Sept. 21:

So what happened between early Sept. and now? Beatles Rock Band.

Yes, I picked up Beatles Rock Band for myself and my sons, and we've been having a great time playing, and singing Beatles tunes. They were a little blown away when I moved the difficulty straight to 'hard' on the vocals, then scored 100% on 4 out of 5 songs. It's a pity "If I Fell" isn't in the song-list... it's one of my favorites.

I saw the movie "Happy Endings" recently, and one scene early on had one of the women singing karaoke to Billy Joel's "Honesty" - I heard it, and thought... "I can sing that"... so I found it on YouTube, and gave it a try. I think being able to connect to the sentiment makes the lyric, and performance ring just that much truer, so next time there's a karaoke night, you can be sure I'll sing it.

Saturday, "This American Life" covered the story of Mark Whitacre, and his bizarre [but TRUE] story of how ADM was involved in fixing global pricing for the amino acid Lysine. The radio story was from 1999, and the events covered in the story were made into a comedy - "The Informant" - starring Matt Damon. It was an elegantly choreographed story with complex overtones, and rich deeper meanings - some of which were only hinted at in the film. But to have heard some of the actual hidden microphone tapes, then to see the same scenes dramatized in the movie served to add a bizarre, almost surreal, flavor to the epic story. Mr. Whitacre had some mental health issues to deal with... but in his own mind, he was the only sane one in the room. He was so deep in 'That River in Egypt', that he could not conceive of a world where his whistle blowing might cost him his job. On the contrary, he envisioned a future with himself rising quickly up the ranks to be President or CEO of ADM once all the 'evil price fixers' were locked away for their nefarious price fixing schemes. But his insistence on cleaning every leaf from his driveway by running the leaf blower at 2am... that was perfectly rational.

If you need a good laugh, check it out.