Sean and I had a great time with Mom and Dad last weekend, but now I’m back to copyediting, pouting that I haven’t had time to go to the movies, and posting links of the week!
- I’m not sure I agree with Tim Parks’s essay chipping at the mythology of the human need for stories, but it’s thoughtful and provocative.
- The continued relevance of Bruce Springsteen’s song “American Skin (41 Shots),” written in the wake of the shooting of Amadou Diallo in 1999, breaks my heart.
- Dan Kois’s profile of actor Peter Dinklage, who takes the lead in the Game of Thrones ensemble this coming season, is fascinating and poignant. The attention he’s gotten playing fan-favorite Tyrion (and knocking the role out of the park, for the record) seems to be a unusually sharp double-edge sword.
- Sean and I plan to see The Hunger Games this weekend, and thanks to Slate, I now know to listen for the use of “Sediment,” a long-overlooked but deeply evocative work of electronic music by Laurie Spiegel.
- The bitingly farcical Better Off Ted was one of those great TV shows that never found an audience (I particularly miss Portia De Rossi—why has she not been cast somewhere else, damn it?!), and as it’s now streaming on Netflix, I’m happy that AV Club spotlighted one of its best episodes, “Racial Sensitivity.” Watch it!
Karl follows the AV Club, and told me about the Better Off Ted review. That was one of my favorite episodes. I always talked about it when telling people to check out the show! I can attest to it being an scarily accurate reflection of science industries such as big pharma…sometimes the farce hit a little too close to home.
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