4/7/26 - 4/13/26

The algorithms seem even more broken than ever lately. I spent years training my Twitter algorithm to only serve me reality TV gossip, but over the past couple weeks it’s somehow become 99% UFO content, with a smattering of only the strangest political stories of the day (like Eric Adams’ recent transition into an Albanian — mazel tov!). My feed is so choked with Nancy Mace’s terrifying face screaming about alien disclosure that I somehow missed the actually important news that Lisa from Real Housewives of Miami was arrested for wiretapping??? Look, I know Twitter isn’t where you get real news anymore, and I know that Elon’s algorithm has decided the best way to try to trick me into the right-wing media sphere is via UFOs, but they’ve sorely miscalculated — and I’m actually much more likely to get sucked into conspiracy theories via the Housewives, anyway. (For example: Lisa is innocent! It’s either her evil ex Jody’s fault or she’s being framed by her other evil ex Lenny! Free Lisa!) All I’m saying is, we’ve had some dead canaries in the media coal mines over the last couple years, but if a Real Housewife gets arrested and a gay’s algorithm doesn’t even bother to show him… the internet might be over.

This week: I watched an all-time classic and got distracted by Val Kilmer body horror, I enjoyed a campy recent flop, I circled back on the Beckham family drama, I dove headfirst into some truly trashy TV, and I read two fine books.

Heat (1995) — on Apple TV

I know I’m going to catch some heat for this, but I have somehow gone this long without ever seeing Heat. I know, I know! It’s one of the greatest shames of my life. Don’t get me wrong, I have seen Pacino’s “she’s got a… GREAT ASS!” scene more times than I can count — I’m not living in the damn woods! — but I had never before sat down for the rest of the movie that surrounds that scene. Last weekend, I finally did, and are you surprised to learn I loved it? I was surprised by how attracted I was to De Niro, and obviously everything Pacino does in this is legendary, but the rest of the ensemble — Danny Trejo, Ashley Judd, and Val especially — is essential to why this works so well. (The only true weak spot is Natalie Portman, who we can somewhat forgive since she’s literally a child. But really, the rest of these actors are at the peak of their abilities, while Natalie’s in a Lifetime movie.)

It’s three hours but hums along so well you hardly even notice the time passing — the only time I got distracted was when I noticed a softball-sized lump on Val Kilmer’s elbow in a scene, and needed to pull out my phone to figure out what the fuck was going on. Turns out he broke his arm filming The Doors, which resulted in a massive cyst on his elbow? And that he had it for the rest of his life??? Did you all already know this? Is this something people have been talking about for decades? Am I joining the Val Kilmer body horror conversation too late? He was such a shining star, gone far too soon, and his performance in Heat is one of the best he ever gave, and yet unfortunately all I can really think about now is this:

The Last Duel (2021) — on Apple TV

This one fell through the cracks a few years ago, but for whatever reason I decided this weekend was “watch 3-hour movies you haven’t seen before” weekend. This is possibly Ridley Scott’s campiest film, and everyone in it seems to be having a great time, even though the movie is about, well, rape. (“Medieval #MeToo” is an insane idea for a film, so I can see why this flopped at the box office, but… it kind of works!)

Everyone’s doing their own separate thing in this, but if you free yourself from such questions as, “Are these performances good?” or, “Is this a real movie or an extra-long SNL sketch?” I promise you’ll have a lot more fun with it. Adam Driver is in full thespian diva mode — this man was simply born to put on a cloak and stomp around! Jodie Comer is actually fantastic, easily balancing the subtleties of the most complicated and actually dramatic role in the film. And Matt Damon is, as always, Matt Damon, this time with some bad prosthetics and a terrible English accent that he gives up on halfway through every sentence.

But really, we’re all here for Ben Affleck, who stars as a royal playboy dripping in gold and jewels, with a terrible platinum dye job, who doesn’t give a shit about anything anyone else is doing, and eats up every scene he’s in. Denzel’s iconic quote about his role in Gladiator II — “I’m putting this dress on, these rings, and going crazy” — easily can also apply to whatever Ben is doing in The Last Duel. I don’t care what anyone says, this movie is silly and kind of stupid but I’m prepared to defend The Last Duel to the death.

“What Broke the Beckhams?” by Bridget Read — in NY Mag

Just when I think I’m out on the Beckham/Peltz family drama, this article pulls me back in. There aren’t any revelations, per se, but there are some incredible anecdotes in here that show just how deeply embarrassing everyone involved is. Take, for example, the movie Nicola Peltz wrote, directed, and starred in, using her dad’s money, which is apparently just a ripoff of The Florida Project, in which her husband Brooklyn Beckham “had a cameo, but it was apparently cut by his wife because he couldn’t stop looking directly into the camera.” That’s our boy!

Even better are the quotes pulled from a lawsuit between Nicola and Brooklyn’s former wedding planners, in which they released thousands of texts and emails from the Peltz-Beckhams, revealing that, yes, all rich people do send messages as inarticulate and sloppily as Jeffrey Epstein’s emails. Here are some of my favorite messages Brooklyn or Nicola apparently sent their wedding planners:

• “Did Megan get an invite … And Harry”

• “deSantis must be OFF THE GUEST LIST. PLEASE CONFIRM!”

• Brooklyn asked if they should get a “gun that shoots a net because theres probably gonna be drones.” [Should I get one of those for my wedding???]

• “Also david blaine is going to go around to tables on Friday night it’s for free he’s my friend.”

NY Mag excels at well-reported bullshit gossip stories like this, and I think they should simply lean in and become a full-time gossip rag. Now that TMZ is rebranding and fixing their evil eye on DC politicians, New York Mag and The New Yorker and even the NYTimes should stop writing their softball fluff pieces about politics, and instead spend their energy and money investigating and exposing celebrities.

I’m dead serious about this: if the Times and TMZ switched roles, we’d all be significantly better off. Maggie Haberman’s sycophantic style is awful when it’s used for reporting on Trump, but imagine if she used her suck-up skills to report from inside Meghan and Harry’s delusional world? Like, instead of sending reporters to the Pentagon to uncritically parrot whatever boozy lies slur out of Hegseth’s mouth, the NYTimes should send their most dogged reporters to finally uncover exactly what the hell happened with Olivia Wilde and Harry Styles on the set of Don’t Worry Darling. The Times and other “serious” publications have failed us over the past decade, and helped pave the way to fascism, so they should stick to gossip and leave the real journalism to the bloodless psychos at TMZ.

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Love Overboard, season 1 — on Hulu

First of all, Hulu’s aesthetics are nauseating. Hate when I have to get on that app. The horrible green, the library of shows that all seem like 30 Rock jokes, the Disney-adjacent vibe of it all… I shudder at the entire experience. But when I heard gay icon Gabby Windey (formerly of The Bachelor, but I look down on Bachelor Nation so I only know her from The Traitors) was hosting a stupid new dating show, I knew I’d have to wade into the Hulu dumpster and watch it. And… I guess I’m trash, too, because I actually enjoyed this stupid fucking show!

Don’t get me wrong: this is absolute brainrot TV. Love Overboard sits squarely in the white-hot molten center of trashy television. But for me, that’s its strength — because unlike other modern reality shows, which largely pretend at more noble goals, Love Overboard knows it’s trash, and openly acknowledges it. This is a throwback to early-2000s reality TV, completely and nakedly shameless in every way.

The premise is devious and designed for maximum drama: 10 or so sexy heterosexual singles all live on a yacht, with half coupling up and living “topside” in luxury, while the single people have to live “downside” and literally serve the couples. Of course, the reveal that half these people will be living a life of servitude below deck leads to some incredible meltdowns almost immediately. This is when I started thinking, oh no, am I going to end up watching this entire show? (Yes.) The only way for a downside single to escape their prison of daily drudgery is to break up a topside couple and basically trick one of them into dating you. No one is here for love — they’re all here for a chance at a slightly better view and an ensuite bathroom.

If the premise sounds manipulative, the show takes it a step further by having the producers shamelessly manipulate the cast on screen — Gabby literally tells people, “Go break that couple up!” — and they found a group that’s incredibly willing to be manipulated. Too much obvious manipulation of reality has killed many a reality show. But the fact that Love Overboard’s manipulation is on-screen and completely in the open makes this show feel, dare I say… kind of honest?

There’s a rawness and a messiness to Love Overboard that’s largely disappeared from reality TV these days — this feels more like a FOX reality show from the early-aughts, with the kind of drama you got on shows like Joe Millionaire. At one point, a man is forced to decide between two women (when you’re kicked off the show, you’re forced to walk the plank), and he’s struggling. One option is the woman he’s been coupled up with for weeks, who he asked to be his girlfriend just the night before. But the other option is a brand new woman, who just gave him a blowjob that very morning. (It must be repeated: this is the trashiest show I’ve seen in a long, long time.) And this stupid, stupid man — who is, I regret to have to tell you, a therapist for children suffering from trauma!!!!! — is completely unable to decide between his girlfriend or the blowjob-giver, forcing these two women to shiver in cocktail dresses while standing at the end of a plank for nearly an hour. Eventually, after even the host Gabby is fully screaming at him to make a decision, he chooses, and, of course, drama ensues.

Look: I’ve watched some trash in my day, and this is some bottom-of-the-dumpster, grad-A garbage TV. But in a world where Love is Blind has a whole slew of abuse-related lawsuits, and Andy Cohen and Bravo are apparently about to go on literal trial over Housewives abuse allegations, and The Bachelor just imploded because they hired a known violent alcoholic lunatic as their new star and then were somehow surprised when she acted like a violent alcoholic lunatic… it’s kind of nice to have a reality show just be like, “Yeah, we’re psychologically torturing our cast members — come watch us do it!” The world is sick, and reality TV is sick, but I’m sick, too, so I’m grateful for Love Overboard for not pretending to be anything other than a sick little show for sick little freaks.

The Library at Mount Char, by Scott Hawkins (2015) — library ebook

This was… fine? It’s a fantasy/horror book that’s got some great world-building, but the writing style was a little too Reddit-esque for my tastes. I’ve spent too many words railing against the way Marvel “humor” has bled into culture, so I won’t belabor it, but it’s upsetting to read a book that has a great premise but, for some reason, decides it needs to try to be “funny.” Maybe I would have enjoyed this more had I not read it so soon after seeing the wretchedly unfunny Project Hail Mary. If I had a time machine, I’d go back and prevent James Gunn from ever being hired at Marvel, which I think would singlehandedly save America from becoming such a deeply unfunny nation.

In A Strange Room, by Damon Galgut (2010) — library ebook

A quick little novel, told in three parts, Booker-nominated, about a man named “Damon” — this is like uncovering an ancient artifact from the autofiction Big Bang of the early 2000s. The three stories follow Damon, a writer from South Africa, who travels to various countries and has a lot of sad emotions. There are some beautiful passages in here, but my tolerance for autofiction is low (will I be reading the new Ben Lerner? Maybe!) so I was happy this was less than 200 pages.

3/31/26 - 4/6/26

Well, today feels fucking insane. We’re all waking up to do our patriotic duty of creating value for shareholders, while our deranged leader is hovering his finger over the nuke button, and the branch of government made to prevent stuff like this all have their out of office replies on while they’re all gallivanting around Disney World. We live in a hell of our own making and unfortunately I don’t even think today will be rock bottom. Anyway, let’s talk about movies???? Jesus Christ.

This week: I watched Zendaya and Robert Pattinson have some drama, I watched a bunch of conquistadors go mad, I enjoyed a documentary designed to kiss Martin Scorsese’s ass, I decided I wanted to stay forever in November 18th, and I observed Passover by reading about Gaza.

The Drama (2026) — at BAM Cinemas

Much has been made about “the twist” in The Drama, Zendaya and Robert Pattinson’s big new dark romantic comedy, but it’s not a twist — it’s revealed in the first 20 minutes, and is, in fact, the entire plot of the film. But it’s more fun to go into this movie blind, so I won’t spoil it, and will only say that something is revealed about someone’s past, which makes Robert and Zendaya’s characters start to question their entire relationship. The central question of the film is: if you learned something shocking about the past of the person you love, would you be able to look past it?

The spiral that follows the big revelation is fairly entertaining, and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, while never losing its core darkness — this is a fun film to see in a packed theater like I did, with the audience reacting almost as if they knew these people personally. Our audience squirmed in horror and secondhand embarrassment throughout the film, occasionally letting out an, “Oh nooooo!” or a simple, “Oh my god.” People were reacting to every scene the way you’d react to a friend telling you the exact same story over drinks. (By the end of the movie, everyone had been so thoroughly worked up into a frenzy that several people let out a shocked gasp at the revelation that… Robert Pattinson’s socks had holes in them?? I’m telling you, this movie had that theater in the palm of its hand!) As a moviegoing experience, it’s fun!

Unfortunately, however, the film is all fun without much depth — it has a fantastically simple premise, but doesn’t seem interested in going any deeper than the surface. After the initial revelation, the characters spiral about what it means about the person who revealed it, but after almost two hours of people rehashing the same issues over and over and over again, you kind of just want everyone to get over it. Grow up! It was shocking at first, but now you’re just being dramatic! Much like the writer/director’s previous film, Nicolas Cage’s Dream Scenario, this film starts with a very smart premise that gradually just… goes nowhere. He doesn’t seem to know how to end his films, or even have much interest in ending them. Actually, forget ending a film — he doesn’t seem to know how to even end a scene! Nearly every scene tends to end abruptly, so that I could almost feel the writer getting bored and deciding to move on. I’m not joking: three separate scenes end with someone projectile vomiting. If you’ve backed yourself into a writing corner so the only way out is to end the scene, “She suddenly vomits,” you might need to rethink the story a bit!

It’s all a bit Emerald Fennellesque, dare I say, a little too proud of how edgy it’s being, while winking and nudging at you the whole time. My biggest gripe is that The Drama regularly employs one of my least favorite tropes: showing something shocking (screaming at someone, physically attacking them, etc.) before cutting to reveal it was only a fantasy the character was having. It’s always such a cop out, the director wanting to have it both ways, and after the 10th instance of one of these “Oops, it was just a fantasy!” fake-outs, it started to feel more than a little cheap.

I know the most boring opinion you can have about a movie was, “It was fine,” but: The Drama was fine! The central premise is great, most of the actors are great (Alana Haim is perfectly cast as a deeply annoying egomaniac — doesn’t feel like a stretch for her, sorry! — but the movie is completely stolen by Zoe Winters and Hailey Benton Gates, who need starring roles in something immediately), but the overall execution is so-so. All those complaints aside, watching it in the theater was like a fun little carnival ride: it’s quick (I genuinely thought Hollywood had forgotten how to make films under 2 hours) and frivolous and a little nausea-inducing, and a rare communal moviegoing experience.

Much like the movie, this review is kind of piddling out without saying much of anything, sorry — let me just projectile vomit so I can end this!

Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) — on Criterion

A descent into Hell, both on- and off-screen. From the opening minutes, with a cast of hundreds on a miserable slog through the jungle — the Peruvian extras regularly looking straight into camera as they’re knee-deep in mud, a look on their faces like, “What the fuck have gotten myself into?” — it’s apparent that Werner Herzog went a little mad in the jungle while making this story about men going mad in the jungle. Sublime and awful, and weirdly perfect for the period we’re living in, in which deranged men drunk on power and their own importance drag us all into a hell from which we can never return. Yay!

Mr. Scorsese — on Apple TV

Absolutely devoured this docuseries and wouldn’t have complained if it were twice as long. Martin Scorsese is impossibly charming, just a real silly billy, and one of the most interesting directors we have. I mean: Mean Streets to Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore to Taxi Driver to New York, New York is an absolutely insane run of films. The tonal whiplash between those four films (all made within four years!) is enough to make him a legend already, before he went on to make even more brilliant films over the next 50 years. No one has the range he has! I’ve always been fascinated by how wildly different Marty’s movies are from each other, and this docuseries does a fantastic job of showing how and why his filmography all hangs together, despite the tonal differences — there is a connective thread between Liza Minnelli tap-dancing and Joe Pesci torturing guys to death, and Mr. Scorsese does a great job showing how all those sides are contained in this one man.

The one gripe you could have with the series is it’s a bit up Marty’s ass the whole time. It’s directed by Rebecca Miller, who happens to be married to perennial Scorsese bestie Daniel Day-Lewis, so there’s no world in which she would make a genuine tell-all that exposes the darker sides of Marty. The only nods we get to anything dark in his background are vague statements — shoehorned in the final minutes — about anger issues in his younger years, which we are reassured are all fixed now. Okay, sure! If you say so! Let’s not worry about that and get back to praising Marty! Don’t get me wrong: Marty is a genuine living genius, possibly the greatest living filmmaker, but there are several points in this series in which people say things like, “You had to know if the camera was going to move to the right or move to the left, and Marty knew exactly which way it would go.” As opposed to other directors, who… don’t know which way to turn their cameras? Sure, he’s earned his accolades, but at times in this series it feels like we’re one step away from celebrating the fact that he eats food and breathes oxygen. What can’t he do!

All the dick-sucking aside, we watched the series with grins on our faces the entire time — it’s just so fun, especially with its focus on how the details of Marty’s life have shown up in his films throughout the years (my favorite bit: due to dangerously bad asthma he spent a lot of his childhood stuck inside, looking down on the kids playing on the streets outside, which is why he’s partial to high-angle shots). Sometimes it’s obnoxious and forced when people try to “explain” an artist’s work via his biographical details, but you really do need to delve into the psychology of Marty to explain how someone can so beautifully capture the Edwardian dandy fops of The Age of Innocence just a year before filming the scene in Casino where a man’s head is crushed in a vise. Marty contains multitudes, clearly, and this series is a charming and highly entertaining glimpse at the brilliant mind churning behind those beautiful eyebrows.

On the Calculation of Volume, Book III, by Solvej Balle (2026) — paperback

I am officially addicted to this series. The third book is the plottiest by far, which I was actually somewhat bummed about. I truly could have read seven books in which Tara simply sat and contemplated the time loop she’s stuck in, but I guess it’s for the best that the plot finally acquires some forward movement. I’ll keep it spoiler-free, because you really should go into the series as blind as possible; most of the joy has been in knowing nothing, and just letting the story slowly unfold a page at a time. These books are oddly calming, despite their sad and lonely tone, and it’s fascinating to map your own feelings about the world and Tara’s situation as you move throughout the series. At first I wanted her to get out of her November 18th loop and return to normal time, but now I’m not so sure — the world of the 18th is more interesting and complex than we originally thought, and I’m suddenly enjoying the fact that she’s stuck, and following the slow unfolding of the central mystery (a mystery I’m not even sure the book is that interested in solving — I’m very prepared for the series to end without any resolution).

Like Tara, I’ve grown accustomed to the time loop, and am almost finding comfort in it, in a weird way. It almost feels stranger, now that I’ve finished the third book and have to wait for the fourth to be published (next week, thankfully), to be outside the world of the novels. I’m missing the 18th of November, and I’m ready to jump back into it!

Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning, by Peter Beinart (2025) — hardcover

Passover felt like the right time to finally read this book, a book I’ve had on my shelf for a year, but have never picked up out of a sense of overwhelming dread. And, as an anti-Zionist Jew, there’s really nothing in here that I didn’t already know. But still, it felt somewhat comforting, at least, to see someone else grappling on the page with the horrors that have been committed in our name, especially someone who was raised, unlike me, with Zionism. I didn’t learn anything from this book I didn’t already know, but it’s still important to have it down on the page, to have it spelled out this clearly and explicitly. I hope the people that actually need to read this book will pick it up and give it the chance it deserves, even though I suspect most of them hardened their hearts to any criticism of the genocide of Palestine a long, long time ago. There’s really nothing much left to say that hasn’t already been said, and yet it’s important we keep saying it.

3/24/26 - 3/30/26

The apocalypse has never been more in the air than over the past week, and no one knows what to do about it. Our president is too busy interior decorating to care about the war he started, everyone’s telling me to stock up on beans and rice before oil hits $500/barrel or whatever, and now I have to deal with the fact that Kristi Noem’s husband is a cross dresser? It’s bleak when the only genuinely “good” news I’ve seen all week is that TMZ is turning their sociopathic attention away from terrorizing former child stars and towards harassing politicians. This could genuinely be major for us — they’ve already got Lindsey Graham pretending to be on a manly hunting trip while he’s actually prancing around Disney World with a bubble wand. We’ve regressed as a society in a thousand different ways, but a little retro homophobic bullying is a-okay in my book when it’s directed at these ghouls. Harvey Levin… welcome to the resistance.

This week: I am here to ruin everyone’s fun with Ryan Gosling’s new beloved blockbuster, I watched yet another Gwyneth film, I enjoyed reading about what the news industry was like before our country completely fell apart, and I have crunched the numbers and decided that everyone involved in the Iran War is a fucking idiot.

Project Hail Mary (2026) — at Nitehawk Prospect Park

For a select few actors (almost always male), it’s possible to reach a point in your career and fame where you no longer have to act. Sure, they might be technically acting in front of a camera, starring in a 2-hour feature film, and they might be doing actor-y things like driving a spaceship or a car, or yelling, or crying, or looking pensively out a window, but none of it is actually acting. Instead, these men simply act as themselves, while doing the things their character does.

Harrison Ford was the pioneer in this arena — sometimes he’s Harrison Ford with a space blaster, sometimes he’s Harrison Ford with a whip — but there are many actors who fit the bill. Brad Pitt is always playing Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise is always playing Tom Cruise (and, actually, I do believe he’s jumping out of planes off-camera), and I’m willing to bet Matt Damon’s character in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey will just turn out to be Matt Damon, but in a Greek-ish helmet.But for me, the platonic ideal of non-acting actors will always be George Clooney. Quick: name one role of his that’s different from any others! Danny Ocean is Michael Clayton is Jay Kelly (I haven’t even seen Jay Kelly but I know I’m right). It all makes you wonder: why does Leonardo DiCaprio still try so hard? He doesn’t need to be doing all that, it turns out! And yet, for as little effort as some of these guys put into their work, we (me included!) still eat it up, because these men are charming and handsome and grade-A movie stars, and it’s always fun to watch movie stars do things handsomely and charmingly.

For many years, Ryan Gosling wasn’t one of these guys. He was a genuine actor who put in some serious work: he played a Jewish neo-Nazi in The Believer, he was believably old-timey in The Notebook, he was convincingly in love with a sex doll in Lars and the Real Girl, etc.. He had — and still has — the talent! But around 10 years ago, he stopped disappearing into roles and started just being Ryan Gosling. Sure, there are different shades to the characters he’s chosen over the last decade — Blade Runner 2049 is sad Ryan Gosling, Barbie is dumb Ryan Gosling — but it’s all still, essentially, Ryan Gosling. (Sometimes he has an accent.) And with Project Hail Mary, he’s thrown in the towel and gone full Clooney: it’s Ryan Gosling, in space!

As a film, Project Hail Mary is fine. It’s fine! It’s beautifully shot — one of the most impressively crafted space films we’ve had in a long, long time, in fact! But the tone of it… oh boy. The movie’s attempts at humor (and it’s attempting to be more of a comedy than any other genre, unfortunately) were cloying and rather desperate, full of Marvel-esque quips that practically required Ryan Gosling to smirk at the camera after each line (in fact, he pretty much does smirk at the camera a few times).

I know that this sort of stuff is what passes for most comedy these days, and that most big-budget movies are essentially live-action Pixar films now, but I found watching this movie in a theater a baffling experience. I genuinely did not even smile at a single joke! To give you a sample: one joke is that the alien in the film (sorry if this is a spoiler, but the alien was 95% of the trailer) misinterprets the phrase “fist bump” as “fist my bump”……..which is then deemed so funny that we have to call back to it every 20 minutes, for the rest of the film…………………..are you laughing yet? When you start seeing “fist my bump” merch sported by all the Disney adults in your life, this is where it came from.

There could have been a good movie buried in here, but unfortunately it’s a 2.5-hour mess. Wild tonal swings, lame humor, a completely unnecessary third-act twist that’s discarded the instant it’s revealed… what the hell was going on?! And yet, I know I’m in the minority: the movie is getting rave reviews, it’s about to make a zillion dollars, and my Monday night showing was packed. But watching this corny film surrounded by an enormous audience absolutely howling with laughter, I walked out wondering… am I the alien?

Two Lovers (2008) — on Criterion

The alien in Project Hail Mary has nothing on Gwyneth Paltrow and Joaquin Phoenix, two deeply strange creatures pretending to be everyday people falling in love in Two Lovers, possibly one of the last truly great Gwyneth films we’ve ever gotten. These are two of our weirdest, least-normal actors, and that gives this already tonally-strange film an interesting layer: are these characters meant to be this odd, or is that just Gwyneth and Joaquin? This film has such a uniquely bleak-but-still-charming perspective on everything from modern dating to living with your parents. It’s also an immediate all-time New York City film for me: a 34-year-old Joaquin Phoenix yelling, “We’re out of seltzer!” to the parents he lives with in Brighton Beach is simply one of the most Jewish moments ever captured on film.

The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper that Changed American Culture, by Tricia Romano (2024) — paperback

This massive oral history of the Village Voice felt like eavesdropping on a bunch of retired drunks reminiscing about the good old days (this is a compliment). It’s extremely insidery — people frequently talk about “Ellen” or “Karen” or “Bob” as if the editors from an indie newspaper in the 1970s are Cher or Madonna — but once I gave up trying to keep track of the cast of characters (there’s a 6-page list of everyone in the beginning of the book, if you really need to follow), I had a great time getting all the delicious, decades-old gossip!

From its birth in the 50s to its death in the 2010s (it came back in 2020 but it’s really not the same), the Village Voice was literally there for everything, so while the book is ostensibly the history of a newspaper, it’s pretty much a history of our own country. Decades before Pride and #MeToo and BLM, the paper was actively fighting with itself (in public!) about gays and women and Black people in the workplace and in culture, and it’s both refreshing and depressing to see that none of the fights we’re having now are new. Between all the history, you get strange little tidbits that you could only get from a paper that was at the center of culture during the periods when American culture changed so quickly (one weird example: James Earl Jones was a janitor there???). But, as always, all this history leads us quite depressingly to modern times, when the internet sweeps in and destroys pretty much every industry, and then Donald Trump shows up to finish our country off. But until we get to the hell we’re all trapped in now, it was a fun, wild ride!

“Miscellanea: The War in Iran” by Bret Devereaux — at A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry

I don’t know why I keep reading and listening to stuff about Trump’s Iran War, because there are no answers to be found, no deeper reasonings or learnings or game plans to uncover. This is the dumbest fucking thing a president has done in a long, long time, and now literally everyone on the planet will have to suffer for it in some way. But if you were looking for a long read that coherently explains exactly why this war is so fucking dumb, this blog does a decent job at it.

