blast-o-rama • issue 010 • 2019-07-07
blast-o-rama
issue 010 • 2019-07-07
welcome!
Your weekly, stream-of-consciousness hello.
Good morning, folks! Or good afternoon or, good evening, or whatever it is when you’re reading this.
I hope you had yourself a nice holiday weekend whether to celebrate the 4th of July or Canada Day – or just a nice weekend if you’re somewhere there wasn’t a holiday - and you’re staying cool as the Summer hits the sweltering side of things. Given that this is/was a long holiday weekend, the news cycle was mostly quiet, so this will be one of those shorter editions, just with some Interesting Reads and a Recommends installment.
This was an interesting Holiday weekend for me as my wife was away in Florida visiting her best friend, so I’ve spent the past few days solo (unless you count the cats?). I saw Spider-Man: Far From Home (which I loved) and as of this writing, I’ve watched 5/8th of the new season of Stranger Things, which I think has been much better than the second (which I enjoyed), but still pales compared to the greatness of the first. Not sure what I’m going to do with my Sunday yet - still have some movies to see which are at my local theater (Midsommar, Toy Story 4, John Wick: Chapter 3), but we’ll see what I get into
You know, it’s a weird thing – I’ve been with my wife for almost a decade now (married four years), and for the first day or two, being solo is really great. I get to watch whatever I want, eat whatever I want, do whatever I want…but sure enough, sometime in the first 24 to 48 hours, the novelty of it ends, and I really start to miss her. Anyone else with spouses or long-term significant others who feel this too? Or am I just weird?
worthwhile reads.
A bunch of cool links what I read this week, typically culled from my ever-growing Instapaper queue.
- Giant Spiders, Giant Flops: The Enduring Awfulness of ‘Wild Wild West’ (The Ringer)
- A Manson Murder Investigation 20 Years In the Making: ‘There Are Still Secrets’ (LongReads)
- On the Road with Mitski (The New Yorker)
- ‘We all suffer’: why San Francisco techies hate the city they transformed | Cities (The Guardian)
- The Troubling Business of Bounty Hunting (GQ)
- From the Mac Startup Tone to the Skype Ring, Sound Designers Talk About the Legacy of Their Work (One Zero)
- Anime 2019: the dark side of Japan’s anime industry (Vox)
- Destroyer of Worlds: The 8chan Story (Tortoise Media)
- If a climate apocalypse is imminent, should we bother paying our debts? (The Outline)
- The Lingering of Loss (The New Yorker)
- Elon Musk wanted The Onion; he got Thud (The Verge)
blast-o-rama recommends.
Every week, I’ll make a recommendation of something to read, to watch, or to listen to. I’ll even link to where you can check it out.
This week’s recommendation:
Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend
Last November, Conan O’Brien decided it was time to make a change. For twenty-five years, he built a legacy of surreal, alternative late-night comedy. He focused on the legacy of the Tonight Show and Late Night with David Letterman and aimed to make a show which honored both - a show which revered and skewed the tenants of the talk show. He was, despite the naysayers, successful.
After two and a half decades though, things had changed. He gained, and lost the Tonight Show after an ugly public battle. He pulled up his stakes and promised to keep creating, first on TBS with a nightly show called Conan, but he also took to the people - doing shows from countries besides the US that loved him, and performing live shows.
And at some point, someone had the brilliant idea to say to him, “Hey Conan, why don’t you have a podcast?”
That’s when Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend was born.
A part of the massive Earwolf comedy network, the podcast was built on a mostly false premise, that Conan built a career but nary a friend. It’s really just an excuse for him to sit down and chat with his friends in comedy. But it’s those same chats which make the show incredibly listenable.
Whether it’s hysterical conversations with Timothy Oliphant (where the Justified star keeps trying to hijack the show with ad reads), heart-to-hearts with Stephen Colbert, or nerding out about the greatness of “Under Pressure” with Lin Manuel Miranda, you get to be the fly on the wall for real, truly funny, truly poignant conversations with a living comedy legend and those creators he admires, loves and respects. It’s a true highlight of my week, and hopefully it can become one of yours.
Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend: Listen via Earwolf | Listen on Apple Podcasts
that’s that.
Enjoy the Holiday, friends in America! Happy Canada Day, friends in Canada! Enjoy your week, people elsewhere. We’ll do this again next Sunday, yeah?
Don’t let the bastards bring you down.
-Marty