Freaks & Geeks Linky

Vanity Fair has published an extensive feature on Freaks & Geeks, my pick for second-greatest TV show of all time (after The Wire). There’s an oral history, new behind the scenes pics, and an amazing reunion photoshoot that brought back all the main cast, most of the secondary cast, and plenty of bit players. LOVE IT.

A eulogy for Occupy: fantastic first-hand journey through Occupy’s successes and failures. Includes plenty of details I’d never heard before, including a brutal analysis of the failure of the General Assembly process that was at the heart of Occupy, and some great insights into what Occupy created that wasn’t easily visible from the outside.

This one time, Yoko Ono and Jim Henson hung out online with Ayn Rand. No, it really happened [No it didn’t – see below], and the transcript is fascinating. (via Allen Varney) [It is fictional! My factchecking on this was pretty limited. D’oh! Thanks David R esq. for the save.]

An ambitious high concept, this: making an improvised opera out of live stock market data. (Also via Allen)

Rap battle: Santa Claus vs your actual Snoop Lion. Not exactly a fair match.

Lengthy research (with many pics) exploring the story behind that unusual hat worn by Archie’s Pal Jughead.

Gem Wilder’s link collection this week included several gems, but my fave was this clever and funny takedown of the Manic Pixie Dreamgirl phenomenon

Also from Gem this week: the problem with Margaret Mahy

Return of the Jedi had some female space pilots in it, but it cut them out.

The alternate moose has made his documentary on Kiwiburn (the NZ cousin of Burning Man) free to watch online. Check it out!

And while you’re watching things online, David Ritchie esquire has endorsed a browser plugin that lets you watch overseas video content without needing to mess about. I tried it: two clicks later, I was suddenly able to view loads of Hulu content that had been closed to me before. You want this.

David esq., also linked to a helpful Hobbit Dwarf Identification Flowchart. Test your knowledge on this collection of photos of the Hobbit actors meeting their Lego minifigures.

Speaking of Lego: here’s a Lego model of the spaceship from Alien, the Nostromo. (via Malc)

Via Sonal: your new TV is ruining the movies you watch

And finally, via Pearce, a classic animated GIF now with its own homepage: BEES BEES BEES

9 thoughts on “Freaks & Geeks Linky”

  1. I always remember Carlos the Dwarf. And Linda Cardellini in THAT jacket. Unfortunately, that is about it. I really should revisit one day. Thanks for the link… 😉

    R

  2. Freaks & Geeks is the second greatest tv show of all time? Case proven: tv is officially an inferior medium, not just to film, but to comic books and video games. 😉

  3. “The problem with Margaret Mahy is slightly misleading, which makes sense since the post is a little muddled-seeming. It starts out cross with Mahy for acist lines she put in the mouth of one of her characters though, even given the context in the post it’s not clear to me that Mahy meant that character to represent her authorial viewpoint (but I haven’t read that particular book). It then goes on to suggest that this is a problem with NZ kids’ fiction generally and link to a post about someone taking precisely the opposite message from a different one of Mahy’s books, but without really “coming around” in terms of tone.

    Possibly the *point* is that Gem doesn’t quite know how she feels about Mahy, and I’m insufficiently sensitive to read it that way.

  4. I was going to mock you for rating “Freaks & Geeks” is the second greatest tv show of ***ZOMG ALL TIME LIKE EVAH SINCE THE TEEVEE WAS MAKED***. But then I remembered that you recommended the Russell T Davies “Doctor Who” to me. So now I’m torn between condescending pity and hideous vengeance.

    Also, what ObjectiveReality said. That was a confused, confusing article which totally failed to provide context for its launching quote, and appeared to contradict its own argument towards the end. It’s a valid argument to raise, but the article did an awful job of raising it.

  5. I find it funny that the best two tv shows of all time are apparently American. Obviously non-Spanish speakers don’t have access to Mexican tv (which is supposed to be uncommonly sophisticated and varied) but quite frankly, there are any number of British tv shows that could kick the butt of Freaks & Geeks, even though I do like it a lot.

    (Yes Minister/Prime Minister, Edge of Darkness, The Prisoner, the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes shows, Boys from the Black Stuff, to name just a few. And then there’s the collected works of Dennis Potter…)

  6. I put Fawlty Towers at #3.

    I haven’t seen Potter’s stuff (or the Brett Sherlock for that matter), but by my reckoning F&G kicks the butt of all the other things you mention.

    & of course this is only stuff to which I’ve been exposed, so Mexican & European TV is excluded.

  7. Given that I tend to prefer the films of Lucio Fulci and Jess Franco to those of Stanley Kubrick and David Lean, I can hardly fault your reckoning in this.

    In my opinion, informed barbarism is vastly preferable to ignorant aestheticism. It is all too easy to prefer caviar and champagne when it is all that one knows; but to understand the appeal of a refined palate and to then state a preference for nachos and Fanta displays a particular kind of acumen.

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