Christina Hendricks as Joan Holloway on 'Mad Men.'
AMC

One linguist has questions about the way those Mad Men types, like Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks), talk to each other.

That's right. Summer doldrums killed it, but the fall surge is bringing back Read/Note/Ignore to send you down further delicious rabbit holes both substantive and ... not so much.

Read:

• Linguist John McWhorter argues that people in 1963 didn't really speak the way they do on Mad Men. Do not take this as a judgment upon the intense realism of the cocktails, however.

How to keep your record store alive, Spider-Man, the voices of children, and celebrity booze-purchasing, after the jump...

 

• The Wrap has an interesting story about bookstores and record stores staying afloat by hosting events, not just selling stuff.

Note:

• This horrible story of a jazz musician whose instruments were stolen only gets worse when you learn that one of them was borrowed. From one of his teachers. Here is the sound the inside of one's brain makes at this news: aiiyeeaaarrgh.

• If you liked Jon Favreau and Robert Downey, Jr. working together in Iron Man, take heart: they may be teaming up again.

• The question raised by this discussion of the revised Oscar rules would seem to me to be: If the Best Picture must logically be directed by the Best Director, then why bother voting on both awards?

• Fans of the PS22 chorus, which we discussed in April, will want to hear the full profile from All Things Considered the other day.

Ignore:

• Less relevant than a famous person's drinking habits? A famous person's buying-drinks habits.

• Vulture is on the story of the Spider-Man musical, which may or may not be dead. If you prefer, as I do, to believe there will never be a Spider-Man musical, you can safely ignore this news for now.