The Friday Article Roundup
Here and now, the best pop culture writing of the week
This week, you will reflect on:
Tell the FAR what you see ahead! Send articles to be featured throughout the next week to magpiesmedia [at] gmail, post articles from the past week below for discussion and Have a Happy Friday!
At Humanizing The Vacuum, Alfred Soto looks back on the release of David Bowie’s Blackstar:
Released on Bowie’s birthday and 48 hours before his death, ★ does not digest without difficulty. At the Singles Jukebox we responded tepidly to the title track weeks earlier. Ignorant of its back story, which involved the artist’s recruitment of modern jazz musicians for a secret project, I accepted ★ as another David Bowie Album, an improvement over The Next Day, an album I savaged with the vituperation possible only by a former lover desperate for a pop kiss. I backhandedly praised the “courageous dormancy” between its release and 2003’s Reality; he should’ve remained a latter-day Garbo. “The Next Day is an album that didn’t need to be made,” I sniffed. Now I wonder if the Bowie who read every press notice said “Piss off!” to the gay Miami tosser with the presumption to issue commands. Another presumption, for the cancer-ravaged man had other things on which to concentrate his dissipating energy.
Nitish Pahwa considers the legacy of Scott Adams at Slate:
Scott Adams began his career as a trenchant (if limited) critic of corporate America only to end it in fealty to the most oppressive boss of all, Donald “You’re Fired” Trump. It wasn’t that he was always bound to go this way; rather, he understood the power of provocation for its own sake, whether aimed at your immediate manager or at scoldy commenters, and grew that into a lucrative enterprise that was perpetually about money and self-branding over any legible principle. True tyranny, for Adams, ultimately came from those in your immediate vicinity—never from the actual forces shaping the world in which you exist.
At his substack, Rob Kotecki comes out swinging against the idea of the artist as influencer and publicist:
It’s a modern cliché that we need to spend more time with real people in real life. But we do, we need to forge communities, and the influencer gig drags us in the opposite direction. It demands more time thinking about ourselves, and how they relate to algorithms. Less time thinking about how to craft work that better serves that audience, which is made of other people.
Steven Hyden pays tribute to Bob Weir at The Ringer:
I am a firm believer in the idea that truly appreciating an artist or band means reveling in all aspects of their work, even the things you might initially scoff at, while also recognizing the ridiculousness of those attributes. (If I can impart any wisdom to our young generation of online stans, it’s that laughing at your heroes sometimes rather than reflexively defending them at all costs will make you happier in the long run.) For anyone to be an all-time great, they must have enough personal belief, guilelessness, creative and personal freedom, and extreme fearlessness to transcend the self-consciousness and intolerance for embarrassment and failure that hamstring 99.9 percent of the population. No band personifies this idea better than the Grateful Dead. And no member of the Grateful Dead embodied it more than Bob Weir. The greatness intertwined with goofiness, the silliness inseparable from the spiritual, the guy who was part saint and part Sammy Hagar.
And Ann Powers muses on two big albums from 2025 and tries to discern a vibe shift for NPR:
Consensus-oriented fandom is competitive and outwardly directed. Communion-based fandom is more coded, even secretive, based in mutual understanding that’s not always easy to articulate. On some level, this is the return of snobbishness, of expecting fans to work to comprehend what they love. I think it also represents a longing among listeners to reestablish a definition of greatness that’s separate from external markers like stream counts and chart positions, one that depends on each listener’s private immersion in an artist’s work. Instead of working to solidify consensus, the community supporting artists like Geese or Rosalía in her Lux era is in it for personal reasons and might even be surprised when it grows.
Tags for this article
More articles by Dave Shutton
Double Features
Considering the comedy in The Phoenician Scheme and The Naked Gun.
The Friday Article Roundup
Going on the record with the best pop culture writing of the week.
The Friday Article Roundup
A cowardly and superstitious lot? No, the best pop culture writing of the week.
The Friday Article Roundup
No kings, of pop or otherwise, just the best pop culture writing of the week
The Friday Article Roundup
Out of the mists of history, the best pop culture writing of the week.
