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Issue One Hundred and Sixty-Five

2024 is finally over. Now we kick down the doors of 2025 and kick its butt. And now that 2024 is finally over I am ready to tell you my favorite book, movie, and album that I encountered in that year. BOOK Everybody Knows by Jordan Harper I love a good mystery and I love it even more if it's a noir-style. Because I am who I am, generally that means that in addition to the book I'm currently reading, I probably have a Perry Mason audiobook also going during my commute. Everybody Knows takes place in the modern day. There are cellphones and everything. Our main character works as a publicist in LA, dealing with celebrity crises. When her boss is mysteriously gunned down, she takes it upon herself to unravel what leads he was chasing to get justice for her friend and mentor.  MOVIE Conclave When I first saw the trailer for this movie, I whispered to my wife, "All my friends are here!" What a cast: Ralph Fiennes, John Lithgow, Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rossellini! I have said this, kind of as a joke, but also kind of truthfully: the audience for this movie is among the rowdiest I have encountered at a theater, maybe just behind Borat and Avengers: Infinity War. Rossellini got an applause break from my theater and there was a moment when an older woman in front of me just kept repeating "Oh my god. This is the craziest movie I've ever seen. Oh my god..." It was a lot of fun. ALBUM All Hell by Los Campesinos! Like most people, I have a podcast. Mine, in short, is about how I didn't listen to the music that was popular in high school. I have learned a lot about punk and emo and occasionally(rarely) I discover a band I actually like. Los Campesinos! is one of those bands. This album, their seventh, came out this year and is the perfect encapsulation of their career. It is not the bouncy, occasionally funny, music of their youth, though there is still a lightness and humor to their words. It is serious and introspective. The music isn't aggressive, but it is driving and forceful. It's a fantastic record. (Want just a taste? Here's "Psychic Wound.")

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Issue One Hundred and Sixty-Four

The only cooking show I really watch is the Great British Bake-Off, and that's because (a) I like baking and (b) it's very relaxing. So, I started the Korean cooking competition show Culinary Class Wars with some trepidation, but it's a wild ride of both cooking and class warfare. In the first episode you are introduced to the white spoons, 20 elite chefs from the finest of fine dining, and the black spoons, 80 chefs from every other walk of life: street food, chicken sandwich stores, elementary school cafeterias, Antarctic research facility chefs (really). Then, they compete. Well, actually they have to cross a couple of other hurdles first, but that would be spoiling things. This cooking show is unlike any other I have seen before. It's both entertaining and a great twist on the usual fare. Cozy up with the 3 star Michelin chef in your life and enjoy!

Continuing from where we left off in our previous installment, here are the next few Christmas TV Episodes of our advent calendar!

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Issue 163

A Charlie Brown Christmas is a work of art. I never go a year without watching the Rankin-Bass Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. But as an adult, I don't know if it gets much better than Christmas at Pee-wee's Playhouse. If you are unfamiliar with Paul Reuben's Pee-wee character, he's a hyperactive manchild who loves cartoons, cereal, and screaming along with his friends who live in a playhouse in a surreal wonderland. Pee-wee's Playhouse was a Saturday morning TV show that ran from 1986-1990 and was a hit with kids and cool adults alike. The Christmas special, made between the 2nd and 3rd seasons of the show, aired in prime time and served as a space for Reubens to pull out all the stops. With a few years of good will, the show had built up a roster of celebrity fans and so many came out to play. Check out this list: Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, Charo, Grace Jones, k.d. lang, Dinah Shore, Little Richard, Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, Joan Rivers, and in a major coup for 1988: Cher says the secret word. (One of the other cameos is one of my favorite jokes in the special. Magic Screen, a talking screen that displays various pre-taped pieces for Pee-wee, introduces us to her cousin Magic Johnson.) Somehow a 1950s throwback that is incredibly 1980s, Christmas at Pee-wee's Playhouse starts and does not let up for the full hour. It is hyperkinetic as it bounces from joke to joke while still managing to include a storyline, some fruitcake jokes, and a cartoon from the King of Cartoons. Best of all, it's free on YouTube! There's no excuse! Speaking of TV, every day in December, until the 25th, over on Instagram and Bluesky, I am posting a different holiday episode of television for you to enjoy. Here are the first four, with another seven on the way for you next week!

