Reply All #158: The Best Podcast Episode Ever

This post is to tell you to listen to one episode of a podcast. Just one hour-long episode, that’s it. I had heard about this episode yesterday on Twitter via NPR's Linda Holmes (who subsequently recommended it on today's Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter) and then it showed up in today's New York Times Morning Briefing email. So I downloaded it at 8 am. I started listening to it while walking to work, and by the time I was halfway through, I had texted several friends to tell them to start listening immediately. I got to work and couldn’t finish since I had a bunch of meetings, but the second I was free, I gobbled up the rest, giggling like a loon at my desk. And when I finished, I stood up and told my colleague sitting in front of me to seek this episode out. I was utterly besotted.

The episode is called The Case of the Missing Hit and it is the 158th episode of the popular Reply All podcast from Gimlet Media. I have never listened to Reply All before and I don’t know if I will again, because this episode has set such an impossibly high bar for the world of podcasting that I feel like I might just have to call it quits after this. OK fine, that's a lie, and I will probably now listen to Reply All's entire back catalog. But it is really not hyperbolic to say this podcast episode completely turned my day/week/month/life around.

So what is The Case of the Missing Hit about? It is the tale of a man in Los Angeles who suddenly remembers this pop song he heard a lot on the radio in the 90s when he was living in Flagstaff, Arizona. He remembers the flute solo at the beginning, he remembers numerous lyrics that bear a resemblance to One Week by the Barenaked Ladies, but accompanied by a rousing chorus more reminiscent of U2. But try as he might, he simply cannot find this song on the Internet. He keeps Googling lyrics as he remembers them but Google stubbornly refuses to return a single sensible hit. This song doesn’t seem to exist and so this man turns to PJ Vogt from the Reply All podcast to help him solve the mystery.

Listen to this episode. Follow the journey as these two men go down an ever-deepening rabbit hole and consult an increasingly ridiculous roster of people to see if anyone has heard of this song. There are so many incredible twists and turns and it genuinely turns into the most compelling mystery you’ve ever encountered. Sherlock Holmes couldn’t have done it better. It is a wonderfully silly but miraculous story with an astonishing payoff. And it is a feat of remarkable storytelling that should be stored in posterity for future generations.

Technology is responsible for a lot of strife in our world but in The Case of the Missing Hit, we have the clearest distillation of what the Internet can help us achieve. Did you think the oral tradition died with Homer? Well, it's back baby. And I will be saving this episode on my phone and listening to it every time I need to restore my faith in humanity. My God, it was so good. 

Orange Is the New Black: Welcome to Prison

Women often have a better chance to portray complex and engaging characters on television than film. While summer movies have been dominated by male superheroes and incompetent grown-ups, summer television offers a welcome respite for those of us with two X chromosomes. After the success of House of Cards and Arrested Development, Netflix is continuing its hot streak with the new comedy-drama series, Orange Is the New Black, which is based on a memoir by Piper Kerman. Set in a women's prison, the first season delivers 13 episodes featuring nuanced and elegant performances from its leading ladies.

The show opens with Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling) preparing to surrender herself to Litchfield, NY's women's federal prison. Piper is a Smith alum who currently runs an artisanal soap company with her best friend - this is not the best preparation for prison life. She has been sentenced to 15 months for transporting drug money across international borders ten years ago, which she did because she was in a relationship with a woman who worked for a drug cartel. In the first episode, Piper is introduced to the prison system and a cast of motley characters whose stories we will gradually get to know over the course of the season. Most importantly, one of her fellow inmates is Alex Vause (Laura Prepon), the woman who had Piper carting drug money all those years ago.

Although the series focuses on Piper as she navigates the prison system and deals with both real and imagined dangers, the supporting characters all have their chance to shine. Each episode weaves in the story of a fellow inmate and uses flashbacks to give us a sense of these characters and how they ended up in prison. It's very reminiscent of the flashbacks in Lost, but this show is much more tightly scripted and the writers know how to infuse these moments with insight and genuine surprise. Laverne Cox delivers an amazing performance as Sophia Burset, a transgender African-American woman who is a former fireman, while Kate Mulgrew is vastly entertaining as "Red," the Russian cook who has a tough exterior but takes care of the drug addicts who end up in the prison. The inmates' stories are endlessly fascinating and the show is careful to paint each woman in shades of grey rather than black and white. It isn't poor naive Piper against a group of hard-bitten criminals. Instead, everyone in there is a victim of circumstance or just bad luck, and they all deserve equal amounts of empathy.

The show effectively deals with the themes of sexuality and race, topics that are always brought to the forefront when dealing with prison. The prisoners divide themselves up according to race, but insist that what they're doing is "tribal, not racist." There's plenty of lesbian activity going on, but it is dealt with very matter-of-factly, and the fluidity of sexuality is constantly acknowledged. Piper's fiance, Larry (Jason Biggs), is worried that she might restart her relationship with Alex now that they're together in prison, but you'll have to watch and see if his fears are unfounded. 

Orange Is the New Black features a darkly comic narrative told by incredible actresses who are delivering performances of a lifetime. The men of the show, who play the prison guards, seem a lot more one-dimensional and predictable, but that's my only quibble. This is a show designed for binge-watching, so log on to Netflix and get acquainted with the inmates of Litchfield. 

Arrested Development: The Bluths are Back!

