1) New music out now from Lana Del Rey, Loretta Lynn, Jon Batiste, Harry Connick, Greensky Bluegrass, Benny The Butcher, and much on this week’s Spotify playlist.
2) Wilson Pickett, had he lived, would have turned 80 recently. He passed away at the peak of his comeback, having been given a second act thanks to the smash indie film “The Commitments,” and had started touring again in the years leading up to his illness. This article is a look back on his Stax years, and includes this great piece of trivia: “His hit R&B recording of the Beatles’ ‘Hey Jude’ introduced the world to the track’s guitarist, Duane Allman.” [USA Today]
Film / Books
3) We’ve seen Minari (above), Promising Young Woman, Soul, Sound of Metal, Shaun the Sheep, Time, and Another Round (recommend all of these, especially the latter two.) Which of these Oscar nominees have you seen? You can catch up for free online with your various streaming subscriptions. [Variety]
4) Carl Hiaasen, hilarious bestselling author, longtime Florida (man) columnist, collaborator with Hunter S. Thompson and Warren Zevon, has retired. [TampaBay]
History / Politics
We’re not following the Royal Family (or even the stories of people escaping “The Firm,” as we called it even before this article, which also describes the Royal Family like the John Grisham book/Tom Cruise movie), but this was actually interesting. “The Royal Family’s continued existence may come from a mix of Britain’s historical reality and the politics by which Buckingham Palace has curated the Royals’ relationship with the public. As Britain modernized into a supposedly democratic country, the Royals were kept but with the obvious caveat of giving up influence over government matters. It was a trade-off the Queen’s ancestors happily obliged so long as the Royals could continue to exist.” [The P Word]
Unfortunately, the Garden & Gun story on socialite author Barbara Howar is not online, but in it, her daughter shares this gem: “There was Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Nora Ephron, and Mom. They were all pretty deep in their Scotch. I told them I had to go to my room to write a basic composition for class. Well, they all got into a big competition and wrote my homework… All these great writers. I handed it in—and got it back from the teacher with a C minus.”