What Wednesday #24
Today I watch some British claymation, listen to NC folk, and get depressed over Venezuela.
What Wednesday is where I talk about what I’m watching, reading, playing, etc, because for some reason I think you’ll find that interesting. If you have recommendations, I’d love to hear them :)
What I’m Watching: Wallace and Gromit (Amazon Prime)
I’d imagine the number of my friends that have seen the adventures of Wallace and Gromit tops out at around 5. And a crying shame that is. A British claymation series, it’s possibly the most decorated film series of all time. Though there are only four short films and one feature film, every single one of them except one were nominated for an Academy Award for best animated film or short. Three of them won. That’s a 60% win rate, better than even Pixar, the kings of animated Oscars.
Since Amazon Prime is the only streaming service to let you download its shows and movies for offline viewing — well, at least before today; great timing Netflix, thanks — I pulled the 4 short films down for family friendly plane viewing on our way to California. For being made in the 90’s, the shorts hold up really well. The train chase in particular is still outstanding. If you haven’t seen them, do yourself a solid and check them out. You’ll at least have some time to kill after the season finale of Westworld this weekend.
What I’m Hearing: Hiss Golden Messenger
While we were driving around through Yosemite, I threw the new album from Hiss Golden Messenger, a suggestion from an school friend. Amd what a wonderul suggestion it was! A folk rock band of high critical acclaim, it was a perfect compliment to the stunning vistas stretched out before us. They sound like Bob Dylan if he took over Mumford and Sons. Highly recommend for whenever you’re taking in the glories of our beautiful planet. Bonus: they came out of Durham. Hooray for local music!
What I’m Reading: “Venezuela, A Failing State” by William Finnegan (The New Yorker)
The ongoing crisis in Venezuela, and the government’s efforts to hide the crisis from the world, has been well documented over the past few years. But something about this New Yorker article hit me anew while I was reading it on our flight home. All of the tragic personal stories the author weaves in combine to hit you between the eyes, forming a heartbreaking picture of incomprehensible hardship.
This passage about the tremendous effort needed to acquire even the most basic of food items is particularly troubling. The fact that I read it while eating a sandwich I spent all of 30 seconds picking up at an airport food kiosk made it that much more difficult to read. Sorry to end on such a bummer, but I think these stories deserve to be heard.
“Avanza, avanza.” Forward, forward. An old woman picks up her plastic chair. Another woman, Maribel Guzmán, hoists her bags. Everybody shuffles a few yards. They’re waiting on a food line for a supermarket in the La Trinidad neighborhood of Caracas. The supermarket is not in sight. It’s around the corner, up a hill, around another corner, on a different street. Guzmán is from Monagas, in eastern Venezuela. “I came to Caracas to find food,” she says. She is forty-one. She left her family in Monagas and found a job here, in the capital, as a housekeeper. She has an agreement with her employer — she works an extra half day each week in exchange for the day she needs to stand in la cola to buy food. Her family back home depends on her: “Last Wednesday, I got only toilet paper, and I thought, Oh, my God, what am I going to send home? They need food.” Today, she’s hoping for two kilograms of flour and two hundred grams of butter. She’s been in line all day. It’s now late afternoon. She is still several hundred yards from the supermarket’s door.