Memorial Day Weekend is supposed to signal the arrival of summer. People flock outdoors en masse to frolic on the beach and get a tan. However, for fans of Arrested Development, this was a weekend to stay indoors, log on to Netflix, and watch 15 brand new episodes of this brilliant show, which had been resurrected from the dead. It was like Easter for TV lovers.

Some brief history for the uninitiated: Arrested Development ran on Fox from 2003 to 2006 for 53 episodes before being unceremoniously cancelled (like all great TV that has the misfortune of being on Fox). The show suffered from poor ratings, but was a critical darling that already had a cult following. That following only grew after cancellation and the show has lived on through DVD sales and online streaming. There were constant rumors of an Arrested Development movie that were shot down in rapid succession, but last year, creator Mitchell Hurwitz announced that he had finally wrangled the enormous cast together and they had a plan. He was going to make a brand new 15-episode season of the show, to be followed by a movie that would wrap everything up once and for all. Which brings us to May 26th, 2013, when all 15 episodes were released on Netflix and the long wait was over.

The show tells the story of various members of the Bluth family, a highly dysfunctional and bizarre group of people. It has been seven years since we last saw them, but the new season kicks off effortlessly, catching us up with what these characters have been up to since the events of the last episode and launching into brand new schemes and intrigues that are as confusing and hysterical as only the Bluths could make them. There's a big government project to build a wall along the border of the US and Mexico, political shenanigans between Lucille 2 (Liza Minnelli) and Herbert Love (a Herman Cain-esque figure played by Terry Crews), George-Michael's internet start-up, and of course, Michael's attempts to make a movie about his family, which will undoubtedly lead to the actual Arrested Development movie.

Each episode focuses on one member of the family over a period of time, so it is only when you watch the season as a whole that you fully understand what was going on in every episode. For example, the first episode ends with Michael finding an ostrich running amok in his mother's penthouse. How did that ostrich get there? You're going to have to wait till Lindsay's episodes to find out. Arrested Development was always a self-referential show filled with inside jokes and meta-commentary, and this narrative structure is the perfect way to build up the jokes and get fans to re-watch episodes to fit all the pieces together. There are several guest stars designed to delight the fans and recall some of the show's most iconic weirdos. And of course, the omniscient narrator (voiced by Ron Howard) has plenty of surprises and snarky insight up his sleeve.

The fourth season of Arrested Development is an utter joy and the show hasn't missed a beat since its cancellation in 2006. The narrative structure doesn't allow all of the cast to interact and play off each other as much as I would like, but the sheer complexity and density of comic genius in every episode is awe-inspiring. I don't know if the next step is a movie or whether Netflix will commission more seasons, but either way, I'm in. This season has proved that the show still has incredible stories to tell, and I don't want to wait another seven years for more. 

Burning Love: The Bachelor Gets Hosed

Burning Love, starring Ken Marino and created by his wife Erica Oyama, is a hilarious send-up of The Bachelor, the reality show where a man attempts to find a bride amongst a bevy of eligible women (most of them dental hygienists) whilst everyone pretends that this is a perfectly acceptable means to finding the love of your life. I must confess, I've never watched The Bachelor or any other reality dating show, but I would happily watch Burning Love again and again.

Burning Love is a web series and each episode is about ten minutes long, but you can also watch the first season on E! on Monday nights. That season focused on Mark Orlando (Marino), a fireman who is looking for love, and in the tradition of all great Bachelors, is completely ill-equipped to find it. The contestants vying for his affections are a who's who of hilarious actresses and comediennes, including Kristen Bell (who Marino knows well from Veronica Mars and Party Down), Malin Akerman, Natasha Leggero, Ken Jeong (yes, he's a contestant for a short while), and others, including cameos from some very high-ranking Hollywood types. Adam Scott (also from Party Down), plays Mark's therapist, while Michael Ian Black is the host of the show.

The web series format means each episode is crammed full of comedy gold, poking fun at every imaginable Bachelor tradition. Instead of a "rose ceremony" at the end, where the Bachelor gives a rose to the women he wants to continue on to the next round, Mark presents his ladies with a hose, symbolizing his profession (and something more besides). There is a contestant who is nearly nine months pregnant, who says she is looking for love, ideally before her due date. There's the unfortunately-named Titi, who Mark keeps around mostly for her name, while he gets rid of the blind girl, the super Christian one, and the incredibly old lady (a move he later regrets when he discovers she was very rich and likely to die soon). There are emotional breakdowns, hysterical pool parties, ridiculous Jacuzzi dates, and a constant stream of satirical commentary that makes this one of the funniest shows around.

One of Burning Love's greatest achievements is that, absurd as it is, it is not so far from the truth. The Bachelor would be exactly like this show if it just owned up to the fact that its contestants have less than pure motives, and the whole premise is a thoroughly immature and laughable attempt at matchmaking. Burning Love beautifully tears apart the facade of reality show dating and is well worth repeat viewing. The second season flips things around with Julie Gristlewhite (June Diane Raphael), a contestant who was rejected by Mark, returning to become the show's Bachelorette and select a husband from the likes of Adam Scott, Ryan Hansen, and Paul Scheer. So head on over to Yahoo! where you can catch her daring exploits, or check the listings on E! where you can discover if Mark Orlando ever manages to find the object of his burning love. 

Coursera: Education For All

As someone who loved school and reveled in a liberal arts education, I was overjoyed to discover Coursera. It is a website that offers online college courses on a slew of topics, all taught by professors from excellent academic institutions across the globe. And the best part is that it's completely free.

