**This is a guest post by Bokeen. Check out his blog at http://blog.bokeen.com

There are some movies that I would not watch if I were single.

Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire is one such movie.  I tend to prefer comedies or movies with explosions and gunplay.  When the two elements are combined, I am riveted.  Typically, I am not a fan of straight-drama movies, particularly if the film did well at Sundance and critics are raving about it.

One the country has reached a consensus that a dramatic movie is a “must-see,” I tune it out entirely.  Perhaps this makes me a tad bit less cultured, but the contrarian in me appreciates the awestruck and confounded look on people’s faces when I explain that I never saw Million Dollar Baby or Slumdog Millionare.

Someday, you will tell your children that there was a time that Eddie Murphy was funny, and they will think that you are full of shit.

Last week, after watching Beverly Hills Cop, a film which deftly combines the aforementioned elements of laughter and violence, boqueen insisted that we watch Precious.  I used my Hollywood connections (read: Bittorrent) to obtain a screener copy of the film, and this is my review.

Succinct Synopsis
The film is set in Harlem in 1987, but the Globetrotters are conspicuously absent.  Claireece “Precious” Jones is a grossly obese 16-year-old black girl.  Precious endures constant verbal and physical abuse from her mother.  She was sexually abused by her father, producing a retarded child.  In addition, Precious is illiterate and pregnant with her second child.

Precious is inexplicably kicked out of public school for being pregnant.  She enrolls in an alternative school, where she meets Miss Rain, an inspirational teacher (cue Gangsta’s Paradise by Coolio.)  Precious develops a relationship with a social worker named Mrs. Weiss.  While Precious is fully commited to improving her life, she continues to face incredibly adversity and her life continues to suck, proving, for once and for all, that it is in fact a hard knock life. 

This is not a good date movie
It is imperative that I warn my male readers that Precious is perhaps the worst date movie in the history of cinema.

From start to finish, Precious is a devastatingly depressing film.  It is not depressing in the typical sense, as in “Golly, the end of Forrest Gump was sad.”  It is more akin to, “Christ, I just watched Schindler’s List and now I feel guilty for being a human being.”

The start of the movie effectively illustrates Precious’ wretched life in dispiriting detail.  Eventually, the audience is led to believe that she is on the road to redemption, fully committed to improving the conditions of her life.  An abrupt plot twist near the end of the film serves as the bread for the shit sandwich that is Precious’ life, and immediately makes it clear that there will be no happy ending.    

 

Dear Pudi clan: Obligatory Community reference complete.

By the end of the movie, I felt as if my soul had been ripped out of my body and raped by a demon created by Satan himself.  I neglected to mention that the demon had sharp spikes on the end of his penis and that he ejaculated lava. 

After watching the movie, I required a form of uplifting entertainment to raise my spirits.  I queued up a rerun of NBC’s Community, which served as a comedic palate cleanser after the debilitating experience of watching Precious.   

I do not recommend the typical theater fare of popcorn and candy for viewers of this movie.  Paxil and bourbon are far more appropriate.  

The somber story leaves viewers dejected and incapable of physical intimacy.   Beware, young men: if you take your date to see Precious, you won’t be getting to second base at the end of the night.  And you certainly won’t be getting a tugger in the Loews parking lot like you did after watching The Proposal. 

Okay, that’s enough. Please stop now. Kthanks.

Too many fantasy cut-scenes
Very early in the movie, the audience becomes acquainted with the “happy place” that Precious takes her mind to in order to escape the trauma of her everyday life.  She repeatedly fantasizes about being famous: singing while surrounded by backup dancers, trotting up a red carpet and enjoying the adulation of screaming fans or getting her ear licked by a slender, light-skinned brother. 

It quickly becomes clear that these fantasies serve as Precious’ defense mechanism.  Even after this point is made clear to the audience, the cutaway scenes continue and become longer. 

I eventually resorted to yelling at the picture box.  “She has these dreams to suppress the pain of her real life.  We get it! Enough shots of her fat ass spinning around in a dress!”

The cutaway scenes are a lengthy diversion that interrupts the flow of the film.  The first few scenes made sense and helped to define Precious as a character.  By the fourth time the technique is used, they feel like an overwrought diversion in indulgent filmmaking, as if the director were pining for an Oscar nomination.

