Tag: television
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Final touches in ‘Lost’ and ‘Parks and Recreation’
I don’t know how but Jenny and I jumped back into Parks and Recreation again in season 5 and went all the way to the end. This time through the finale, “One Last Ride”, I saw how much it had in common with the Lost series finale. *Spoilers ahead* I’ve written about Lost and Parks…
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The Crown
As a patriotic American, I am against the British monarchy on principle. That hasn’t stopped me from loving Netflix’s The Crown. I’m here to echo all the good things you’ve heard about it, specifically the performances of Claire Foy as the Queen and Matt Smith as Phillip. That said, I think swapping in a new…
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There’s always money in the Death Star
I don’t know who made this mashup of Arrested Development and Star Wars, but it captures the show’s tone so perfectly, and not only because Ron Howard himself provided the narration: This might even make me want to see Solo: A Star Wars Story. [*Ron Howard Arrested Development voice*] It won’t.
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The People v. O.J. Simpson
I was seven years old when the O.J. Simpson trial happened. I don’t have any personal memories of it, but through over 20 years of cultural osmosis I’ve grown familiar with its broad strokes and iconic images: the Bronco chase, Kato Kaelin, O.J. trying on the glove, Judge Ito, the verdict. Watching FX’s The People v.…
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Tom Hanks, Olympia, and Me
I had the pleasure of seeing a photo of mine get the Ken Burns treatment on CBS Sunday Morning’s story this weekend about Tom Hanks, his new book, and his love of typewriters: One of my colleagues got an advance copy of Hanks’ book at a library conference back in June specifically because she knew…
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A Librarian’s Guide to ‘The Simpsons’
In what’s quickly becoming a regular hobby, I went screengrab-hunting on Frinkiac, this time for anything library- or book-related. The result:
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Typewriters in ‘The Simpsons’
Frinkiac, a searchable archive of seventeen seasons worth of Simpsons screengrabs, ought to be in the Internet Hall of Fame. After using it to look up some old favorites, I searched for anything typewriter-related, and here’s what came up: And of course Wiggam with his invisible typewriter:
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Tom, John, Abby & George
The fourth episode of the John Adams miniseries (“Reunion”) contains two of the best scenes in the show. The first is John hanging with Abigail and Thomas Jefferson in Paris. It’s fun to consider now how these titans of American history would have interacted in their time, before they achieved titan status: The second is…
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The Man In The High Castle
Not long after we subscribed to Amazon Prime did I check out the pilot of The Man in the High Castle. I’d heard some good regard for the show, but didn’t think to seek it out until it was suddenly available to me. Boy am I glad I did. Set in 1962, the show exists in a…
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Parks and Re-Recreation
My wife and I just finished bingeing Parks & Recreation. It was her first time seeing the show and my second, but the first since watching it live. We started with season 2 as, like The Office, it’s where it finally gets going and I didn’t want her to lose interest in the sluggish first…
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The Leftovers
As we approach Sunday’s season finale of The Leftovers, HBO’s new series about a Rapture-like occurrence and its aftermath in a small New York town, let’s consider a Gospel story: Jesus said to his disciples, “Compare me to something and tell me what I am like.” Thomas said to him, “Teacher, my mouth is utterly…
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Girl Meets Rainbow
I was heartened by the exceedingly successful Kickstarter campaign to resurrect Reading Rainbow, which will help bring a new version of the early-literacy television program back to solvency and into classrooms to foster a love of reading in today’s children. But this article from Caitlin Dewey at the Washington Post gave me pause: “Crowdfunding is theoretically supposed to…
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House Of Cards
As the second season of House of Cards begins Friday, it’s worth remembering that the Netflix political drama last left us with a prayer. In last season’s finale, Frank Underwood, the politician who has schemed his way through a twisted plan of revenge, enters a church, gets on his knees and looks skyward. “Every time I’ve spoken…
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The Spirit of American Experience
[Update: the video with show footage was removed, so this one just has the music. Doesn’t have the same effect but it’ll have to do…] This might be one of my all-time favorite things. It’s the older version of the American Experience opening and theme (composed by Charles Kuskin) that so beautifully juxtaposes things I…
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Dharma Island
Disney owns the Lost mythology, so why not a Dharma Initiative attraction on Discovery Island? :: http://t.co/AppFOyDL7V— John August (@johnaugust) January 13, 2014 John August’s above tweet informed me that Disney World used to have a wildlife attraction on their massive property called Discovery Island, which was abandoned in 1999 and left to be overrun by wilderness.…
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Seeing In Black And White
Rod Dreher recently wrote about Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson’s comments about, essentially, how happy he believed Black Southerners were in the 1950s before the civil rights movement. To Dreher, Robertson’s comments demonstrate the power of narrative, of the stories we tell ourselves and how they affect how we see the “truth” of our own situations, even when…
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Stupid Is As Rosewater Does
If what happened to Maziar Bahari is the trend in Iran, the country just hasn’t figured it out yet. Bahari, an Iranian journalist, was imprisoned and tortured in Iran during the “Green Revolution” in Iran, which was the reformist response to the 2009 reelection of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. His memoir Then They Came For Me details…