Weekly Wreck of the Web #7

[Yes, I am behind on these. Oops.]

Ten links of interest:

1. Twitter Account Documents Jewish Refugees Turned Away by America in 1939

2. Michael Schur Got Himself a Tumblr

3. The Art of "No"

4. Thanks to Trump,  the Doomsday Clock Advances Toward Midnight

5. Rejected Porcelain Restored More Beautifully with Gold Lining

6. Just How Big Was the 2017 Women's March?

7. "Immigrants Are America": Protesters Mass at Airports - in Pictures

8. Immigration Ban Protest in Harrisonburg

9. My Time at Standing Rock Taught Me What We Need to Do to Resist

10. Samantha Bee to Roast Donald Trump at Alternative What House Correspondents Dinner

Quote for These Times #4

[not to be confused with its sister ongoing feature, Quote from a Fictional Character]

"Do you know why one can't take the law into one's own hands? ... Because the law is too big to fit in one pair of hands. So if you feel you've got a comfortable grip on whatever you're holding, you can be pretty sure it's not the law."

--- Mildred Benjamin,

Territory, Emma Bull, 2007

(Rec. #10)

Weekly Wreck of the Web #6

Ten links of interest:

1. Is Covergirl's New Coverboy a Feminist Coup or a Capitalist One?

2. Of Course Fiona Apple Made a Trump-Shaming Rallying Cry for the Women's March

3. Signs from Women's Marches Around the World

4. Hero Librarians Create Fake Reader to Save Books, Outsmart Algorithms

5. Aimee Mann Is Back and Bummed Out as Ever on Her New Album Mental Illness

6. Teaching While Black

7. The Otherworldly Genius of The Good Place [SPOILERS]

8. Broadway Preview: Spring 2017

9. Kitten and Cameraman

10. Cute Dog Things from Twitter

Quote for These Times #3

[not to be confused with its sister ongoing feature, Quote from a Fictional Character]

"Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone."

--- Czeslaw Milosz

Rec. #401: The Good Place, season 1

What: The show begins when Kristen Bell's character learns from Ted Danson's character that she's dead and in "The Good Place."

First problem: She realizes she doesn't belong there.

Second problem: Everything that follows.

Comparable to: Created by Michael Schur, so it's tonally similar to his other shows, Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

Privilege check: The show passes the Bechdel test and (misleading poster notwithstanding) features characters of a variety of ethnicities. It's not too heteronormative, although this particular universe is comprised of paired soulmates, which seems to preclude both polyamory and asexuality. Overall, especially for a rich white dude, Michael Schur (and his team) do pretty well.

How to get it: Stream the whole thing on Hulu, including episodes with extended cuts!

Perfect for rewatching the whole first season, which is probably what you'll want to do after the truly excellent season finale.

Quote for These Times #2

[not to be confused with its sister ongoing feature, Quote from a Fictional Character]

"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read."

--- James Baldwin

Weekly Wreck of the Web #5

Ten links of interest:

1. Hong Kong's "Villain Hitters" Use Sorcery to Vent Political Anger

2. A Reminder that Brooklyn Nine-Nine Is a Great Show

3. How Some Cool Silent Film Effects Were Done

4. A Moment of Silence for Black and Brown Talent That Grew on Vine

5. Spectacular Rooftops Around the World

6. There Will Soon Be 100 Days of Anti-Trump Songs

7. The Internet Is Becoming Unreadable Because of Lighter, Thinner Fonts

8. Lin-Manuel Miranda Wrote a West Wing Song

9. Newspaper Lists Trump Inauguration as a Twilight Zone Reboot

10. Hidden Figures as a GIF

Quote for These Times #1

[not to be confused with its sister ongoing feature, Quote from a Fictional Character]

"How happy we were, and how little we realized how nice it was to be lazy and happy, without fear and anxiety and horror knocking at the back of one's brain like a little gnome with a hammer."

