The Reverie Five: Enjoy the Internet while it lasts

Google Wave - As part of their continuing bid to be the only thing you need in life, Google announced that it would be releasing a product later this year that would essentially render the Internet obsolete. Combining elements of everything you do online, Wave is, according to one of its developers, “what email would look like if it were invented today.” Needless to say, because we’re all nerds, the Rev staff completely freaked out. Our only concern is that Google seems to have completely disregarded the very real possibility that they are, in fact, becoming Skynet. but frankly if that’s what it takes to get Wave into our hands, well, we’ve had a good run. You can go to their website and sign up to be notified when it’s released (everybody here has).

Dark Night of the Soul - We’ve been streaming the mystery-shrouded collaboration between Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous for some time, and it’s as great as you’d expect, so news that it was being blocked from release was disheartening. Luckily, the ever-sneaky artists have found a way around it: the intended album artwork (by professional iconoclast David Lynch) will be published as a book, packaged with — wait for it — a blank CD which you can use “however you see fit.” Clever!

The Lost Rewatch - As you may have gathered, there are more than a couple fans of Lost around the Rev offices. One of our favorite Lost resources, DocArtz, has initiated The Lost Rewatch to fill the time leading up to, and prepare for, the show’s final season. The Rewatch begins June 1, so start getting pumped! Pull out your DVD sets or, if you’re more tech-savvy, head over to ABC.com, which has the entire series streaming in HD.

Playing For Change - An incredible project spearheaded by Grammy-winning producer Mark Johnson. He and his team spent a decade traveling the world, getting street musicians to collaborate on a set of songs by recording them right where they sat. Check out the amazing video for “Stand By Me” and then proceed immediately to their website to buy the album (proceeds benefit the Playing For Change Foundation). Thanks to Jon Bellinger for bringing this to our attention.

Converse Jack Purcells - They’re like Chuck Taylors, but for grown-ups! Unfortunately, they’re priced as such. But ever since the post at the taken-as-gospel-around-here blog Magnificent Bastard, we can’t get them out of our heads. And soon, off our feets.

New Jeff Buckley live album; weird podcast

In honor of the fifteenth anniversary of the masterpiece Grace, a new collection of Jeff Buckley’s unreleased live recordings is set for release on June 2. While this news is exciting and welcome, perhaps the more surprising news is that Buckley’s mother, Moby, and Duncan Sheik are recording a series of retrospective podcasts on the singer’s life. I’m sure that after I listen to the first installment the question of how this seemingly insane conglomeration of people came together will be clarified; meanwhile I must admit that as soon as I hear the name “Jeff Buckley,” I’m there, whatever it is. The live collection, Grace Around the World, is out June 2. [via Rolling Stone's Rock and Roll Daily]

LOST: Mysteries Roundup

The following article was waylaid by our recent technical problems, and thus is not all that timely, but I liked it so much I had to repost it anyway.

In the continued spirit of making the Internet a better place, we introduce our new feature, Let Me Look In The Back, wherein we point you in the direction of stuff you might want to know. If we can’t find it, we compile it ourselves so it will be out there.

In today’s installment: New York magazine’s Vulture, our go-to pop culture blog, put together an absolutely exhaustive list of outstanding questions from Lost. Several of us here are obsessive fans, and I often wish that there were a list of the mysteries I could refer to week-to-week. Now that the penultimate season is over, I for one am going to spend the next seven months re-watching the series and seeing what I can come up with.

WARNING: If you are not completely caught up (as in, watched the season 5 finale), the following link contains IMMENSE spoilers.

No Such Thing As A Stupid Question: More On The Lost Finale [Vulture]

Google Reader > Facebook

May 28, 2009

We’re huge into Reader here at The Rev – so much so that it’s starting to eclipse Facebook in terms of how much time we spend with it. Combine that with Reader’s recently revamped social features,  and you’ve got a product that credibly competes with Facebook as a social network. I wrote a whole post about this over at my other blog, check it out.

Brittain Ashford has won our hearts

May 27, 2009

Photo by Alric Kaczor, via Ashford's MySpace page.

Our good friend Joel from Martha Dumptruck Massacre recently introduced me (literally and figuratively) to Brittain Ashford by telling me she was a “charming, red-headed folk songstress with a penchant for tiny instruments of yore.” It would be hard for me to come up with a better description. Her debut full-length, There, but for you, go I, is a collection of heartrending folk songs replete with autoharp, dulcimer, and the like. Her voice seems to lift off the surface of the beautifully low-fi chamber pop arrangements, a time traveler reaching a hand out to lead us off somewhere; where, it’s difficult to tell, but you’ll follow.

Ashford plays this Thursday with Martha Dumptruck at the Northeast Kingdom. Follow the link to her website to hear samples from There as well as her three previously released EPs.

Technology scares and confuses us

May 27, 2009

So apparently, something isn’t working with the “Post to blog” function in Google Docs, which is where we’ve been doing our work the past few weeks. Please pardon our dust; we’re working on it.

here is kind of a random post about Mormons

May 11, 2009

I am a weird nerd. The normal, run-of-the-mill nerd knows a lot of things about say, Star Trek. Now, I’m not saying that I don’t know a lot of things about Star Trek, but in addition to that, I also know a lot of things about religions that started in the United States in the 19th century. This is not really any more useful to know about than say, Star Trek, and has the additional handicap of lacking interesting conventions where people get together to wear funny ears.

Harith is aware of my proclivities, so when he read this Daily Intel post about Barack’s mom being posthumously baptised into the Mormon faith, he wrote to me saying, “Okay, I have done a bunch of reading but I can’t get my head around it, and I know you’re obsessed with Mormons- how can they do this??”

I responded with the long block of text that you will find below, and Harith suggested that I post it here. I do not know why he suggested that. But here is a kind of random post about Mormons, who are more properly called “Latter Day Saints”.

Our bad

May 4, 2009

It seems, in the excitement of getting the blog up and running, we never got a chance to post a Reverie Five this week. While it would probably be too much to assume anyone has gotten addicted just yet, we’re big on consistency here and we didn’t want to leave you hanging.

Since most of last week was spent (by me, anyway) obsessing over the swine flu and whether or not I had it, I figured these three links would pretty much sum up that time and we could move on. Oh, well, alright, if that’s too much panic for you, here’s a bonus link I think you’ll find pleasant. (via)

Hope you’re all having a bang-up weekend. See you Monday!