Listen: Master Bass by Bob Boilen ♥️
It’s been a minute since I wrote, and in that time, consummate sweetheart Bob Boilen announced he’s leaving NPR Music. It’s always sad when a beloved personality leaves, but Bob is the institution — in his 35 years at NPR, he started All Songs Considered, and accidentally launched the concert series that basically equates to authenticity in music (The NYT headline: “Bob Boilen, of NPR, to Push Back From His Tiny Desk” 🥺).
In his honor, I’m linking to Bob’s own music, a single from his 2022 album aptly called Futures Waiting. It’s kind of what you’d expect him to make in that it’s romantic and genre-bending and ambient. If that’s not your thing, move right along to some of Bob’s recommendations from the show this week, one of his last, with new releases from CHAI, Doja Cat, Bakar, and on and on.
The end of how many other eras?
Congrats to Lachlan Murdoch for landing the starring role in Succession, Season 5, which I was thinking would be unscripted, but who knows now, given the WGA deal.
Writers aren’t the only folks breathing a sigh of relief —apparently all the set builders have been pivoting to general contracting, which is the same as what they do for films only with less pay and less respect, and just this weekend, Bridge Props NY, the firm that does interiors for Succession, Gossip Girl, etc, had a sale for the general public to stay afloat. Cheers to whoever seized that moment, and much larger cheers to everyone else who has a job again.
Bite me (on second thought, absolutely do not)
Elsewhere in Things To Pay Attention To When There’s No TV, Dave Portnoy appears to be hosting a food festival? And peppering it with the characteristically abhorrent parts of his personality. (For anyone blessed enough to have forgotten, Portnoy is the Barstool sports founder who assaulted multiple women, was held accountable, and then attacked the journalist who broke the story.)
As a person who generally tries to avoid hypermasc blowhards such as Dave Portnoy, I’ve just learned that the festival is spinning out from a video series he runs called One Bite, where he’ll take a single bite of pizza and rate it from 1 to 10. That series has enough viewers, evidently, that the festival has the voluntary participation of several reputable pizza places willing to mortgage a moral compass for a bit of visibility: Lucali, John’s of Bleecker Street, DiFara, Patsy’s, Ace’s, Andrew Bellucci’s, Made in New York, Artichoke, Denino’s, and Prince Street Pizza, among others. When reporter Jeremy Schneider wrote as much on NJ.com, Portnoy pulled a Portnoy and posted on Barstool Sports: “this clown has been obsessed with me since 2013. 2013!!! Just seeing me everywhere he went because he has like a Fatal Attraction syndrome with me. How he can’t stop thinking about how successful I am and what a failure he is.” Perhaps Dave could organize a little pizza lunch with Lachlan.