The cure for the common television show.
Mad linkage:
John Cusack as Edgar Allan Poe (and hopefully teaming up with young Abe Lincoln to hunt vampires).
Obama urges Americans to “turn the page” on Iraq.
Bill Compton as Doctor Doom and either Jack Bauer or John McClane as the Thing.
Jon Hamm: “If Rob Lowe had been cast in the part, it would have been different. There was no backstory with me.”
An interesting write up on Phonogram: The Singles Club.
Behind the “Frazenfreude.”
Stephen Hawking changes his views on God.
Just imagine this: An 80 hour Lost marathon.
5 mind blowing ways that your memory plays tricks on you.
5 UFO sightings that even non-crazy people find creepy.
5 stupidest ways that movies deal with foreign languages.
6 famous unsolved mysteries (that have totally been solved).
January Jones: “I need not to think about my character. Betty is so blissfully ignorant in certain ways, so I feel like I should be too.”
Speaking of Arcade Fire: Their new collab with Google folks, The Wilderness Downtown.
A cannibal restaurant in Berlin. Figures.
Laura Marling’s award-nominated love triangle.
Self-described CIA assassin dies in ([accidental] self-imposed) gun accident.
Some of these pictures are, of course, from Rolling Stone, which will be featuring Mad Men on the cover of their new issue. Great idea. Bad photoshopping on that cover though.
And, I tell ya, August and I have really missed doing our Mad Men write ups the past few episodes, especially since, as far as I’m concerned, this has been the show’s strongest season yet, but on the plus side, it’s probably spared you an incredible amount of Nora Zehetner photos that I would’ve just bombarded you with…
Seriously.
Creepy artificial arm from the 1800s.
Peter Travers talks with Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Weezer’s just trying to sell some clothes and Cee-Lo says “Fuck You.”
Is Barnes & Noble really going bye bye?
Blah blah blah bedbugs.
The Bloom Box: A power plant the size of a coffee mug.
Why do hurricanes often curve out to sea?
There’s some NSFW happening in the new Conan movie.
One year after Disney bought Marvel: Not much has really changed.
The perilous profession of underground mining.
Wormholes in NYC.
I honestly can’t believe that they renewed Human Target.
Booty calls are their own special type of relationship.
Oh, and hey, the next post will be the 750th!
Precious little simulacrum.
Found this somewhere in the wilds of the internet the other day:
Scott Pilgrim vs. The Matrix, mashed up. Made me chuckle. Also, Keanu, you’ve really made a comeback (of sorts) on the internet this year. And, only slightly unrelated, this:
A twist of fate.
Mad linkage:
Long running comic strip Cathy will be coming to an end October 3.
AMC picking up new crime thriller series, The Killing.
The cowboy’s lament, up above, from here.
Why are southern California’s seas turning green?
Homeless Poles living on barbecued rats and alcoholic handwash.
Brazil’s Air Force to officially start recording UFO sightings.
How to have sex at work.
Google, Verizon, and net neutrality.
One of the last strips that Harvey Pekar wrote.
Albino python on cocaine confronts police.
Readers pick the best album art of all time.
The only Facebook button I’ll ever need.
Sarah Palin and Kate Gosselin together again for the first time.
Girl quits job via dry erase board, emails entire office (which makes for a cute hoax).
A poster for Julia Robert’s new movie.
Soldiers try to trade tech support for Afghan intel.
The secret to what makes something funny “discovered.”
A letter from a freed man to his former slave owner.
Happy Friday the 13th, everyone.
Sometimes I can’t believe it; I’m moving past the feeling…
I was all set to fill in for Marco and write up a Mad Men recap, but then I noticed that OS X now blocks screenshots of protected content. I don’t know when they worked in that wrinkle, but well done sirs. I’m far too lazy to search for screencaps online, so I’ll just drop some general thoughts.
Don: Is it a problem that I now root for Don Draper the same way I do for Jason Stackhouse? I’m like, “Attaboy, Draper! For an encore, do your neighbor!” Probably. I don’t know if television has ever given us one character, let alone two, who deal with this kind of “pussy overflow” on such a regular basis. Old Don would be hopelessly drawn to to the self-assured marketing analyst, because just like Rachel Mencken, girls who say no turn him on. New Don… well, we’ll see how much he’s really changed. He’s single now, so women are viewing him as a potential partner instead of just a fling now, and he’s having trouble getting used to it.
Peggy: Her talk with Freddy was a little “on the nose,” as they say, but we get the picture. Peggy knows this dork isn’t marriage material, so she’ll fuck him for now, knowing this will hasten his exit. While we’ve certainly gotten hints of feminist angst from her before, I think this episode was the closest she’s come to outright voicing them. I liked the half-grimace she, Joan and the marketing chick all seemed to share when White Pants were brought up in the meeting.