The result is a fairly classic escalation trap: once the conflict starts, it is extremely costly for either side to ever back down, which ensures that the conflict continues long past it being in the interests of either party. Every day this war goes on make both the United States and Iran weaker, poorer and less secure but it is very hard for either side to back down because there are huge costs connected to being the party that backs down. So both sides ‘escalate to de-escalate’ (this phrase is generally as foolish as it sounds), intensifying the conflict in an effort to hit hard enough to force the other guy to blink first. But since neither party can back down unilaterally and survive politically, there’s practically no amount of pain that can force them to do so.

(One petty complaint is that whoever writes this blog needs to chill on the bolds and italics. The formatting throughout this entire post is insane! I love writing with emphasis as much as any other aging Millennial, but why is this blog yelling at me while I read???)

It’s too staggering, really, to sit with the concept that thousands, if not millions, of people could die (and, in many cases, are already dying) simply because some of the dumbest and most soulless people alive managed to gain control of the US, Israel, and Iran, but we do have to face it. Even if this isn’t exactly World War III yet, it kind of is, and it’s all a lot more evil and stupid than anyone could have imagined.

3/17/26 - 3/23/26

I’m writing this from San Diego, where I’m spending the week with my family in the unseasonably hot weather that suggests we’re all going to die very very soon but is, for the moment, absolutely lovely. Might as well enjoy the warmth before we ChatGPT ourselves to extinction! As a result, this will be a shorter email, and honestly this week it’s mostly an excuse for me to brag about a good thing that happened to me.

This week: I got some bling, I watched two rather strange movies about how being a political prisoner can make you insane, and I jumped headfirst into a Danish literary sensation.

An engagement ring — on my finger

Some breaking news: two weeks ago I proposed to Justin! And unfortunately he said no, so now I am brokenhearted and single. :( No, no, I am only joking. He said yes, so I am now a fiancee, just like the women on Love Is Blind!!!!

I proposed on a beautiful 72-degree day at sunset on the Christopher Street Pier, an iconic gay cruising spot, while nearby a group of queers sexually harassed shirtless runners — so it was a very New York, very gay proposal. Later, we had dinner across from Jennifer Tilly, which was really just a perfect gay punctuation mark on this whole gay affair. “I’m so happy good things can still happen in the world!” my cousin said when I told him the news, and I agree! The Strait of Hormuz may be closed, but my heart is wide open……………

You might be asking why, after 9 years of dating, I finally proposed, and frankly I am asking myself that question, too, now that I had to purchase a ring at peak gold prices. I should have done this shit 6 years ago!!!! If nothing else, at least I have a fancy new object to pawn for cash when they reboot the Great Depression this summer.

Apologies for hiding this news from you the past couple weeks, my dear beloved subscriber, but I couldn’t say anything until we had surprised my family with it this week. I promise I won’t hide anything from you ever again. We are sisters, you and I, and we must hold no secrets from each other. Promise?

The thing I’ve learned, now that I am out of the engagement closet, is that you are immediately thrust into the terrifying world of post-engagement, pre-wedding questions. So, to get it all out of the way: no, I don’t know when or where the wedding will be happening. No, I don’t know how big it will be. Yes, our DJ will take requests, but there will be a list of banned songs (“Blurred Lines,” and anything by Justin Timberlake or Meghan Trainor). It’s a brave new world out here for me! Should I be subscribing to Brides magazine???

Kiss of the Spider Woman (2025) — on Delta

An absolutely delirious movie to watch at 30,000 feet. You’ve got Diego Luna and some actor named Tonatiuh playing political prisoners during the Argentinian dictatorship, who pass the time by telling the plot of a movie called Kiss of the Spider Woman, a fake movie musical starring Jennifer Lopez. So we cut back and forth from the two prisoners being tortured, basically, and then the bright, campy song-and-dance sequences of J.Lo’s fake musical. It’s… very strange! It’s also very obviously based on a stage play, one of those movies where the dialogue is overwritten and overacted, everything still played for the back rows even though the camera is tight on the actors. As a result, it all feels hammy and broad, which doesn’t work at all for the more serious prison scenes, but does work for J.Lo’s campy dance numbers.

As much as I resisted this often-stilted movie, the combo of altitude and J.Lo worked together to activate my homosexuality, and I found myself, against all odds, having a somewhat good time with this. Make fun of her all you want, but no one commits to anything more than Jennifer Lopez commits to everything, and she is genuinely a star in this (probably because she’s not asked to do much other than dance and show off her legs and smile, but still: a star is a star!). There is absolutely no way I’d make it through all two hours of this on the ground, but up in the air — with a little bit of help from airplane wine — I was soaring.

It Was Just An Accident (2025) — on Delta

I feel like I need to throat-clear a little, before I give my real feelings on this movie: this is obviously an important film, the biggest hit out of Iran in years, at a time when our country is committing untold war crimes over there. And the fact that it was made at all, let alone seen outside the country, is impressive, so all the accolades are worth it. But, as a film, I thought this was just… okay? I loved the simplicity of the story, and the way Panahi uses the framework to explore the different ways regular people have been brutalized by the Iranian regime, and I found many scenes and images particularly beautiful. And I also loved how surprisingly funny it was, and how well it balanced humor with drama. But the longer it went on, the more I felt like it had run out of things to say — the characters all have strong feelings, but no one ever really budges from their feelings, so there are many scenes of characters rehashing similar arguments with each other. And once the drama kicks into high gear, it switches from comedy into melodrama, in a way that doesn’t feel earned to me. I started the movie in the palm of its hand, and ended it feeling a little cold and distant. I’m sorry!

On The Calculation of Volume, books 1 and 2, by Solvej Balle (2024) — paperback

In a matter of days, I absolutely devoured the first two books in this seven(!) book series, which follows a woman, Tara, who gets trapped in the 18th of November, in a Northern European version of Groundhog Day. The books are short and efficient, each less than 200 pages while covering a year or two of Tara’s time loop, as she lives out November 18th over and over and over again.

I found Tara’s situation simultaneously soothing and panic-inducing. It’s repetitive, but never in a way that drags — often, when a book is described as “meditative,” I view it as a warning, but this is the rare “meditative” book that actually keeps me awake instead of putting me to sleep. The first book focuses more on Tara’s immediate situation, specifically how to deal with the fact that her husband wakes up and lives the same day out over and over with no memory of the day before, while she is still aging and moving forward. She’s forced to choose between explaining her situation again every morning to her husband, or forgoing that and instead living separate from him and everyone else she knows, completely alone.

In the second book, Tara has a little more fun living “outside of time”— she spends a year traveling around Europe, “chasing seasons,” finding snow in Sweden during the “January” of her internal calendar, and sun in Spain during her own summer. She spends another year doing exactly what I would do in this situation, doing almost nothing but deep-diving into Roman history, becoming an expert on Ancient Rome just because she has nothing but endless time. But often she finds it unbearably lonely, of course, and the series excels at bringing to life the many different ways loneliness can appear in the mundanities of life — feeling alone even though you’re at home with your husband, being surrounded by a crowd but feeling apart from everyone, or simply walking around and wondering if anyone can even notice you.

This is much more than another retread of a “time loop” story, and I’m only upset I’ve started it now, because the final 4 books have yet to be translated into English. I finished the second book and immediately went to a book store to pick up the next. So now I have the third on hand, but once I finish it I’ll be trapped in a time loop of my own, waiting for the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh to be translated and published. But unlike Tara, I’m actually very happy to be trapped in November 18th for a while.

3/10/26 - 3/16/26

It’s St. Patrick’s Day, and I hope my Irish ancestors won’t curse me for saying bad things about Jessie Buckley in this email. I should probably get off her back soon, though — between last week’s The Bride! takedown and this week, I’m accidentally becoming the internet’s #1 Jessie Buckley hater. And I’m not even a hater! I think she’s fine! I just don’t like a lot of the stuff she does! But to get the heat off of me, I’m going to take some time off from working in the Jessie-criticism mines for a bit, but rest assured that I’m keeping a very close eye on her………..

This week: I watched the Oscars and barely felt anything, I bravely came out as someone with eyelash mites, I watched Gwyneth pretend to be British and other British women be insane, I watched another embarrassing Jessie Buckley performance, and I am finally free from carrying Gravity’s Rainbow with me everywhere.

The 98th Academy Awards — on ABC

For such a decent year of movies, the Oscars felt excruciatingly strange and mostly boring. Conan was stiff, and came the closest to bombing I’ve probably ever seen him get, but I’m not blaming him. Something was off in that room! The monologue fell flat, but even worse were the endless and meandering presenters’ jokes — most notably the unbearably long “banter” between Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans that was supposed to be Marvel promo but instead convinced me to continue avoiding those movies at all costs. So many movie stars on that stage, and so little charisma to be found. Hollywood, girl, you are in trouble, we do not need you putting on a boring show like this right now. Get it together!

The whole production felt cursed, in fact. Why couldn’t the cameras find anyone? Why was the audio so echoey? Even Maya Rudolph getting so much screen time wasn’t enough to save the thing from being a mostly unpleasant bore. When they brutally cut off the K-Pop acceptance speech mid-sentence and the entire room, (including Conan!) rebelled, it was almost a relief that something so cruel was happening: finally, some excitement!

It was, I suppose, an accurate look at culture these days: the monoculture is dead, and no one knows what to do about that, least of all a big old show like the Oscars. So it’s no surprise the show felt like a bunch of flailing attempts to grab someone’s, anyone’s attention. The awards were fairly spread out between the big movies, so it felt like there were no real winners or losers, other than, you know, Timmy (who looked awwwwful) and Rose Byrne (we will avenge you). So what we were left with was a panicky mishmash of attempts to keep your eyes on the screen. Your kids love K-Pop, so here are those beloved Demon Hunters, doing whatever they do! Oh, you liked the big musical number from Sinners? What if we put that on stage, but a poorly choreographed, sloppy version of it? Would that interest you? No? How about a Bridesmaids reunion? I’m genuinely shocked they didn’t trot those exhausted Heated Rivalry boys out, even though they’re not even in movies, just to try to force gay people to screenshot something from the ceremony and put it on their social media. It already feels like the Oscars came and went as if they never even happened. What does a multizillion-dollar corporation gotta do around here to get the homosexuals interested in their awards shows again???

At least Leo was looking more attractive than he’s looked in, like, 20 years. He should permanently stick with whatever de-swelling routine Scorsese got him on for their new movie! And, no Club Chalamet, but everyone celebrating Timothée’s loss should take a moment of reflection to understand that this means we now have to live through yet another Oscars campaign from him. So congratulations to Michael B. Jordan, but condolences to Timmy’s team, who are probably already reaching out to every podcast on the planet in anticipation of next year’s inevitable continuation of the endless Timmy Wants An Oscar And He Wants It Now! tour. This kid will still be tap-dancing for votes long after the nukes have been launched.

While we’re on the subject of little Timothée, I am so happy the forced outrage about his ballet and opera comment can be finished now. It was annoying and somewhat arrogant, yes (and his comments have also been completely misinterpreted, but I really can’t dwell on this nightmare any longer), but so was everyone else who took to the stage and scolded him all night. You’re all being annoying! Show me all the ballet tickets you purchased last year! And, if you’ll allow me to be woke for a hot second: it is very telling that everyone had more energy all night for attacking Timmy on behalf of ballet than speaking up on behalf of Palestine or immigrants or against war with Iran or Venezuela or Cuba or… etc. etc. etc. (Not you, though, Javier; you’re perfect as always.) This was a deeply annoying night of television, one I regret spending 4+ hours in front of, and I know I’ll do it all again next year, for some reason.

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XDEMVY eye drops — in my eyes

I have a confession to make: my infamous stye, which I have been battling for over two months, did not come out of nowhere. It was caused by an ailment known as Demodex blepharitis, which is a fancy way of saying I have an overwhelming amount of tiny mites in my eyelashes. Mites! But don’t you dare sit there so smug, thinking that I’m a nasty little freak with my eye mites: you — yes, you — also have Demodex mites on your face right this very second. It’s just that mine went out of control for whatever reason, resulting in my horrific stye, and this lingering feeling of mite shame. But you’re disgusting, too, and don’t you dare forget it.

The cure for Demodex blepharitis for decades, if not centuries, has been to wash your eyelids with tea tree oil. This is a solution that may or may not work, but it’s at least guaranteed to make you wonder why you’re paying an eye doctor hundreds of dollars to tell you this, rather than consulting with a local forest witch.

However, that’s no longer true — a hot new bombshell has entered the pharma market! The second eye doctor I saw for this humiliating endless stye cued me in on the magic ingredient known as XDEMVY eye drops. (The first doctor I saw for the stye — who operated out of an office that was connected to a Crumbl Cookies, so her office reeked of 1,000-calorie cookies baking in the oven — didn’t even mention the Demodex blepharitis! Which makes me wonder if she’s in the pocket of Big Mite, or perhaps has her own case of D-bleph that’s gotten so out of control it’s spread to her brain and she’s trapped in some sort of Pluribus situation with the mites.)

This miracle cure known as XDEMVY is a simple, teeny-tiny bottle of eye drops that kills the mites lickety-split and costs — I am not joking — $2,000. Two thousand fucking American fucking dollars!!!! For an eye drop bottle smaller than the size of my thumb! And I have small thumbs! Miraculously, I appear to be one of the rare (according to my doctor) people whose insurance covers this liquid gold, so my bottle somehow cost $0. I have never, ever said a bad word about United Healthcare!!!!!!!!! I love my insurance company and all the things they do for me, and I think Luigi Mangione did a really mean thing to them and also isn’t that hot if you really think about it.

It is of course deeply, psychotically criminal that a company can create the only functional cure to a very un-serious disease that doesn’t seem to really do anything other than cause occasional styes (you can’t even see the mite overgrowth without a microscope, so I really need you to stop thinking I’m disgusting over here), and then charge $2,000 for a bottle that has something like 100 drops in it, max. But the good news is my Demodex levels are under control again (bragging about my normal level of eye mites), which means I’m willing to sell my remaining drops of this shit for $20 a pop. If you think you’ve got too many mites in your eyelashes, just hit me up on Venmo and I’ll send you a droplet in the mail. And if you’re a subscriber, I’ll sell you a drop for $15 to thank you for your support! Don’t say I never did anything for you.

Sliding Doors (1998) — on Criterion

It’s so random that Gwyneth was British for most of 1998. It’s also so funny that Shakespeare In Love, for all the awards and controversy it caused back then, has had absolutely zero lasting cultural footprint (unless you count paving the way for Hamnet, ugh), while Sliding Doors has lived on as a cultural reference to this day. And while I get why they wanted the most famous actress of the moment in their movie, I have no idea why the fine folks at Sliding Doors Inc. felt like Gwyneth absolutely had to be British in the film. She could have been American without any of the story changing — her character has no family, as far as the movie is concerned, and only one friend, which is kind of sad. Maybe the character originally was American, but Gwyneth wanted to get her money’s worth out of all those expensive Shakespeare In Love British accent lessons by showing off some more? (This actually seems extremely likely.)

Whatever the reason for her Britishness, this means you get to hear Gwyneth saying some of the most British slang ever forced into a movie’s script. Gwyneth says “wanker” and “bollocks” practically every five minutes; at one point, she refers to a man as a “pissing shagging wanker.” Everyone else speaks normally, but Gwyneth’s character speaks like she’s in a Guy Ritchie film. Characters will be having a nice little dinner party, speaking to each other as normal humans do, and Gwyneth will burst into the room, chugging a pint and screaming, “Oy! Wut’s all this, luv? Fancy a shag, mate? Bloody hell, I’m knackered! You fuckin’ wanker. Blimey!” It’s INSANE. I loved every second.

Ladies of London, season 4 episode 1 — on Peacock

The last thing I needed was another Bravo franchise of rich women acting like lunatics to get screen time and brand deals, but when I heard the Ladies of London reboot was being compared to early RHOSLC, that was all I needed to give it a chance. And oh boy did they find a collection of psychos.

The star of the premiere was a woman — sorry, a Lady — who has a chaotic riches-to-rags-to-riches-to-rags story, and currently lives in a literally crumbling apartment with an exotic bird who will pluck your eyes out if you look at it (visitors have to wear safety goggles in her home). But we’ve also got the Marchioness of Bath, who lives in “the largest house in England,” which she has turned into a literal zoo, and who is trying to claim the “first Black woman to join the Royal Family” crown from Meghan Markle, or at least to start some on-air beef with Meghan. There are 1-3 Swedish women (I can’t tell them apart to count them), who all confusingly have brown hair, and two women with a toxic relationship (one thinks they’re best friends, while the other can’t stand her). Everyone feels extremely Epstein-adjacent, so much so that I won’t be surprised when Trump pardons Ghislaine and she joins the cast next season.

How To Shoot A Ghost (2025) — on Criterion

This 27-minute short film by Charlie Kaufman and starring Jessie Buckley was some of the most pretentious nonsense I’ve seen in a while. Jessie Buckley and some other guy play two dead people who wander around Athens, whispering clunky poetry about death, life, violence, humanity, and everything in between. Jessie’s in Eternal Sunshine Clementine drag the whole film, taking Polaroids for no reason other than the forced poignancy of showing faded Polaroids on screen every twelve seconds. I spent every part of its 27 minutes begging for it to end. Between this and The Bride!, I’m going to need Jessie’s agents to stop sending her scripts for a while. This woman makes terrible choices!

Gravity’s Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon (1973) — paperback

My Pynchonian ordeal is complete! I found the last bit of Gravity’s Rainbow even more exhausting and twisted than the beginning, the way it loops and fractures and becomes almost a parody of itself. (But I did love how Pynchon’s language collapsed in on itself by the end, with sentences like, “The knife cuts through the apple like a knife cutting an apple.” This hilarious, obnoxious, pretentious dick!) What kind of a deranged madman introduces brand new characters 700 pages into a novel? This was frustrating, exhausting, sometimes gorgeous, often disgusting, and I am happy I read it, but I am probably not doing that to myself again.

3/3/26 - 3/9/26

It’s a beautiful 70+ degree day in NYC, here at the beginning of the end of the world, so you’ll have to forgive me for skipping right to the main drama of this week’s email because I desperately need to go outside before we’re plunged back into winter. And I have a lot to say in this email, because a movie really made me mad this week!!!!

This week: I suffered through Maggie Gyllenhaal’s big flop, and I watched three movies about people having affairs, which is a strange coincidence, I swear I’m not admitting to anything here with those choices, Justin. I also, coincidentally, started reading Pynchon during the beginning of World War III, which was a bad choice.

The Bride! (2026) — in IMAX at AMC Kip’s Bay

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! is a two-hour movie that’s two hours too long, an infuriating, exhausting, excruciating film that, like Frankenstein’s monster, should have never been created. The Bride! has the aesthetics of a teenager throwing a tantrum in a Hot Topic, and the emotional intelligence and political depth of Hakeem Jeffries. This movie is so bad it actually made me switch sides in the eternal Maggie Gyllenhaal vs. Park Slope Co-op war; maybe if she had worked her required shifts at the co-op, she wouldn’t have had the time to make this monstrosity. They were trying to save us all along!

The nicest thing I can say about The Bride! is that in comparison to Guillermo del Toro’s boring (and bafflingly Oscar-nominated) Frankenstein, at least I felt something while watching it. The problem is that “something” I felt was a combination of exhaustion, annoyance, and resentment. The longer this movie went on, the more upset I got that I was still watching. Is it a good sign for a film if you get excited every time the main characters have guns pointed at them, because maybe they’ll die this time and you can finally go home?

One of the many, many problems with this movie is its incoherent plot. Let me try to summarize: the year is 1936, and Oscar winner Christian Bale is Frankenstein’s monster, who has been wandering the planet for over 100 years in search of pussy. Yes: this entire movie is kicked into motion because Frankenstein is horny. So Frankenstein (or “Frank”) enlists Annette Benning, a lady mad scientist (there are several moments in this movie in which ham-fisted male characters are like, “But women can’t be [occupation]! Whaaaaa??!!” and it’s always very funny) to dig up a dead woman and make him a bride so he can finally lose his virginity. The body they get belongs to future Oscar winner Jessie Buckley, who plays a New York-accented flapper who dies after becoming briefly possessed by the ghost of Mary Shelley, author of the original Frankenstein novel. I’m sorry to say I am not making any of this up. There’s also a whole separate thing going on with the mafia, and Peter Sarsgaard and Penélope Cruz playing a pointless pair of detectives, but none of that really matters so why get into it?

The Mary Shelley of it all is the most baffling choice in a movie full of baffling choices — the only reason we’re given as to why Mary Shelley possesses Jessie Buckley (Mary is also played by Jessie, in a series of excruciating scenes in which she basically tells knock knock jokes straight to camera while dressed like Cole Escola in Oh, Mary!) is because she wants to get revenge on men on behalf of women, I guess? We’ll get into the movie’s take on feminism a bit later, but the politics of this movie are the equivalent of those “if Hillary had won we’d all be at brunch” signs. (It’s actually so embarrassing I coincidentally saw this movie on International Women’s Day, now that I think about it. I am a MALE ALLY.)

Anyway, this is all to say: when Jessie Buckley is reincarnated as “The Bride of Frankenstein,” Mary Shelley’s possessed spirit is, I guess, reincarnated inside of her, too? As a result, Jessie Buckley spends the entire movie alternating between speaking in a New York/transatlantic accent, and a thick English accent that manifests when the ghost of Mary Shelley takes over. The ghost of Mary Shelley, however, is the most obnoxious character in a movie full of obnoxious characters, because the only thing this dead woman seems to want to do is to force Jessie Buckley to start spitting rhymes. This is where I really wish I were making things up. Imagine becoming the first person in history to defeat the finality of death, and the only thing you use your immortal powers for is to make a woman speak like she’s a mix of Allen Ginsberg and Nicki Minaj.

This is how it goes, every time Mary Shelley possesses the Bride: Jessie Buckley is saying a normal sentence, in her weird transatlantic accent, but she is suddenly seized by a series of spasms, yanking her head back and switching into a thick British accent, in which she spouts out rhymes or synonyms of the word she just said. So, for example: [Transatlantic accent:] “I would like a kiss.” [British spasm accent:] “Kiss! Bliss! Swish! Piss!” [Transatlantic accent:] “Shall we?” As far as I can tell, the only purpose of this whole contrivance is to show that… Mary Shelley was a writer? And loves words??? (The only time it’s ever acknowledged by anyone that she keeps doing this is when Frankenstein says, after one of her episodes, “Wow… you have a great vocabulary.” LOLLL even her virgin husband is like “…..k.”)

75% of Jessie Buckley’s dialogue in this movie is delivered in this sort of James Joyce-ian slam poetry, and the only positive thing I can say about it is it does capture the excruciating feeling of hanging out with someone who’s obnoxiously proud of their uselessly large vocabulary. If the ghost of Mary Shelley is real, Maggie Gyllenhaal better watch her back, because she is not going to like being portrayed as such an obnoxious little freak.

And obnoxious is the key word here: I have never met two more annoying characters to spend time with than Christian Bale’s Frank and Jessie Buckley’s The Bride. These two spend practically half the movie running around, tongues hanging out, smashing glasses while screaming, “BAHHH!!!” It’s like spending two hours watching a couple of 8-year-olds rebelling against their babysitter at bedtime. If you like riding the subway at 3pm on weekdays when all the tweens get out of school, you’ll love The Bride!

You’ll see a lot of defending this film because it’s a “feminist Frankenstein,” but the only feminist thing about this movie is that it proves that women can suck at making films just as much as men. The feminism here is hackneyed and trite — the Bride is angry about the way men have treated women, yes, but that’s as deep as the movie is willing to go. Every once in a while Jessie Buckley picks up a gun, points it at a man, gives an incoherent speech about how badly men treat women, before sprinting out into the night screaming, “Ahahahaaha!!!! Yes!!!!”

Somehow, this half-assed call to action serves to inspire women around the country, resulting in an excruciatingly stupid montage of women painting their faces to look like the Bride, shooting guns in the air, and screaming “Brain attack!” in the streets, while we see a series of newspaper headlines that are just embarrassingly empty Riot Grrrl references. (For a brief moment in this montage we also see — and I swear I am not joking — a shot of a 1936 woman twerking on the hood of a car.) This baffling eruption of proto-feminist violence goes nowhere and is never touched on again. The feminism in this movie feels like the cinematic equivalent of Rose McGowan taking a photo of herself raising her fist in the air and then going home, satisfied with another day’s work of activism. What are we fighting for? Who cares! Brain attack!

Female rage is obviously a rich and somehow still tragically under-explored territory in mainstream film, but the Bride is all rage, no substance. And sure, female rage at the expense of complicated interiority can be highly effective when a film commits to it (like, to name one off the top of my head, the spectacular Revenge, the first feature film from Coralie Fargeat, director of The Substance), but The Bride! wants to have it both ways, suggesting a rich inner life and larger questions for its protagonist without, you know, actually showing any of that.

The Bride is still, at the end of it all, just a woman with very little agency of her own: she’s been forced into violent actions largely via Mary Shelley mind-control (I guess?), and the only question the non-possessed half of her personality seems to have is, “What is my name?” Which — spoiler alert — comes to an extremely unsatisfying end, when she decides at the end to change her name, from “the Bride of Frankenstein” to simply “the Bride.” As if removing the husband’s name changes the fact that calling someone “the bride” is still a way to refer to her as only existing in relation to a man! After all that anger, all that rebellion, all that sticking-it-to-the-man, she is at the end of the day still just somebody’s wife. Sad! It’s a confusing message, like the kind of feminism you see on Love is Blind or tradwife TikToks, where it’s seen as empowering to be subservient to a man as long as you have a punk rock attitude about it. Go on girl, give yourself nothing!

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Mistress Dispeller (2025) — on Criterion

This is an absolutely wild documentary, and I have no idea how they filmed any of it. It follows a woman called a “mistress dispeller,” which I guess is a thing in China, who is hired by wives to help chase their husbands’ mistresses away. So we follow the titular mistress dispeller as she gets herself involved in the husband’s life, and then the mistress’ life, while lying and manipulating them into realizing that what they’re doing is wrong. It’s wild, and the most insane thing is that everyone knew they were being filmed and signed releases?! I have no idea what the husband and mistress were told before filming (an opening disclaimer says that all participants signed onto the film before and after filming, once they understood the true purpose of the doc), but the raw, emotional footage captured would put some Real Housewives franchises to shame. And now that I know about this world and this mistress dispeller, I’m going to need more. I need a documentary about the making of this documentary, I need a full series following her work with different couples every episode, and I need the mistress dispeller to get on Survivor. She’d have Boston Rob crying within, like, an hour.

