The guy behind LiarTownUSA is just a really wonderful sort of crazy.
Yearly Archives: 2015
Behind the scenes on the greatest TV show EVER
A sound editor who worked on the Wire did an AMA over at Reddit; Kottke has highlights but this is my favorite:
McNulty (Dom West) came in often and was awesome, as well. His accent showed most often when the character was drunk or angry. Oddly, the name “Stringer Bell” tripped him up a lot. “Stringa” and then a very over-enunciated end to “Bell-eh.” Also, the words “fuck” and “cunt” came out “feck” and “cahnt” and the only way to break him of it was to stand right in front of him (so he could watch the mouth shape) and say the word over and over again. So a Dom West ADR session often went like this:
Me (with Dom staring at my mouth): Cunt. Cunt. Cunt.
Dom: Cahnt. Shit, do it again, please.
Me: Cunt. Cunt. Cunt.
Dom: Cunt. Cunt. OK, let’s record…
(three beeps, the line starts and):
Dom: …cahnt. Feck! Say it again.
Me: Cunt….
Use an iPhone? You should set this up.
The new Health app (iOS 8 only) contains a feature that will allow your phone to share medical data with first responders in the event of an accident. It’s not some high-tech Bluetooth thingy; it’s just as simple as filling in a few fields (emergency contacts, allergies, medical conditions, etc.) and flipping the bit to turn it on.
Once it’s set, the data can be accessed from your phone’s lock screen by pressing Emergency and then Medical ID.
I dunno if I’ll bother with any of the rest of the Health features, but this is a nice addition.
Dept. of Good Things On TV
As a consequence of my injury back before Thanksgiving, Mrs Heathen and I spent a little time between then and Chrismas trying to keep me on the first floor of Heathen World HQ (and plan we’ve subsequently abandoned, because NO). During our evenings there, we were limited in televised entertainment, as we remain (apparently) the last remaining single television home in Christendom.
This limited us to things would could watch for free on NetFlix or Hulu, or on a pay-per-episode basis via iTunes. I don’t remember where I got the tip, but somehow I became aware of a show from the BBC, currently available on NetFlix, called The Fall. It stars Gillian Anderson (who apparently keeps a portrait in her attic) as an investigator in Belfast who in relatively short order finds herself pursuing a serial killer.
(Unlike lots of transatlantic casting, this works, largely because Anderson’s accent is spot on. The reason, apparently, is that she lived in the UK until she was 11, and can code-switch from American to British on the fly. Neat trick.)
Anyway, the first season is there, and you should watch it — and soon, so that you’ll be ready to enjoy season 2 when it arrives on Netflix on January 16.
Wired has a nice piece up about the show which you may enjoy; it’s spoiler-free, mostly (a last-episode plot detail drops late in the piece, but it’s not a major thing).
Books of 2014, #21-26: The Rest
Yeah, well, I’m behind:
- #21: The Getaway God, by Richard Kadrey: Big fun, and closes out the first major arc for Kadrey’s Sandman Slim character.
- #22: The Ways of the Dead, by Neely Tucker: Solid thriller debut from a friend of a friend.
- #23: Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel: End-of-the-world tale (plague subtype), sorta, but as much about life years after as it is about life during, which makes it more interesting than most such tales. It’s solid work, but I absolutely will ding her for a few clangy bits, most notably her apparent need to remind us, over and over, that gasoline has a short, finite shelf life. It felt like she’d learned this, had it surprise her, and then felt the need to work it into the text as many times as possible. Which is weird, right?
- #24: Inherent Vice, by Thomas Pynchon. Basically, I took another run at it because the movie is almost here. I think my takeaway is that Pynchon is for other people. Each sentence has a high chance of being an intricate and clever thing of beauty, but it seems he gets distracted building those things and forgets to complete the story.
- #25: Personal, by Lee Child. Sue me; I’ve been laid up. At this point, I must confess that I’m completely caught up on Reacher.
- #26: The Peripheral, by William Gibson. Probably the best and most interesting book I read last year. But it’s Gibson, so this isn’t a surprise. I might get around to writing more about this later, but who can tell?
I finished the Gibson on the 11th, and just finished another book yesterday — but the timing suggests a 27th book for 2014, since I didn’t buy yesterday’s book until the 21st. However, I’ll be damned if I can tell you what it was. Clearly, it was memorable.
At least I’m in good company
Bono is apparently more crap at riding a bike than I am:
On the day of my 50th birthday I received an injury because I was over indulging in exercise boxing and cycling, which was itself an overcompensation for overindulging on alcohol coming up to the big birthday. I promised myself I would be more mindful of my limits, but just four years on, it happened again – a massive injury I can’t blame on anyone but myself, mainly because I blanked out on impact and have no memory of how I ended up in New York Presbyterian with my humerus bone sticking through my leather jacket. Very punk rock as injuries go.
[…]
Recovery has been more difficult than I thought… As I write this, it is not clear that I will ever play guitar again. The band have reminded me that neither they nor Western civilization are depending on this.
The whole thing is on an alphabet riff; scroll down for X for the inevitable X-ray of his repaired elbow, which looks even scarier than my repaired femur.
On Harkaway’s comic critique of capitalism in *Gone-Away World*
This is absurdly spot on, and you should read it. You don’t need to have read the book first; it includes all the context you need.
“You saw something horrifying at the circus.”
How To Tell If You’re in a MFA Workshop Story is just a leetle close to my academic roots. It is, of course, hilarious.