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On Saturday, June 25^th from 1:00-5:00PM, CPL will host some of the most creative hobbyists and hackers in the Metro Detroit Area for our second CPL Hack Day. Our Community Room will be full of demonstrations and presentations of hacks ranging from robotics to web apps to modded IKEA furniture to scrapbooking.

If you or someone you know is a 'hacker' in a special field; if you have ingenious and/or unconventional workarounds and solutions, then consider doing a presentation or having a demo table at Hack Day. Time slots and planning discussion can be found at the Hack Day CantonWiki page. For any questions, please contact Brad Czerniak at czerniakb@cantonpl.org.

Elizabeth Taylor passed away today at the age of 79. She was well-known for her roles in prominent films, her illustrious marriages, and as an eccentric life-long celebrity. If you would like to rekindle memories of this wonderful actress, you can find the following at Canton Public Library:

DVDs

Cat on a hot tin roof

Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?

White Collar [season 1 DVDs available here] is a procedural crime drama about FBI white collar crime expert Peter Burke and his former-art-forger-and-thief confidential informant Neal Caffrey, who in conjunction with his friend Mozzie (pictured) use unconventional tactics to bring criminals to justice. If you enjoy this fictionalization, try some of these true stories of brilliant theft and deception:

Gaming the game: the story behind the NBA betting scandal and the gambler who made it happen by Sean Patrick Griffin

Literary hoaxes: an eye-opening history of famous frauds by Melissa Katsoulis

Madoff with the money by Jerry Oppenheimer

RoboCop, a cinematic gem of the 1980s, exemplifies the attitude of many people toward Detroit: crime-infested urban ruins. So, despite the title character being [spoiler alert] a hero, the movie's setting is not depicted in such a positive light.

This is in contrast to Rocky, which shows Philadelphia in a mostly-neutral light; along with a glorious training montage that made the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps an icon and tourist attraction. Given the positive effect of Rocky on Philly tourism, the strong identification of that film with a particular filming location, demand for a statue for photography purposes, and the pre-existence of a bronze Rocky statue (which was created as a prop for Rocky III), the permanent installation of the prop statue seems natural.
Now, in Detroit, with the resurgence of civic pride and national recognition:

Some people have come forward to have a statue of Detroit film history erected.

But where? The Detroit in the film bears little resemblance to the rising-Phoenix-Detroit we see today. Additionally, no location in the film was particularly memorable above others. Maybe RoboCop isn't the right fictional Detroiter for a statue. Here are some films set in Detroit for your sculptural inspiration:

Pecha Kucha means "chit chat" in Japanese. The phrase is the namesake for an interesting presentation style: slideshow presentations of 20 slides shown for 20 seconds each (for a total of 6 minutes, 40 seconds). At our 2010 Staff Day, some library staff gave it a try; some stuck to the format, while others got creative and pushed the limits. No matter what, all the presentations were great:

If you're on facebook and like books, DVDs, and all the other great things Canton Public Library provides, you'll probably be interested in our May We Suggest facebook page. We post recommendations from our expert staff: romance books, comedy DVDs, nonfiction and advice titles, and more. Along with that, we'd like to know what you're reading and whether you recommend other people to read it too. Join us on facebook for great recommendations.