--- Henrietta,

Henrietta's War, Joyce Dennys, 1939

(Rec. #344)

Weekly Wreck of the Web #4

Ten links of interest:

1. Yoko Ono's Cleaning Pieces

2. I Am Not Your Negro Trailer: James Baldwin Talks Race Relations in America

3. Travel Man Christmas special ["48 Hours in Florence"]

4. Hong Kong in the 1950s Captured by a Teenager

5. The Best Photographs of Barack Obama's Presidency

6. This Artist Is the Only Person Banned from Using the World's Pinkest Pink

7. This Year's Golden Globes, Grammys, and Academy Awards Will All Be Hosted by White, Straight Men Named James

Three-parter from The Guardian:

8. Climate Deniers, Conspiracists and One-Percenters: Trump's Cabinet of Characters

9. Trump's Cabinet Picks: Here Are All of the Appointments So Far

10. What You Need to Know: Confirming Trump's Cabinet

List #63: People in the Media I Actually Liked in 2016, Part Two

Corporate media let us down in many, many, many ways last year.

But! Here are some media people I actually liked in 2016:

[See Part One here for #1-5.]

6. Nadiya Hussain

Who: Baker, columnist, author, television presenter

Two of the whats: The Great British Bake Off (tv), Nadiya's Kitchen (book)

Where:
For The Great British Bake Off (series 6) - YouTube, intermittently
For Nadiya's Kitchen - library or bookseller of your choosing

7. Daniel Levy

Who: Actor, writer, producer

One of the whats: Schitt's Creek (tv show)

Where: Amazon Prime

8. Kate McKinnon

Who: Comedian, actor

Two of the whats: Singing "Hallelujah" on SNL as Hillary Clinton (tv), Ghostbusters (movie)

Where:
For "Hallelujah" performance - Hulu
For Ghostbusters - rent, buy, or borrow from the source of your choosing

9. Michael Schur

Who: Producer, writer

Three of the whats: Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Good Place, an A+++ Twitter

Where:
For Brooklyn Nine-Nine - Hulu
For The Good Place - Hulu
For his Twitter - @KenTremendous

10. Ngozi Ukazu

Who: Web comic author/artist

One of the whats: Check, Please!
[you might think you don't care about fictional college hockey players ... you are so, so, so wrong]

Where: Start the comic here

List #63: People in the Media I Actually Liked in 2016, Part One

Corporate media let us down in many, many, many ways last year.

But! Here are some media people I actually liked in 2016:

1. Richard Ayoade

Who: Writer, director, actor (of the British variety)

One of the whats: Travel Man (tv show) (Rec. #396)

Where:
Channel 4 if you're in the U.K.; otherwise, YouTube

2. Samantha Bee

Who: Late-night host, author

Two of the whats: Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (tv show), I Know I Am, But What Are You? (book) (Rec. #285)

Where:
For Full Frontal - TBS or, you guessed it, YouTube
For I Know I Am, But What Are You? - buyable, borrowable, Kindle-able

3. Carrie Brownstein

Who: Musician, writer, actor

Two of the whats: Portlandia (tv show), The Realest Real (short film)

Where:
For Portlandia - IFC, or stream on Netflix
For The Realest Real - YouTube

4. Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins

Who: Comedians, hosts

One of the whats: The Great British Bake Off (tv show)

Where: Was on the BBC in the U.K.; PBS in the U.S.; sporadically findable on YouTube

5. Adam Goldman

Who: Writer, director, actor

Two of the whats: The Outs (web series) (Rec. #280), Whatever This Is (web series)

Where:
For The Outs - season one at TheOuts.com, season two on Vimeo
For Whatever This Is - at WhateverThisIs.com
(also, his twitter is really great)


[Read Part Two here for #6-10.]

Weekly Wreck of the Web #3

Ten links of interest:

1. The Guardian's Travel Photographers of the Year

2. On Twitter: Sondheim Lyrics

3. Americans — especially but not exclusively Trump voters — believe crazy, wrong things

4. Wes Anderson Officially Announces New Film Isle of Dogs

5. Considering the Ankara Assassination Photos As History Painting

6. Lagoon Table Created from Merged Travertine and Marble

7. Trump Supporters Especially Oppose Public Policies When Cued to Think about Black People

8. Watch Footage from New Broadway-Bound Musical Amélie

9. Trump victory spurs women to run for office across US

10. The Best Dataviz of the Year: The IIB Awards Winners 2016

List #62: Five Songs That Capture My Year

1. "Play for Today" - Belle and Sebastian

Key lyrics:
Life is a secret,
Death is a myth,
Love is a fraud,
It's misunderstood.
Work is a sentence,
Family's a drag,
This house is a trap.

