Media Diet January - June 2026
It has been a difficult first six months of 2026 as I have been living and finishing up work in El Paso while Morgan and the kiddos have been in Birmingham living with her parents since she got a job as a manager in March. The good news though is as of July 4th we are back reunited and will be living in Birmingham for the foreseeable future. I guess if there is a perk to being away from the family, it is that I managed to watch a bunch of movies and read a bunch of books that have been on my list for a long time.
I've organized the list into some general categories with the biggest category being about grief and death. While I have been deployed and in school for long stretches of time before, this time with our family now being four people (and Millie!) the grief from being away from them for an extended period hit me differently. There is a passage from the Wizard of Kremlin where the protagonist Baranov is talking about his five-year-old daughter that I think sums it up perfectly:
Before Anja, I don't think I ever experienced fear. Now I live in terror, starting from the moment I first saw her. She put her fingers to my lips and I understood then that my life was in her hands and not the opposite. . . I have very little to teach her. She's really the one who teaches me to look the moment in the face. My daughter doesn't count the hours, or the days. She's given me the gift of the present, which I was unfamiliar with, having always lived in the future. Someday, though, we'll have to part. My only duty is to lead her to the threshold, then to let her enter alone, withdrawing with a slight nod. She's still only a child, yet I can't keep from thinking everyday about that goodbye. I only hope that I'll have the strength for it.
So that is why my picks this first half of 2026 may seem a little wonky. On to the ratings!
As always (except when I forget) I use the Michelin Star System. Three stars an all-time, best of decade. Two stars best of the best. One star, best of the year.
***Could the Girls of Camp Mystic Have Been Saved?: Kerry Howley (A+): If you read or watch anything from my list, make it this NY Mag Article from March. This hits on so many levels, from how different parents deal with the loss of children to the outlook of survivors versus those with children who didn't survive to the intersection of faith in the heart of Texas to rich oil millionaires.
*Sorry for Your Loss: Michael Cruz Kayne (A+): this is billed as a stand up special. It's not. It's a one man show that also involves his entire family and is at once funny and profound about the loss of his son. It is paywalled by Dropout and worth it to purchase a one-month membership to watch this.
Theater and Hollywood :
Hit and Run: Nancy Griffin and Kim Masters (A): 600 pages of the worst behavior from two Hollywood executives Peter Gruber and Jon Peters and how they fleeced Sony Studios and came out nearly billionaires. With the recent Paramount WBD news, it shows some things in Hollywood never change
Laugh Lines: Alan Zweibel (A) I love this story about his collaboration with the composer Cy Coleman whose six year niece asked him about writing songs:
"Uncle Cy, do you always have a song in your head?" She'd ask.
"I guess I do, angel."
"Wow, that means you'll never be lonely."
From the mouth of babes
Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama: Bob Odenkirk (B+): The first half up to an including Mr. Show is much better than the second half.
Putting it Together: James Lapine (B): Lapine is the book-writer for several of Stephen Sondheim's better known later musicals and this part-diary/part oral history documents Lapine's first work with Sondheim on Sunday in the Park With George. Lapine has an academic background and is clinical, sometimes to the point of law review-level detail, in his recounting of how Sunday in the Park came to be. After reading the book, I watched a filmed version of the original Broadway cast and while I cannot say I enjoyed the musical itself anymore than the book, Finishing the Hat is a really strong number.
Theater Kid: Jeffrey Sellers (B): Sellers is best known as the producer of Rent and the majority of the book is devoted to how he and Rent writer, Johnathan Larson, took Rent from off-off-Broadway to off-Broadway to Broadway. The problem is there are entire chapters of tangents, some funny, some just banal, that take away from the main plotline.
Grief and Death:
In my Time of Dying: Sebastian Junger (A); this would have been A+ if it was a little shorter, like magazine article length. It's only novella length as it is, but still drags in a couple of places. The scientific stuff is downright Bill Bryson good. It's just the physics stuff that suffers.
What the Dead Know: Barbara Butcher (A-): Butcher is the former medical examiner of NYC and this book has a bunch of death, and murders and "only in New York!" Moments. Just wish it was 100 pages tighter.
Every Brilliant Thing: Duncan MacMillan (B+): this one act play is now on Broadway and I can't see how it will play when it's meant to be so interactive with the audience but hopefully it does. Was not my jam though I can see why it's so popular while dealing with such a serious topic as a parents suicide
Grief is for People: Sloan Crosley (B): Crosley wrote this after her former editor and good friend took his life and it is clear she is still trying to deal with the feelings. It's a feelings-based book and whether it works or not for you depends on if you identify with the feelings. For me, that was about 50 percent of the time.
Grief is The Thing With Feathers: Max Porter (B-): this was short enough to read in one setting and while it deals with grief, it didn't effect me until the final pages and the beach scene. The crow's dialogue in particular was hard to follow.
