Just watched the NZ Breakers basketball team win a thriller in game one of a 3-game final series. I get so invested in these big games! Sigh. Deep breaths.
Ian McEwan on the time his son had to write a book report on one of his novels (via d3vo)
Also from d3vo, one for film design & sci-fi people: spaceships that became other spaceships. one, two, three
Self-portraits in airplane lavatories, wearing classic Flemish style
Via Naomi, an excellent reaction to a friend coming out: act shocked by his website coding choices
I think I’ve linked this before, but it’s been redesigned. Or this is a different site doing the same thing, better. The Food Timeline
Dangerous Minds has turned up a true Monty Python rarity
Hitchcock’s Rear Window – amazing video assembles all the different elements of the scene to construct the whole view
Viking Movies, evaluated by viking history enthusiasts
You might have seen that Daily Mail column by Samantha Brick that was about how tough it is being beautiful because all the other women hate you? The Guardian’s Hadley Freeman has a refreshing take on that whole thing. (I really like Hadley Freeman, whose column got me reading the fashion section of the Grauniad first each Saturday. I was completely thrown when they introduced photo bylines, and I discovered she was a she. I had just figured she was a guy who really understood women’s clothing… Sherlock Holmes I ain’t.)
Via Mike Upton: Existential Crisis and Dragons. (I have actually played games not too dissimilar to this.)
The Pentametron constructs verse from tweets that happen to be in iambic pentameter
Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi writes an eye-opening, rage-inducing explanation of what Bank of America did and what “too big to fail” actually means.
Top 10 lessons of the Iraq war.
Vulture had a series of face-offs to determine the greatest TV show in the last 25 years. Here’s part one: The Wire vs. My So-Called Life. No prizes for guessing the ultimate winner, but there are some surprises along the way I think.
This fantastic Lego ad has been all over social media, with the attribution stripped off.
The hallowed DavidR found a detailed read-through and description of the Back to the Future novelization. It is… just click through and see, actually.
And finally, the launch issue of “Conservative Teen” magazine, which shut down its site and disappeared after being mocked a whole lot, can still be found and enjoyed by those who really want to combine their teenage thrills with their conservative political spills.
This was a great linky. I will spend/waste much time reading about food trends from the 1930’s now.
Don’t make me choose between My So Called Life and The Wire man! Fully recommend re-watching the former both as an adult or parent if you haven’t seen it for a few years.
I also remember the BTTF novelisation quite well, especially the opening. While mildly disturbed I never had the plotting dramas the blogger did with killing everyone when I read it in the 80’s; I just thought it was something Marty was watching in class, and a throwback/ setup reference to the 50’s era when that film was produced (and it is actually a real film, they were dummies in a house built to see what an atomic bomb would do it, recreated in THAT scene in Indy 4).
The spaceship thing is interesting. I knew the back story of the evolution of the Falcon already, but didn’t know how closely the Viper and Starfighter were related (both names of real-world fighters btw). It’s interesting for me how sometimes you can see what real aircraft the concept guys might have been influenced by.
Has anyone told the Viking guys about The Almighty Johnsons? 🙂
Thanks for the vulture article, it expresses much better than I could many of the things I feel about the Wire – especially Bub’s character. I now want to see my so called life.