If you've ever enjoyed learning just for the sake of learning, or have always yearned to study a particular topic in-depth, chances are you will find something you love on Coursera. The variety of available courses ensures that everyone can find some appealing subject or learn some useful skill. I just completed my first course, a 10-week survey of Greek & Roman Mythology taught by a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and it was a magnificent experience. I had taken a mythology course in college, but as far as I'm concerned, you can never get enough of the classics. This week, I embarked upon two new classes offered by Duke University, one on the philosophy of reason and argument, and another on introductory astronomy. These are subjects I always wanted to take but didn't have time for in college. Thanks to Coursera, I can now spend a few hours every week learning about how to calculate celestial movements or how to analyze an effective argument. If the above subjects seem too esoteric to you, there are plenty of more "practical" courses, like this upcoming one on personal financial planning, that most people would surely benefit from.

Most of these courses don't require any background knowledge at all and just ask for enthusiastic participants who are eager to learn something new. The coursework involves watching lectures, and may include quizzes, problem sets, or essays. The beauty of Coursera is that in these days of escalating higher educations costs, people can now experience world-class education for free and genuinely learn amazing things that broaden their horizons. A small business owner could take an introductory economics class in the comfort of their own home and learn how to run a more efficient business. Or you could take a literature class and finally read some of those classics that were just too difficult to get through on your own.

Currently you can't get college credit for any of these courses, though some courses offer a certificate of completion if you obtain a certain grade. However, beginning in 2013, Coursera will offer some classes that grant college credit upon completion. These courses won't be free (though I'm sure they won't be prohibitively expensive) and the credit won't be valid at all academic insitutions. Ironically, the Ivy League institutions that offer so many of these classes are most likely to not accept college credit obtained on Coursera. It will be interesting to see how things change and develop over time. No one can deny the quality of the lectures that are currently available and people are just going to be clamoring for more.

So go forth to Coursera. There's a whole universe of knowledge to explore.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: Whimsical Villainy

It is no secret that I love Joss Whedon, writer of genius TV fare like Firefly, Buffy, and Dollhouse, or genius movies like Cabin in the Woods and The Avengers. Well, during the 2007-2008 Writers Guild Strike, Whedon concocted a weird and wonderful little project called Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. And on Tuesday night, you'll have the chance to watch the whole thing (it's only 45 minutes) on the CW Network.

Dr. Horrible was a web series consisting of 3 acts or episodes that were released online for free on certain dates and later sold on iTunes (where they are still available). The hero, Dr. Horrible, is actually a villain. Played by the superb Neil Patrick Harris, he is an evil scientist who is trying to gain access into an elite group of supervillains known as the Evil League of Evil. He records all his thoughts and plans on a video blog, and these musings often take musical form. Ergo the title. His nemesis is Captain Hammer (the charming Nathan Fillion), who is a brawny braggart who always manages to foil Dr. Horrible's villainy and make him look ridiculous. However, Dr. Horrible has come up with a new plan involving a freeze-ray that will hopefully wreak havoc and get him the supervillain status he so craves.

However, a complication arises in the form of Penny (Felicia Day, from the amazing web series, The Guild), a girl that Dr. Horrible has fallen in love with. She catches Captain Hammer's eye, leading to an escalation of tensions among the two rivals. Dr. Horrible angrily sings about his dashed hopes, Captain Hammer masterfully roars about how great he is, while Penny happily warbles away about her simple life, unaware of all the trouble that is brewing.

The soundtrack is amazing, with catchy songs that will worm their way into your brain and stay there. And if that wasn't enough, the team behind the series created a behind-the-scenes commentary for the DVD release, done entirely in song. It is funny and just as catchy as anything in the actual series. But be warned, as amusing as the premise of Dr. Horrible is, it has a great deal of heart and heartbreak, in trademark Whedon fashion. And in case you forgot, this brilliant story takes place in the same amount of time as a single episode of television.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog caused quite a stir upon its release because it made more than enough money to justify this unusual business model. If the show gets a ratings boost on the CW on Tuesday night, it will be further justification that this online model can be a source of enormous creativity and high-quality television. So tune in for this piece of Whedon magic and prepare yourselves for an unusual and spectacular treat. A sequel is already in the works and you need to get on board.

The Hobbit on Facebook: For the Fan Who Cannot Wait

As a massive Lord of the Rings fan, I was inexpressibly delighted when Peter Jackson announced that he would be returning to Middle Earth to film The Hobbit, the book that serves as the prequel to The Lord of the Rings. Once casting announcements were made, my excitement continued to grow: Martin Freeman (Watson in BBC's excellent Sherlock) is playing the eponymous hobbit Bilbo Baggins, Richard Armitage (from the BBC's equally excellent adaptation of North & South) is dwarf-king Thorin Oakenshield, Luke Evans is the heroic Bard, and Lee Pace is Thranduil, elf-king of Mirkwood and father of Legolas. Of course, most of the original LOTR actors are also reprising their roles, including Andy Serkis as Gollum and Ian McKellen as Gandalf. Throw in a dozen more dwarves and let the high-jinx ensue.

The movie started production in March 2011, and Part 1 is scheduled to release in December of this year. Peter Jackson just announced that instead of two parts, The Hobbit is going to follow in the footsteps of LOTR and be a trilogy. This is somewhat worrisome, because I was hard-pressed to understand how they were turning this rather slim novel into two movies, let alone three. But as the motto of any rabid fan should be, "Our not to reason why, ours but to do and die," I am certain I will love every part of this movie and am merely dying of impatience. Enter, The Hobbit Facebook page.

