Well, What Would You Recommend?

When I was in graduate school twenty years ago, my big Master’s Project was to build a recommender system. As users browsed through the content (I used music albums for the proof of concept), the links would self-organize to make it more likely that the users would be presented with something that met their preferences. If you have some bizarre curiosity about how it worked, or if you need some soporific bedtime reading, the resulting paper is here. It’s the only academic paper I ever published.

It worked for shit. But in my own defense, don’t they all? I have never once said, “Listen to this awesome song, Apple Music recommended it to me!” Netflx has never proven useful at finding me decent content without having to wander far and wide through their catalog. Amazon has never turned me on to a great book that I hadn’t already come across elsewhere. Why is that? While ChatGPT can now write a Shakespearean sonnet about a sex toy in fifteen seconds, I still can’t get a decent book recommendation from an algorithm.

So here I am, doing it the hard way, asking one person at a time for their favorites. And I think this works better. With a human recommendation, you can see the person light up as they tell you why their favorite book is the best ever written. Even if you don’t agree with them, you can feel the sincerity and know that, under different circumstances, that might well be your favorite, too. As good as the machines have become, the sentient seal of approval has not been replaced.

My favorite book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, says this about quality:

“So it is not subject nor object, but where the two meet. In the Trinity, God is the Object, Christ is the subject. So maybe Quality is the Holy Ghost?”

An algorithm cannot be a subject, so there is nowhere for quality to meet its recommendation.

So keep on talking to me, folks. Keep those sparks flying, and let me know your take on what is best. One book at a time, one song at a time, one movie at a time, let’s write the scripture of quality as we see it.

Some Valentine’s Gratitude

I’ll be recording my ninth episode of the podcast this weekend, and Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, so I wanted to take a moment to send this little love letter to my listeners.

With all the options you have for filling your leisure hours— I mean seriously, have you been keeping up with The Last of Us?— I appreciate you taking the time to listen to this little amateur podcast. Gathering the latest data from Apple, Google and Podtrac it seems that there are. . . not fucking many of you. A couple few dozen per episode. For my frequent flyers, I now recognize you by IP address (I’m talking to you, Greg). But I’m good with that. As my friends in stand-up comedy know, a couple dozen people is not an empty room. And I would keep having these conversations even if no one were listening. I am as delusional as Kramer in his home studio.

That said, professional poker player and cognitive researcher Annie Duke advises us to enter any endeavor with exit criteria, lest we play a losing hand too long. So what is my plan? Simple: 100 episodes.

I will keep cranking out BSM episodes until I hit the triple digits. At that point, I’ll reevaluate. Maybe it will be out of my system then, or maybe I’ll decide to just keep going like Thelma and Louise. In any case, a century or bust.

So thanks again, constant listener. Keep reading, listening, and watching. If you’re of a mind, give us a share or a nice rating. Or better yet, take a full draught of the kool-aid and come talk about your favorite book, song, and movie.

In Praise of Amateurism

I suck at guitar. Many of the songs I play are the same three chords. My fingers refuse to make barre chords quickly enough to make changes. I don’t understand a thing about music theory, and I don’t know how the hell people are capable of learning by ear. Nonetheless, about once a year, usually on St. Patrick’s Day, I play my tired old repertoire of Irish drinking songs in front of people. It’s clearly amateur night every time I play, and I wear it as a badge of honor.

A hundred years ago, music was participatory by default. Maybe a friend would play the piano, more people than not would join in on the singing, and the very act of making music would bring people together. If you really want to geek out on the science of how music bonds people, a quick google search on music and oxytocin production will be enlightening. So what’s happened in the last century? Recorded music has turned most of us into consumers of music rather than participants. We defer to the ‘expert’ professional musicians, and don’t consider ourselves good enough to share our music with others. Most people can call up hundreds of thousands of songs on their phone, but won’t try to make any of their own music other than an occasional half-assed contribution to ‘Happy Birthday.’ Millions will queue up for Taylor Swift, but won’t support their local band. We’ve lost something important, and it just might be an appreciation of amateurism.

But it doesn’t stop at music. How many people past college age spend more hours participating in sports rather than viewing them from the couch? How many people will never consider going to their community theater, but will binge seasons of Netflix content? Now with services like Twitch, even freaking video games are becoming spectator sports!

Stop the madness, embrace the amateurism. Amateurs, by my definition, are those with the courage to suck. Publicly. Those without the courage are doomed to a life of sucking privately, and making the world around them a little suckier while they’re at it.

Please enjoy this amateur podcast.

That’s Nye on the Truth

I was starting to write that this Bill Nye quote might as well be the mantra for Book Song Movie. It seems like a pretty good match for my approach: rope in as diverse a bunch of people as I can get to talk with me, get them to tell me their favorite works, and do my best to understand why they hold them in such high regard. But there’s something that doesn’t quite line up. I’m all for lifelong learning, but I don’t think the exercise is about finding that thing someone knows that I don’t and extracting it. That seems a bit transactional, even greedy, collecting everyone else’s bits of information like some dragon hoarding gold (that’s a hint that The Hobbit is in one of the upcoming episodes). It’s more about the person than the knowledge, an exercise in trying to understand what the world looks like from where they stand, to try to catch a glimpse of how the light of the world refracts in their particular jewel in Indra’s Net. Everyone else perceives the world in a way that you don’t. Does that work?

Next Episode ETA November 6

A scientist’s daughter and an Irish soul band go on a psychedelic trip…

From a Buick 8

“As the twig is bent, the bough is shaped, so they say, and my tastes have remained simple and unrefined.”

Stephen King says this about himself in reference to his culinary preferences. I could say the same about myself in reference to my literary preferences, because I love me some Stephen King stories. Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading him since the 1980s. Maybe going to college in Maine had something to do with it (my freshman English teacher was a classmate of King’s at UMaine Orono). But for my money, King cranks out consistently solid fare and represents the best of the baby boom generation.

There are critics, amateur and professional, who label his work as junk food. Comparing his prolificness and unmatched global sales to McDonald’s “billions and billions served,” they make the case that quantity and quality necessarily have an inverse correlation. They argue he uses cheap horror tropes: a haunted hotel, a killer clown, or in this case, a car that’s not really a car. I think those arguments are a misplacement of focus. His work doesn’t shine (pun intended) through the description of weird events, it shines through his characters’ reactions to the weird events. Stephen King’s characters are three-dimensional, even his secondary and tertiary characters. And finding out how those fully fleshed out people react to the unwanted intrusions of the bizarre is always a satisfying, page-turning experience. I’ll admit he doesn’t use the most poetic language in doing this, but that’s not what he’s going for. He takes the tone of the guy on the next barstool who is telling you a story you just won’t fucking believe. Not junk food, comfort food.

Is From a Buick 8 King’s best? Probably not. The biggest complaint out there seems to be that you never really know what’s going on. But that’s one of the biggest complaints about life in general. And that’s kind of the point.

X or Y shaped holes?

Two of my best friends made it clear to me on Friday why I had to start doing this podcast. We were hanging out for our usual Friday happy hour, when I brought up the subject of doing these book, song and movie discussions. I expected to hear some interesting thoughts about what feeds their souls in the realm of literature, music and film, but they quickly turned the conversation in the direction of. . . smokeless fire pits.

“So, you hear the new model has Y shaped ventilation holes instead of X shaped?”

For fuck’s sake.

For the love of God, please let me know your favorite book, song and movie.