Tag: television
-
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:
-
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:
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Dharma Island
If you click the link from John August’s above tweet, you’ll learn, as I did recently, 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. Shane Perez, a self-described “urban explorer” and photographer, apparently snuck onto…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Attested Development
After years of hype and speculation, Arrested Development is back thanks to the tireless work of Mitch Hurwitz and the show’s writers. Watching these characters again has been surreal. I had the same feeling when I saw Toy Story 3 and The Hobbit: I’d watched the previous installments (the LOTR trilogy in the case of The Hobbit) so many times that…
-
Fox News’ Amazing Rage
About two years ago I stopped watching cable news all together. Regardless of the channel, there is rarely anything on worth the time and energy it takes getting frustrated by the mostly non-news news stories being covered like Access Hollywood fluff pieces. But late last night as I was channel-surfing before turning in, I was chagrined…
-
To Binge Or Not To Binge?
There’s been some debate recently about whether binge-watching a TV show on DVD or online is good or bad. While I must confess I have gone on a few TV benders, usually with the intention of catching up on a series before its most recent season premiered, there’s something about watching a show live on…
-
Thank You, Kristen Wiig
Last night, Saturday Night Live bade farewell to Kristen Wiig, one of the show’s most talented and versatile performers in its history. I wrote about her back in 2008, and those sentiments hold today. It’s fitting they sent her off to the Rolling Stones’ “She’s a Rainbow” given the spectrum of colorful characters she brought to…
-
Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop
Watching Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop made me realize something I’ve suspected for a long time: I don’t ever want to be famous. There’s a scene in this documentary about the “Legally Prohibited From Being Funny On Television” stage tour Conan created immediately after his inauspicious exit from The Tonight Show in 2010 where Conan does a meet-and-greet after…
-
Mad World
Looks like Mad Men is getting the LOST treatment, and I couldn’t be happier about it. The deal between Mad Men showrunner Matthew Weiner and AMC will end the series after the sixth season premieres. Like the deal that gave LOST a definitive end-date a few years ago, this new deal for Mad Men will be…
-
The Ten Commandments Of Watching ‘LOST’ In A Group
1. Thou shalt be caught up. 2. Thou shalt hold all questions until commercial breaks. 3. Thou shalt not bring a friend who hath not seen Lost or hath not been caught up. 4. Thou shalt offer theories upon the conclusion of the episode. 5. Thou shalt not use the bathroom during the show and…