The Housemaid (2025) — on Apple TV

Unlike The Bride!, which is just bad bad, this is a perfect example of good bad. Sydney Sweeney is, of course, the worst actress in the entire world, and though I haven’t seen her in much, it’s shocking to me how little effort she seems to have put into a starring role opposite Amanda Seyfried. Sydney really is at peak marble mouth here, mumbling her way through the entire film. (At one point, she sips a glass of champagne and mutters, “It’s really bubbly…” which felt like the world’s worst ad lib that somehow made it into the final cut.) But Amanda Seyfried makes up for Sydney’s lack of energy with a performance that rivals The Testament of Ann Lee for Most Psychotic Amanda Seyfried Character of 2025. In fact, this could make for a strangely good double-feature with Ann Lee, if you want to spend 5 straight hours watching Amanda Seyfried terrorize people for having sex. And why wouldn’t you!

A Perfect Murder (1998) — on Criterion

This is such a campy, twisty, perfect 90s thriller, a Hitchcock remake with three icons in their prime — Gwyneth, Michael Douglas, and Viggo Mortensen — who all happen to have basically the same haircut for some reason. There’s murder, sex, bribes, twists, turns, Gwyneth speaking Spanish with a Catalan lisp, Gwyneth speaking Arabic. Basically: everything you could ever want in a 90s film. A Perfect Murder on a rainy night, with a little joint? Bliss!

Gravity’s Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon (1973), pages 1-519 — paperback

For the past two weeks I have been working my way through Gravity’s Rainbow and boy am I exhausted. It’s my first Pynchon, and I suppose I am enjoying it, although “enjoying” isn’t really a word I’d use to describe the experience. It will be worth it in the end, I can tell, but I can’t remember the last time I worked this hard at a book. If you’re looking for the cure to phone-addicted brain rot, Pynchon might be it, simply because there is no way to read him without using 100% of your brain’s focus. If I find my mind wandering for even half a sentence, I’m suddenly lost and need to go back 2-3 pages to start over. This is an intense, wild, sometimes annoying, occasionally beautiful experience. (I will say, if you’re going to take it upon yourself, the website gravitysrainbowguide.com is very helpful, especially when you’re picking it up the next day and need to remember wtf happened in the last section you read.)

One major theme of the book seems to be the separation between reality and fantasy: do fantasies come from reality? Or can fantasies create reality? Before reading this, I would have said the former, but now that I’m reading this book, which was written 50 years ago and is all about the rise of fascism, increased militarism, and an all-encompassing paranoia reinforced by extreme surveillance and shady corporate practices, I’m like……….. maybe fantasy and reality have collapsed? It’s all very — for lack of a better word, but actually now that I think of it this is literally the perfect word in this instance — Pynchonesque.

There genuinely is no one who writes better about paranoia. Just look at this section in which, after spending 400+ pages building up paranoia as an awful burden to bear, he flips it on its head and shows how the opposite might actually be worse:

If there is something comforting-religious, if you want—about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long. Well right now Slothrop feels himself sliding onto the anti-paranoid part of his cycle, feels the whole city around him going back roofless, vulnerable, uncentered as he is, and only pasteboard images now of the Listening Enemy left between him and the wet sky. Either They have put him here for a reason, or he’s just here. He isn’t sure that he wouldn’t, actually, rather have that reason....

And, really, is there anything more Pynchonesque than starting the most deranged and mind-altering novel about bombs raining down from the sky during World War II, right before the bombs start raining down at the start of World War III? This may not have been the most comfortable time to start reading Gravity’s Rainbow, but it is also tragically the perfect book for this moment. Fuck it, let’s have a paranoid summer.

2/24/26 - 3/2/26

I know there’s a lot going on — did you know there’s a lot going on? — but I’m still annoyed about last week’s pre-war media cycle, which was wall-to-wall about the NYPD whining and crying and literally arresting people for throwing a couple snowballs at them (during a massive snowball fight they walked into???). There have been so, so, so many worse things that have happened over the past year (the past year? try the past 36 hours), but for some reason this whole snowball fight circus was my final straw. How the media was able to take these claims that these cops’ lives were endangered by snowballs seriously, to breathlessly report on every deranged statement from everyone involved, has to have been the final nail in the already-buried media coffin. Anyway, I’m glad it’s finally going to go above 60 degrees this weekend, so hopefully all the terrifying, dangerous snow melts (it must be so scary to be a cop and to walk by a pile of snow these days… you might as well be walking past a loaded gun). Anyway, let’s get to the consumption, I just got myself mad about this all over again.

This week: I went long on the Survivor 50 premiere because I am unfortunately addicted to that show, I watched the two remaining Best-Picture-nominated films I had yet to see, and I watched another new movie that traumatized my gay ass.

Survivor 50, episode 1 — on Paramount+

The premiere of Survivor’s 50th season came with a lot of trepidation. I’ve been watching, studying, and obsessing over this show since I was 13 years old. I have never missed a single episode — even when I studied abroad in Cairo, Egypt, in 2007, I would regularly take my janky old laptop to a nearby cafe and drink tea for hours while using the extremely slow Egyptian cafe wifi to illegally download that week’s episode of Survivor: China (don’t sue me, CBS). So, having been on the Survivor journey for 26 years — literally 2/3 of my entire life, yikes — I was equal parts excited and anxious as the show’s 50th season began last week.

Thankfully, and somewhat to my surprise, it delivered! The fact is, Survivor has discovered some of the most iconic and charismatic reality TV stars of all time, so having true megastars like Cirie, Coach, Colby, and Mike White back on the show goes a long way to making the 50th season feel as big as it needs to. The whole cast isn’t up to that caliber, of course, but that news was released months ago, so I’ve had time to whine and cry and gnash my teeth, and I’m practicing a Buddhist (or Coach-esque) acceptance now with the show. I’ll take whatever slop they’ll give me, basically, but at least right now the slop has true Survivor icons like Coach and Colby on it!

It’s hard to overstate just how truly famous Colby Donaldson was 25 years ago, but he’s aged very well, if you’re wondering, and has returned to remind us what true reality TV star power looks like. Within minutes, he dismissed Rizo — a 6-year-old boy stuck in a 12-year-old boy’s body but who is somehow 25 years old — as “annoying as hell.” If you, like me, had suffered through Rizo (who calls himself “RizGod”) for all of Survivor 49, Colby calling him annoying on television felt like that first bite of cheeseburger must feel after you get off the island. Finally, some real food!

In the old days of Survivor, calling someone annoying would barely rate as an insult (we’ve literally seen a woman mock another woman for crying over her father’s death… this show used to be dark dark), but in the post-covid reboot of the show (what Jeff refers to as Survivor’s “New Era”), the casts have been overwhelmingly positive and friendly. It’s rare we get a spirited disagreement on the show these days, let alone a full-fledged insult, so hearing someone call someone else annoying was as shocking as, like, the Oscars slap (which happened 50 years ago next week, can you believe it?).

And while I will forever complain about fully half the cast of season 50 consisting of players from seasons 41-49 (a move that feels a bit like Jeff Probst stubbornly doubling down on criticism from fans that the show has lost its way in the last 5 years — which is a response I unfortunately very much relate to as a stubborn brat myself), even some of the more random “new era” choices are given a lift toward stardom merely by interacting with true legends. In fact, Colby quickly reverses course on finding Rizo annoying and decides to take him under his wing (they briefly bond over Rizo telling Colby, who is 50, that his dad is 47[?], before bursting into tears[???] — I burst into tears as well, because what do you mean you’re an adult on Survivor and your dad is only 47???), which serves to let Colby show he’s a more flexible player than he was in his younger days, and lets Rizo show that he’s a more socially savvy player than I possibly give him credit for. (Still doesn’t mean I have to root for Rizo, though. Go away! Get off my lawn!).

As you can tell, I’ve suddenly found myself deep in the Survivor strategy weeds, now, while merely trying to write about the show, and that’s still the biggest flaw with the way it’s evolved: it’s simply too complicated! I have no idea how new viewers can follow along with the slew of advantages, twists, “beware advantages,” and, in season 50, prior relationships you have to track. And with the premiere running a full three hours, if you opened a bottle of wine at the start of the episode, you were probably cross-eyed by the end of it. You can’t expect me to keep up with whatever a Billie Eilish Boomerang Idol is when I’m drunk!

Because, yes, they did introduce something called a “Billie Eilish Boomerang Idol” into the game, which was revealed by a hidden note “written by Billie Eilish,” which began: “Hey, it’s Billie Eilish,” before “she” went on to describe how this complicated advantage works. I guess this is the show’s way of trying to bring in new viewers, but… are people watching a 3-hour episode of TV just to see a note that some PA wrote and passed off as something actually written by Billie Eilish? Furthermore, where the hell was Billie during all this? I saw no promo from her, no acknowledgement she had anything to do with it — if this woman is supposedly designing complicated Survivor game mechanics, can she not whip out her phone and quickly record a front-facing video to promote the damn thing? I’m genuinely asking: does Billie know this happened?

This whole thing was so baffling, and yet, because my gay brain is broken (or maybe because of the aforementioned bottle of wine), I found it kind of…. campy? I do not think the Billie Eilish Boomerang Idol did anything to help the show’s ratings, but I’ve already gone through the five stages of grief with my feelings about this show and settled on acceptance. So, fuck it, it’s Survivor season 50 and for some reason that means we’re going to have to watch Mike White being forced to learn who Mr. Beast is. Jeff already knows I’ll keep watching the show no matter what he does, apparently, so why should he care what I think? He knows he had me hooked long ago!

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The Secret Agent (2025) — on Hulu

This was wayyyyy weirder than I anticipated (the leg scene?????), and better for it. I was expecting a sober, action-packed look at the horrors of 1970s Brazil, and instead I got a goofy, beautiful, slightly messy film, one where I literally never knew what was going to happen next. Like pretty much every film, it’s too long for no reason, but I don’t care; despite the horrors of the Brazilian military dictatorship, I could have stayed in this world forever, with its gorgeous colors and Wagner Moura’s adorable, sad eyes. It’s so crazy the Oscars nominated this and Sinners for Best Picture, but also nominated… F1???

F1 (2025) — on Apple TV

This is the longest movie ever made. If you told me I watched this for 6 hours straight, I’d believe you. There are exciting moments, sure — the racing scenes are actually fun, and thank god for that because otherwise what are we even doing here — but this is such a cookie-cutter old-school Hollywood plot that I found myself gobsmacked at how normal it all is. Unfortunately for me, I will follow my girl Kerry Condon anywhere she goes, and sometimes that means sitting through 3 hours of her simply batting her eyelashes at Brad Pitt (who, it must be said, turns in possibly his clunkiest and stiffest performance of all time in this movie). If there’s an F2, I will NOT be watching.

The Plague (2025) — streamed somewhere, I forget

This is billed as a horror movie, which is kind of annoying because it’s not, though I guess it captures the horrors of being a young boy surrounded by other young boys. Call it: emotional horror. Gay trauma horror. Sissy horror. Set at a water polo camp (do those exist??? hundreds of kids getting shipped away to become water polo players? is this some WASP shit I don’t know about?), it follows a boy who tries his best to fit in with the popular crowd by joining in on their bullying of an outcast boy who’s been deemed to have “the plague” — some sort of vague disease that requires you to be ostracized by the group.

It’s a simple movie shot absolutely gorgeously (all those underwater shots!), with several sequences I’ll be thinking about for a while, and builds perfectly. I really liked this one! It will possibly be re-traumatizing for anyone who was once a little boy (well, maybe not if you were the popular kid, but if you were, you’re probably not reading a gay substack), but it’s all fine now! You’re an adult! No one can bully you! And water polo isn’t real! There’s really nothing to be afraid of.

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2/17/26 - 2/23/26

First things first: this email may have arrived in a different part of your inbox, because I have relocated to Substack for reasons that are too boring to get into here (my old indie platform seemed to be falling apart, so I’ve sold out yayyyyyy). The good news is I finally have a working url — deathbyconsumption.com — so we are a real, official, grown-up website. All this means nothing for you; the emails should keep flowing as usual, so just drag this into your primary inbox or whatever, and gmail should resume treating these weekly emails as the priority they are. And now that all that boring stuff is out of the way: snow, huh?! What a concept! The Great Blizzard of ‘26 was beautiful for a day, but now all this snow is just in the way, and I simply refuse to find myself midway through March and still trapped behind slow walkers on snow-narrowed sidewalks. MELT, BITCH.

This week: I saw the new Sam Raimi film and once again was horrified at how people act in movie theaters, I marveled at how much Willem Dafoe looked like a lesbian in the 80s, I was chilled to the bone by the men of Love is Blind, I loved the new HBO show that exposes how broken Americans are, and I read the debut novel from a two-time Survivor contestant that’s totally not based on Survivor, wink wink to any CBS lawyers.

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Send Help (2026) — at Nitehawk Prospect Park

This is a perfect January/February movie: campy, over-the-top, genuinely shocking at times, and just perfectly stupid. Which is all to say, this sure is a Sam Raimi movie, all right!

Dylan O’Brien and Rachel McAdams are both fantastic in this, and while I always expect her to be great, I realized I’ve become weirdly proud of him, as if he were my very own son. You’re doing great, Dylan! They do a She’s All That kind of thing with Rachel McAdams here, where they throw her in a bulky cardigan and an ugly skirt and you’re expected to believe Rachel McAdams is physically repulsive to men, which is more than a little insane. But she’s such a good actress she actually kind of pulls off the transformation from mousy office worker to empowered, feral island woman. What can’t she do!

There aren’t “twists,” per se, but the back-and-forth between Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien does keep you guessing who will get the upper hand. The smartest thing the movie does is to avoid moralizing — these are both bad people, in different ways, and if you’re rooting for either of them you’re missing the point. We do get some perspective on why they’re so fucked up, but it’s handled well, used more to flesh out the characters rather than forgive them. Like the best fights on the Real Housewives, both characters are completely in the wrong, and the best way to enjoy it is to free yourself from having to choose a side at all. This is a knowingly stupid movie, yes, but it’s also a bleakly funny glimpse at the coldhearted rot at the center of America, where the job market is slowly collapsing and many of us (especially women, of course), are forced into toxic workplaces. When you’re given the chance to flip the power against your abusive boss, how far would you take things?

The only downside to the movie — and this is something I’ve complained about before, but I don’t care, I’m doing it again — is the fact that people have completely lost the ability to watch a movie in public. We were surrounded by the worst-behaved theater audience I’ve been subjected to in a while, a collection of people who were all convinced that we all paid $20 specifically to see the film with the addition of their own audio commentary. The more the people around us threw out unfunny one-liners, the more I fantasized about doing to them what Rachel McAdams was doing on screen to Dylan O’Brien.

Two Gen Z girlies behind us couldn’t make it through a scene without adding a “joke,” like in a scene in which Rachel McAdams makes a sauce to go with the fish she’s caught on the island, causing the girl behind me to screech, “SAUCE?! A WOMAN AFTER MY OWN HEART!” Wow, what a hilarious thing to yell! I’m sure it must have been hard for you, to watch a movie that somehow didn’t revolve around you, so I’m thrilled you managed to find a way to make us all aware of your uniquely sparkling personality! Sam Raimi should be paying you to see his film! In fact, we should all turn our seats around and watch you instead of this movie, since you’re clearly the most interesting person in the room!

Look, if you’re going to speak during a movie, you really need to assess whether you’re actually a funny person or not. Most people simply don’t have the personality to pull off a genuinely entertaining mid-movie outburst, I’m sorry to tell you! The majority of the time, adding your own “joke” to the movie we’re all watching just makes you sound like everyone’s lamest coworker, awkwardly reheating week-old memes in a sad attempt to pass as humorous. We can’t all be the genuinely hilarious woman who was in the theater with me when I saw the horror movie Barbarian a couple years ago — when that film’s main character passed up her 4th or 5th easy opportunity to escape, this theatergoer groaned out loud, mostly to herself, “I’m so sick of this bitch,” which made the entire theater burst into laughter. If you’re going to yell something in a movie, you better make it worth our while, and none of the people in my showing of Send Help had the charisma to pull it off. Normally I’d be enraged at the girl next to us, who spent the whole movie scrolling Instagram, but compared to what else was going on in that theater, I was just relieved she was quiet.

All I’m saying is: movie theaters are dying and while it’s easy to blame the corporations for their own collapse, I can reserve some of the blame for these people who can’t ever shut the fuck up.

To Live and Die in LA (1985) — on Criterion

From the neon-stylized opening credits to the Wang Chung-composed soundtrack to the quaint concerns with counterfeiting $20 bills, this is a gloriously 80s film, and has to be one of William Friedkin’s best. He’s the master of Bleak Cinema, giving you a miserable look at the institutional rot beneath our society, and unfortunately since we never seem to learn our lesson as a nation, his films are still relevant over 40 years later. He’s also smart enough to lean into the fact that Willem Dafoe looked exactly like a glamorous lesbian in the 80s, so why not work that concept into the movie?

Love is Blind, season 10, episodes 1-9 — on Netflix

Every season of Love is Blind is a horror show about women who have been cursed to heterosexual hell, but nothing prepared me for the nightmares that the Ohio-based season had in store for us. These are some of the scariest people ever put on television. Most of these people literally voted for JD Vance to be a Senator, and then voted for him again to be Vice fucking President of our entire country, okay? So you know these people don’t give a shit about anything. The men on this season have the intelligence level and personality of those macaques that keep beating up Punch the monkey.

Chris is the obvious villain, but his body-shaming of Jessica felt so obvious and almost forced — like a performance from a tiny man who’s desperate to turn his 15 minutes of fame into a career as a right wing podcaster (and it’ll probably work!). Alex is the most genuinely terrifying one, with his shifty lizard eyes and inability to say even a single thing with conviction. That man is hiding some dark and terrifying secrets, and with his “nomad lifestyle” I will not be surprised when some true crime TikTok girly gets her corkboard and red yarn out to reveal an uptick in disappearing women in every city Alex visits.

The show got lucky with its first and only successful couple, and it felt like the producers wasted years trying and failing to chase that initial high, serving us rose-colored edits of some clearly fucked-up couples. But now, with the nightmare that is the entire state of Ohio, it feels like they might finally be retooling the show and making it into what it always should have been: a PSA to women about specific men to be avoided at all costs.

If we can keep this show running for the next decade-plus, we will have compiled an FBI’s Most Wanted list of all the single men women should most avoid in the entire country. This show is performing a valuable public service to all women, and I think it should be taxpayer funded.

Neighbors, season 1, episodes 1-2 — on HBOMax

Neighbors is, unfortunately, the show America needs right now. This new HBO show, produced by A24 and the malevolent spirit that lives inside Josh Safdie, tells various stories from around the country of neighbors at war with each other. Each episode is less than 30 minutes and covers two different stories, so the episodes are quick and dirty, told at whiplash speed, with TikTok-inspired edits and absurdist interludes that, somehow, captures the vibe of living in the United States right now: we are a nation of idiots at war with each other over the stupidest things imaginable.

The show is often cruel and unforgiving, using distorted lenses and unflattering angles to show the worst of the participants, with most arguments edited to make both sides look absolutely deranged. No one comes out of this looking good, least of all our country. The portrait of America that emerges after only the first two episodes is a nation of petty, miserable people squabbling over the tiniest plots of land, willing to draw a gun on neighbors if they’re perceived to lower our property values by even a dollar. Each episode strives for a happy ending, but the participants’ happy endings always come across as more coping mechanism than actual happiness.

I’m making the show sound more bleak than it is, and, depending on your tolerance for laughing at people, you may find it bleak. But I’m not ashamed to admit I screamed with laughter throughout most of the two episodes I saw; despite the cruel nature of the show, I found the participants almost always extremely charming, if not relatable at times. (My absolute favorites are, of course, the elderly Indiana gays who I refuse to believe aren’t plucked from a Christopher Guest film — the first time we see them, they’re sitting in a hot tub that appears to be in their living room.)

Who hasn’t felt absolutely overwhelming frustration at the tiny, ridiculous slights from an obnoxious neighbor? We’re a nation on the verge, at each other’s throats over extremely important and vital issues, so maybe what we need most is a show that exposes the pettiest, least-important arguments in our country, and gives us all a chance to laugh at it. This is a cruel show, holding up a mirror to a cruel nation, and if you weren’t laughing, you could cry.

Escape!, by Stephen Fishbach (2026) — hardcover

This debut novel by two-time Survivor player Stephen Fishbach feels like a book he’s been working on since his first time on the show, 18 years ago. Focused on a Survivor-esque reality show called “Escape!,” it tells the story of the types of people drawn to reality TV — on both the contestant and production sides. Kent, a grizzled hero who has already won a similar reality show, is cast on season one of “Escape!” and marooned on an island alongside a collection of other reality TV has-beens and newcomers, all various mishmashes of recognizable types (and, for a Survivor fan, Stephen drops endless Easter eggs dropped throughout the narrative — I truly lost count of references). Also out there is Miriam, cast to be the “nerd,” a reality TV newbie who may or may not be in over her head. And on the production side we follow Beck, a disgraced producer eager to prove herself once again. Miriam and Kent are playing the literal game on the show, but Stephen never lets you forget that there’s always more to the story than what you see on screen: “There are always two games. The one you’re playing against the other contestants, and the one the producers are playing against you.”

What starts as a silly, tongue-in-cheek look at the behind-the-scenes process of reality TV turns deadly serious, with twists and melodramatic turns worthy of their own Sam Raimi adaptation. While the characters sometimes feel a bit blurred at the edges, not quite fully real (but perhaps that’s just a meta-commentary on the act of thinking you can know a character based on their TV edit?), it’s a true page-turner, with more than enough clever insights on the types of personalities (and personality defects) that have kept the reality TV engine humming for decades. But reality TV, of course, turns a mirror on society, and what it shows us is we’re a nation of paranoid lunatics, overeager to turn on someone else before they can get one over on us.

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YIKES, bleak week! I blame the snow. As always, you can reply to this email, or forward it to someone who might love it — or better yet, someone who might hate it and want to fight about it with me. I love fighting over email! You can also, I think, comment on it on Substack?? I don’t know, we’re figuring this brave new email world out together.

2/10/26 - 2/16/26

Okay, it’s time for the snow to melt. We’ve all had our fun, but I am absolutely sick of being stuck behind slow pedestrians on a sidewalk that’s been narrowed to a single lane of traffic between gray-brown walls of snow and ice. Just like any self-respecting gay New Yorker, I’m used to zipping down the street at lightning speed, elbowing tourists and old ladies in the ribs in order to get ahead. So every time I come to a screeching halt behind a slowly shuffling family of four, tiptoeing their way across the slush, I feel it as a personal attack. Why are you doing this specifically to me, I scream at the back of their heads, kicking out the knees from the youngest child in the group so I can leapfrog over him and get to the bar or movie theater 2 minutes faster than Google Maps told me it would take a straight person. Even worse is the horrific amount of dog shit left on the sidewalks — what is it about Americans that we think dog shit somehow melts with snow, so it doesn’t need to be picked up in the winter? Every step I’ve taken outside over the last month has been fraught with danger, a half-inch away from ruining my day with every step. I love dogs more than most people do, but these days, as far as I’m concerned, every dog owner is a fascist, willing to destroy innocent people’s lives rather than face even a single second of inconvenience themselves. The post-Trump truth and justice tribunals better make some room on the docket for city dog owners, is all I’m saying.

This week: I endured Emerald Fennell’s latest cinematic assault, I healed myself with Scorsese’s gayest film, I followed Elle Fanning into the depths of Disney hell, I relived the years Tyra Banks spent torturing and mangling young women for our entertainment, I marveled at modern anti-stye technology, and I read three newish books, wow!

“Wuthering Heights” (2026) — at Cobble Hill Cinema

I am an Emerald Fennell apologist, but even I can’t defend “Wuthering Heights,” her bloated, boring, gutless take on a classic. Somehow, Emerald Fennell — a woman whose previous work has given us grave-fucking, a naked dance number, and inspired the Tina Fey-coined phrase “sexually violent third act twist” — made a movie less shocking than the 150-year-old book it is based on. Emerald, girl: you’ve been out-scandalized by Emily Brontë, are you not ashamed of yourself?!

This movie needed to be 30 minutes shorter and 200% crazier. In retrospect, the obnoxious quotation marks around the film’s title should have been the giveaway that Emerald wasn’t confident enough to commit to anything, that the entire movie would run away from its own convictions. At times, it wants to be a sexually violent story that pays tribute to the emotional and physical horrors of the novel; but every time things start to get even a little bit weird, Emerald retreats to the braindead comforts of a weepy, rain-soaked, period piece romantic film, something you’ve seen a thousand times before. For every bit of genuine freakiness (Jacob Elordi’s Heathcliff licking the wall mid-makeout), there are ten times as many moments of melodramatic crying and longing in the rain. I’m bored!

Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie, unfortunately, have nearly zero chemistry — Jacob literally has more chemistry with the aforementioned wall he licks. It’s hard to forget, due to the sheer size of him as he looms over a tiny trembling woman, that he is our reigning (Oscar-nominated??) Frankenstein’s monster. And yet I wish he had brought even more Frankenstein into the role; at least then we’d have had a Heathcliff worthy of the reputation! The Heathcliff of “Wuthering Heights” is mostly a doe-eyed sadboi who likes to tell you he’s dangerous and scary more than he ever acts on it. The dangerous liaisons between Cathy and Heathcliff are told, not shown, and if the characters weren’t spending every scene reminding you that Heathcliff is violent and cruel, you wouldn’t be blamed if you forgot it. In the novel, we see Heathcliff abuse children, servants, his wife — oh and he literally hangs a dog. But Jacob Elordi and Emerald Fennell’s Heathcliff has been so declawed, he’s closer to Heathcliff the cartoon cat than anything recognizable from Brontë’s work.

The whole time, you could feel Emerald Fennell unsure if she wanted to make the most fucked-up BDSM nightmare of her career, or an 1800s The Notebook, before deciding to split the difference, slapping some quotation marks around the title at the last minute to give herself a perfect out for any criticism. And it’s those quotation marks I keep coming back to. Those quotation marks, I know, will piss me off for years, if not decades. It’s an astonishingly embarrassing and cowardly decision, and also a pointless and stupid one: the quotes are meant to signify that this isn’t literally Wuthering Heights, merely one woman’s take on it, but like....... that’s how all movie adaptations work??? Does Emerald Fennell think if she hadn’t put the quotes there, we would have all, what, wondered if Emily Brontë collaborated with her on the script? Does she think other adaptations of other novels aren’t taking creative liberties? Does she not understand that every single time a director has taken 200-400 pages of a novel and compressed it into a 2-hour movie, they have been forced to make creative choices about how to adapt it in their own unique way? Does Emerald Fennell not know what the word “adaptation” means???

