Your Mid-Week Experiment
You rock. Seriously. But not as much as Janelle Monae.
Welcome to the always free, reader-supported mid-week edition of The Experiment. If you’d like to support my work, buy my Alamo book, buy some Experiment merch, drop some coins in the PayPal fountain, or become a paid subscriber. But even if you don’t, this bugga free.
It’s an awful thing to be sitting around, trying not die and go broke at the same time. Thanks for stepping up for Heather Linington-Noble, y’all. She’s immensely grateful. If you haven’t had a chance to throw her a couple bucks while she’s recovering from her double mastectomy, here’s the link. Thanks, Max, Karin, Matt, Hill, Stephanie, and Hal who have already thrown in!
I’m writing this a few hours before going to Globe Life Field to see my Baltimore Orioles try to stay alive in the playoffs. By the time you read this, my heart might be broken, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have cool stuff to read, cook, listen to, and watch. Let’s get to it:
#12 FTW (Matthew Yglesias)
Did you know that Texas is sitting on a budget surplus of $14 billion and hasn’t increased public education spending since 2019? Do you think that sucks? (Click here, foo.)
Want a super-easy recipe for shrimp and broccoli? (New York Times Cooking)
It’s Mac DeMarco day at The Experiment! Here he’s doing a duet with Ryan Paris, the Italian singer who had a hit in the ‘80s called “Dolce Vita.”
This is terrorism being directed at public schools, and it makes me want to punch someone in the nose. Repeatedly. (Washington Post)
The makers of the Peabody Award-winning podcast Southlake comes another one that is going to severely P me O: Grapevine. (NBC)
The Times piece on Rudy Guliani’s drinking is harrowing. (Matt Flegenheimer and Maggie Haberman)
“[O]ur culture has not been able to deliver step changes for quite some time. … To pay attention to culture in 2023 is to be belted into some glacially slow Ferris wheel, cycling through remakes and pastiches with nowhere to go but around.” This essay becomes stunningly smart. Might write about it this weekend. (Jason Farago)
If you like MacDeMarco’s loose jangly mood, you’ll dig this song from Filipino singer-songwriter, rapper Idris Vicuña, better known as Eyedress.
If you’re going to study lying, it’s best not to lie about your study. (The New Yorker)
Also, if people are newly questioning your work, there’s a graceful way to respond, and there’s the way Michael Lewis handled this interview. (The New York Times)
This sounds like if Neon Indian and Mac DeMarco had a baby, and it was Wham! but in (mostly) Spanish. (This is an endorsement.)
Twitter used to be a useful news service. No longer. Here’s why. (Philip Bump)
Kids, wake up! There’s new music from Stella and the Very Messed!
I missed Enough Said when it came out a decade ago, and I wish I’d made an effort. Nicole Holofcener’s movies make me uncomfortable in strange ways, and I’m grateful that she found her muse, Julia Louis-Dreyfus.
Never got around to seeing Muriel’s Wedding in the ‘90s, and I’m kinda glad I didn’t. I find it easier to see how mean-spirited that decade was, especially as seen through a campy Australian lens.
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!