Ok, this cover is just all kinds of awesome. I’m having flashbacks of Swing Out Sister or Level 42 meets Return to Forever and I’m listening to a Bieber song?

I transcribed Davis’ solo in high school and to see it come to life like this is absolutely thrilling. Even if you can’t read music, the song just comes to life visually. I hope you enjoy it.

(via Kottke.org)

Two words. Fincher. Reznor. The subject matter in the first book is very dark and if there are two people that work with that subject matter very well, it’s these two.

I am so there.

Update: Sony Pictures can’t seem to get their act together with the embed, so I’ve swapped it out with an image and a link to Apple Trailers. Just watched the trailer in 1080p and I’ve got chills.

Source: Sapling Press via SwissMiss

Aram Bedrosian is a bass soloist and this song is called “A Dark Light”. My hope is that he will release it on an upcoming album, because I would LOVE to buy it. I typically play it over-and-over in a loop because I love it so much. I hope you do too.

I can’t wait.

I sent an e-mail to tech support and after a few days they sent back a reply stating that they would make an exception and allow me to download my files on a one-time basis.

Michael, iTunes Store Customer Support will let you download (at no charge) all the titles you purchased on this account that are still available. This does not include any item that has been modified or removed from the store since you purchased it. Please note that you may download your purchases only once, so this is an exception.

So I’ve begun the process of re-downloading what is still available to me as you can see in the image below.

A screenshot of my iTunes software downloading 1812 items.

I’m extremely grateful that iTunes support made this exception and allowed me access to 1812 files, but it’s also a little disconcerting. There were an additional 637 that were modified in some way so that they are no longer available to me. What disturbs me is not the fact that there are 637 items that I lost, but that my total iTunes files equals 2449. In other words, I’ve spent over $2000 in the iTunes store.

Of course that’s not including the 900+ CDs I have, so I’m beginning to think that I might have a problem.

Thanks to Pandarr’s request on Reddit, the Old Spice Guy responded with the isolated audio to create your answering machine message. I threw it into GarageBand and played with it a little bit and created my very own. Enjoy.

OldSpice has done a series of personalized commercials and posted them on YouTube. Simply go to this link and prepare to be amazed. Very funny, very clever and I have no doubt that I’ll be buying an Old Spice product very soon.

Got to go though. I have to create my new voice mail message!

Maybe it’s her attitude, her facial expressions, her attempts to keep the beat, the Flashdance attire, or the delicious bouillabaisse of all these ingredients, but I can’t stop watching this video. She is absolutely a m a z i n g.

You’ve been warned.

And to live up to my reputation of providing too much information, “Donk” is a real style of electronic music. Yeah, I know. I thought the video was a joke too. There’s even a 30-minute documentary on VBS.tv all about it.

*** Spoiler Alert ***

Britain has rednecks too.

I tried to be helpful and constructive in my response, but I couldn’t help but recall a great piece by Josh Olson entitled, “I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script” for the Village Voice. Josh is best known for writing the screenplay for A History of Violence and I suppose he get’s asked his opinion quite a bit. Josh’s default answer when asked if he would read someone’s script, is a very colorful “No.”

Josh’s reason for saying “No” upfront is that in his experience he’s caught between a rock and a hard place. If he does agree to read the script and offers criticism then the writer will think he’s a jerk, but if he says no upfront, he’ll still be thought of as a jerk. Might as well save the time and energy and just be a jerk from the start.

Well, I chose the latter. I provided a lot of feedback and detail and I suppose time will tell wether or not I made the right decision. I really like this person and respect his work, so I hope it turns out well.

Meet the sloths from Amphibian Avenger on Vimeo.

Courtesy of BoingBoing

I plan on writing more about this journey I’m on, but I need to get some distance first so I can look back and have some perspective. Then the article Simplicity is hard. Let’s go shopping! showed up in my RSS reader, courtesy of minimalmac.com and I just had to share it.

It has more to do with how husbands and wives communicate than it does with minimalism, but I hope you find it as humorous as I did. Enjoy.

How to Brew a Good Cup of Coffee from Ben Helfen on Vimeo.

It’s done in a hybrid classic sitcom/reality show style, kind of like “The Office”, but without the awkward moments. The actors are suppose to know the camera is there, so they break the third wall, but not too much.

Whatever, stop reading this and go watch it from the beginning. You can catch it on Hulu.com for the next few weeks and below is episode 3.

Then yesterday, as I was driving home, I flipped on NPR and Fresh Air was one with Terri Gross. She was interviewing T.R. Reid about his new book “The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care” and what he discovered about healthcare in other countries.

I particularly enjoyed how he walked through the four major types of healthcare currently used around the globe: Beveridge, Bismarck, National Health Insurance and Out-of-Pocket (details here) and then related to what his experience was living and using the health services. It’s one thing to talk about the concept and it’s another to have experienced it.

However, what blew me away was that we have all four healthcare models at work here in the US.

If you’re Native American, or a Veteran, you live in Britain. They get government healthcare from government hospitals with government doctors and they never get a bill.

If you’re an employed person sharing your health insurance premium with your employer you live in Germany. That’s the Bismarck model that was invented in Germany and used in many countries.

If you’re a senior and you buy medicare insurance from the government and go to private doctors, you live in Canada. That’s the Canadian model. As a matter of fact the Canadian healthcare system is called Medicare and when Lyndon Johnson provided it for our seniors in 1965 he borrowed both the model and the name from Canada.

And if you’re one of the 10′s of millions of Americans who can’t get health insurance, well you live in Malawi, or Madagascar, Somali or something. If you can pay for health insurance you can get it, or maybe you can line up at a free hospital sometime.

We’ve got ‘em all and that’s really the most important difference. All the other countries have decided it’s cheaper and fairer to provide one model so that everybody has the same access to the same care at the same price.

So with everyone up in arms about “socialized medicine“, I find it interesting that however you define this made up word, we’re already engaged in it.

You can listen to the entire interview below, or go it directly at this link.

I’ve already pre-ordered the album on iTunes, but since it doesn’t release until August 24^th, I’m thrilled that I don’t have to wait any longer to enjoy her new album. [direct link]

For those that are interested, Imogen has been using her Twitter account to show her creative process which has been very interesting. If you don’t want to catch up on month’s of tweets, you can check out these two videos on YouTube courtesy of Billboard Magazine.

• Imogen Heap on ‘Ellipse’
• Imogen Heap Talks Recording

Today iTunes announced that they have added a new “D-45″ to the music section [iTunes Link]. Their prices range from $1.49 – $1.99, and you get two songs for that price. Right now there are over 20 different artists to choose from and the range is pretty wide.

Personally, I like this idea, but it seems kind of pointless. The B-Side died with the CD, so this seems like too little to late. What do you think?