The page was started last year in obvious recognition of the legions of fans who simply cannot sit back and await the final product. When making LOTR, Peter Jackson fully embraced the fan base and was constantly supplying us with snippets of information about how filming was progressing and offering up tantalizing set photos and videos. Now with The Hobbit, he has filmed a series of production videos that give us a glimpse into Stone Street Studios in Wellington and the epic undertaking to bring Middle Earth back to life. The first video was released in April 2011 and each subsequent release has introduced us to the dedicated people behind-the-scenes who are involved in putting this project together. Set decorators, hair and make-up artists, caterers, costume designers, prosthetics experts, linguists, stuntmen, calligraphers - it's astonishing how many people are working around the clock to get this movie made. And of course, there are the actors themselves, prancing around on set in their giant hobbit feet or intricate dwarf beards and having the time of their lives.

These videos serve as a reminder of how amazing The Lord of the Rings trilogy was in its attention to detail and The Hobbit looks all set to follow in its footsteps. The final production video was released last month and revealed bits of the Comic Con panel as well as the final days of principal shooting in Wellington. Now we move on to post-production, and although the wait to December seems interminable, I have no doubt Jackson will keep us entertained with more videos and photos that make the wait less dreary. If you weren't excited before, you should watch these videos and catch the Hobbit fever, because it's time we headed back to Middle Earth.

  

Pop Culture Happy Hour: A Podcast For Anyone

There are many reason to be thankful when Friday rolls around, but one of my chief reasons is that it is the day a new episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour is released. Hosted by Linda Holmes, who writes the fantastic pop culture blog Monkey See over at NPR, the show is a merry forty minutes of pop culture analysis, debates, and regrettable television pop quizzes.

Aside from Holmes, the show features Stephen Thompson from NPR Music, arts editor Trey Graham, and Glen Weldon who "writes about books and comic books." If one of these regular participants is missing, the show will deploy producer Mike Katzif or pull in some other delightful NPR person to liven up the proceedings. Apparently NPR is just filled to the brim with people who love movies, television, books, or music and can't wait to offer up witty insights into the ever-expanding world of pop culture.

The show has a relentlessly cheery vibe and if you've had a bad day, all you need is to listen in on an episode and laugh. It is an incredibly informative show, with each member bringing their particular area of expertise to the table and providing an in-depth look at a variety of topics ranging from comic book heroes to Shakespeare to music featured in television and the wonders of German art song (OK, that last one may not have been taken so seriously). But this isn't some reverential podcast that aims to provide an elevated pop culture dissertation every week. Each episode is extremely funny, lively, and devolves into silliness quite rapidly. Truly excellent television is discussed alongside the truly terrible, and sometimes they might not all agree as to which category a show belongs to. Stephen Thompson might have to sit out a discussion of some book as he famously does not read, and occasionally everyone might mock Trey Graham for his high-brow tastes (see: German art song). But at the heart of this show is a group of friends who are just having a lovely chat about stuff that they enjoy and they have graciously allowed the rest of the world to listen in.

One of the nice things about PCHH is that every episode ends with "What's Making You Happy This Week," where they go around the table and offer up some pop culture tidbit or life event that brought them joy that week. It might be a YouTube video, a great episode of television, making some pottery, or a win for the Green Bay Packers, but this segment serves as a reminder to savor simple pleasures. So this Friday, head on over to the NPR Monkey See blog and listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour. It will probably become the thing that's making you happy this week.

Code Year: Time to Enter the 21st Century

Today is Monday, which means I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of my next Code Year lesson in my e-mail inbox. OK, so my life is not that exciting. But my sole purpose today is to convince readers to give Code Year a try and see if they can garner some valuable skills to help them deal with our computer overlords in the future.

I first learned about Code Year via this Slate article by Farhad Manjoo on January 4th. Intrigued, I decided to sign up. Ever since then, I happily click on the link that arrives in my inbox on Monday afternoon and spend a few hours (or on some occasions, a day or two) excitedly or frustratingly learning JavaScript. And that is the essence of Code Year. It is a brilliant idea by the people at Codeacademy, a startup that designs innovative web tutorials, to teach people the basics of programming so that they can get in step with the 21st century. After all, we all use computer programs. Isn't it about time we learnt how they worked?

I am not a computer whiz but I can fix most problems with some assiduous Google searches and the confidence borne out of a lifelong familiarity with computers. But like most people, I have been marvelously content to take programming for granted. When a website asks me to enter in some information or performs a calculation, I have no need to know what code it is using to execute these functions. The end-result is all that matters, the inner workings are a mystery. But now Codeacademy is demystifying those inner workings and giving you the chance to enter the digital age. Through their tutorials, they aim to teach you how to code and make your computer run all those behind-the-scenes programs. Because in this day and age, JavaScript and other computer languages are just as important as English or Mandarin.

I've already professed my love for learning new languages, like when I started learning Welsh. Perhaps it makes sense that Code Year came about at a time when I had just finished my Welsh course and needed a new project. But while Welsh is a fun skill that I will almost never use, programming is a deadly useful skill that is practically a necessity. Ours is a world that is completely run by computers, and knowing how to "talk" to them is quickly becoming an essential skill that could help you in a variety of ways. In my blog post about Say Something in Welsh, I jokingly said that at the very least a knowledge of Welsh would be an interesting factoid on your resume. Well, if you say you know JavaScript, that resume's going to positively sparkle.

