Just added Michael Weinreb’s Bigger Than the Game to my book queue, after reading an interview with Weinreb at Sports Crackle Pop.

I mean, I remember reading McMahon: The Bare Truth About Chicago’s Brashest Bear while I was in fifth grade. I carefully kept this card double-protected in soft nylon and hard plastic. And don’t get me going on Tecmo Bo. This book’ll be right up my alley, for sure.

It would be well worth your time to read this fascinating article from the January 2010 issue of Outside Magazine: Bob Friel’s The Ballad of Colton Harris-Moore. Friel has been following the story of Harris-Moore for a long time now. The article is basically what got Friel the book deal for Taking Flight: The Hunt for a Young Outlaw (in the works), the film rights of which were recently acquired by David Gordon Green, Danny McBride & Jody Hill’s Rough House Pictures. Things on that end should speed up a bit now, as the ongoing saga reached a pretty solid conclusion this past Sunday when Harris-Moore was captured in the Bahamas after a high-speed boat chase.

It’s also been pretty interesting reading the updates on Colton on Friel’s blog, Outlaws & Outcasts.

50 years before Roger Troutman glimpsed the future of funk with “More Bounce to the Ounce” the vocoder was invented by Bell Labs to further secure encrypted military radio transmissions. In Dave Tompkins’ book, How to Wreck a Nice Beach ”—music journalist Dave Tompkins traces the history of electronic voices from Nazi research labs to Stalin’s gulags, from the 1939 World’s Fair to Hiroshima, from artificial larynges to Auto-Tune.”

To compliment the book, Tompkins’ and DJ Monk-One put together this mix:

“The Bees in Your Beargut” or “Bonus Beach”

This thing is completely badass. You’s NEED to download it.

Extensive tracklist + commentary here.

(via Yours Truly)