I’m not sure the “oral history” long-form article became more popular in the social media age, but I certainly have noticed it a lot more in the past 15 years… and I usually enjoy the pieces about seminal stage and screen productions. It’s a good reminder of how, even when we see these works that are exquisite faits accompli, they are the result of hard-working humans, who are on their own journey. So I very…
The ferryman guided a special soul across the river earlier this week. Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou, known to professionally as Vangelis, died this past Tuesday at the age of 79. You can read remembrances, appreciations, and obituaries from: Rolling Stone AP BBC NPR Variety The AV Club Many a cinephile will know Vangelis immediately, but for many of us, we came of age and found our love for both film and film music right when Vangelis…
A couple posts I read this past weekend inspired me to update my “Writing” section, but before I get to that, here are the posts in questions. Ken Levine on the difference between amateur writers and pros. Ken Levine is, as one might expect of a veteran writer of shows like M*A*S*H and Cheers, pithy and to the point. I’ve heard both the anecdotes before, though I don’t think I knew the sources. Mark Evanier…
It’s Friday, so it’s time for something light and cheerful. How about death? It is Friday the 13th, you know. No really, this is about as fun an exploration about the language we use regarding shuffling off the mortal coil that I recall seeing this side of a Charles Addams cartoon. And the doctor below happily explains all sorts of geeky trivia regarding words. Seriously, if I understood how much fun I might have before…
This interview, by Vox‘s Sean Illig with journalist Johann Hari, came out in February… and then I finally checked it out in March… and now I’m only posting about it in May. The way I finally got to it was actually to listen to it, because the article is actually a summation of a more detailed slightly-more-than-an-hour audio interview. It’s full of useful insights especially… dang, I might need to listen to it again.
It’s not uncommon for me to kick off Monday’s with a post about motivation or life satisfaction, so I figured I’d post this brief article by Arthur C. Brooks over at The Atlantic. In short, Noël Coward may have been on to something when one of his characters in Design for Living goes on in a perfect theater banter way about how one can have too much of a good thing. Basically, the happiest people…
While it seems that not everyone liked the latest screen version of Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi novel Dune, it’s the first film in a long time that I finished watching and wanted to immediately watch again. I’m up to seeing it five times now, so it’s safe to say I’m a fan (I find much to love in the other two screen versions as well, but that’s for another post). One of the most striking…
So based on last week’s post about the schadenfreude over the disruptor Netflix being disrupted, here’s a piece by Joy Press for Vanity Fair about the changing landscape of streaming TV. Now, once you read the article, you may find the title above a tad click-baity, but the article is predicting possible directions for the industry to go. Many of those directions look to be safe, one might even say traditional, avenues in terms of…
Note: This post and the related links abound in spoilers for Ted Lasso, season 2. This past weekend, my wife and I finally finished the second season of Ted Lasso, the comfort-food comedy-drama that is nominally about soccer, but really seems to be a backdoor effort to assemble a Gen X mixtape playlist whilst making equal numbers of jokes and pop culture references every single minute. The gentle yet foul-mouthed comedy of season one remains,…
It could be because each micronation origin story is chock full of ingredients ripe for a quirky biopic, but I love learning about micronations. And there appear to be no end to them popping up. In fact, the Internet seems to have given some of them a new lease on life… or sovereignty. Over on BBC Future, Jessica Mudditt explores the ongoing existence of micronations, with some particularly deep dives into the origins of Atlantium,…