Happy Saturday!
Today, I've got a Halloween edition of Three Things for you. Personally, I go back and forth on whether I like Halloween or not. There's way too much pressure to come up with a clever costume. But it's also a holiday centered around getting food for free, and I love free food. Everyone starts watching scary movies, which I hate. But they also make pumpkin pie, which I love. Overall, it's like someone took my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving, and added a lot more murder to it. But hey, you do you.
Upcoming Shows
LOS ANGELES:
Sunday, October 27th at 7:15 pm at START LA. Golden Hour Comedy is a free outdoor comedy show featuring some of the best standup in LA. Also free hot dogs! You really can't go wrong. Link
This week’s list
GREAT:
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is one of the greatest specials to ever air on television. It's funny, it's touching, it's beautiful. And I mean, come on, it's the Great Pumpkin! Also the idea that Charlie Brown goes trick-or-treating and ends up with nothing but a basket full of rocks is so hilarious to me. Is there a sadder fate in the universe? I strongly recommend giving it a rewatch (ABC is currently streaming it) and, of course, the Vince Guaraldi Sextet is the perfect soundtrack for any of your late October activities.
FUNNY:
The Pumpkin Dance is one of the greatest accomplishments in choreography, performance, television, and costume design. A local news station in Omaha, Nebraska decided to take the road less traveled. They used the weather map green screen to create a spooky graveyard backdrop. And then they brought in the pumpkin dancer... and the world was never the same. KXVO15 Pumpkin Dance (h/t The Ann Friedman Weekly)
INTERESTING:
Dr. Nenad Sestan is a Yale neuroscientist whose research challenges our ideas about what it means to die. If you could cellularly revive tissue, would that mean that the organism was back from the dead? Or would that be a new creature? What if it wasn't just any tissue, but brain tissue? Would you do it? Should you? Those are incredibly tough questions, both philosophically and ethically, but they're questions we may need to answer sooner than later. Forget the zombie movies and dive into the real science. It's stranger than I could have imagined. Scientists Are Giving Dead Brains New Life. What Could Go Wrong?
Thanks for reading! If you like these emails, please forward to a friend or spread the word. If someone forwarded you this email but you're not yet on the list, you can subscribe here.
I hope this coming week is exactly as spooky as you want it to be,
Chris