Month: May 2020

Lockdown is over but I thought I’d do one last Friday Linky. It’s been fun bringing it back! I hope your Fridays have been suitably enriched, including this one, thanks to this collection of treats:

1. Naomi Klein on big tech companies using shock doctrine tactics, using the pandemic as an excuse to push through huge changes https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/may/13/naomi-klein-how-big-tech-plans-to-profit-from-coronavirus-pandemic

2. My wonderful friend Helen won an award for her new poetry collection at the NZ Book Awards, and I am so stoked. Here is an absolutely breathtaking poem from that collection, Notes on the Unsilent Woman http://turbinekapohau.org.nz/archive-issues/2018-contents/poetry-helen-rickerby/

3. This person has collected in one place every Peel Session recording he could find. They are listed in alphabetical order by band name. So many! Just phenomenal: https://davestrickson.blogspot.com/2020/05/john-peel-sessions.html

4. Duncan Greive at the Spinoff does a very insightful deep dive into one of the biggest stories of the pandemic in NZ: the comms https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/11-05-2020/a-masterclass-in-mass-communication-and-control/

5. Crowded House lockdown performance: Something So Strong https://youtu.be/mwljB3S3LvI

6. These TV industry people paid a farm to zoom with a sheep, then pitched it a TV show https://twitter.com/jennyjaffe/status/1258805382446645248?s=21

7. Paul Scheer talks with Gillian Jacobs about Power Pack and Ms. Marvel and this is a Venn diagram I am into https://youtu.be/hK-4llPrBnY

8. Variety finally gets the true story of the much-rumoured Famous Person D&D Group. (It is exactly like every other D&D group, except more miniature figurines.) https://variety.com/2020/biz/features/joe-manganiello-dungeons-and-dragons-campaign-1234585006/

9. Speaking of: how about Sue Perkins from Bake-Off playing D&D with Ed Gamble, Sara Pascoe and Nish Kumar? https://www.twitch.tv/videos/614992541

10. Goofy and pleasant interview with the men who have portrayed 80s horror icon Jason Voorhees. https://www.theringer.com/movies/2020/5/7/21249688/friday-the-13th-jason-voorhees-actors-stunt-stories

11. Steve Albinis pitch letter about how he wanted to work with Nirvana is a great read. https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/steve-albini-letter-to-nirvana/amp/

12. Legendary Canadian sketch show Kids in the Hall is free to watch in NZ via TVNZ online! Never seen it available in NZ before. Can’t work out how to link to it directly, so here’s the tweet from Sam Brooks that tipped me off: https://twitter.com/sbrookbrooks/status/1260796234459037701?s=21

13. The (free!) Essential Services zine contains new writing from some great people cut loose during the great media purges of the pandemic era. https://essentialserviceszine.com

14. The NYT does an oral history of Mad Max Fury Road to mark its 5th anniversary: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/12/movies/mad-max-fury-road-oral-history.html

15. The Atlantic continues its excellent pandemic coverage with a discussion of how calls to reopen the US embody a slaveholder mentality, cutting to the heart of what freedom means: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/what-freedom-means-trump/611083/

16. Little Yellow Digger meets Bigger Digger https://twitter.com/dan_mckenney/status/1260675430614532103?s=21

17. And finally… Robert Pattinson’s GQ profile went viral for a Kaufmanesque pasta gag. It’s all very weird. Pattinson is a delight, never stop fucking with us Robert. https://www.gq.com/story/robert-pattinson-on-batman-tenet-isolation-june-cover

That’s it for the linky for now and maybe forever! Stay safe everyone!

With lockdown up for review on Monday, might this be the final Friday linky? Possibly! But you know what happened after the last Final Friday: Jason went to space. So we can’t be confident about anything.