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I was alive in 1992 when Johnny Carson did his final Tonight Show. Despite never seeing a single episode of his show live, I've watched so many Carson documentaries, read so many books, and I might be willing to bet I've seen that Ed Ames tomahawk clip more than times than anyone else my age. Carson the Magnificent, started by the late journalist Bill Zehme and finished by Mike Thomas, is not the most comprehensive look at Carson's life. (That would probably be King of the Night: The Life of Johnny Carson.) Nor is it a salacious inside look at his boozy celebrity hangouts. (That would be Johnny Carson by Henry Bushkin.) What it is is a verbose reflection on what made Carson important and an attempt to crack through to who the real Johnny was when the cameras off. Not to pry, or to explain why he cheated on his multiple wives, or why he was kind of a bad father (though we do touch on that). This is not an attempt to smear: it's an attempt to understand. Rather than writing a strictly chronological biography, Zehme jumps from era to era. We learn about what his early attempts to break in to show business were like in Nebraska, going from young magician Carsoni to the host of a local ABC show. My favorite chunk is a transcript of his first episode monologue, with extended annotations/digressions, explaining the situation of his Tonight Show predecessor Jack Parr, how Ed McMahon ended up next to him, and an attempt to figure out why Johnny and his first bandleader Skitch Henderson didn't get along. Did I mention verbose? Zehme's writing certainly won't be for everyone, but I found it to be a nice break from the traditionally dry non-fiction bio. Here's a sample from the first chapter, describing a traditional start to a Carson Tonight Show:

The forgotten rites of many moons (abbreviated):

He stands offstage unseen before seen by millions—oh, sweet polarities!—consolidating adrenaline into twinkling brio. With balls of feet bopping rhythmically, he waits… as his signature brassy fanfare blares away out there… and then, a couple dozen seconds later, comes the indelible booming pronouncement (reassurance?) that he is emphatically nowhere else but… here. As in: Heeeeeeeeeeeere. So summoned, he lopes out through a rustling split of the multicolored curtain, or “rainbow rag,” briefly clutching its fabric until releasing it with a dismissive toss. Neck cranes—snaps, really—most birdlike, absolutely—toward all compass points of audience, which noisily exudes fierce approval; before uttering a single word, his manner variously approximates surprise, glee, reproach, humility, authority. Attire tonight: blinding electric-plaid sport coat (woefully au courant weave of flammable synthetic polyester fibers, very likely a sample selection from his own bestselling menswear line) with pastel buttons; beige shirt, French cuffs; slacks and tie and loafers, all brown. Hair: thick flames of silver at sides and forked throughout otherwise still-dark crown. He is five weeks from turning forty-eight years old.

It goes on from there. There's a bit of drama here and there, but some of that is necessary to understand this guy: four marriages, a mom who wasn't much of a fan, and a serious alcohol problem. Hard to avoid along the way. But the majority of the book is a tribute to this guy who at his peak was putting the majority of America to bed.

The only thing I like more than interesting data is interesting data that's displayed in a cool way. That's why I like The Pudding. Love songs! Why isn't anybody writing them anymore? It's all just sex and singing about how great the singer thinks they are these days. Right? Sort of. But no. But kind of.

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Issue One Hundred and Fifty-Two

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Back in September of 2021 I wrote about Kirby Ferguson's Everything is a Remix, a video essay about how culture, from the beginning of time, is built upon the works of others being reshaped and reinvented. It's a fantastic piece of journalism that makes some fascinating points and insightful observations about creativity told through the medium of remixing. It practices what it preaches! Well, not only is the full project finally complete, BUT ALSO, its creator has edited it all together into one super convenient 90 minute video, BUT ALSO it goes way beyond previous iterations and updates the world of remixing to also delve into the complicated and thorny issue of artificial intelligence and how it interacts (and infringes?) on the art of human beings. It's a fascinating discussion and I don't want to give you any spoilers, but I believe Kirby argues a position that you may not have come across yet. Everything Is a Remix walks a very difficult line of being educational and super interesting and I can't recommend it enough. I'm disappointed that it is over but excited that you will get to watch the complete work (right now! For free) if you click the button below. Everything is a Remix (COMPLETE EDITION)

I love a good story about an unlikely creator of something that goes on to change the world. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster are two such fascinating characters, not only because they created Superman, but because that creation was so important and they were then treated so poorly by the company that bought their idea. This article, by Helene Stapinski and Bonnie Siegler is an excellent look at their story from a ground-level view. Whether you know Siegel and Shuster's story or are encountering it for the first time, this is a good read.

