The music of Captain Bogg and Salty
The pirate novels of Gideon Defoe

A list on understanding what makes the news and what doesn’t:

The essay on how news stories are written to be balanced, even if they can’t be, in Sex, drugs, and cocoa puffs: a low culture manifesto by Chuck Klosterman
It’s not news, it’s fark: how mass media tries to pass off crap as news by Drew Curtis, an excellent examination of the types of non-news in the news.
Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe, especially this segment on the structure of a TV news story.

A Multimedia List on the Subject of Ventriloquism
Ventriloquist Love, a song performed by Martin Mull
The Great Gabbo, a film starring Erich Von Stroheim
The Entertainer and the Dybbuk, a novel by Sid Fleischman
The Puppet Show, an episode of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Graphic Nonfiction That Involves Traumatic Tooth Loss
Smile, Raina Telgemeier
Laika, Nick Abadzis
The Photographer, Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefèvre, & Frédéric Lemercier*

*tooth loss in afterword