Amazon's new Kindle: I'm reading my xmas list folks

I don't think I've wanted anything this bad since the iPod came out. Unless you count the iPhone. But, as much as I love Apples I won't Sprint for one.


If this little thing can do for my reading what the iPod did for my music, I'll be a very happy camper. And to be honest, if given the choice between one of these for xmas and a non-Sprint iPhone...I'd have to go with the Kindle.

How Many Connections Do YOU Have?

Yesterday I found an invitation in my inbox to become a member of a friend’s “professional network” via the professional-networking site LinkedIn.com. The first thought to run through my mind? Oh. God.

I’ll admit that I was quick to jump on the Friendster bandwagon back in the day: I really enjoyed reconnecting with many of my college friends and even a couple people from my high-school era. Not to mention the never-ending satisfaction that came in creating and recreating your own personal dust-jacket. It was like launching your own marketing strategy complete with personal Hallmark addendums. After a while, though, the site became less about a place to reconnect and maintain friendships and more about how many “friendsters” or testimonials you had. It began to feel like middle-school, which is the only other forum I’d previously encountered where people’s cliques, tastes and popularity were so blatantly on display for others to judge and dissect.

So, when everyone subsequently jumped over to MySpace I only half-heartedly followed suit. I never really engaged with that site, though, mainly because I felt the tone delve deeper into middle-school territory with personal-page “comments” that read more like really bad jokes and chain emails. I’ve also managed to resist the pull of FaceBook for precisely the opposite reasons: nothing is quite as uncool as joining a social-networking site that my mother could very well be a member of. God forbid she proves to be more popular than I would! Ha!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against these kinds of sites. I still keep my profiles up on Friendster and MySpace. After all, the birthday reminders from the former are invaluable and the pictures posted by friends on the latter are great to have. And I have joined other kinds of sites since my Friendster-crack days as well: I have profiles up on Yelp and Shelfari, etc. Although, unlike Friendster and MySpace, I joined these other sites anonymously with the use of initials and nicknames (as I have also done with this blog). I like to share my opinions, but I also don’t necessarily want just anyone to know they are mine.

Which brings me back to LinkedIn. As a professional networking site, LinkedIn differs from the others in that it is supposed to be used for business networking and the like. For example, you might find out that your friend has a friend who manages a venture capital firm and because you have mutual connection that VC-friend might be willing to look at your new business plan. Not to mention that you could do a little preparatory research on the people who will be interviewing you at the firm you would like to join—perhaps you could warm them up with talk of your mutual love of gardening? You get the idea. [In fact, to see all the ways that LinkedIn can help you and your professional career, check out this nicely written and (careful now) very persuasive plug here.]

But therein lies the rub: any research you can do on them, they can clearly do on you as well. And do you really want your (current or future) co-workers and employers to have ready access to that information? I mean, granted, they could find out more “damaging” things about you from Friendster and MySpace than they might from LinkedIn but even still it sort of makes me cringe to think about. Some things are better left as skeletons in my closet…even when those skeletons in my closet might just be lazy co-workers that I’m “connected” to and thus (to the people that also know the co-worker in question) inadvertently projecting a similarly lazy persona. And saying “no” to a connection invite would probably disrupt office politics, so there may not be an easy way around that. (For more about this, and a generally funny article, you should check this out.)

That said, I'm sure I'll be joining up with LinkedIn in the next couple of days or so. Afterall, the Fortune 500 companies are doing it. And I found my boss on there too. Ha!

Listening: Eric Bachmann

My belated post below about the Josh Ritter show I went to a while back brings to mind the fact that I discovered Eric Bachmann there. He opened for Ritter that night and he totally blew my mind. While this will lose me some cred in the eyes of some people, I had no idea who he was but, thankfully, managed to catch his whole set that night because I misjudged the actual start-time of the show. Bachmann was the frontman of Archers of Loaf and currently fronts Crooked Fingers (hence the cred-losing thing: I've never really listened to either of those bands before even though I probably should have).

At any rate, he impressed me so much with his opening set that I bought his album the next day, To the Races (pictured above), and have been listening to it pretty much non-stop since then. Calling it merely acoustic folk seems a bit of a let-down even though that is precisely what is: it's stripped down folk at its best.

If for nothing else, this album should be explored for the opening song alone. Man o'War is lyrically dense and haunting in it's build-up (but those who know me well also know I'm a sucker for a slow-build). It incorporates so much imagery and room for interpretation, in fact, that I'm still unsure as to whether the song is about Man o'War (as the album title would suggest), a man o'war (as the opening line and the references to blue bottles suggests), or a Man of War (as the imagery of the ocean and sinking suggests). Perhaps them all? In my opinion, like similar-in-style Dylan lyrics, it doesn't really matter.

So, if you get a chance, check it out. And I'm talking to you, Boo.

You are the Northern Lights: Josh Ritter @ Webster Hall 11/9

So, about forever and a day ago I checked out Josh Ritter's show at Webster Hall. I was going to let this post slide (as I have other posts when I've been a little late on the draw in posting about a show) but I just had to mention this show. It was, without a doubt, the most fun I've ever had at a show in New York City. So please excuse my lateness and allow me to tell you that Mr. Ritter puts on one hell of a show.

The first great thing about this show was Ritter's obvious enjoyment in performing for us, which was coupled by the uber-enthusiasm emanating from the audience. The atmosphere was positively electric. It still brings chills to me. As for proof of his enjoyment, the grin you can see in this picture to the left rarely disappeared from his face the entire evening. Even in the quieter moments, a small smile would creep out as he was singing.

I have been a Ritter fan for more than a few years and mostly for a dumb reason: we both hail from Idaho. Not necessarily the greatest reason to check out a band, granted, but the reason that led me to him nonetheless. I find his lyrics to be clever and his country-by-way-of-Leonard-Cohen style is also definitely my cup of tea. So I was extremely excited to have the chance to finally see him live.

However, I'd been reading a few interviews that Ritter had been giving around town leading up to the show and was starting to get a little worried about what I was getting myself into. There was a lot of talk (by him) about his new album being less "auto-biographical" and more "rockin" than his previous albums and how he was getting tired of being fit to the mold of the confessional singer-songwriter type. Fair enough. But, while it's true that his new album does include references to pirates and Joan of Arc, I found it to be neither rockin (per se) or a huge departure from his other work. Different, yes, but more like a progression rather than a departure. So...with visions of Ryan Adam's attempt at be coming more of a "rock star" in my head, I was really worried that my first look at Ritter live was going to let me down.

And, let me tell you kids, Josh Ritter can rock! And it turns out his new album is rockin...or at least more so than I thought it was while listening to it over my head phones on the subway. Nothing like context to set one straight.

I had such fun that night. There was a lot of dancing in the crowd, a lot of chit-chat from Ritter, and a lot of interaction between the crowd and the guys on stage. As Josh Ritter said as he closed the show, the night was truly magical. It's too bad I can't go back again.

*Thanks to Kyle Dean Reinford on Flickr for the awesome shot. Please check out more of his shots from that night here.