Thursday, February 26, 2009

Rail Jam 09

MSU Bookstore is an official sponsor of Chamberlin Productions' Rail Jam 09.

Rail Jam 09 will be held on Main Street in downtown Bozeman at 6 PM on Saturday, March 7th. There will be a snowboard and ski competition, live music, a DJ and all sorts of fun stuff.

MSU Bookstore will be sponsoring the Best Trick at the Rail Jam and the winner will receive Skull Candy headphones, Ogio merchandise and the ever-so-coveted AWESOME stamp. It's sure to be a great show, so stop by the MSU Bookstore booth and say "hey-o" and try to influence the Best Trick judges to pick your favorite Rail Jammer as the awesomist.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Spring Sidewalk Sale

Next Tuesday through Thursday, March 3 -5 from 10 AM to 2 PM, the MSU Bookstore will be holding a Sidewalk Sale. The sale will be held in the hallway on the lower level of the Strand Union Building outside of the Textbook Buyback window. There will be great deals on Under Armour clothing, MSU sweatshirts and t-shirts, books and other merchandise. Tell your friends!

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The Swing of Things, Wintery Things

While most of the world is getting sick of sub zero temperatures, slush, ice, and snow shoveling, a large sub-culture of skiers and snowboarders are patiently (or not-so-patiently) awaiting the next big snow storm to sweep through the Rocky Mountains of Montana. Most of my faithful readers are probably unaware that I am a snowboard and ski instructor at Moonlight Basin Resort in Big Sky, Montana (shameless self-plug). The snow situation this winter has been meager at best, but my crew at Moonlight Basin has been busy thrashing the snow on Lone Peak in the sunshine. Our faces are sunburned and our lips are chapped, but man, do we have a good time!

In this post are some pictures from the adventures of a few Moonlight Basin employees. Pictures are property of Patrick Gannon and Scott Schaefer, please leave them here.

Above: Patrick Gannon, ski and snowboard instructor and guide at Moonlight Basin shows us the base of his skis. Photo by Scott Schaefer.











Right: Texan turned Coloradan turned Montanan, Dave McCune, snowboard supervisor at Moonlight Basin, sprays some light Montana snow in front of Lone Peak. Photo by Patrick Gannon.




















Left: Lone Mountain is home to the world famous Headwaters terrain at Moonlight Basin. Patrick Gannon plans his descent in front of the beautiful view of the Gallatin Mountain range. Photo by Patrick Gannon





















Right: While the snow gods are not always good to us, it is important to praise them when they behave properly. Dave McCune gives thanks before
traversing out the Stillwater bowl to make some pow turns. Photo by Patrick Gannon.










Below: Dave makes some late afternoon backcountry turns at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, a beautiful 200 mile drive from Bozeman. Photo by Patrick Gannon.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Daytime TV

Due to a series of unfortunate events, mostly related to my incorrect hypothesis that flu shots are a marketing scam, and the graciousness of my roommate and coworkers, I have fallen victim to the almighty influenza. Years ago, sitting on the couch at my parents' house, I would have cheered the thermometer on as it inched past 100 degrees, thus ensuring I would get to lounge around all day avoiding school work. These days, however, a fever, sore throat and cough mean that I am stuck watching daytime TV while my underexercised dog romps around the house and work emails pile up.

Here's an abbreviated daytime TV schedule, as I remember it, circa 1998:
10 AM: Price is Right
Noon: Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
1 PM: Full House
3 PM: Maury Povich

I wish I could say that the daytime TV schedule had changed in the last 11 years, but unfortunately, it hasn't. Staying home from work in 2009 is the same as staying home from school was in 1998: boring.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Best of the Superbowl

Most of you are probably unaware that besides being the biggest NFL football event, the Superbowl is also the biggest marketing event of the year. For marketing dorks like myself, that means I spend the whole game shushing my friends when the commercials come on. There are always a few commercials that stand out and here are a few of my favorites:

How can you resist Nannerpuss?


As a dog lover, I was a sucker for the Pedigree commercials. Yes, Maybe You Should Get a Dog.


What? I can't flex the golden pipes?


And, you have to admit that Miller was cleverly able to combat the high cost of Superbowl advertisements and thumb its nose at Budweisers large number of spots by releasing multiple 1 second Miller High Life "Delivery Guy" commercials. This was the "champagne of commercials":

Monday, February 2, 2009

This Week's Bestsellers

The Inheritance by David E. Sanger

Readers of The New York Times know David Sanger as one of the most trusted correspondents in Washington, one to whom presidents, secretaries of state, and foreign leaders talk with unusual candor. Now, with a historian's sweep and an insider's eye for telling detail, Sanger delivers an urgent intelligence briefing on the world America faces.

In a riveting narrative, The Inheritance describes the huge costs of distraction and lost opportunities at home and abroad as Iraq soaked up manpower, money, and intelligence capabilities. The 2008 market collapse further undermined American leadership, leaving the new president with a set of challenges unparalleled since Franklin D. Roosevelt entered the Oval Office.

Sanger takes readers into the White House Situation Room to reveal how Washington penetrated Tehran's nuclear secrets, leading President Bush, a desperate effort to delay an Iranian bomb. Meanwhile, his intelligence chiefs made repeated secret missions to Pakistan as they tried to stem a growing insurgency and cope with an ally who was also aiding the enemy--while receiving billions in American military aid. Now the new president faces critical choices: Is it better to learn to live with a nuclear Iran or risk overt or covert confrontation? Is it worth sending U.S. forces deep into Pakistani territory at the risk of undermining an unstable Pakistani government sitting on a nuclear arsenal? It is a race against time and against a new effort by Islamic extremists--never before disclosed--to quietly infiltrate Pakistan's nuclear weapons program.

"Bush wrote a lot of checks," one senior intelligence official told Sanger, "that the next president to going to have to cash."

The Inheritance takes readers to Afghanistan, where Bush never delivered on his promises for a Marshall Plan to rebuild the country, paving the way for the Taliban's return. It examines the chilling calculus of North Korea's Kim Jong-II, who built actual weapons of mass destruction in the same months that the Bush adminstaration pursued phantoms in Iraq, then sold his nuclear technology in the Middle East in an operation the American intelligence appartus missed. And it explores how China became one of the real winners of the Iraq war, using the past eight years to expand its influence in Asian, and lock up oil supplies in Africa while Washington bogged down in the Middle East. Yet Sanger, a former foreign correspondent in Asia, sees enormous potential for the next adminstration to forge a partnership with Beijing on energy and the environment.

At once a secret history of our foreign policy misadventures and a lucid explanation of the opportunites they creat, The Inheritance is vital readig for anyone trying to understand the extraordianary challenges that lie ahead.

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

To contrast the seriousness of our first bestseller on the list, I present to you a graphic novel called Watchmen. If you are a fan of DC Comics, this is the book for you. Here is what some of the critics are saying:

"A work of ruthless psychological realism, it's a landmark in the graphic novel medium." -- One of Time Magazine's 100 Best English-Language Novels since 1923

"Watchmen is peerless." -- Rolling Stone

"Remarkable... the would-be heroes of Watchmen have staggeringly complex psychological profiles.: -- New York Times Book Review

"A brilliant piece of fiction." -- The Village Voice

"The greatest piece of popular fiction ever produced." Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof

"A masterwork representing the apex of artistry." -- Entertainment Weekly

Sounds good, doesn't it?