What We’re Watching This Week: Paige VanZant, Microsoft’s Comeback, and Jude Law Underwater
You don’t even want to look at the Weather Channel.
Monday
It’s not just Indianapolis: This Martin Luther King Jr. Day is set to be the unhappiest day of 2015. Known to researchers as “Blue Monday,” the annual nadir is marked by the moment on the calendar when the weather is at its worst, our collective debt is at its highest, we’ve all failed at our resolutions, and British people are pigging out. That last bit might sounds odd, but the whole concept was birthed across the pond, where gloomy researchers have spent years looking into this because you’ve got to do something after you lose an empire. Anyway, we’ll be looking for reasons to cheer up.
Here are five:
1) Joanna Krupa
3) Mara Teigen
4) Grace Weber
5) Larry Wilmore
Tuesday
The city of Portland has declared this Tuesday, “Decemberists Day” in honor of the seminal accordion-driven indie rock band that spent much of the last decade reimagining what the Crimean War would sound like if it had occurred in the basement of Juilliard after the students all took mild psychedelics. The city will celebrate by having beards and listening to the band’s new album with Mayor Charlie Hales at City Hall. The whole thing is charming and we look forward to searching out the local news clip in which Mayor Hales talks about how the band’s ode to American novelist and spelling bee expert Myla Goldberg affected his political career.
As an antidote to all that, we’ll also be looking at the articles marking the early rumblings of fame for one Paige VanZant, a pint-sized, blonde dynamo, who just booked her first major UFC fight and is going on press tour to remind people that she is both very terrifying and very pretty. She does not live in Portland.
on Jan 1, 2015 at 4:23pm PST
Wednesday
It’s easy to mock Microsoft and the years the brand has spent in the consumer tech wilderness, but Bill Gates can still afford more comedy writer than we can and Microsoft is still managing to threaten relevance. When the monolith debuts Windows 10 on January 21, the whole tech world will be watching. The operating system was built largely for the purpose of improving PC game play so expect to spend a little time watching the ol’ Xbox update.
Thursday
Fox really wants you to watch Dwight Schrute play detective on Backstrom, which is basically “House” if Hugh Laurie wore a poncho and was paid with tax dollars to be a dick to citizens. Doesn’t sound super palatable as an idea, but we’ll give it a go just as soon as we get tired of the X Games, which are kicking off in Aspen.
Friday
Not
a lot of people (read: Americans) saw last year’s
, in which Jude Law ingested pounds of drugs, buckets of alcohol, and most of the scenery. As a dissolute ex-con with a deep desire to reunite with his daughter and a deeper desire to get fucked up, Law was compelling to the point of being grotesque. The movie was awesome as a movie and as an announcement: Jude Law is back. Does
, his new undersea noir, have all the hallmarks of a
Das Boot
ripoff
? Sure, but Law will make it work. Have faith.
Weekend
There’s no football, so we’ll have to overcome the overwhelming urge to sit on our couch and reflexively watch a blank wall. We’ll overcome that urge by tuning into
the NFL Films documentary about the four photographers who have covered the Super Bowl for 48 straight years – good work if you can get it.
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