booknewb

Sometime in January I had set the following. 1. Focus on relationships, maintaining, strengthening and creating new ones 2. Get over yourself, Laugh about yourself 3. Do good work 4. Limit fast food 2x a week for lunch until February 5. Mend. Start again 6. Learn values of resilience and overcoming adversity 7. Be respectful, low-key and accessible 8. Get better overall Results: 1. Relationships - Fair, I feel quite content with my relationships right now. 2. Get over yourself - Yes! still work to be done. 3. Do good work - I hope I have 4. Limit fast food - Needs Improvement. 5. Mend. Start again - Yes! 6. Resilience/Overcoming Adversity - Yes, Very insightful year 7. Respectful, low-key, accessible - Yes, Fair, Fair 8. Get better overall - I would say yes.

"That is the defining moment of if you want to do this seriously or continue to do it, is the moment you get hurt. Do you love it so much that you're going to push through this and learn from your mistake? or is that the sign that you have to stop because you don't like getting hurt? From the very beginning one of my worst injuries was I got a concussion. I knocked my teeth out and I knew when I woke up literally in the pro shop of the skate park that I wanted to get back out there and do it. And it wasn't going to stop me even though I had this extremely tragic injury for the most part." -Tony Hawk This was part of an Art of Charm podcast episode with Tony Hawk.

Dreams do not have a chance to be realized if you don't schedule them. Lesson: Schedule them. The past year, the incoming year and all other years do not owe you anything. Lesson: You are merely a visitor in this time and space. You can't treat a person based solely on how they're treating you. AKA. The Golden Rule on steroids. Lesson: Be kind irregardless. I'm not entirely sure how grammar works for triple negatives, the point is be nice anyway. Lesson pt.2: Put your phone down and talk to your date. If you don't take the responsibility in your hands, If you don't fight back on the things you don't like, then who else will? It has to be you. Said a Serbian political activist. Lesson: Revolutions? Nobody's going to do it for you. Both hope and despair are self-fulfilling prophecies. Said two psychologists. Lesson: Choose your destiny wisely. Self-Love is a good thing. Self-awareness is more important. You have to go ...

J.J. Abrams: "I remember my whole life, since I was 8 or 9 wanting to be a film maker. And it was just this thing that I just knew if I was lucky enough to get the shot would be how i'd want to live my life. Whether I could or not, I didn't know, but it was the thing I wanted to do forever. And there's that thing that happened for me, and i'm sure we all have our versions of this, that you kind of think that somehow the finish line; that's the place you want to get to. And when you get there, you will have become that person, that thing. You will reach a certain level of insider evolution or whatever; that you will feel like i have become that person. And I remember when I was in my last year of college, and I ran into a friend. And we came up with an idea. And we ended up writing it and selling the pitch to Disney, [...] And i remember signing these documents and getting paid. And suddenly I was a professional screenwriter, and I remember the feeling of no...

I bought the book slightly out of an impulse. I wasn't expecting to see it in shelves and there it was. It's basically a collection of interviews Judd Apatow made with comedians when he was young and some more recently.  If he had the technology back then, he'd have probably turned them into podcasts. Aside from the current stand up comics, more than half of the people Judd interviews I've never heard of, which made it intriguing. A couple I realized I've seen their bodies of work, I just didn't know it came from them. One for example is Harold Ramis. That memory connection went when I googled and saw that he directed Groundhog Day. I may be oversimplifying something but it seems like the directors are pretty stable, happy and content. Some of the writers and stand up comics seem all over the place. Some are pretty dark and one could sense a bit of ego riding along. As a whole, I realized these comics are really just people. Some are born out of broken fam...

It's incredibly absurd; Hilarious.  Some comics say this movie cannot be made today. I got that now. It's basically a dark comedy in a western setting. The story revolves around a newly appointed black Sheriff in an all-white town. The final act was trippy. The movie gets away with a lot of edgy material for it's time.  This would be the first Mel Brooks movie I've ever seen. If it's representative of his comedy filmography. Much respect.

I've been around the sun twenty-six times now. I still get dizzy from the spin from time to time. But this is incredible that it's even possible. It's a privilege. Thank you Universe. Thank you God.