Hi kids! Do you like violence?
The film is interspersed with remarkably violent scenes that create an awkward juxtaposition when compared with the tone of the rest of the film.  Frying pans are swung, babies are dropped and obese people fall down stairs.  In each case, the scenes are frantic and incredibly brutal to the point of nearly being cartoonish, as if they were pulled from an Eminem song. 

I suspected that notable clownish hack Rob Zombie had been brought in to direct these scenes, though I was unable to confirm my suspicion with a quick search of IMDB. 

(Consider this paradox: Is it possible that no one takes Rob Zombie seriously anymore when no one took Rob Zombie seriously to begin with?  I cannot take credit for writing that one.  That’s all Confucius’ handiwork.) 

Lenny Kravitz’s heroic portrayal of a tree
Two Grammy award-winning artists had roles in Precious.  Mariah Carey played Mrs. Weiss, Precious’ social worker, while Lenny Kravitz played “Nurse John,” who worked at the hospital where Precious delivered her second child.

Carey’s Mrs. Weiss character plays an important role in the film.  As the gatekeeper for welfare checks, Weiss meets with the title character multiple times, eventually learning about the incest and abuse that Precious has endured. 

Kravitz’s role, on the other hand, is one of very little consequence.  He appears in only two scenes in the movie, long enough to kiss Precious on the forehead, making her classmates swoon.   He also attends a party for Precious at her school that may have resulted in a sexual encounter with Sherri Shepherd’s “Cornrows” character.

Ultimately, Kravitz’s cameo appearances did absolutely nothing to advance the plot of the film.  I am certain that if “Nurse John” had been played by an actor with less than 40 million albums sold worldwide, his scenes would have ended up on the editing room floor.

The decision to cast Lenny Kravitz and include his 78 seconds of screen time in the final cut of the film is a transparent attempt to boost the pop culture relevance of the film.  It is quite telling that Kravitz’s name appears prominently on promotional posters for the movie, while there are at least half a dozen characters that are more relevant in the film.

Precious’ linguistic coach.

The questionable omission of subtitles
There were several points in the film where I simply could not understand the words that the title character was saying.  This was quite a nuisance because Precious served as the narrator for the entire film. 

The most notable example of this came during Precious’ first extended meeting with Mrs. Weiss.  As she began an anecdote about the living conditions of her neighbors, boqueen and I leaned forward with puzzled looks on our faces, struggling to comprehend the actress’ words.  Her speech was utterly unintelligible, the words mumbled and slurred as if she were talking while chewing on a peanut butter sandwich.

The filmmakers neglected to consider the importance of coherent dialog.  Unfortunately, the screener copy of the film that I obtained did not have the option to enable subtitles, which would have been quite helpful in understanding the utterances of Clareece Precious “Mush-mouth” Jones.

White is right
There is an undeniable racist undercurrent in the film, as there seems to be a direct correlation between the lightness of one’s skin and their redeeming values as a character.  The positive, heroic characters – Mrs. Weiss and Precious’ teacher, Miss Rain – have very light complexions.  Precious fantasizes about being a blonde woman and dancing seductively with the aforementioned skinny light-skinned brother. 

A light-skinned woman who has a profound impact at an inner-city school? That is an incredibly unique concept.

On the other hand, Precious’ degenerate parents are decidedly black.  Her outrageously violent and abusive mother, portrayed by comedian Mo’Nique, has a medium black complexion.  Precious’ father, who is only seen in dream sequences recalling the horror of sexual abuse, is black as an ace of spades. 

I am convinced that if Wesley Snipes had a role in the movie, the filmmakers would have decided that his skin was so dark that he would have been cast as a baby-kicking, kitten-drowning vampire serial killer.

Ironically, the movie was directed by Lee Daniels, a black man.  The movie was based on a novel written by Sapphire, and adapted into a screenplay by Geoffrey Fletcher; both are black.  I found this a bit surprising, as I expected that such obvious racial undertones would have been the work of a cracker-ass cracker, perhaps from a white man born south of the Mason-Dixon line or of German descent. 

Ratings
All scores are out of 100.

Overall: 32.24
The acting was excellent, but the story made me want to kill myself.

