The Bassoon King

Author: Rainn Wilson
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698161432
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
From the three-time Emmy nominated actor, climate activist, and author of Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution—Rainn Wilson’s memoir is about growing up geeky and finally finding his place in comedy, faith, and life. For nine seasons Rainn Wilson played Dwight Schrute, everyone's favorite work nemesis and beet farmer. Viewers of The Office fell in love with the character and grew to love the actor who played him even more. Rainn founded a website and media company, SoulPancake, that eventually became a bestselling book of the same name. He also started a hilarious Twitter feed (sample tweet: “I'm not on Facebook” is the new “I don't even own a TV”) that now has more than four million followers. Now, he's ready to tell his own story and explain how he came up with his incredibly unique sense of humor and perspective on life. He explains how he grew up “bone-numbingly nerdy before there was even a modicum of cool attached to the word.” The Bassoon King chronicles his journey from nerd to drama geek (“the highest rung on the vast, pimply ladder of high school losers”), his years of mild debauchery and struggles as a young actor in New York, his many adventures and insights about The Office, and finally, Wilson's achievement of success and satisfaction, both in his career and spiritually, reconnecting with the artistic and creative values of the Bahá’í faith he grew up in.

Summary of Rainn Wilson's The Bassoon King

Author: Everest Media,
Publisher: Everest Media LLC
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 49

Book Description
Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 I had the biggest head of any baby that was ever born. My name is Rainn, and my parents were odd. They changed their names to Shay in 1965. My mom was raised on a farm in Weyauwega, Wisconsin, and spent a year living with chickens. #2 My father, Robert George Wilson, had a miserable childhood. His father, Chester Wilson, was an alcoholic who stole his lightning rod company, Wilcor Grounding Systems, from his brother and made millions off of it while his brother moved back to Minnesota and had to run Wilson Brothers Auto Parts in Thief River Falls. #3 My father wanted to call me Rainer, but there was a mountain that hovered over the skyline of Seattle called Mount Rainier. I imagine weird chicken-coop Mommy and slot-machine Daddy having a conversation about my name on the deck of their rainy houseboat on Lake Union in Seattle. #4 The city of Seattle was a mossy, shambly town in the 1970s, famous only for the film It Happened at the World’s Fair with Elvis Presley as a crop-dusting pilot dancing under the Space Needle with a little Chinese girl.

The Bassoon King

Author: Rainn Wilson
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0451469437
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 338

To Repair the World

Author: Mary B. Robinson
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040015972
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Book Description
This book is a biography in the form of an oral history about a woman whose founding of Arena Stage in Washington, DC in 1950 shifted live professional theater away from Broadway and inspired the creation of non-profit theaters around the country. Dianne Wiest, James Earl Jones, Stacy Keach, and Jane Alexander, among many others, share their memories of this intrepid pioneering woman during Arena Stage’s early years. As Head of New York University’s Graduate Acting Program for 25 years, Zelda Fichandler also trained a younger generation of gifted actors. Marcia Gay Harden, Rainn Wilson, Mahershala Ali, and other developing actors who became “artist-citizens” under her guidance, talk about the ways in which she transformed their lives. Theater practitioners who have lived during Zelda Fichandler’s time will find this book a fascinating and entertaining read––as will all theater lovers, especially those in Washington, DC. And through this vivid and compelling oral history, students and aspiring artists will come to grasp how the theatrical past can shed essential light on the theater of today and tomorrow.

Befriending Your Monsters

Author: Luke Norsworthy
Publisher: Baker Books
ISBN: 149342341X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Book Description
Monsters aren't real. As reasonable adults, we know this. But we also know that, while fake, the monsters of fairy tales, movies, and Netflix series embody our very real fears. Large, powerful beings that hunt us in the dark make us feel small, weak, vulnerable. When characters in these stories run away, they temporarily feel safe, but it's not until the monster is faced head-on that the story can have a happy ending--and, more importantly, the hero can become all he or she was created to be. The same is true of the monsters of the spiritual life. The monsters of comparison (I am what others say about me), more (I am what I have), and success (I am what I do) are powerful enemies of a healthy spiritual life. But ignoring them solves nothing. Pastor and speaker Luke Norsworthy wants you to face your monsters, get to know them, and discover how they are inviting you into a deeper understanding of yourself and a more intimate connection with God. You'll never completely eradicate your fears, but if you befriend them, they can lead you into becoming God's intention for you.

