Welcome to 17th edition of The Three Things, the weekly update of three links, podcasts, videos, or books you can’t miss from Michael Schechter, Howie Goldfarb, and me!
For those of you new to this series, The Three Things arrives in your inbox on Sunday mornings (unless you don’t suscribe, but that can easily be fixed if you hurry over and enter your email address or add to your RSS feed) so you have some extra time to spend perusing the obscure content we’ve curated for you (and one another) before your week begins and deadlines, meetings, and work takes over.
This week we have thoughts on family, winter croquet, and the Death Star. When you read Michael’s submission, I hope you exclaim, “CONGRATULATIONS!” like I did!
Happy Sunday reading!
Michael on Family. I know, I know… I already spoke about my brother’s movie this week, but when the New York Times has nice things to say about your brother (or any other family member for that matter) I’ll understand you going on and on about it, I promise! Brotherly pride aside, it’s an amazing thing to me that you can have an idea for a feature length film, raise a shoe-string budget, and make something that’s worthy of praise in the Times, Interview Magazine, and The Daily News. If my endless suggestions to check this movie out haven’t been enough, hopefully these reviews will get you to run over to iTunes and check out Supporting Characters (I’ll be quiet about my brother’s career now… for now).
Intergalactic Croquet Cures Winter Blues
Howie on Community. Waterbury, Vt., is the birthplace of Green Mountain Coffee, Ben and Jerry’s, Alchemist Brewery, and is about 15 mins from where I live. Nothing replaces communities of real people. And it is hard to feel ‘community’ in a big city, which is probably why social networks do so well with city folks. The word community is thrown around online very loosely. This article about winter croquet – played on snow and ice – reminds us to get outside and celebrate our non-virtual communities.
This Isn’t the Petition Response You Want
Gini on Star Wars. This is a couple of weeks old, but I keep reading it because it’s so funny. You know how the White House said they would support any petition signed by 25,000 people? Well, a petition for the government to build the Death Star was signed by nearly 35,000 people. This is the response from the White House and it’s brilliant. They turn down the petition stating (my favorite), “Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?”
The White House has since increased the number of signatures required to 100,000. Which really makes me want to do something similarly hilarious and see if we can get that many!
Now it’s your turn. Is there a podcast, video, book, or article you think we need to see?