This episode was a more uneven than the last 2, but still had some fun moments. And you remember I said last week, that Gene's death foreshadowed the birth of Don and Betty's baby. I usually miss those clues, so past me on the back, alright?
-What's with the hippie flower girl teacher? Sort of weird in the parent/teacher conference, and then very weird when she drunkenly called Don to apologize.
-Another episode, another illustration between how LLP does business and how Don Draper wants to do business. Now over paperclips and pencils. This might not end well, but it will probably look good. It's also revealed that Don goes to all the movies. And expenses them.
-A reappearance by Duck Phillips. Everyone's favorite. Now sniffing around Sterling Cooper for talent. Not clear what he'd want with Pete, but Peggy seems like a good idea. I like that he's still got the ducks on his wall, and I like how Pete freaked out when "Uncle Herman" called.
-Once at the hospital, that was sort of a shock to see how they did births in the early 60's. Wives get left at the end of the hall, and husbands hang out in a waiting room. Great shot when Don is watching Betty get wheeled down the hall. He's there the first time she looks back, but not the second. Also awesome how Don's eyes lit up after being offered a drink in the waiting room. Also, also awesome is Lisa Simpson as the maternity ward nurse. Lastly, the warden gave Don the cold shoulder while wheeling his wife out of the hospital. Maybe he was ashamed of sharing his feelings on the clean slate a baby brings?
-Don might not be that good of a cook, but he does know how to make one of my favorites, corned beef hash and eggs. First time Sally has ever seen him cook, too.
-Pete and Harry trying to convince Admiral TV to embrace the opportunity had shades of hip hop and Cristal. Pete says they should have commercials for blacks and whites, "Do them together. Integrated." "I don't think that's legal." And then Cooper ironically says, "Admiral Television doesn't want to be a colored television company."
-Finally, for all of you who had episode 5 in the pool of when would Don Draper first say, "What do you want me to say?" you can collect your winnings. That's his favorite phrase, and I should explore that more when I'm more awake.
What did you see?

This may be the best music review I've ever read. A sample:

1967 proved to be a turning point for the Beatles—the overwhelming lack of public interest made touring a fiscal impossibility, subsequently forcing them to focus exclusively on studio recordings. Spearheaded by the increasingly mustachioed Fake Paul, the four Beatles donned comedic Technicolor dreamcoats, consumed 700 sheets of mediocre acid on the roof of the studio, and proceeded to make Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a groundbreaking album no one actually likes. A concept album about finding a halfway decent song for Ringo, Sgt. Pepper has a few satisfactory moments (“Lovely Rita” totally nails the experience of almost having sex with a city employee), but this is only B+ work.

Nic Cage can see 2 minutes into the future, which is about all you need to know about this movie. I thought for a second they were going to use the clever device of him looking into the future to move along the story, and then they didn't, but points for almost. The movie would have been better if it had ended about 90 seconds earlier than it did.

Derek Sivers has a good post about a Kurt Vonnegut talk he saw a couple years ago where Vonnegut described our desire for drama. He used a chart to graph the plot of a normal work of fiction and then graphed what normal people's lives look like. Makes sense to me.

The normal disaster story, what we want our lives to be like.

“But because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs! So people pretend there is drama where there is none.”

What our lives are ACTUALLY like.

Not sure how I missed it, but Michael Jordan is getting inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame tomorrow. Not sure how I missed this either, but it seems Shepard Fairey has been commissioned by Upperdeck to make 3 prints, some of which will be signed by MJ. Not sure if any of the previous sentence is true, but what is true? The below poster is sick, and will, dare I say it, rival Jordan's rookie card for ebayjordanparaphernaliavalue. Yikes. Incidentally, and not completely unrelated, my brother and I each have an unrated Jordan rookie card. Neither of us know where they came from, though, as neither of us ever collected basketball cards.

Thanks to the Telegraph UK for this list of 50 things that are being killed by the internet. Thanks also to them for posting this list on one page instead of as a slide show. I hate when people do that.

My favorites below, and also, #1 is a doozy.

9) The myth of cat intelligence
The proudest household pets are now the illiterate butts of caption-based jokes. Icanhasreputashunback?
42) The nervous thrill of the reunion
You've spent the past five years tracking their weight-gain on Facebook, so meeting up with your first love doesn't pack the emotional punch it once did.

Via Fimoculous.

Hell yeah! This is the kind of web documentation I can get behind. Malcolm Gladwell has a new book coming out called What the Dog Saw made up of articles he's written for the New Yorker over the last several years. Kottke took it upon himself to grab links for all the articles, so it's up to you if you want to read the articles for free or buy them in a pleasing collection.

Two of my favorites: Troublemakers and Late Bloomers.

Written using the vernacular of about 165 years ago, there were entire paragraphs of Blood Meridian where I had very little idea what was happening. Then there was the brutality and violence. And yet, I loved it all.

Based on the book Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, The Last Pale Light In The West is a solo effort by Ben Nichols of Lucero. It's weird, an EP based on a book, but every song, even the my least favorite, is great. 4 stars, instead of 5, because all of the songs sort of sound the same, which ends up being fine, actually, but might rub some of you the wrong way.

By far the best episode of this short season. Yikes. Plus, Don closing up the cot makes 2 iconic last scenes in 2 weeks. I'm not going to be able to make it if the rest of the episodes are this good. Let's get to it.
-I usually like to do these note sections in chronological order, but hell, let's just start off with Gene. Gene letting Sally drive, Gene yelling at Bobby about eating an English muffin in the car and then yelling at Bobby again when he said peaches give him a rash, Gene telling Bobby not to listen to Don. And this one deserves it's own sentence, Gene eating chocolate ice cream with a sprinkle of salt. That's coming back around you, you know. When he said he was smelling oranges, I knew it was a precursor to dying, but I couldn't remember where I'd heard that before. This seems to open the door for Betty to have the baby, but we all thought the baby would be out before the first episode, didn't we? In any case, for a death we all expected, it certainly took up a lot of air in the episode.

Moving along to other major points:
-Horace, the tan Pete Campbell, wants to start a jaialai league, but can't stop saying things like, "I'm terrified of him catching balls in the face." This is all obviously a set up for the idea that Don hates how PPL is running Sterling Cooper.
-Someone needs to tell someone, that they may think they're making a movie and making a show made to be watched on DVD, but almost every single break to commercial is too abrupt. This has the jarring effect of reminding you you're watching the show on TV, like the channel wants you to. Why is this hard for them?
-Joanie dropping Ibsen. Classy.
-Don breaking the ant farm and then saying, "Bill it to the kid." Why not?
-Recognize Peggy's new roommate played by Carla Gallo. You probably saw her last in Undeclared or Californication.
-Sal getting to be a director is meh, as is Peggy getting an apartment in the city, but not bad for what seemed to be the 5th and 6th plot line of the show.
What did you think?