Department of
Conversation
What Did We Watch?
Live Music – first proper gig of the year, and it was a good one. Touring acts were two bands I’ve seen a couple of times each before, Fortitude Valley (catchy, fuzzy pop in the vein of The Beths) and Junk Whale (grungier and noisier but still with a melodic edge) and the openers (Cough Drops) were new to me, they had chunky basic-but-effective riffs and a frontwoman with a powerful voice, kind of a Beth Ditto / Gossip vibe maybe. Fortitude Valley are always great and Junk Whale felt like they’d gotten significantly better since the last time I saw them, so I bought their t-shirt.
Woo, live music!
Wooooooo live music in 2026!!
Woooo live music! Wooooo bands getting better! Woooo t-shirt support!
Babylon 5 — on to season 5! Right now there is a sense of wrapping up threads and one of the best arguments for another season (although now understanding the ‘we thought we only had four, oh snap’ setup of this one helps it make sense) is giving some time to Londo and his actions, because he’s done a lot of bad shit and has largely skated through it. Lovely little scene of Vir and Lennier at the bar, two devoted number 2s who have nothing else in common but can sit with each other on that particular wavelength.
English Teacher S1E3 – Is the heterosexual effeminate Southern gentleman a real thing?* Evan doesn’t seem to think so (“He was gay, he was gay – it’s like The Sixth Sense, you’re going to realize all these guys were gay”) when he meets Gil, Grant’s soon to be son-in-law who is, uh, effeminate to say the least. I liked the way this was handled, very funny bottle episode with all the teachers at Grant’s house.
*Someone familiar with or who has spent time in the South please confirm.
Oh yeah, it’s a real thing. Think BJ on Gemstones. Liberal arts educated urbane white straights can unintentionally ping some gaydars. Especially from Charleston, Savannah, or any college town.
But also the archetypes of
redneck chud masculinity that if you have any refinement or taste or culture by contrast you can come off as effeminate.
I remember someone on The AV Club commenting re: Lee Russell on Vice Principals, “You laugh but all of these guys walk and talk like this.” (Appreciated BJ being very straight and merely big on defying gender norms.)
Men in Black II – Not as bad as I remembered, but definitely not as good. Oddly, while the plot is almost the same, the beats of the plot are actually easier to follow and make a bit more sense. But it’s the surroundings that are a mess. Part of it is that it takes a while to get back K as K, and Tommy Lee Jones seems rather uncertain as Kevin Brown of the Post Office. Part of it is that we have MORE. More worms, more Frank the Pug, more alien bad guys, more seeming death for the bad guy before the actual death, and none of it adds anything. And a lot of it is that Lara Flynn Boyle, who I find to be pretty good on The Practice, is awful as the big bad and Johnny Knoxville is almost as bad as her henchman (and hey, where did he end up anyway, he kind of vanishes). But J and K reunited still works, Will Smith makes J’s lament of an empty life work (even if Barry Sonnenfeld thought no one wanted to see that), and the creativity Rick Baker put into all those aliens still stands out. Rosario Dawson is okay but really gets nothing to do.
The Practice, “Liar’s Poker” – Jimmy has a gambling problem, and is forced to work for scuzzy Jeffrey Tambor (by which I mean Tambor’s character is a scuzzy bookie, distinct from what Tambor turned out to be later). A place for Badalucco to show his acting chops but not a very interesting story. And when a key witness in a murder trial dies, the DAs withhold the information from Lindsey and give her the plea bargain she wanted, and when she finds out the truth, she is livid but the law is on the DAs’ side. I haven’t mentioned Richard McGonagle much. He’s a regular judge and not a well known actor, but he’s steadily improved as the show’s gone along, and his reaming of the DAs for their dishonesty is very very effective. BTW, Lara Flynn Boyle was not here. Is it because it would not work for her to lie to Lindsey, or because she was filming MIB2?
