How To Sit Through Sandy

For those who are stuck at home or are sitting in an empty office, we’ve comprised something of a guide to help keep you entertained and engaged during the storm. And for the West Coasters, who are just getting home from looting San Francisco following the Giants victory in the World Series: science has proven that the longer you stay awake, the shorter you hangover will be.

First, our Vox Tablet podcast today features Franklin Foer and Scroll Editor Emeritus Marc Tracy talking about their new book Jewish Jocks. Front and center in this conversation is another Sandy entirely—Sandy Koufax. Have a listen. There is an old wives’ tale that suggests that the sound of Marc Tracy talking heatedly about sports will countervail bad weather.

Over at The New Yorker, Ben Greenman has a hurricane playlist including the Bob Dylan song “Ballad in Plain D.” He explains:

It’s easy to pick a Dylan song, but hard to pick the right one. Not “Hurricane”: it’s not about weather. Not “Blowin’ in the Wind”: there’s weather, but it’s political, metaphorical, and, by this point, cliché. Not “Shelter from the Storm”: too obvious. Not “Idiot Wind”: too long. In the end, we parsed lyrics, and found three candidates: “The wind began to howl” (from “All Along the Watchtower”); “I’d jump up in the wind, do a somersault and spin” (from the early “All Over You,” recently released on the Witmark Demos); and “The wind knocks my window, the room it is wet,” from this plaintive, sometimes bitter ballad. It’s about the late Suze Rotolo, Dylan’s early-sixties girlfriend, and Dylan later looked back on it with regret: “Oh yeah, that one! I look back and say ‘I must have been a real schmuck to write that.’ I look back at that particular one and say, of all the songs I’ve written, maybe I could have left that alone.”

The Awl has compiled a stellar list of movies and television shows available for view on Netflix for those in need in of distraction.

The Forward has a dispatch from an Orthodox Jewish town as it prepares for the hurricane.

And, of course, there is Bruce Springsteen’s “Sandy,” live from 1975. Accordions for the win.