It’s a tale as old as time: An experienced guitarist sits down with a young kid who just wants to learn the basics. They have an hour-long lesson in which they discuss tuning, chord progression, and they strum a few easy songs. The 21st-century catch? The guitarist is halfway across the world.

No matter where the student or teacher is, music instruction is now possible through a website called Bandhappy (bandhappy.com), which uses video chat to connect nearly 400 teachers with more than 8,000 students around the globe.

Earlier this year, when Vanity Fair marked the 30th anniversary of Diner by proclaiming the Baltimore-set movie, written and directed by native son Barry Levinson, “the most influential movie of the last 30 years,” it led to lots of head-scratching: “Not E.T., not Reservoir Dogs, not Titanic, but… Diner?”

Editor's Note: Anne Tyler’s 19th novel is, not surprisingly, set in Baltimore, so its geography and overall feel will be familiar. But the book contains some surprises, including a quasi-supernatural element, that will raise a few eyebrows as she explores notions of love, loss, and recovery. Tyler selected this excerpt and personally edited it for Baltimore readers, who have gotten sneak previews of her last four books.

For five years, Erin Gleeson and Benjamin O'Brien have been producing a surreal children's show, Showbeast, and posting episodes online. Billed as "a show to feel weird about," their Web series makes Pee-Wee's Playhouse seem straight-laced thanks to its peculiar puppets, plotlines involving mustache removal or Magic 8 Ball fortune-telling, dreamlike digital animation, and wacky cameos by the likes of Dan Deacon. It isn't the sort of project a network gets behind or a foundation funds.