The Weekly Wrap: March 24, 2024

For the past few years, we've let the kiddo put together her own March Madness bracket. She doesn't give a whit about the teams and she has no concept of seeding, but she does have strong opinions about mascots.

Each year, I download a picture of every single mascot. Then, I pull up the image of the mascots for each game on my laptop. She tells me which one she likes best. It's not a winning method, but it is a lot of fun. We generally do it over dinner and I try my best to not sway her choices.

While there are a lot of dogs, wolves, birds, and questionable Native American mascots, there's usually one or two random outliers. I, personally, was a big fan of St. Peter's peacock. Kiddo, on the other hand was delighted by Long Beach State's shark. It was an immediate favorite and she had this 15-seed team taking the championship.

Spoiler alert - they will not be the champion.

​How do you pick your bracket?

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• How to capture a solar eclipse. [PetaPixel]
• We need more childcare on campus. [NPR]
• Some tips for using Google Scholar. [Lifehacker]
• The high cost of cheap shrimp. [AP]

• An interesting discussion about the meaning of Princess Diana. [Royal Blood]
• The esteem of the Criterion Collection. [The Daily]
• What your car knows about you. [The Daily]
• What do you put down your sink? [99% Invisible]
• The culture of Cajun flavor. [Gastropod]
• A look at the end of life in prison. [Ear Hustle]
• The joy of Kevin Bacon's Instagram. [Culture Study]
• Protect your peepers! [Life Kit]

• I've been meaning to watch Snowpiercer since it came out in theatres. I did not realize, until I checked IMDB, that this film is now 11 years old. How time flies. From reviews and recommendations, I thought this movie would be a lot more visually brutal than it actual was.  There was indeed graphic violence but what I found most disturbing was some of the descriptive dialogue. That's gonna stick with me for a bit. Well done acting by Chris Evans in those scene. Also, love a good bit casting with Ed Harris. [Tubi]
• I don't know that last time I laughed out loud to a film as much as I did to Anyone But You. This rom-com headlines Sydney Sweeny and Glen Powell. The husband and I watched it together and found it highly amusing. We outright cackled at some scenes. This movie is about two beautiful people in a beautiful place and the various rom-com shenanigan tropes the get into.  Also, this film gave equal treatment to male and female gaze which I appreciate. [Amazon Prime]
• For our TV show binge, we dove back into the later seasons of The Crown. I found episode 3 of season 5 ("Mou Mou") to be particularly good. It told a lot of narrative from a montage with the Duke of Windsor's valet. It was quite well done and I found the valet to be far more interesting than the main characters. Also, the actor cast to play Mohamed Al Fayed, Salim Daw, gives a particularly wonderful performance. He's engaging and it's hard not to like him. [Netflix]

• I'm trying to cycle more seafood into my meal planning. This week, I made everything salmon with cucumber and red onion salad. This is kind of a variation on bagels and lox. It was quite good and I will make it again. I used Trader Joe's Everything But the Bagel Seasoning which worked great. I also soaked the red onion in ice water to remove some of the bite. [WaPo]
• Another new to us dish was sheet pan chicken souvlaki. We used chicken breast instead of thighs because that's what we had on hand. This was quick to throw together and decently tasty (I should have seasoned with a touch more salt.) After the meal, we had leftover veggies. To use them up later in the week, I sauteed them in a frying pan and then topped them with a fried egg and sriracha. That was a delicious way to start my day. [The Kitchn]