A Brilliant Idea I Will Do Nothing About

Jeez, I go out of town for two seconds and all hell breaks loose. I thought I could count on you guys, what happened? I told you, while I'm gone no house parties and no race baiting! Come on, you're better than that. Though I must say, that John Rambo guy made some good points.

I don't like to brag about this, but I'm now rocking 2 Kindles. To think, there are idiots out there with only one. Ha!

I bit the bullet and bought the Kindle Fire. It's not that good. However, I needed it in order to watch movies on the tortuous 5 hour flight. And yet, I still needed my old, first generation Kindle for reading in the bright Hawaiian sunshine. Thus, I'm the guy with 2 Kindles in the airport security bin. Do they each need their own bin? I still don't know and was embarrassed to ask. I'm pretty sure I'm the reason the terrorists hate us.

It was well worth it though because I read the shit out of a book all weekend. I'm not even sure where I heard about this book, and I'm shocked it hasn't been more heavily hyped. It's an "oral history", where the whole thing is just a million different interviews with people and the story is told through their recollections. The Saturday Night Live book was done this way, and this book is the story of MTV.

It's called "I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution".

Obviously, it's about the creation and rise of MTV, and I loved it. Yet, it seems like no one is talking about it. It's as if the book about ESPN, which is done in the same interview style, completely overshadowed it. And the ESPN book is not nearly as good as this.

They talked to everybody. I mean, everybody. Anything you remember seeing on MTV that was noteworthy at all, is discussed. And I happen to be of the age where MTV rose up as I was growing up, so it was of particular interest to me. However, so did ESPN, and that one didn't do it for me. I guess sports highlights aren't as fun to read about as Tommy Lee's giant dick.

There's a tiny section about Prince that you could make a whole book about. He was in a meeting with a video director and some music execs getting pitched a video idea for Sheila E. He doesn't say a word the entire meeting. At the very end, he whispers "she should have drumsticks on her pants". Then he gets up and walks out. Everyone is left to scramble to figure out what the fuck he meant. Boy, I can relate to that.

It's very hard to describe the behavior of stars, but this book nails exactly how crazy and illogical and irrational they can be, and how different their world is.

Anyway, I recommend it for this holiday giving season.

But let's get to my brilliant idea that I will do nothing about.

So I'm reading this book, and they keep talking about music videos and little details that occur them. And it's killing me, because I HAVE to go watch that video and see what they're talking about. But I'm not near a computer and it's a pain in the ass and then I keep reading and they start talking about another video and the same thing happens all over again.

But this is a Kindle! It has video playing capability! As does the Ipad. Yeah, I could look up stuff every time, but it occurred to me: books don't need to be just books anymore. They're being read on God Damn computers. They should have links on them. There should be video. You should be able to tap a word and go watch whatever they are talking about. You know, like how the internet works.

This MTV book would've been made a thousand times better if it was like this. "No, I don't remember the scene in Poison's "Talk Dirty to Me" where C.C. DeVille falls off the riser, let me touch this sentence so I can refresh my memory". How awesome would that be? C.C. deserves to be revisited!

You're probably saying, "but it only works for this book". You are so small minded. Are you kidding? This works with tons of books. Like, for example, the ESPN book. They talk about the first broadcast ever, that happens to be on youtube. I'll watch that. Or Craig Kilborn's catchphrases, I'll watch that too.

Or how about The Da Vinci Code? You know how many links to Wikipedia would be on that shit?

What else? Malcolm X biography? Boom, links to his speeches. Any history book would be transformed with this. Any sports book. I'm changing the world here! I went to Hawaii and blew all of your minds. You thought it was a vacation? I just made a billion dollars.

Thank God I'm too lazy to do anything about this. Good luck, people with a work ethic and ambition.