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Phillip Maciak

@pjmaciak.bsky.social

5.1K followers 1.3K following 2.1K posts

TV Critic @ The New Republic // DAD: A POP HISTORY (Plume 2027) // teaching @ Wash U in STL // https://linktr.ee/phillip.maciak 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, sixers

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Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · Apr 16

I'm writing a cultural history of the DAD! With Plume! Get ready for Father's Day 2027, friends! This is what's happening now! @duttonbooks.bsky.social

A Publishers Marketplace deal report screenshot that says: "New Republic critic and New York Times contributor Phillip Maciak's DAD: A POP HISTORY, a personal, entertaining, and revelatory examination starring TV's best and worst dads, from Ward Cleaver to Tony Soprano to Phil Dunphy, as well as the moments in history that made each meaningful and what our favorite pop culture dads tell us about our contemporary identities as fathers and parents, to Jill Schwartzman at Plume, in a pre-empt, by Danielle Svetcov at Levine Greenberg Rostan (world)."

Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 15h

SINNERS, but it's about twin brothers named Shake and Shack.

Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 16h

Replacing human writing with generative AI is a pretty bad technological transition, but I'm not sure it'll be worse than replacing rakes with leaf blowers. I'd rather be dealing with a T1000 as my next-door neighbor than this current guy with his infernal machine.

Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 16h

Yep — I'm saying that, before it's revealed that it's an ad for a better phone, it could easily be mistaken for an ad that's against phones in general.

Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 16h

I kind of liked the idea that it was my posts specifically.

Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 16h

Oh no!

Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 16h

This is a pretty good ad about screen addiction up until the only woman on earth with a phone asks it to tell her which flowers are prettier because she doesn't want to use her eyes to make that decision for herself and also she's the hero and everyone is jealous. www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...

Google Pixel 10 Launch | Vanilla

YouTube video by Made by Google

www.youtube.com

Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 17h

"Are you the favorite person of anybody?" is an extremely Head Coach question.

Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 17h

It was an extremely well-executed bit.

Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 17h

In other news, yesterday, Miranda July convinced an apparently decent number of her Instagram followers that she's secretly an assistant coach for the Oregon State men's soccer team.

Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 19h

"I hope they do it again forever." I haven't lived in Philly for so long, but @mckinneykelsey.bsky.social captures very precisely the social/antisocial magic of living in that great city when the Phils are good. It brought a tear to my eye. defector.com/what-ill-rem...

What I'll Remember About The Phillies | Defector

At the Phillies’ 2025 home opener, we decided that it was our year. As my friend Dana and I stood next to the giant balloon arch and let someone take our photo, people around us were feeling optimisti...

Reposted by Phillip Maciak

Paul F. Tompkins @pftompkins.bsky.social · 1d

Oh yeah I think I read about this being a possibility in DUH DOY Magazine

My wife and I had couples therapy on TV. It nearly wrecked our marriage

After Jessica and I received expert counselling from the hit show Couples Therapy, I became public enemy number one. Here’s what didn’t make it to the screen

www.theguardian.com

Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 19h

"You're talking for, now, five minutes with the Vice President of the United States..."

Vance's thing is being vocally indignant about not being respected. It's in the Zelenskyy videos too. Does he think DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU'RE TALKING TO is effective rhetoric or is he just pissed?

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 20h

STEPHANOPOULOS: I didn't insinuate anything. I asked you whether Tom Homan accepted $50k as was heard on an audio tape recorded by the FBI in September 2024. You did not answer the question. Thank you for your time.

VANCE: No, George, I sai--

STEPHANOPOULOS: We'll be right back

Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 19h

Also, everybody's like: Battle of Algiers! Midnight Run! But also: I Think You Should Leave? A man shouting bizarre non-idiomatic expressions and lying unconvincingly to a bland, vaguely surreal corporate organization?

Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 20h

I saw ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER at the Alamo Drafthouse last night,, which is probably the most dads who've ever been at a PTA meeting.

Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 1d

What a great book.

Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 1d

VERY MUCH SAME VIBE, but you're right. This show doesn't seem to hate anyone (incl, me, specifically, the viewer).

Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 1d

This is not a spoiler, or even necessarily a criticism, but each episode of THE CHAIR COMPANY — the new Tim Robinson show — has made me feel worse and worse.

Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 2d

GABBY'S DOLLHOUSE, the movie, stars Gloria Estefan as a hippie grandma living in a city called Cat Francisco.

Also starring Jason Mantzoukas.

Reposted by Phillip Maciak

Cory Barker 🆗 @corybarker.bsky.social · 3d

I read this a few years ago! mubi.com/en/notebook/...

Cinema Year Zero: TikTok and the Grammar of Silent Film

The forms and formulations of the social-media juggernaut TikTok are rooted in the earliest of all films.

Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 3d

Has anybody written about TikTok as silent cinema? Specifically the genre where an influencer or influencer couple acts out a scene w/ dialogue subtitles but no actual dialogue? On top of the early cinema editing toolkit — substitution splices, etc — seems like there's a performance style echo too.

Reposted by Phillip Maciak

Luke O'Neil @lukeoneil47.bsky.social · 3d

Oh brother, Rand Paul reading from a Hell World article on the senate floor.

Jake Romm @jakeromm.bsky.social · 3d

Lmao

Reposted by Phillip Maciak

Matt Zoller Seitz @mattzollerseitz.bsky.social · 3d

My next book will be a biography of Jack Nicholson, written as an epic story of the transformation of the movie industry and modern masculinity from the 1950s to the present, with Nicholson as the main character. The title: Leading Man.

New York Times bestselling author and film & TV critic at New York Magazine Matt Zoller Seitz's LEADING MAN, the definitive biography of Jack Nicholson, casting Nicholson as the complex main character in an era of American culture spanning six decades, while shining a light on the actor’s crucial role in shaping modern masculinity, both on and off the screen, based on new interviews and original reporting, to Amar Deol at Grand Central, in an exclusive submission, by Ethan Bassoff at WME.

Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 3d

I feel like We Are Who We Are disappeared into the pandemic fog, but it's a fascinating series.

Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · 3d

Re-upping this just to say that what's happening now is not "you created a novel bureaucracy to police us, and now we're doing it to you." The right is retaliating against thought crimes within higher ed that they have either hysterically exaggerated or wholly imagined. This is not tit for tat.

Phillip Maciak @pjmaciak.bsky.social · Feb 25

I know it's a right-wing, anti-DEI talking point, but do regular people think this? That DEI offices were auditing faculty syllabi and ordering them what to teach? Maybe I'm naive, but that level of detailed attention and oversight sounds far-fetched to me from any higher ed admin unit.

so, in the last four years:

1. a wise critique of DEI on campus was that a novel bureaucracy had been created within the college system, which represented neither the faculty nor the students, and it was starting to act like many faculty members' direct supervisor and telling them how and what to teach.

2. one thing that tech right strongly criticized about social media in the early 2020s was that their algorithms clearly had their finger on the scale to produce biased outcomes

and now, in the last four weeks:

1. we've got DOGE, essentially a little anti-bureaucracy bureaucracy, which is insisting on acting like every federal employee's boss (despite the objections of their senate-confirmed supervisors); and

2. there's mounting evidence that Musk has fixed Grok to avoid criticisms of him and the president

if you're on the right, and you don't quite consider this hypocrisy, then ok. but consider this: what's happening in govt/elonland right now could easily generate the exact same flavor of backlash that just brought you to power

Reposted by Phillip Maciak

David_j_roth @davidjroth.bsky.social · 4d

It's a testament to the Dodgers' industry-leading depth that when one of their accomplished-but-washed chud pitchers duffs a game out of reach they actually have another accomplished-but-washed chud with even worse politics to bring in to mop it up. Most teams don't even have one guy that odious.