Frasier, “Three Blind Dates” – All the other regulars want to see Frasier start dating again (even though he’s been doing okay since the season premiere, and even though I think the audience has as well). So Niles schemes to have Frasier meet a book store owner, but can’t actually introduce them because the woman was a patient. Roz sets him up with Alison Janney (on leave from The West Wing) only that really goes nowhere. And Martin introduces Frasier to a very pretty woman who really does seem interested but also can’t manage to drag herself away from all her admirers at the bar they had pre-date drinks at. Even as Niles decides that maybe Frasier is right to just let fate guide him, fate does and he meets the book store owner. A fun if not very funny episode that works mainly because we are spared watching Frasier make a fool of himself, and I think the writers know that right now, he is past that at least some of the time.
NBA on Amazon – first Thursday night game, and first game for me on Amazon, but the production is basically industry standard. Doesn’t hurt that Kevin Harlan was the play by play man, so it’s like we are still on TNT. And I picked the right moment to go to bed, because so did the Rockets.
The main thing I remember about Rosario Dawson in MIIB is how she has to hang out with the worm guys (fun!) but as the Men leave one of them says something like “watch your drink” as a laugh line and wait a minute, is the joke that these dudes are going to roofie Rosario Dawson? I’m getting the particulars wrong but not the vibe and boy is that one of those jokes that clangs hard now.
That came and went pretty fast, but yeah, not very pleasant. But the worms expanded to more than one scene are not very entertaining anyway.
finished Succession . Great performances from the big 3 + tom here. Jeremy Strong swings between projecting confident competence and whiny psychopathic patheticness on a dime (
). Shiv experiences a real emotion maybe three times and Sarah Snook is great at selling it. Roman’s final breakdown likewise is great. Greg and Tom might be the only two people who have actual affection for each other.
The show started as Arrested Development + King Lear but I think it ended up as maybe a bit more of the Ring cycle. Waystar Royco is the prize they’re all fighting over, but they don’t need the money and Waystar itself is a shit company. The news? shit. Kalispotro ? Shit. Cruises? Shit? The parks? Second tier. Living plus?vaporware. They’re invested in their dad as the guy who built this great thing which is actually
shit and they’re destroying themselves trying to claim it. Similarly, trying to claim the ring and the horde of Fafner destroys the Walsungs, the Niebelungs, and the Burgundians, and the gods.
We seem them chase and abandon projects that they’re proud of in order to go after Waystar Royco—Vaulter, the 100, Gil’s campaign. We see them manipulated into attacking each other by Logan (here doing double duty as Wotan and Odin, whose main jobs are respectively trying to keep the power of the ring and stirring up shit to fill valhalla with dead warriors).
Anyway, 10/10 show. Highly recommend.
dogman. . Very solid kids movie. Very silly. The central
conceit is pure body horror: a cop and a dog are in a bomb defusing accident; the dog’s body is dying and the cop’s head is dying. There’s obviously only one solution: sew
the dog’s head onto the cop’s body, creating a much smarter cop (there’s some subtle reverse copaganda) with a dog’s intelligence and a human’s dexterity and combat ability. Played straight it would
be horrifying. Imagine if disney bought it and did one of their photorealistic “live action” remakes. It’s very true to the spirit of the dog man graphic novels, which my kid has become obsessed with.
Someone rightly compared the end to Macbeth, with Roman the only one to call this what it is. “It’s all fucking nothing, man. I’m telling you this because I– I know it, okay? We’re nothing. Okay. Okay.”
Dogman sounds like if Turner and Hooch was directed by David Cronenberg and good.
Succession’s great strength is making Waystar Royco something of value not through any actual accomplishment but through the negative of wanting to deny it to the pieces of shit who want it — fuck you, Legally Not Daniel Ek, you’re not getting this! And they are all real pieces of shit, so the viewer winds up aligning with the awful Roys. And this is what allows Logan to stir shit up, his only real skill is manipulation and making his awful life and work something to fight over. No one ever realizes they can just leave.
Babylon 5, Season Three, Episode Twenty-Two, “Z’Ha’Dum”
This is yet another totally boss reveal; Mass Effect 1 clearly rips this off for its central twist, and logically so. I love that it’s delivered by a doddering old man genuinely trying to be helpful; it’s excellent contrast to the faux-Darwinian horseshit. What strikes me here isn’t just that it’s wrong, it’s that the character is being violently hypocritical, espousing survival of the fittest over cooperation but also appealing to Sheridan on the basis of cooperation. There’s a funny thing to how the story gets what Justin is saying but also definitively rejects it.
