This is a neat concept, and the Nick Drake one in particular is very pretty. Sure, it doesn't seem particularly useful, and I suppose the sculptures will suddenly become next season's must-have item for rich d-bags who like to pretend they have good taste, but I still think it's kind of cool.

Thanks; I'll look into that. I hope you feel better soon!

Friday: Watched Vikings first thing in the morning. This latest episode was fantastic, and a good showcase for what this series does best— kinetic battle sequences interspersed with telling character moments. Then I went and saw Lost River, which was significantly better than I expected. It is very obviously a first…

Upvoted for Vikings; I loved this episode (although, my god, everything just ground to a halt in the 30 seconds Porunn was on screen). I haven't read any of the real history (other than knowing that Ivar the Boneless existed)— I'm treating it largely as pure fiction, which makes the anachronisms easier to take.…

Most of the things I have to say about this episode have been covered in other comments (this is what I get for showing up so late to the discussion, I guess). Still, I just wanted to say that the scene(s) at Bjorn's bedside were perfect— when Lagertha, Ragnar, and Rollo gathered all around him, and later, when Ragnar…

I see where you're coming from (though I think the 2 episodes prior to this one were among the strongest the show has ever done). The thing that saves it for me is that we're still getting to see an alien perspective— most shows about medieval England/Europe put the Anglo-centric, knights-and-ladies, King Arthur lens…

I would agree that the Paris court scenes fell flat, but I think there's some potential there. And I enjoyed the Aethelwulf and Kwenthrith business more than I expected; the first scene, when he's waiting in the anteroom and all the birds get frenzied, was great. And Amy Bailey's performance continues to grow on me.…

I've seen clips of the Branagh version but never watched the whole thing; I'll have to check it out.

Yeah, I really enjoyed their chemistry. Of course, the material they have to work with is fantastic— Beatrice and Benedick's dialogue is some of the best Shakespeare ever wrote, and the arc of their relationship feels really natural— but those two sold it 100%.

I must shamefully admit to never having watched Angel, though I have seen most of Buffy and all of Firefly. I will remedy this someday.

Ran is glorious. I watched it in a college class a few years ago. That final frame…
I need to re-watch TTOI; I burned my way through it when series 4 premiered and loved every minute, but I'd like to go back through and study the nuances of it a bit more.

Friday: Watched the latest Vikings episode. I won't say much more to avoid spoilers, but I will say that so far, this season has been terrific. These last two episodes alone have been some of the best of the series.

The friendship between Athelstan and Ragnar has always been one of my favorite elements of the show, so I'm stunned to see it end this way. At least Athelstan was in a state of grace? And the expression on Floki's face after he'd done the deed was somewhat ambiguous; I actually thought for a second that maybe he'd…

Bob Dylan's "Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" from his 1965 performance at the Manchester Free Trade Hall. The earnestness of his delivery is just devastating.

The version of "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore" from Gunfight at Carnegie Hall.

I remember drunkenly belting out this and "Gloria" at a friend's birthday party during my junior year of college. There were a lot of dramatic hand and arm gestures involved (as well as a few rounds of bad tequila and some bright red lipstick…)

Yeah, there was this undercurrent of "Ooh, aren't we *hip* and *enlightened* for coming to see this!" I mean who knows, some of them may very well have been the real deal back in their day, but it seemed really incongruous.

Friday night, I went to a staged reading of Shakespeare's Winter's Tale ("exit, pursued by a bear", etc.). One of the actors went to high school with my older brother, so I was curious to see him perform. What an odd piece of work that play is— I can think of few others with such a dramatic shift in tone. Still, it…

Technically, I've already read it cover-to-cover, but I'm still "exploring" Suspended Sentences by Patrick Modiano (translated by Mark Polizzotti). Sometimes when a writer feints and dances around what's actually happening, I get annoyed, but since these stories are largely concerned with the way our memories and…

I read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter for the first time this summer and absolutely loved it. It stayed with me in a way that few other books have. I hope you enjoy it.