1. The Atlantic covers the Insane Clown Posse’s pandemic leadership (v. good) and looks across the whole juggalo phenom, including the way dozens of journos embedded themselves at The Gathering… https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/04/insane-clown-posse-models-pandemic-era-leadership/610651/

2. This discussion of how coronavirus is affecting our imaginative limits, by SF legend Kim Stanley Robinson, is just as good as everyone else who shared it said it was. Essential reading. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-coronavirus-and-our-future

3. Highly-regarded essay series on the myth of the “warrior race”, with a specific focus on Spartans in the real world and Dune’s Fremen in fiction. I’m linking a blog post that summarises, because it is looong. https://zompist.wordpress.com/2020/05/03/the-fremen-mirage/

4. Lovely story about a kid who loved writing letters, and the US postal service. https://twitter.com/hughweber/status/1256731692611571712?s=21

5. The Guggenheim has hundreds of exhibition catalogs available for free download, going back to 1936! https://www.timeout.com/newyork/news/you-can-now-download-over-200-art-books-from-the-guggenheim-for-free-042920

6. Globetrotting investigator of oddities David Farrier (Tickled, Dark Tourist) has an email newsletter! It is great! Sign up! https://webworm.substack.com/about

7. Another collection of people recreating famous artwork in their homes. These are genius and i hope humanity never stops doing this now we have started. https://www.boredpanda.com/art-painting-recreations-quearteencasa/

8. My amazing friend Helen reads a very relevant poem from her Ockham-nominated collection: https://youtu.be/Sii5dokSagE

9. Some lovely behind-the-scenes from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, with Matthew Broderick interviewing his cast mates. https://youtu.be/tNzRSVmz0To

10. Tim & Guy lived in a NYC sewer for a week and watched the Michael Bay Ninja Turtles film three times a day and somehow this didn’t become a YouTube Red TV show but you can watch it: https://youtu.be/ebs0C1Wk0gE

11. In case you missed it – Daniel Radcliffe leads off a series of celebs reading Harry Potter book 1 to you, chapter by chapter: https://nerdist.com/article/daniel-radcliffe-reads-harry-potter-recording/

12. The books of Anno Mitsumasa were mainstays of my childhood. Japan House in London has just launched a virtual exhibition of his works. https://www.japanhouselondon.uk/

13. And finally, via Katherine H (who also provided the Free Masks image from a few weeks back!) – the Twin Peaks theme delivered by cats https://youtu.be/8MnOtMP41k4

The first Friday linky of level 3! Let’s go…

1. This NYT essay by a restaurant owner who closes her restaurant in lockdown is gripping. Beautifully written and intensely personal. Worth creating a free NYT account to read. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/magazine/closing-prune-restaurant-covid.html

2. Mad Chapman’s listicles of NZ food items are hilarious and controversial classics of the genre, and this one is no different. https://thespinoff.co.nz/food/26-04-2020/all-142-biscuit-flavours-in-new-zealand-ranked-from-worst-to-best/

3. Brett Goldstein (the lovely Films to be Buried With podcast) is making a lockdown webseries like Love Island, only the love interest is a pot plant? Brilliant. https://youtu.be/nP793bQSHPY

4. More lockdown fun with this beautifully-produced interactive murder mystery on twitter: https://twitter.com/misterabk/status/1253625098256465920?s=21

5. Film costume nerds judge historical films by the standard of one that really got it right. They speak, of course, of Bill & Ted https://slate.com/culture/2020/04/regency-movie-costumes-bill-and-ted-test.html

6. This supercalifragilistic parody will bring you joy https://youtu.be/ykieEE1j9eA

7. Everyone knows the quickest way to sort problems with your broadband is to call out the company in public, on twitter. But this call goes weird places. https://twitter.com/adrianrmg/status/1254742269686624257?s=21

8. “I personally don’t believe solutions are the answer to our problems” https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-personally-dont-believe-solutions-are-the-answer-to-our-problems – probably the best thing McSweeneys has ever published.

9. The White Man Behind A Desk has graduated to a well-produced RNZ series about New Zealand’s history and present. A local civics education, plus funny! https://youtu.be/m1VrqxohA-A

10. Fraggle Rock is back – as a series of shorts *filmed in the homes of the performers during lockdown*. Wow. https://news.avclub.com/apple-revives-fraggle-rock-for-a-series-of-short-weekly-1842982769

11. Generate your own neural-network-generated memes! Mysteriously addictive. https://imgflip.com/ai-meme

12. Shut Up and Sit Down reveal some amazing board games you can print on your own printer at home and play by yourself. Genuinely inspirational! These look really fun! https://youtu.be/sNghPlwbYe8

13. And finally, watch this guy rap Dr Seuss’ tongue-twister Fox in Socks to the beats of Dr Dre: https://youtu.be/hqIbEHNqbPs