iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

B-Side @benmsmith.com · 30/09/2026

Jill Lepore is the sort of academic I absolutely want to hear shoot the shit on whatever topic she wants to

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 25/09/2026

love to discover in hindsight that apparently this week’s movie theme was “the devil”?

posters for EVENT HORIZON, IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, CHRONOVISOR, and BOORMAN AND THE DEVIL

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 16/09/2026

was already excited about this book but flipping it over and seeing this Tressie McMillan Cottom blurb has me even more hyped

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 13/09/2026

love Hanif Abdurraqib's three-part journey re: the WVU Hilltoppers' Mascot, Big Red

Hanif Abdurraqib on Instagram: "my politics are famously and firmly AMABEE (All Mascots Are Bad Except Ellie) but today I saw a video this little freak doin some goofy antics and I think I like this weirdo. Look at the shape of this thing. I don't know anything about Western Kentucky University really but I am rooting for this thing specifically"

Hanif Abdurraqib on Instagram: "wow and Big Red also rejects the gender binary - much respect, I will not be rooting for Western Kentucky. My beloved Hilltoppers. Quick question, Are they good at sports."

Hanif Abdurraqib on Instagram: "Lord Jesus they lost by 50 points this very afternoon, I'm out, I'm just gonna stick to rooting for the freaky red blob as an individual"

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 07/09/2026

MIT’s List Visual Arts Center has a show featuring the Student Lending Collection before it goes out to various undergrad and grad student living/office spaces for the year

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 04/09/2026

A great time at the movies this week

Poster for TOTAL RECALL, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956), INVADERS FROM MARS (1953), and COYOTE VS ACME

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 01/09/2026

we also get to premiere the BEAUTIFUL visual refresh @justinladia.com helped us out with over the summer. More to come with this, but it already looks so good, y'all.

episode cover for 308, WELCOME TO BULGARIA

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 30/08/2026

This theme is an incredible series of finds. #NYTXW

Congratulations! You solved a Sunday Crossword in 10:03.

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 28/08/2026

as a person of Minnesotan heritage, I immediately understood the white hot rage behind these words. Someone's house is getting burned down.

It’s Just Plain Fucking French Fries
Price: $9 to $20 at Solem's French Fries

Solem's French Fries serves fresh-cut french fries in four sizes with a dedicated sauce bar offering a variety of self-serve spices and dipping sauces. Plus, fresh-squeezed, frozen lemonades, fountain sodas and bottled water. Fries are gluten-free, vegetarian and vegan.

This is a scam!! The only thing Solem's French Fries sells is plain, humble french fries in various sized containers. Prices start at NINE U.S. DOLLARS for the smallest cup (pictured), which holds approximately one (1) potato. In exchange, Solem’s offers 10 pump-your-own sauces, Cajun seasoning from Restaurant Depot, and ketchup that isn’t even Heinz. And these boring-ass spuds are being peddled from behind one long counter shared with Solem’s marquee truck, which has been selling buckets of cheese curds on Machinery Hill for years. All sodas literally come from the cheese curd truck! Need a sweet treat? Try Solem’s mini donut outfit, located just behind the suburb of Solem’s savory franchises. Inquiring mouths need to know WHO on the State Fair board is getting paid to label french fries a “new food” and Solem’s a “new vendor!” GTFOH.

Verdict: Skip

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 21/08/2026

Joe Dante clearly having a lot of fun, weapons-grade Velveeta, a fun riff on The Tempest with spaceships, and a Michael Powell thing I didn't know existed until Eternal Family wrote about it.

posters for THE HOWLING, THIS ISLAND EARTH, FORBIDDEN PLANET, and BLUEBEARD'S CASTLE

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 20/08/2026

my favorite repost is the one that added Leches Georg to the mix

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 18/08/2026

Unbothered. Moisturized. Happy. In His Lane. Focused. Flourishing.

the little dancing guy from the Baskin Robbins CAN'T STOP THE NUTS ad

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 12/08/2026

It's somehow the movie equivalent of this tumblr exchange. I re-watched it in order to do the writeup, and all I had mentally at the end of the viewing was "it movies?"

tumblr exchange.

heedra: "i’ve mixed cranberry mikes harder and cucumber lime gatorade into a drink i like to call “the flavor” because like. you drink this shit and your tongue is like “there’s a taste here. you are experiencing a flavor” but when you go to open the door there’s no flavor there. it comes back with an undefined error in the flavor column. it’s the missingno of flavors. it so absolutely and definitely tastes like something and that thing is nothing."

xgutter-glitterx: "im going to make this brb"

xgutter-glitterx: "okay so i found a gas station that had the stuff so i made it

diagnosis: it tastes?"

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 12/08/2026

Ned clearly read my ringing (?) endorsement (?!?!?) of THE PHYNX on @eurowhat.bsky.social's recent Patreon newsletter: patreon.com/eurowhat

🥰 Recommendations

If at the end of our summer movie marathon you found yourself looking for a movie that has that "episode of the Monkees stretched out to feature length" feel, but also want something which somehow got even less of a release than TOOMORROW, unfortunately I have a movie for you: 1970’s THE PHYNX.

Available via Warner Archive, THE PHYNX describes itself thusly:

When the Commies snatch George Jessel, Butterfly McQueen, Dorothy Lamour and other "World Leaders" , America's Super Secret Agency forms The Phynx, a pre-fab pop band whose musical mission is to play a concert in the castle where the captives are held and rock the prisoners free.

