Weekly Churn 001: Television and Tattoos

Yonge Dundas Square

Ahoy! Welcome to the Weekly Churn, a regular series of posts about what I’ve been reading, watching, and thinking about over the previous week. This is sort of my response to the whole newsletter phenomenon, but mostly it’s about getting me back into a headspace where writing is a habit rather than an event. So here goes. The big news for this week is that Tim Maughan’s book Infinite Detail finally dropped. I’ve been a fan of Tim’s work for quite some time—somebody recommended Paintwork, his self-published collection of short fiction, and I was hooked right from page one. It took Infinite Detail almost a year longer to come out than expected, but it’s well worth the wait. I’ve been re-reading Bragi Ólafsson’s work as prep for my review of Narrator, his latest book to be translated into English, but I was so excited about Tim’s novel that I set… Continue Reading

Community Without Dan Harmon

As a fan of Community, it’s been a week of ups and downs. First there were rumours of cancelation, trotted out like the reliable workhorses they proved to be when the show was put on mid-season hiatus. And then we got the reprieve; thirteen more episodes, but getting moved to Fridays starting in June of all months. Whatever, we could live with it. But now this: Dan Harmon is no longer going to be Community‘s showrunner. I never even bothered to learn his actual title. It’s probably Executive Producer; it usually is with these things. The announcement says he will be staying on as a Consulting Producer, which appears to be network code for being paid to stay home and keep his mouth shut. Given how integral Harmon is to Community—even people who acknowledge that he’s a poor manager or otherwise have conflicts with him call him the “soul” of… Continue Reading

Community, 30 Rock, Parks & Recreation, and Rumours

Here’s the deal, kids. Nobody’s been cancelled yet, except 30 Rock. Here’s what went down: There has been talk on Twitter and blogs and whatnot that 30 Rock was getting a 13 episode season for next year, which would be its last. That was confirmed today by TV By the Numbers, which in case you didn’t know, is probably the most reliable venue for this kind of news. There was speculation (and I can’t remember where I first saw it, but it may actually have been at TVBTN) that Community and some other sitcoms would be returning with similarly shortened orders. No announcement is planned on NBC’s other sitcoms until Monday, though it doesn’t look good for shows like Whitney (which is a guilty pleasure of mine). The link-baiting idiots at something called Opposing Views, a site nobody had heard of until today, are reporting that rumour as fact for… Continue Reading