How John Wilson Made the Quirkiest, Most Transcendent Show on Television

That’s probably because Wilson’s face has yet to appear on his own show. Viewers merely hear his narration — voice nasal, tone deadly dry — and catch glimpses of him in mirrors as he wanders around New York City with a camera, interacting with everyday people. Episodes like How to Put Up Scaffolding, How to Cover Your Furniture, and How to Make the Perfect Risotto begin with Wilson attempting to learn something practical. But each time the effort spirals into hilarious, sometimes poignant, and impossible-to-predict chaos, taking him everywhere from the home of a nude foreskin enthusiast to a beach resort in Cancun packed with college students on spring break.

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Andy Greene — Rolling Stone

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No Sympathy for the Devil: ‘The Exorcist’ Director William Friedkin Looks Back

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Those stairs – and steps in general – are a defining metaphor in both The Exorcist and Friedkin’s latest film. When we walked through Georgetown, Friedkin kept pointing out stairways he shot – one in Healy Hall that Jason Miller’s character ascends to ask for the extension, one out front where Burstyn’s character led a student protest, another in a courtyard that led to the Jesuit residence, another outside where two priests discuss obtaining the Roman ritual of exorcism and then two minutes away those famous 75 steps that ended in a pool of blood. In The Devil and Father Amorth, Friedkin explains that the priest used to perform his exorcisms in the Scala Sancta atop a staircase – the Holy Stairs that lead to the praetorium of Pontius Pilate – that can only be climbed on one’s knees.

“It all represented the idea of ascension,” Friedkin says.

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Kory Grow — Rolling Stone

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Ronda Rousey: The World’s Most Dangerous Woman

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Today’s needull is a 2015 article on Ronda Rousey. This article looks at how she became MMA’s most unstoppable force.

Like everyone else, however, it wasn’t just Rousey’s fight skills that caught White’s attention. “She’s beautiful, intelligent and very pro-women, which I respect,” he says. “And she is psychotically competitive.” Which is true. Take the book tour for her new autobiography, My Fight/Your Fight. She’d been dreading it, until she read some report about Kim Kardashian’s crazy new book tour and suddenly changed her mind: “I was like, ‘Hell, no! I need mine to be crazier than that! Mine’s going to be the best book tour that ever happened! Kim Kardashian, I will beat your book tour!’ ”

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Eric Hedegaard – Rolling Stone

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The weirdness of David Lynch

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You don’t understand David Lynch creations. Period. But, they just refuse to leave your mind for a long time. Twin Peaks is making a comeback and so Lynch fans like me are waiting for something strange and unexpected.

You’ll find there’s no one single way to characterize what goes on in a Lynch film – all attempts sound a lot like creative-writing exercises trying to describe the interior state of a hallucinating psychotic. Starting at the beginning, with Eraserhead (1977), is like grabbing an alligator by the nose, but there it is: from nowhere, during the Carter administration no less, Lynch birthed out what might be the most ingenuously strange American film ever made. We’ve been trying to articulate what the hell this cult oddity is ever since, from the wailing mutant baby to the Lady in the Radiator, and somehow we’re right back where we started, wondering when the mere suffocation of dream logic ends and Lynch’s one-of-a-kind perspective on stuff begins.

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Michale Atkinson — Rolling Stone

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Meet the Man Who Flies Around the World for Free

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This one is very interesting!

“I’m very fortunate in that I do what I love,” says Schlappig, stretching out in an ergonomic armchair as we reach 30,000 feet and just before the mushroom consommé arrives. In the past year, since ditching the Seattle apartment he shared with his ex-boyfriend, he’s flown more than 400,000 miles, enough to circumnavigate the globe 16 times. It’s been 43 exhausting weeks since he slept in a bed that wasn’t in a hotel, and he spends an average of six hours daily in the sky. He has a freewheeling itinerary, often planning his next destination upon hitting the airport. Just last week, he rocketed through Dallas, Dubai, Oman, Barcelona and Frankfurt. Yet for all his travel, it would be a mistake to call Schlappig a nomad. The moment that he whiffs the airless ambience of a pressurized cabin, he’s home.

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Ben Wofford — Rolling Stone

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The Story Behind the Year’s Best Road Movie

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Weekend is here!!! Today’s needull is a very positive review of the movie ‘American Honey’.

What’s so powerful about American Honey is how it encompasses both that excitement of youth and the anxious, on-the-margins world of its characters – both of which Arnold was keen on coexisting in the movie. “I was in a homeless shelter in Austin,” she recalls, “and the man working there said to me, ‘A lot of Americans see these [people] as throwaways.’ I just wanted to show that they’re not throwaways. I don’t wanna get on any kind of soapbox, but I feel like that’s not a way to live. It is an amazing place to be where you can show something that perhaps doesn’t get seen.”

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Tim Grierson — Rolling Stone

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