Hello and welcome to an all-new of Five Cool Things, the biweekly article where I talk about all the interesting, fabulous, and yes, cool things I’ve discovered since the last time.
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings in Tulsa, OK on April 29, 2026
On our way to this free concert, my wife and I were debating on whether or not Gillian would sing any Grateful Dead songs. Our show was in the middle of a string of concerts Gillian and Dave were doing that they called “Acoustic Reckoning,” where they covered nothing but Grateful Dead tunes (and a few traditional numbers the Dead often covered themselves). This night did not get that billing; it was hailed as part of their Woodland tour (in promotion of their latest, and fantastic, album of the same name). My wife figured they would throw in a couple of Dead songs, as they would be on their minds. I hoped she was right but figured they were probably tired of those songs and would stick to their normal repertoire.
Buy Gillian Welch & David Rawlings – WoodlandI was correct. They didn’t play a single Dead tune. As a huge Grateful Dead fan, I gotta admit that was a little disappointing. I’ve heard some recordings of their Acoustic Reckoning shows, and they are spectacular. It would have been awesome hearing one of my favorite duos singing my favorite band. I can’t really complain, though, because what we got was absolutely wonderful.
It was a beautiful, if chilly, night out under the stars (and a full moon), and the large crowd was thoroughly respectful. The duo has been playing together for decades and share a loving, easy rapport with gorgeous harmonies. They make new music that sounds as old as the hills. Rawlings is an underrated guitar player who is capable of setting the night on fire.
They played a lot of new songs and a few old ones. Rawlings joked that they had toured both the Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie museums (which are located in downtown Tulsa, just a few blocks from where the performance was being held), and he wanted to pay homage to both of them, but he couldn’t decide on what songs to play. Then he launched into “Song to Woody” Bob Dylan’s 1962 tribute to Woody Guthrie.
For the encore, they played a medley of Old Crow Medicine Show’s “I Hear Them All” (which Rawlings produced) and Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.” The crowd went wild, and it turned into a magnificent sing-along. They might not have played a single Grateful Dead tune, but this was one night I’ll never forget.
Anaconda (1997)
Anaconda came out at a time when I was going to the movies every weekend. I watched pretty much everything that came to my local theater. I skipped this one. The previews made it look terrible, and the reviews were even worse. I’m quite sure if I had watched it back then, I would have hated it.
Buy AnacondaBut time does weird things to bad movies. Like a lot of films that came out during this time period, Anaconda has undergone something of a re-evaluation. I don’t think anyone is declaring this to be a great movie, but nostalgia is a hell of a drug, and I regularly see posts talking about how much fun the film is. They recently made a meta-film about it starring Jack Black and Paul Rudd as a couple of guys who love the original film and go into the jungle to make a low-budget remake of the film to (presumably) disastrous results. That film also got terrible reviews, and I haven’t seen it.
But it did put the original in my mind once again, and on a boring Sunday afternoon, I finally watched it. It is an extraordinarily stupid movie. When Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube are your headlining stars, you know you’re in trouble. There’s also Eric Stoltz, an actual good actor, but he gets sidelined by a coma for half the movie. Jon Voight won an Oscar in 1979 for Coming Home, but you gotta figure the Academy thought seriously about revoking it when they saw what he’s doing here. He’s got some kind of untraceable alien accent going on, and his performance is so over the top it made Nicolas Cage blush. And the CGI snake is some of the worst effects work I’ve seen in a major motion picture.
Yet, somehow it kind of works. Coming to it this weekend, nearly 30 years after its release, knowing it is going to be terrible released me from any sort of expectations, and I was able to just sit back and enjoy the ridiculousness. It is still about 15 minutes too long, but when Voight’s character is spit out by the giant anaconda and his slimy corpse actually winks at the camera, I knew I was watching peak cinema.
Mudtown
My wife and I watch a lot of British television. From comedy panel shows like Taskmaster to Agatha Christie adaptations, Monty Python to Doctor Who, we love all things British. We are especially fond of British mystery shows. We subscribe to BritBox, which is a streaming service dedicated to all things British. The difficulty with watching British shows as an American is that there aren’t a lot of good ways to know which shows are good and which ones are crap. I don’t see the trailers or hear any of the buzz. I suppose there are places online where people talk about these things, but I don’t know where they are. So I usually just randomly choose something, press play, and hope for the best.
We’ve watched several shows of late that were pretty stupid, so when Mudtown proved to be pretty good, actually, I was thrilled. Erin Richards stars as Clare Lewis Jones, a volunteer magistrate, because that’s a thing in the British criminal justice system, apparently. She loves her job, and she’s good at it. But she has a dark past. She was a bit of a troubled teen, and she used to run around with a guy now called Saint Pete (Tom Cullen) who grew up to be a bit of a drug kingpin.