Spying and History:
**Night: Elie Wiesel (A): Could put this into the grief category as easy as the history category. A classic. Cannot believe I did not read this in high school like most people do. Deserves its reputation as part of the high school cannon.
*The Confidence Men: Margalit Fox (A) this was an A+ up to the last 50 pages or so. Still a great book and more Ben Macintyre than Macintyre's latest book (The Siege, which I reviewed in 2024 and also gave an A). Highly recommend.
Genghis Kahn; Jack Weatherford (B): Weatherford repeats himself a lot. To the point that the prologue and the epilogue are virtually identical, but he does lay out how the Kahn's came to conquer three continents
Fiction:
The Drowning Pool: Ross McDonald (A): My first McDonald book. I wrote off McDonald's Archer (in movies, Harper) series after watching some of the Paul Newman films and finding them wanting. Specifically, Harper has not aged well. That being said, never judge a book series by its movies and I found this to be a delightful short noir romp. A step below Chandler, and right at the level of Charles Williams. In fact, it reminded me a lot of Dead Calm (A) which I reviewed in 2025.
The Big Nowhere: James Elroy (A-); was between an A and A- and landed on an A- because (1) the middle part on the HUAC committee lulls a bit; and (2) it's definitely a step below The Black Dahlia. The best thing about any Elroy novel is his turn-of-phrases and dated slang. I started to put together a list of my favorite lines:
Big adios/ a snuff job
He’s a real piece of velvet
She’s in dreamland for keeps
He’s a bad penny
Tighter than a crab’s ass
Tighter than a popcorn fart
Einstein couldn’t remember all that and I ain’t no Albert
If I’m lying I’m flying
He’s been in stir (prison) for eight years
Keep it sotto voce
That’s the whole ball of wax
All aces to me
It could use a lick and a promise
Hung like a cricket
I’ve got butkis
It’s not highway robbery. It’s felony extortion settled out of court
You can’t shit a shitter
Lonesome Dove: Larry McMurtry (B): I'm going to lose some people here. A 600-plus page meandering western focused on unresolved grief, male friendship, and unrequited family bonding should be right up my alley, but it never grabbed me.
Games:
Play Nice: The Rise and Downfall of Blizzard: Jason Schreier (A): I've not played one minute of a single Blizzard game and still find this fascinating as to the internal politics and pettiness that ultimately give way to corporate greed. I had a roommate in undergrad who spent his entire collegiate time playing World of Warcraft (shoutout Donny!). I often wonder about Donny and what happened to people like him.
The Fifth Major: John Feinstein (B+): I find Feinstein to be the best golf writer (though non-golf writer, Nick Paumgarten wrote the best piece I've ever read about golf with his behind-the-scenes piece in the New Yorker on the Masters) and I've read A Good Walk Spoiled several times. This book, focused on securing PGA membership via the Q-School, has flashes of the breezy brilliance of A Good Walk Spoiled. If any of the players covered in length in the book had ever made a dent on the tour this would be more well remembered. As it is, imagine a book about five minor-league players trying to make it into MLB. Except the book was written 20 years ago and none sniffed even Triple-A. That's this book. The best part is at the beginning when it talks about Joe Daley and one of the most famous golf videos, even if you think you have never heard of Daley.
The book talks about Daley's play during this tournament and the after affects and how he never made it to the PGA Tour because of this bad break. That was the most fascinating and relatable part.
Random Books
The Wizard of Lies; Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust: Diana Henriques (B+): As remarkable as the story is about Bernie Madoff and his theft, equally remarkable is the story of the trustee, Irving Picard, and how he managed to get nearly all the money back. Also interesting were the two factions of victims: the investment-positive victims and the investment-negative victims and how they ended up fighting each other as much as Madoff. Where the book falters though is the main character. Even though Henriques had interviews with Madoff in prison, he remains an enigma. No explanation or sorrow or inner-thinking, at least that comes across on the page, and that's what keeps it from being a great book.
Alien Oceans; The Search for Life in the Depth of Space: Kevin Hand (C+): This one is on me. I picked up this book thinking it would be about our own oceans and how at depth they are still alien to us. No! It is about the oceans of potential life-holding moons, so many moons!, of our Solar System and how scientists have determined, written in very, very intricate detail, of what readings have made us believe these places might be conducive to life. If there is a trope I hate in scientific writing, it is the tortured analogy, and boy, does Hand have a lot of them. All of the chapters have a breezy, wry name, like "How I Learned to Love Airport Security" and "The Rainbow Connection" and then try to tie very dry scientific concepts to the analogy.
