Samantha Brown

When you're at home ill, who is the friendliest face on TV?

http://youtube/DdnHoLkg9hc

al Bari

al Bari, the evolver, is one of the 99 names of God in the faith, Islam. This is a meditative piece on the idea that positive change, evolution, is a spiritual goal and exercise.

Occupy the World

For those people cold in their tents, for those people in the drum circles, for those people who march, for those willing to be arrested, for the people who know justice will come because they demand it, you are beautiful.

Pirate Polifix

A protest song for your consideration.

Let Me Be Near You

A love song....

Loves Overtaken and Wall Street

Something bitter and something sweet. The kids have it. The eyes have it.

Danny Boy

A non-traditional rendering of a traditional irish ballad. And a protest and a prayer.

If not peace, then mercy.

You Reeka! Hooters and Shooters

“And ALERT: My character “Hollie Martin” starts her 7 episode run on Eureka July 18th - Felicia Day”

A season featuring Felicia Day that begins with footage of the launch of a Mercury Redstone is not without the irony of an inside reference to her. Cute.

On the other hand, the season premier is weak in the knees.

Leave it to Canadian production to take pieces of American history and mash them up. From the perspective of someone who lived through that history up close, the season opener was clumsy. The holes and misattributions are glaring like a 1950s pre space era sci-fi movie. I found myself laughing in all the wrong places.

As to Siffy’s season premiers: C for effort and keeping a lot of CGI types in work, but the writing is derivative and in critical need of innovative originality.

It is possible the writers are coming at this from a gamer's perspective. We've never really mastered the art of interactive character and plot development. It gets in the way of action and grinding for gold or solving puzzles that are neat in first person but terrible in dialog. When you apply that approach to a series, you get what a friend of mine calls "chicks in tank tops" or simply, hooters and shooters.

I get the same sense from the Siffy season openers and premiers as I get from gen y music; it is as if they don’t have their own experiences so they keep going to the baby boomer well and sipping shallowly. They try to make themselves look smarter or more cool than the baby boomers and simply come off as plastic heros with boob and gun fetishes. The 60s had their share of schlock too. No contest. The question is how to do better.

Felicia Day can do better as one of the most original voices of her own generation. Her best work is The Guild. She writes from her own experience as they say a writer should, but more importantly, she isn't writing a game. She is writing a comedy series that explores the foibles and strengths of her generation or gamers and in doing so, also as a writer should, reveals the universals there. How well she could craft a decent sci-fi series is up for debate but I doubt she can do worse and I'm willing to bet she can do quite a bit better. Otherwise she should distance herself from Siffy and take a hard look at offers that will enable her to develop her own considerable talents as a writer while she continues to hone her acting chops.

Give her the shot. It's time to quit imagining greater; imagine better.

Nothing More (Oblatio Sui)

A song of penitence dedicated to all those who raise their eyes to God in service regardless of religion or place in the world. The Oblatio Sui is a prayer by Ignatius Loyola and this is inspired by that text.

The Evil Mirror

We pay a price for the perfection of media. I tell my kids to watch the TV shows before color such as the Red Skelton Shows. I tell them to note two things:

a) It was a very Caucasian world.
b) Women had hips.

For the first, I am glad. This had to change and as painful as that change was for some on the wrong side of history, the world is better.

For the second, I am sad. We live in the reflections of Snow White's Evil Step Mother's mirror where all the edges are ground away and only the super luminous colors reach our eyes. We photoshop our way into believing in things that are not real and the delusions rob us of the subtle colors. So much beauty is hidden by the glare and the irony is we perceive it by the power of the shadows to give edges to that unseen beauty.

Here's an example: Leland Sklar copies the obit notice by Fred Steiner's daughter, Wendy Waldman. Leland is A-list. I know who he is and enjoy the privilege of his conversations on Facebook. Fred composed the Perry Mason theme and many other famous soundtracks, so I am dimly aware of his work. But Wendy, his daughter? I didn't have a clue. And that is tragic but I know how that happened.

The world of entertainment is dominated by the high frequencies of the A-list, the stars who become super-luminous. In the world of Red Skelton, that was all one would see and in the super competitive money-driven world of today's entertainment industry, things are no different with the exception that as some of the A-listers who are brave enough or reckless enough to actually converse on the pages that represent them, occasionally their less famous but equally talented friends shine through. It took the shadow of her father's passing for me to see her there. And that is regrettable but there are greater tragedies.

Ron Paul says he doesn't believe in evolution. It wouldn't matter because evolution doesn't care. It works whether we believe in it or not. The difference is that by his super luminosity he gives a not inconsiderable number of people the excuse to also disbelieve and to persuade others of such. Again, evolution goes on but what is lost is that evolution is not inviolate. It can be directed and those most aware of that who can gain control over self and others can do that. Some like to say 'program or be programmed' but that is just one technical approach, valid but insufficient. It isn't enough to program; one needs to know what to shape and why it might matter.

It matters that women have hips. It matters that the world is not all Caucasian. It matters that Wendy Waldman is a brilliant, gifted songwriter and producer who is one of the pioneers of Southern California country folk rock because these are the people we learn from, the people who can illumine what matters. It matters that we see the subtle colors that make up the majority of the light.

How sad that we can only see them because for a moment the Moon passed over the Sun and shadows outlined the shapes of subtle beauties. How wonderful that we are not yet so blinded by super luminosity, we can still notice and our hearts still care for that last part is the miracle of love, that we can still feel. Snow White will sleep until we cut down the brambles put there by those who own the mirror and only feel empowered if what we see there is the most fair, the most bright, the single parts because the best are often the most subtle.