Agent Palmer

I hadn’t thought about AND1 for a long time until I saw the title “Untold: The Rise and Fall of AND1.” The start of the documentary establishes its primary function as we hear the AND1 announcer himself Duke Tango narrate:

“This is where it’s at. It’s New York City. Street basketball. This is our culture. This is what we do, B. This is our job. Yo, back in the day, it was like a big block party. The atmosphere, the energy. It was just special. But AND1, they just took it to another level…

This book is three things in one. It’s an activist’s manifesto describing the thoughts and some of the actions that Alan Jennings has had that have cultivated his activist’s mentality; it is a memoir describing his assault on problems within his own community that has fed his activism; and it is a how-to manual for running, creating, and even just working for or volunteering at a non-profit organization.

All three of those things is what makes The Pursuit of Fairness: Fighting for What’s Right in a World That’s So Wrong by Alan Jennings a heavy and yet still entertaining book to read and learn from.

Entertainment is changing. It’s becoming independent in a way that is vastly different from what 20 years ago was indie film. It’s small, it fits on whatever device you want it to, and it streams to you, sometimes staged, sometimes live, always creative and more often than not, fiercely independent.

I am one of those people…

Deconstructing Sammy: Music, Money, and Madness by Matt Birkbeck could very well be one of the saddest books I have read in recent memory, which includes some books on WWII.

There are a lot of things in play in this book… “Adored by millions, Sammy Davis Jr. was considered an entertainment icon and a national treasure. But despite lifetime earnings that topped $50 million, Sammy died in 1990 near bankruptcy.

A while ago I asked a Twitter Poll question “Your favorite indie #podcast can either remain indie and more or less remain as it is or go mainstream and potentially be vastly different… You want it to Remain indie or Go mainstream?”

That the results were so close, with 51% saying they would want their favorite podcast to “Go mainstream” is extremely surprising… Or is it?