Rewatchability: 0
The movie was too fucking depressing to watch a second time.

Explosions: N/A

Nudity: 00.005
Brief scene of Precious’ flabby tit as she breastfeeds her newborn child.  It is an incredibly disgusting scene, unless you are in to that type of thing, you chubby-chaser

This book is basically a distillation of the “Dave Ramsey philosophy” into the form of a self-help book that, in terms of language, has more in common with books like Joel Osteen’s Your Best Life Now or Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People than with typical personal finance books. If you’re looking for motivation more than for technical personal finance advice, this book will have a lot of appeal; if you’re looking for specifics on how certain investments work, you might not like this one.

Of course, the Dave Ramsey philosophy has its own quirks, as anyone who has listened to his radio show will know. Dave is a big proponent of the “no debt” perspective, meaning that you should pay for everything using only cash. This philosophy is a constant throughout this book, underlining all of the ideas that Dave presents.

In fact, the plan in a nutshell is to save $1,000 as an emergency fund, pay off all your debts, build up a six month emergency fund, then start saving to buy things never using a loan. He’s against credit cards in every form and basically eschews credit in every possible form.

Dave has a very, very strong voice (if you’ve listened to his show, this is pretty obvious) and it continually shines through here, almost to the point of being abrasive. This makes for entertaining reading, but it can almost be distracting from his main points.

So let’s dig in.

Hurdles

The first five chapters of The Total Money Makeover focus primarily on psychological hurdles that one must overcome in order to be ready to build up their personal finances. Perhaps more than any other part of the book, this first portion is imbued with the “Dave Ramsey philosophy” of no debt, no matter what.

The first hurdle is denial. Many people simply deny that there is a problem with their own finances, even as they slip further and further behind. Even people with only a small amount of debt often find themselves in denial if they are spending as much as they are bringing in. What is being denied? The possibility of a disaster, as well as the possibility of great financial success.

The second hurdle is debt myths. Dave asserts that there is a great mythology in the Western world about debt, particularly in the sense that debt is normal and healthy and acceptable. The philosophy here is that debt is never a healthy thing to have, particularly when you’re not mature enough to quickly reduce and eliminate it.

The third hurdle is money myths. Similarly, The Total Money Makeover says that there is a mythology about money as well, that it is the key to solving all of our problems, when the truth is that money is nothing more than a tool. We set ourselves free if we use money as a tool, otherwise money uses us.

The fourth hurdle is ignorance. Most people simply don’t have any idea what it takes to get ahead financially; they just imitate what everyone else does and considers that to be right. Once a person sits down, looks at the problems, and considers a solution, they’re often already on the right track.

The fifth hurdle is keeping up with the Joneses. Hand in hand with the last problem is te need to keep up with the Joneses. Many of us get into debt because we imitate the neighbors so that we “fit in.” The truth of the matter is that the neighbor is likely in as poor financial shape as you are: saddled with tons of debt and so forth. Stepping back and not worrying about the Joneses for a while can set you free.

The First Steps

The second portion of The Total Money Makeover, which includes chapters six through eight, is the building of a financial foundation upon which you can grow. Dave’s a big proponent of the one step at a time concept and proposes a “three step” plan for building a foundation, but upon careful reading it becomes clear that there are actually six steps.

First, develop a budget. To many people, this is a scary step, but it’s actually quite easy for a first-timer to make a simple budget. The goal is to find areas that you’re spending too much on and cap those areas – these tend to be shopping, expensive cars, and other non-essentials.

Second, get all of your accounts current. Hopefully, you can skip this step, but if you have any late bills, pay them off first. You don’t want late bills hanging around that continue to damage your credit.

Third, build up a $1,000 emergency fund as fast as possible. This fund exists to keep you from failing in your plans if a disaster occurs, such as a damaged vehicle or so forth. This is absolutely essential, to the point that Dave encourages people to take out second jobs and sell some of their stuff to create such a fund. He also requires that it be liquid (in a savings account, not in a CD or something you can’t easily touch) so that you can get to it in an emergency and not risk sliding back on your progress.