Look, up in the sky...

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Issue One Hundred and Fifty-One

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Hello! It’s been a little bit. I do have a reason, and I’ll let you decide if it’s a good one or not: I’ve been making things. And I’m not plugging those things here. However, I wanted to talk to you about the simple act of making things. Recently, my podcast cohost Heather and I had to figure out some merch to send to a group of our listeners. I came up with the idea of a baseball-style pennant and got to work trying to figure out how much it would cost to have a company print custom ones. The answer: not insanely expensive, but not incredibly cheap either. Had it just been me, I probably would’ve moved on to a different idea, but Heather had a plan: we bought some blank pennants, we found a person on Etsy who made vinyl transfers, and we fired up Photoshop. (Luckily, Heather already owned an iron.)

It took some practice, but we soon became experts at ironing on incredibly intricate designs onto incredibly thin pieces of fabric. I won’t lie: it was occasionally stressful that we were going to mess up our limited supply of pennant crafts, but by the end of it we were having a ton of fun making pennants for a podcast. So, in summary: we saved some money, we learned a new skill together, and we had a grand old time putting it all together. The Internet is super cool and gives you access to a number of different small businesses, large businesses, and individuals who will put together whatever crazy thing you want to put together. It takes more work to research and determine how to replicate that work on your own. And let’s be honest, the homemade canoe you make in the garage it’s going to be far crappier, and take far more time to make than the one you buy online. But, nothing is going to beat that feeling of having done it yourself. The one from Amazon might look nicer and might not immediately sink, but no matter what that’s never going to be the canoe that you built yourself.  Unless you’re a liar. Then you can say whatever you want.  

Hey. Did'ja see Everything, Everywhere All At Once? Don't worry. That's not the recommendation. It already won Best Picture. In fact, it swept the Oscars so you probably already saw it and loved it, or you already saw it and thought it was overhyped. Those are the two options. But, in the Best Supporting Actress category, Jaime Lee Curtis won, so that means Stephanie Hsu did not. She's going to have many more cracks at winning, so it's fine, but if you haven't already seen her audition for the role of Joy, you really should. (I do not recommend watching it if you took the rare third option of "I haven't gotten around to it, but I've heard good things. I'll check it out, I will. Maybe this weekend!")

Sucked Into a Bagel

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One Hundred and Fifty

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Last month on the other Internet thing I do, a music-centric podcast called If You're Listening, my co-host Heather proposed an episode of songs with a December theme. Because I am a delightful scamp, I selected the song "July, July" by The Decemberists. But I have been hoisted on my own petard because I've fallen into a Decemberists hole, listening (and re-listening) to a band I loved in high school and then, for whatever reason, fell away from. If you've never listened, here's how I would explain them: you know pop music? Okay, now pretend it was written by a group of hyper-literate 18th century whalers. They can write a solid hook and a catchy four minute jam, but they'll also allow themselves some flights of fancy and venture out into 8 minute epics, often adapting ancient myths or epic poems into catchy song suites. The always barbed Pitchfork kind of hits the nail on the head when Amanda Petrusich wrote in one album review: "The quirks that make them such a target for snickering, disaffected aesthetes (namely, stuffing their songs with arcane historical allusions and library language) are also what make them a boon for drama kids in three-button vests." Whether you've never heard of them or you've loved them for years, I've made you a playlist to help you test the waters.

More music! If Alan Rickman got you a Joni Mitchell CD for Christmas this year and you want to hear more of her back catalogue (or, for the rest of us, if you just want to listen to Joni Mitchell), she's done you a solid. Now you can find her entire catalogue on her YouTube page for free. Now there's no reason not to listen to a side of one of her records, or, both sides, now!