Roger: I think SCDP will not end the season with Lucky Strike as a client.
Betty: Fuck Betty.
Glen: Him too. Creep. The world, August Bravo aside, was not asking for more Glen.
——-
But what’s really on my mind tonight/this morning is the new Arcade Fire album: The Suburbs.
As soon as I read about the title of this LP, I had a feeling I’d like it. I’ve always had a complex connection with suburbia, and it sounds like Win Butler does too. I’m only on my second listen-through, but I can tell that this is an album that’s going to keep growing on me.
It’s a sort of choppy, stream of consciousness series of vignettes on the love/hate relationships between the suburbs and the city. The sprawl is an inescapable malaise of crushed dreams, but go downtown and maybe those shallow hipsters aren’t your kind either. Two years into an economic catastrophe and a lot of those downtown bohemia promises can start to sound like so much happy bullshit. Something fascinating about the line, “Now that San Francisco’s gone, I guess I’ll just pack it in.” There’s a theme of weary resignation here. But in The Suburbs, resignation feels a lot like growing up, and who says that’s a good thing, even if it’s unavoidable.
Most of the kids in my generation — if they could afford to, if they didn’t get shackled with a burdensome spouse or child, or military service — they moved to the city as soon as they could get away. Me, I moved back to the suburbs. I guess I’ve always felt there was something important going on here. Something that, if I came to understand it, would understand everything about modern American life. I don’t think I do yet, but I’m getting closer.
I’m confident that one day I will, and then I’ll leave.
The internet is an information superhighway and I want to ride it all night long.
I had this dream the other night: Picture the protagonist of some indie film as he drives in a car on a plain road in the middle of the nowhere. Either a cool new song by a not well known hip band is playing through the car’s speakers, or there’s an older song, at least 10 to 15 years old, equally hip and recognizable and slightly “ironic” and catchy is playing. The sun is low, the sky is dim. It’s either just after sunrise or just before sunset. The character is driving for a few moments before something happens…
The stars have names that somehow fit them.
Just Walking Around
by John Ashbery.
What name do I have for you? Certainly there is not name for you. In the sense that the stars have names that somehow fit them. Just walking around…
An object of curiosity to some, but you are too preoccupied by the secret smudge in the back of your soul to say much and wander around smiling to yourself and others. It gets to be kind of lonely but at the same time off-putting. Counterproductive, as you realize once again that the longest way is the most efficient way, the one that looped among islands, and you always seemed to be traveling in a circle. And now that the end is near…
from here.
The segments of the trip swing open like an orange. There is light in there and mystery and food. Come see it. Come not for me but it. But if I am still there, grant that we may see each other.
The day before the Lord rested…
On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog
Reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Mad linkage:
Don Draper/Jon Hamm as Superman?
Google and the CIA to invest in the “future” of web monitoring.
The above image, if you can believe it, is for a condom ad. I love it.
Girls like boys with skills.
Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s wacky lesbian theory.
“My soul knows my meat is doing bad things, and is embarrassed. But my meat keeps on doing bad, dumb things.”
-Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard.
Lost‘s Damon Lindelof to rewrite Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel.
Old Spice’s sales double with YouTube campaign.
Mike Tyson likes cocaine and sex.
Disabled Austrian man eaten to death by maggots while his partner slept in bed beside him.
The first half of the Rubicon pilot is certainly interesting. A show for smart people or a show for people who think they’re smart (and love 70s paranoia thrillers)?
from here.
The Booker Prize longlist announced.
The longest photographic exposures in history.
Quantum time machine “allows paradox-free time travel.” If you need me, I’ll be in the past. Or the future.
The oil spill: when a science fiction nightmare becomes reality.
The plight of Afghan women: a disturbing picture.
“History is merely a list of surprises… It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again. Please write that down.
-Kurt Vonnegut, Slapstick: Or, Lonesome No More!
The above is a trailer for Gary Shteyngart’s new novel, Super Sad True Love Story. Here’s an excerpt.
The porniest American Apparel ad ever.
Ship lost for more than 150 years is recovered.
Stieg Larsson is the first to sell one million Amazon Kindle books.
Inception: Dreams vs. Reality.
“Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn’t mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.”
-Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus.
Also: Every cigarette smoked in Mad Men.
Where did the money to rebuild Iraq go?
Tokyo’s oldest man has been dead for 30 years.
Bethany Cosentino from Best Coast talks about her cat.
Your lack of privacy on the internet.
Mash up.
The Shining vs. The Social Network:
and
Team America: World Police vs. Inception:
Interesting. Apparently this is a popular thing, especially with Inception, which has been mixed with quite a few other films, including Willy Wonka, The Matrix, Shutter Island, The Dark Knight (of course), Up, WALL-E, and, of course, Lost.
Vector Prime.
This:
from here.
