Weekly Reader: Stories From Across Paste Media

By Garrett Martin  |  September 12, 2025 | 4:00pm
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Weekly Reader: Stories From Across Paste Media

Do AOR radio stations still do weekend blastoffs on Fridays? Do AOR radio stations still exist? If you’re unfamiliar, the radio is a device that connects to waves in the air that carry sound on them. When you dial your radio to a certain number you could hear a specific broadcast, and the companies—or “stations”—that would broadcast on those numbers would typically focus on a specific type of—okay, wait, you probably get how radio works. Some of those stations focused on playing the most popular rock music released in the ’60s and ’70s, and those stations often had their afternoon DJs yell “it’s Friday!” around 5 p.m. on Fridays while playing that Todd Rundgren song about banging drums. They usually called it the Weekend Blastoff and it seemed fun and cool when you were a kid, I don’t know what to tell you.

Well, consider this Paste Media’s weekend blastoff. Every Friday one of our network of sites cobbles together a quick guide to some of our best work of the week. This week Endless Mode, The A.V. Club, Paste Magazine, Splinter, and Jezebel looked at Guillermo del Toro’s new movie, Andrew Cuomo’s runway walk, the starving of Gaza, and more. Start your weekend off by reading ’em all. Thanks!

From The AV Club

With Frankenstein, Guillermo del Toro writes his career’s thesis in blood and snow by Katie Rife

“Where the whole experience becomes a bit ponderous is in the unwavering solemnity of its tone. Maybe two or three minutes of Frankenstein are actually light or funny; a low ratio for a 90-minute film, let alone a 149-minute one. The rest is all deathly serious, and Frankenstein bends under its own weight as the runtime wears on, particularly in the sections where [Guillermo] del Toro blatantly telegraphs the themes. The cast dutifully trudges along, but all seem exhausted by the film’s end.”

From Jezebel

I Saw Andrew Cuomo Walk the Runway at NYFW—So Now You Have to, Too by Audra Heinrichs

“As Cuomo was introduced (only as a former governor, not a mayoral candidate), Ostreicher, who MC’d the show, jested about his recent quip at a fundraiser, where he claimed he was ‘practicing his runway walk.’ Did it show? Not at all. The Prince of Darkness simply smiled, opened his blazer repeatedly (not a novel practice for him, I’m sure), and winked at the press jockeying for a photo at the end of the runway. I know an alleged sexual predator showboating for a captive audience is part and parcel of American politics, but it was (and probably will always be) one of the most haunting scenes I’ve ever witnessed—so much so that a waiter approached me in the shadowed corner I called home for the evening to inform me that I ‘looked like I needed a drink.'”

From Splinter

Great Hunger: Israel Restricting Gaza’s Food Supplies Isn’t New by Tiernan Cannon

“Israel also controlled what could be exported. ‘Gaza always was marketing a few trademark products,’ said Tania Hary, the executive director of Gisha, an Israeli human rights organization. ‘They are famous for their strawberries, for cherry tomatoes, peppers. These were products that were sold on the Israeli and West Bank market in the past. But in 2007, when Hamas came to power, the borders were completely closed and these products were barred from exiting. So that also had an impact on the economy writ large, and also on—it’s sort of overlooked—but also on development. It was like Gaza was frozen and left behind by certain agricultural advances.'”

From Paste Magazine

JADE Plays the Game by Matt Mitchell

“‘Through the Wire,’ ‘Royals,’ ‘Video Games,’ ‘Losing My Edge,’ ‘Galang,’ fucking ‘Tik Tok.’ These are the brilliant debut singles that have helped shape the last 25 years of music. We can add ‘Angel of My Dreams,’ the inaugural glimpse of Jade Thirlwall’s solo career after the dissolution of her longtime band, Little Mix, to that list now, too. With this current era of focus-group pop banality both rampant and oversaturated, ‘Angel of My Dreams’ is bonkers, zig-zagging through strips of falsetto, vibrating electroclash, and Sandie Shaw’s nearly unrecognizable voice, which gets doubled, halved, chopped, screwed, and funneled into a synthesizer across the first three minutes of That’s Showbiz Baby!’s splashy maximalism.”

From Endless Mode

Hollow Knight: Silksong‘s Crushing Difficulty Conveys a World in Penance by Elijah Gonzalez

“More than avoiding ‘cheap’ tricks, the game’s crushing difficulty ties in neatly with its overarching portrayal of religious self-flagellation. A consistent theme throughout the first and second acts is that the goal laid out for the pilgrims by the Citadel is virtually impossible; the path to the peak is littered with corpses and former followers controlled by a power dubbed the Haunting. After defeating a certain boss, you open a door that clearly hasn’t been used in decades, implying that no one has successfully made this climb in a very long time; their path to a promised heaven inevitably ends in death. The road to this terrestrial ‘heaven’ isn’t one that the flock is actually supposed to reach, but an impossible goal that causes suffering. Whether out of naivety or intentional self-destruction, the pilgrims worship a religion that demands every pound of flesh. In this way, it feels appropriate that Hornet’s journey is one that often feels similarly impossible, with imposing adversaries and swarms of rabid bugs making this climb an act of self-abasement.”

 

JADE photo by Conor Cunningham

Gaza Photo by United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East

Frankenstein photo from Netflix

 
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