Fourth, pay off all debts (except the home). Dave advocates a “snowball” approach, in which you list all of your debts in order of balance due from smallest to largest, then make minimum payments on all but the smallest and make a large as payment as possible on that smallest debt. Once that’s paid off, apply everything you were paying on that smallest debt to the new smallest debt, and so on. Eventually, when you get to the big debts, you’ll be making very large payments on them and paying them off quickly.

Fifth, build a “real” emergency fund. Once your debts are gone, you should continue to build up that emergency fund up to the point where it can replace three to six months of salary. You should basically just move the total debt payment you were making in the past straight into saving for this emergency fund.

Sixth, start saving for real purchases. Once your emergency fund is built, now is the time to start saving for big items. That debt snowball payment should now be directed into saving for expensive items, such as a house down payment or a new car that can be paid for in cash.

According to The Total Money Makeover, once a person has reached this level, they have a firm foundation upon which to build.

Building Wealth

Once you’ve built a solid foundation by following the steps outlined in the middle portion of The Total Money Makeover, Dave offers suggestions on how to build up your wealth.

It is important to note that prior to these concepts, the book instructs the reader to pay off all debts except for the home loan and build up a six month emergency fund before moving on.

First, start paying for your retirement. Dave advocates pretty strongly that one should save 15% of their income towards retirement using the basic formula of paying into the work retirement plan until you reach the matching cap, then maximizing a Roth IRA contribution, then putting the rest in the work retirement plan. It’s the basic rule of every retirement advisor because it works.

Second, start paying for the kid’s college education. This chapter felt sort of wishy-washy, mostly because Dave strongly hinted that a child learns more if they have to pay for college themselves than if their parents cover it for them. Still, a well-funded 529 savings program is recommended.

Third, pay off that home mortgage. Once the first two items are in place, you should be paying off that home mortgage as fast as you can. He advocates getting into a 15 year mortgage and still overpaying each payment if you can, just so you can get the mortgage finished off much faster.

Now it gets fun. If you’ve trained yourself well enough to reach this point, you should know very well how to manage your money and suddenly you’ll have more of it floating around than you can imagine. The rest of the book focuses on this stage in life, which we are all striving for: keep some goals, remember who you are, and keep investing.

Buy or Don’t Buy

Before you decide on whether or not to buy this book, I want you to answer yes or no to the following five questions.

1. Have you ever read a general (non-financial) self-help book and enjoyed it?
2. Are you completely lost with your financial situation and want a firm, clear, and simple guiding hand?
3. Have you ever listened to and enjoyed Dave Ramsey’s radio show?
4. Are you a practicing Christian?
5. Do you find anecdotal evidence to be more enlightening than detailed instruction?
I recommend that you buy this book if you answered “yes” more often than you answered “no,” and I also recommend that you don’t buy this book if you answered “no” more often than you answered “yes.” Sound strange? Let’s break it down.

First of all, this whole book is written like a self-help book. It’s not written in the more dry and informative style of many personal finance texts. Dave is up there preaching the truth of personal finance success, and if you’re open to it, he’ll take you along for the ride.

Second, the advice is very basic and direct. The Total Money Makeover plan is about as simple as it is going to get when it comes to personal finance. If you’re really lost and most personal finance advice seems over your head, Dave can probably help.

Third, it comes off like a continuation of Dave’s radio show. If you’ve heard Dave’s show on the radio, what was your gut reaction to it? If you liked it, you’ll like this book; if not, then you’ll probably find this book less than compelling as well.

Fourth, there are some Christian overtones. Dave quotes Bible verses multiple times each chapter. If this makes you uncomfortable, you’ll probably have a wave of feeling uncomfortable every fifteen pages or so; if it’s fine, this is a non-issue.

Fifth, the evidence for success relies heavily on anecdotes. Unlike the conclusions in many personal finance books, which offer raw numbers and walk you through calculations to show you how to do it on your own, Dave’s ideas are often supported by anecdotes. Admittedly, most of the ideas are easy enough to grasp that you won’t need a calculator, but the flood of personal stories from hundreds of people is almost overwhelming at times.

I enjoyed it, and I would recommend it to many people, but not to everyone. It’s a great, simple methodology for getting your money in line, and Dave is an enthusiastic promoter of the message.

