22 June 2013

This Week in Awesome (6/22/13)

We're just about at overflow capacity this week; strange how some weeks I find almost nothing of interest, and other times it's like this...

Jimmy Kimmel wraps up The Baby Bachelor.

The resting place for Manhattan's no-longer-needed pay phones has been located. (BuzzFeed)

Here's another exercise in applying the periodic table framework to completely unrelated material. (Laughing Squid)

This week's time-lapse: construction of a new skyscraper in London. (Vimeo)

Somewhat related: I have a thing for infrastructure—roads, bridges and tunnels, buildings, anything that comprises the built environment. You may have heard that New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is constructing a new subway line under Manhattan's east side, the first such work to take place in eight decades. Regardless of the location, new subway construction is fairly rare in any city, so the opportunity to see these amazing pictures of the progress is rare and special. (MTA via Jalopnik; if you liked this, the MTA's flickr page has much more.)

NBC's Hannibal turned out to be the best new show of this year (I had previously labeled FX's The Americans as such, but Hannibal hadn't premiered yet), partly by subverting expectations of just what sort of show it was going to be (sorry, Mom). This excellent article by Todd VanDerWerff explores how this was accomplished, and why it matters. (The A.V. Club)

And finally this week, to mark the end of Mad Men's sixth season, a couple of related bits: first, a silly tumblr (HitFix); second, many viewers probably recognized the song used over last week's closing credits as "Porpoise Song" by The Monkees, from their 1968 movie Head. But take a look at the opening of the movie where the song is used, and see if it reminds you of anything. (Thanks to Aaron at Unlikely Words for pointing this out in his weekly MM recap)

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