OhBuoyancy!

Like most normal people, I don’t care for Mondays much. Being that I work a job with fairly flexible hours I usually give myself Mondays off, I try to make them relaxing and/or do something I enjoy. Many bloggers do a fun post to close out the week with, be it through lists, or funny videos from youtube, or whatever else, but I decided to do a fun post every Monday. Let’s face it, they need it.

So here starts Multimedia Mondays, every Monday I’ll post some sort of multimedia, it could be a video, song, game, photo, slide show, or all of the above. You might have seen it before, you might never see it again.

Today’s multimedia comes from The New York Times. Visit their site for interactive fold-ins from MAD magazine created by Al Jaffee from the 1960s onward.

Fact: Magazines are expensive. Solution: Don’t pay for them.
No, I’m not encouraging thievery of magazines, or to give them up. Actually, we should all be reading more of them. The answer is the public library. Not nearly enough people take advantage of the magazine rack at the library—not nearly enough people take advantage of the library at all for that matter.

A while back I read a post on Russell Davies’ blog on “How to be Interesting,” one of the tips was to read a new magazine every week. At first this sounded a bit ridiculous to me, I mean magazines are expensive. The Life magazine I posted about, for example, $11.99, that’s a bit above average, but still magazines are not cheap. Being a full-time student with just a part-time job, I can’t refuse to spend $7 each week on a magazine, not matter how interesting it will make me. But then I got to thinking, every time I have some extra time between classes why not go to the library and read a magazine.

So I started doing just that. Last week I read an issue of Time which had a great article about the Dali Lama, and whether it made me more interesting or not, I definitely have knowledge now that I lacked before, and I found interest in something I would have passed over normally. Another good thing about reading magazines in the library is that they also have back issues so you can even catch-up on events or topics that you’ve missed.

While it’s good to read a variety of different magazines (sure, I may be female but I can still expand my personal bank of information and be entertained by Esquire), news magazines are about the best for this. They have current events, culture, politics, editorials, and entertainment all in one magazine. Sure the stories may be brief and not give a full picture of the topic, but there’s 20 more magazines right there to give you the other side, and maybe even a specialty magazine with an in-depth look.

Knowing a lot about a few things is always good, but also knowing at least a little about everything else is even better. I think that is how this should work, it makes you interesting by increasing your knowledge and widening the scope of topics you know about. Perhaps the best part of reading more magazines is that it increases your ability to have something to talk about with just about anyone, which means a lot less of those awkward, silent moments when you can’t find any topic you and the other party (or parties) are interested in talking about.

This is the issue of Life’s Great Photographers Series that’s on shelves right now, the subject: Audrey Hepburn, “Remembering Audrey 15 Years Later”. I’m a huge Audrey Hepburn fan if you didn’t already know, and if you read much about her you’ll love her too, not just as an actress, but as an altruistic humanitarian. My mom saw this issue of Life at Target today and picked it up for me, rarely I never spend this much on a magazine, but to me this is definitely worth it. It’s filled with wonderful pictures, and what I’ve read in it so far is great as well. It won’t be on shelves much longer, so if you want a copy you best get it now or ebay. I now have a great desire to collect every issue Audrey Hepburn has been on the cover of (I’m finding 7 others so far), and to get a pet fawn.

I also just finished reading How to be Lovely: The Audrey Hepburn Way of Life, which is full of quotes and stories that are very inspirational.

And now for some music I’m lovin’
I just started my Best Albums of 2008 list with these two albums:
The Raconteurs – Consolers of the Lonely: While I loved Broken Boy Soldiers, I’m glad this album isn’t just a repeat of that. It’s different, just as great, if not better.

Unwed Sailor – Little Wars: I will venture to say that this is the best Unwed Sailor album to date! It is brilliance to my ears. It’s a more melodic sound closer to Unwed Sailor’s older releases, but it’s more than that, I don’t know how to explain it but it makes me feel nice and I’m in love with it. The LP version has 2 bonus tracks, and I usually hate it when bonus tracks are only available on the vinyl because I like to listen to it on my iPod and in my car, but this LP release comes with a coupon for free digital download of the entire album plus bonus tracks. How awesome is that!

What other albums should make it onto my Best Albums of 2008 list?

What are you lovin’ right now?