Fame sucks, even if you’re a hippo
Fame sucks, even if you’re a hippo
🎺🎺 Should I hire trumpeters to play every time I drop a newsletter? 🎺🎺
Hey friends, welcome back to Follow Friday! This week, we’re talking about AI-hosted podcasts, media criticism, Gordon Ramsay, and more. But first, here are some AI-generated ducks getting ready for the aggrieved rant I’m about to drop on you in the next section.
🙅♂️ Don’t watch this trailer
Better late than never, I saw the Broadway musical Wicked this week and it was a good time — not my favorite sort of play, but good enough that I was eager to see the trailer for Jon Chu’s upcoming two-film adaptation, starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. And WOW, am I glad I didn’t see this any earlier.
This movie is going to only adapt the first act, and if you have seen Wicked, then … yeah. The trailer gives away everything that happens, which is such a let-down because the story is genuinely clever. Here are the top comments on YouTube:
Look, getting people into the movie theater is a tough business right now, and studios are going to do what they have to do. But I don’t think this CliffsNotes version of the story even works as a piece of marketing.
📰 What I’m reading
The parties of Silicon Valley’s ultra-rich: “One recent client who ordered up a medieval-themed party in a French castle asked that each guest be announced via trumpeter. In concept, it seemed like a good idea, but a trumpet ‘going off every five minutes’ was annoying. ‘I said, “Hey, this is actually ruining the experience, can we just have one trumpet and leave it?” … But they were obsessed with the trumpet.’”
In praise of Vertigo’s most overlooked character: “Bel Geddes is remarkably skilled at investing every moment with meaning, even when Midge remains silent. Watch her face as she reacts to that observation and try to read her expression. Is it the look of a woman plagued by regret? Or is she remembering that she had a good reason to end their engagement, that there’s something about Scottie that made settling down with him seem undesirable?” (spoilers for Vertigo, FYI)
Begun, the AI podcasts have: “The hosts could almost be mistaken for human podcasters, from the way they emphasized ‘bam!’ when tossing it in the middle of a sentence to using modern phrasing like ‘messy as heck.’ There were still a couple of quirks, as I noticed the AI spelling out certain words and phrases, like ‘P-L-U-S.’ Some of the writing wasn’t exactly what a human would say, either, with one AI host calling platinum ‘bling bling metal.’”
Crazy Soviet bus stops: “As Jonathan Meades writes in the first book’s forward, the Soviet empire had a ‘taste for the utterly fantastical.’ The bus stops take in a vast range of architectural styles and aesthetics, materials and decoration, welcome breaks from the autonomy of Soviet centralised planning and functionality.”
Fame sucks, even if you’re a hippo: “A video on Tiktok showing Moo Deng’s caretaker playing with the hippo has been viewed more than 33 million times, with more than 2 million likes … But her caretakers are increasingly concerned for her safety, with some fans throwing water and other objects at Moo Deng, prompting the zoo’s director to threaten legal action.”
🎧 What I’m listening to
I love the idea of Question Everything, a new podcast from S-Town creator Brian Reed. He’s inviting the media to question its own ethics and how those values are relayed to the public, beginning with an interrogation of his own podcast from one of its harshest critics, Gay Alcorn. It’s fabulous! Distrust of the media only intensifies when journalists are afraid to engage with criticism. BUT I worry that only current and former journalists like me will listen to this. Prove me wrong, y’all.
A hearty round of applause for The Allusionist, which has just crossed 200 episodes! It’s one of the most consistently delightful and enlightening (delightening? Enlightful?) podcasts out there, and unlike some milestone episodes, this one is completely accessible even if you’ve never listened to the show before. Its play-along quiz is, in fact, a great introduction to the wonderful and charming (wonderming? chonderful?) Helen Zaltzman.
Omg, Hrishikesh Hirway and Joshua Malina are finally back in my podcast queue thanks to the The West Wing Weekly Political Film Fest (or TWWWPFF, as all the Gen Zs are calling it). It doesn’t take much/anything to get me to listen to a free movie podcast, but this one is behind a paywall on Patreon; and yet, that didn’t matter at all. I loved Josh and Hrishikesh’s pioneering TV recap podcast so much that I started donating to their Patreon the same day this was announced. Here’s the trailer, but if you choose to donate, I particularly recommend the Dr. Strangelove episode.
Speaking of Patreon … I edited this: On one of my favorite recent episodes of Grit, Joubin Mirzadegan interviews Patreon CEO Jack Conte about his reluctant path from indie musician to tech entrepreneur, why success feels like failure, and why Jack hires for obsession, humility, and kindness. It’s genuinely an inspiring listen, and I wish more CEOs talked the way he does.
I also edited this: On the Smart Home Show, Adam Justice checks in with Richard Gunther about all his new hardware acquisitions from the past year, the most intriguing of which (to me) is a “food recycler” that turns food scraps into something resembling coffee grounds. Those grounds can then be composted, used as fertilizer, or shipped back to the company that makes the recycler, Mill, and turned into chicken feed.
🙏 Hey, thanks!
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💯 The single best thing I’ve seen online this week
is this compilation of surreal AI-generated videos “starring” Gordon Ramsay. Unethical? Probably. Did I laugh a lot? Definitely. (Via Garbage Day)
🍿 What I’m watching
Little Caesar (1931) - ★★★ ½ - Melodramatic but surprisingly modern for a nearly century-old crime movie. The scenes between Edward G. Robinson as Rico and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as his partner Joe are the highlight, but many of the actors — including some who only show up for one or two scenes — are given the space to make bold choices. I love the extremely deliberate way Thomas E. Jackson talks, such a clever contrast with the fast-talking gangsters he’s after.
How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) - ★★★ ½ - The first half feels rushed because so many new characters and ideas have to be introduced, but everything comes together in the end to make a very satisfying family adventure tale. A major plot development is so heavily foreshadowed as to feel late when I finally happens, but I guess this is a movie intended for children and not 30something adults. As one of the latter, though, I really appreciated the care that was put into the gorgeous animation here, and the fantastic score by John Powell.
Some friends and I also started watching Muriel’s Wedding at 1am Sunday morning, but everyone in the room was falling asleep by 1:30, so I can’t review that yet. I liked what I saw, though! Toni Collette has always been good.
Follow me on Letterboxd for more reviews as-they-happen!
💀 What I’m TikTok-ing
Lilo & Stitch & this lady’s husband
🦆 About the Ducks
HOW CUTE ARE THEY? I can’t take any credit for that, because I didn’t specify that they should be this cute. I learned from last week’s “content policy restrictions” struggles and got this one with only one prompt:
“draw a colorful picture, with a landscape aspect ratio, of two ducks facing each other. one of them should have green feathers, be holding a broomstick, and wearing a black pointy hat; the other one should have blonde hair and be wearing a pink poofy dress”
But what if …
No, I shouldn’t.
…
Or should I?
“do it again, but make them cuter”
Hmm. No, sorry, the first attempt was cuter.