"I think there's a real good lie that goes around that many pseudo-intellectuals believe that misery has somehow got more intellectual value than joy. And that's a real problem because there's a lot of [...] people [that] think because they're miserable they're smarter than they are. [...] Also in the portrayal of tragedy and comedy, I have tried to do both in my life and I have watched many other people do it. It seems to me far easier to portray misery whether as an actor, or as a writer than it is to portray joy. Joy is difficult because there's much more resistant to it." [...] "I do believe the key, the meaning of life is live each moment as it arrives." This was part of a Nerdist podcast episode with Craig Ferguson

"There are no secrets. There are no secret recipes. There are no secret techniques. Everything you learn in the kitchen are either you are told, open-sourced by your immediate superior and that's been shared with everybody in the kitchen; Or you have learned it over time painfully.  The ability to tell when a steak is cooked by listening to it in the pan or on the grill, Or determining that a piece of fish is probably ready to come out of the pan just from the sound of it. These are things you learn through repetition. And that is the great secret.  This is how professionals learn. This is how home cooks should learn. People shouldn't be intimidated by recipes. They should understand that professionals learn through getting it wrong, getting it wrong, getting it wrong, getting it wrong, starting to get it right, eventually gets it right until it becomes second nature. Repetition repetition repetition. " This was part of a StarTalk interview with Anthony Bourdain...

This was beautiful.  If in another universe I was an author, this would be the book that I would have liked to have written. It tells the story of Francisco "Frankie" Presto, from his birth to his death. All the while, brushing shoulders with well-known people of music.  It's kind of a historical retelling, including a collection of sort of interviews about how different people met Frankie. Here's one beautiful moment in the book. "Papa" "Yes, Kai?" "My fingers hurt." "Music is pain." "Really?" "It's something my teacher told me." "What are these things?" "Those are calluses." "Why am i getting them?" "Because you're learning. The more you play, the harder they will get." "Yesterday they were bleeding." "Yesterday you tried a lot of songs." "I was terrible." "No, you weren't." "I'll be bett...

"I've played digitally before for years just for fun, (but) p laying vinyl's different, because things can go wrong. The turntables can breakdown. There can be feedback. It's not perfect. And so it requires a certain level of being super attentive a hundred percent of the time. You can't just press a button and everything works perfectly.  And I love that. I love that things can go wrong. You're on your toes constantly. You're constantly working.  You're looking through your record bag of what you're going to play next. That record's now skipping. I've got to transition to another record quickly. There's something ephemeral about it that can change in a moment's notice. And every night's different as a result of that." This was part of a Nerdist podcast episode with Elijah Wood and Samuel Barnett.

Stephen: " Grief cannot be fixed. It can only be experienced.  Unless you allow yourself to experience it, it will stay. " Patton: "Yep, It can't be remedied, it must be endured. And it's the endurance that weirdly enough becomes the remedy." Stephen: "It's the demon that must be named and then it can go." This was from a Late Show with Stephen Colbert episode. The guest was Patton Oswalt.

"As an educator, it's not about me. It's never about me.  It's about the knowledge and wisdom of the natural world, and how your knowledge and wisdom of that can empower you to make decisions you take ownership of.  So I'm duty-bound as a scientist and an educator to share this information with you. What you do after that in a free society, that's your business. I don't lobby congress. I don't lead marches. I don't give speeches at alleys. Cause that implies you want people to do what you do and to say what you say. I never care about that. All I want people to do is be enlightened.  [...] For me the goal is a smarter country. For me the goal is people who can think for themselves.  [...] (That people can) think for themselves not by telling them what to think but by training them how to think." This was part of a Nerdist podcast episode with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

It's an interesting view on the modern dating scene in the US through the eyes of a stand-up comic. Most are pretty easily identifiable, like the anxieties over text messages. Some I'd say are still different in the Philippines, like Online Dating being not as prevalent, or m aybe I'm part of a segment that does not see as much.  Aziz has a bit that goes something like "Your grandmother didn't have 50 guys texting her all night saying how good she looked when she met your grandfather".  Time being a factor. People before didn't have the circumstances we have now. Likewise, people in the future will have advancements we don't have or know. Also,  people were meeting differently. They were meeting people that were relatively close to their homes. Nowadays, people have the option to meet through bigger channels and be introduced to a bigger number of potential partners. With the surge of potential partners and options, the paradox of choice surface...

David and Goliath is about how the seemingly disadvantaged, small people or underdogs, triumph over big enemies.  A couple items: Sometimes the disadvantages are not what they seem, they are what makes the game different and strategic. And inversely, sometimes what seems like an advantage can become a stumbling block. Sometimes, the things that are out of our control, that which makes us different are the ones that push us to grow through it. Like dyslexia, a torn family and/or race issues. The last is that power is not what it seems. Power can be miscalculated.  One that stood out and was excruciatingly painful to read, was the story of the doctor who treated leukemia. ________________________________________________________________________ Tipping Point.  I've forgotten a lot about Tipping Point since I've read it last year. I only thought of including it since I read a Malcolm Gladwell book again. From what I remember it's a collection...