The Mitchell Versus the Machine

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Issue One Hundred and Forty-Nine

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The Thing: Marvel's She-Hulk & Werewolf By Night Submitted by: Jonolobster Why It's Great: "2022 was the year it finally happened. I got MCU fatigue. It's not the dire medical condition it sounds like, I simply got a bit bored with the output of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But then, just when I thought of tapping out, in true cinematic fashion, they pulled me back in. Not through movies, but through a sitcom and a "special presentation." I can't explain why, but Jennifer Walters and Ted Sallis, along with their green alter-egos, are two of my favorite characters from the comics. Finally seeing them in live-action form, and very faithfully at that, was enough to respark the joy in making mine Marvel. Bonus: the new "Gargoyles" comic from Dynamite.

The Thing: Paramore "This is Why" Submitted by: TartTooth Why It's Great: "I can't stop listening to it."  

The Thing: The 1975 Being Funny In A Foreign Language Submitted by: Heather Hynes Why It's Great: "This album came out in the fall and I still have not stopped listening to it obsessively. It’s the perfect combo of poppy, sad and produced by Jack Antonoff for my tastes. ."  

    The Thing: Tolkien Deep Dives Submitted by: Angela Workoff Why It's Great: "I've loved Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films dearly since they came out, but was a dilettante for the written work, only having spottily read LOTR and The Hobbit in grade school. Last year, I finally read LOTR straight through, The Silmarillion (with a certain editor of certain Sincere Positive publications), and the Hobbit, listening to a lecture series by Corey Olsen, a medievalist known to y'all as the Tolkien Professor, throughout these three reads. I can talk your ear off about Tolkien after all this (and stop me, because Rings of Power was also great, not to mention the usual PJ LOTR extended version rewatches), but better than that was the joy of doing an obsessive deep dive, the kind you might as a nerdy kid, to scratch at trying to know everything about a thing you love. Also Andor. Just, full stop, Andor. "

Welcome to 2023, everybody. Let's make it a good one.

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Issue One Hundred and Forty-Eight

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Two things happened this week that have led to this somewhat unexpected choice for a SPT: yesterday was Dick Van Dyke's 97th birthday. From his role as Rob Petrie on the (still charming and funny) Dick Van Dyke Show to this album of covers that is great for parties, Van Dyke is a treasure. The second thing was that my wife and I finally got COVID which meant we were stuck on the couch for much of the last few days, streaming an awful lot of television. For reasons I can't articulate, my illness-raddled body wanted to watch Mary Poppins. A delight. Just a movie of fun. Every single one of the Sherman Brothers' songs are fantastic (except for the one about banking that you probably forgot existed. It's funny, but not a toe-tapper.) Julie Andrews is fantastic, a beautiful singer, and very, very dry. Dick Van Dyke's accent is derided, but it's perfectly cartoony and his physical performance is unparalleled. Glynis Johns and David Tomlinson as Mr. and Mrs. Banks are ever so British. There are some special effects in here where you'll say, "Oh, that looks good for 1964!" and some where you'll say, "I have no idea how they did that one." I know you've probably seen this movie. But whether it's the Mary/Bert subtext or the detail of the fox being hunted being Irish, I bet there are some details you've missed. Poppins is not a Christmas movie (if anything its about the end of winter into spring) but whether it's the message of family or love over money, there's something that makes this movie feel right for this time of year. Plus, the bridge of "Feed the Birds" has this part that will never fail to give me chills.  -- I would like to know what your favorite piece of media to come out of 2022 was. Movie? TV Show? Book? Song? Food? Whatever! I plan on sharing a list of our readers' favorite things at the start of 2023, and this is your chance to be a part of it! Just fill out this super short form and you're a part of the official SPT 2022 Going Away Celebration! --

We love a word game here at SPT HQ. Tumbleword is a new fun one that gives a few different tools to try and create the largest number of words using the fewest number of moves. It's deceptively simple, but surprisingly tough. Sorry/enjoy!

Tumbleword!