Her daughter Beca (Lauren Morais) starts dating Pete’s right hand man. One night at a party, Beca is attending, there is a fire that just so happens to burn a building Pete was hiding a bunch of money in. Soon after, one of the kids gets shot. Pete spends the rest of the season trying to figure out who is responsible, and Clare does her best to keep Beca out of harm’s way.
The show does a nice job blending the family drama with the crime stuff. The acting is good, and the Wales location is gorgeous. It falls a little into cliché at times, but I’ve watched so many mysteries of late where the characters make the stupidest decisions possible; it was quite nice to see people behaving at least somewhat sensibly.
Wilco in Bentonville, AR, on May 02, 2026
Wilco is one of my all-time favorite bands. I’ve seen them more times live than any other band. They often come to Tulsa, and frontman Jeff Tweedy has noted that the Cain’s Ballroom is one of his favorite venues to perform in. A few months ago they announced a new tour, but Tulsa wasn’t on the list. Bentonville was, and since that’s just a couple hours drive from me, I bought me and my family tickets.
Buy Wilco – Sky Blue SkyNaturally, about two weeks later they added a Tulsa date, at which point I turned to my wife and said, “We’re catching Wilco twice this summer.” My sister and her husband are coming into town from their home in South Korea, and we got them tickets, too. So that will be fun.
The Momentary is a big outdoor venue with just a lawn, no seats. Tickets were general admission. There was a time when I’d go to a GA show a couple of hours early to score the best spot possible, but I am old and out of shape. The idea of standing for two hours before a show and then keeping standing for another two during the show hurts my back. We arrived about half an hour before the performance was to start. Everybody brought their lawn chairs, and they were spread out pretty sporadically, so we could only find a spot pretty far in the back.
I know it is a cliche to complain about talkers at a concert, but my God, I cannot for the life of me understand why people pay a lot of money to go to a show and then act like the band is just background noise to their conversation. There were two guys behind us who talked loudly through the entire thing. Another lady came in late and literally turned her chair around, facing away from the band, so she could sit and chat with her friend. There was an entire group of people gathered behind the soundboard just talking away. I tried my best to tune them out. Sometimes, I’d shut my eyes and try to focus on the music. But it was hard going. It sucked too because the band was really good. And they were playing a most excellent set of songs.
At the set break me and my daughter got up to get a drink and check out the merch table. On our way, back we spied an open spot much closer to the stage. We signaled my wife, grabbed our stuff, and moved on up. What a difference that made. We could hear the band so much better. The crowd was actually into listening to the music instead of their own voices. The show went from what I was quickly considering to be one of the worst gigs I’d ever attended to one of my favorites.
The band absolutely rocked. They played an incredible set of music filled with songs from throughout their long career. Jeff Tweedy was in great spirits, and guitarist Nels Cline proved why he’s one of the best dudes in rock. Normally in songs like “Impossible Germany,” he’ll launch into this great cacophony of sound, just thrashing on his guitar, then the band will pick it up and create this wall of noise. I love it. But this night he played real solos, jamming out the melodies of the songs and creating something pure magic. I can’t wait to see them again in Tulsa.
Twins of Evil
I’ve gotten in the habit of watching horror movies on a Friday night. Often, I put on films from the legendary British studio Hammer. I love their blend of lavish production design and classic storytelling.
Buy Twins of EvilTwins of Evil stars Peter Cushing as the leader of a Puritan group who love nothing more than burning beautiful young women at the stake, believing them to be witches. Little do they know an actual Satanist, Count Karnstein (Damien Thomas), lives in the castle that sits on the hill high above the village.
Soon his twin nieces, Frieda and Maria (Mary & Madeline Collinson), move in with him, for their parents have recently died. As with all twins, one of them is a good girl, and the other is bad. Meanwhile, the count, who really only likes to dabble in Satanism—he’s not serious about it—accidentally awakens an ancestral vampire who promptly turns him into a vampire and then disappears from the movie. Freida, the evil twin, will then sneak out, visit the count, and become a vampire herself. It will be up to the Puritans to save the day. It is probably a mixed message to have the guys who were literally burning innocent women at the stake when your film begins to become the heroes without much of a change of heart, but what can you do?
Like most Hammer Horror films, the set designs are amazing, The cinematography is beautiful, and the cleavage is bountiful. It isn’t a great film by any means, but I love this stuff.
Resident Evil (2026)
My brother bought the original Resident Evil game back in the late 1990s. He was a huge PlayStation fan, but I’d given up on video games after the SNES. He showed me that game, and I’d sometimes watch him play for a while. It looked cool, and it was creepy as hell, but I just wasn’t into that stuff back then. That game, about a group of government agents sent to a town infested with mutants and zombies, spawned a multimedia franchise. I’ve seen a couple of the films, and they were mostly terrible. So when I learned there was a new movie out I was pretty skeptical. But when I learned it was directed by Zach Cregger, I gave the trailer a watch. You never know with a trailer how good the actual movie will be, but this looks terrifying. I enjoyed both Barbarian and Weapons, both helmed by Cregger, so I’m excited to see what he can do with a franchise.
