Music to My Ears (Media Meditation #2)

I love... absolutely love going to see live music. I almost went to see The Brew a few nights ago. My girlfriend and I were supposed to be on the guest list because her uncle is friends with the band, but something fell through somewhere along the line and our names didn't make it on the list. Oh well, we will have to go see them another time later on this year. The cool thing about the whole situation is that one of the guys from the band actually called her to apologize about the mix up and told us we could go to their next show and get a bunch of free stuff to make up for it. One of my favorite shows I ever went to was to see OAR when they played in Saratoga Springs at the venue, SPAC. It was amazing. They had an acoustic session in the middle and opened with the song "About an Hour Ago". My favorite part about the show was when they played "Crazy Game of Poker" and everyone in the whole place was dancing and singing. At one point they completely stopped playing and shut the lights off on the stage. They turned the house lights on as if the show was over, but everyone kept singing the verse that they were on. It was awesome. It felt like everyone was just having fun together and it was a really cool experience. It gives you the chills, which I'm sure is a result of the truine brain. The reptilian and limbic part of your brain are working very hard at these concerts.

Here's a clip of the show I was at

(This is a technological shift, its amazing that I can type in a few words to a search engine and find a clip from a show that I was at last summer... pretty cool.)

LOST? I AM... Media Convergence #1

I started watching the hit TV show Lost when it was first on television. Many people liked it a lot and some people hated it. I liked the story line and could follow it, but I liked other aspects of the show as well. During commercials they would have subliminal messages that related to the plot of the show and there would be websites that were set up to seem like real websites from the TV show, but they were actually just to promote the show Lost and the more you poked around the more you could find out about secrets in the plot of the show. In my opinion it was all very good marketing for the show and it was a very unique change for television. TV shows in the past were something that you just watched, but Lost showed us that a TV show can be something more than just that. It can be something that you invest part of your life into and can investigate and try to figure out more secrets in the show.

Here is the trailer for the first season


I still watch Lost, but I have kind of gotten out of the loop for this season and need to spend more time on Hulu to catch myself up. The show itself has changed a lot since the beginning and it is actually much harder to follow now. I mostly watch it now to stay caught up with my family and so I can call home and talk to them about the newest twist in the show. One thing that the show does really well is balance the different types of the brain so that they catch you off guard. Sometimes they will play very nice relaxing music and the next there will be a huge explosion, and sometimes you hear the relaxing music and think something huge is going to happen, but then nothing does. They do this to trick you brain and keep your attention. I think they do a good job of this.

Also, people like to have a lot of fun with Lost. There's everything from forums to go on to talk about the characters or ask questions like "Where do the writers plan on going with this?" One thing that really gets most Lost fans laughing are the videos that are posted on youtube that people make to make fun of the show and joke around about it.

For example,