The title’s quotation marks are everything wrong with the film: they’re useless, poorly thought-through, a garishly obvious “joke” that thinks it’s a subtly clever wink. Someday, it would be nice to see an Emerald Fennell film that reveals what she actually thinks about the world, but I’m starting to worry there isn’t any thinking happening at all.

The Age of Innocence (1993) — on Criterion

I appreciate Criterion throwing Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence onto streaming as a not-so-subtle “fuck you” to “Wuthering Heights.” You see, Emerald, this is how you adapt a 100-year-old novel about longing and forbidden love, no titular quotation marks required! This was, hilariously, sexier and more scandalous than all of “Wuthering Heights,” and it’s all pulled off while you never see any skin below anyone’s neck!

Daniel Day Lewis — young and more beautiful than you remember he ever was — is engaged to a comically wide-eyed Winona Ryder, while secretly falling in love with her cousin, a disgraced Countess played by Michelle Pfeiffer. The story is narrated, thrillingly, by Joanne Woodward, who helps you through all the interconnected family drama in 1870 New York City. It’s actually shocking to see a Scorsese film with this tone, like you’ve pulled up a sofa in a seating room and are being told the most delicious high society gossip. This is, to my knowledge, the gayest film Scorsese ever made, and made me realize that the Wuthering Heights adaptation we actually need is his.

Predator: Badlands (2025) — on Disney+

The male loneliness crisis affects Predators, too, apparently! People have dubbed this “the gay Predator movie” (which I get, but is wrong — the original 1987 film is gayer), since the story follows a Predator who’s rejected by his father for being weak. Eager to prove himself to his burly dad, he flies to “the death planet” to hunt the deadliest creature as a trophy to bring back to his tribe. But that’s all a simple setup to the real message of the film: the power of friendship. Yes, this is a Predator film that amounts to a “we’re stronger together!” message, and as a result it’s the most Disneyfied of the bunch. It has its decent moments, but the tone of the movie felt like one of the 5,000 films that lay downstream from the Marvel universe, where an exciting action sequence must be immediately undercut by a character being like, “Well, that just happened.” The only takeaway from this film was that I will, apparently, watch literally anything Elle Fanning is in.

Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model — on Netflix

I found this three-part documentary on the Tyra Banks Prison Experiment known as America’s Next Top Model equally captivating and confusing. It’s unclear to me how much involvement Tyra had in the making of the documentary — at times it feels like she’s genuinely being put to the screws to answer for the crimes against humanity she perpetuated on her reality show, while at other times the documentary feels like a whitewashing of her reputation, if not promo for a return of ANTM. Either way, I watched all three hours in one sitting.

Those who know America’s Next Top Model already know its most psychotic moments — judges calling skinny girls “elephants” to their faces (and worse behind their backs), the blackface challenge (not joking), the forced surgeries (yes) — so the weakest parts of this documentary are the 20 or so montages that simply highlight the insanity of ANTM without commentary. But when they dial in on specific moments, there are genuine revelations here, most newsworthy the fact that the iconic “cheating scandal” of Cycle 2, in which model Shandi “cheated” on her boyfriend in Milan on camera (seriously: they not only aired her boyfriend SCREAMING at her on the phone, calling her a slut as she sobbed and hyperventilated, but they also aired her calling the Italian man she had sex with to ask him if he used protection or had any STIs — you truly had to be there), was actually a sexual assault.

This is the most harrowing section of the documentary, in which Shandi recounts the whole excruciating escapade: she wasn’t eating, because no one ate on that show, and the producers got her drunk with a bunch of Italian men they had hired to drive the girls around, and next thing she knew she was blacking out while he was on top of her, and the cameras kept rolling through it all. I remembered the Shandi spectacle from when it first aired, of course (anyone who’s been reading these emails for more than 2 weeks knows my brain is 90% reality TV mush), but I had never heard the truth of the matter, and it’s horrifying to see Shandi recount it and the ways it continues to ruin her life. Even worse is when Tyra and the other executive producer are asked about it in their interviews, and they brush it all aside with barely an acknowledgment that anything bad happened.

The most frustrating and fascinating aspect of this documentary is the decision from Tyra to be interviewed, alongside co-executive producer Ken Mok, plus former judges Miss J, Jay Manuel, and Nigel Barker. The three former judges make it clear they’re here to settle scores, after Tyra publicly fired and burned them, ending her friendship with them practically overnight, but the result of their vendettas against her is to frustratingly avoid any self-criticism. Any of the show’s evil behaviors they participated in were Tyra’s fault; they were, in so many words, simply following orders.

Tyra also refuses to accept blame for pretty much everything (the only time she admits she went “too far” is during the viral “we were all rooting for you!” meltdown, but even that she blames on some “Black girl shit that’s deep inside”), hand-waving any concerns off with vague admonishments that young critics just don’t understand “that’s just how things were back then.” Sure, we’ve come a long-ish way in 20 years (although, considering the state of things, it’s a little bit 2 steps forward, 3 steps back......) but it’s maddening to watch Tyra refuse to accept any criticism while acting like America’s Next Top Model aired in 1942 rather than the 2000s.

There’s a much more interesting, much more explosive documentary here, if they cared to look for it, about the abuses and extremes that were often required to make the iconic reality TV we all look back on so fondly. It’s a question that’s still grappled with today: can you make good reality TV ethically? And, to be honest, I don’t know the answer! Most of my favorite reality moments happened in the early 2000s, which can be partly attributed to the fact that, without social media or YouTube or even reruns of reality TV, people felt free to act like lunatics in front of the cameras without thinking about how it would follow them for the rest of their life. But these iconic moments are also, in many cases, attributed to the actions of producers with shaky ethics and boundaries — even a show like Survivor, which really does seem to have been one of the most ethical shows at that time, went through multiple rounds of horrific on-camera scandals (multiple sexual assaults that weren’t taken seriously, and a trans man being outed against his will, to name a few) before it started to focus more seriously on the long-term wellbeing of its cast members (and, probably as a result, has become a nicer and less dramatic show).

So, yes, America’s Next Top Model was all of it: iconic television, a product of its time, and seemingly a factory for abuse. And yet, as Tyra says to us viewers in the documentary while panicking to throw blame on anyone but herself, “You wanted this.” She’s not wrong! Because, at the end of the documentary, my first thought was: “Holy shit, that was fucked up.” But then my second thought was: “I should rewatch America’s Next Top Model.”

eye-press self-heating reusable compresses + lid wipes — purchased at CVS

As I bravely came out with last week, I’m currently battling the stye of my life, which may force me into eyelid surgery (???) next month if it doesn’t go away on its own. The only real weapon any of us have against styes are hot compresses, so, tired of heating up a damp washcloth 5x a day, I decided to try out these supposedly self-heating and reusable hot compresses I happened to see on a CVS shelf. And let me tell you: these are the most astonishing invention of the 21st century.

The compresses have a soft pad on one side (which is apparently soaked in baby shampoo to help clean your eyelids! So thoughtful!), while other side is clear plastic with a tiny little handle so you can comfortably hold it against your eye. Inside is a mysterious blue goop, the color of the ocean in James Cameron’s The Abyss, in which floats a small oval sliver of metal, like a button from the 1700s. To activate the self-heating mechanism, you simply flex the button back and forth, popping it like the top of a Snapple bottle’s lid, which immediately causes the blue goop to transform in a flash, from blue to icy-blue, from liquid to solid, in about 2 seconds. I can’t properly describe the experience, but I can tell you that — alongside bluetooth and smartphones — I’m 100% certain this technology has been reverse-engineered from a crashed UFO.

The heat lasts for about 10-15 minutes, the exact amount of time you should be compressing for, before turning into a cold plastic lump. But here’s where things get even more magical: to re-activate it, all you do is drop it in a pot of boiling water for 5 minutes, and it somehow resets to brand new. It comes out of the boiling water pliable and soft, the liquid once again ocean blue, ready to be re-activated via its metallic disc. I purchased a pack of 10, but I only use 4 of them now, in a constant cycle of boiling and resetting. Sure, boiling bits of plastic repeatedly and putting them against my eyelid is probably exposing me to all sorts of nefarious microplastics going directly to my brain, but what modern activity doesn’t come with a side of microplastics? And if it gets rid of the stye without requiring eye surgery, I’d say that’s a worthwhile exchange.

I have no idea what toxic chemicals are inside this little package, I have no idea what sort of evil conglomerate is behind this invention, and I’d rather not know. What I do know is that this is the kind of technology we should be funneling billions of dollars into, rather than AI or crypto. This is truly transformative. This is revelatory. This is the future we were promised.

The Passenger Seat, by Vijay Khurana (2025) — library ebook

This slim, tense book explores the idea that — well, I don’t know if you’ve heard this before, but, young men are kind of fucked up these days. In The Passenger Seat, two teenage boys run away from home and embark on an aimless drive “up north,” causing a hell of a lot of trouble on the way. Right off the bat, we know bad things are going to happen, and they do, but the violence is anything but predictable: I spent most of the book anxiously turning the pages, waiting for something awful to happen to these boys, or for them to do something awful, or, usually, both. It’s a quick, short little read, which is great because I really did not want to stay in their minds very long, and ultimately a sad one that offers no catharsis or platitudes, which I think makes it stronger. Boys are fucked up, and they crave intimacy, but often don’t know how to find non-toxic ways of being together. It’s sad and true, and Khurana never lets the boys off the hook for the awful things they do, while also finding moments of tenderness that speak to the deeper need within them, that force you to, at times, see the humanity behind the monsters in the headlines:

Teddy remembers the first time Adam took him to jump into the river. ... Adam vaulted onto the railing like it was nothing. When Teddy got up there they stood side by side, looking down. They both had to touch a hand to each other’s shoulder to keep their balance. He remembers Adam looking at him then, those small eyes, pupils tiny in the sun. Teddy was uncomfortable and chose to look down at the water, at the rocky banks closing in on the patch where Adam was assuring him it was safe to jump. Adam adjusted his trip on the stanchion and with his other hand nudged Teddy off balance. Instinctively Teddy stepped forward, only a fraction, to catch his weight, but there was nowhere to step. He can still picture the sight of Adam’s face in his peripheral. On the way down he decided he hated Adam, planned to put a knee right through his stomach. Or better yet, to walk up to Adam’s truck and take the handbrake off, let it roll right into the river. But once he struck the water, he saw that Adam was not up on the bridge, looking down at Teddy and laughing. Adam was right there beside him; he had followed Teddy down without Teddy realizing it. And this made Teddy wonder if he really had been pushed, or if they’d both just stumbled over the edge. Adam made a shrill, joyful noise, and Teddy decided then and there that he had enjoyed the fall.

The Mind Reels, by Fredrik deBoer (2025) — library ebook

This is another slim, tense book, but one I enjoyed a lot less than The Passenger Seat. It follows a young woman, Alice (of course), who loses her mind to severe bipolar disorder while at college. We follow the unraveling and paranoia, her frequent and frustratingly brief encounters with what amounts for mental healthcare in this country, and we exhaustively chronicle the medicines she takes. It’s bleak, and though it feels very realistic to the experience of having bipolar disorder, it feels like one of those books that’s important that it exists, but not the most enjoyable to read.

The Unveiling, by Quan Berry (2025) — hardcover

I enjoyed Quan Berry’s previous novel We Ride Upon Sticks, about a 1980s high school girl’s field hockey team that turns to Satanism and witchcraft to win matches, so was looking forward to The Unveiling, which sounded like a mix of LOST and Lovecraft. In The Unveiling, a group of tourists to Antarctica get stranded on an island, where strange things keep happening and the past comes back to haunt them. It has its fun and genuinely spooky moments, with some great, tense horror sequences, but I kept bumping up against the characters, who all felt obnoxiously one-note. This is by design — the narrator rarely uses their real names, instead referring to them by the character names she’s coined, like “The Baron,” for an obnoxiously arrogant older wealthy white guy — but that doesn’t mean I can’t be annoyed it. Rather than figuring out how to survive, the characters spend more time bickering about social and political issues, arguing about affirmative action and pronouns while literally starving to death. There’s a point to all of it, but not a very elegant one, and I never enjoy a book in which I’m hoping for literally every single character to die, and quickly. The genre of “horror as a way to unpack trauma” is well-worn territory, and while it can still find ways to surprise me, I didn’t find any surprises here.

2/3/26 - 2/9/26

I need to speak my truth about something: I have the worst stye I’ve ever had in my life, one that I have been informed may require surgery if it doesn’t go down over the next month(!), and it’s made practically everything I enjoy — reading, writing, looking at things, blinking, being alive — extremely annoying. There are worse ailments a person can get, of course, but also I’m pretty sure I’ve suffered more than anyone else on the planet this week. Let’s hope it goes away ASAP, because I have my tickets to see Wuthering Heights and I know I’m going to need both eyes operating at 100% in order to take in whatever madness awaits.

This week: I scoffed at most of Hamnet, I was horrified by Sirat, and I read a new novel about a production of Hamlet in Palestine — it’s unintentionally Hamlet week!

Hamnet (2025) — on Apple TV

I dragged my feet on seeing Hamnet, because I’m kind of never in the mood to watch a movie about a child’s death, you know? But I knew the day would have to come eventually, so once it hit streaming I decided to pull the trigger. And, sure, I found it emotionally devastating and extremely well-directed and well-acted, and Jessie Buckley is more than deserving of her Oscar nom. But… I didn’t really like it! Sorry!

Mostly, I was unpleasantly surprised at how obvious and overwrought it was. This feels like an Oscar winner from the late 90s, and while those kinds of movies were (and clearly still are!) effective at pulling tears — if not full-body sobs — from audiences, they’re also not, like, actually good movies. For every genuinely emotional scene, I often found myself immediately pulled back out of the movie by a scene making some of the most scoff-inducing choices I’ve seen a film make in a while.

When Agnes (I know Shakespeare’s wife was alternately called Agnes and Anne throughout history and possibly even her life, but it’s so funny to me that she has to be called Agnes in the movie simply because having a character literally named “Anne Hathaway” would be extremely confusing) gives birth, it’s a largely bloodless affair, and babies are plucked from beneath her skirt looking clean and fresh, without even a pesky umbilical cord to deal with. The movie is full of weird, discordant, or just plain corny choices like that; in another moment, when William and Agnes are first falling in love, we cut from their love-making in the forest to William at home, furiously writing Romeo & Juliet. I’m almost shocked there wasn’t a scene in which someone says, “Ahhh... a lovely Midsummer night, what a dream!” before we cut to William furiously scribbling the title A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Even worse, after their son Hamnet has died, and he and Agnes are both overcome with grief, we watch William step up to the edge of the Thames and consider suicide, only to recite Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” speech in full — apparently he is writing the most iconic monologue of all time during a flash of inspiration in the midst of suicidal ideation. Look, I don’t need realism in a movie like this, and I’m not asking to watch Paul Mescal scribbling and struggling with a quill over his verses for hours, but can we not have at least a little taste here? For a highly lauded and soon-to-be-Oscar-winning film, I was mortified to see the most egregious and embarrassing use of “to be or not to be” since Adam Driver randomly recited it in Megalopolis.

What’s even weirder about those first un-subtle 90 minutes is how delicate and beautiful the final 30 minutes are. You’d think there’d be nothing left to mine from yet another creative interpretation of a fictional performance of Hamlet (and this wasn’t even the only fictional interpretation of Shakespeare’s work I consumed this week!), and yet Chloé Zhao managed to breathe new life into this dusty old play.

That final act of the movie delivers some of the best face acting I’ve seen in forever, as we watch Jessie Buckley’s character react first with horror at her son’s name being used in a play, then realize that her husband had been grieving in his own way the whole time, and, finally, realize that not only is she not alone in her grief, but that the entire world will be grieving her son forever. That’s a hefty serving of complex emotions to get across while using nothing but the dialogue from Hamlet and Jessie Buckley’s face, and yet they pulled it off. Which makes the rest of the movie so baffling and frustrating to me — if they could make a movie like that this whole time, why didn’t they?

Sirat (2025) — streamed at home

“I think this is like a fun adventure thriller?” I said to Justin before we saw Sirat. An hour later, we were stuck with our hands covering our mouths, watching in shock and horror at the things we were witnessing. Sirat is outrageously stressful and bleak, one of those movies that I never want to watch again. It’s difficult to discuss without spoiling it, so I’ll keep it brief, but the plot is simple: a father and his young son are searching for the man’s missing daughter, and travel from one Moroccan desert rave to another in an attempt to track her down. So it is an adventure, of sorts, but not a fun one. This movie fucked me up for hours after, so don’t plan on seeing it before, say, a child’s birthday party!

Too Soon, by Betty Shamieh (2025) — library ebook

Too Soon could be called the Palestinian Pachinko, a big novel telling the story of a family through a few generations, and while Pachinko remains the stronger book, I thought Too Soon was a lovely and surprising book that tells a different kind of story about Palestine than you’re probably used to. It follows three generations of women — the grandmother who is forced to leave Palestine during the Nakba, her daughter who grows up in the United States, and then the granddaughter, a thoroughly American woman, who returns to Palestine to direct a performance of (what else?) Hamlet.

The opening sections with Arabella, the American granddaughter, are some of the weakest in the book, and quite honestly almost made me give up on the book entirely. Something about her deeply Millennial-coded narration was triggering, and I wasn’t sure if I could endure it for hundreds of pages (instead of “motherfucker” she says “motherlover,” which I took as the author feeling that particular slur would be inappropriate in a book about mothers and daughters, but I found it unbearably cringe).

I mean, this is how Arabella speaks:

I had seen a production of Equus there when I was in high school that made my panties wet and not just because a dude was naked in it and I saw my first adult wee-wee (although that helped).

It’s all just a little too Millennial “meep” for me, but, to be fair, the “present” of the book is set in 2012, and that is how certain people my age spoke and wrote back then. And it feels like a deliberate choice to make Arabella speak so unseriously and, frankly, obnoxiously, to reflect that this is a deliberately not serious book about Palestinians. It deals with trivial matters by design, because that is exactly the point: Palestinians deserve the right to trivialities just as much as we do.

Reading it, I realized that we hardly ever get to see or hear about normal life in Palestine. Setting the book in 2012 is clearly a deliberate choice to show us what “normalcy” in Palestine was like before Israel started their genocide, and it’s a risky choice — I have to assume the title Too Soon is partly Shamieh asking whether it’s too soon to put out a book like this. But I think it’s even more necessary now, to show that Palestinians have always just been regular people trying to survive, no different than you or I, and to show a Western audience Palestine outside of the victim/aggressor binary narrative people love to ascribe to them. As she writes about the city of Ramallah: “It is a city under siege in a country that the world didn’t fully recognize, but it felt like a country just the same, with its hospitals and universities and girls who needed to experience more than the din around them.”

This book revels in the trivialities of life in Palestine, because, after all, life is trivialities. There’s always the horrific background of the occupation — Arabella’s love interest is a doctor, so he’s frequently reporting on the everyday war crimes like two boys whose feet were shot by Israelis so that they couldn’t play soccer anymore — but the real focus of the book is on Arabella’s work life and love life. It makes the story all the more effective, and broadens Palestinian literature in a way that it often isn’t allowed to be: after all, Palestinians have work drama and romantic drama just like the rest of us, so why shouldn’t those stories be told?

As Arabella frets about whether it’s inappropriate or pointless to care about a production of Hamlet in a virtual war zone, you can feel Shamieh working out her own feelings about writing a silly little love triangle set in Palestine. But, the book is directly arguing, why can’t Palestine have its own Bridget Jones? Do Palestinian stories always have to carry the weight of their history, or can they have a little fun like the rest of us? In a world desperate to dehumanize Palestinians, and a media environment that wants you to never think about the people who live there, I don’t think it’s too soon to tell a story like this; I think it’s been long overdue.

1/27/26 - 2/2/26

I’m regretfully back from the Bahamas, and I, like the rest of New York, am now furious at Zohran for not getting rid of all this snow yet. Bitch, you’ve been mayor for a month, why is it not WARM outside yet?? I voted for change! Anyway, whatever, we’re suddenly in February and I’m back in the consumption mines, but this will be another slightly shorter one, because I’m going to spare you the envious details of my week of sitting in glorious sunshine and drinking rum and not being on my computer. Someday, when AI is doing all of our jobs, that will be the life us humans get to live every single day, and it’s going to be so great!!!!!! Hurry up, Sam Altman!

This week: I saw the Kate Hudson Oscar-nominated (??) movie about Neil Diamond impersonators (???) and was charmed by it (??????); I was forced to visualize Bernie Sanders having a cosmos-shattering orgasm; and I was tortured by the freaks of Wuthering Heights.

Song Sung Blue (2025) — on Apple TV

When I first saw the trailer for Song Sung Blue, all I felt was confusion. Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson were in a movie about... Neil Diamond? I mistakenly believed it was a Neil Diamond biopic, which raised even more questions. Has Neil had an exciting life I didn’t know about? Is there a huge story involving Neil Diamond I’ve somehow missed? And what the hell is Kate Hudson even doing here? It all felt like the kind of fake movie they’d cut to on 30 Rock for a quick joke, so I promptly forced myself to forget about it. Whatever Song Sung Blue was, it was not my problem. And then the Oscar nominations came out, and Kate Hudson was nominated for Best Actress, and I had a sinking feeing: oh no... I’m going to have to watch Song Sung Blue.

Thankfully, the movie is not about Neil Diamond, but rather about Lightning & Thunder, a married duo of Neil Diamond impersonators (or, as they call themselves, “Neil Diamond interpreters”), who were a real sensation in Milwaukee in the 80s and 90s. That’s exactly when I was growing up in Wisconsin, so I was surprised to have never heard of these two, but I did feel like there was a shocking amount of Neil Diamond music in the air around me as I was growing up — and, without even knowing it, I realized I had kind of always thought of Neil as a Wisconsin-specific sensation, for some reason. So now I wonder: was Neil’s music more prevalent in Wisconsin in my childhood because of these two? Had I been affected by Lightning & Thunder without even knowing it?

The first hour of the film I found surprisingly charming, while thinking, I can’t believe I’m being charmed by this shit right now. Kate is very good in this, sporting a surprisingly decent Wisconsin accent that just borders on parody, and it’s genuinely lovely to see her on screen again, a warm and strong presence opposite the larger-than-life mania of Hugh Jackman. And you wouldn’t think this about a gigantic, superhero-jacked Australian, but it turns out Hugh was actually born to play a Wisconsin alcoholic obsessed with Neil Diamond — he’s somehow electric and perfectly fits this silly, strange role. The man was simply destined to put on a sparkly shirt and sing, what can I say!

This isn’t a great movie, by any stretch, and it remains insane that it is now an Oscar-nominated film, but it is a reliably old-school Hollywood movie. It hits extremely traditional story beats, despite following the real twists and turns of the character’s lives, so I see why it appealed to a certain sector of the Oscar electorate (old people). When the tone shifts halfway through, it’s predictable and a little schlocky, but it is still effective, if only because it’s somewhat comforting to see a movie that still follows the traditional story arcs we all grew up on. In lesser hands, this would be a Lifetime Original, but it is well-directed, well-choreographed, and well-acted, so as a whole it rises above kitsch. I don’t know what to say: I’ve been charmed by Song Sung Blue! Give Kate Hudson the Oscar, why not, it’s not like anything really matters anymore! Fuck it, give Hugh one, too!

“EXCLUSIVE: How Bernie Sanders built a device to give himself ‘cosmos-shattering orgasms’” — in the Daily Mail

Look, if I had to read this headline, so do you. (Full article without a paywall can be found archived here, because no one should be paying the Daily Mail to read about Bernie’s orgasms.)

This appears to be pulled from some sort of book about Bernie, in which we all have to learn the unfortunate fact that, in his 20s (so: in the 1800s?), Bernie built a device called an “Orgone Accumulator,” which sounds like it was basically an electrified box you sat in that, somehow, channeled energy into your body that would result in stronger orgasms???

Look, the grossness of picturing Bernie’s “cosmos-shattering orgasms” aside (imagine the yells! Sorry!), this is classic Daily Mail behavior. Of course — on a weekend in which millions more Epstein documents were dropped, revealing some absolutely horrific things done to children by seemingly every single rich person and politician alive — these reporters spend their energy digging through a random book for the details on Bernie’s college gooning phase.

Like, sure! This is kind of weird and gross and silly! But, uh....... have you seen what the President and his friends have been up to??? SEEMS WORSE! Honestly, not to go full Bernie Bro on you, but I don’t even see what’s bad about this! You’re telling me Bernie wanted to have stronger orgasms in his 20s, and instead of trying to achieve that by, say, pinning a woman to the bed and covering her mouth as she screamed, or raping a woman in Bergdorfs, or transporting underage girls across state lines in order to have sex with them — he just strapped some electrodes to himself and meditated? Sounds pretty normal, by comparison! They probably have these devices at Equinox these days! All I’m saying is: maybe some of Bernie’s colleagues should try sitting in an Orgone Accumulator instead of all the awful shit they’ve been doing to women and men and literal children! Maybe Bernie should build Orgone Accumulators for everyone in the Administration and they’d leave future victims alone! Probably not, but anything is worth a shot at this point, right?

I, as much as anyone, love and crave salacious details about politicians’ freaky little sex lives (my inbox is always open for tips on whatever gets Hakeem Jeffries going — I know deep down that guy is into some crazy BDSM), but this is the funniest example of it we’ve had in a while. Especially because the Daily Mail also takes this opportunity to try to soft cancel... Albert Einstein???

This lazy, hilarious journalism is made worse by the fact that we get no updates on the story. We’re left on a cliffhanger, stuck at the very beginning: 60+ years ago Bernie sought stronger orgasms, but what about now? Has he continued the search? Or has he been victorious, and finally achieved the stronger orgasms of his dreams? Are his earth-shattering cries of pleasure rattling the walls of power up in Burlington? Is he still tinkering away in his garage, trying out new and stronger voltages on his Little Bernie Bro in an elusive search for the perfect O? Or has he sadly given up his lifelong quest, forced to accept a life of orgasms that barely even dent the cosmos? Enlighten us, Bernie!

Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë (1847) — paperback

“Are you buying this because of the movie?” the older woman scanning my purchases at McNally Jackson asked, before continuing without waiting for an answer: “It’s such a good book, but that Emerald Fennell lunatic is going to ruin it. They’re going to be engaging in homosexual affairs on the moors for no reason.”

Not to quibble with this bookseller, my new favorite NYC icon, but, after reading Wuthering Heights (for the first time!): I don’t think homosexual affairs would stand out much in this story. They pretty much already do everything else!

Wuthering Heights is, I was surprised to learn, a deeply insane book. Not knowing much about it before I started, I had been imagining the book was simply a lot of sad, quiet pining for lost love, with lots of ruffled dresses and misty moors. I did not expect it to, in actuality, be a twisted book about horrible people trying to kill each other pretty much constantly.

In Wuthering Heights, everyone hates everyone else. Any time you enter a room, 5 people immediately are disgusted with you, and each starts imagining how they could murder you most painfully. Children are there to be slapped and thrown into walls, women are likely to scratch and bite men, husbands are one bad day away from strangling their wives, and servants find any excuse to tell their masters how ugly and stupid they are.

One servant, describing her teenaged master, Cathy, says, “I own I did not like her, after her infancy was past. ... I’ve had many a laugh at her perplexities and untold troubles, which she vainly strove to hide from my mockery.” This old woman hates this little bitch, and rightfully so — a few pages later, Cathy pinches and slaps her for no reason.

Even the “love” in this love story is twisted: to love someone means to keep yourself away from them, for whatever reason, and then to slowly let yourself starve to death out of misery. All these people are sickly, coughing and withering away, while pining after their one true love, only to finally confess their feelings after the object of their desire has passed away (most iconically, Heathcliff demands that when he dies, they are to remove one wall of Catherine’s coffin and connect his to hers, to make it a double-wide — I can see why this book has been a favorite of goth girls for centuries). In Wuthering Heights, love is a death sentence, even when it doesn’t have to be. These people are simply obsessed with torturing themselves and others!

As a reading experience, it is quite a slog, with a lot of repeating drama and outrageously dense anachronistic prose, so I spent most of the book being annoyed with it. Why was I working so hard to get through a book full of characters I hated? And then, at the end, I unfortunately realized I had enjoyed it. It felt like an accomplishment, but also like I had been let in on a disgusting, twisted little world of freaks — reading the book is like having the most fucked-up gossip session with someone who died 150 years ago.

And, now that I’ve endured it, I don’t think I see all the fuss about Emerald Fennell adapting it. If not her, who? This is a monstrous little book, full of sexual deviants and emotional basket cases, with a story that’s absolutely primed to – in the iconic words of Tina Fey summarizing Emerald Fennell’s work – take a “sexually violent turn, and you have to pretend to be surprised by that turn.” In fact, now that I’ve read it, I think she might be the only person who can give us a faithful adaptation of Wuthering Heights! If Heathcliff and Linton start engaging in “homosexual acts on the moors,” it may not be faithful to the literal plot from the 1800s (though, reading between the lines, there were definitely homosexual acts happening on those moors), but it will probably feel emotionally true to the spirit of the novel. Either way, it’s probably going to mirror my experience with the book: an exhausting experience, full of people I hated, and one I’ll be thinking about for a long time.

1/20/26 - 1/26/26

Okay, there’s no good way to say this, when half the country is buried under a foot of snow, but: I am in the Bahamas right now. I’m sorry! So, you’ll have to forgive me for a shorter than usual email, because the beach is calling my name. Sorry sorry sorry, I understand the feelings of hatred you are having. But first, I’m here to talk about something more important: I finally revealed the existence of this newsletter to my therapist. He looked shocked that I had never mentioned it to him over the past year, and he had a surprising amount of follow up questions (in fact, he had more questions about this than he has when I tell him about actual emotional experiences in my life!). Questions like, “Do people pay?” and, “You can find it online?” Questions that made me worry he was immediately going to google it after I left, which is of course exactly what I would do if I were a therapist. So, Dan, are you reading this??? I can’t wait until our next session is all about analyzing my feelings about The Testament of Ann Lee or whatever.

This week: it’s a weird one, since what I’ve mostly been consuming is rum punches and sunlight, but I found time to get mad about an article in The Guardian about The Traitors UK; I decided the Vanderpump Rules reboot might actually be good; I desperately tried to find some hope in the ICE occupation of Minneapolis; and I enjoyed a prizewinning book that I know at least a few of you hated, and I am ready to fight about it.

“It’s open warfare in the castle! How The Traitors lost its soul” by Alexi Duggins — in The Guardian

I’ve written before about how The Traitors UK is top-tier reality TV, so of course the curmudgeons at The Guardian have decided it’s bad for society. Grow up! This article about the show was an instant-click ragebait the second I saw the subhead, which reads: “It used to be a breath of fresh air – TV’s most relatable reality show. Now it features shouting matches and bad-tempered confrontations, and the biggest loser is the viewer.” Oh no! Shouting matches and confrontations? On reality TV?? Who could have let this happen????

I don’t know who this Alexi Duggins writer is, but let’s just take a look at the kind of person who needed to write a whole pearl-clutching article about a reality TV show that dared to show people arguing:

Okayyyyyyy well, it all makes sense now. One look at Alexi Duggins and I knew his whole deal. This guy is the awful new boyfriend of your friend, who you desperately try to not sit next to at a dinner party. This guy shames you for liking pop music, and only reads books reviewed in The Economist. This guy pronounces “Timothée Chalamet” with a French accent. When everyone else is passing a joint at the party, this guy takes out his tobacco pipe and hopes you’ll comment on it. This guy probably swims in an Oxford button-down.

But, you know what? It’s actually a little cute watching Britain freak out over how “mean” this season of The Traitors was. (People betraying each other? On a reality TV show? One that’s literally called The Traitors? The horror! The Queen, God rest her soul, must be rolling over!) Seeing this article was a little like falling into a time warp, because here in the godless and cursed United States, we stopped having this argument in, like, 2003. Truly, the average British person would not have survived the Stanford Prison Experiment that was America’s Next Top Model, or the lawless fight to the death that was Rock of Love with Bret Michaels. Americans have been in the reality TV trenches for decades now, and pretty much the only thing that could genuinely horrify jaded US audiences anymore would be airing live executions — and even that would depend on who was getting executed. (I can think of a few I’d tune in for!)

So what I’m saying is, England: you need to cling to your naivety as long as you can. You make some incredible reality TV over there, and that’s largely due to how committed people still are to the bit. The cast of The Traitors UK seemed to genuinely believe people were getting literally murdered in the castle, which led to incredible drama as people sobbed and screamed as people were eliminated. Over here in America, reality TV has become simply the easiest pathway to getting enough followers so that you can pull a crypto scam — I’ve said it before, but the only American Dream left anymore is to follow Hawk Tuah girl’s career path (go viral, start a podcast, steal millions from your followers, enter Witness Protection). And the more we’ve become a nation of wannabe grifters, the worse our reality TV has gotten. It no longer matters whether you’re a Real Housewife throwing a glass of wine, a contestant starving on Survivor, or a mail-order bride on 90 Day Fiancee — the real game on all these shows is always ultimately the same. It’s scams and grift all the way down.

So I can mock dear old Alexi Duggins for his embarrassingly bad take, but he is, in a convoluted way, doing England a public service. For reality TV to survive, we need people who are still horrified at the idea of backstabbing on a game show all about backstabbing. Dorks like Alexi are the whimpering cogs that have kept the outrage machine of reality TV going strong for over 30 years now — and honestly, if The Traitors producers are smart, they’ve already reached out to Alexi to cast him on the next season.

Vanderpump Rules, season 12 episode 6 — on Peacock

After the spectacular, world-shaking implosion of “Scandoval” destroyed any sense of reality on Vanderpump Rules, producers made the risky and controversial choice to fire everyone and recast with an entirely new, younger cast for season 12. I really did not want to watch the reboot, and I certainly didn’t want to like it, but, 6 episodes in I think it’s time to admit they might be cooking with something here.

The magic of Vanderpump Rules’ success was the fact that the original cast was intimately entwined, had genuinely worked together for years at Lisa Vanderpump’s steampunk-meets-carnival-themed Hollywood nightmare restaurants, and, most importantly, were absolutely desperate for fame. The true star of Vanderpump Rules, in fact, was always that desperation, the hunger that drove these people to repeatedly destroy their own lives in a quest for more and more followers. To continue my thoughts from earlier, VPR is the endgame of all American reality TV — a television show about people who need to be on TV at all costs. As a viewer, we understand that the show is a performance and that the cast members aren’t acting authentically, but their performances are built on an authentic layer of desperation and emptiness, so, somehow, the performances become a form of actual reality. Vanderpump Rules is postmodernism, reality TV commenting on reality TV itself. What I’m saying is: Lisa Vanderpump is our Rene Magritte. Ceci n‘est pas reality TV. (Clearly, these people have warped me, too.)

Thankfully, this new cast appears to be just as desperate as the old cast, with the perfect amount of self-awareness (none). The women are shameless and boy-crazy, and happily invite producers and camera crews along as they warble into a microphone in a rented recording studio as they attempt to launch their hopeless singing careers. But so far, the real stars are the men, which is how Vanderpump should be — VPR is a franchise built on the backs of piggish, immature men who do nothing but torment women, and the new guys seem to be expert manipulators, primed to psychologically torture these girls for, ideally, seasons to come.

There’s Shayne, an extremely attractive former addict, whose parents introduced him to hard drugs as a child, and who has been shot four times (honestly, the show had already won me over at the idea of a Vanderpump cast member with bullet holes in him). There’s Marcus, a manchild who, when scolded for behaving badly at work by Lisa Vanderpump, burst into tears and revealed his father had died, before quickly taking advantage of Lisa’s pity to ask her to let him DJ at the restaurant.

But the true stars in my eyes are Chris and Jason, two hunky idiots with painted-on eyebrows, who are unfortunately already known to fans as the Incest Twins. Yes, the new Vanderpump Rules cast has had incest drama in its first 6 episodes, and this is how I know it will be successful. Chris and Jason are cousins who live together and, horrifyingly, make OnlyFans content together. I don’t know if they, like, do it do it (I‘m too scared to look, but hopefully someone can conduct an independent investigation and fill me in), but even the idea of filming porn with your cousin…………. well, these are the kinds of horrific, humiliating situations that made Vanderpump Rules big enough for even Obama to make fun of them, once upon a time. The jury’s still out on whether the new cast will be successful, but they‘ve clearly got the raw ingredients, the perfect mixture of delusion and desperation, so here’s hoping they can continue their descent into Hell, for our entertainment.

“There is no such thing as other people’s children” by Erik Hane — at Welcome To Hell World

What’s happening in Minneapolis is intolerable and horrifying, of course, and it’s hard to find anything hopeful in it, when children are being snatched off the street and used as bait, and mothers and nurses are getting murdered by government thugs. So this essay, in the newsletter Welcome To Hell World, was at least somewhat heartening, with its focus on how the community has come together in Minneapolis, in a way that shows all of us what’s to be done when the thugs come for our neighbors:

Here is something simple and beautiful: the vast majority of the residents of this city agree. In the days since ICE murdered Renee Good, something new has happened. Everyone is activated. Ordinary people—as in, people who don’t normally think that much about politics or where they fit on an ideological spectrum—have looked up and said, “No, what ICE is doing in my city is unacceptable, and I am going to be part of the opposition.” Networks for supplies, groceries, shelter, rides, medical care, and neighborhood patrols have burst forth on the sheer strength of everyone participating. This is part of all of our daily routines now, just as much as our jobs and our personal lives. Groups that started with whole neighborhoods in mind soon became so full that they’ve splintered into ten-block chunks, then five-block chunks, then specific locations within those areas. There is nowhere ICE can go in this city where they won’t soon be met by a dozen locals ready to record and impede their actions, and the whistles we’re all wearing mean that many other people will soon be at that location too.

Fuck ICE, obviously, but also fuck every politician who puts even a single dollar in these thugs’ pockets, or who acts like “better training” will fix it, or who settles for anything less than the total dismantling of ICE — which is, of course, an organization that’s younger than the concept reality TV. We were fine before ICE existed, and we will be much better off after ICE is gone. These soulless men and women are masked, but they’ve exposed the rot at the heart of our country, and none of us should settle until ICE no longer exists, and the many, many people who enabled these horrors have been punished for their crimes against humanity. We have to believe that they will lose this fight, because they will.

Flesh, by David Szalay (2025) — hardcover

Flesh has to be one of the most controversial books of last year — it won the Booker Prize, but everyone in my life I know who has read it hated it (including a handful of you reading this right now, I know for a fact!). So I’m here to say that I liked it, and I’m ready to fight you about it.

The book tells the story of one Hungarian man’s life, told through radically spare prose, with a limited view into the interiority of our protagonist. István, at first glance, appears to be a passive participant in his own life — he mostly says, “Okay,” and lights cigarettes. “It’s like he’s waiting for something else to find him. Or not even that. He isn’t really thinking about the future at all,” Szalay writes, and that’s exactly the point. Somehow, by the end of the novel, I genuinely felt like I had gotten to know István, this mostly silent, lonely man. He’s incredibly frustrating, but this is what straight men are like. Have you ever tried to talk to a straight man, or to access his inner feelings? I don’t recommend it!

I think a lot of the frustration people have with the book is that they’re frustrated with István, which tells me he was a successfully drawn character. You’re annoyed with István, you want to shake him to speak up, to tell you what he’s feeling, which means you’re reacting to him as if he’s a real person. He’s not just a character in a book, he’s a real guy you just want to stop being so fucking thick. By the end of the book, I felt like I had, somehow, gotten close to István, despite the sheer amount of blank space on the pages, the one-word sentences and the endless okays. It felt like a magic trick, the creation of interiority via the seeming absence of it. So I understand why so many of you hated this book, but, I’m sorry, I’m on István’s side.

1/13/26 - 1/19/26

Our president, whose brain is leaking out of his ears, is enlisting more and more Nazi death squads to snatch people off the street and terrorize the elderly and children in the Midwest, while mulling how best to crater the economy and also whether he should nuke Nuuk, Greenland — and yet, despite all this, we now have to also contend with the fact that Victoria Beckham did a sexy dance on her son at his own wedding? How much are we expected to take before we all just fucking snap! Everything feels like a CIA psyop these days, but this feels especially suspicious, like someone somewhere decided that none of the distractions have worked, and that everyone still has plenty of time and energy to absolutely despise everything this administration is doing, so they hit the big red BECKHAM INCEST button. We must resist! (But please send me any new information on this story as it develops.)

This week: I saw three new movies, all kind of crazy, and all kind of great; I watched a classic, also kind of crazy, Scorsese; I got mad about the fascist takeover of Minneapolis; and I read a book about a weird creepy loser.

The Testament of Ann Lee (2025) — at AMC Lincoln Square

I have no idea how to summarize a movie like Ann Lee. It’s a semi-musical, semi-fictional biopic of Ann Lee, one of the founding leaders of the Shaker religious sect in the 1700s, and I simply can’t imagine seeing a more insane film for the rest of the year. This is a full-body ride, an overwhelmingly exhausting, exhilarating, and deeply strange experience. I had the time of my life!

Ann Lee is such a strange historic character, so it’s fitting that this is a strange movie. A mystic to some, a cult leader to others, she found religious conviction via, it seems, overwhelming grief at losing baby after baby (which we also endure in a particularly harrowing montage early in the film), and turned it into a movement that didn’t exactly transform the world, but at least transformed the cabinetry industry.

It’s a shame this movie is only in, like, 5 theaters around the country for some reason, because Amanda Seyfried deserves a hell of a lot more attention for this role. She throws herself into it, singing, dancing, chanting, wailing, beating her chest, somehow resisting the physical allure of Christopher Abbott.

It’s definitely one of the best performances of 2025, but one that no one will really see — and, frankly, I feel like half the people who watch this movie might hate it! In our group of four who saw it together, our opinions were extremely varied. We all found it a bit too long, but I found it completely immersive, and felt that its maximalism had its reasons — you can’t exactly make a quiet, simple movie about a charismatic freak like Ann Lee, you know? I was completely engrossed, nearly ecstatic with joy throughout most of it, and baffled at seeing a movie that felt like something completely new. It’s been called a “musical,” but that feels so reductive, and the idea of putting this in the same conversation as Wicked is laughable. The music is just kind of how these Shakers communicate, so most of the songs flow organically in and out of the scenes (except for one insane musical moment featuring a kooky guy and his index finger — not explaining beyond that, sorry!). Honestly, I never say this about a musical, but I could have had more songs in this. Let Amanda sing!!

But, as I said, for some reason this remains nearly impossible to find in theaters — perhaps they want you to suffer and travel long distances, as Ann Lee did, in order to prove your faith, as some new, immersive form of stunt marketing? Whatever it takes, I think it’s worth seeing, even if you end up walking out of it like so many of those snooty French losers at Cannes apparently did. This is big, bold, strange filmmaking, and I think it should be rewarded.

And, really, you should get on board before everyone else does, because I’m calling it now: 2026, we are having a Shaker Summer. We are forgoing all carnal pleasures, and beating our breasts in ecstasy with our best girls and gays. We are fighting tyrannical governments and getting arrested and growing arm hair in prison. We are refusing to take our husbands in our mouths, no matter how much they beg, and we are making our gay brothers cut their nasty hair. We are taking care of the Earth, and carving gorgeous furniture. There might only be two Shakers left, but possibly not for long!

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026) — at Nitehawk Prospect Park

It’s still so shocking to me that the 28 Years Later movies are good — 28 Days Later felt so singular, a one-off miracle of a movie that only got better with retrospect, especially in light of its sad and stupid sequel 28 Weeks Later. But last year’s 28 Years Later and now this year’s Bone Temple follow-up are a rare thing these days: big, splashy blockbusters with a lot to say about Big Issues. Danny Boyle really took issue with how lame the zombie genre has gotten, and returned to wake us all back up!

28 Years Later used its zombie-ravaged England setting to explore ideas of grief and loneliness, and the different ways people respond to trauma and tragedy, and while The Bone Temple is in many ways a more traditional movie-like movie than its predecessor, it’s still got plenty of big things to mull over. It follows two intertwining stories from the first film: in one half we have the “Jimmies,” a cult of psychos with a belief system that absurdly blends Satanism with the Teletubbies, who were bafflingly introduced in the final minutes of the previous film; in the other half, we have Ralph Fiennes’ semi-mad doctor, who’s battling grief and loneliness but also can’t help but continue to try to figure out how to heal the world.

This sets up a classic reason-versus-faith dichotomy, one that has been explored for better and worse in many better and worse movies and TV shows, but director Nia DaCosta makes it all feel brand new. I loved this movie, way more than I thought I would. Its tone is all over the place but somehow never felt jarring — we go from dark comedy to comedy comedy to classic horror to horrific scenes of gore, and none of it ever feels out of place. I don’t know how she did it, really!

And when the two stories finally come together, the resulting scene is, like Ann Lee, one of the most bafflingly hilarious and jaw-dropping musical moments I’ve seen in a movie in a long time. I won’t spoil it, but I can tell you this: the audience I watched this with had an enormous reaction to this musical moment, especially compared with the absolutely silent audience I watched Wicked: For Good with. (I don’t know why I woke up so mad at Wicked today, but I’m running with it.)

If the Oscars producers know what they’re doing, they’ll get Ralph Fiennes and Amanda Seyfriend on stage together, performing a Satanic/Shaker musical medley mashup that will change the entertainment industry — and maybe even religion! — forever.

Pillion (2025) — streamed through nefarious means after going to great lengths to see it legitimately

Alexander Skarsgård is very attractive. This is not up for debate! And Pillion is a movie based on the blunt fact that, for most of us, Alexander Skarsgård would be one of the most attractive men we had ever seen in real life, if we were to run into him. So the question the movie is asking is: would you let this man ruin your life?

It has become such a trope online, this need to be destroyed by the object of your desire. Kill me, daddy. Hit me with your car, mommy. Choke me, Heated Rivalry’s Francois Arnaud. In Pillion, one kind-of-ugly gay (I’m not calling him ugly, okay? The movie calls him ugly! Get mad at them, not me!!!) gets to live out that fantasy, becoming the sub to Alexander Skarsgård’s dom, resulting in a deeply strange, twisted, and heartbreaking British romcom of sorts. It’s Love Actually or Notting Hill, with just sliiiiightly more leather fetish.

The marketing played up the sexiness and silliness of the film: come see Alexander in a wrestling singlet! Look at one of the boys from the Harry Potter movies, all grown up and licking a man’s leather boots as he jerks off! So it’s a real bait-and-switch that what this movie actually is is devastating. You quickly learn this is not all the fun, sexy silliness you thought it was going to be. Because Colin, the sub played by Harry Melling, does get what he wants (to be dominated and practically destroyed by Alexander Skarsgård), and we have no choice but to sit and witness it all. We watch Colin slowly and methodically excise the freethinking, free-acting parts of himself, all in service of being closer to Alexander Skarsgård. The more Alexander debases him, the more ecstatic his face.

And yet, this isn’t torture porn or meaningless pain for the sake of it — it’s really a love story, between two men with very different but conveniently overlapping needs, while also exploring loneliness. And after so many years of having to hear endless hand-wringing about the “male loneliness epidemic,” it’s refreshing to have a movie that actually steps up and shows these guys a potential way out: put on a leather singlet and let a bigger man step on your face! Stop complaining and get out there!

But, really, the movie handles the dichotomy between their needs so well: Colin needs to be needed, and Alexander’s character needs someone to need him. And that works for a while, but what happens when your needs overtake you? When there’s nothing left but need? Or when your needs are, actually, not what you thought they were? The movie raises a whole slew of bleak, thorny questions that are destined to absolutely tear the Online Gay Discoursers to shreds, if this movie is ever actually seen — so it’s probably good news that you can’t find it anywhere! If the community can’t handle Heated Rivalry, I don’t know if we deserve Pillion.

Much like Ann Lee, Pillion has been absolutely impossible to track down (it appears to now be showing a couple times a day at Angelika, if you’re in New York — which is fitting, because no theater treats you more like a worthless little sub than Angelika). I know movie distribution is absolutely broken (did you know there’s a new Ben Affleck/Matt Damon movie that just got randomly dropped on Netflix? I didn’t! Though I do love that the press tour for it has mostly just been the two of them shit-talking Netflix), but what I don’t understand is how much money was spent on marketing both Pillion and The Testament of Ann Lee specifically to gay people, only to make it impossible for anyone to actually see the movies. Maybe spend less money targeting me with daily Instagram ads that tell me to go see these films, and more money getting your movie into a theater so I can actually see it? I’m no movie producer, but the math isn’t adding up! Is everything, even the movie business, just a front for money laundering and crypto scams now? (Yes.)

The King of Comedy (1982) — on Criterion

This feels like the most overlooked Scorsese film, and it’s probably because it’s so tonally out of synch with everything else he’s ever made. This is a wild, goofy, incredible ride, and arguably De Niro’s funniest role ever, one that’s at times explicitly in conversation with De Niro’s role in Taxi Driver. It’s also a prescient film, one of those ahead-of-its-time cult classics, because, really, everyone’s acting like this now. Sure, maybe no one’s plotting to kidnap a TV host to get on their show (imagine wasting your one big kidnapping attempt on Jimmy Fallon!), but everyone basically has more parasocial relationships than real relationships at this point, and most people seem to think that if they can’t be a big star, at least they deserve to be noticed by a big star. What I’m saying is: no one show this movie to Club Chalamet, I don’t want her getting any ideas!

“Where are the Democrats?” by Ryan Broderick — at Garbage Day

Ryan and the team at the Garbage Day newsletter have been some of the best at succinctly explaining Why Everything Is Fucking Horrible for years now, simply because they do two things the LAMESTREAM media doesn’t: 1) they take Republicans at their word, and 2) they take the internet seriously. Which means their coverage of the absolutely horrific things happening in Minneapolis has been very strong, like this piece from last week. Ryan’s focus has been on the relentless need for spectacle and content, and how everything can basically be boiled down to that. It’s not an accident or a coincident that the ICE freak who murdered Renee Good was filming with his cell phone while shooting her in the face. As Ryan and others have pointed out, it’s also not a coincidence that we never hear from the Proud Boys or other Neo-Nazi militias anymore. It’s almost like they all went and got jobs somewhere?:

That’s what ICE’s true purpose is — a state-sanctioned holding pen for Trump’s most violent supporters. Looking back at it, January 6th was likely Trump’s version of the Night of the Long Knives, or at least a first attempt. Just like when the ascendant Nazi party cleared out their paramilitary gangs and laid the groundwork for more official party enforcers, to too do [sic???] insurrectionists and far-right militia members now have two easily-monetizable paths towards legitimacy. (That aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.) Join ICE and fuck up the libs and brutalize minorities, or film it for the internet.

Anyway, so glad the Democrats are leading on this. Newly married (to a woman!!!) Senator Cory Booker seems to think the solution is more training, which would be funny if it weren’t literally life-or-death. A 45-minute mandatory online HR video module should get those guys with literal Nazi tattoos to stop acting like Nazis! And as Ryan says in response to brainless flop Richie Torres’s new plan to put scannable QR codes on ICE agents (??????), “Maybe someday soon you’ll be able to scan an ICE agent like a restaurant menu right before he shoots you to death.”

Metallic Realms, by Lincoln Michel (2025) — library ebook

This is a strange book, one that I’ve seen ripped apart by people who don’t seem to understand that the narrator is, like, extremely delusional? I guess the literacy crisis is hitting people who even still read books. Bleak! Anyway, if you understand that the narrator is unreliable — which is, like, 75% the entire point of the book — then you’ll probably enjoy this more than the people who missed it completely.

The book (bear with me here, it’s overly complicated) is presented as a collection of sci-fi short stories written by four college students who go by the name The Orb 4, with annotations and explanations written by the narrator, named Michael Lincoln (yes, the actual author’s name is Lincoln Michel — again, this is all very, very meta).

As you quickly learn, Michael is obsessed with these people, to a problematic account, and his “annotations” quickly spiral into score-settling, drama, and barely concealed hatred for some of the members of the Orb 4. It’s a bit like a modern version of Nabokov’s Pale Fire, which is one of my all-time favorites in “weird creepy kinda gay guy” lit, but your enjoyment of this will depend on your tolerance for spending long periods of time with a nerdy, completely un-self aware, obnoxious character who talks like this:

What’s to be said of Taras, my steadfast friend? He’s a kind and somewhat unkempt man. Laconic and ironic, he speaks only when words are necessary yet one can never be quite sure when he’s joking. I watch as he strolls past the bathroom. His six-foot-one frame, scraggly hair, and red-tinged scruff make him appear as a mythic warrior teleported from the battlefield to twenty-first-century Brooklyn. He grips his sword—Muji 0.5mm gel ink pen—in his smooth right hand as he strides into the wine-dark room.

