THINGS I WISH MY KIDS WOULD ASK ME
Editor’s note: Barry Courter has a 21-year-old son who is a junior in college and a 16-year-old daughter.
Q: Dad, I’ve been working at this company for six months, and I have some ideas on how things could be improved. How should I approach the owner?
A: You are 21, still in college and have been an employee for less than a year. Keep your mouth closed, your eyes and ears open and worry about your job and how you can do it better. I don’t care how smart you are, there are things at play that you can’t know about, so learn to be a good employee before you start being the boss.
— Barry Courter
SCREEN SCENE
NOW SHOWING: “The A-Team”
Continuing a trend of ’80s remakes, here comes a big-screen version of the 1983-1986 action/adventure series about a quartet of ex-soldiers framed for a crime they didn’t commit. Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Sharlto Copley and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson play the titular squad and Jessica Biel appears every now and then fficers tasked with tracking them down. The only way this will really get Gen-X’s seal of approval though is if Mr. T pops up for a cameo … — Ethan Alter
APP OF THE WEEK
WHAT: BerryBuzz for BlackBerry
Looking for another way to customize your blackberry contacts? BerryBuzz lets users choose an LED color and audio-alert for notifications ranging from incoming calls to newly updated tweets. You can choose to make all calls/e-mails/texts from your boss blink red, or use the “disco-ball” effect to have 12 colors flash when you receive a call from a friend. It also offers a feature that the Blackberry has long been missing, the ability for the phone to ring and vibrate at the same time. Another special feature notifies you if your call is lost, vibrating before you continue talking to yourself for the next 20 seconds. Download from your BlackBerry via m.bellshare.com for $5.95, or visit www.bellshare.com for more info. — By Amanda Lilly
— McClatchy Newspapers
POP PICKS
ARTIST OF THE WEEK: Blitzen Trapper
Who’s your favorite ’70s band? Odds are, Blitzen Trapper sounds like them. Singer/guitarist Eric Early and company bounce from folk rock to prog, psychedelic pop to southern rock without breaking a sweat, paying homage to their forefathers without ever ripping them off. Blitzen Trapper doesn’t really seem to care about grand statements and definitely aren’t afraid to show all their disparate origins or get a little dirt under their fingernails in the process. Blitzen Trapper is a mess, and it’s all the more thrilling for it. — Ryan Reed
WATCH: “Smash His Camera” (Film)
On one level, Leon Gast’s excellent documentary takes paparazzi Ron Galella as its subject, but on so many others, it uses him as a way to ask more resonant questions — about celebrity and class, obsession and delusion, the blurred definitions of public and private. Gallela’s stories about himself — he’s providing a service, he’s making a living, he’s doing what he loves to do — are also stories about the audience he imagines. Gallela is within his rights, as First Amendment expert Floyd Abrams points out. “We protect him because we don’t want to start selecting who we protect and who we don’t protect,” says Abrams. “He’s really the price tag of the First Amendment.” Watch it on HBO Saturday at 5 p.m., June 18 at 9:45 a.m. and June 20 at noon. — Cynthia Fuchs
— PopMatters.com