Welcome to Dragon Talk

Author: Shelly Mazzanoble
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1609388593
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 199

Book Description
"In this collection, the hosts of "Dragon Talk," the official D and D podcast, recount some of the most inspiring stories from their guests. All use the core tenants of the game in their everyday life"--

Equals and Partners

Author: Patricia Verge
Publisher: FriesenPress
ISBN: 1525518690
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 444

Book Description
Canada is poised to reconcile its centuries-long fraught history with Indigenous peoples and to establish justice. What fundamental spiritual principles should guide this challenging process and bring together peoples who have been separated for so long? In this part-memoir, part-scholarly work, Patricia Verge records her decades-long friendship with the Stoney Nakoda Nation in southern Alberta. She explores how her spiritual journey has been intimately entwined with service among Indigenous people and confronts her own ignorance of the true history of Canada, taking for her guidance this quote from the writings of the Bahá’í Faith: “a massive dose of truth must be administered to heal.” An engaging and timely work, Equals and Partners is ultimately a story of love and commitment to the principle of the oneness of humanity.

Soul Boom

Author: Rainn Wilson
Publisher: Hachette Go
ISBN: 0306828294
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
In this New York Times bestseller, comedic actor, producer, and writer Rainn Wilson explores the problem-solving benefits that spirituality gives us to create solutions for an increasingly challenging world. The trauma that our struggling species has experienced in recent years—because of both the pandemic and societal tensions that threaten to overwhelm us—is not going away anytime soon. Existing political and economic systems are not enough to bring the change that the world needs. In this book, Rainn Wilson explores the possibility and hope for a spiritual revolution, a “Soul Boom,” to find a healing transformation on both a personal and global level For Wilson, this is a serious and essential pursuit, but he brings great humor and his own unique perspective to the conversation. He feels that, culturally, we’ve discounted spirituality—faith and the sacred—and we need profound healing and a unifying understanding of the world that the great spiritual traditions provide. Wilson’s approach to spirituality—the non-physical, eternal aspects of ourselves—is relatable and applies to people of all beliefs, even the skeptics. Filled with genuine insight—not to mention enlightening Kung Fu and Star Trek references—Soul Boom delves into ancient wisdom to seek out practical, transformative answers to life’s biggest questions.

The Office

Author: Andy Greene
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1524744972
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 466

Book Description
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The untold stories behind The Office, one of the most iconic television shows of the twenty-first century, told by its creators, writers, and actors When did you last hang out with Jim, Pam, Dwight, Michael, and the rest of Dunder Mifflin? It might have been back in 2013, when the series finale aired . . . or it might have been last night, when you watched three episodes in a row. But either way, long after the show first aired, it’s more popular than ever, and fans have only one problem—what to watch, or read, next. Fortunately, Rolling Stone writer Andy Greene has that answer. In his brand-new oral history, The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s, Greene will take readers behind the scenes of their favorite moments and characters. Greene gives us the true inside story behind the entire show, from its origins on the BBC through its impressive nine-season run in America, with in-depth research and exclusive interviews. Fans will get the inside scoop on key episodes from "The Dundies" to "Threat Level Midnight" and "Goodbye, Michael," including behind-the-scenes details like the battle to keep it on the air when NBC wanted to pull the plug after just six episodes and the failed attempt to bring in James Gandolfini as the new boss after Steve Carell left, spotlighting the incredible, genre-redefining show created by the family-like team, who together took a quirky British import with dicey prospects and turned it into a primetime giant with true historical and cultural significance. Hilarious, heartwarming, and revelatory, The Office gives fans and pop culture buffs a front-row seat to the phenomenal sequence of events that launched The Office into wild popularity, changing the face of television and how we all see our office lives for decades to come.

Audiobooks as Artifacts

Author: David Seinberg
Publisher: Common Ground Research Networks
ISBN: 1963049373
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Book Description
Their ever-evolving popularity notwithstanding, audiobooks remain a rather undertheorized phenomenon. The prevailing handful of existing studies seem to have adopted an inherently historicist approach, which fails to identify and scrutinize their aesthetic importance. Thus, rather than regarding them as mere recorded ‘versions’ of existing literary works, this book explores them as the unique products of a hitherto undefined artistic genre. As performance-based aural artefacts, the very act of listening to them is rendered an aesthetic experience in its own right. By effectively embracing an interdisciplinary approach and introducing a set of aesthetic questions and philosophical conundrums (ignited by a paradigmatic application of the New Institutional Theory of Art), this study establishes a new aesthetic category—which, in turn, not only classifies audiobooks as artworks to all intents and purposes, but also generates the criteria and parameters for evaluating their merit. Since the proof of the proverbial pudding is purportedly in the eating, in surveying a series of concrete case studies—each highlighting different degrees of complexities—this study mainly examines first-person narratives as the most natural medium for the aesthetics of the audiobook. As such, the investigation herein provides one with comparative close listenings, appropriately analyzing and debating their aesthetic properties. Finally, in exploring what this study identifies as one’s informed intuition and its role in the craft of casting audiobooks, this study also proposes a new understating of how aesthetic appreciation works in action.