What Did We Read?
Finished Millard’s Destiny of the Republic, and I can see how this is a Netflix show now. She’s heavy on telling a specific set of stories – about the lost greatness of James Garfield (which is unproveable), about how America came together in grief (which might be true but I suspect many in the South were not saddened by his slow motion death) and then anger at his assassin (never mind that the man was clearly mentally ill), and about the utterly botched medical care for Garfield (which is at least clearly documented). Millard is the sort of historian who likes story more than fact, which I suppose is fine if you like popular history more than academic history. But where I fault her most is that she never once tells us if Garfield actually did anything in his four months as president, what his plans were beyond civil service reform and something related to civil rights, and never says who was running the country while he was dying. Granted, it’s possible that in 1881, the country was just fine with a dying president, but she never mentions this once. So I would definitely call this quite flawed.
Guiteau’s hanging is pretty egregious given his mental state. If you know Assassins, the opening of “The Ballad of Guiteau” is based on the actual little poem/song he sang before execution. (Denis O’Hare’s performance is amazing.)
Finished The Future of Truth by Werner Herzog, really thought provoking and timely given the ongoing onslaught of AI (which Herzog is a little more even-handed on than I might have expected).
Why Did the Well Wheel Creak? by Seishi Yokomizo – a second mystery included as a bonus with Murder at the Black Cat Cafe, I thought I’d break them up with another book in between. This one is written in an epistolary style, letters at first and then newspaper articles closing out the case. It’s intriguing and agreeably twisty, again the famous detective from this writer’s works only makes a tiny appearance – I’m curious as to whether he’s more of a focal point in any of the other novels. I will definitely check out one of the others at some point.
Now reading Good Pop Bad Pop by Jarvis Cocker, his sort-of-autobiography that spins out from him decluttering his attic full of lifelong junk. Hugely enjoyable so far, was thinking it might be one to dip in and out of alongside something with more of a narrative but I’m thinking I’ll just blast straight through.
The Cynic Philosophers, an excellent Penguin compilation of the Greek and Roman Cynics with some commentary. A lot of this is in essence how I think of the world even if I am not tough enough to walk about in a fur tunic and no shoes. (The Ancient Greeks probably didn’t have quite as much litter and broken glass.) Diogenes echoes my own frustrations with philosophical rhetoric by mocking Plato’s long-windedness.
Mansfield Park – An okay book by a great writer. Austen’s social commentary is razor sharp, part of the narrator’s passivity is her class status and the casual cruelty of the gentry, but this does not make for a great protagonist with Fanny, and the same goes for her romantic interest Edmund. Both are at worst conservative and simpering, products of their age. Meanwhile the Crawford’s adultery and flirtations now appear to be mild transgressions in the 21st century. I’d put it this way: I’d want to go to a party with Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy. I would not want to be in the company of Fanny Price and Edmund Bertram to watch them weep over moral sanctity.
It, by Stephen King — the Boomeriest book of all time, everyone goes on about the child gangbang but the real thing to dig into is how King wrote it and his editors okayed it and millions of people bought it and Time Magazine gave it a cover story, this is as mainstream a book as you can find and that’s sitting at the end of it. So what does that say about the mainstream? And the book partially answers this, as Derry is the poisoned well the waters flow from and Derry is a conglomeration of American sins, in particular violent racism (and to a lesser degree homophobia) — Derry prospers because of these sins and King says at the end that it must be destroyed for them (although he would walk this back in subsequent books, more Boomerism). The ending of this remains quite sad, It itself is in some ways a child in its solipsism and King writes very movingly of how the Losers become more than their individual parts, but they wind up forgetting this and drifting apart again. But the coming together still matters. The standout scene I’d forgotten was Eddie’s confrontation with his mom (another one of King’s overbearing mothers), nothing supernatural and in fact based in cold hard facts that neither of them have been willing to accept, it’s great stuff that builds to an adult action in order to retain childhood friends. I think the book’s structure of alternating and merging child and adult Losers does something similar throughout the novel (and I’ve never seen the movies and really have no interest if they can’t get this basic thing right), creating tension between these two states that aren’t as far apart as they may seem sometimes. This is how you write a mid-life crisis.