Today is the 6th week of Code Year, which means there is plenty of time for you to sign up and get caught up with all the lessons. Some lessons go by in a flash, while others have more of a learning curve, but the tutorials are methodical and wonderful.  They also keep improving every week as the people in charge carefully consider user input and ensure that they review topics as needed. I've enjoyed the lessons tremendously and love the sense of accomplishment I feel when I successfully construct an object, declare a variable, or program a rudimentary blackjack game. I can already talk semi-knowledgeably (or half-assedly if you tend towards sarcasm) about ternary operators, bracket notation, and object-oriented programming, topics that were utterly alien to me in 2011.

By now you have probably given up on a ton of New Year's Resolutions. So why not take up a new resolution that will serve you well in 2012 and head on over to Code Year? It might be the smartest thing you do all year. 

A Letter to Three Wives: Three Leading Ladies Versus One Vamp

Oscar nominations came out today but rather than discuss a recent movie, this post is about a 1949 Oscar winner for Best Directing & Writing. Starring the wonderful trio of Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, and Ann Sothern, A Letter to Three Wives is one of those comic masterpieces that boast powerhouse performances, a tight script packed with whip-smart dialogue, and an improbable but hilarious premise that keeps you guessing till the very end.

The movie opens with the narrator, a woman named Addie Ross who snarkily introduces us to her three so-called "friends," Debra Bishop (Crain), Rita Phipps (Sothern), and Lora Mae Hollingsway (Linda Darnell in a scene-stealing performance as a poor girl trying to make it with a rich man). It's a Saturday morning and the three women are getting ready to volunteer at a children's picnic while their husbands have all begged off with some excuse or the other. When they get to the dock (they have to take a boat to get to the picnic site), Lora Mae reports the news that Addie Ross has disappeared. She rented out her house, grabbed her things, left town overnight, and no one knows why. Just as they are speculating, a messenger arrives with a letter from the missing Addie. Bursting with curiosity, the women tear it open. After some simpering declarations of how much she will miss her three best friends, Addie drops her bombshell. She has run off with one of the three women's husbands, "so that she will always have something to remind her of her three best friends."

The stunned women board their boat and head for the picnic. With no access to a phone, they are forced to wait until the Country Club dance later that night to discover whose husband won't be showing up. As their day progresses we see three different flashbacks that tell us something about each woman's marriage and why she has reason to worry that her husband might be the one who has run off with Addie. And as you see their stories unfold, you become just as impatient as they are to return home and discover who is going to be alone at that dance.

The ending is neatly tied up and is appropriately warm and satisfying, characteristic of the comedies of that era. Writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz won two Oscars for this movie, a feat he repeated the next year for the much more famous All About Eve. He seems to have excelled at directing movies about interesting and clever women and got great performances out of these already great actresses. The actors playing the husbands are also a fine lot, including an unrecognizable Kirk Douglas in a much lighter and comic role than usual. Ultimately this is not the dark Oscar fare we've come to expect, but a much more effervescent and charming film that will keep you entertained for a solid two hours.

This movie was featured as one of The Essentials, a weekly feature every Saturday at 8 pm on Turner Classic Movies. Look for this channel on your cable line-up if you haven't already - it's my go-to whenever I need to indulge in some classic cinema fare. The great thing about old movies is that they're widely available, so if you don't have TCM, you can still check to see if your local library has a copy on hand. And failing that, there's another ingenious option. A lot of these movies were adapted for radio and there are online archives of the original broadcasts. I made a marvelous discovery yesterday: the Screen Guild Theatre broadcast a 30-minute adaptation of this movie with Linda Darnell and Paul Douglas reprising their roles, and you can listen to the whole thing at this link (scroll down to # 342 on the media player). This archive features over 300 adaptations of other masterpieces like The Philadelphia Story, Suspicion, Laura, etc., so if you needed some audio entertainment, you're covered for the foreseeable future.

Many people scoff at old movies and their eyes glaze over at the mere sight of black & white cinema. But lack of color does not equate to lack of sophistication. The actors are stellar, the stories well-crafted, and the scripts are deft and agile. Comedies of this era had to be extra devious and witty to get by all the censors, and the scripts are often packed with double entendres that will make your head spin. If you needed any more evidence that A Letter to Three Wives is a true classic, I offer you incontrovertible proof: the movie was parodied in an episode of The Simpsons entitled, Moe Letter Blues.

I'm not saying all old movies are great. There are plenty of duds among them, just like for every Hugo or The Descendants of our modern age, we get another awful Adam Sandler "comedy". But don't be quick to dismiss all old movies, because there are true gems among them that still deserve to be seen and revered. After all, these movies were winning Oscars long before anyone named Clooney, Scorsese, or Streep came along.

Dead Island: The Trailer That Made Gamers Cry

It is Friday so I felt like writing up a more whimsical post. Ergo, today's post concerns the trailer for the zombie video game, Dead Island. The video is below:

I discovered this trailer in February when it started making the rounds on Twitter. I almost didn't click on the link because who sees the words, "trailer for zombie video game" and thinks that is worth their while? (Well some people do, just not me.) But after multiple people on my Twitter feed had posted links to this trailer with comments like "This is amazing," "Masterpiece!" etc., I thought I might it was worth a shot. And over the next week I watched this trailer more than a dozen times.

