Reaching Inbox Zero

This afternoon, after catching Merlin Mann’s presentation on the Worst Website Ever for the second time, I wandered over to 43 Folders. I think I’d been to the site a few times before, for whatever reason, but I don’t recall ever spending a lot of time there. Anyway, one of the articles which caught my eye was the post on Inbox Zero.

I’m a geek for organization. I completely buy into the idea that, if only I could be more organized, I would be happier and less stressed out. I’d heard the term “inbox zero” before, a concept which is pretty much self-explanatory, but I had no idea how a person accomplished such a thing. The last time my work inbox was empty was the day I turned it on for the first time.

Then, I watched the video of the Inbox Zero presentation that Mann gave at Google in 2007. And a light came on.  Most of the advice that Mann gives could neatly be defined as “advanced common sense” (a term Mann uses more than once during the presentation), but it was all stuff that I just never did.

I used the remainder of my workday and the better part of my bus ride home implementing elements of the strategy outlined by Mann. And let me tell you what: I feel one hundred times better than I did this morning. I still have just about as much to do as I did this morning, but I have a clearer picture of what needs to be done.

If you have any problems at all with an unwieldy inbox, I can’t suggest this video strongly enough.

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Frat Pack Upcoming Movie Grading Guide

My brother-in-law Alex was the first person to ever use the term “frat pack” in a conversation with me, and I actually thought that he didn’t know what he was talking about when he explained that the members of the group included both Judd Apatow, who I think is a genius, and Ben Stiller, who I think is probably the worst thing to happen to American cinema in the last two hundred years (except, maybe, for Owen Wilson, who might be worse). So, I went home and looked up the term on Wikipedia. And sure, enough, Alex was not bullshitting me. There is such a thing as the Frat Pack.

And now, according to New York Magazine’s Vulture, there is apparently a definitive way to tell if a film featuring these fine folks will be any good or not.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is also written by an Apatow acolyte, Freaks & Geeks vet Jason Segel (3), who also stars along with Undeclared’s Carlo Gallo (1.5). Sadly, it’s directed by Nicholas Stoller (-2). We are promised wangs, “several scenes,” so let’s say three minutes (3). No big stars, but Kristen Bell is at least as proven an actress as Katherine Heigl (3). That gives us a relatively solid movie, with a total score of 8.5 — somewhere between Anchorman and The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Not bad!

Any other Apatow fans up in hee-ah? What do you think?

[Via Kottke]

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FiveCast Going Weekly

For the sake of my sanity, I’m scaling back the schedule for the Geek Force FiveCast. I just don’t have time to do five shows a week. Last week, I was home early from work every day and I still barely got them done. And I’ve been stressing out since Monday about how to find the time to get one organized and filmed for this week. They’re fun, and I feel like people are enjoying them (except for that one YouTube troll), but I just can’t allow myself to stress out about something like this. As those who know me know already, I stress out about far too many things as it is.

So, the FiveCast is going weekly. That’s the best I can do, and I hope that you’ll stick around to check it out.

Now, if I had the time to film an episode today, here’s what I’d cover:

• Burger King Ketchup and Fries Flavored Potato Snacks. Oh. my. Jesus. Seriously, when I spotted these things in a vending machine on the Lesley University campus this morning, I thought they’d be an amusingly bad snack and not much more. But these things were amazing! They tasted like french fries. With ketchup on them. But without the mess. Seriously, I don’t know how they did it, but they better keep doing it. This is one snack that simply must not go off the market.
• Syd Field’s Screenwriter’s Workbook. I teach a class on Writing and the Literary Arts, in case you didn’t know. This week, I’ve been having the kids watch Wonder Boys as part of my segment on drama. We’ve been discussing the structure of drama versus the structure of short and long fiction, and I’ve been referencing Syd Field. After class this morning, while one of my students made up the mid-term exam (she’d been very sick on the day of the test), I was paging through The Screenwriter’s Workbook when I got to thinking about how the structure paradigm that Field uses to help his students breakdown their screenplays into manageable chunks could also be used, with a bit of tweaking, to help people (me, for instance) write novels. It was a very exciting realization, something that I’ve totally been geeking out about all day.
• Human Mario. The image I’ve included above was among the pile of stories waiting for me in my RSS reader on Monday/Tuesday, after a long weekend away from the Interweb. And, my goodness, it’s disturbing. Dontchu think? Geekologie has more.
• Pix from Zack and Miri Make a Porno. News Askew has been posting some still photos from Kevin Smith’s next film, Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Check them out here and here.
• Bible Fight. Oh, and then there’s Bible Fight, a game I found out about through Geekologie. The gist of it: It’s a Bible-themed fighting game where you can pit Jesus against Mary as easily as you can pit Jesus against Satan. If I believed in hell, then I’m sure that’s where I’d be going for having such fun this.

So, yeah, that’s your text-based FiveCast for the day. A real, live video FiveCast should be coming at you later this week.

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More Soon

Hello, all. Sorry for the prolonged absence. I had yesterday off in observance of Evacuation Day, and I needed all of it to catch up on paper grading and such. My Google Reader had 346 unread items in it when I checked it this morning, and I hope to get some of the news found therein up on the site before the end of the day.

More soon…

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Geek Force FiveCast 005 (Video)

Better late than never, here is the Geek Force FiveCast for Friday, March 14, brought to you by GeekForceFive.com. Today, we cover 1) 90210 - The New Class; 2) Zack and Miri - A Hard R; 3) 100 Best Last Lines in Novels; 4) “Meet Kevin Johnson” teasers; and 5) Conceiving of You - A Father’s Letters to His Unborn Daughter.

If you’d like, you can subscribe to the show as a podcast via PodShow.com.

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