Moment in time captured: March 2016

2. "I'm Ready to Move On / Wild Heart Reprise" - Bleachers, Susanna Hoffs

Key lyrics:
So put your shotgun back in the glove
C'mon and wait another year for the dream far away
To come home, to be brave
Snow is falling all the time
Snow is smiling all the time
I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready to move on

Moment in time captured: August 2016

3. "Head Underwater" - Jenny Lewis

Key lyrics:
I put my head underwater, baby,
I threw my clothes away in the trash
I stood barefoot on the blazing concrete,
I was waiting for the gut of thunder to crash

Moment in time captured: October 2016

4. "Impossible Year" - Panic! At the Disco

Key lyrics:
There's no good times
This impossible year
Just a beachfront of bad blood
And a coast that's unclear

Moment in time captured: December 2016

5. "God Draws Straight" - original cast recording of Here Lies Love*

Key lyrics:
As I turned on my walkman,
And all I could hear - every station was Marcos, he’s on every TV
In an appliance store window he fills every screen,
Then the TVs went blank and his face disappeared.

Moment in time captured: Maybe the future?




* For those not familiar with the show, this is the final song --- its lyrics are taken from the oral histories of participants in the People Power Revolution that forced an end to the Marcos regime in the Philippines

Weekly Wreck of the Web #2

Ten links of interest:

1. Kate Beaton is home for the holidays, which means she's making comics about her family 

2. 99 Ways to Fight Trump

3. Blood and beehives: Phyllis Posnick's styling for Vogue

4. A new interactive timeline visualization of U.S. television news coverage

5. This panda battling a snowman is all of us grappling with the year 2016

6. Snow falls in the Sahara Desert for the First Time in 37 Years

7. London gentrification: cliches and conundrums (and hipsters)

8. To those fleeing President Trump: Welcome to Canada! (published a year ago) 

9. Starting in 2019, if Your Film Isn't Diverse, It Won't Be Eligible for a BAFTA Award

10. Susan Blackwell Gives Back with Hamilton Star Javier Munoz for the Holidays

Weekly Wreck of the Web #1

Ten links of interest:

1. “How to Protect Yourself from Government Surveillance and Criminal Hackers” 

2. Looking at popular Christmas-set films through a 2016 lens

3. Sunday in the Park with George, Annaleigh Ashford, Broadway. YES

4. Kate Beaton is working on a graphic novel!

5. “Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda”

6. Fascinating photos of posh parties in 1980s U.K.

7. Baby wombat and his favorite human

8. BBC and ITV are launching a service that streams British shows on demand 

9. Said the Gramophone released their annual “Best Songs” list (with downloads)

10. Sarah Kendzior on the false binary of “fake news”

Quote from a Fictional Character #93

"That's what's so tough --- just having to put up with it. It's a bloody awful shame, I know. But you'll feel a bit better by and by, I promise. Yes, you really will. There'll be tea, and sand castles, and your birthday, and Christmas. It's just as bad as can be now, I know; that's why things have got to get a bit better."

--- Lucy Culpepper,

The Embroidered Sunset, Joan Aiken, 1970

Friday Flashback: Rec. #237: Dorothy Parker --- What Fresh Hell Is This?

I decided to start doing Friday Flashbacks in case you missed some early posts the first time around. You're busy; I understand.

Also, What Fresh Hell Is This? just seems like such an appropriate title right now.

What: Some people go through a Sylvia Plath phase or a Jack Kerouac phase. I went through a Dorothy Parker phase and, frankly, it's ongoing. 

Parker was the brittle soul of the Algonquin Round Table in 1920s New York, and this biography by Marion Meade fully explores every damaged relationship, every jaded poem, every stripped-bare story, every failed suicide attempt, and every biting quip.

Some of Parker's famous biting quips:

"Wasn't the Yale prom wonderful? If all the girls in attendance were laid end to end, I wouldn't be at all surprised."

"This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."

"That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say No in any of them."

"Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common."

"I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true."


You might not like it if: You get weighed down by the tales of depression and alcoholism, and the bright flashes of dry genius aren't enough to lift you back up.

How to get it: Buyable, borrowable, Kindle-able.

Connections to previous Wreckage: I recommended The Portable Dorothy Parker for Personal Wreck #3. Also, Fran Lebowitz, with such works as Metropolitan Life (Rec. #188), is often compared to Dorothy Parker.

[Originally posted 5/21/12.]

Friday Flashback: Rec. #231: Gentlemen and Players

I decided to start doing Friday Flashbacks in case you missed some early posts the first time around. You're busy; I understand.

