day 27: leverage & pixar

What an interesting book you have there Mr. Jimmy Fallon.

Here's another installment of things I've been listening to. I go through phases, most of the time it's music, but sometimes I'll get on a talk show kick and listen to Jon Stewart or Letterman or Conan or Jimmy Fallon while working. I can't generally listen to plot-driven shows. I will just stop working and watch. But talk shows are great.

Flavia de Luce. Great illustration by Brigette Barrager.

Sometimes I will listen to audio books or podcasts. All time best are the Ricky Gervais podcasts. Right now I've been listening to The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, the first of the Flavia de Luce books. Set in England in a big old estate in the 1950s, 11-year old Flavia loves chemistry, her passion is poisons. And of course there's a murder and she has to investigate. It's a fun book. I once saw it described as Lemony Snicket meets Nancy Drew, which is pretty accurate. I'm about halfway through, but taking a break for:

Leverage! Okay, so I geeky love this show. If you've not seen it, it's a higher-tech classier version of the A-Team. Former bad guys help the little guy by taking down The Man. I just got the Season 4 DVD yesterday, so I'll be listening to the audio commentaries this weekend. Audio Commentaries in general are hit and miss, but the Leverage commentaries have been universally interesting and entertaining. John Rogers, the head writer, show runner, co-creator, guy in charge, is a great story teller, offers interesting insight into their process and keeps the pace going. Looking forward to getting a lot of work done.



And finally a couple Pixar-related things I listened to this week. The first was a Google interview with Brave's director Mark Andrews. It's always interesting to hear how these guys got to where they are, plus what they were thinking when they were making the movie.




Here's Andrew Stanton's Ted talk about story. And finally since I'm at the Ted site, if you haven't listened to Elizabeth Gilbert's talk about the creative genius, please do. Here, I'll embed it for your convenience!