Also Boomer-y: the big shock reveal that IT/Pennywise is female, whoa, gender bending (hey, at least King trolled Rowling about TERFs on Twitter, people can change). And yes, the movies make a crucial mistake in not intercutting the narratives, the tension and poignancy that results is powerful stuff. IT Part Two is also one of the worst blockbusters I’ve ever seen, the drop in quality is staggering and it’s not like Part One was a masterpiece. Skarsgaard at least has an interesting interpretation of Pennywise, a demon clown who’s a bit tired of his disguise and wants to get down to the monstrous deeds.
Yeah, IT being female and more to the point pregnant is pretty relevant storywise (evil perpetuating itself) and thematically (more kids!); the reveal is a shock out of the 50s/60s entertainment that King drew so much from.
Doesn’t the more recent movie age the kids up as well? There are many practical reasons to do this but 11-year-olds are not teens, and the “kid” aspect of the book is profound in a way it would not be for adolescents (who King has deep experience writing in their own right).
I THINK they’re all around 11 or 12 still, isn’t Bev a year older or something in the book?
Bob Dylan: On A Couch & Fifty Cents A Day, Peter K McKenzie
This is a Bob Dylan book with a difference: it’s a self-published memoir from a man who is friends with Bob Dylan. Specifically, Dylan stayed with McKenzie’s parents when he landed in New York and became almost an adopted son to them. This is as much about McKenzie’s parents as it is Dylan; as much as he’s an iconic figure that McKenzie openly idolises, he was also dearly influenced by a kind, smart pair of people. If you’re in it for Dylan specifically, there’s a lot to like here; it’s a side of him you don’t really get anywhere else, where he becomes – and McKenzie explicitly says this repeatedly – a big brother figure. McKenzie views him with a starry-eyed hero worship and Dylan is never anything but kind to him, even when McKenzie shows up on his door post-motorcycle-accident to hang out.
The book is naive in a lot of ways – not in content, but in style. Like most amateur writers, McKenzie writes very short chapters, helped by the fact that it’s one anecdote after another. This is not to say McKenzie is stupid in any way – if he made this whole thing up, that would actually be more impressive, because he easily conveys both Dylan’s peculiar way of talking and the way he seems to have dropped in from another world (his first meeting with Dylan is incredibly cinematic and also conveys how he could be kind of a dick, when his first action is to steal McKenzie’s sandwich).
If there’s specific Dylanology to take from this, it’s seeing Bob Dylan in a relaxed and casual setting and then being surprised to find he’s still wearing a mask; Dylan initially introduces himself with his famous New York lies about his upbringing, and the McKenzies know he’s lying but also know these lies are necessary to his work (and eventually he does spill the beans), and the climactic anecdote is a mini-concert Dylan throws for his friends where one guy keeps trying to berate him into playing a pair of songs, and Dylan does everything but reveal what he’s really thinking.
There’s also the pleasure of watching him soak up information about people; McKenzie describes, of course, his famous ability to soak up things like a sponge, but he also describes the relationship between Dylan and his parents, as he essentially interviews them, soaking up their lessons and kindness.
The Infinite and the Divine, Robert Rath
This is a Warhammer 40k tie-in novel that came strongly recommended from philosophically diverse groups of Warhammer fans; I read it mainly because one of my DMs is a massive fan, and I was curious about its influence on him (just as much as I’m curious about the influence upon any of my creative friends), more on this later. I was actually surprised how much this felt like something I would write; the central hook of the rivalry between two people is very much my thing, the way the necrons tend to talk to each other is very reminiscent of the way I write my alien characters in my scifi, and even the basic style reminds me of my own approach to writing criticism (right down to the wry sense of humour).
