Man (to woman): “Wanna go to WalMart?”

Woman shrugs.

Man picks up laser-pointer from display, shines light in woman’s eyes.

Man: “Cool light.”

Back in 2003, when dial-up was still common and many keyboards didn’t have a “Windows” key, a few good friends and I put on a conference. The Zap Your PRAM conference was better than we could have hoped. We’re still in touch with friends made that fall.

We’re doing it again! This time we’ve got the entire Dalvay-by-the-Sea hotel booked for a long weekend in October. For those unaware, Dalvay-by-the-Sea is a hotel in the National Park on the North Shore of Prince Edward Island. It was built in 1895 as a summer cottage by a “wealthy industrialist” (I hope they call me that some day). It has been beautifully preserved.

While the location is remarkable enough that I think we could spend a worthwhile weekend there without any activities, we do plan to spend the weekend talking and playing. All invited are expected to contribute - stories, talks, music, films, etc.

At the last conference, we had film-makers, librarians, radio producers, and a bunch of web geeks. We’re hoping for even more diversity this time around.

As with the first Zap, the conference is invitation-only due to the limitations of the location and of the dynamics of group discussion. We’re intentionally keeping it small.

If you’re interested in an invite read up on the details and let us know by getting in touch with me directly, or zap@zapyourpram.org.

The two parts in include performances by Joel Plaskett, Serena Ryder, Jeremy Fisher, Jay Malinowski of the Bedouin Soundclash and others. Both Plaskett and Ryder play new songs and some crowd singing-along may cause goose-bumps.

The recordings can be downloaded via the Radio 2 Podcast or downloaded directly:

1. Juno Songwriters Circle Part 1 (46Mb MP3)
2. Juno Songwriters Circle Part 2 (48Mb MP3)

The first session of Acts of Volition Radio for 2008, the future.

For more, see the previous Acts of Volition Radio sessions or subscribe to the Acts of Volition Radio RSS feed.

While the TV networks are struggling to figure out a business model for distributing television online, a small company called Revision3 is actually doing it (disclosure: revision3 has been a client of my employer). They produce a whole bunch of shows, and the quality varies, but there are a few gems.

Their best show, by far, is a weekly movie/tv/game/comics review show called The Totally Rad Show. The show consists of three guys who stand in front of a green-screen and talk about the latest movies, tv shows, video games, and comics. This doesn’t sound great, but it is.

What makes this show so enjoyable is that the three hosts clearly love the stuff they are talking about. They grew up with movies, tv, and games - this is their culture. They are so enthusiastic that it’s contagious. It’s almost enough to make me care about comic books (but not quite).

This type of passion, even about something as trivial as movies and tv, stands out from the drivel of cable/network TV we’ve grown accustomed to. Most “entertainment” news consists of celebrity gossip and sixth-grade-book-report style movie reviews (plot summary != review). These guys watch the movies, watch the shows, play the games, and actually tell us how they feel about it. They are excited when they find something great, and disappointed when find a dud.

These guys talk about video games with more interest and sincerity than a typical cable-news anchor talking about a school shooting. Perhaps the formula for online video has more to do with making something you care about than distribution and subscription models.

“it’s harder to shoot someone if they’re your Facebook friend”

Thanks, Jason.

Hertz phone lady: “We have no record of that reservation, sir.”

Me: [pause]

Me: “Ok, thanks.”

Simon makes it clear that the show’s ambitions were grand. “ ‘The Wire’ is dissent,” he says. “It is perhaps the only storytelling on television that overtly suggests that our political and economic and social constructs are no longer viable, that our leadership has failed us relentlessly, and that no, we are not going to be all right.” He also likes to say that “The Wire” is a story about the “decline of the American empire.” Simon’s belief in the show is a formidable thing, and it leads him into some ostentatious comparisons that he sometimes laughs at himself for and sometimes does not. Recently, he spoke at Loyola College, in Baltimore; he described the show in lofty terms that left many of the students in the audience puzzled—at least, those who had come hoping to hear how they might get a job in Hollywood. In creating “The Wire,” Simon said, he and his colleagues had “ripped off the Greeks: Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides. Not funny boy—not Aristophanes. We’ve basically taken the idea of Greek tragedy and applied it to the modern city-state.” He went on, “What we were trying to do was take the notion of Greek tragedy, of fated and doomed people, and instead of these Olympian gods, indifferent, venal, selfish, hurling lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no reason—instead of those guys whipping it on Oedipus or Achilles, it’s the postmodern institutions . . . those are the indifferent gods.”

With winter in the air, Acts of Volition Radio is back with eight great songs.

For more, see the previous Acts of Volition Radio sessions or subscribe to the Acts of Volition Radio RSS feed.