Freyburg

The New Yorker has a great article up about the dire straits the newspaper industry finds itself in, and how they can best move past what is clearly a dying business model.

When I was a kid, I used to ravenously consume my dad’s old Mad magazines. It’s fair to say that a lot of my love of both reading and recent history comes from Mad (my knowledge of the Nixon administration, for one), and I’m glad that my collection has now been passed on to another young guy with an appetite for satire and sarcasm. One of my favorite Mad writer/artists was Al Jaffe, and it turns out he’s still kicking at 87, and still drawing amazing fold-ins for the back page of the magazine.

With the Third Guy once again AWOL (this time in France) and not much in the way of news in the week prior to the Series Four premiere, Warren and Steven still threw down nearly an hour of jocularity as they discussed both recent Who-ish goings on and took time to reflect on their favorite story from each Doctor’s era. Next week, new Who! Oh yes, and Torchwood finale or something.

With the release of Be Kind Rewind (which i didn’t think much of), the phenomenon of “sweding” films has gripped Internet videographers like a VHS-fueled fever. “Sweding” is the art of remaking famous film scenes in as clunky and obviously lo-fi way as possible. Most of these efforts fall kind of flat, but this remake of Tron is absolutely beautiful.

The Third Guy was absent for this week’s podcast, and he missed a heap of news with the release of not only the Series 4 trailer and various teasers on the interwebs but an honest to goodness announcement of April 5th as the airdate of the Series 4 premiere. Warren and Steven tried to hold down the fort through jocularity and sarcasm, but their constant threats involving the Gun of Spite (and later, the Cannon of Hatred) because of the Third Guy’s impending trip to Paris and to a studio audience to view David Tennant in person meant an air of amusing menace permeated the proceedings.

A truly wondrous expose of the conspiracy behind the destruction of the Death Star in Star Wars: A New Hope. Death Star Truthers, UNITE!!

The New Music Express has alternatively championed and derided every major form of music to come out of the UK since the 1970s, but according the Time of London, the august tome might finally due to expire. Meanwhile, music critics surprisingly hate the artists beloved by the public, and vice versa.

Because of scheduling, a weekend trip for Warren, and various other bits of business, we were unable to record Radio Free Skaro #75 this Sunday. But rest assured, faithful listeners, we’ll try to get a show out early this week!

Meantime, here’s a Series 4 trailer straight from the BBC to whet your appetites…

The Globe and Mail has put together an excellent video and print documentary on the Taliban, and they’ve done so by actually going to the source and talking to members of this mysterious group that’s been keeping Canadian troops pinned down in Afghanistan for the last seven years.

In an interview last week with an ABC correspondent, Dick Cheney’s response to the point that the American public doesn’t support the war in Iraq was simple…”So?” Mickey Edwards of the Washington Post, long a Cheney supporter, has had enough of this open contempt of the public interest, and he says so in the Washington Post.