Susanne Bier’s 2005 melodrama, Brothers, was just that, a simple soap opera between a war vet, his wife and his brother, and while Jim Sheridan’s update isn’t terribly different at its core, its all-American setting quietly places a firmer emphasis on the toll of our current war at home.

Just as Tommy Cahill (Jake Gyllenhaal) is getting out of another stint in jail, his brother Sam (Tobey Maguire) is about to ship off to Afghanistan for another tour of duty. His wife, Grace (Natalie Portman), wishes him well, as does everyone, but soon enough, his helicopter is taken down by enemy fire and news comes that Sam was among the casualties – although he is actually a prisoner of war. Tommy, out of guilt, and Grace, out of need, draw closer to one another, close enough to rile up the suspicions of a changed Sam once he returns home…

It’s a ready-made drama-fest, starting off with grief, ending up with paranoia, and tense in between as we cut back to Afghanistan and the awful deeds that Sam’s captors force upon him. Back home, it’s a more gradual progression of having Tommy take up responsibility and be welcomed back into the fold (his father, played by Sam Shepard, gradually lets his resentment go, which only benefit his initially heavy-handed scenes), so that by the time Sam shows back up, domestic bliss is bound to be upended by the aftereffects of the war and conflict seems to evolve naturally from these characters and their circumstances.

Sheridan knows how to keep matters low-key, using Frederick Elmes’ cinematography to paint the New Mexico shooting locations in an admirably anytown light and keeping the youngest performances from Bailee Madison and Taylor Geare (as Grace and Sam’s daughters) from being too cloying, a skill already demonstrated with 2002’s In America and just underrated in general. Thomas Newman’s subtle score tries its best to keep emotions on an even keel throughout, and in adapting the screenplay, David Benioff merely swapped out the subtitles, keeping the proportion of back-home/over-there scenes identical and ideal for us to sympathize with Sam once he goes off the deep end.

And off the deep end is just about the only time that any of the lead performers loses their grip on the material. Until then, Portman comes across as a loving mother and lonely wife, a former cheerleader who can’t cope with the prospect of being a widow. Gyllenhaal, knowing as well as we do that he’s due for redemption, quietly grows in consideration for his family and responsibility for his life. And Maguire has all the pride and patriotism of a man ready and willing to serve his country once more, only to be burdened with the terrible truth about what was forced to do and the sneaking suspicion that his family may no longer belong to him.

His low simmer, combined with the performances of his young girls, help bring a dinner table conversation-turned-confrontation into a taut turning point in the relationship of all involved. However, it’s past this point that Maguire’s character gets a bit more hysterical (he must get it from his father). What happened to him may be feasibly traumatic, but his climactic uproar makes him feel like less of a threat to himself and others than intended. Only here does this version of Brothers concern itself more with how far Sam might go than how much he’ll let anyone in, and only here does it seem to suffer in comparison to its predecessor.

But more so than its predecessor, Brothers dwells as much on the toll of a conflict abroad as it does on that of a conflict at home. There’s no denying that it takes a melodramatic story to get there, but at least it gets to the heart of the matter before blowing its fuse

If you’re dreaming of becoming a web worker, check out “Undress for Success: The Naked Truth About Making Money at Home,” by Kate Lister and Tom Harnish. While the book isn’t the first on the topic of working from home, it gives you a lot of what you need to know including a discussion of whether you have the right traits for e-working, jobs you can do in your jammies, useful technologies, scams to avoid and business considerations such as marketing, operations and finance.

Those in corporate jobs that come with a daily commute get a few chapters’ worth of advice on how to convince the boss to let you work from home. The authors only address this for a small part of the book, so if this is important to you it may be better to borrow the book from your library. It probably would have been helpful to split the book into two: one for corporate employees looking to work from home, and another for those who want their own businesses. The two groups have different needs and requirements, and Lister and Harnish concentrate more on the latter in this book.

The book gives you most of the information you need to figure out the whole “work from home” thing. Unfortunately, the book barely touches upon how to deal with health benefits, a big concern for many self-employed folks. The contracts and proposals chapter are also lacking detail.

If you’re a regular reader or already work from home, you probably won’t get a lot from this book, unless you’re thinking about switching gears and starting your own business. But if you’re thinking about becoming a web worker, “Undress for Success” is a well-rounded beginner’s resource. Visit the book’s companion site at undress4success.com.

