Measure your life in jellybeans...

In the musical Rent, the late Jonathan Larson talked about how life was made up of 525,600 minutes, and that you should measure your life in love. I certainly can't argue with those sentiments.

I was, however, intrigued when writing my newsletter at work, I came upon a post from Ze Frank, online performance artist, composer, humorist, and Buzzfeed's executive vice president of video, in which he examined the average human lifespan, measured out in jellybeans.

It's a humorous and surprisingly moving look at life. And you might want to have some jellybeans handy...

Cool cover song of the week...

As I've said many times before, I'm a huge music fan, and have more than 23,000 songs on my iPod. (It keeps playing the same 1000 or so, but it is what it is.)

While my musical tastes are tremendously eclectic, in general, I love songs to which you can sing along. Which probably explains my fondness for covers, new versions of popular songs, sometimes faithful to the original, sometimes bringing a new and wholly unexpected twist.

I have a treasure trove of covers to share with you, but I'll start with The Counting Crows' take on Borderline, one of Madonna's earliest hits. It's off their album Underwater Sunshine (Or What We Did on Our Summer Vacation), and I think it gives the song an interesting twist. So interesting, in fact, that I knew I recognized the song but couldn't figure out what it was until Adam Duritz hit the all-too-familiar chorus.

Enjoy. What are your favorite cover versions of songs?