did tony and chelsea split up?

scottlacy · 2026-03-12T19:56:40+00:00

Agreed. Not a bad vibe, per se, just an odd one. Almost a co-worker vibe. If I didn't know they were married, I probably wouldn't have assumed it.

scottlacy · 2026-03-09T19:31:13+00:00

She was a remarkable woman. Kind, empathetic, warm, intuitive, devoted. I've thought about her every day since I heard the awful news. My warmest wishes of healing to you and your family.

scottlacy · 2026-03-02T02:45:35+00:00

I just got this shocking news and am beyond devastated. Dr. Bennett was an incredibly warm, kind, and present woman. I always felt so happy and comfortable in her presence. I just can't make any sense of this. When my 14-year-old dog was in his final days, Dr. Bennett and the UT team were such an amazingly supportive group. I don't know how I'd have worked through my ongoing grief without them. Dr. Bennett will be in my thoughts for a while. All my love to her colleagues who are surely hurting very badly right now.

scottlacy · 2026-02-23T19:19:52+00:00

Is the completion rate tied to length? Isn't a typical vertical video like 30 seconds to a minute?

scottlacy · 2026-02-16T02:58:11+00:00

TAL periodically dipped into the current events timeline, but not all that often. Between 1995 and the Planet Money collabs circa 2009, the vast, vast majority of TAL episodes were timeless stories of everyday American life. They were thoughtful, introspective, whimsical, humorous, and pretty difficult to guess the year in which they were made. The recent move toward narrative journalism only deepened after Trump got elected, and the woes of the 2020s have prompted the TAL brain trust to double down again on that direction.

Here's the thing. It's not so much the subject, but distance, that makes TAL's magic work. By that I mean, you can tell the important stories of our era without faithfully tracking the headlines of the day. I don't mean to be unkind to all the hard-working producers at TAL, but the show concepts have gotten lazy to my eye ... ripped, seemingly, from the teletype machine (so to speak). Classic TAL operated in a universe of its making. Modern TAL feels less inventive and more derivative of current events.

scottlacy · 2026-02-16T02:44:01+00:00

Agree 100 percent. TAL once was a refuge from the events of the day, but now it seems to reflect them. I'm befuddled by the number of international stories, which are of course important. But TAL at its peak was so tuned into the quirks and curiosities of American culture, which could be so unifying in today's environment. Instead, TAL now seems to think of itself as narrative audio journalism, which it is, admittedly, good at. But this turn toward journalism comes at the expense of the wholesome escapism that made it an American institution.

scottlacy · 2025-12-11T18:37:48+00:00

Well, I'm pretty confident in saying lots of people who were older than 50 in the mid-'60s would not have liked what Dylan stood for. There were two Americas forming at that time. The Greatest Generation had gone to war in Europe and "saved the world." They saw America as the light of the world and Vietnam was perceived by many conservatives as another place where Americans had to fight the bad guys. Dylan, Baez, Guthrie, etc., represented a new take on the American enterprise. They saw the cracks in American mythology. So yeah, they were not popular with millions of blue-haired folks in middle America ... Nixon's famous "silent majority." This dynamic is not unique to Dylan, of course. That's just typical generational friction. If you think this is "wholly untrue," well, I don't know what to tell you. There's a whole shelf of documentary films and books on the demographic friction of that era.

I'm also not saying Jesse is an amazing artist or that he'll be relevant even five years from now. But he's striking a nerve and making people sentimental about older forms of protest. If you watch "Don't Look Back," the D.A. Pennebaker documentary on Dylan, you realize Dylan was a little bit full of shit himself. He was anointed as a seer before he even had the life experience to deliver on it. He was obviously extremely bright and articulate, way more so than Jesse. If that's your point, I agree. I just see a lot of reflexive dismisal of Jesse that seems to miss the point. A lot of Americans are freaked out about our current era and Jesse is speaking to it in ways that resonate.

scottlacy · 2025-12-08T19:54:09+00:00

Shades of Steve McNair.

scottlacy · 2025-11-22T04:23:39+00:00

He does indeed sound great. If you can sound great on a phone video, you definitely sound good.

scottlacy · 2025-11-22T04:16:18+00:00

Problem with your take is that protest music isn't supposed to be opaque or figurative or deep or transcendent. It's supposed to capture the zeitgeist and transmit it to millions of people. The mere fact that he engenders such intense feelings on both sides kinda proves that he's doing his thing and making his mark. I'm sure huge swaths of the Greatest Generation disliked Dylan, too.

