ALL SYSTEMS GO
And ready for launch
One of the things I failed to consider from last week’s vacation was just how long it would take me to get back on east coast time. Sure we hear about west-east jet lag, but holy god I’m awake at 3am every morning and that’s without my Cuban coffee.1
This is a HUGE week for the Historians At The Movies community. First thing- we launch the podcast on Wednesday-two days from now. Final edits are being made and files are being uploaded as we speak. You’ll be able to find the pod wherever you listen to them. I’ll have links galore. We’ll be releasing two episodes Wednesday. The first is a discussion of Black Panther and Wakanda Forever with Walter Greason. The second is talking all things Chef, food instagram, and social media with Emily Contois and Zenia Kish. We’ve taped about 10 of these so far and I’m so excited to share these all with you. We’ll be calling upon the entirety of the HATM community to help launch this, so please give them a listen, like them, subscribe, and share them with your friends on social media.
Also exciting is that the Historians At The Movies Instagram page is now live. A lot of you have expressed concerns about twitter and social media, and this page serves as an alternate contact point. You can go there any time to see what this week’s film will be and you can see an archive of every film HATM has shown thus far. I need to give a huge word of thanks to HATM Historian Jake Blackwell, who actually keeps better records of our enterprise than I do.2
What I’m Reading
With the year coming to a close I’m in a rush to finish as many books as I can. I read and finished Sebastian Junger’s Tribe on the plane and finally laid Dave Grohl’s The Storyteller to rest via audible yesterday.
That leaves me awkwardly without a new book to read. Instead of ordering something new, I thought I might (gasp) pick something off my bookshelf and knock that out. I’m circling two contenders. First is Jeremy Zallen’s American Lucifers: The Dark History of Artificial Light. Confession: I bought this simply on name and cover art alone. I mean, goddamn. Just look at it.
My other option is Mark Peterson’s The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630-1865. This also looks really good, but at 784 pages is kind of a beast. Will probably save to start 2023.
THIS WEEK ON HATM
It’s the holiday season and that means we’re kicking off a few movies related to the season. That means it’s time to get a little Dickens up in here. Join us on Amazon Prime this Sunday, December 11th at 8pm eastern for Scrooged. I think this will be a lot of fun.
Alright, back to work everyone, like and share these posts and don’t forget about the podcast on Wednesday. I cannot wait for you to hear it.
This did benefit me last week when I needed to completely recraft a new talk and powerpoint after I left my laptop charger on the plane from Paris. So up at 4:30am I was, typing away. It wasn’t my best stuff, but I can’t complain, all things considered.
By the way, Jake created an awesome map that shows the locations of HATM films. It’s right here: https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/jake.blackwell/viz/HistoriansattheMoviesHATM2_0/HATMFilmLocations