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Issue One Hundred and Forty Seven

What's a song that you're always glad to hear but you've never owned or dug deeper into? For me, that's probably Stevie Wonder's "Superstition." It's perfect: that opening riff on the synth-y thing, the steady drum beat with perfect snare fills, and the horns. The HORNS. The brass section three separate iconic riffs in this song. (Don't believe me? To prove my point, I recorded this very low-effort clip of me impersonating three different horn riffs.) Okay. So then why haven't I listened to more Stevie Wonder? Instead I've just relied on the radio to occasionally play "I Just Called To Say I Love You" at me. Even better question, I subscribe to a streaming service: why haven't I ever played Talking Book, the 1972 album that spawned this perfect song? I guess I've just never had Spotify open and thought about "Superstition" at the same time. And the loss is all mine. The New York Times just published a look back at this album on its 50 year anniversary which details why it's not just a great album, but also why it is such an important one. You'll learn about how this album was on the forefront of synthesizers, utilizing an insane machine named TONTO (retronymed to mean The Original New Timbral Orchestra) and you'll also learn that synth-y thing I was talking about earlier is called a clavinet (It's from the 1940s and it's both electronic and uses strings. It's crazy.). So here's where I'm at: if you know "Talking Book," you've gotta read this article. If you don't know this album, you're wasting precious moments of your life. It's really, really good and it sounds like it was recorded yesterday. Get on this. Talking Book

The blankets in our house have slowly been thrown away for various reasons over the years until only one has remained. Then that one was adopted by the cat and you can't use a cat blanket. So after years of not having a blanket to throw over my legs on the couch, I once again have a warm flannel blanket from The Vermont Country Store and I forgot how good life could be. Just call me Linus Van Pelt because I'm a blanket guy now and I'm not going back. The link below will take you to my particular blanket, but let's not overthink this: The thesis is a simple one. Get a blanket this winter.

Happiness is a Warm Blanket

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Issue One Hundred Forty-Six

Hey! More over here! Hey!

Longtime readers of Sincere, Positive Things know that in addition to ingesting all things modern media, we are often looking backwards as well. Well allow me at this late date to be the first person of 2022 to inform you that the best thing to listen to while doing the dishes are celebrity interviews from Dick Cavett's vast archives. Should you never have encountered the interview stylings of Mr. Cavett, the experience could be rather jarring if you're only familiar with the modern talk show. The host isn't constantly interjecting with a segue to a pre-planned anecdote, there aren't games, and the audience isn't reacting constantly. Instead, there is space to discuss, argue, and debate. There are laughs, but they aren't a constant requirement. Instead, there's room for thought and depth. That's not to say "aw shucks, they just don't make them like this anymore." I mean, they don't, but this is, at times, slow television. This would absolutely not get made today, but it's not a show for today. Rather than extol the virtues of a show you'll never click on and explore, I'm going to link to a number of worthwhile interviews to tickle your fancy. There's something here for everyone (over 30).

Mel Brooks

Janis Joplin

Gore Vidal / Norman Mailer (FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT)

Ray Charles

Groucho (and another for good measure)

Bette Davis

And so many more at his official YouTube channel!

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and Werner Herzog a German film director. They both have very distinctive voices and have recorded many hours of themselves speaking. Obviously, the next step was to feed many examples of their voice and their words into an AI to have them speak to one another on philosophy forever.  

The Infinite Conversation

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Issue One Hundred and Forty-Five

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Across the previous 144 issues of Sincere, Positive Things, I have never recommended anything to you that I had not personally read, watched, heard, eaten or played. These are things that I am recommending full-throatedly, from personal experience. I will not lie to you, today's Big Thing is sitting on a table in my house, ready to be read by my wife who purchased it and then again by me, but I am so confident that it's going to be good that I'm just going to tell you about it now. Katie Beaton is the cartoonist behind Hark! A Vagrant, a comic strip that I love so much that I recommended it here, years after she was done with it. It mixes history, fiction, and humor to create something truly original. She has been talking about her new book Ducks for quite some time. In this graphic novel, Beaton blends stories from growing up on Cape Breton Island, which is part of Nova Scotia (which is part of Canada, but I know you know that). As I said, I haven't read this book, but I did read the original, sketchier webcomic that it grew out of (still available here), and it is wonderful. It still has her sense of humor and storytelling, but with a more serious edge. If the book is half as good, I might just have to recommend it again in two weeks. Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands

Perrenial Little Thing honeree, ThePudding is back with a cool little game called "Words with Strangers." Each day you are pitted against one random person who also signed up for the game. You are both given a clue like "5 letter noun" or "word that starts with z" and you have to list as many as you can, with extra points for more obscure words. That's really it! Three rounds, one match-up per day. It's a good time!

