The Weekender #7: Your Must Hear, Watch, & Read Guide
Here's what we're getting into this weekend.
The Weekender is a curated listening, watching, and reading experience to give your weekend a sensory upgrade. Subscribe to get The Weekender in your inbox free every Friday.
What to Listen to This Weekend
Waxahatchee - Tigers Blood
Get Vinyl: Tigers Blood Clear Red | Ice Cold | Crowbar Grey | Black
Stream: Spotify | Bandcamp | Apple Music | YouTube
Katie Crutchfield returns with her sixth Waxahatchee album, titled Tigers Blood. This release builds on the country-tinged sound of her acclaimed Saint Cloud, with Brad Cook reprising his role as producer. Speaking to Rolling Stone, Crutchfield shared a newfound satisfaction with this album, a departure from her previous experiences:
“In the past, I’ve anxiously listened to my records before they come out a lot, searching for mistakes — and then of course finding them because I’m searching for them,” she says with a laugh. This time, she adds, “Every word is in the correct place. Every melody is just right. There’s no question marks. There’s no need to obsess over every little detail.”
My Alabama Crimson Tide vinyl variant from Seasick Records is arriving early next week and I can’t wait to give this a proper listen.
The War on Drugs - Lost in a Dream
Get Vinyl: Black | Discogs (multiple colored variants)
Stream: Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube
This month marks the tenth anniversary of Lost in the Dream, an album that firmly holds a spot in my top ten favs of the last decade.
The War on Drugs' third effort was, by all accounts, a laborious project. Spanning over two years, the recording sessions saw Adam Granduciel obsessing over minute details, with endless revisions and rewrites. This painstaking process, however, culminated in a stunningly beautiful hour of music that only gains more luster with each listen.
Lost in a Dream makes an incredible one-two punch with 2017’s A Deeper Understanding. Highlights from these records and more can be found on 2020’s LIVE DRUGS, one of the best sounding live albums in my record collection. The live rendition of “Under the Pressure,” the opening track of Lost in the Dream, extends over 12 minutes and is nothing short of exhilarating.
What to Watch This Weekend
NCAA Basketball March Madness
Stream: CBS, Paramount App, ncaa.com/march-madness-live/
Happy March Madness weekend to those who celebrate. 48 games in 4 days makes for one of the best sports weekend of the year.
Here’s some “Roundball Rock” courtesy of Tim Robinson, Jason Sudeikis, and John Tesh to get you hyped!
3 Body Problem
Stream: Netflix
If you’re someone who says “sportsball,” you’re probably opting to watch 3 Body Problem this weekend instead, which premiered on Netflix yesterday. The sci-fi series was created by Game of Thrones’ David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo, who created the criminally underrated AMC show The Terror.
The eight episodes, which you can binge in its entirety, is based on the Chinese novel The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin. This is the second live-action adaptation after the 2023 Chinese television series, called Three-Body, which can be viewed on Peacock.
Late Night with the Devil
In Theaters
There’s not many things better than watching a scary movie with a packed theater and you can do that this weekend with Late Night with the Devil, courtesy of IFC Films. The film premise is a live television broadcast in 1977 goes horribly wrong, unleashing evil into the nation's living rooms.
Character actor David Dastmalchian, who’s been in over 75 movies like Oppenheimer, Dune, and The Dark Knight, finally gets a starring man role.
The movie is 96% certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and should be our first great horror film of the year.
What to Read This Weekend
“The Last Days of the Boeing Whistleblower” by Shawn Tully for Fortune (published in Yahoo Finance for free reading)
The last few years have been tumultuous for Boeing, marked by a series of calamitous events. From the fatal crashes of its 737 Max 8 jets in 2018 and 2019 to an Alaska Airlines plane losing a door in flight earlier this year, and a harrowing incident this month when a LATAM Airlines Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner experienced a nosedive that caused injuries from passengers flying against the plane's ceiling. The pilot, reportedly pale as a ghost, informed onlookers that the gauges "went blank" and he was unable to control the aircraft, before the gauges reactivated and the flight resumed normally.
Against this backdrop, John Barnett, a former Boeing quality manager with over three decades of service who retired in 2017, found himself in the spotlight. Barnett had been testifying in a whistleblower lawsuit, raising alarms about production issues he had witnessed. His testimony was compelling and forceful:
Barnett had been on a roll as a video camera recorded the event. “John testified for four hours in questioning by my co-counsel Brian,” says Turkewitz. “This was following seven hours of cross examination by Boeing’s lawyers on Thursday. He was really happy to be telling his side of the story, excited to be fielding our questions, doing a great job. It was explosive stuff. As I’m sitting there, I’m thinking, ‘This is the best witness I’ve ever seen.’” At one point, says Turkewitz, the Boeing lawyer protested that Barnett was reciting the details of incidents from a decade ago, and specific dates, without looking at documents. As Turkevitz recalls the exchange, Barnett fired back, "I know these documents inside out. I’ve had to live it."
In an unusual turn, Boeing lawyers requested Barnett to extend his testimony by an additional day, a deviation from the norm in such legal battles, which are often protracted by one side to leverage time and resources.
Barnett was found dead the next morning in his vehicle in a Holiday Inn parking lot, a gun in his hand and a gunshot wound to his head.
The absence of an immediate independent investigation by the Department of Justice into this matter raises profound questions about accountability and the protection of whistleblowers in a supposed just society. It makes one wonder if we have become too desensitized to corporate overreach and the silencing of dissenting voices.
All I know is, the next time I’m on a Boeing and it lands safety, it may no longer be cringe to start clapping.
Hey thanks for visiting The Wax Museum! If you like what you read, forward this newsletter to a few friends who need their weekend upgraded! 🙌