As much as I loved Cryptonomicon, it was probably inevitable that I’d start in on the Baroque Cycle. I feel like I should be paying a lot more attention to Stephenson’s concepts and his plot, but his prose just slays me. I can’t imagine anyone else seeing a hanging this way:

The rope clutches a disk of blue New England sky. The Puritans gaze at it and, to all appearances, think. Enoch the Red reins in his borrowed horse as it nears the edge of the crowd, and sees that the executioner’s purpose is not to let them inspect his knotwork, but to give them all a narrow—and, to a Puritan, tantalizing—glimpse of the portal through which they all must past one day.

In an odd way, he reminds me of Hilary Mantel. Where Mantel’s all fragments of prose, sharp, strange images, Stephenson tends towards run-on sentences, infinite outward expansion. But they both do lists in the same way, conjuring worlds into existence with arcane nouns and adjectives. For Stephenson, it’s alchemists’ experiments or the stores of a cellar that turns into a solid block of gold in the great fire. For Mantel (in Wolf Hall at least), it’s merchant’s stores and catalogues of estates. They’re both beautiful.

Katie’s got an interesting list of actors she likes who mostly work in television who are, currently, without roles in existing shows or new pilots. I say interesting mostly because when I think about actors I’d like to see on TV, it’s not primarily in terms of wanting to see more of them in general—it’s about wanting there to be certain kinds of characters and stories on television that for me, those actors embody. I want to see Katee Sackhoff on screen more, because I want more stories about smart, steely, unconventional women. I don’t like her enough to go see, for example, The Haunting in Georgia.

Of course, there are occasional casting decisions that make me change my sense of what a pilot’s going to be, and how it’s going to come across. I probably never would have checked out Glee competitor/ripoff Smash, which is apparently about a group of people who bond while they’re part of a production of a musical about Marilyn Monroe, if not for the news that Angelica Huston was going to be in it. The sudden appearance of someone delightfully regal and strange—and someone who has never been a TV regular before—in an otherwise pedestrian-sounding concept is almost alchemical.

I may not like David Friendly’s movies very much—Big Momma’s House is not exactly my jam—but this is an interesting essay on where the next, nationally dominant, black comedian is going to come from, particularly as the internet has challenged the comedy club scene:

In the world of comedy, whether it’s movies (Pryor’s classic Here and Now) or HBO specials (Lawrence’s You So Crazy) or series TV (Sanford and Son, The Bernie Mac Show), the stars honed their acts for years on the road before they reached the big screen. Well before he could legally order a drink, Murphy got his chops at clubs like the Comic Strip in New York and Lawrence at places like L.A.’s Kings Wood. Saturday Night Live became a launchpad for everyone from Murphy and Chris Rock to Tracy Morgan and Kenan Thompson.

But how relevant are those clubs today, and how much do they influence the pipeline that leads to stardom? With the advent of YouTube, Funny or Die and Hulu, the living room can become the main room. And in this attention-deficit, quick-fix world, they need to be funny fast. Take a look at Jay Pharoah’s Will Smith imitation, and you quickly get the feeling you’re watching a future superstar. But will the suits bet the millions necessary to make and market a Jay Pharoah studio release? Trust me, in this environment, It’s not an easy call. Even in this hyperspace world, the process is gradual.