Your Mid-Week Experiment

In which our Magic Number is 2

A programming note as we rejoin The Experiment already in progress… This newsletter will always be free. It’s a labor of love that is coming up on its 5th anniversary next spring. Our little community of Experimenters has grown past a couple thousand, and the open rate remains steady. Doing this makes me happy, but it also takes work, so I’ve turned on paid subscriptions to acknowledge that this isn’t a trifling hobby. I take this seriously, and judging by the open rates and responses I get from many of you every week, so do you. So to borrow from Steven Pressfield, I’m going pro. What do you miss out on if you don’t pay? Nothing. This bugga free. What do you get if you pay? Besides my gratitude? Nada. (Seriously, to those of you who have upgraded to paid? Thank you.) If you can’t upgrade to paid, how can you help support the cause? Invite other people to join the party.

Now, enough about money. As Quincy Jones said, “God walks out of the room when you do music for money.” Thanks to everyone who responded after my latest essay. This whole woke nonsense has been rattling around in my head for a while. Thanks to Elon, I suppose, for knocking it loose. And we’ve got some fun stuff to read, cook, listen to, and watch this week.

Let’s get to it!

So, apparently the comedian Hasan Minhaj is telling stories that aren’t, strictly speaking, true. (The New Yorker)

Here is why that matters. (Jason Zinoman)

Hey kids, do you like that ecstatic, earwormy pop music?

Got some tomatoes that are past their prime? Make this super easy marinara. (recipe)

If you can get your hands on ground turkey or chicken, white beans, and something green that doesn’t wilt easy — that is, not the New York Jets — you can make this awesome soup. (New York Times Cooking)

Austin’s Max Frost should be a famous pop star. He ain’t, but he’s good.

American English is a virus that mutated on this continent. h/t Ma (Lapham’s Quarterly)

Can a car commercial make you love a poem? h/t E.J.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

I forget which review I read that said the scenes of Gael García Bernal in bed with his lover or talking to his mom are so much more real and full of life than are the supposedly triumphant scenes of him in the ring. Dead on, but for my money — again, this is all free if you want it to be — Pop Culture Happy Hour’s discussion of the movie got to a better place than any of the mainstream critics.

Here’s the trailer.

And through this movie I discovered La Lupe, who rules.

The best thing about this meet-cute rom-com are the protagonists’ relationships with their parents, not with each other.

This song was on Love at First Sight’s soundtrack, though, and I dug it.

Finally got around to seeing John Wick 4. Great action scenes. The rest, kinda meh.

---

We set up a merch table in the back where you can get T-shirts, coffee mugs, and even tote bags now. Show the world that you’re part of The Experiment. 

We’ve also got a tip jar, and I promise to waste every cent you give me on having fun, because writing this newsletter for you is how I have fun.

Buy the book Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick banned from the Bullock Texas History Museum: Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of the American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and myself is out from Penguin Random House. The New York Times bestseller is 44% off and the same price as a paperback now!