As someone who sort of followed her father into a field, I cannot imagine how absurdly hard it is to be Justin Townes Earle. I assume it’s gratifying, and probably reassuring, for Earle to get the reception he’s been getting lately. This is a really terrific song: I am profoundly not a musician (stabs at violin and trumpet aside), but I assume it’s more satisfying to write a genuinely... 

I haven’t read Freedom, but I did follow SEK and Scott Lemieux’s discussion over at Lawyers, Guns and Money about the novel. And I was struck by Scott’s observation by how the advance coronation of the novel interfered with his reading of it: “once you’ve abandoned the idea that Freedom is a Masterpiece of American Literachoor, it can be enjoyed as an engaging... 

Part I is here. Part II is here. Standard rules apply below the jump: spoil up to, but not beyond, the section entitled “Phreaking.” And for next week, let’s read up to the section entitled “Conspiracy.”One of the things that’s struck me most reading our most recent chunk of Cryptonomicon is the extent to which it is both about historical moments of innovation... 

I sort of wonder if this is the movie Pegg and Frost should have been making, rather than Paul: Mashing up stoner comedy and fantasy is a good idea, and even sort of traditional, isn’t it? The trailer did remind me that one of the impacts of being a) young and b) almost completely isolated from non-book pop culture in the 1980s was that I totally missed the cheesy, pre-advances-in-special-effects,... 

Given that Mark Wahlberg’s career has really, truly taken off, moving both into comedy with The Other Guys and back into Oscar territory with The Fighter, I sort of doubt he and the rest of the gang will ever get back together to make The Brazilian Job. A sequel to The Italian Job was never strictly necessary, from a narrative or any other standpoint, but in that moment when Ocean’s... 

I wasn’t crazy about The Tudors when I first gave it a shot, but I decided to try it again over the weekend. Fortunately, I got to the episodes involving the romance between Charles Brandon and Mary Tudor. It helps that the actors involved are terrific. Gabrielle Anwar took a while to grow on me on Burn Notice—I find her somewhat alarmingly thin—but I think she’s wonderful, tough... 

It’s come to this: Hugh Jackman has found his Rollerball remake: Despite the 2002 version of Rollerball‘s epic stupidity, I actually rather like it. It’s am amusing test of Jean Reno’s established reputation, and Naveen Andrews, Rebecca Romjin, and LL Cool J’s abilities to recover and continue with their careers; a sort of weird look at an emerging reality show culture... 

I think io9 is a little quick to dismiss the similarities between the Harry Potter books and some earlier works in this analysis. But I don’t think that makes J. K. Rowling some sort of plagiarist, either. Rather, it’s a matter of a monkeys and typewriters. There are a lot of people out there writing a lot of fiction. And in the age of the internet, there are even more people disseminating... 

Reading this interview with Rupert Grint, you have to wonder how it’s affected the lives of the actors who play the main Harry Potter characters to spend a formative decade of their lives impersonating some of the most famous literary figures of the era. Grint sounds sort of Ron-like, living at home with his folks, without definite direction, but cheerful anyway. Daniel Radcliffe’s... 

I feel sort of horrible about the fact that I’ll end up watching the second half of the Real Housewives of Washington, DC reunion show tonight. I watched the show religiously for work this season, but it wasn’t nearly as entertaining as the other installments of the franchise that I’ve followed (mostly New York, a little Atlanta). I tend to think it’s because the show was...