Today, I will be reviewing products and the website for the Apples of Gold’s jeweler. I happened upon the website while searching for Christmas gifts and I decided to take a look at their products and services. I am very happy I took the time to really get a feel for this company.

The first thing I noticed about the website, aside from how clean it looks, is how wide and varied the cross pendants collection really is. It took me nearly 20 minutes to through each page or the website, and most of the pendants looked amazing. The pricing is compareable with most major retailers, and in some cases, is actually cheaper then the larger stores.

In addition the huge selection of cross pendants, they also carry an amazing selection of other kinds of jewelry, from bracelets to diamond jewelry.

The shopping cart feature is really intuitive and the website in general has excellent security, so you shop in confidence.  I called and spoke to a customer service agent, and without disclosing I was doing a review of their products, the agent helped me with all my questions and concerns.

If you are looking for afordable jewelry, I would strongly recommend Apple’s of Gold.

Today, I will be doing a review of the website CarID. CarID is a automobile accessories website that carries many styles of flashy car add-ons and nick knacks.

The website itself has a really nice and clean layout. You can quickly and concisely find exact what you are looking for. For example, lets say you are looking for hyundai accessories. All you have to do is type in the seach field what you are looking for and before you blink, you have a wide selection of parts for you hyundai.

The shopping cart feature is intuitive and easy to manage, although it does appear a little clunky when you start adding lots of products. This happens on a lot of e-commerce sites, so I don’t look down much on sites with this issue.

They offer live customer service. I called and spoke to a support agent, they are very friendly and happy to assist.

Graphicaly, the website is very standard but appealing, the lines and logos are very sharp. The website doesn’t appear like a cookie cutter website, and it appears to have taken a good amount of time to get right.

Overall, I give CarID a great mark in layout and service, so if you are looking for automobile accessories, give CarID a shot!

One of the city’s first tapas restaurants, Café Ba-Ba-Reeba! is still going strong, thanks to its location on bustling Halsted Street, near the Armitage Avenue shopping strip. The clientele tends to be young and comes to the restaurant in groups, so be prepared: Loud conversations and tipsy toasts over pitchers of sangria may surround you.

Café Ba-Ba-Reeba! isn’t breaking any new ground with its menu, but tapas lovers will see plenty of favorites, including garlic potato salad, roasted eggplant salad with goat cheese, beef and chicken empanadas, and roasted dates wrapped in bacon (which have been a popular menu item for years). The menu has also been updated with miniversions of more upscale fare, including a spicy devil’s lobster tail dish, a cured pork lomo with frisee salad, and a flavorful plate of seared Spanish sausages. Some dishes are available in both tapas and full-portion size, and there’s a range of paellas for those who don’t want to go the tapas route. The vibrantly decorated cafe makes an excellent, efficient choice for pre- or post-theater dining if you’re headed to Steppenwolf Theatre, a few blocks south, for a play.

This is a book I wish I had my hands on about two years ago.

I was working at a job I liked, but I also felt that there were several directions in which I was unable to spread my wings. The work I was doing was slowly moving in a less creative direction over time. Plus, I wanted to spend a lot more time with my children and limit my work-related travel to perhaps one trip a year at most.

For me, “the leap” was into a freelance writing career and it seems to have worked out. The Leap, by Rick Smith, is a guide to this very kind of move. You’re in a job that’s stifling you in some way and you want to move in a different direction with your career and/or your life. What can you do without sacrificing the income you need?

Before we get started, I found the advice in this book often paralleled my own experience, but in more than a few places, it dropped some insights that I didn’t think of or didn’t expect. In other words, I would have loved to have this book in my hand about two years ago.

1. “Great Work, You’re Fired”
Sometimes, when you think you’re in an incredibly secure position in a successful job with a great company, it’s all swept out from under you. You’re walloped with a new passion (like writing, for example). Your life context changes – you fall in love or you have children. The economy changes and your job is “downsized.” Your company’s CEO makes some really stupid moves and you’re “downsized.”

These types of changes happen more and more often and yet people are still often gobsmacked by them. Yet we all have the opportunity to turn lemons into lemonade. We just have to start now.