The songs are by Lieber and Stoller and the guest appearances are from all of Hollywood’s Brightest Stars of Yesteryear Who Were Available In The Warner Brothers Commissary That Day. If TOOMORROW is “The Monkees get kidnapped by aliens because their synthesizer is so groovy, man”, THE PHYNX is “The Monkees are assembled by the US Government to depose the far-out throne of Albania”. It did not escape test screenings and it's mind-boggling to me that it’s been let out of the vault onto DVD/the usual online movie renting spaces like Prime Video and AppleTV. It is a TV show-ass movie. You've been warned.

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 08/08/2026

love to find a Jenny Holzer text piece in the wild

sticker on a municipal electric box that reads “USE MORE GARLIC THAN THE RECIPE INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX TELLS YOU TO. THEY CAN’T STOP YOU. THEY WON’T EVEN KNOW.”

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 01/08/2026

Quote with a ridiculous movie you think people should watch. this poster and tagline are new to me, at no point does this movie enter space

poster for 1980's THE APPLE. Catherine Mary Stewart stands astride a gigantic apple with a treble clef for a stem. the tagline promises "THE POWER OF ROCK...THE MAGIC OF SPACE" even though the movie stays firmly planted within Earth's gravitational space for its entire runtime.

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 29/07/2026

look at this delicious-looking mango con chamoy paleta-themed field notes

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 26/07/2026

hello from crosswords, we are at the school outside Boston that is fancy enough that we are not solving in the gymnasium like common people, we are in the PALAISTRA

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 25/07/2026

It’s new Scott C. print day!!!

Scott C. Great Showdowns print of Rocky and Grace from Project Hail Mary

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 25/07/2026

someone posted a photo of this flyer to the local reddit as a "what is wrong with some people" post but unfortunately it is the funniest thing I have seen of recent note

flyer advertising "Farts at the Armory: a gender non-conforming flatulence experience", apparently tonight at 7:30

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 25/07/2026

made this in May and didn't post it then because I was unsure of the "watching Eurovision"/"knows classic Onion headlines" Venn diagram overlap

modified Onion headline reading "Petra Mede: 'Well, Well, Well, Not So Easy To Find A Eurovision Host That Doesn't Suck Shit, Huh?'"

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 23/07/2026

this is the opposite of an endorsement to me. I will actively seek to destroy this business and salt the earth it was on.

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 23/07/2026

Boston folks, Shakespeare on the Common’s Midsummer Night’s Dream is RAVE THEMED and delightful, GO

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 09/07/2026

sunday funday with these pig dicks

Jean Dubuffet’s “Business Lunch”, a series of 5 identical business men eating lunch scratched into a canvas covered in black paint

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 08/07/2026

managed to run into everyone I wanted to on campus mostly by accident, bless you, universe. thanks for a lovely visit, rose-hulman ❤️

White Chapel on RHIT’s campus, preceded by a delightful amount of rewilded green space

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 06/07/2026

didn’t pay $7 to experience all 22 minutes of the Eddie Munster Monster Museum experience because this photo was sufficient

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 06/07/2026

I have spent vacation so far going to a regional amusement park and showing my dearest college roommate some primo hot garbage like Sitcoms That Primetime Forgot and FUN IN BALLOON LAND and it has been the hard reset my brain has needed

the classic Oreo margarita recipe we all know and love

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 30/06/2026

Every biotech startup ad on the T is basically: ZOOSHA, K-SMOG, and grunt flipping. In days. Not months.

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 30/06/2026

summer friends are out!

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 27/06/2026

thoroughly on this one's wavelength #NYTXW

Congratulations! You solved a Saturday Crossword in 5:18

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 25/06/2026

folks? everything bagel croissant.

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 20/06/2026

folks? It turns out you can make an espresso tonic with irn-bru in place of the tonic water and it kind of works!

an iced espresso drink with irn-bru, a soda that tastes like if cotton candy could become rusty

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 19/06/2026

deeply chaotic in the best way, I am changéd and will not dither on getting tickets next time

Sam Campbell leading us through a Phone Experience

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 19/06/2026

demi adejuyigbe’s run on guy montgomery’s guy mont spelling bee is giving me the same feeling of pride as the world cup, we need to get him on taskmaster STAT

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 13/06/2026

my salted caramel sauce got slightly darker than I intended it to go but in doing that it may have made the bread pudding even better?

a batch of salted caramel pretzel bread pudding

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 12/06/2026

look at the rise on my beautiful sons

A batch of cacio e pepe scones with good color and rise

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 11/06/2026

Also: possibly the best scenic design I’ve seen for a local production in a while?

The set of EUREKA DAY, an elementary school library in Berkeley, CA

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B-Side @benmsmith.com · 07/06/2026

went to see Purple Rain for Prince's birthday and had thoughts

as a minnesotan I am giving this movie 5 stars with my heart and 3.5 stars with my eyes/head

there's a point in every movie about a band making it big where you have to buy into the fantasy that yes, THIS is the song that WILL make this band the stars the movie tells you they will be.

it is very easy to do this with the end of Purple Rain because the band is Prince and The Revolution, and they are playing "Purple Rain", "I Would Die 4 U", and "Baby I'm a Star", having already played several other songs in the movie that will absolutely catapult them to a new echelon of fame.

this movie also understands that it needs to use the minimum amount of plot connective tissue to get you from performance to performance, and that said connective tissue should be played straight to the point of melodrama. It means this has mostly aged into delicious cheese, though the parts that haven't REALLY haven't. you can't be talking to people like that and throwing ladies in the dumpster, Morris Day and Jerome!

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