The name Rick Moody will be familiar to anyone who keeps current with American writing. He’s the recipient of several awards and fellowships, including the Pushcart Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship and the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir, and his lauded 1994 novel The Ice Storm was filmed by director Ang Lee. Moody is hanging around the MAGNET shop this week mostly because of his side job as one-quarter of the Wingdale Community Singers, a remarkable collection of writers, musicians and artists of varying stripes. Once pegged as an “urban folk” group that wrote old-timey songs about modern topics such as cross-dressers and funky Brooklyn culture, the Wingdales just released their second album, Spirit Duplicator, on the Scarlet Shame label. In addition to his writing and recording projects, Moody is guest editing magnetmagazine.com this week. Read our Q&A with him.
Moody: The Sopranos is ancient history, The Wire had its time and is now consigned to classrooms where it will be taught for the next 200 years, Battlestar Galactica is esoteric because of its speculative/sci-fi topography. That leaves Friday Night Lights as the best show on television, and not because it’s about football. It’s good despite the fact that it’s about football. Great women characters! Especially the coach’s wife! And plausible human situations! People who always seem to have mixed feelings about one another! Losers! The left behind! People who don’t get it all together, just like the people you know in real life!
