1. This weekend sees the release of the comedy I Love You, Man, starring Jason Segel and Paul Rudd. Having been a serious Segel fan since his days on Freaks And Geeks (top-five TV series ever!), I am considerably more excited for his next project – writing and producing the new Muppet movie. An early version of the script leaked this week and sounds very promising. According to AICN, “the movie revolves around The Muppets reuniting after a huge falling out to save The Muppet Studios in Hollywood.” If anyone can do justice to the spirit of Henson, it’s them.
2. You may have heard about the findings of the American Religious Identification Survey, which was released last week. The big news seems to be a significant rise in the number of Americans claiming no religious identity – 15% of those polled, nearly double the percentage from 1990. And New England has officially surpassed the West Coast as the least believing region of the country. Statistics are statistics are statistics, but the trend is undeniable (the survey’s chief investigator describes it as the “erosion of the religious middle ground”). I think Aaron’s post from last week spells out our feelings on the matter.
3. As part of our ongoing eulogy for David Foster Wallace, here’s one of his final stories for The New Yorker, entitled “Good People”. It’s a powerful sketch of two Christians struggling with an unwanted pregnancy. It is also an excerpt from his final, unfinished manuscript.
4. An astonishing blog post by Stanley Fish over on the NY Times website about the financial crisis, comparing Christian doctrine with economic theory. Fish quotes George Herbert’s poem Redemption at length, explaining, “The rich Lord has made himself low and wiped away the sinner’s ever-growing debt with his blood”. Wowza.
4a. The series finale of Battlestar Galactica airs tonight, and many of us will mourn its passing. That is, until Caprica premieres in April. The reviews for the finale are very positive thus far, though I frankly don’t see how it could possibly live up to my expectations. So say we all?
4b. We try not to take many overt political stands here at Mockingbird, but we just couldn’t live with ourselves if we didn’t join our good friend Jamin Warren over at the Wall Street Journal in speaking out against Zombie racism.
4c. THE CONFERENCE! T-minus 6 days and counting…
COMMENTS
7 responses to “4.5 Links 4 The Weekend”
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Thanks to Dave for placing “Freaks and Geeks” in one of the 5 best TV shows ever. I love you, man. (No, not the movie, I really mean that.) F and G is wonderful.
Another recent Segel movie was “Forgetting Sarah Marshal”, which was also awesome.
Thanks finally for the post about Zombie Racism. I really am a lot happier than I was ten minutes ago. And the comments following the gawker.com ZR piece are really good too.
From a commenter at Gawker.com:
I shot a zombie this very morning. He was sitting on a milk crate
outside my office, and he said, “Hey, pal, can you help me out. I just
wanna get some breakfast . . .” and then BLAMMO ’cause I knew that
sentence was going to end with “of your brains.”
Dave, thanks for these links. . . great analysis.
I agree Cliff. . . but I still have that “post-Camp” depression after seeing the finale—I need to get out more, clearly:)
I share that depression, and just can’t seem to get out of the hole.
I’m still mourning the end of Star Trek – Enterprise 4 years ago. I sincerely hope your Battlestar Galactica finale is better than the way they ended Enterprise…
Cliff- I totally take your point about Balthar. It was a little cheap. But all in all, I felt that it was a surprisingly satisfying conclusion. The theological stuff was predictably ambiguous, but I was glad that they seemed to affirm something positive there. And the battle scenes were awesome! (clearly they were saving the season’s entire effects budget for that first hour…). Without giving things away to those who haven’t seen it, I was glad that agreement with Cavil didn’t work out. A cool twist.
What would you have like to have seen that you didn’t? I hate to say it, but I sort of thought there should have been more casualties. (Helo?!)