One of my favorite musical “acts” is Blue Man Group. The Blue Man Group explores, with primitively modern musical instruments, society, detachment, and collectivism. You may remember them from Intel’s old Pentium commercials. You may also remember them from the television show Arrested Development, in which the character Tobias, played by David Cross, auditioned for the show and failed, later declaring, “I blue myself.” Blue Man Group has shows in New York City, Boston, Las Vegas, and a few other cities, as well as a touring rock show, with each show similar but not identical to the others.

I recently picked up the latest Blue Man Group CD and DVD combination package, How to Be a Megastar! and watched the program. It includes fantastic music and visual performances as I expected, but I am equally intrigued by the special features, including a documentary-style interview with the creators of Blue Man Group, Phil Stanton, Chris Wink, and Matt Goldman.

When originally devising the concept of the Blue Man, the creators struggled at first. These three percussionists, who were working day-jobs as caterers in New York City, were ready to abandon their vision. At the right time, they received a sign. While watching television, they came across an interview with an expert on religion and philosophy. In this interview, the expert was asked to summarize the prevailing philosophical thought across the world, to which he answered: “Follow your bliss.”

Stanton, Wink and Goldman then knew that despite their difficulties, they must continue to create their vision through completion, even if success would never come. Thankfully for them, success did come, and Blue Man Group is now a cultural phenomenon. But the interview made me think about this particular philosophical idea.

First of all, what is “bliss?” Wordnet defines the word’s most common sense: a state of extreme happiness. The true path is the path that leads you towards a state of extreme happiness. In fact, in the interview, the creators of Blue Man Group went on to say that the journey is more important than the destination.

Am I following my bliss? I’m not sure. There was a time when I thought I had my life planned out, but year by year, I allowed this path to change. I’m now quite far from what I thought I would be doing with my life by this point, the age of 32. My job is fine, but it’s not intellectually, emotionally, or artistically stimulating. I like writing for Consumerism Commentary, but I’m not a particularly good writer. I enjoy building online communities, and that may be my personal strength for the moment, but is it my “bliss?”

Who should follow this advice, to follow one’s bliss? Perhaps not everyone has the luxury of doing so. The world needs janitors, truck drivers, bus boys, and others who perform thankless jobs—the jobs children often don’t think of when they are asked what they’d like to be when they grow up. But then again, are we sure that these individuals are not following their bliss? Perhaps their “extreme happiness” is satisfied simply by providing for their family in any manner possible.

In the case of the creators of the Blue Man Group, they needed to complete their project before they could be satisfied. With success, it seems their project may never be complete; shows are revised, new tours are initiated, and new audiences are born constantly.

After leaving the arts world, I thought my goal would be to volunteer for causes about which I feel strongly or become a to philanthropist as much as my budget allows. It seems I may be too picky to do so at the level at which I would be making a difference, and in some cases, to do so at all. Even though the organization closest to meeting my requirements is strongly involved in the activity I wish to support, having been close to that organization with intimate knowledge of its administration, I’d prefer not to do business with them. Unfortunately, no other organization is similar.

Do you follow your bliss?

If you have an HD DVD player and fear it will be collecting dust in your entertainment center, you have an option to turn the hardware into $50. Best Buy is accepting returns for any HD DVD product in return for store credit. You would receive up to $50 in store credit for the player and a few dollars for each HD DVD title you return through the Best Buy Trade-In Center.

You can even return HD DVD hardware and titles not purchased at Best Buy, but you’ll still receive a Best Buy gift card in return.

Additionally, Best Buy is automatically sending a $50 gift card to those who purchased HD DVD players at their stores. As long as your purchase is on the store’s records, you will receive this gift card in addition to any credits you would receive if you decide to trade in the player.

That’s actually not a bad deal. It’s rare that “early adopters” are afforded this courtesy.

Will you be trading in your HD DVD player? Or will you be keeping the device for the existing HD DVD titles and the player’s upconverting features for standard DVDs? Or will you be laughing at all of us poor souls who thought the lower price and better features would win consumers over in comparison with Blu-Ray’s larger storage capacity?

(Thankfully I hedged my bets and managed to find myself with a Blu-Ray player as well.)

Best Buy HD DVD Action Center

When VHS finally emerged as the market leader over Sony’s Beta format, we gave our immediately-obsolete player to my grandmother.

I’ve been following the high definition format wars with moderate interest, since I was a “late early adopter.” Last fall, I picked up an HD DVD player and during the holidays I received a Blu-ray player. In my opinion, HD DVD was the better deal—more interesting technology, players that were ready to enter the market, and better price points on the hardware. Blu-ray had the benefit of larger capacity and the bandwidth to allow higher quality encoding. Blu-ray also uses region encoding, like standard DVDs. Blu-ray discs purchased in one country will therefore not work in all countries. HD DVDs were “region-free.”

I thought that HD DVD would be the format that caught on, but I underestimated Sony’s ability to get the studios on their side. In the last few months, movie studios and distributors, one after another, announced they would be publishing future releases exclusively on Blu-ray, most likely due to the region restriction (and probably some financial incentive).

Toshiba, the major company behind HD DVD, has finally surrendered. The company announced they are discontinuing their entire HD DVD business. Thankfully, I haven’t invested too much in this technology, but with few movies being released on HD DVD in the future, I won’t need a device used for less than 10 movies (5 of which were free) taking up space in my entertainment center.

Toshiba announces discontinuation of HD DVD business [hddvd.org]

Netflix has been offering movies to rent on both high definition media formats, HD DVD and Blu-ray, will now be exclusively supporting just one technology: Blu-ray.

Citing the decision by four of the six major movie studios to publish high-def DVD titles only in the Sony-developed Blu-ray format, Netflix said that as of now it will purchase only Blu-ray discs and will phase out by roughly year’s end the alternative high-def format, HD DVD, developed by Toshiba.

Paramount and Universal are left as the only major film studios supporting HD DVD.

While I think Blu-ray is the superior medium in terms of capacity and encoding, its hardware isn’t priced competitively with HD DVD and the player technology is about a year behind HD DVD’s advancements. The film industry, rather than the consumers, has made the decision to support Blu-ray.

Netflix, Citing a Clear Signal From the Industry, Will Carry High-Def DVDs Only in Blu-ray Format [Netflix Press Release]

Last year, I decided to become a “late early adopter” by taking the jump to high-definition entertainment. I upgraded my equipment, including a Toshiba HD DVD player. While cognizant of the HD format wars, I went ahead with HD DVD because the equipment was better priced for the mass market. I thought thought that due to pure economics, this format would win despite its technical inferiority to Blu-Ray. I decided to hedge my bet and asked my girlfriend for a Blu-Ray player for the holidays.

Recently, more movie studios have agreed to support Blu-Ray exclusively, so despite HD DVD’s connectivity and interactivity features—none of which were ready on Blu-Ray—people seem to be declaring that Blu-Ray has won the format war. Shortly after this announcement, the Blu-Ray camp announced that players on the market now (except for the one built into the Playstation 3 game console) will not be able to play most future Blu-Ray discs thanks to technological advances that won’t be backwards compatible. Even though I thought I was covering all my bases, I lost the format war. The consumers always lose.

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