cab Calloway • Ella Fitzgerald • Louis Armstrong • Diana Krall • Mel Torme • Bill Weathers • Nina Simone • Billie Holiday • Sarah Vaughan • Bobbi Humphrey • Diana Krall • Betty Carter • Little Jimmy Scott • Madeleine Peyroux • Patricia Barber •

Soul-Crushingly Beautiful Music

• Sigur Ros • “Go Now” by the Moody Blues • “I Get Along Without You Very Well” by Carly Simon • Neko Case • Emmylou Harris • Riceboy Sleeps • “Possibly Maybe” by Björk •  Other Lives • Ray LaMontagne • Neil Young • Annuals • Jeff Buckley • “Oriental Melody” and “Cool New Way” by Joe Satriani • Kings of Convenience • The Sundays • Mazzy Star • The Cure (Disintigration-era) • Leonard Cohen • Sufjan Stevens • The Sublime Goodness Mixtape 2 • Patty Griffin •

My ears will be warm and full for weeks. Thanks to @jimmymarks, @allspeeds, @solis510, @ali_shafai, @vanessahenry, @morrischris, @jhoop98, @andrewshepherd, @lisarandolph, @bradywalen, @dericjones, @mmpartee, @nunispramp for that.

Update 7/1: I’ve added four jazz vocalists and a spelling change from @astigmatic, who let me know that, “It’s Krall, the singer, not Krull, the awesomely bad fantasy thriller from 1983.” Thanks, Aaron.

PS: Add to the list by posting your favorites in the comments.

This inspired speech from Charlie Chaplin was delivered sometime during WWII. Over fifty years later, it’s still as poignant and relevant as ever.

“We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in.”

“Machinery that gives abundance leaves us in want.”

“We think too much but feel too little.”

“More than machinery, we need humanity.”

“More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness.”

One commenter responded, “If only people would listen and do, instead of listen and forget.” That’s really the trick, isn’t it?

Last week while walking through the wilds of Williamsburg, I passed this.  Just like last time, it needs a caption. Bad. Please leave yours.

This round’s winning caption receives a copy of Marc Johns’ righteous book of illustrations, “Serious Drawings.”

As always, you are free to submit as many captions as your noodle can pop out. I’ll announce the winner Thursday, July, 2nd.

Update (7/2): This was a really hard decision, because there’s a ton of solid gold in the comments. Jeff Hardin takes the win with: “Prison dwarf tossing FAIL,” which actually made me spit coffee when I read it.

I wrote a song yesterday from my hotel room outside of Minneapolis. I think I’ll probably add to it, but here’s a quick-and-dirty little recording I made this morning of what it is right now. Hope you enjoy it:

Notes From a Hotel Room in Minnesota (MP3 download)

Lyrics:

For days upon days
I’ve been dreaming awake
of you calling me up,
and we know just what to say.

But doors have been shut
and the well has run dry
and my cast iron throat
it can’t ask for advice.

We say cheers to the present,
we empty out the glass,
talk about where we’re headed
as we drink down the past

Shawn sat on the plane
and drank ginger ale.
He told me the stories
of how he had failed.

His family was waiting
in Saskatchewan
to start their new lives
in the hot Florida sun.

“I spent years breaking things
that I love the most
and feel cheap when I pray:
‘Father, Son, Holy Ghost.’”

Sit down on the train
and they all look away -
staring down at their coffee
and the newspaper page.

We’re all packaged well
we’re all wrapped up and bound
we all practice distraction
and don’t make a sound

We have our smoke and mirrors
we have our one act plays
we’re all trying to scream
in the quietest way

Playing it cool is for the birds.

(via Ze Frank)

In 1995 a couple of miffed Danish filmmakers got together and said, “We’re tired of the effects and novelty and plastic pizzazz of Hollywood hijacking the most important thing about film: the story.”

And so they trimmed the fat.

The two Danes were Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, and in 45 minutes they wrote the Dogme 95 Vow of Chastity, a 10-point manifesto that rejected overproduced gimmicks in favor of pure storytelling. The rules include shooting only on location with no props or sets, avoiding added sound or music, using only hand-held cameras, and filming in color with no special lighting (read the whole thing here).

In other words, von Tirier and Vinterburg believed in placing certain limitations on their work and got great results. The first of the dogme films, aka Dogme #1, Vinterberg’s “The Celebration,” demonstrated the beauty of limitation and won the Jury Prize at Cannes, along with loads of other awards.

Like von Trier and Vinterberg, we all need to embrace—and even self-impose—limitations to achieve a deeper creative focus.

Unlike our Scandinavian friends, however, we don’t have to declare all-out stylistic chastity. We can begin sketching our boundaries with a few rough outlines.

» Inside Marketing: Drawing Lines to Color Inside

Thanks very much, Lisa & the CUESers, for the opportunity.

“I was at Microsoft for a long time and I watched them continue to pack features into products that nobody wanted.

In fact, they packed so many in that they innovated by hiding a lot of the features so you weren’t so confused about them.”

It’s from Jamie Monberg’s panel, “Interactive Beyond the Screen: Branding in Four Dimensions.” Download the full session mp3 here. The quote is at about 37:20 into it.

On a related note, Rube Goldberg’s “Self-Operating Napkin:”

(image credit: Wikipedia)

My days are hodgepodge of the three CDs, but I spend way more time on the right side of that scale than I’d like.

Good to know: If I try hard, one day I’ll work in “booze” like some people work in watercolors and modeling clay. (via iVisuell)