"What, in this moment, is lacking? What's missing in the moment? When you really think about it.  Nothing's missing. " This was part of a You Made it Weird podcast episode.

"I think, you know, just going in there and being willing to kinda do anything cause I remember going up to Adam Mckay and saying hey,  Cause there were some cast members who were like "Uhm I'm just delivering a pizza in this sketch. Really? That's it? I don't wanna do it." I told Adam like "You know I love those little two line parts." Cause I can come in and just be odd and leave the sketch and you can sometimes get a laugh.  And that kind of attitude is what you have to have. Like obviously you want to be in as much as you can. But also doing the little parts, there's no small parts really. " This was part of Nerdist podcast episode with Will Ferrell

"I just see myself as a human being, Just trying to play my part.  I don't think of myself as much as a leader, I'm happy to share what I know." This was part of an HBR podcast interview with Yo-Yo Ma

I had been putting off this film for a couple years. Mostly because it seemed long. I had tried watching it twice before on separate occasions but the scenes always seemed to drag. Like the characters in the film, I was busy. Or at least that's what I think I was being. Busy. It's an entirely different story structure of what I've been used to. For the first half I didn't quite figure out what the premise was. Is this a story about these two old couples wandering around Tokyo? Or maybe they reminisce about their life while seeing their children? I like it because there's a subtlety to it. Like Life in general, Often we don't realize that this is it; That our daily lives are often mundane with the big moments happening in phases. The biggest draw I would say is that we have a tendency to become so enamored with our own lives that we forget the very people who raised us. That we drift away. It's hard not to feel sad for the grandmother, and for the gran...

"It is my view that the kind of guitar you have, the kind of pick-ups, the kind of strings, amplifiers make no difference whatsoever with the kind of music that you make. [...] Here's the forest not the trees answer for you. This guitar that he's asking about my favorite one. It was horrible and I tried to make it sound great and I was unable to. I switched the neck ten times and the pickups ten times, and the strings and I put little pieces of dead weight on it.  It never sounded great to me and I had this amp too that I was just like frustrated with.  So one day I went in there and I just, I spent hours fiddling, and finally gave up.  I got it as good as I wanted it to sound. I was not satisfied with it. It was not the tone I wanted. I marked the amplifier like this is the best that I can do and it's not what I want.  This is the guitar, I set it aside. I'm never going to think about it again. I'm going to use this sound in this guitar to n...

I wasn't quite sure what to expect of this book. Though I'm glad a friend referred me to it.  It read like a collection of stories viewed through the eyes of a found man. I can sense that he's really passionate about what he does and his faith. I guess being the main title. The main idea behind it is that Love simply takes action, for reasons beyond ourselves. Some things one may not easily identify with, but the stories overall were entertaining. I liked the part where he encourages his children about sending letters to world leaders. And then actually going to and meeting them. That may not be as feasible to most families but I feel that would teach children a little something more than trips abroad, and to actually have a sense of connection with people other than their own.

As the caption written on the title below says; it's a "medley of factual romances, happy or tragical, most of which made news." The first stories I wasn't sure if these were actual true stories. It seemed almost like a Gabriel Garcia Marquez plot.  Reading it now in 2016, some names seemed familiar; BenCab, the Aranetas, the Laurels. Others are some of which one will not usually learn in history class; though they may have made quite a stir at the time. It's an interesting insight on the toils and spoils of love. We oftentimes forget love transcends time. I wouldn't have known that the stories were from the 1960's-1970's if it wasn't stated. They could easily pass as today's stories. It seems love transcends distance and race as well. One is about a Japanese girl and a Filipino boxer. Another about a Yugoslav and a Filipina ballet dancer. Interesting ones also from a Colombian Miss International, an Irish American, and a German Barones...

Do you ever have these streaks where you listen to one song repeatedly for a period of time? I don't know what it is, but I'm having one of those with Copeland's song: She Changes Your Mind. "It was your Hello that kept me hanging on every word And your Goodbye that keeps me listening for your voice around each corner It keeps me listening for your voice around each corner"

I was going through some rough times a couple months back and this book helped me go through that period. This is the best piece of literature  I read this year.   I'm not going to write a summary. Instead I'm merely going to list a couple quotable quotes I'd like to remember. Book 1 - 4: When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own-not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel ...