What: Who doesn't love a good cat-and-mouse suspense novel set at a British boys grammar school? With an allegorical chess framework, no less.

Comparable to: Impossible not to imagine the cast of The History Boys running around St. Oswald's, with Richard Griffiths fitting into the role of Roy Straitley, the eccentric and hunted Classics teacher, quite nicely. Or is that just me?

Opening lines: "If there's one thing I've learned in the past fifteen years, it's this: that murder is really no big deal. It's just a boundary, meaningless and arbitrary as all others --- a line drawn in the dirt."

You might not like it if: Author Joanne Harris clearly had so much fun coming up with the character names. (Using the Dickens method of nomenclature, we've got Bob Strange, Dianne Dare, John Snyde, Chris Keane, Mr. Meek, Dr. Tidy, etc.) 

But the overt chess references (I'm looking at you, Pat Bishop and Colin Knight) might make you feel a bit bludgeoned.

How to get it: In print, Kindle-able, and surely available from your library system.

Connection to previous Wreckage: I first mentioned Gentlemen and Players during Personal Wreck Week (List #1). The History Boys was Rec. #115.

[Originally posted 4/29/12.]

Friday Flashback: Rec. #241: The Name of the Rose

I decided to start doing Friday Flashbacks in case you missed some early posts the first time around. You're busy; I understand.

What: Umberto Eco's first novel is a medieval whodunnit set in an Italian monastery. With this bestselling doorstopper, you get a monk-murderer, accusations of heresy, casks of pig blood, secret symbols, and some unexpectedly baroque descriptions of illuminated manuscripts.

Comparable to: Like If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, this novel is set up as a postmodernist puzzler. Also like If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, the original language of the book is Italian.

Closing lines [no spoilers; don't worry]: "It is cold in the scriptorium, my thumb aches. I leave this manuscript, I do not know for whom; I no longer know what it is about: stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus."

You might not like it if: Well, it's a 600+-page novel in which a lost work by Aristotle plays a pivotal role and Latin is strewn about with reckless abandon. 

It's rather difficult to pinpoint why exactly this was such a popular success that it inspired a movie adaptation, a board game, a radio drama, and a video game ... but it was and it did.

How to get it: The Name of the Rose is widely available. Easy to buy, borrow, or download to your Kindle.

Connections to other Wreckage: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler was Rec. #261.

[Originally posted 6/3/12.]

Friday Flashback: Rec. #361 and Rec. #362: The High Concept of Concept Albums --- Two Case Studies

I decided to start doing Friday Flashbacks in case you missed some early posts the first time around. You're busy; I understand.

Case #1 (Rec. #361): God Help the Girl

The album after the concept album:
God Help the Girl, 2014 film soundtrack

Lifecycle:
Single --- Come Monday Night --- May 2009
Main concept album --- God Help the Girl --- June 2009
Single --- Funny Little Frog --- July 2009
EP --- Stills --- November 2009
Single --- Baby, You're Blind --- May 2010
Film (God Help the Girl) January 2014

What the concept album did: Under the leadership of Stuart Murdoch, indie pop group Belle and Sebastian acts as the backing band to fictional character Eve.

What the concept album couldn't do: Adding a mannered two-step dance by Emily Browning and Olly Alexander takes the last minute of the song "The Psychiatrist Is In" to the next level of sublime. The film also features assorted snarky visual gags and some inspired hair/wardrobe combos.

Case #2 (Rec. #362): Here Lies Love

See also Rec. #187

The album after the concept album:
Here Lies Love, 2014 cast recording

Lifecycle:
Song cycle performances --- Adelaide Festival of Arts --- March 2006
Live performance --- Carnegie Hall --- February 2007
Concept album --- April 2010
Off-Broadway musical --- 2013-2014

What the concept album did: David Byrne and Fatboy Slim tell the story of Imelda Marcos in 22 songs, featuring a wide range of vocalists, including Santigold, Martha Wainwright, Florence Welch, Cyndi Lauper, Nellie McKay, Sia, and Steve Earle.

(I know that's a lot to take in. See Rec. #187 for further information.)

What the concept album couldn't do: The off-Broadway disco musical is an immersive theatrical experience. There are rolling platform stages and a DJ and screens everywhere and audience dance breaks and a news camera on walkabout and some very helpful people in bright pink jumpsuits. It's nonstop, but not overwhelming.

[Originally posted 11/12/14.]