Have you ever wondered what the show Seinfeld would look like if it was made into a hip-hop album?  Yeah, I hadn't either until I heard about Wale (pronounced wah-lay).  Wale, the son of Nigerian parents, created a mixtape titled "The Mixtape About Nothing," a thematic album that takes beats and themes from the show Seinfeld and wraps them around ideas and discussion that isn't often heard on hip-hop albums.

You have to give the guy credit for bringing together seemingly opposite worlds and having it not simply be a novelty act.  There are some ok beats on this album and great flows and lyrics.  He even incorporates Michael Richard's (Kramer's) racial-slur infused rant into the beginning of a song that deals with what it means to be black and what is expected of a black man in America.

Being a credit card company is not an easy thing to be right now. The stock market is rising and falling like an amusement park ride, and the steep drops and furious margins are nauseating the American public. With much of this crisis being attributed to our collective greed and sense of entitlement, the idea of opening a new credit card is not (or at least probably should not) be high on anyone’s to-do list. But to survive, MasterCard, Visa, AMEX and Discover need us to keep using their services. And if we are all hitting the brakes on spending, the only way to grow as a credit company is to get new customers. So how do you get a new customer in this culture of economic insanity? What kind of promises do you make? What kind of story do you need to tell?

Great choreography has become a bit of an obsession in America. The sheer magnitude of the High School Musical Empire is point enough, but that would be to say nothing about Dancing With The Stars (a ratings hit in its own right) and the many other dance-based reality shows on cable and network TV. There is something about watching separate pieces move together as one that both attracts and mesmerizes us.  

I recently heard a discussion about the connection between beauty and death. The example used was seeing a vase of flowers on a table in a restaurant and reaching out to touch them. If they turn out to be artificial, they immediately are not as beautiful in our mind as they were when we thought they were living. There is something about the fact that they won't die that makes them less stunning. Part of the experience of beauty is tied to its fleeting, fragile nature.

How does a beautiful idea begin? When does that idea become art? Eyelids, a short film shown this year at Cannes and the Chicago International Film Festival, began in 2007 as a doodle on a post-it note. Brad Bischoff, a student at Columbia College and the co-founder of the production company, Look at Rubbish, first envisioned Eyelids as a Valentine's Day poem for his girlfriend. As friends from Look at Rubbish got involved, the project grew to include a children’s book and eventually the short film. The result of this collaborative process is a touching story narrated by Bischoff’s grandfather and filmed on black and white 16mm film.