Linked List: January 16, 2025

Thursday, 16 January 2025

Another fun promo for Severance season 2.

And a promo on Apple’s homepage featuring a computer made by another company. And a free in-universe book, The Lexington Letters, at Apple Books. (Update: Ah, the book came out in March 2022, as part of season 1. Still: fun! Apple Books does not make the publication date prominent.)

David Lynch Dies at 78 ★

Brian Tallerico, writing for RogerEbert.com:

David Lynch saw my dreams. As a teenager growing up in suburban America in the ’80s, “Blue Velvet” and “Twin Peaks” hit like a bolt of lightning. Not only did they capture something about the sinister, surreal underbelly of life under the picket fences, but they said something directly to anyone who thought they could be an artist: You don’t have to do what everyone else is doing.

Lynch was one of those creative voices who found his own octave, doing for film what people like David Bowie or Prince did for music, shattering expectations of what a piece of art could be. Even when his work missed the mark, which was rare, Lynch was never anything less than a singular artist, a creator who never once succumbed to the desire to please that derails so much potential in his industry. When people point to Lynch works like “Mulholland Dr.” or “The Straight Story” or even those of us who love “Lost Highway,” it’s not just that specific film that speaks to them — it’s the sense that the potential of the form is limitless as long as people like Lynch are involved. The entire art form was shifted by him and is now lessened by his absence. We owe it to him to burst through the doors he opened. [...]

Lynch’s fifth film, 1990’s “Wild at Heart” would be one of his most divisive — it’s often pointed to as Lynch at his most excessive — but it was what he did on television that same year that rocked the entertainment world: “Twin Peaks.” I could write a book about what “Twin Peaks” meant to a 15-year-old entertainment junkie. To summarize, it exploded the potential of the form. People who watch “Twin Peaks” over three decades later need to understand the TV landscape on which it landed. I’m not saying there wasn’t quality TV in the ’80s, but there was less risk-taking than in the 2020s, and watching the saga of Laura Palmer next to formulaic dramas or laugh-track-heavy sitcoms felt like a true shock to the system. For more on “Twin Peaks” and why it mattered, check this out.

A thought that’s been swirling in my head for 30-some years but only today properly crystalized: Lynch is the only artist I love whose work I largely don’t “get”. Nothing exemplifies that more than Twin Peaks — I never stopped thinking that there must be something there that I simply wasn’t getting, but I absolutely loved it. But now I realize that’s a big part of why I loved it. I don’t like to be confused but I do like it when it’s David Lynch confusing me. It’s still hard to believe that show was on commercial network TV.

Like Kubrick, he was quick to embrace new technology as it became available and to see its artistic potential. He sung the praises of digital video and declared himself done with film years ahead of the industry. Lynch called bullshit when he saw it, and he always let you know what he really thought. Also like Kubrick (whom Lynch, unsurprisingly, named first when asked his favorite filmmakers), Lynch’s later years were sparse with new work, but the work he delivered continued to elevate the art form. 2017’s 18-episode Twin Peaks: The Return was so utterly Lynchian — a perfect capstone to a remarkable career.

Bob Uecker, Mr. Baseball, Dies at 90 ★

Ray Ratto, writing for Defector, gets it right. Bob Uecker was just the best:

He was the face and voice of baseball cinema, the man whose line-reading made “Ju-u-u-u-st a bit outside” so good that “iconic” doesn’t remotely cover its impact. Even if you’re not a seamhead, you likely came across Bob Uecker and smiled.

So Thursday’s announcement that Uecker has died at age 90, due to small cell lung cancer, came as a blow. Nine decades is a good long run, but there was never a sense that he was running out of material; Uecker was still a joy to hear on Brewers broadcasts even in Year 54 of being the voice of Wisconsin baseball for two-and-a-half generations. The reaction to his passing was unanimous in the same ways and for the same reasons that the response to Vin Scully’s death was unanimous — it was an outpouring of both sadness at the loss and gratitude for all the time we got to spend with him. In an epochally angry time in America, at a moment when it isn’t hard to find even anti-puppy polemics with a keystroke, Uecker gets a pass from most everyone. Yes he defined baseball, but he also managed to become more than merely Mister Baseball. From the moment of his first appearance on Johnny Carson’s definitive version of the Tonight Show, which Uecker earned merely by mastering the tripartite arts of comedy writing, unabashed self-deprecation, and martini-dry humor, he was recognizable as that rarest of Americans, the guy you’d sit back down to listen to even if you were already halfway out the door. Put another way, Norm Macdonald thought he was one of the funniest men he ever met. Beat that with a stick.

MLB.com has a fine obituary that includes a slew of links and videos. Uecker, 90 years old, was on the call for the Brewers right up until the bitter end of last season, when they fell to the Mets in the 9th inning. His final words as a broadcaster: “I’m telling you. That one — had some sting on it.” So does this one.

If you want to lose a few hours in laughter, head down the rabbit hole of Uecker’s 100-some appearances on Carson. Here’s the first one that just came up for me now, a 1976 appearance where Uecker, utterly deadpan as ever, makes Mel Brooks spit out his coffee.

Nintendo Drops Switch 2 Trailer ★

Fun trailer and a smart if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it design. Switch 2 just looks like a slightly bigger Switch. Pure joy.

That it’s just a bigger faster Switch is proof of the genius of the Switch form factor, which has now been widely copied across the industry. The Switch is to handheld + dockable console gaming what the iPhone is to phones. They’re announcing compatibility with existing Switch games, including physical game cards, but with a footnote disclaiming “Certain Nintendo Switch games may not be supported on or fully compatible with Nintendo Switch 2.” I suspect all major games will be fully compatible but some of the half-assed dreck available on the online Switch store might not be.

It’s nothing short of glorious that, thanks to the Switch, Nintendo is thriving. Just about everything currently on my plate and on my mind to write about is some combination of tragic, ugly, hateful, worrisome, more worrisome, spiteful, corrupt, more corrupt, contentious, depressing, or, at best, just plain no fun at all. But here’s Nintendo — perhaps the most humane company in the history of computing, and one that has never allowed either success or failure to distract it from its core mission of creating wholesome, clever, exquisitely well-designed fun games — with a much-anticipated announcement of something new that is purely about adding more joy to people’s lives.

As Mario would say, “Woohoo!”