First off, the music. The piano and violin score composed by Giles Lamb is just beautiful and tugs at your heartstrings in a weird way that you would never expect while watching zombies feasting on humans. The game's Facebook page had the music available for download at one point and now you can buy it off iTunes if you so desire. I love listening to it, because it is a great stand-alone piece without the gory visuals.

Secondly, the visuals. That first shot of the girl's eye is shockingly realistic and it takes a few seconds to realize that you're not watching a live-action scene. Sure things get progressively game-like and bloody from that opening scene, but it still looks pretty stunning for a video game and shows you that the world of gaming has come a long way from playing Asteroids on an Atari. 

Finally, the story. You'd have to have a heart of stone to not get swept away by the devastating story that this trailer tells in a few short minutes. Presented in reverse chronological order (which drew instant comparisons to the marvelous Coldplay video for The Scientist) you get progressively more horrified as you discover who exactly the dead girl at the beginning of the trailer is. The story is heartbreaking, and in fact, upon the trailer's release, there were several articles written by people who succumbed to tears upon watching it. So much depends on the way the story is presented. On the one hand it could be an action-adventure tale to tell about a family that goes on vacation only to become infected by the zombie plague that is ravaging the island's inhabitants. But when you add that image of a little girl struggling to get to her parents who are willing to do anything to save her, suddenly you forget all the horror elements and just connect on an emotional level.

The Dead Island trailer caused a big stir (and some controversies) when it surfaced and I loved it just as passionately as all the other people who wrote about it. However, unlike the gamers who said that this trailer made them eager to play the game, I didn't really care. I've never been much of a gamer, and am certainly not interested in a zombie slasher RPG. What I loved about this trailer was its supreme artistry on every level. Yes it was a brilliant marketing ploy, but when advertising is this good, it's true art. And if more video games start emulating the Dead Island example, we can look forward to a slew of trailers that will merit Best Animated Short Film nominations at the Oscars. 

Hexic: The End of a Soul-Sucking Quest

I have been playing Hexic since the age of 15. That's 9 solid years of off-and-on enthusiasm for this devious game that has always bested me. But no more. Last night at 10:59 p.m. I created a cluster of 3 black pearls and officially WON a game of Hexic. This is such an insignificant achievement in the grander scheme of things, but considering that it has taken me 9 years, I simply had to blog about it.

Hexic is a spectacularly straigthforward game, very like Bejeweled. All you have to do is rotate the colored hexagon pieces on your screen so that you make clusters of three like-colored pieces and they are replaced by new pieces. However, the added layer of game play comes from the fact that if you can arrange six hexagons of the same color around one piece, that center hexagon will turn into a "starflower." But it doesn't stop there. If you can successfully make six starflowers and then arrange them in that same pattern around one hexagon, you will create a "black pearl." And unlike other games like Bejeweled that just go on forever until you either run out of time or can no longer make a valid combination, Hexic actually has an endgame. If you make a cluster of 3 black pearls (or for the more ambitious, an arrangement of six pearls), you win. The game just ends. And that ending is what I have been seeking for so long.

Now I am 100% certain that there are plenty of Hexic players (possibly some among you who are reading this post) who are mocking me right now for taking so long to do this. I'm sure a basic understanding of spatial reasoning and judicious hexagon-wrangling would help anyone achieve this goal in no time at all. But somehow that has always eluded me. I have always been on the verge of winning when suddenly an unfortunate move will make my starflowers pieces combine with each other and disappear, leaving me with the arduous task of making more starflowers in a futile attempt to get to that damn black pearl. Or a bomb will appear and no matter what I can do, I simply can't get it close enough to two other like-colored pieces before it explodes and destroys my game. But yesterday was finally my day. I was making starflowers left and right, they all went exactly where I needed them to go, the black pearls were created with surprising ease, and when I made the third pearl, it was exactly next to the other two so that I didn't even have to do any work to create a cluster of pearls. It was perfect.

There are many web games out there that people love, which are vastly more complex or interesting. But just as people used to (and still do) laud Tetris as a marvel in the field of computer games, Hexic is easily my pick for a simple and utterly conniving game that can take up hours, days, weeks (and in my case, years) of your life. Now that I have finally defeated it, I don't know if I will ever really play it with as much enthusiasm. But I do know that when I play it again, I won't scream in frustration if a bomb explodes before I've made a third black pearl. 

National Novel Writing Month: What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

Today is Halloween which means tomorrow is November 1st and marks the beginning of National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo is an annual event that brings people across the globe together in pursuit of one goal: write a 50,0000 word novel in 30 days. Simple as that.

My friend in New Mexico has completed several NaNoWriMo's in the past and this year she has persuaded me and a few other friends to give it a whirl. Writing an entire novel in one month is a ridiculous proposition so the more people you know who are indulging in this insanity with you, the better off you will be. I dearly hope I can keep up with the ladies in our cross-country writing group, even if my novel does devolve into a fantastical imagining of people turning into parrots and chasing unicorns (a plot my friend is strongly urging me to pursue, despite my protests). NaNoWriMo seems incredibly stressful, but it is ultimately just a fun and challenging pursuit and hopefully you can revel in completing it at the end of the month.

Throughout the month, the wonderful people responsible for this crazed idea will send out encouraging e-mails, remind you to back up your novel, and give you lots of tips and pointers if you're in the midst of agonizing writer's block. If you're lucky enough to live somewhere with a regional NaNoWriMo group, you can look forward to parties at the beginning, middle, and end of the month. So if nothing else you will discover a bunch of writers you can either celebrate or commiserate with depending on how your month goes.

