Oops…Spring Break came and went, and I haven’t posted in about a month or filmed my next YouTube videos. I went on a really fun cruise for my friend’s bachelorette party, then I was sick for a bit, and my mom came to visit. Excuses, I know, but life got busy! I’m still at least happy that I did keep up with my OPW challenge for the most part, even though I didn’t document everything here. Unfortunately, my thoughts on the media I consumed might not be as fresh as they were a week or so ago, but I will try my best to think back and share my opinions.
Below are my reviews for week 11/52 (March 12-18):
Album: Brothers & Sisters by Steve Mason
3/5 stars
I’ve mentioned in the past that The Beatles are my favorite band, but I wanted to specify that they’re my favorite English-language band. My favorite Spanish-language band is Cafe Tacvba. Some years ago, I discovered a freelance photographer/videographer named Eric Guevara (elerictronico on Instragram) because of his amazing photos of Cafe Tacvba. Over the years I’ve noticed that we tend to have similar tastes in music. Eric is very active on Instagram and will often interact with his followers, so I decided to message him to ask for an album recommendation. He asked me to specify what kind of music I was looking for, but I just asked him to tell me about his most recent favorite album, which he said was Brothers & Sisters by Steve Mason.
I had never heard of Steve Mason before. He is a Scottish musician and a founding member of The Beta Band, which is also a band that I’m not familiar with. Brothers & Sisters is an album that includes both rock and “world music” elements. It feels like a protest album to me, especially because of songs like “No More” and “The People Say.” These two songs are actually my favorites in the whole album. A few songs also reminded me of Peter Gabriel, but I can’t quite pin-point why.
While I did enjoy listening to Brothers & Sisters, it’s probably not one that I will revisit. However, I am curious to hear more of Mason’s music in the future, either past or future projects. I still really respect Eric’s taste in music though!
Book: Thinking for a Living: How to Get Better Performances and Results from Knowledge Workers by Thomas H. Davenport
2/5 stars
In my last post, I mentioned that I’m part of a leadership program at my job this semester. We were asked to watch these 7 Partnership Principles videos from Instructional Coaching Group on YouTube:
I read one of the books that Jim Knight recommended for my last post, and I decided to do the same this week. While I loved the last book that I read (Turning to One Another), I did not like Thinking for a Living: How to Get Better Performances and Results from Knowledge Workers. The title of the book already explains it, but if you are unfamiliar with the term, a knowledge worker is a type of worker who “thinks for a living.” Knowledge workers could be programmers, teachers, architects, and so on.
Basically the only thing that I learned from this book is that knowledge workers don’t like to be told what to do, which I pretty much already knew. I also learned that knowledge workers might sometimes be hesitant to move into leadership positions because they value the work that they do, so it could be beneficial to have opportunities for them to work as “player coaches.” Other than that, the book was very dull and it didn’t really fulfill the promise of teaching me how to “get better performances and results from knowledge workers.” I am thinking of reading more books that Jim Knight has recommended, and I hope I get more out of them than I did with this one!
Movie: The Invisible Man – Directed and Screenplay by Leigh Whannell
4/5 stars
I’ve been on a bit of a horror movie kick lately. For several years, I avoided most horror movies because one of the Chucky movies and Talking Tina from that one episode of The Twilight Zone scarred me as a kid. Even though I haven’t watched many scary movies in the past 10ish years, I’ve always enjoyed learning about them and I will often spoil movies for myself by reading or watching YouTube videos about them.
When The Invisible Man first came out in 2020, I remember one of my students asked me if they could spoil the movie for me, and I said it was fine because I didn’t plan on watching it. This year, I decided to finally get around to watching more horror movies, including this one. Luckily I forgot most of the details that had been spoiled!
I really enjoyed watching The Invisible Man, mainly because I thought it did a very good job of dealing with the theme of overcoming domestic abuse. It also has some pretty good scares! Even if you’re not a fan of horror movies, I would suggest giving this one a try.
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