• The Guardian’s Uki Goñi sets us straight on that whole Argentinian presidential god-children/werewolves story: “No, Argentina’s president did not adopt a Jewish child to stop him turning into a werewolf.” The widely published (and linked here) story smooshed together two unrelated bits of Argentinian tradition and folklore. The presidential god-children thing doesn’t actually have anything to do with the werewolf thing.
• RIP Edward Herrmann. He was a terrific character actor — Gilmore Girls, The Lost Boys, Overboard, Annie — and one of the very best narrators of audio books I’ve ever heard. Herrmann recorded dozens of books, and he makes almost any of them a delight to listen to.
Almost any of them. “What makes a book really painful and even sickening to record is the shallowness of the thinking and the childishness of the philosophy of life it expresses,” Herrmann said, without naming names, sometime after he finished recording Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
• The photo here is of the brand logo for a model of toilet seat. Those familiar with the long, obscure history of “progressive” white evangelicalism will understand why it made me laugh. (So, basically, this is a visual joke for David Swartz, Brantley Gasaway and Ron Sider.)
• The petulant toddlers of New York’s Finest Whiniest are now threatening to hold their breath until they turn blue or until anyone who has ever criticized them promises never, ever to do it again. And thus, the Thin Blue Skins say, they’ll stop arresting people for minor infractions.
Or, as Zandar puts it: “So your brilliant, devious plan is this: you’re going to show the people who believe that the NYPD is full of power-hungry bullies and paramilitary goons what for by displaying to the country exactly how most of the collars you make are in fact wholly unnecessary exercises of petty microagression towards the citizenry you hold in open and rancorous contempt.”
Brilliant plan.
• Speaking of incompetent and dysfunctional police bureaucracies, a lot of people have been re-watching The Wire thanks to the hoopla surrounding the series’ re-release in HD. This is a Good Thing.
“I would have loved to see a season 6 focusing on the church,” Roxane Gay tweeted. We talked about that here a while back — “The Wire: Season 6.”
That post stands up pretty well, but I somehow failed to include my favorite line from Melvin Williams’ character — the nameless deacon who shows up at odd moments throughout the series. “How is it you got so much wisdom about who should be where?” the ex-gang-soldier Cutty asks him. And the deacon says, “A good churchman is always up in everybody’s shit. That’s how we do.”
• The end of December and beginning of January is when everybody publishes their Best of the Year music lists. And because I am old and out-of-the-loop, this is how I first learn of many amazing performers and recordings.
Here’s one of my favorite new-to-me in 2014 artists, Hurray for the Riff Raff:
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