The central relationship reminds me of lots of other things I like; when at each other’s throats, they remind me of G’Kar and Londo, or Vic Mackey and David Aceveda; when forced to work together, they remind me of Light Yagami and L, or Mason and Dixon when they’re really getting along. One of the central bits of characterisation is that they’re actually very similar once you get past the philosophical differences; both are arrogant to the point of not really seeing the point of other people, totally invested in their own work (where they start to resemble Nolan’s take on Batman and The Joker). The ironic thing about the cosmic scope of their actions and timelines is that the actual emotions are the pettiest and most banal, and the centuries-long gaps in time mean less to the characters than the months between seasons of The Shield.
What’s fascinating is reading this knowing it was important to my friend, and I set out to be able to empathise with him better. I believe I have succeeded; not just little turns of phrase, but little turns of phrase that seem to capture his whole worldview, and he identified with these characters to the bone (or he would, if the characters had bones). What makes this strange was seeing how the characters and even narrative would criticise his views, articulating criticisms that I have thought but not said, and I’m struck by how nothing I could say has not been said to him already by a work he loves. As far as I’m concerned, this frees me from having to say it.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie
It’s always funny to go to a classic for the first time and see it be self-consciously clever; this was the book that made Christie’s reputation, and you can see why. It’s a standard detective story that pushes itself into a new direction that detective stories could always have gone; if it has a supremely confident move, it’s in making the genre savvy character a secondary one rather than the true assistant. It’s not as good as the later Christies I’ve read; the characters and their world are a little less interesting than they should be, for one thing. That said, the final chapter is incredible.
8 Bit Theater, Strips 0540-0570, Brian Clevinger
There’s been an extended plot of Sarda throwing White Mage into a pocket dimension, only to realise too late that he’s thrown her back to the start of the universe, retroactively screwing up his plan to go back in time and seize control of the universe, putting him alone in the universe and giving him fourteen billion years (and two weeks) to build up a seething rage. We often talk about the fine line between horror and comedy – see the career of Jordan Peele, or, the other way, Stanley Kubrick – and this is a really funny niche example. 8BTM traffics heavily in horror of the fantastic variety; in this case, being alone in the universe for fourteen billion years, although we’ve also had Sarda freezing the entire universe except Black Mage to drag his body through intense pain, and there’s another moment here when Sarda fills BM’s lungs with taffy out of spite. Actually, it’s specifically funny because it’s cosmically awesome but always in service of some very petty emotion, and the contrast between the two is hilarious.
Black Mage distracts Fighter by leaving a note that says ‘There is a map to Swordtown on the other side of this note.”
There’s a great moment where Garland interviews Fighter about his team’s weaknesses, which he readily and (his total trust of Black Mage aside) insightfully reveals their characters. There’s another where BM makes fun of Sarda’s ‘doing magic’ face, which obviously leads the others to make fun of BM.
“It doesn’t bother you that the missions [Sarda sends us on] are undeniably suicidal?” / “They can’t be too suicidal if we keep living through them.”
“I said the theory was sound. I didn’t say it was a good theory.”
Year of the Month update!
Coming in February, we’ll be looking at 1957, including all these movies, albums, books, TV, yadda yadda.
Feb. 2nd: Tristan J. Nankervis: Throne of Blood
Feb. 6th: Gillianren: The Story of Anyburg, USA
Feb. 13th: Gillianren: The Truth About Mother Goose
Feb. 16th: Tristan J. Nankervis: The Incredible Shrinking Man
Feb. 20th: Gillianren: Our Friend the Atom
Feb. 27th: Gillianren: Sleeping Beauty’s Castle
And there’s still time to sign up for January! Here’s some of the movies, albums, books, TV, and games you can write about.
TBD: Ruck Cohlchez: Tim and/or Fables of the Reconstruction
Jan. 9th: Gillian Nelson: Advice on Lice
Jan. 16th: Gillian Nelson: The Wuzzles/The Gummi Bears
Jan. 19th: Tristan J. Nankervis: The Breakfast Club
Jan. 23rd: Gillian Nelson: The Golden Girls
Jan. 29th: Cori Domschot: Jewel of the Nile