Read: Dream Team
‘Dream Team: How Michael, Magic, Larry, Charles, and the Greatest Team of All Time Conquered the World and Changed the Game of Basketball Forever’, is entertainingly written by Sports Illustrated journalist Jack McCallum. The politics surrounding the shedding of the pretense that Olympic sport was just for amateurs is an intriguing appetiser, but the main course is the corralling of the massive personalities, the managing of the phenomenon, and the play by play description of the greatest game nobody ever saw.
Watch: Political Animals
It comes across as watered down West Wing meets Party Animals exploration of the family lives of political operatives and it isn’t as good as either of those shows. The simplified and at times offensively stereotypical characters (OMG the promiscuous gay son has a drug problem!) are the biggest obstacles to enjoying it. It is at its entertaining best when it focuses on Sigourney Weaver’s Secretary of State Elaine Barrish and Carla Gugino’s journalist Susan Berg cautiously negotiating their way forward, trying to gain each others trust to extract what they want and accidentally befriending each other in the process. They have at least one great scene together in every episode, and the show is worth it for that alone.
Listen: Hayseed Dixie
They started out doing ‘hillbilly tributes to AC/DC’, and have expanded to include other covers and originals. There is something deliciously incongruous about hearing superbly mastered southern twanged banjo-heavy renditions of Outkast’s Roses or Scissor Sisters’ I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’, but it works. Weapons of Grass Destruction is my pick of their catalogue. If you’re not giggling maniacally at some point u r doin life rong.
