Nov 15, 2021

Etcetera #31: Macaques, Records, Dad Thrillers

Matthew Culnane

Hello. Here we are again—the new schedule, such that it is, seems to be working better. I write this from my repose after having received a COVID booster yesterday. Get yours as soon as you’re eligible.

This issue is nature-heavy, with stories about ice, primates, trees and sharks. Sadly I couldn’t find anything that combines all four, the closest being these three.

See you next time.

Where is the Mystery Monkey of Tampa Bay?

The mystery primate—a rhesus macaque—escaped from captivity. Twice. This is an excellent story from Stephanie Hayes, well researched and written, that delves into Florida’s under-regulated monkey kingdom in an attempt to find him again.

www.tampabay.com

Life of the Record

Life of the Record is a podcast series that sits somewhere alongside the 33⅓ series of books and Song Exploder. Each episode is an in-depth discussion of an album with the people who made it.

A couple of months ago I listened to the episode about Elliott Smith’s self-titled album, and it was great. More recently I’ve listened to three episodes about albums I love: Heatmiser’s Mic City Sons, Grandaddy’s The Sophtware Slump, and Brendan Benson’s One Mississippi. I recommend them all.

lifeoftherecord.com

'90s Dad Thrillers: a List

Max Read on the best dad thrillers, a popular genre of the ‘90s:

The Dad Thriller was a genre of movie made by Hollywood studios in the 1990s, marketed mainly to men and presented sincerely if not always accurately as intelligent and sophisticated entertainment. The Dad Thriller draws on courtroom dramas, spy movies, the conspiracy thrillers of the 1970s, and the action blockbusters of the 1980s. The vibe is “action movie you might be able to convince your wife to see because it’s sort of about politics, science, and/or legal stuff.”

maxread.substack.com

A Very Big Little Country

Katherine LaGrave on Westartica, a micronation claimed and founded in 2001 by Travis McHenry that covers 1.6m sq km of Western Antarctica. Like many other micronations, it started as something of a gag, but since 2018 it has been focused on fighting climate change. See also: Ian Urbina on the Principality of Sealand, the micronation a few km off the coast of Suffolk.

www.afar.com

Etc.

I’m in the middle of my biennial obsession with Sonic Youth’s Sister. Here are two interesting renditions of ‘Schizophrenia’: a triple acoustic instrumental guitar cover by Brian Østergaard Ravnholt, and a version on board a train by Thurston Moore and John Moloney.
A podcast that examines the symbol of the guillotine, how it’s changed over time, and how it reveals a split in the way we think about democracy.
Two pieces on arboreal displacement, a term I just made up: Lauren Markham asks if we can move our forests to help save them from the climate emergency, while Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder and Jeremy Seifert wonder what is at stake as the forests change and migrate around us.
Claudia Geib on the process of rescuing unborn sharks from recently caught females.
You probably already know about a lot of the history of tobacco marketing. This podcast taught me about how menthol cigarettes were disproportionately marketed to black Americans.
Zach Gage has (re-)released SpellTower+ on Apple Arcade and it’s taking up a lot of my time. Think of a word search crossed with Tetris.

Videos

This is the first in a two-part series about Wes Anderson’s use of typography. I’ve already said it here several times but there are far too many videos about Anderson that are extremely shallow, presumably created because there is a large audience who will find and watch them and generate ad revenue for the creators. This isn’t one of those. It’s from Linus Boman, who knows his stuff:

Futura & Wes Anderson: a love story

I hadn’t realised this was a debate. It’s clearly John:

The Vocal Debate Over A Day in the Life's "Ahhhs"

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Matthew Culnane @coldbrain

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