2. The Now Trap: Stuck in the Status Quo
One of the biggest traps we fall into in the workplace is the urgency of now. Most of the time, we’re chasing the things that need to be done immediately, but all of these little “putting out the fire” actions do nothing to actually establish a great career. We’re trapped by the moment in our jobs. Instead, it’s the less urgent things that tend to establish us: completing projects, improving ourselves, and so forth.

Sometimes we need to set aside the “now” and work on the truly important things that are a little less urgent. Commit to some projects or some educational opportunities. Don’t just worry about the “now” – devote some of your time to building your value for the future.

3. Breaking Away: The Three Rules
Smith proposes three “rules” for getting you from where you are to a position where your job doesn’t control your life or your career future. For the most part, these rules revolve around figuring out where your skills and passions overlap and maximizing that area, which he calls your “primary color.”

Of course, these three rules are discussed in detail over the following three chapters.

4. Primary Colors: Tapping the Energy Within
We each have a distinct set of strengths and weaknesses. We also each have areas we’re passionate about and areas we’re less passionate about. Quite often in life, we spend time trying to patch up our weaknesses and trying to improve ourselves in areas we’re not really passionate about. Smith argues that this is a giant mistake.

Instead, we should focus on the areas where our strengths and our passions overlap. So, for example, if we’re awful at public speaking but good at writing, and we’re passionate about fiction but don’t like science, we should avoid public speaking on science topics and instead focus on writing fiction.

5. What Is My Primary Color?
The trick, of course, is figuring out where our skills and passions lie. Smith refers to this as our “primary color.” In essence, this “primary color” is essentially a description of our core personality – what we’re naturally geared toward and skilled at.

Smith offers such an assessment for free at www.primarycolorassessment.com. I took the test myself and came up with 85% curiosity, 35% execution, and 33% leadership, which sounds about right. I prefer to come up with ideas, but will lead or be involved in execution if need be.

Is it useful? I think it is if you spend some time really contemplating the results and asking yourself how they match – or don’t match – what you’re doing.

6. Big, Selfless, and Simple: How Ideas Become Contagious
The most valuable thing in the modern workplace is the idea. People who come up with ideas, share those ideas, and are involved in implementing those ideas are the people who get ahead. Of course, without other people buying into those ideas, it’s very difficult to get your ideas heard and implemented – which means that you need to work on the “stickiness” of your ideas.

Most of this chapter lines up perfectly with the excellent book Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath (which I reviewed and loved a while back). In fact, I’d consider it reasonable to simply read the full book than read this chapter, since the ideas are similar and the general concepts are covered (in my opinion) in the book by the Heaths.

7. The Spark Sequence: Stacking the Deck
How can you know if this idea you think would match your passions and skills would actually work out? The best way to find out is by doing it – devoting as much of your time as possible to exploring that junction between your passions and your skills. Practice. Dive into opportunities. Back away from the optional things in your life that are less fulfilling and instead fill your hours with finding that crux between your passions and your skills.

One strong exercise that Smith suggests is simply writing down your idea, then making a list of five or ten questions that, if you knew the answer to them, would make your decisions about that idea much easier. Those questions then become your checklist – strive to answer as many as you can without giving up your current way of life.

8. Aristotle on a Lily Pad: A Perspective on Life-Work Design
Smith closes out the book by calling upon the philosophy of Aristotle to make a simple, yet central, point: the journey is what really matters. As you go along and figure out what you’re passionate about, you might have your eye on the destination, but the journey is where your true lessons will be learned. Your destination will likely change over and over again, but the lessons learned along your journey will stay with you.

Is The Leap Worth Reading?
The Leap is a very solid book for people who are struggling with finding the career they’re meant to have – a position I found myself in not too long ago. It’s incredibly straightforward, yet it provides plenty of food for thought and reflection.

I’ve been reading a lot of career books lately and many of them overlap on a lot of themes: finding your passionas and strengths, focusing on things that build value for you over the long term, building you and not your organization (remembering that a better you will help your organization more). The Leap presents all of these ideas very cohesively and clearly.

It’s a book I wish I had in my hands two years ago.

This book review was provide by Trent at The Simple Dollar.com. Trent offers his reviews and blog to the public domain, so visit his blog and show him love here.

