Media Nugget

River Dogs

Robert Olmstead
River Dogs
1987

"The old man was gone. Raymond turned and saw him halfway up the lane on the way to his trailer. Raymond walked through the side door and looked at his onions in the dim light coming through the doorway. He threw the breaker switch and the fluorescent tubes high in the trusses flickered, then lit. As each light came on, the mountain of onions grew. Millions of yellow globes the size of your fist nestled in together. They smelled rich and pungent, but if they weren't gone soon, they'd freeze, and then, when spring came, they'd rot. He hit the breaker switch and left for the house to wait for something else to happen."

--from "Onions"

The Indian Runner

Sean Penn
The Indian Runner
1991

Sean Penn's directorial debut offers powerful performances from David Morse, Viggo Mortensen, Patricia Arquette, and, of all people, Charles Bronson. The storyline is familiar: two brothers who have taken different paths in life come together and clash. In Penn's suprisingly adept hands, the story rises high above the commonplace. Don't miss the great cameo appearance from Harry Crews.

Celebration on the Planet Mars

The Beau Hunks Sextette
Celebration on the Planet Mars
1995

Subtitled "A Tribute to Raymond Scott," this album presents a smorgasbord of compositions that are, as the liner notes suggest, "genetically encoded into the world's subconscious." But you've never heard of Raymond Scott? Perhaps that's because themes such as "The Toy Trumpet" and "Powerhouse" are most commonly associated with cartoons. From Bugs Bunny to Ren and Stimpy, Scott tunes are frenetic clarinet-driven tornadoes that have made great soundtracks for animated mayhem. Of course, in the end, Scott's compositions amount to much more than cartoon accompaniment, as this magnificent recording testifies.

The Science of Hitting

Ted Williams
The Science of Hitting
1986

They say that hitting a baseball is the single hardest thing to do in all of sports. Here Ted Williams, considered by most to be the best pure hitter of all time, offers his insights on the art of connecting. Replete with photos and illustrations, the latest edition offers Williams' evaluations of other Hall-of-Fame hitters, from Ty Cobb to Tony Gwynn.

Underworld

Don DeLillo
Underworld
1997

"Writers tend to be one heartbeat away from becoming elevator music," said Don DeLillo recently. It seems that not just writers are in peril lately, but the entire publishing industry. DeLillo's new novel, Underworld, seems to be shouldering the industry's burden, as they try to save the "serious novel" from becoming nothing more than a curious artifact of the cultural elite. The good news is that DeLillo might actually pull it off -- almost in spite of the press barrage (author profiles in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine), the book tour (his first in many years) and the glowing reviews. Underworld is nothing less than a tour de force counter-history of post-WWII America, where DeLillo explores baseball, nuclear waste, and the Zapruder film in order to come to grips with the lasting effects of the Cold War.

Psycho

Alfred Hitchcock
Psycho
1960

While Psycho is arguably not Hitchcock's best film, it's almost certainly his most influential. However, unlike the legion of horror films that followed, this movie derives its strength from the subtle interplay of image and imagination. The Hitchcockian technique of "using less to show more" is almost totally lost on today's over-the-top filmmakers.

The Street.com

Jim Cramer
The Street.com
$6.95 a month

Everyone knows the Web abhors a pay site, but if you're playing the stock market, seven bucks a month is a drop in the bucket. This site, not unlike Motley Fool, provides tips, technical analysis, and market tracking -- to the tune of about 15-20 new stories per day. The main attraction is straight-shooting Jim Cramer, the current poster boy for gonzo investing. Even if you decide not to subscribe, there's still a good bit of free content to give you a taste of the trading life.

The Best of Damon Runyon

Damon Runyon
The Best of Damon Runyon
1938

"Now it comes on the spring of 1931, after a long hard winter, and times are very tough indeed, what with the stock market going all to pieces, and banks busting right and left, and the law getting very nasty about this and that, and one thing and another, and many citizens of this town are compelled to do the best they can. There is very little scratch anywhere and along Broadway many citizens are wearing their last year's clothes and have practically nothing to bet on the races or anything else, and it is a condition that will touch anybody's heart. So I am not suprised to hear rumors that the snatching of certain parties is going on in spots, because while snatching is by no means a high-class business, and is even considered somewhat illegal, it is something to tide over the hard times."

from "The Snatching of Bookie Bob"

The Quark and the Jaguar

Murray Gell-Mann
The Quark and the Jaguar
1994

Murray Gell-Mann, the Nobel-Prize-winning scientist who coined the term "quark," has done his most influential work in the field of particle physics, but this book is not a treatise on quantum mechanics so much as it is a tour through the mind of the author. A complex and challenging book, it will take you from rainforest to laboratory, through history and across the atom, and in the end it will change the way you see the world.

Here's Jonathan

Jonathan Winters
Here's Jonathan

Jonathan Winters is from Dayton, Ohio, the birthplace of aviation, and this live album (recorded in and around San Francisco) touches on several aeronautical themes. Standing out amidst the array of bizarre caricatures, there's a classic bit featuring Maude Frickert, the comedian's wickedly funny impression of the world's oldest airline stewardess.