Although Dave Cusick’s Post Modern Rock Show is still the best radio show on the Internet, I’ve recently discovered Coverville, which is a strong #2.
The concept — interesting covers of well-known songs — could easily have been painful, painful, painful, but the music (mostly) stands on its own as great tunes, although many of them are so obscure, they’re impossible to find on one’s own.
In a clever twist, there are also Originalville shows that feature the original versions of songs that only became popular as covers.
For those who find Dave Cusick’s show a little too po-mo (which even I find to be the case once in a while, as he’s more musically adventurous than I am, despite all my efforts at extreme open-mindedness), Brian Ibbott’s Coverville might be just the ticket. And even for those who’ve gotten turned on to the former show, it’s a great addition to a podcasting line-up, along with the music shows from KCRW.
We just got back from a mandatory (but with Baskin-Robbins ice cream) staff meeting at the Daily Press, where Publisher Stephan Wingert announced that Gretchen Losi, formerly the DP’s Hesperia reporter and now doing a bang-up job on education, was the DP’s Employee of the Month, for her leadership in the newsroom while the paper temporarily was without a city editor. Well deserved, even if this is half a step towards management, Gretchen.
Bards and Sages has just announced that the Koboldnomicon, with material by yours truly, among others, will be released in July.
No word on distribution methods, but going by history, it’s a pretty safe bet it’ll be available through RPG Now at the very least.
This was a really great story on NPR yesterday:
At many newspapers, the top priority is how best to prop up revenues. But the family that owns The Anniston Star in Alabama is quietly planning to devote the paper’s profits to training new generations of reporters.
The Star is a small daily that packs an outsized punch, situated in a town west of Atlanta. The paper has a circulation of just 27,000. But under the leadership of publisher Harry Brandt Ayers, it fights above its weight class. It campaigned for racial desegregation at a time when much of Alabama was brawling to keep it out, and it has uncovered pollution and government corruption. The newspaper has maintained a staff that is twice as large as what industry consultants recommend.
The Star has long served as a training ground for aspiring journalists. Rick Bragg and Jim Yardley went on to win Pulitzers at The New York Times. Others graduated to the Chicago Tribune and The Wall Street Journal.
The audio version has more to it than the text sample on the NPR site.
The Anniston Star sounds like a great paper. I wish every community in America had a paper like that.
There are movies that merit running more than two hours, where the filmmakers fill every second with cinematic gold. Unfortunately, Tristan & Isolde
isn’t one of them. The movie drags from the beginning, as we see 20 to 30 minutes of background that could have been explained with some background text. Each scene, then and after, moves at a leisurely pace, as though people were not dying and nations were not at war.
Worst of all, James Franco — surely there were attractive young British actors that could have played Tristan — seems to be sleepwalking through every scene with his co-star, bringing an abject lack of chemistry to the proceedings.
This is a workman-like film, but it has really nothing to demand that the viewer watch it. A rental, and nothing more.
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