I did find myself laughing at it and mostly enjoying it, but unfortunately it never really went anywhere beyond the central concept of “weird guy is kind of in love with and obsessed with his best friend and his writing group.” Overall, the book definitely teeters on the edge of being a little too cute (not only is the author, Lincoln Michel, writing in the voice of a character named Michael Lincoln, but at one point the character Michael Lincoln discovers the existence of the real-life Lincoln Michel, a moment which will only land for you if you’re really into the work of Charlie Kaufman), but, again, there is a lot of fun to be had with skewering a specific type of overly confident, not-self-aware, weird loser, like so:

“I don’t think you have to be necessarily queer to produce queer texts,” Jane offered. “Look at Italo Calvino. A novel based on tarot cards. Another that’s a long list of cities.”

I nodded from my bedroom, where I was listening via the fern microphone. Perhaps if straight people could be queer writers, they could be queer readers too. I thought about the various ways I’d “queered” my readings. Maybe the time I put my bookmark in the wrong place and read the ending before the middle? Or when I’ve listened to half an audiobook and read the rest on a Kindle?

But really, I’ve lived with way weirder roommates than this guy. I’ll take a Michael Lincoln as a roommate any day, rather than the girl who painted gnomes and roosters all day and night in the pitch black in our living room, or the other girl whose boyfriend once pooped next to the toilet instead of in it. Give me this weird creepy loser — at least he mostly stays in his room!

1/6/26 - 1/12/26

I spent most of the week in Aspen for my dear friend Meghan’s wedding, and then I came back to the city and promptly chopped off the tip of a finger while making Gwyneth Paltrow’s veggie chili (not the first nor the last time I’ll make a blood sacrifice for Gwyneth!). Now I have to wear a ridiculous bandage over my entire hand for at least the next week, so typing is very annoying. In fact, pretty much everything I love to do is annoying now: typing, cooking, showering, giving supportive thumbs-ups. At least I’ll have a cool divot in my thumb for the rest of my life!

This week: I watched 6 episodes of 2 different versions of The Traitors like a true psycho, I reveled in the return of the backstabbing assholes of Industry, I read a DEEPLY annoying divorce book written by a very annoying woman we’ve already covered in this newsletter, and I had a troubling experience that made me fearful of the entire airline industry.

The Traitors US, season 4 episodes 1-3 — on Peacock

The Traitors remains one of the dumbest games ever conceived, and yet one of the most entertaining shows. Turns out all you need to do is put some of the most charismatic and insane people in a castle together, let them wildly accuse each other of lying all day long, and you can make some great entertainment! This TV shit seems so easy, I don’t know why Bari Weiss is having so much trouble figuring out how to do it.

The magic of this silly show remains its absurdist casting — getting the chance to see Lisa Rinna laughing at a joke told by someone I loved on Survivor 20 years ago, while Travis Kelce’s mom shovels food into her mouth in the background. And, as always, the cast this year is a great mix of big-personality psychos (Housewife Dorinda Medley, Drag Race‘s Monet X Change, Michael Rappaport UGH) and smaller-personality weirdos (Tara Lipinski??) with the occasional very normal person thrown in (I don’t know why Top Chef‘s Kristin Kish is even here, but I do find her presence soothing so I’ll allow it).

SPOILERS AHEAD: But this season seems to have been a bad one to go on as a “gamer” (the stupid name given to players from reality game shows like Survivor and Big Brother, even though you could argue that being a Real Housewife is basically playing Survivor 24/7...), who are getting jumped early, to pay for the crimes of former Traitors Boston Rob, Danielle Reyes, Parvati, and Carolyn. The early boots this season have already hurt me deeply, especially my beloved Rob Cesternino, who returned to television 22 years after last appearing on Survivor: All Stars in 2003, and proved in short order that he hasn’t lost a trick despite decades of retirement. Watching him figure out what the Traitors were doing in real time was thrilling and rewarding, as a long-time Rob C. stan who still believed in his abilities, but even more rewarding was watching the rest of his cast — most notably and hilariously Real Housewife Candiace — fall in love with him.

And despite the resulting murders, the casting of the Traitors this season was brilliant, putting hotheads Lisa Rinna and Candiace in the turret with Love Island‘s disarmingly strange and handsome Rob Rausch. These three have an oddly undeniable chemistry (see Rob’s “Girl...” to Candiace), and it already seems like the only people that can stop them in the game are themselves. Which I won’t put it past these three to do! After all, this is Lisa fucking Rinna, as she calls herself, who we’ve seen self-implode many a time before. And Candiace is mostly infamous for getting her head slammed into a table by another Housewife, and for calling a breastfeeding castmate a “filthy milkmaid,” and, when accused of body shaming her, immediately replying: “You walking into a room, you body shame yourself!” What I’m saying is, with this group of people, it’s only a matter of time before someone literally dies in this castle. Let’s hope it’s Michael Rappaport.

The Traitors UK, season 4 episodes 4-6 — streamed illegally

As fun as The Traitors US is, The Traitors UK is the superior show in every way, and this newest season (which, like the earlier UK seasons, will probably be added to Peacock in, like, 6 months — literally WHY do these companies make it so hard to see the things they make?!) is off to an incredible start, thanks largely to one woman: Fiona. The star of this season is a 62-year-old, teeny tiny woman named Fiona, with the voice of Mrs. Doubtfire and the heart of an arsonist. She’s like a fairytale villain, a sweet-voiced demon who will throw anyone under the bus without warning, and seems to just want to watch the castle burn down.

While Fiona is the star, the rest of the cast, as always, is impeccable, with their odd collection of accents and hairstyles and jobs (a “sweets shop assistant”?). Even though they’re all playing for, like, $20,000, everyone cares so deeply about this show, backstabbing and panicking and sobbing at every turn. I don’t know what it is about the UK, but their reality show newbies seem to be much more in it than ours, way less camera-aware and more authentic, in a way that just seems impossible to cast in the US anymore. Is it because the UK is largely made up of either out-of-touch elites or out-of-touch shepherds and farmers, whereas the only job anyone wants in the US is to basically follow Hawk Tuah girl’s career path? I don’t know, but it’s the only theory I’ve got!

Industry, season 4 premiere — on HBOMax

My favorite show that makes me feel like an idiot is back! I’m so glad to be reunited with these sexy little sociopaths, even if I still don’t know exactly what a short sell is or, frankly, even what a mutual fund is. Though this tweet did actually help clear things up a tiny bit:

The premiere was fun and bewildering, and at no point did I have any idea what was going on. Is this what it’s like to watch TV when you’re elderly? I just let the emotions and images wash over me while catching, at most, half the jokes, and yet I had a fantastic time! The premiere was shot in such a beautiful way I couldn’t help but say out loud, “Wait, this is Barry Lyndon,” only for the end shot to actually be a direct Barry Lyndon reference. In a Stranger Things world, it’s so nice to have a show that cares so deeply about its quality, even and especially for a show that’s 90% people doing drugs and saying offensive things at each other. I missed all these assholes!

If You Love It, Let It Kill You, by Hannah Pittard (2025) — library ebook

Every Q1, I try to read everything in the Tournament of Books before it kicks off in March. I typically get through about 90% of the books, most of which are books I’d never even heard of, let alone would have thought to read. While I appreciate the opportunity to expand my reading horizons, in recent years it feels like the quality of books chosen has... dropped. I suspect If You Love It, Let It Kill You made it into the tournament largely due to the drama surrounding it, rather than its quality alone, which I can’t blame them for, as a drama-appreciating person. But this book is one of the most annoying books I’ve read in a while, and we need to talk about it.

First, let’s recap the drama: author Hannah Pittard’s ex-husband, who is also a writer, had an affair with her married best friend, who is also a writer married to a writer. This all-writer square of cheating was chronicled in New York Magazine back in 2024, which I consumed way back in the 13th week of Death by Consumption, when I had this to say about Hannah Pittard:

For example, according to Hannah, in her 20s she would “go to Bloomingdale’s in Chicago, gather up an array of expensive clothes she couldn’t afford, then lock herself in the well-lit safety of a dressing room, undress, and go to sleep for hours surrounded by the outfits she would almost never buy before waking and trying them on, playacting the personalities she imagined she one day might have.” NO SHE WOULD NOT!!!!!!! THAT IS NOT A REAL THING SOMEONE WOULD DO. SLEEP FOR HOURS IN A PILE OF CLOTHES AT BLOOMINGDALE’S???? COME ON. This is the most obvious case I’ve ever seen of a person trying to force whimsy into their public persona and reading it made me absolutely spiral.

Later, Hannah claims that once a year, “almost always on my birthday,” she goes to the ER for a bad back. That is also extremely fake!!! You do not go to the fucking ER on your birthday every year for a bad back, Hannah, stop trying to make yourself into an indie movie character!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And now, Hannah has written a book about the whole thing, an on-the-nose piece of “autofiction” that explicitly makes fun of itself for doing what it’s doing, trying and failing to have its cake and eat it too, which I found so incredibly irritating from beginning to end. And that was before I realized this was the very same woman who had annoyed me already a year and a half ago!

What grates on me most (more than the many obnoxious plot choices, the most egregious being a sassy talking cat for no reason other than forced quirkiness) is the writing style, which can only be described as “if Miranda July or Patricia Lockwood had brain damage while working at Buzzfeed.” A character is described as having “the sixth sense of a platypus,” a phrase that made me cringe with its desperate need to force profundity via ~~~randomness~~~. Even worse was the way the narrator (who isn’t Hannah, but is Hana, obnoxiously) describes herself: “I’m like an early morning weather report: mostly relieved, but with a chance of scattered wistfulness and bouts of anodyne jealousy.” GIRL, WHAT ARE YOU SAYING? THIS IS NOT HOW METAPHORS WORK.

Twice now, I have been pushed into rage while reading the forced whimsy and self-mythologizing of Hannah Pittard. While I love when women are annoying (I watch all the Real Housewives, never forget), I don’t know if I need to read 300 pages of it. Let’s hope this is the last I hear about this dreadful, dreadful divorce. Leave us out of it!

The Catch, by Yrsa Daley-Ward (2025) — library ebook

Another Tournament of Books book, also about a writer. (In fact, this is the fourth Tournament of Books book I’ve read this year in which the main character is a writer — have all authors run out of ideas?) This was significantly better than If You Love It, Let It Kill You (another annoyance from Hannah Pittard, having to repeatedly type out that obnoxious title while a chunk of my finger is missing), though I found it deliberately opaque in a way that frustrated me. But still, it’s about something more interesting than a divorce between two assholes, dealing with the loss of a mother and how it impacted her daughters. It’s an ethereal, strange, weirdly page-turning book, and I only felt down by the ending a little bit, which I guess is all we can hope for.

A pinot grigio — at the Delta lounge, in Denver

On the trip back from Aspen, we boarded our plane in Denver, where everything was running smoothly and right on time (a rarity in The Real World’s Sean Duffy’s America). And that’s when the problems started: we immediately noticed it was at least 95 degrees on the plane, if not more. I have never experienced heat on a plane like this, not even when flying from a literal desert. Lest you think I’m exaggerating, the shirt of the man in front of me was completely soaked through within 10 minutes. As we sat there for over 30 minutes, I was strongly considering dumping my bottle of overpriced Hudson News SmartWater over my head. Then, my phone buzzed with a horrific update: our flight, the flight I was actively boarded on, with the plane door already closed, was now delayed 2 hours. Horrified murmurs spread throughout the cabin as people got the updates on their phones, moments before the flight attendant came on to announce that yes, we were delayed 2 hours, and to tell us why: there wasn’t a pilot.

“The pilot didn’t show up, so we’ll have to deplane you,” she said, before adding, “This is extremely embarrassing.”

We all grabbed our shit and shuffled off the plane, grumbling and genuinely furious but also a litttttle bit giddy, with that holy and righteous anger you get from being treated like shit by an airline — yay, an excuse to be justifiably PISSED at a corporation!

Justin and I practically sprinted to the tiny and rather gross Denver airport Delta lounge, where space was limited and we were NOT about to wait in line. Inside, we enjoyed a single glass of free wine while anxiously monitoring my flight tracking app, which kept updating the departure times, seemingly at a whim (at one point it said our plane had already left). Confusion and chaos was in the air. Another man from our flight sat near us, watching TikTok videos on speakerphone — videos starring various bloated white men and women with bad makeup, screaming at the camera about “cancel culture,” as if it was still 2021. I tried not to judge him, assuming this was how he self-soothes.

When we reboarded, the plane was just as hot (they couldn’t have opened the doors?) and everyone was even more miserable. “We’re back!” I playfully announced to the flight attendant as I got on board, flying high on pinot grigio and trying to lighten the discomfort, but the flight attendant didn’t even force a smile — she simply lowered her head in silent shame, like a palace servant nervous to offend a lord. (She may have just been fighting off heat stroke; her face was deeply flushed.)

Finally settled back in our seats, they announced what had happened, and we discovered we had been in the classic situation that Nathan Fielder had tried so valiently to solve in season 2 of The Rehearsal. You see, when the crew landed in Denver from New York, the pilot got off the plane and, they assumed, went to grab some quick food, and then he just... never came back. It turns out he never spoke to anyone, not even his copilot, so they all assumed he was flying back to the city with the rest of them. And for some reason now, the flight attendant was telling all of these details, which felt almost inappropriate to be hearing. Like, thank you for giving us the gossip, but also shouldn’t you not be telling us this? Also: what do you mean, the pilot didn’t speak to his copilot at all?

At first I was mollified by this explanation — again, I’ve seen The Rehearsal, so I know a little about these silent pilots we’re all stuck with — but upon reflection it made no sense at all. Sure, the pilot not talking to anyone explains why the crew didn’t know he wasn’t their pilot back home, but why didn’t Delta’s own system have a pilot scheduled??? Our flight was only delayed once we were all already boarded and they closed the airplane door, only to discover no one sitting in the pilot’s seat! Are you telling me there’s no actual, computerized scheduling system to make sure every plane has a pilot sitting in its cockpit at takeoff? Are Delta’s flight schedules written in crayon on some break room calendar, like it’s Dunkin’ Donuts? Is all scheduling done via word-of-mouth, just pilots being like, “Sure, I can fly this back to NY if you want”? Is anyone reading this a pilot, and if so can I ask you some stuff??? I have a lot of questions and I’m, frankly, terrified!

Our relief at the new pilot’s appearance — the plane burst into applause when he boarded, as if we were in the presence Sully himself — was momentary, as he quickly took to the mic to announce that he’d “need some time up here to figure out the peculiarities of this aircraft.” I shared some panicky eye contact with a woman in the row next to me. We seemed to have found ourselves on a plane crewed by the world’s biggest oversharers, a team of flight attendants and pilots determined to tell us their every thought, no matter how worrying. Anyway, we clearly survived the flight, and all I’ve got to show for it is a host of brand new fears of flying that I didn’t even know were possible! Good luck out there.

12/23/25 - 1/5/26

Well, I truly thought this day would never come. Opening my laptop after the break felt like an attack, and I walked into the office yesterday like Maduro — disoriented, hair askew, random water bottle clutched in my hands, wondering how I had gone from my warm bed to a badly lit prison in what felt like seconds. Anyway, this is all to say: we’re back, and I could not be more upset. I’m hoping by about Q2, Zohran will have canceled all work, and I can spend my days enjoying the socialist paradise of New York. To quote Marx: the proletariat have nothing to lose but their Microsoft 365 accounts.

We have two weeks of consumption to cover here, so we’re going to run through a quick-ish overview of the seven movies I watched and six books (!) I read while I was blissfully enjoying what life could be like if I had married rich.

Marty Supreme (2025) — at Marcus Oshkosh Cinemas

Marty Supreme feels like the last moment for everyone to decide if they want on or off the Timmy train. If you aren’t charmed by him here, then I think it’s safe to say you will remain immune to his powers forever. But if you’re anyone else — from Club Chalamet down to the merely Timmy-curious — I’m willing to bet he’ll win you over. The magic of Marty Supreme is how it mirrors and plays with Timothée’s public persona: he’s a carefree scamp who gets away with things no one else gets away with (for Marty: stealing; for Timmy: dating a Kardashian without getting any of their stink on him), who has chosen one specific thing to excel at, and that’s the only thing he cares about. Marty is determined to be the best ping-pong player in the world, mostly through the sheer power of caring about it more than anyone else, and Timmy has always had the same attitude and commitment to acting; and now, I think it’s safe to say, he is the movie star of his generation. Maybe the only one, in fact!

I didn’t find Marty Supreme nearly as stressful an experience as Uncut Gems — sure, it’s life-or-death at times, but it never felt as dire for Marty as it did for Adam Sandler’s character. Which is maybe an asset and a flaw to the film; I was less tense throughout, but I also didn’t feel the stakes as strongly. While Uncut Gems kept me engaged via pure, white-knuckled anxiety, Marty Supreme kept me watching simply to see what the fuck would happen next. At no time did I know where the story would go, and I thought the strongest part of the film was its ability to spin off into an absurd little side story that may or may not connect to the larger plot. The Holocaust honey scene, in particular, was probably the boldest choice any movie made all year, and watching that scene gave me what I think must be a completely unique feeling, one I’ve never experienced before, nor could I even give it a name. Something between shock, horror, laughter, disgust, and awe. I can’t get it out of my head — even moreso when I read that it was based on a true story. This was a deeply Jewish movie (I never got tired of every character ending their knock-out screaming matches with a “love you!” that always felt just as sincere as the insults that preceded it), and I’m so thrilled they didn’t chicken out and cut that Holocaust moment.

But, really — and is it any surprise? — I’m mostly here for the grand cinematic return of Gwyneth Paltrow. Many have tried, but no one does gorgeous, luxurious sadness quite like Gwyneth, and I absolutely delighted in every second she was on the screen. Her wrinkles! She looks spectacular, and I was honestly so happy to see her acting again that I got a little teary-eyed (I had done a light edible, it should be noted). True, she doesn’t have much to do, but there is literally no one on the planet better at wearing glamorous outfits and lounging in luxurious settings while having the saddest eyes. I hope this marks a shift for her, back to acting and away from being the hotter RFK Jr.

Blue Moon (2025) — on Apple

This might be the best ugly movie I’ve ever seen. This film is ugly ugly, terribly lit and shot, but it’s a testament to how magnetic and talented Ethan Hawke is (who spends the entire movie seemingly shuffling around the set on his knees, to simulate being short???) that I was engrossed the entire time.

There’s so much about this movie I should hate: it’s essentially a one-man, one-set, one-act play; Margaret Qualley is in full “I’m an acTRESS” mode; it’s kind of about Oklahoma!; and I truly cannot overstate how deeply ugly and Netflix-coded this movie’s visual style is. And yet! I found it genuinely delightful. Ethan Hawke is so charming and so talented, I watched the whole thing beaming like a proud parent.

(This is where I should mention/brag that twice I have had the pleasure of directing Ethan Hawke during a voiceover recording session, and he was everything you want him to be. We shared a loveseat when he wasn’t in the booth, my thighs tingling with the intimacy of being mere inches from Ethan Hawke’s thighs, and he showed us how he can make himself sneeze if he combs a specific spot on his head. It was also the day of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, and I will never forget hearing the sound of Brett Kavanaugh screaming like a drunk freak at senators, which we listened to through the tinny speakers of Ethan Hawke’s iPhone, frequently punctuated by Ethan declaring, “They can’t seriously confirm this guy, can they?!” At the end of the session, he invited us to come see him in True West on Broadway, and I said, “I’d love that!!” assuming that meant he was personally inviting us and about to extend us free VIP tickets, since he had spent the whole session making us feel like we were his best friends — only for him to say, “Great! Thanks so much, everyone!” and leaving the room. Because of course Ethan Hawke wasn’t personally inviting me to his Broadway show.) (I never bought tickets to True West — too expensive!)

I know the Best Actor conversation is all about Timmy vs. Leo, but I wouldn’t count Ethan out as a dark horse. This is easily one of the best and most charming performances of the year, and, as a lifelong hater of Oklahoma! (and especially a hater of that stupid exclamation mark), this movie spoke to me. This was such an unexpected delight!

Avatar (2009) — on Disney+

With two weeks off, I figured it was time to maybe, finally, watch the Avatar trilogy. I love James Cameron — even and especially when he’s at his craziest — but Avatar always felt like a bridge too far, either too weird or not weird enough. I never understood what the hell was going on with those long-limbed tiny-headed blue people, and it always felt vaguely furry-adjacent to me. Like, congrats if you’re into this and no judgment, but please leave me out of it.

The funny thing is, I actually had already seen the original Avatar, way back when it first came out. My friend Ali and I went to see it — I think in 3D? Is that right, Ali?? — and we walked out completely bewildered, feeling as if we had just survived our first acid trip. I barely remember the movie itself, but I viscerally remember how it felt walking out of the theater: we were confused, more than a little scared, and we struggled to reorient ourselves into the real world outside. Ali immediately smashed her phone inside the car door, which felt like a just punishment for having endured whatever the fuck Avatar was. All I remember from the actual movie is the scene where they have sex by linking their ponytails together.

Which is why I regret to inform you, upon viewing Avatar some 15 years later, that they appear to have DELETED the ponytail sex scene!!!! Is this some Disney+ corporate censorship under our new Christian Nationalist regime, or did I fully make up the scene in my own fantasies?! Upon some quick research I conducted right now, it appears that the ponytail sex scene was in the original theatrical release, and was then deleted from all future versions. (If you’re furry-curious, you can still watch the scene here.) I find this absolutely disgusting, disappointing, and cowardly — if you’re going to spend all those months, if not years, animating two blue freaks having sex via ponytail, I just think you should stand by your work, you know?

Anyway, we tried to start the 2nd Avatar film and within 30 minutes found it so bewildering and kind of annoying that we had to turn it off. I might try to continue it, but I might not. I just can’t get down with these blue people and their papyrus-font subtitles!!! I still love James Cameron, but it’s insane that this series is what he will seemingly spend the rest of his life working on. We deserve seven The Abyss sequels, not more of these!

Eternity (2025) — on Apple

A totally passable, better-than-it-should-be movie. This could have become a Defending Your Life reboot, which would have been unbearable, but it wisely stays in its lane, which is being a late 90s/early 2000s romcom. I didn’t buy any of the chemistry between any members of the love triangle, but John Early and Da’Vine Joy Randolph have more than enough charm and chemistry with everyone to make up for any shortcomings. Really, Da’Vine steals the entire film, and I honestly think they should give her a second Oscar just for showing this much range after her character in The Holdovers. I don’t know if I see Elizabeth Olsen in many more romcoms after this, but Da’Vine has proven she can literally do anything.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025) — on Netflix

Better than the second Knives Out, maybe even better than the first, but do I care? The answer, unfortunately, is no. These movies just don’t do it for me, and I think it’s safe to say that if Josh O’Connor and Daniel Craig having adorable chemistry hasn’t won me over to the franchise, then it’s probably not for me. They seem to know what they’re doing, at least, releasing this exactly when you most need a non-offensive film to watch with your family at the holidays, but if they really want to succeed they can’t make these things 2 and a half hours. Nobody’s parents want to watch movies that long!!!

Bones And All (2022) — on Netflix

Started the new year off with the Timmy/Luca film I had somehow missed when it came out, and though I couldn’t really take him seriously in this I did enjoy it more than all the reviews led me to believe I would. It’s wonderfully disgusting and yet sweet, and Timmy is decent in it, though going from Marty Supreme to this made it clear how far he’s come in just a few years. Our boy is growing up!

Lost In America (1985) — on Criterion

Just a great classic Albert Brooks comedy, about a couple who “drop out of society,” buy an RV, and travel the country. There are so many genuinely hysterical moments in here, and a lot of the social commentary is somehow, tragically, still accurate 40 years later. The highlight of the movie is a scene in which Albert tries to convince a casino manager played by Garry Marshall (of all people!) to give back all the money his wife lost, via a convoluted ad campaign. It’s an unbelievably hilarious scene in a very funny movie, and the perfect way to remind myself, at the end of a lovely long holiday break, that I probably shouldn’t quit my job and drop out of society.

Katabasis, by R. F. Kuang (2025) — hardcover

I enjoyed how simple the plot is, especially compared with her earlier book Babel, which I did love but which took ages to get through: in Katabasis, two postgrad magicians (this is a world where magick — yes, it’s spelled with a cringy k — is just another semi-useless thing you can go to school for) travel through Hell to try to bring back their recently deceased academic advisor. The Hell of Katabasis is beautifully nondenominational and well thought-through, an amalgamation of nearly every religious and philosophical depiction throughout history — we’ve got Dante’s Hell, the underworlds of Ancient Greece and Egypt, the Confucian afterlife, all working together to torment anyone who dies.

This is, essentially, a classic journey tale, like The Odyssey or The Hobbit, which are both classics for a reason. It’s a simple structure to follow, and makes for easy reading, although Katabasis loves to get frequently distracted by rather long and dense philosophical discussions about the nature of life, death, and morality. This is a heavily academic book, surprising for a bestseller (though I suppose, at this point, if you’re one of the last 100 people in America still buying and reading books, you probably don’t mind a denser story — anyone who would be overly turned off by this has probably self-selected out of the reading population years earlier). I enjoyed the world of Hell and found it a fairly strong page-turner, but I did struggle with the extreme focus on grad school. This felt like a book that will kill in MFA programs, but, as someone who left formal schooling behind almost 20 years ago, I struggled to relate to anyone. What do you mean you’re scared of your professor? He’s a weird little dweeb! Just bully him back! Don’t get an MFA, kids.

Our Share of Night, by Mariana Enriquez (2019) — library ebook

This was the best book I read all break, and I’m only upset I hadn’t read it sooner. Like Bones and All, it’s a twisted, grotesque story, mostly following teenagers, but in the world of Satanism rather than cannibalism. The book is set in Argentina, in the decades around the dictatorship, and follows a father and son trying to escape a Satanic cult of witches and psychos. It’s the first book to genuinely creep me out at times, with viscerally descriptive scenes of gore and horror, but held together by beautifully written and authentic characters. I usually hate reading books told through a kid’s perspective — I always find it pretty embarrassing when an old person tries to mimic young people — but the son, Gaspar, is an “old soul” in the most literal sense, so I didn’t mind seeing the world through his eyes for most of it. The book is definitely too long (I think it’s over 700 pages), and surprisingly aimless for large sections, but I didn’t mind it the way I’ve rolled my eyes at other overly long books — this is a disgusting, eerie, horrific world I loved luxuriating in.