Aside from discussing NaNoWriMo, the reason for this post is to inform you, dear readers, that I will likely be in absentia for much of this month. As I will be furiously scrabbling to meet my daily word counts and hit that elusive goal of 50,000, I won't have much time for blogging. Of course, if the novel starts giving me a headache or tangles me up in various plot points, I'll pop back on the blog to write a procrastinatory note about something or the other. If you want to check on how I'm doing, you can search for me on the website (my username is shlokes) and see if I've made any headway.

Head on over to nanowrimo.org and consider if you want to give it a try. Yes, if you decide to do it you will have to get started tomorrow, presumably without a plot or any idea in place. But if you're stuck, just start writing about parrots and unicorns and maybe one day you'll be heading on stage to claim your Hugo award.

The Guild: A Celebration of Gamers, Comics, and Nerd Culture

I had never watched a web series until a friend told me about The Guild. This is a series about a group of gamers who are devoted to "The Game" (a MMORPG with an ardent following, similar to World of Warcraft and its ilk). Initially, it didn't strike me as something I would be interested in, as I wasn't a part of that fervent gamer culture. But I thought I should give it a shot at least, and I am so glad I did.

First off, if you have no experience with online gaming or MMORPGs (that's Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game for those of you who are truly lost in this discussion) do not fret. Yes, there are multiple gaming references and asides that mean something hilarious to avid gamers but just completely passed me by. But I quickly became drawn to this group of oddball gamers and became invested in their stories. The cast is led by Felicia Day, who I first saw in Joss Whedon's incredible Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, and she does not disappoint. A gamer in a real life, this show was a passion project for her and she has quickly become one of the most influential people in the world of web series and entertainment. She plays Codex, a perpetually frazzled woman whose life revolves around The Game and her guild. Despite talking and playing with these people for hours on end every day, none of the guild members have actually met, and the first series starts with an endless round of webcam-style talking heads as you get to know the various characters that make up the Guild. They are too varied and complex to describe: suffice to say, these are some ridiculous characters, each with their own quirks and strengths, who continue to amaze me as the series progresses. Eventually, they find themselves in need of an actual real-life meeting, and as these disparate people come together, united solely by their love of The Game, you know that you are watching a hit show. In later seasons, the show picked up MSN as a sponsor, so you can watch every single episode on their Bing website. This is not a huge time commitment as the average length of an episode is 5 minutes, so you can easily finish the first season in an hour.

The show is wrapping up its 5th season and has evolved a great deal from its humble beginnings. Everything looks more "professional" and "shiny" (I lack the cinematographical know-how required to basically explain that they have better cameras and lighting now), the episodes last longer, there are different settings, and because of the series's growing popularity, there has been a particular abundance of guest stars that will thrill anyone well-versed in nerd culture. What hasn't changed though is the core belief at the center of the show, that people can be brought together by their love of something, whether it's The Game, comic books, or Neil Gaiman. In this way, it is a true depiction of the power of nerd culture and why we have huge events like Comic-Con to celebrate nerds and the things they love. Being a nerd is no longer a personality trait to be shunned - it is something to embrace, and The Guild expertly shows us how people can grow and change their lives, based solely on the fact that they made friends while playing a game. 

Happy National Coming Out Day!

October 11th marks National Coming Out Day, a day to celebrate coming out and to encourage more awareness and discussion of LGBT rights and issues. Whether you're gay, straight, bi, transgender, or questioning, this is an important day to let our LGBT friends and relatives know that they are not alone.

Stephen Fry (British author, comedian, activist, polymath Renaissance man who also happens to be gay) tweeted a link to this article on the Huffington Post. Written by Elton John and Johann Hari, it is a plea for people to fight back against the horrific injustice and appalling treatment that the LGBT community has to face throughout the world. It is a sobering read, detailing startling atrocities conducted against LGBT people in Uganda and Ghana, and the narrow-minded prejudice of American political candidates who continue to endorse homophobia without fear of recrimination.

Despite these horrors, there is also hope. The article very interestingly puts forward the case that you can't generalize who is homophobic. People might say poor countries disdain their LGBT citizens, but Nepal has introduced legislation to protect gay rights. Others argue that religious countries could never support homosexuals, but Argentina, despite being a largely Catholic country, has legalized gay marriage. We are often inundated with stories of the desperate plight of the LGBT community, who face bullying, social ostracism, imprisonment, and murder. But these examples from Nepal and Argentina illustrate that people can grow and realize that this is no way to treat other human beings. In fact, as Elton John mentions in the article, when he was born in England, it was a crime to be gay, but now he is happily married to his partner and can raise his son with relative acceptance.

The quote that most touched my heart was from Archbishop Desmond Tutu: "If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn't worship that God." With such champions for LGBT rights in our corner, it behooves us to take a stand against discrimination and homophobia. This is where Kaleidoscope come in. This organization has been set up in London and has the single purpose of supporting gay people anywhere in the globe, in any way that they need. Read the Huffington Post article or go to Kaleidoscope's website to get more details, but essentially they aim to use the full force of the international community to fight back against incidents of homophobia and inequality. If you have been searching for some way to help the LGBT community, supporting Kaleidoscope is a wonderful way to have an impact not just in your own community but internationally. Maybe if enough people declare themselves as proud allies of the LGBT movement, we will build enough momentum to fight this backward thinking and prejudice that has no place in our world today.