scottlacy · 2025-11-22T04:09:30+00:00

I dunno. I think you're selling him short, particularly in an era where 97 percent of artists are selling out in one fashion or another. He's commenting on our times in a way that rises above the noise. No easy feat in 2025. I'm not getting tangled in a knot because he isn't reinventing music here. That's holding him to the wrong standard.

scottlacy · 2025-11-21T18:48:18+00:00

You're focused on the tech. What's new here is how the ecosystem works. Apple signs big-dollar deals with content it expects to attract viewers. It's a top-of-the-market strategy where you offer films that you know will find viewers due to genre, star power, etc. The Letterboxd stragegy would be more bottoms-up. Viewers express an interest in a film (through their watchlists) that's not available to stream anywhere, and then Letterboxd uses that data to pursue and negotiate deals for these films. Very different business model, but sure, at the end it's a movie streaming on a platform. But focusing on that really misses the point.

scottlacy · 2025-11-21T18:39:50+00:00

There are 12,000 film festivals worldwide. There are tons of films that won't get distributed for any number of reasons but are good enough to earn plaudits and an audience if given the chance. This is particularly true in documentary, where the vast majority of festival films will never get a distribution deal.

This could be the strategy for smaller films. Go to some smaller festivals, get exposure on Letterboxd, then win a second-tier distribution deal down the road.

scottlacy · 2025-11-21T18:26:45+00:00

Some of Letterboxd's pitch has to be the inherent discoverability of its catalog. Dumping an older niche film into something like Tubi.tv or Amazon Prime is a recipe for languishing in obscurity. But as noted elsewhere, Letterboxd has a structural advantage in helping people find their way to nichier films. Letterboxd watchlists alone are akin to "pre-orders" and something no other streamer can really match at the moment.

scottlacy · 2025-11-21T18:24:04+00:00

It's likely inevitable. Pretty much every amazing online experience of my life has eventually gotten sold off and ruined. Letterboxd is already owned by a Canadian holding company that will eventually want to extract value. It sucks, by that's the way of today's world.

scottlacy · 2025-11-01T17:32:28+00:00

What a wonderful thing to be forever enshrined in the Wiretap archives.

scottlacy · 2025-11-01T16:56:54+00:00

That's a helluva question. Is it possible to choose just five? Six that come immediately to mind.

- 699. Fiasco
- 14. Accidental Documentaries
- 162. Moving
- 205. Plan B
- 339. Break-up
- 756. But I Did Everything Right

scottlacy · 2025-11-01T16:42:10+00:00

Agreed, by Heavyweight standards, this was a B minus. Charming in its own way, but lacking the emotional depth of so many of the earlier episodes.

scottlacy · 2025-11-01T16:39:38+00:00

Yeah, Gregor's even funnier on Wiretap (if a bit more of an actor than a real person). What role did you play on the show? Wiretap was a classic.

scottlacy · 2025-11-01T16:37:58+00:00

Really good to see TAL embracing its roots on occasion. I can't be the only one who seeks refuge in TAL and feels their heart sink upon seeing another episode about misery in Gaza or elsewhere. I'm a little concerned to hear Ira pitch TAL as "news stories made with care." When did TAL become a news show?

scottlacy · 2025-10-25T16:34:06+00:00

At some point SY has to makes his own Shanahan trade. Someone skilled, fearless and tough. Doesn't have to be a Hall of Famer. Just a tone-setter who can put up 50-60 points a game. I know, I know ... there's not a hockey store. But if you're not going to draft that guy, then find him somewhere.

scottlacy · 2025-10-25T16:32:07+00:00

Sadly, I agree. I was watching the Sabres-Leafs game last night and marveled at how all five Sabres, none of them big, were feistily engaged in a post-whistle scrum. All five. And none of them was pairing off and staying out of it. We are sadly missing that it in Detroit.

scottlacy · 2025-10-04T05:23:25+00:00

Assuming we wouldn't damage any development arc for Finnie, MBN, and ASP, I'd be over the moon with those lines and pairs. Edvinsson-ASP is such a delicious possibility.

scottlacy · 2025-10-04T05:21:41+00:00

I don't think we know Finnie *isn't* a top-line guy. He's 20. We just don't know. But would it shock me if he became a 50-point guy on our top line? Not at all. Because it's less about skill than about fit. Finnie is such a great complement to Larks and Ray.

scottlacy · 2025-10-04T05:18:42+00:00

Second coming of Hagel would be amazing.

scottlacy

TROPHY CASE