Fruit Palace: Charles Nicholl (C): found this at a bookstore and was attracted to the book cover and tagline "an odyssey though Columbia's cocaine world". The author admits to being a fan of Raymond Carver and writing this non-fiction in a noir like way, but by page 100 or so he has given up, and it becomes just a transactional biography of a wanna be journalist in Columbia. A slog to finish and cannot recommend.
Longform Magazine Articles I Recommend (these are all A's or better):
Brain Injuries and the Conscious (Atlantic Magazine)
What 100-Million Volts Does to the Body and Mind (Atlantic Magazine)
Documentaries and Stand-Up:
Miracle; The Boys of 1980s (A): this was really well done and captured the vibe of 1980 without relying on recreations. Would have liked to have gotten the Soviet players memories though.
Secret Mall Apartment (A): I agree with Morgan's assessment that these artist border on the insufferable, yet I was drawn to Michael, the center artist, and his work outside the apartment, especially towards children's hospitals and the OKC bombing.
Julio Torres: Color Theories (B): I talk about tortured analogies in Alien Oceans below and Torres entire stand-up special is built on a very tortured analogy. The difference being, the analogy is meant to be a joke, and often feels effortless. Just wish the jokes were better.
MOVIES (From Favorite to Least Favorite):
***Lawrence of Arabia in 4K (A+): I read a Lawrence based book nearly every year and when this came out this past year on Blue-Ray, I bought a Blue Ray player just so I could watch the 4k remaster. That says it all about how much I love this movie. While seeing this in a theater on a 70mm print is still a bucket list item, this is the closest I'll probably get to an in-home experience that can rival the theater experience.
Anatomy of a Murder (A+): Probably the most unique courtroom/legal movie I have ever seen in that Jimmy Stuart, playing the defense lawyer and protagonist, isn't a lawyer desperate for the truth, or to help an innocent client nor is he the crooked lawyer, willing to bend the law type. He plays just a typical hang-a-shingle small time country lawyer (yes, there is where phrase comes from) whose trying to do the best job he can for his client while not too passionate about it one way or the other. In this way, it is a very realistic movie.
*Conclave (A): the first 90 minutes of this movie are the favorite of anything I've watched in a long time. Loved it. That makes the twist ending feel that much more unnecessary and cheap. It would have been more realistic and better if they played it straight instead of go for shock at the end. Still, cannot recommend the first part enough.
A Civil Action (A): Another lawyer movie. This one based on a true story of a EPA toxic cleanup site in Massachusetts
Ben Hur (A): since I bought a nice DVD player I went ahead and bought the Ben Hur 4k remaster (60+ years after this release and this has been the number one seller on Amazon nearly the entire year). The movie is good. Is it four hours good? Eh. But certain parts of it are amazing and the Chariot Race. Wow! The chariot race is the most exciting movie watching experience I had since Mad Max Fury Road or the original Gladiator. I yelped out loud at least four times. Just amazing. However, I could have done without the two hours about lepers.
Aliens, Director's Cut (A): I watched the director's cut which comes in at a whopping 2:40 run time. The James Cameron runtime excess that reaches its zenith (nadir?) starts to show itself here and what should have been an enjoyable 100 minute tight action film is continually bogged down with unnecessary and repeated scenes involving arguing about the Aliens, but no actual Aliens. The original cut is still A+.
1917 (A): Atmospherically, score wise, movement wise, and edit wise this movie reminds me so much of the animated film Flow. This movie came first and I'm guessing was a very large inspiration for Flow, which I watched last year.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (B+): Unlike Tarantino's best films, it does not contain a great villain. Charles Manson has maybe two lines in the middle of the movie and is never seen again. The movie needs a Colonel Landa heavy type for our two main dudes to play against. Instead, it is just a buddy hang film, which it's really good at, but buddy hang movies shouldn't be nearly three hours long. Anyways, I'm wrong because a prequel is coming up so apparently other people enjoy it enough.
Ace Ventura (B+): Does the comedy hold up? No. It's still incredibly juvenile and deeply problematic. I still liked it though because it moves. You blink and Ace is already at Finkel's parents home. The entire thing is over in 80 minutes. At points the plot doesn't make sense just to keep the film moving quickly and that's fine. Its pace shows just how many current comedies have also been taken over by the Surf Dracula problem
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (B): My first Cassavetes film. It reminded me of Altman films in the way I can appreciate the technical skill of what the director is doing, and yet, I never feel engrossed.
Decision to Leave (B): I usually love noir but this one left me feeling empty.
The Conformist (B-): Tough watch. No humor. Much more stilted dialogue than i expected from a movie some consider amongst the best of all time, and lots of Dutch angles. Oh! The Dutch angles.
Jay Kelly (C-): Morgan said if I gave this awful movie anything higher than a C- she'd divorce me. The thing is I agree with her. Maybe I'd give it a C on my own, but it's definitely between C and C-. It is bad.
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