Blob: A Love Story, by Maggie Su (2025) — library ebook

Blob is The Substance for single girls. A quick little book with a simple plot: a woman dealing with heartbreak finds a strange blob by a dumpster, takes it home, and makes the blob into her new boyfriend. It’s sad and silly and stupid, a bubblegum book that I read in practically one sitting. It’s small enough to fly through at the last minute if your book club meeting is the next day, and the kind of book where you spend less time analyzing the book itself and more focused on the characters, which I suppose is a compliment to Maggie Su: the main character feels very real, so real that I spent most of the book deeply annoyed by her. I don’t need “likable” characters, and I think it’s always worthy to try to capture the feeling of depression on the page, but this woman got on my nerves. She needs to get a hold of herself!!!! I wanted to scream at her to get a fucking grip, and by the end I was reading it practically peeking through one hand, not wanting to live in this woman’s brain anymore but unable to escape. The overall message is pat and trite, but did you expect anything else from a book called Blob?

Tokyo Express, by Seicho Matsumoto (1958) — library ebook

I requested this from the library before we went to Japan but got it 2 months later, so I guess this book is either still very popular, 70 years later, or it just means a lot of people in New York were also traveling to Japan this fall and wanted to read it. Anyway, this is a classic mystery novel, and supposedly responsible for a whole mystery craze in Japan. It’s a book that feels uniquely Japanese in how obsessed it is with train schedules (a good 30% of the book — and in fact the entire central mystery — hinges on the extremely complicated train schedule), but I just let the details of which train is going to which station at which time wash over me. If a detail is important, I figured, they’d let me know, and they did!

There’s a great moment in this book when the detective is like, “Wait, how could he get from one part of Japan to the other so quickly on the trains? ... Oh, I forgot airplanes exist!” which is such classic train guy behavior.

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, by Barbara Demick (2009) — library ebook

A well-reported look at “ordinary lives” in North Korea, told through the stories of a handful of defectors who live in South Korea. What’s most interesting about this book is that all the defectors came from outside Pyongyang, so it’s a rare glimpse at life outside the cushier lives in the capital. When I traveled to North Korea, we were kept to strict areas, where everything felt stage-managed for our benefit — even when we were allowed free rein to ride the subways and talk to anyone, or to walk a few blocks and go into shops with other people, it was all in Pyongyang, where you only get to live if you’ve proven loyalty. So as close as we could feel we were getting to meeting real people, we knew it was always through a skewed lens, one where no one would dare say anything remotely critical of the regime, for fear of losing the privileges they were given in the city.

But outside the city, and especially in the famine years when most of the defectors’ stories take place, life is much rougher, and much more hidden, which made this book surprisingly fascinating, even for someone who’s read a lot about North Korea. What surprised me most is that, in some ways, the people outside Pyongyang have more freedom, outside the scrutiny that comes from being in the capital, so as the economy cratered, black markets and small capitalistic enterprises (everything from reselling electronics to prostitution) flourished, as people had no other options to find ways to survive. But still, life is of course harder on the margins of this world, and the stories in here are absolutely brutal — at times, I wanted to stop reading, after hearing story after story of horrific trauma, which I could only really compare to Holocaust literature. Ultimately, the stories have “happy” endings, in that the main characters all escape, but even that is barely a victory, as they find themselves lost and alone in a totally foreign world, or, even worse, find out that their families were killed as punishment for their defection (in one brutal passage, a woman who’s done very well for herself in South Korea now, but whose sisters were sent to a death camp after she left, laments that “her sisters died so she could drive a Hyundai”). This was a brutal read, and when I kept questioning why I was doing this to myself, I tried to tell myself that it’s better than turning a blind eye to suffering, but once the book is over, and you realize there’s really no immediate way to help the people of North Korea, you’re just kind of left with the suffering.

The Burning Heart of the World, by Nancy Kricorian (2025) — library ebook

I don’t know why I started the year out with multiple books of death and destruction and suffering, but here we are, fully leaning into seasonal affective disorder. The Burning Heart of the World is a very short, poetic book about an Armenian family living in and escaping from Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. It’s told as a folktale, with family members referred to as “the mother” and “the grandmother,” and deals with intergenerational trauma, PTSD, religious and political conflict in the Middle East, the diaspora, and all sorts of death and misery, including 9/11 because why not throw that in as well? It’s fun, is what I’m saying!

This is not the type of book I tend to read or enjoy (I’m not ever really clamoring to read a book described as a “lyrical fable,” you know?), but by the end it had won me over, with its beautiful epilogue that feels somewhat disconnected to the overall story, and yet completely tied it up with a surprisingly emotional conclusion. I liked it, is what I’m saying, but I think I need to read something cheerier next.

12/16/25 - 12/22/25

It’s Christmas Eve Eve, and I regret to tell you this will be the last email of the year — I simply will not be opening my computer next week, not when there’s so much lounging and doing nothing to be done! I thought about reflecting on 2025, but, really, I don’t know if I want to: the year was kind of bad! The US fell off a cliff in every single way and is trying to take the rest of the world with it, all the worst people alive got more power and more money while everyone else suffered, Survivor aired two of its most boring seasons of all time, Taylor Swift kept herself in the news every single week despite never once saying or doing anything interesting — it was a rough year! And yet, we all got through it (unless you didn’t, in which case RIP, and thank you so much for being a subscriber!!!!!), so I guess that’s something to celebrate. Anyway, I’m at least going to celebrate you, for reading this dumb shit every week, for subscribing and sharing my silly little emails with your friends and/or enemies, and for replying to me sometimes so I’m not just screaming about reality TV into the void. I still don’t know what or why this newsletter is, but when I started it I said I’d keep consuming until it kills me, and it hasn’t yet, so: maybe next year!

This week: I watched one of the most stressful movies of the year, I watched a documentary about how Shia LaBeouf sucks, I watched two Chinese films (one straight, one gay), I gave into my disgusting need for the lurid details of Bill de Blasio’s sex life, and I read a fantastic short story collection about awful mothers.

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (2025) — on Apple

I assumed, based purely on Conan O’Brien getting second billing, that this movie was a comedy. Oh boy, could I not have been more wrong! If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is a stressful nightmare, unexpectedly one of the most intense movies I saw all year. As the tension ratcheted up with every scene, I slowly realized I was watching a horror movie, despite the Conan and ASAP Rocky of it all, and that the only way out is through. Rose Byrne, playing a stressed-out mother whose life is (literally) falling down around her, gives what is easily one of the performances of the year, with the camera staying tight on her face nearly the entire length of the film, so we’re suffocating right alongside her. (Between this and Die My Love last week, my parents should not be expecting any grandkids from me anytime soon — and I still haven’t even seen Hamnet! Why was every movie this year about how having kids is awful?) I loved this movie, and I never ever ever ever want to watch it again, thank you very much!

Megadoc (2025) — on Criterion

Watching Francis Ford Coppola’s insane film Megalopolis, you can tell that Francis and everyone else went a little nuts while filming it. So we didn’t even need this documentary about the making of that film to confirm what was already clear from the finished project, but it is a welcome treat to see firsthand just how deeply insane the process truly was. Francis famously sold a huge stake in his own wine company to self-finance the film, which ended up costing him $120 million (of which he lost something like $100 million when the movie tanked), and through this doc we see that with all that money Francis Ford Coppola, essentially, built a $120 million prison and then locked himself inside with Shia LaBeouf.

The documentary is ostensibly about the making of the film, but quickly turns into a character study that asks the question: how annoying can one man be? In the case of Shia, there is no true answer to that question, because he proves time and time again that he can find new ways to become even more irritating. At every step of the way, he questions Francis — but not for the obvious questions any of us were asking about the film (like: why is everyone speaking in nonsense riddles all movie? or, you know: what the fuck is this film about??). No, Shia brings a uniquely obnoxious perspective to set, where he’s constantly asking Francis about his character’s motivations in each scene, only to tell Francis that all his answers are wrong. Okay, then why the fuck did you even bother to ask, if you already knew the answer??

Tensions between Francis and Shia start high and only get worse from there, with several on-camera screaming matches over the tiniest issues — in one scene, Shia thinks he should walk a few steps while delivering his lines, and Francis thinks he should be seated, and over this minor issue they practically come to blows, causing Francis to leave the set entirely and direct the rest of the scene from inside his trailer. (The next morning, Francis emails Shia an apology and tells him he loves him, so they kind of deserve each other.) They should have had a police car waiting outside the set, to take Shia straight to jail the instant shooting wrapped. This man is just out there on the streets? Our streets?!

It’s insane — especially in this era of overly sanitized stars, who refuse to give interviews to anyone who won’t ask pre-approved softball questions — that any of this was captured or allowed to be shown to us prurient normie freaks, but I’m so grateful for this chance to see pure, unfiltered movie-making psychopathy. Shia takes up a lot of oxygen, but practically everyone gets swallowed up by the insanity on set (the only one who seems to be having any fun at all, naturally, is Aubry Plaza, who also seems to be the only one who actually understands that she is starring in a campy disastrous mess), and all of it is shamelessly aired out for our entertainment. This is the best and worst of Hollywood, all bafflingly on display for your viewing pleasure, and I found myself constantly asking how these people didn’t manage to get their most humiliating moments cut out of this film — like when star Nathalie Emmanuel has her agent email the documentary’s director that Nathalie is never to be filmed eating (which the director gleefully and messily reports to us on camera, technically respecting Nathalie’s wishes while also humiliating her — so even the documentary’s director gets caught up in the toxic insanity on set!).

It has to be said that isn’t necessarily a well-made film — it feels more like a DVD extra than an actual documentary. But who cares, when it’s this entertaining! And while the director doesn’t pull his punches when it comes to showing how deeply insane everyone is, he’s clearly too emotionally close to Francis, because he obviously wants to protect him from the box office and critical failure of Megalopolis. The documentary ends with footage of the standing ovation at Cannes (which reportedly involved just as much booing as clapping), as if Francis’s film was received as the world-changing masterpiece he thought it would be, rather than becoming one of the most notorious flops in movie history. It’s a strange ending, but it’s not like any other aspect of the Megalopolis experience ever made any sense, so, in a very weird way, it fits.

Caught By The Tides (2024) — on Criterion

This film — largely consisting of stitched-together scenes from other movies filmed over 30 years — has been lauded by film people for the past year, so I regret to inform you that I didn’t love it. It’s certainly a film I admired (it’s so beautiful!), but it’s not one I enjoyed. The first 30 minutes are entirely plotless, with long stretches of aimless footage, mostly pulled from the director’s earlier films and documentaries. Once the “plot” kicks in, it’s still barely there, a delicately sketched out story of vaguely lost love, which mostly serves to highlight the way China has changed and developed over 30 years. It’s genuinely beautiful, with some absolutely stunning sequences and shots, but extremely abstract, and more than a little exhausting. I suspect I would find this more moving if I were, say, watching it in one of those little screening rooms you find inside a modern art museum, but watching it at home left me feeling a bit exhausted and sleepy. Sorry to China and film bros! I’m not cultured enough for this, I fear!

Happy Together (1997) — on Criterion

This, however, was fucking great. I loved Wong Kar Wai’s In The Mood For Love, one of the greatest films about yearning of all time, but I had no idea he had made a gay yearning film a few years earlier. Happy Together follows two gay men from Hong Kong who live in Argentina while making each other miserable. Throughout the film, the men break up and get back together countless times, finding new, terrible ways to hurt each other, while also finding each other completely irresistible. They’re toxic and, somehow, perfect for each other, with some of the most sweetly romantic moments I’ve seen in films (I, like everyone else, loved the big, stupid dramatic gay kiss in the most recent episode of Heated Rivalry, but it really can’t compare to the quietly beautiful slow-dancing scene in Happy Together).

This film was made back in the time when all gay stories had to end in either death or AIDS or misery, some sort of divine cinematic punishment for the sin of homosexuality, and even though Happy Together does somewhat fall into that territory, it didn’t give me the bitter taste so many of those old stories did. You’re both rooting for these two to work it out, but also you kind of never think they should speak to each other ever again. This is the kind of couple you avoid most of the year, because you just can’t deal with their bullshit, but also you invite them to your Fire Island share, because you need someone to provide the drama, you know?

In retrospect, I shouldn’t be surprised that Wong Kar Wai’s gay movie was great: every gay guy goes through at least one period in life of having a toxic, miserable yearning for someone who’s absolutely not good for him, so I’m not surprised he captured it so well — all gay men are Wong Kar Wai characters deep inside, after all.

“Nomiki Konst’s Revenge Tour” — in The Cut, by E.J. Dickson

For some reason, ever since Bill de Blasio left office we have been plagued by unasked-for updates on his disgusting dating life — first his open marriage with his wife, then his public attempts at dating, and now his hilariously dramatic cheating scandal, the victim of which has decided to get more attention for herself by talking to NYmag. This is an insane thing to do, but I’m grateful for her, because this article is a gift from beginning to end. Within the first three paragraphs, she compares herself to both Lily Allen and Shakira (she has Lily Allen’s new album conspicuously playing when the reporter comes over lol). She gives us glimpses into her extremely Park Slope-ified life with Bill, waking up to make “sprouted quinoa bars” for breakfast, while also teasing us with brain-melting details, like the fact that de Blasio once wrote her a poem titled “One Pussy Nation.”

Bill doesn’t come off great in this article, of course, but it’s not like Nomiki looks normal here, either. She keeps telling us horrifically embarrassing details about him, while reminding us that “this is a 64-year-old man,” but, girl... you were the one with him this whole time!!! I think she thinks she’s going to be relatable to women who have been cheated on, but, I’m sorry, the way their relationship ends is too funny to be tragic:

Then in September, the couple flew to Greece, where Konst did a round of IVF. De Blasio accompanied her to the clinic. They were in the elevator when Konst saw he had been texting someone photos from Greece, and that the person had responded with a kissy-face emoji. “I was like, ‘Who’s that?’ And he goes, ‘The mayor of South Tucson.’”

After the embarrassingly childish breakup in which, I guess, de Blasio started lovebombing the mayor of South Tucson (which begs the question: is South Tucson different from Normal Tucson, or does Tucson have a mayor for each cardinal direction, like the witches in Oz?), Nomiki becomes, somehow, even more embarrassing:

She’s been coping by watching the 1997 live Fleetwood Mac version of “Silver Springs” on repeat and throwing herself into two film projects, including one about disgraced former congressman George Santos, with whom she’s become friendly.

That sentence is such a beautiful gift, unwrapping so many delightful surprises as it goes, that I almost kissed my phone while reading it.

But fear not! They’re both doing great. Bill, I assume, has relocated his One Pussy Nation to the town of South Tucson (although twice in the past year I have seen him, lumbering past the window of a bar or restaurant I’ve been in, like the Sasquatch of Park Slope), while Nomiki has, reportedly, found love with “a 28-year-old firefighter she’d met while judging a Staten Island Mustached Firemen competition.” (Ok, I don’t blame her for that one.)

This article is perfect, except for how short it is. I need 100,000 more words on this disgusting former couple stat. As usual with Bill de Blasio’s love life, I’m only left with more questions, namely: how does this strange man keep driving so many women absolutely feral? I fear I know the answer, based on how tall he is — and how large all his physical features that we can see are, sorry sorry sorry — but I’m going to need reporters to stay on this disgusting Bill de Blasio romance beat. Bari Weiss: if you’re not going to let 60 Minutes do any real reporting, can you please at least send a team down to South Tucson to keep eyes on Bill? I need daily updates!

Mothers & Other Monsters, by Maureen F. McHugh (2005) — paperback

If Jennifer Lawrence and Rose Byrne’s new movies didn’t do it for me, Mothers & Other Monsters has put the nail in the coffin: having children is hell!!!! This collection of short stories isn’t explicitly about motherhood, but as the title suggests, nearly every story in it has something to do with the often monstrous relationship between parents and children, in some form. A mother who cloned her dead daughter deals with the health problems that come from cloning, and the guilt of what she’s created. A stepchild has possibly disappeared, and the stepmother harbors secret relief. An abandoned space colony of humans is visited by researchers from Earth. None of these stories are linked, but they’re all about the two-way street of resentment and need that happens between a creator and what they’ve created. The stories are largely speculative, and extremely well-crafted, brutal and beautiful. A lot of the time, short story collections are barely thematically linked, if at all, but this is one of the most narratively tight collections I’ve read in a while; and if you missed the point, Maureen McHugh ends it with a personal essay, all about her own complicated feelings about being a stepmother. While the stories are often about literal monsters and space aliens, this is somehow one of the most raw and emotionally vulnerable short story collections I’ve enjoyed. Read it if you like great stories, and/or if you hate your children!

12/9/25 - 12/15/25

Every year around this time, I get disproportionately furious whenever I have to do work. We should all be given the entire month of December off, as if we lived in a Christmas movie set in London, to spend our days strolling holiday crafts markets with our lovers, and our evenings in cozy steamed-window pubs with our dearest friends and family. That is all the month of December is good for, and yet, despite no one sane wanting to do this, Microsoft Outlook persists until the bitter end. All I’m saying is: I voted for Zohran over a month ago, but I still have to work??? What was even the point! I’m sick of it, I’m on my last nerve, and if I get one more email for the rest of the year I’m going to fucking snap. I even hate this email I’m writing now — do not read this! Who cares! Go make snow angels with your children or, if you don’t have children, grab someone else’s child and shove them into the snow and force them to make snow angels with you! All the emails will still be in your inbox in January, TRUST ME.

This week: I watched four movies, three about not-great parents and one gay classic; I shamelessly enjoyed yet another stupid Netflix reality show; I invented the concept of slow-roasting brisket; and I read some essays about (what else!) gay people.

Die My Love (2025) — on Apple

Die My Love is a bit of a mess, but at least it’s not a boring mess? Jennifer Lawrence is genuinely fantastic, as a new mother gradually losing her mind (this movie felt almost like a sequel — or maybe more like a replacement — to the atrocity that was mother!), and more than anything this movie made me wish we got to see Jennifer Lawrence do more stuff more often. Why are we plagued by a new Sydney Sweeney project every other day (her new movie Christy will never fail to make me laugh; Christy who??? literally what are you talking about, you sound insane), but we’re lucky if we get a new Jennifer Lawrence or Julia Roberts every other year. Hollywood has a lot of problems right now, but this might be at the top of the list.

In Die My Love, Jennifer crawls through tall grass like a prowling cat, seduces a neighbor (or does she? I still don’t know wtf was going on with that), barks at dogs, tries to hurl her body out of cars, strips naked any chance she gets; she’s feral and magnetic. Robert Pattinson has less to do but is also great, as her vaguely sad-sack husband. Where the movie suffers, despite its great actors, is from a lack of destination — once we’ve established the basics, we’re just left to sit in the misery with this couple. I gather that’s the point of the entire film, but it’s a rather unpleasant point to endure for 2 hours. I have to assume this movie hits much, much harder if you’re, you know, a person who has given birth. But as I am merely a childless Brooklyn gay, I was mostly just here to watch Jennifer Lawrence slay. Is motherhood hard? It looks hard!

The Mastermind (2025) — on Mubi

Josh O’Connor is everywhere now (the new Spielberg movie trailer just came out and I am salivating) and I’m sure will be getting much more attention for his role in the new Knives Out movie, but I was more excited to see him in this, Kelly Reichardt’s new 1970s-style heist film. He plays the titular mastermind (a title that starts to feel mocking as the movie goes on), a small-time art thief and father. This is a heist film, but not a typical one: the heist is over by the halfway point, and the movie is much more interested in exploring the fallout. It’s a character study, and a rather slow one at points (the people complaining about Pluribus being too slow truly wouldn’t survive The Mastermind), but I mostly enjoyed it due to Josh O’Connor’s incredible watchability. The guy is unavoidably charming, and I really will watch him do anything, even if it’s just climbing up and down a ladder for 5 uninterrupted minutes. And, it must be said, for the second time this year I’ve come out of a movie with one lingering question: what was Alana Haim doing there? I just don’t think the Haim sisters should ever be allowed to do anything without the other two. It’s unnatural!

Sentimental Value (2025) — at Nitehawk Prospect Park

Sentimental Value, like The Mastermind, is a slow film, but this one’s pace never bothered me. I could have soaked up the film for even longer — it’s absolutely stunning, and features some of the best and most surprising performances of the year. Stellan Skarsgård is an aging director and terrible father, who returns to Oslo to try to convince his actress daughter to star in his new film, which is loosely based on his own mother’s suicide. It’s a darkly funny setup for a movie, and a great way to explore family dynamics, repressed emotions, and how art can (and I know this will sound schlocky but here I go) help you heal. Stellan is at his best in this, but the whole cast knocks it out of the park: most notably Renate Reinsve, who plays his daughter, and is so spectacular an actress that she can seemingly blush on command; and my girl Elle Fanning, who plays an up-and-coming American actress eager to break out of her typecast YA roles but unsure of her own talents. This cast is an embarrassment of riches — even the child actors can seemingly cry on command.

Tonally, this film walks a delicate tightrope, flirting with, well, too much sentimentality. There’s a throughline (told via voiceover narration, no less) of the family’s house in Oslo as a thinking, feeling central character; there are multiple sequences in which someone reads a script someone has written and is moved to tears; the end scene is a big risk that somehow also feels utterly predictable — in a worse filmmaker’s hands, all of this could and should have turned into a schlocky mess. But instead, I loved it. It’s quietly one of the best movies of the year, and, in a movie full of characters talking about struggling to get finance for their films, it’s genuinely inspiring that movies like this can still get made and released. Cinema’s not dead yet!

Far From Heaven (2002) — on Criterion

It felt like a massive oversight in my life to have never seen Far From Heaven, but the Criterion app’s new collection of Julianne Moore films has helped rectify that, and immediately turned me into a gay madman, frantically texting friends in the middle of the night about a 23-year-old movie they probably all forgot about. We have to talk about Far From Heaven more! Or have you guys been talking about Far From Heaven all this time without me????

The entire film felt like heterosexual drag: straight 1950s marriage, as seen through a gay man’s eyes. The colors are, of course, unbelievable, but I could not stop laughing at the way they all spoke — “camp” has become overused to the point of nothing, but this is actual camp in the true, Sontag-ian sense. The melodrama is the point. This whole movie I kept thinking, “Every single character is a Cole Escola character.” I’m not surprised I didn’t see this when it first came out — I was 15 years old and actively running away from anything even remotely gay — but had I watched it back then, this probably could have saved me a lot of grief. Straight people are insane!

Pappardelle with port-braised brisket ragu with shallots and rosemary — made at home

Longtime DBC-heads know I love my girl Meryl Feinstein, she of Pasta Social Club, for her incredible cookbook and newsletter, which genuinely transformed my ability to make pasta at home — I’m so good at it now! So on Sunday, when New York got real, actual snow, for the first time in what felt like years, I turned to Meryl’s cookbook to find an easy, long-roasting sauce recipe. I tragically could not find lamb in any grocery stores or butcher shops within walking distance, which is what the original recipe calls for (you can find it for yourself here), but I replaced it with brisket and was absolutely not disappointed.

Did you guys know you can just buy some meat, put it in a pot with a bunch of shallots, port, and tomato sauce, let it cook for like 7 hours, and it’ll be delicious?! I know none of this is groundbreaking, but doing, truly, the bare minimum on a snowy December Sunday and being rewarded with a restaurant-quality pasta dish made from scratch is one of the most satisfying feelings in the entire world. I could cry right now just thinking about it! I know I sound like Meghan fucking Markle right now, talking about slow-roasting meat as if I invented the concept, but I guess some things can’t be avoided. Next week, don’t yell at me when I send an entire email about making balloon arches.

Squid Game: The Challenge, season 2 — on Netflix

How is the fucking Squid Game reality show more entertaining and better at character development than Survivor this year? The first season of this show was surprisingly good for such a dumb premise (and, actually, the hysteria around its announcement reminded me of the pre-Survivor hysteria back in 2000: are they going to be killing people on this reality show?? Good to know we’re still a nation of idiots, 25 years later), but once it was over it immediately faded from memory. The second season, however, somehow got even better and, dare I say it... smarter?

The show’s weakest point is also its strength: there are literally 456 people in the cast, so there is no hope of ever meeting even 75% of them. People appear and disappear in a matter of seconds, and they’re lucky to even get a single word on the show. But that means there’s a deep, deep bench of potentially interesting people to introduce to the audience, and the show knows how to deploy their backstories in the most interesting possible ways. Often, we learn about someone’s tragic life, like, 5 minutes before they’re eliminated. (A rule of thumb is: if you start to care about someone, they’re probably gone within 2 episodes.) But there’s a huge amount of charismatic, compelling people to pull from, so any loss is quickly filled with someone equally interesting. By the end, in a matter of just a few episodes, they had managed to create compelling villains and heroes, and produced a winner that actually felt genuinely emotional and raw, someone you cared about. On the fucking Squid Game: The Challenge!

This was either a surprisingly good season of reality TV, or a sign my brain is truly cooked beyond all hope.

The Burning Library: Essays, by Edmund White (1994) — paperback

I haven’t read much Edmund White, but after he died this summer I picked up some of his work. And though I enjoyed it, I would not recommend this collection of 25 years’ worth of his essays and criticism as an introduction to his writing, since it’s extremely dense and a bit all over the place. There are some incredible essays on gay life in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, but those are interspersed between the kinds of book reviews I typically skim in The New Yorker. Like, my attention span is barely clinging to life as it is, but there’s simply no way I can endure a 25 page analysis of Jean Genet’s work from 1979, I’m sorry!

But Edmund White was an incredible observer of gay life, particularly during the turbulent periods he wrote in: when we were coming out of the closet in the 70s, surviving the AIDS crisis of the 80s, and beginning to build real political power in the 90s. The essays are arranged chronologically, so you can track the changing attitudes of society towards gays (and White’s own attitudes towards his own homosexuality) throughout the book, with cutting little observations dropped in your lap out of nowhere like:

No homosexual can take his homosexuality for granted. He must sound it, palpate it, auscultate it as though it were the dead limb of a tree or the living but tricky limb of a body; for that reason all homosexuals are ‘gay philosophers’ in that they must invent themselves. At a certain point one undergoes a violent conversion into a new state, the unknown, which one then sets about knowing as one will. Surely everyone experiences his or her life as an artifact, as molten glass being twirled and pinched into a shape to cool, or as a novel at once capacious and suspenseful, but no one is more a Homo faber (in the sense of both ‘fabricator’ and “fabulist’) than a homo. It would be vain, of course, to suggest that this creativity is praiseworthy, an ambition rather than a response.