Words Words Words

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Issue One Hundred Forty-Four

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I have never in my many years of going to the movie theater said about a documentary, "okay, but you have to see it in the theaters." I'm also not sure if I've ever said about any movie, let alone a doc, "okay, but you have to see it in IMAX." Today I blaze a trail through both of these firsts. The new David Bowie documentary Moonage Daydream is not like other documentaries. It doesn't follow any traditional "birth-to-death" narrative, instead focusing primarily on Bowie's journey as an artist. We begin with him at the peak of his powers, we see him stumble, and then we see him find himself again. There's a dash of family history, a dollop of his sex life, but otherwise: it's about the art. Unlike most music documentaries, this is a movie about music. Full songs are performed. Live takes you probably haven't seen, familiar hits, and even songs from after Bowie's peak that have been less in the zeitgeist are given center stage. Sometimes remixed slightly to fit the events on screen, sometimes not. And (again, I don't work for IMAX) they sound incredible through the fancy movie theater speakers. When the drums on "Sound and Vision" kick in, you feel them kick. And then the visuals. Bowie, according to the film's director/writer/editor, Brett Morgen, was a hoarder. He saved every scrap of film he appeared on, every journal, everything. Morgen had a mountain of material to work with, and when you learn that he began working on this film in 2017, a year after Bowie's death, it's clear why: there are no newly recorded talking heads explaining Bowie. It's just the man himself talking to you through archive footage. All of this is woven together through an intense montage of concert footage, filmed outtakes, movie appearances, but also art that Bowie didn't create but help to illustrate. It is at times trippy and at other times intimate, but it is at all times relentless. After a brief intro, this movie grabs you and it refuses to let you go. (It is also 2 hours and 15 minutes, so try to time that bathroom break for right before the film). I enjoy Bowie's work, but I'm no expert superfan. That said, Moonage Daydream is a piece of art befitting this man who put everything he had into has work. If you can, see it on the screen and enjoy. I'm an alligator!

The premise of this game is simple: you start on a Wikipedia page and you have to get to a different Wikipedia page using only links to other articles. How many clicks will it take you? How long will it take you? This, of course, is a hard game. But it's fun! Challenge your friends to a Wikipedia Speed Run!

Wikipedia Speed Runs

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Issue One Hundred and Forty-Three

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Hello! I went on summer vacation from newsletter writing without telling anybody. It's like I've always said: I am the Don Draper of positive newsletter writing. Well, I'm back, I'm recharged, and I said hello to the widow of the man whose identity I stole in the Korean War. One of my favorite kinds of Internet videos has the following qualities: someone has a crazy idea (like Nick Lutsko), builds an elaborate contraption (like Mark Rober), and devotes an awful lot of time to making it perfect (like Samara Ginsberg). I am happy to inform you that I have one of those for you today. Swedish inventor, robotics enthusiast and video maker Simone Giertz had a dream: to turn bubble wrap into a musical instrument by somehow harnessing the small bubble explosion through a panflute. What emerged was a massive, crank-powered musical instrument that has never existed before and a glamorous music video to display it. Whether you want to see the whole process that went into this creative act, or just get to the music video (which starts at 11:26), giddy-up to enjoy a whole new kind of sound. Pop Pop Poppop Pop Pop Pop

If you've been on the Internet even a little bit in the last few months, you've probably encountered images created by Dall-E. If not, it's basically an Artificial Intelligence program that takes a prompt submitted by a user and turns it into images. So, "an armchair in the shape of an avocado" would get you:

Blogger Max Woolf has used Dall-E to create professional looking photographs of insane foods and they are a pleasure (and a little scary) to look at. Enjoy the brave new world of fake food!

Faux gras

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Issue One Hundred and Forty-One

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The latest Jurassic Park movie does an awful lot of looking backwards, bringing in Sam Neil, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum from the original film. That first movie came out exactly the right time for me and I absolutely loved it. I bought the action figures, I started digging up the backyard looking for dinosaur bones, and I'm pretty sure I started asking for an Alan Grant fedora. So obviously as a young lad I checked out the original Michael Crichton novel from the local library. I cracked it open, ready to return to Jurassic Park. The first chapter did not start the way the movie started. That's fine. That happens. Chapter 2 was also very different. Chapter 3. I flipped ahead in the book to make sure that there was an actual dinosaur park in this book and read a few pages from the middle, got frustrated and returned it to the library. Now, as an adult, I've returned to finish what I started and I can say: this book is a lot of fun. My younger self's attention span was... not the best, so it was his loss as I was really surprised at how close the movie was to the source material. However, the changes that do pop up all make the world and science more grounded. There's a lot more about the effect that cloning dinosaurs has on the ecology around the park. And the character of John Hammond, the founder of Jurassic Park, played by Richard Attenborough in the film, has a much darker tinge in the novel that doesn't negate, rather, it enhances, the grandfatherly characteristics he also demonstrates. In short, this very successful 30 year old book? It's good! Great summer read. Welcome...

