TV
The Clone Wars
How come the Star Wars movies couldn’t be as good as The Clone Wars, which launches its fourth season this week? Intergalactic action, writing that hearkens to the best comic books, gorgeous animation — it’s the total package. The new season moves closer to Episode III, in which Anakin Skywalker goes bad and George Lucas’s franchise goes off the rails. But for now, watching Obi Wan Kenobi match wits — and lightsabers — with General Grievous on Cartoon Network is one of the best half-hours on TV.
BOOK
Just My Type
Were you outraged when Ikea switched from Futura to Verdana? Do you own a T-shirt with an ampersand on it? Congratulations! You’re a font geek, and I have just the book for you: Simon Garfield’s Just My Type. As Garfield points out, the world of typography went mainstream with the first Macintosh, which allowed users to choose their fonts. Now there are hundreds of thousands of fonts, each set a work of art. Garfield takes you to the London Underground, where Johnston Sans gives the Tube a modern edge, and he speculates on whether Obama won the White House for his font choice (Gotham).
Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour
My iPod is always playing the same old tunes, but I found an antidote: Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour. Dylan takes a theme — “Money,” “The Devil” or even “California” — and spins an hour’s worth of awesomely obscure tunes around it. His little monologues are priceless, too — Hemingway-esque in their brevity, and deadpan funny. He hasn’t cut any new shows since 2009, but he did create 100 episodes. What’s new is that Sirius/XM Radio now has a 24-hour Theme Time Radio Hour channel on its Internet lineup (Ch. 801). You can still hear the show four times a week on Deep Tracks (Ch. 27) on Sirius/XM.