This was from a Conan Interview recently. To give a brief background, While Patton Oswalt had just won an Emmy, his wife passed away a couple months back. People ask me now like hey so " Are you happy like with the.."  Obviously, I'm happy to have won an Emmy but it's very abstract because  it's the flavor of happiness but there's no calories or nutrition there.  It's like it tastes like it but there's nothing. And again I'm not putting down winning an Emmy or anything like that. But, watching a bad movie with her  or fussing over what we're gonna pack for our daughter's like we're going on a trip  on a plane.  That was happiness, that's what it actually felt like for real.

This was written by Viktor Frankl back in 1946. I had been seeing it listed in book recommendations from a couple thought leaders. I chanced upon a copy of it at one of what seemed like family-owned bookstores in Quezon city. 

It's one of those books where you wish you had read earlier in your life, and how much it would have guided you throughout. It's a truly fascinating book from Carol Dweck. Here she basically describes two mindsets a person can have in terms of intelligence; Fixed and Growth Mindset; and how it influences our daily lives, and how it impacts our work, sports, business, relationships and parenting. 

I'm in a really anxious state right now. Going to have a medical operation in the next few days. I dont know what's going to happen. May be too early. I do have a tendency of overthinking things. Now's not an exception.

"If not us who else. [...] It has to be you.  If you don't take the responsibility in your hands, [If]  you don't fight back [on] the things you don't like, then who else will.  It has to be us. " Nobody's going to do it for you. Sound bite from the Art of Charm podcast. The guest was Srdja Popovic  

Excerpt from the You made it Weird podcast with Pete Holmes. John Mulaney: I have this picture of Bobby Kennedy. He's sitting on a stairwell, it's from 1964. He's sitting on stairs in a suit, holding his speech. He's about to give a speech at the '64 Democratic convention. His brother, the president, was assassinated in '63. He's barely been seen. The new president, Linden Johnson, hates Bobby Kennedy. Doesn't want him to steal his thunder during the convention, so he pushes his speech time to a shitty time. Also has his room bugged to find out if he's talking about him. And didn't give him a green room, hence why Bobby Kennedy is sitting on the step.  So the photo is just him sitting there and I think about it a lot like..... You know, you can go through the worst thing in the world and then people can still treat you with great unkindness. But he didn't evaporate. He sat there, he waited, he's humiliated by the president, his b...

Grit. It's a fairly loose buzzword one usually hears in big business town-halls, or some kind of formal ceremonies. I chanced upon the book "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance" by Angela Duckworth, at a local National Bookstore in one quiet Manila afternoon. My impulse kicked-in. I know of it. I had it listed in my books-to-buy list. Perhaps, the marketing worked. I've been seeing the term "Grit" and Angela Duckworth's name pop up in the couple months leading up to it, in articles, in podcasts, in videos etc.

"I didn't really think Tesla would be successful, I thought we'd most likely fail." (then why try?) "If something is important enough, you should try even if the probable outcome is failure."

the sooner you realize that this life isn't about you,  the sooner you actually start living. that what a privilege it is that you get to be alive and wander that you are able to participate in life and be a witness to it

Gotten around to finishing Daniel Kahneman's book Thinking Fast and Slow. It's quite fascinating. Here he describes two thinking systems in the mind; System 1 and System 2 . System 1 is automatic.  System 2 is deliberate. System 1 is fast. System 2 is slow. Intuitions fall on System 1. Active and effort-full calculation is on System 2.

Taken from an interview with Stephen Colbert. He was asked how about his Mom, when early in his childhood, his father and a couple siblings died in a plane crash. "She taught us to still love life and not be bitter. And to realize that everybody suffers. And if you can accept your suffering then you'll just understand people better. And strangely enough, you have to be grateful for pain."

This is part of a Nerdist Podcast episode with Neil Gaiman. On deliberate writing: "If you only write when you're inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet but you will never be a novelist because you're gonna have to make your word count each day and   those words aren't going to wait for you whether you're inspired or not, so you have to write when you're not inspired and you have to write the scenes that don't inspire you.   And the weird things is that six months later, a year later, you'll look back at them you can't remember which scenes you wrote when you were inspired, which scenes you wrote because they had to be written next." On the writing process: "The process of writing can be magical. There are times when you step out of an upper floor window and you just walk across thin air, its absolute nutter happiness.   Mostly it's a process of putting one word after another.   It's like out in p[---] district in Englan...