I don't know the full story as to why many of our nation's teenagers went to see The Minions: Rise of Gru in full suits and I don't care why. I think it is very funny and I will continue to enjoy that it happened.

It's... bananas.

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Issue One Hundred and Forty

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My knowledge of Indian cinema is the opposite of extensive. In fact, it is limited to a movie my roommate in college had me watch that was named The Matrix and had absolutely nothing to do with the other more popular film of the same name. But then your friend and mine, Adam Maid, introduced me to director S. S. Rajamouli's new movie RRR. In a perfect world, you could go in as blind to this movie as I did, so I'm going to give you basically the same pitch Adam gave me and then we'll see where we're at. RRR tells the story of two real-life Indian revolutionaries, Alluri Sitarama Raju and Komaram Bheem from the early 1900s. In this alternate history, the two meet, become friends and fight everybody: the British, each other, their own people, a tiger... everybody. Imagine elaborate, John Wick style choreographed fighting with the most elaborate set pieces and a pair of just-as-intricate dance numbers. Still not sold? What if I told you it was on Netflix as we speak? You're seconds away from watching this epic piece of cinema. But if you still need a little more, the trailer is linked below. Watch. Enjoy. See a man throw a motorcycle and a dance involving synchronized suspender pulling. I can assure you, Top Gun: Maverick has neither of those things. RRR!!!

I will always have a soft spot in my heart for good old Weezer. They made a couple of classic albums right when I most needed them and I am thankful for those. And remaining relevant and releasing new music some 25 years later is not an easy task. So, I enjoy an innovative way of delivering a new song to the world, in this case, the only way one can hear Weezer's brand new single is by going to the song's website on your phone, and turning your body into a record player by holding your thumb on the screen and rotating your body. The song is fun, and the website is pretty cool. (Sorry about this) Why not give it a spin? (I'm really sorry)

Round and Round and Round

[sincerepositivethings]

One Hundred and Thirty-Nine

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Live music seems to have returned and stabilized itself and my summer is now packed with concerts (I literally knocked on wood after typing those words). Here's a trait that is very specific to myself: after I watch a movie, I immediately go over to IMDB and read the trivia facts about that film, and immediately after I attend a concert I go to setlist.fm to log the show. Setlist.fm is an incredible resource for anybody who vaguely enjoys concerts. It is a crowd-sourced repository of concert setlists. One can revisit old shows that they've attended and see how many encores the band played, or you can go check out shows that happened decades before you were born. Among the cooler things you can do is also aggregate the data of the concerts you've seen in interesting ways. Of course you can see which band you've seen perform the most times? But you can also see which song you've seen live the most! It's probably your favorite band's biggest radio hit but maybe it's a cover of "Freebird" performed by multiple bands you've seen! Who knows? Our personal connections with music are one of the things that make us different from every other human, but the shared experience of listening to it also connects us immediately. Celebrate those personal, communal moments with a walk through setlist.fm! Setlist.fm!

Two of my favorite musicals were honored at the Tonys this weekend. Admittedly, they couldn't be more different. One is about a thirty-something person living in New York City struggling with the concept of marriage as they steps in and out of observing the relationships of their married friends and the other is about a con-man who sells musical instruments to a small town in Indiana. The Music Man is a silly, silly show, but it is also a lot of fun. I saw the new production with Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster with my friend Jesse and was so taken with the world of the show that I then read Meredith Willson's memoir about the original production of the show and the long process it took to take it to the stage. He (and his wife Rini) performed the show over and over again on a piano for potential backers. Eventually this two-man version of the show became so refined and so legendary that they put it down on wax. Today, for your listening pleasure, prepare to be charmed by the 1959 long-playing record: And Then I Wrote the Music Man...

But he doesn't know the territory!