On a personal note, National Coming Out Day always reminds me of the e-mail thread that used to be posted on the Wellesley College Community group every October 11th: "I support my queer Wellesley siblings because..." The thread would be filled with messages of support and acceptance, posted by students and faculty alike. I never posted on this thread because I never felt like I had anything adequate to say to express my admiration and love for my LGBT friends. I still don't feel I can adequately express myself, so I will rely on the oft-used but always true sentiment that best summarizes why NCOD and LGBT rights are so important: Love is love is love.

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

People I follow on Twitter mentioned that today was Ada Lovelace Day, which led me over to www.findingada.com. Ada Lovelace was a remarkable 19th century woman, considered to be "the first computer programmer." October 7th is dedicated to her and is a day to commemorate women in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. According to the website, the movement began after a psychologist found that women need to be inspired by female role models, so the movement is all about sharing stories of women in the STEM fields who have served as an inspiration and can encourage more women to join these traditionally male-dominated fields.

As a Biochemistry major who attended Wellesley College (a women's college), I have been fortunate enough to have no dearth of female role models in the STEM fields. Some studies have suggested that women are more reserved and less engaged in co-ed science or math classes because their male colleagues dominate the class or are just more willing to speak up. Since I was in a sea of women in all my college science classes, I have no idea if I too would have been less engaged in a co-ed environment. What I do know is that I was surrounded by some incredible students and was taught by some brilliant women who never made me feel that a career in the STEM fields was out of my reach. My female professors were articulate, intelligent, and skilled at explaining a wide array of subjects, including calculus, organic chemistry, cell biology, physics, and physical chemistry. I never felt like they were floundering or less capable than their male peers, and I never knew there was this disconnect in the outside world where people actually thought women can't be good scientists or engineers. So I would just like to thank my wonderful professors in Wellesley's Math, Physics, Biology, and Chemistry departments, as well as the students and friends I made in these classes who helped me work through countless problem sets, puzzle through various laboratory experiments, write papers, get through my thesis, and never questioned my ability to pursue a career in the sciences.

If this is a cause you are interested in, definitely check out www.findingada.com. Write your own story and honor the female teachers, scientists, mathematicians, computer programmers, and engineers who are role models to women everywhere and remind us every day that there should be no such thing as a "male-dominated" field. And remember that encouraging women to enter these fields is something that should be championed all year round, not just on October 7th. 

Website Review: Say Something in Welsh

Full disclosure: I am a person who loves languages. I took a year of Latin in college even though I absolutely did not have to and had already fulfilled my Foreign Language requirement with French. So if you are someone who absolutely detests learning languages and are safely cocooned in an English safety net that will see you through the rest of your days, the website I am about to discuss is not for you. However, if you are someone who either likes to learn languages or has wanted to but never quite been able to learn a new one, you are about to get a pleasant surprise.

Say Something in Welsh is, obviously, a website that will teach you to speak Welsh. Now granted this is not the most popular language in the world. I'm fairly positive that everyone in Wales speaks English anyway so even if you visit, speaking in Welsh is not imperative (if anyone from Wales is reading this, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong!) When I told my friend I was learning Welsh she proceeded to send me this BBC News article that goes to show that even people putting up Welsh road signs don't know any Welsh. But again, that is not the point. The point is, this is a wonderfully different language from any other I have spoken (I speak English, Hindi, Tamil, and a smattering of French and Spanish). And the way these lessons are taught are tremendous. I have never learnt a language from scratch like this before. The lessons are composed of 30-minute audio files and feature a husband & wife team from either North or South Wales (you can pick your dialect of choice) who start you off with some verbs and send you merrily on your way.

The people on these audio lessons are wonderfully encouraging and in the middle of Lesson 1 when you learn to say "I can speak Welsh," the man very kindly assures you that this is a true statement and now you are fluent and just need to expand your vocabulary. This is a heartening attitude even if I'm a long way from conducting a Welsh conversation with Michael Sheen. I finished Lesson 2 today and already I can compose sentences like "I have to go because I cannot stay," "I can do it," and "Why are you trying to speak Welsh?" For someone who had never heard a bit of Welsh until yesterday, this strikes me as a remarkable accomplishment and a testament to the impeccable manner in which these audio lessons have been designed. Up till now, the biggest challenge has been pronouncing the double "ll." I knew that Welsh words had a lot of "ll"s in them, but I always assumed they were pronounced as a regular "l" sound like in English. Imagine my surprise when the instructor calmly explained through my computer speakers that I had to press the tip of my tongue to the back of my teeth and hiss. It is a most peculiar consonant and you will just have to hear it for yourself. Frankly, learning how to pronounce the letter "ll" is quite the accomplishment in itself.

Another point - you do not do any revision and the teachers are emphatic that you do not ever write anything down. They do have a study guide so you can look up words after you do the lesson just to check if you heard correctly and whether that "g" was actually a "c." I was astonished to discover that the words were spelt completely differently from what I was expecting, but the point of these lessons is conversational fluency and I suppose I will go through all the beginner lessons to get my speech up to scratch before I attempt to make any sense out of actual reading & writing.

You will really enjoy these lessons if you give them a shot, and you can just listen to the first one on the homepage before you even give them your e-mail address. And lest I forget, these lessons are 100% free. And in this economy, that's as good a reason to learn Welsh as any. Just think of the impact it will have when you can put down "Languages: Welsh" on your resume, and add to the list of esoteric skills you have amassed in this lifetime.