May 2, 2026

What I'm Watching, Reading, Listening to, and Rediscovering This Week

Hey there!

If you’re new here, welcome! I curate a combination of current events, pop culture, music, sports, and…well, whatever else I think you might dig.

Sometimes it’s heavily researched, and other times things pop up from random conversations with friends — see Rediscovering below, thanks, Jeffrey! — but, for 26 consecutive weeks now — and 36 Saturdays overall — we’ve shared The Saturday List.

Here, then, after a word from the “Subscribe” button, this week’s list.

Watching: My Chat with Sportswriter Lauren Beasley on The Vandy Program

This was a really fun interview for me, as the past few interviews were more focused on current events and less on sports and the intersection of sports and pop culture.

Lauren Beasley has covered sports for a long time, is based in Columbia, South Carolina, and actually grew up in Augusta, Georgia. So she has been around professional golf since high school.

Here’s more on who she is and what she covers for College Sports Wire at USA Today.

Reading: The Electric Typewriter (Or, A Whole Bunch of Essays on Just About Everything)

Surprised that I have only recently stumbled into this website. In some ways, I’m glad I did; in other ways, not so much, as it’s possible a site like that could put a little curator/blogger guy like me out of business.

But here are a couple pieces that will do what any great essay should do: get you thinking.

Josh Dzieza has a piece on The Verge called “AI Is a Lot of Work” from 2023 and it might give you hope that we’re not all going to turn everything over to machines.

From Asterisk Magazine, Oliver Kim talks about the global economy in a fascinating essay titled: “GDP: We Really Don’t Know How Good We Have It.”

Maybe, maybe, some of these essays might give you a much-needed dose of positivity heading into your weekend.

Listening to: Young the Giant

Young the Giant was formed in California in 2004, went through a couple lineup changes and a name change, then they got their break: playing at South by Southwest in 2009. (Yes, it’s time to feel old!)

From there, the band put out a self-titled debut album in 2010 and the biggest hit off of that disc was the single “Cough Syrup,” which got airplay on World Famous KROQ in Los Angeles and made it all the way to #2 on the US Alternative chart.

The next disc was called Mind Over Matter and had two solid singles that rose up the US Alternative chart. First, here’s “It’s About Time.”

One of my all-time favorite songs is the title track from that album; here’s “Mind Over Matter.”

Let’s flash forward to 2026: the band has a new album (!) called Victory Garden, so sure, why not! Here’s “God As Witness,” which dropped…on Friday, May 1.

Rediscovering: Ad Campaigns for the Television Set You May Have Had in the 1980s

Our first television set, and for a while our only set, was a Quasar. It was great and we grew up in UHF country, so we had even more dials to turn than those of you big-city folks with your 12 main choices.

Yes, pre-cable, pre-clicker in our house, it was the Quasar that did the trick. (They also had a very cool logo.)

My guess, from watching this ad, is that ours was pretty close to this model. (And TIL that Motorola was behind it.)

That ad was from 1972, so let’s move ahead in the 70s, and switch brands to what was possibly the best TV you could buy, at least if you believe this ad campaign from Sylvania.

We never had a Sylvania, but that didn’t stop their 1984 ad campaign from living rent-free in my head for 40 years. Nondishka!

The ne plus ultra of 1980s television brands, though? Curtis Mathes, who was actually a guy — George Curtis Mathes Jr., more on him below — that put his name behind some really high-quality televisions. Before we get to his ads, though, let’s take a look at one of the secrets behind their TV’s success; this particular element may have led to my family’s purchase of one of these sets.

That particular “VIR Circuit?” It also got you free HBO. Don’t tell the cable company.

Anyway, time to mainline some Curtis Mathes commercials. This reel comes from the ad agency itself, so enjoy 5:27 of a bunch of ads — They Had A Movie Club! — and the “I’m Curtis Mathes, our home entertainment products may be a little more expensive, but they’re worth it!” tagline — and think back to the glory days of the 1980s.

The second half of the above reel gives us a little bit of a lesson in brand management, as the ads that don’t feature the eponymous pitchman would come in handy; Curtis Mathes would die in a 1983 airline accident.

Finally, though, there’s Sony. I remember the Trinitron brand name. But we never had one in the house.

Alas, here’s an ad with a narrator that sounds like Jeremy Irons.

I can’t confirm who the narrator was…but I can wish you a wonderful week ahead!

All the best,

Dave