It’s December, and that means another theme change and direction change! It seems like I try to reinvent this website several times a year, and now is no exception. Part of running and owning a website like this is that it’s very easy to get excited for a spell, but after a while, it just gets stale and you have other things occupying your free time. So, after deciding if I really wanted to keep Review Chicago or not, I took some time to evaulate what this website should and shouldn’t be.

First and foremost, it was fun trying to be a magazine style website. Lots of graphics, tons of topics, and it really took off in the begining of 2009. However, right around April reality started to sink in. It is virtually impossible with no capital and limited resources to be a viable media outlet. We tried as hard as we could. Charlotte, Jessica, Shawn and Bokeen each provided this website with many articles and hours of their time, and I sincerely appreciate everything they have done for this website. I hope they continue to write and contribue articles.

The reality has officially set it. Review Chicago is going back to a standard blog format. What will be gone are weekly columns, and any deadlined material. I hope Char and all will continue to bombard me with opinion columns, sports related fun, and of course music and album reviews. My focus from here on out will be to post reviews of anything and everything. Included in this will be business sponsored reviews and other advertisements. The intention is, in order to survive and thrive, we have to take baby steps towards making this website somewhat commercially viable.

Sponsored posts will not be the only reviews we will do, and we will do reviews for ANY business, website, book, band, movie, bar, ect for free. Contact me if you are interested in having a feature. The sponsored posts just pay more attention to some backend web related stuff, and provides them with certain perks that standard reviews don’t get.

Further more, included now will be general product reviews, such as a review of a cell phone, or television, for example. These will be unbiased, and non-sponsored.

I have decided to keep the percentage of sponsored posts to roughly 10 percent, hopefully this will be enough to continue to provide hosting and an outlet for all things Chicago. If the paid reviews become a nuisance, I will drop them entirely and try to figure out another source of income for the website.

In an ideal world, we would have roughly 15-20 relevant posts a week. 10 Chicago based reviews, 3 product reviews, 3-4 news articles and a couple opinion columns. This is just some of what I have running around in the old noodle right now. My goal is to have over 1000 Chicago related product and business reviews by the end of 2010.

One of our most popular features, our local musician Artist of the Month will continue on our sister blog at ChicagoIndieInsider.com. For the time being, they will run concurrently on this website as well.

Since the site launched in April of 2008, it has grown a ton. Our traffic is consistant, and we have a loyal readership. I don’t intend on insulting you. I hope you stick with us as we go through more growing pains.

Saturday, the Numbers touched down at North Beach in Downers Grove, Illinois for the CD release of their newest album, Sunny Side Up. North Beach is a pretty interesting (bad) venue to have a rock show on a Saturday night. As I entered the venue, I was told that there was a mandatory coat check. What is this, John Barelycorn? I wasn’t going to be grinding on some dance floor booty, I was going to see a rock band. Next, I had to fight through a dance party to get to the back room where the show was being held. After getting to the back room, the sound bleed from the dance party was overwhelming, and I had to move as close to the front of the room as possible, which wasn’t entirely all that bad.

After seeing a previous incarnation of this band, I had high expectations. The show started rough, with the Numbers appearing a little disjointed and loose. This could have to do with the fact the sound system wasn’t turned on until their third song. Once again, top notch North Beach staff. At this point, the band found their groove. Principal songwriter, guitarist and singer David Bovyn shined through the muddy mix with blistering solos and loud, emotive vocals. Guitarist Tim Clark showcased his ample ability, and the rhythm section did it’s job holding down the beat after a very rough start. The Numbers are an interesting band because it is really hard to pin down what they sound like. At times, you hear some Neil Young and Crazy Horse influence, at other times, you can the Boss creeping through. Then, just when you feel you have them pegged as a classic rock band, you hear a vocal melody that would fit in with the latest Coheed and Cambria record. They have a real interesting vibe and songs.

If I had to make a complaint about the band, it is they aren’t as tight as their music would allow them to be. Bovyn and Clark do an excellent job improvising over the music, but other members sometimes lag behind. This should be remedied as the band grows, as new members have been added over the last year.

Overall, the show was a success and the crowd enjoyed the Numbers.