That final sentence, I loved. The way he, at the very last second, pops the bubble he’s just built so delicately. At every turn throughout these essays, I felt like Edmund White was saying to me, another a gay person: you think you’re special? Well, you aren’t, but also you are.

12/2/25 - 12/8/25

Last night, Justin and I got our first-ever Christmas tree, and it turns out he and I have very different ideas of how you should string lights on your tree. Our sides essentially boil down to: “evenly space them out and make sure all the cords are hidden” vs. “just shove that shit in there wherever and be done with it.” Anyway, we survived the ordeal, and now I understand why my parents absolutely hated doing that every year.

This week: I watched the outrageously horny new gay hockey show, I saw the absolutely perfect new Park Chan-wook, I surprisingly liked a Netflix movie, and I read a very good historical overview of the Islamic world.

There are billions of people on this earth, and all of them have Substacks, so I can’t say this for certain, but: it feels like this has to be the only newsletter on the planet to cover both softcore gay porn and a history of Islam in the same email, right? So I guess that’s something to be proud of!

Heated Rivalry, episodes 1-2 — on HBOMax

I’m not saying Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is gay, but it is rather suspicious that HBO started airing softcore gay porn and Netflix suddenly decided they had to own the network. And I’m not accusing Paramount’s CEO David Ellison of anything, but it is interesting that he saw a parade of spectacularly beefy hockey butts and thought, “I have to own this at any cost.” I’m sure there’s more to the fight to buy Warner Brothers than a high-level tussle over who owns the rights to drop by set the next time they’re filming a Heated Rivalry locker room scene, but I just think the timing is interesting, that’s all!

Heated Rivalry — and sorry if I’m gaysplaining here — is a new HBO show following two rival hockey players who, basically, have sex with each other. A lot. There’s Hollander, the Canadian hockey star (who plays for an American team, I think? I’ll be honest; I have zero interest in the hockey parts of the show — thankfully the show has no interest in hockey, either!), and his main rival in the league, Rozanov, the dashing Russian who, I think, randomly plays for Boston?

Look, it’s not worth getting into the hockey details of it all — I really cannot overemphasize how little hockey there is in this hockey-based show. When Hollander and Rozanov fuck, you see every single position, every single moment of insertion, every bit of the action. But when it’s time for them to play hockey, you see them skate out onto the ice, and then we cut to them in the locker room, like, “Wow, that was quite the game, huh!” This might frustrate some viewers, but this is actually how gay people view sports. We’re mostly watching just to get a glimpse of their asses, so it’s no surprise this show is a smash hit; we greatly appreciate a sports show that finally cuts to the chase. I think at least 3 years’ worth of hockey championships are played out over the course of the first episode alone, and I could not tell you who won any of them. Who cares! Let’s hit the showers!

Sure, there are allegedly other plot points, but the show knows you’re here for the sex and not much else, so it wastes no time in getting you there; within the first 15 minutes the main characters are already going at it, and doing so while leaving almost nothing to the imagination. Be warned: this is not a show you watch on a plane, unless you want to be put on a List. Releasing this show during the holidays is absolutely diabolical; I’m picturing thousands of young, closeted gays watching this in their childhood bedrooms late at night, headphones on, one paranoid eye on the door.

The porn is one thing, but for me the aspect of the show that had me absolutely screaming was its bizarre obsession with tracking how much time has passed. In the first episode alone, we speed through at least 2 years, with the show updating you on precisely how much time has passed along the way. Between practically every scene, we get a title card with an update: “14 months later,” “12 months later,” “4 months later.” After a while, it started to feel like a bad 30 Rock joke, as if we’d start getting down to “2 hours later,” or, hell, why not “25 seconds later”? I understand that this is a key part of the books the show is based on, which I believe tracks at least a decade of their lives — you see, since they play for opposing teams, they can only meet up when their teams play each other, which only happens a few times a year (I think? Again, I know nothing about hockey, despite coming from a hockey family, who I assume are reading this entire thing with absolute horror).

But whatever the reason for tracking it, I really do not need to know that 4 months have passed if it’s not important! We all understand the concepts of “time” and “space,” and how people’s bodies and lives move through them. That is not only how the world works, but it’s how stories have worked forever! Characters do something in a scene in a specific location and at a specific moment in time, and then we cut to another scene, which typically happens in a different location, at some later time. Ta da! We understand how this works, so there is really no need to keep updating us on the simple act of time passing. (Though I do like the idea of some obsessive psychos on the internet feverishly tracking the continuity errors in the gay hockey porn show. You know they’re out there!)

I sense the show will get a little more serious, a little more plot-focused as it goes on, but I hope it remains as minimal and un-serious as it has been thus far. I’m not interested in exploring the realities of being gay in Russia through the lens of Heated Rivalry, but thankfully it seems the show also has no interest in the larger “what does this say about society?” of it all. Queer media always tends to have some sort of larger meaning forcibly grafted onto it, as some panicky justification for why straight people should care about it. Which I think is why this silly, sexy show has gotten so big so fast (other than, you know, the sex) — it feels genuinely different from the gay shows that have come before. This one was made for exclusively gays (and the girls who like watching gays), with absolutely no interest in justifying itself to a larger audience. If you want to watch hockey you can watch hockey, and if you want to learn about the struggles of gay Russians or sports stars you can watch documentaries about those things. But if you want to see very attractive men flirt and fuck, well, you come (sorry) to Heated Rivalry.

No Other Choice (2025) — streamed via nefarious means

This new film might be one of my favorites from Park Chan-wook, who already has an extremely stacked filmography. But it really feels like one of the key movies of the year, a pitch-perfect bleak comedy about what people might resort to once there are, like, 5 jobs for humans left.

It follows a father, named Yoo Man-su (played by Lee Byung-hun, who I shamefully recognized as “the Squid Game guy”) who’s worked at a paper mill for 25 years, earning his family a very comfortable little life. Which, of course, all falls apart when an American company takes over and lays him off, alongside hundreds of other workers. When Man-su struggles to find a new job in the increasingly narrowing paper industry, he resorts to desperate measures: namely, killing the guys who seem to have better resumes than him. Once they’re out of the way, he figures he’ll be at the top of the list for the one job that seems to be available.

It’s a spectacular character story and a brutal commentary on the situation we’re all in right now: if you’re not at the top you’re kind of fucked, so of course people will start turning on each other. And it feels telling that the people who made these decisions and are actually to blame are barely in the film; the bosses show up to ruin hundreds of people’s lives in an instant before quickly leaving, without even a fraction of the guilt Man-su feels about going after his targets. (Of course, firing and killing are different magnitudes of evil; but from an American lens, where firing means losing your healthcare, there’s sometimes not really that much of a difference, you know?)

Man-su does atrocious things, of course, but can you blame him? We’re all in a knockdown, drag-out fight for the remaining table scraps of our calcifying economy, so it’s no surprise that some people, like Man-su, will feel like they truly have no other choice. This is a hilarious, uncomfortable, beautiful, perfect movie that, ironically, is probably not playing in a theater near you because of corporate consolidation in the film world. Everything is going great!

Train Dreams (2025) — on Netflix

I’m surprised by how much I enjoyed this movie. It seemed slow and dreary, and the fact that it was released on Netflix kind of made it feel like it was in the Yellowstone universe, but this was a shockingly beautiful and devastating film that snuck up on me. Joel Edgerton and Felicity Jones always feel like such random actors to me — I know they’re out there doing a lot of stuff all the time, but it never really felt like any of my business, you know? But I guess I need to become an Edgerton-head, because Train Dreams really got me.

The plot is simple, when there even is a plot, but this is the kind of film you just have to be in the right mood for, and to let wash over you. It’s absolutely beautiful, one of the best portrayals of the Pacific Northwest I’ve ever seen — the trees feel unimaginably huge and old, and every inch of ground is covered in a thick, nearly hallucinogenic shade of green moss. This is one of those films that isn’t really “about” anything, except it’s about everything: life, death, love, loss, guilt, pain, aging. It’s a quietly heavy movie, one there isn’t much to dissect after, but one you want to sit with for a while. Don’t plan on watching it before a holiday party!

Destiny Interrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes, by Tamim Ansary (2009) — paperback

Those of you who hate when I write about boring history books are going to hate this, but I promise you that this book is anything but boring. Destiny Interrupted makes its aims explicit from the start, telling you it intends to serve as almost a “parallel world history,” tracking humanity through the lens of the Islamic world, rather than the Western-focused histories people like me grew up with. It’s a huge task to cover: 1500+ years of world history in a mere 350 pages, but somehow, impossibly, it pulls it off. I am not joking when I say this book should be taught in schools!

Of course with such a high-level view of basically all of recorded history, there will be a lot of important moments glossed over (at times, entire kingdoms and empires rise and fall in a matter of paragraphs), but I never felt like it was rushed or brushed-over. This is mostly due to Tamim Ansary’s style, which is conversational and light, which keeps you engaged throughout, even though at times it felt almost too conversational. Like, I’m not sure I need to be told that Nizamiya University in Baghdad was “the Yale of the medieval Islamic world” to understand that it was a big, prestigious university. (Unless his point was that Nizamiya University mostly served to churn out arrogant blowhards whose only purpose in life is to make as much money as possible while holding society back from real progress, in which case it was a great comparison!)

As with any great history book, there are fascinating tidbits that give me that little tingle of excitement about history, most notably the history of the secretive Islamic death cult called the Assassins (they weren’t named that because they were assassins; assassins are called that because of the cult), who seemed to exist purely to cause chaos. The Assassins, who lived in a secretive mountaintop castle, like Dracula, sent suicidal killers to infiltrate and publicly murder key figures all over the Muslim world. Anytime it felt like Islamic society was finally about to pull it together and unite, the Assassins were there to fuck it all up. When the first Crusaders arrived in Jerusalem, rather than helping Muslims defeat them, the Assassins aligned with the Crusaders, and killed all the key players most likely to organize a coherent Muslim resistance (thankfully, the Crusaders were so stupid and careless that they eventually messed it all up on their own). I mean, please tell me you still think history is boring after reading shit like this:

Murders of this sort happened an astounding number of times during the early Crusades. Some of the murders were not proven to have been the work of the Assassins, but once the terrorist narrative had been reified, the terrorists didn’t need to commit all the terrorist acts. They could claim any murder that bore their stamp and use it to forward their cause. Apparently, they kept detailed records of their work, but because they were so very se-cretive, no outsiders had access to these records at the time, and when the cult was finally destroyed by the Mongols in 1256, it was destroyed so thoroughly its records were almost all erased from history. Therefore no one now knows how many of the murders attributed to Assassins were actually committed by them. Rumors and whispers tell us they cast a grim shadow over their times but we will never know the scope of their impact on the Crusades: the records are gone.

A secretive cult of capital-A Assassins infiltrating royal households and murdering rulers for 200 years, who lived in literal mountaintop castles, were ultimately defeated by the Mongols, and were wiped off the map so completely that they remain forever shrouded in mystery? If they taught this shit in schools, we’d be overwhelmed with graduates with history degrees. (Actually, that sounds like it would be really annoying, and maybe we shouldn’t teach this in schools.)

This is a genuinely eye-opening book that, somehow, pulls off its central thesis, offering a comprehensive overview of world history through the lens of Islam, while also explaining why the Western world “triumphed,” and why the Islamic world remains as divided and contentious as it currently is. What’s most compelling is his central argument that Islam, unlike other major religions, isn’t just a system of beliefs, but actually contains a system for how to organize society itself — how a community should coexist and work together. More than once, he draws explicit and convincing parallels between early Islamic societies and socialism (giving us, if you believe the New York Post, an exciting preview of Zohran’s NYC, coming to you in 2026!!!). The early years of Islam are so beautiful and idyllic — scholars debating the fine points of theology, philosophers inventing algebra and pushing science forward in a way that wouldn’t be replicated for 1000 years, Muslim rulers allowing Jews and Christians and polytheists to live peacefully and completely un-converted in Muslim-ruled territories. There’s a surprising amount of equality to be found here, which you wouldn’t believe if you only read panicky headlines.

It’s only when the Mongols came in, the book argues, that the Islamic world really started to change. Those dastardly Mongols arrive like a wrecking ball and commit a massive, unexpected and devastating holocaust, murdering millions of Muslims and destroying entire cities, practically salting the earth behind them. They turned the Middle East into a desert, literally, by destroying the well-developed and engineered irrigation systems that had allowed the desert to flourish for centuries — the Mongols are, the book claims, why the fertile crescent stopped being so fertile, and why places like Iraq are now desert. The effects of their crushing assault are still felt to this day.

But interestingly, Islam kind of won in the end, as the Mongols stuck around and ended up converting to the religion, basically transforming from invading Mongols into the next generation of Islamic rulers in the Middle East (this is also why, in addition to the Silk Road, Central Asian food is so fucking good — these guys just took all the best shit from everyone). But such devastation still had to be grappled with: why had God allowed Islamic society to be destroyed so thoroughly? The answers people landed on are predictable, as we’ve seen pretty much anytime human society suffers an unexpected catastrophe: we lost our way, God got mad, so now we have to become more conservative! That’ll fix it! Thus, in the wake of the Mongol invasion, Ansary argues, were the theological seeds planted for the creation of new branches of a more radical, more militant form of Islam. This new interpretation of the religion would mostly simmer for centuries, until it all came to the forefront in 2001.

It’s a persuasive argument, if overly simplistic — the Mongols ravaging Baghdad 700 years ago also did 9/11? Okay! — but any “conclusions” like this in history are always going to feel overly pat and simplistic, especially when presented in a 350-page book covering nearly 2 millennia. But the book isn’t here to convince you of anything, which is one of its greatest strengths. It’s simply here to introduce uninformed Westerners to a whole swath of history we haven’t been introduced to before. And the closer we get to modernity, the more eye-opening the book gets — we see the effects of both World Wars on the Islamic world (which, of course, being a “world war,” had massive effects over there, most obviously in Israel-Palestine), and all the reasons why efforts at true democracy were often cut short. (Spoiler alert: the US doesn’t come out looking too good!)

This is, simply, one of the most interesting history books I’ve read in years, one that very gently shamed me for not already knowing a lot of this stuff, while holding my hand to educate me on the history of, like, half of the fucking planet. It’s a great introduction to that part of the world, and more than anything a great reminder that no one controls or owns history, and that the “center of the world” only depends on which way you’re looking at it.

11/18/25 - 12/1/25

The best part about coming back from a long vacation (oh, did you know I went to Japan? Have I mentioned that yet?) is the absolute mountain of culture you have to catch up on. And yet, instead of planting myself in front of a screen and binging the new gay horny hockey show, I’ve been stuck spending quality time with loved ones. Like some sort of sucker! December, for me, will be about upping my screentime as much as humanly possible. I’m about to burn these retinas out of my skull with how much content I plan on consuming.

This week: I watched three of the big new movies and disliked two of them, I decided I’m over the government’s constant striptease with UFO disclosure, I was charmed by The Beatles, I finally started getting caught up on the masterpiece that is Pluribus, and I read a book that was written by a reader of this very email!!

Wicked: For Good (2025) — at Marcus Cinemas Oshkosh

It’s time I accept I’ll never be a Wicked gay.

Now that I’ve seen the entire thing, I’m only left with questions. What was the point of this second film? Why was everything lit so terribly? Was it to turn the famous color of the original Wizard of Oz on its head, the way this story turns that movie’s story on its head — a symbolic darkening of the screen, to make you take a second, closer look at everything you think you know? Or are these people really just that bad at making movies?

And I have even more questions about the story, now that I’ve seen it from beginning to end. Why — other than needing to give the story a plot — did Glinda stick with the Wizard, despite knowing he was a fraud? Why did Elphaba sing a whole song about how she was done being good, since everyone blames her for bad stuff anyway, before proceeding to... keep being good? And why did the big, final reveal need to be kept a secret from Glinda forever? In fact, why did any of this pointless stuff happen, and why did it all take so long??? Was this all just one big cash grab? Is it capitalism all the way down? Am I dumb for even asking such obvious questions?

The first film was a bit of a mess, sure, but at least it was a mostly fun mess. This one was mostly a joyless slog. It felt largely perfunctory, as if the film itself was saying, “Ugh, okay, let’s just wrap this shit up, so sorry about all this.”

For a film in which nothing really happens in the first half, it certainly felt like it never stopped moving — there is so! much! exposition! in the first hour-plus, so much it gave me whiplash, until I realized: wait, nothing is happening. It certainly feels like a lot of plot, but there actually isn’t any plot to be found. There’s a lot of frenetic energy here, but it all leads nowhere and has no purpose. You know it’s a good movie when practically the entire first hour could be lopped off the film and nothing would change!

Granted, Wicked gays and girls have made it abundantly clear for the past year that the second half of the musical is famously a struggle, with pretty much zero iconic songs to be found, so I suppose we can’t blame the film itself for these problems — though that once again raises the question: why split this into two films in the first place? I know the answer is “money” but you’d think they’d at least bother to come up with something else to justify the 5-plus hours we’ve now spent in this poorly lit world. This was a blatant cash grab, nothing more, and I’m kind of annoyed I fell for it. Wicked has fooled me twice, and the shame is absolutely on me.

Frankenstein (2025) — on Netflix

Another pointless, overly long, poorly lit slog of a film! The American film industry is doing great, it seems. Frankenstein, like Wicked: For Good, could have lost at least an hour, if not more. Fuck it — the whole film should have been left on the cutting room floor.

At least the performances were enjoyable, I suppose. Oscar Isaac is always great to see, especially when he randomly gets naked, like he does in this. (And, if you’re wondering, no, you unfortunately do not get to see Dr. Frankenstein’s other monster.) Jacob Elordi was certainly doing some acting, though a lot of the time his “acting” is actually more just “crouching.” (It’s a performance reminiscent of my favorite stage performance of all time, one that I never actually saw in person: Bradley Cooper in The Elephant Man, where he just kind of scrunched his face up and hobbled around.) And Mia Goth is there, doing her Mia Goth thing, which I always appreciate, though I never quite understand it.

The film felt strangely empty and soulless, with nothing deeper to say about humanity than a vague hand-waving at the ways the sins of the father are passed onto the son. So profound! And it only took 3 hours to get there! Sure, the set design and costumes and all of that were beautiful, but that’s a bit like putting a tuxedo on Frankenstein’s creature — it’s still a lifeless, shambling mess that probably should have stayed buried.

Bugonia (2025) — on Apple

At some point we need to have a serious discussion about Poor Things, and what to do with the people who loved that movie. It’s scary enough that we have to share a society with RFK Jr. supporters, but knowing I could be sitting next to a Poor Things enjoyer at this very moment is enough to send a chill down my spine. I’m constantly looking at everyone askew, wondering if they laughed with glee at watching Emma Stone pretend to act like a baby for 2 hours. We live surrounded by freaks in this country, and I’m never going to forget the lesson of that film.

Poor Things also altered my relationship with Yorgos Lanthimos. After directing some of my favorite movies back to back to back (I will accept no The Lobster slander!), something in Yorgos must have snapped, and he made one of the worst films ever, an atrocity so irritating and inane that it forever changed my opinion of him. It was like if Picasso had gotten really into AI, or if Lady Gaga started doing reggae. Poor Things made me worried for Yorgos’ mental health, and the adulation heaped upon the film made me worry for our society at large.

And yet, despite it being another Yorgos/Emma Stone collaboration, I felt a sense of eager anticipation about Bugonia. I still went in with a heavy dose of skepticism, but, damnit, by the end, these lunatics had somehow won me back. Bugonia is easily the best Emma/Yorgos film since The Favourite, and while it doesn’t quite reach the brilliance of that movie, this was a very fun ride, and a fantastic showcase for Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons’ talents. These two are really at their best here — Emma as a Lean In-style girlboss CEO, wielding corporate buzzwords and a plastered-on smile like a whip; Jesse as a conspiracy-addled backwoods one-man militia, equal parts terrifying and heartbreaking. The film is part thriller, part comedy, part sci-fi, genreless and very clever, and it’s good enough for me to start the process of forgiving Yorgos and Emma for Poor Things. The body keeps the score, of course, we know this, but with enough time, therapy, and movies like Bugonia, I believe we can start to heal.

The Age of Disclosure (2025) — on Prime Video

Remember a couple years ago when the government was like, “Would you guys mind if we announced that UFOs are real?” and everyone was like, “Actually we can’t take this on at the moment, sorry,” so we all just collectively moved on? Isn’t it time to, like, circle back to that? This “documentary” attempts to do just that, via “explosive” interviews with high-up government officials, seeking to “reveal” the “secrets” of “UAPs” (as UFOs are called now, if you haven’t been keeping up with this whole thing, WHICH I HAVE).

There’s no new UFO or alien footage in here, so don’t get your hopes up that this documentary is about to blow things wide open. Instead, it relies on some big-name interviews, the biggest being Marco Rubio and Kirsten Gillibrand, two senators who have surely never lied to us before. They’re accompanied in the film by interviews with random high-level military dudes, who all tell us various things you’ve probably heard before — a weird thing moved faster than possible, a different weird thing was seen by a military base — with a few “new revelations” sprinkled in. The most notable new revelation is a psychotic story (supposedly related by George Bush himself???) of a spacecraft landing at a military base, and an alien coming out and, like, talking to Air Force guys? Okay, sure!!! Why not!

These sorts of “documentaries” are always a silly affair, probably a mixture of real stories, total lies, and CIA psyops (my tinfoil hat stays ON), but as a rule they always get bogged down by one very specific dude. These dudes are always some sort of vague former government contractor, who worked in various mysterious sectors, and they always have the exact same bloated, roided-out body type as Alex Jones. The dude always makes himself the star of the film by unspooling story after story of his nefarious government past — he’s always claiming to have been on a spaceship inside a government facility, or to have spoken to an alien. And, conveniently, he can never prove his government history, because it all either never existed or was wiped by nefarious entities once he started speaking out. Whoops!

So, while a part of me gets a little thrill every time there’s footage of an admiral I’ve never heard of being like “yes, aliens are real,” this film falls into the same trap as all this stuff: it’s the same tired footage, the same stories of “tic-tac shaped objects,” and unfortunately throwing Marco Rubio into the mix is simply not enough to convince me of anything. Maybe the 20 Rubio/Gillibrand stans out there are frothing at the mouth, but I’ve long since become immune to anything these two have to say.

As a certified nosy bitch, I’m getting tired of all these half-teases about who knows what, and I think it’s time for these government folks to start putting up or shutting up. The government keeps acting like a bad burlesque dancer, tantalizingly rolling down their elbow-length gloves, teasing the public, like, “Ooh, wouldn’t it be so naughty if we told you about the aliens?” before covering back up while doing some stupid Betty Boop dance to try to distract us. Either show us the goods or get off the stage, I’m TIRED!

The Beatles Anthology 2025 (2025, duh) — on Disney+

This series – Peter Jackson’s remastering of the 1990s The Beatles Anthology series — is spectacular, and also happens to be a fantastic series to watch with your parents, if you’re in the market for that kind of thing this month. While I’m far too familiar with practically every part of The Beatles’ history (yes, yes, Sir Paul, I already know “Yesterday” came to you in a dream), I had never seen the original Anthology series, a gap I’m all too happy to be rectifying now. Because, it simply needs to be said: these were the four most charming boys in the world!

This series, in which The Beatles’ story is largely told by George, Paul, and Ringo themselves, is an obscene display of charisma — practically every sentence out of their mouths is gold. And Peter Jackson’s remastering of the footage and music is genuinely stunning, something you have to see to believe. The old concert footage feels practically 4K, as if you could reach out and brush John’s sweaty hair out of his eyes. And the music! The way Peter Jackson has been able to isolate each individual track from even the most hectic of live 1960s recordings — most iconically the insane Shea Stadium performance — makes me wonder why every other modern film and TV show is so terribly mixed, if someone is able to pull this wizardry off. Like, Peter Jackson is making ancient shitty recordings come alive, so why is every Netflix show mixed like: “whisper whisper whisper EXPLOSION!! GUNSHOTS!!! whisper whisper”? (Breaking news: old man yells at TV for being loud.)

That Shea Stadium performance in particular is such a spectacular set piece, not only for The Beatles, but for Peter Jackson, who at a certain point feels like he’s simply showing off. You’re able to hear every missed guitar chord, every slightly flat note sung by Paul, every laugh from John and George as the overwhelming crowd causes them to repeatedly fuck up. You even, at points, hear specific screams from specific girls in the audience. It’s almost as if Peter Jackson had traveled back in time, and planted mics all around the stadium.

And the entire series is like that, somehow breathing new life into the well-trodden history of the most-covered band in the world. At this point I don’t even care if Peter Jackson wants to continue doing this work: it is our imperative as a society to force him to keep restoring old music and footage, until he’s brought all lost media back to us.

Pluribus, episodes 1-3 — on Apple TV+

The only downside to traveling was knowing people were watching Pluribus, Vince Gilligan’s highly anticipated new show, so when I returned I had to dodge spoilers as deftly as I avoided kissing my girlfriends in high school. Somehow, I managed to go into the pilot completely blind, and had the time of my damn life. Watching the Pluribus pilot felt the same way it must have felt living through the Renaissance, like all this ancient knowledge we thought was lost forever had come rushing back out of nowhere. You’re telling me people still know how to make good TV shows?!

The 2nd and 3rd episodes were a bit slower than the pilot, I’ll admit, but I really don’t care — I’m having so much fun watching this show, luxuriating in its very strange world, and I truly will follow it wherever it goes at this point. I love the careful and respectful way he’s treating the central mystery, the way he sets up a question that you think is going to be the narrative hook of the entire season, before giving you the answer in, sometimes, a matter of minutes. It’s a sure sign that the showrunner trusts the audience, and isn’t here to waste our time, even in its slowest moments. You can feel the confidence behind the entire show, and it just feels so, so, so nice being in the capable hands of a person you know you can trust. We needed this show badly, and now all I ask is to please not spoil the next 2 episodes before I can get caught up. Pluribus is my life now.

Never Stop Exiting: Stories, by Michael Hopkins (2025) — paperback

I’m going to be honest, I was nervous about this one. You see, this is the first book I’ve ever had sent to me by someone who reads this very newsletter. When author Michael Hopkins offered to send me his new collection of short stories, I accepted, with some fear that I’d be saddled with an absolutely terrible book that I’d either have to trash or lie about. So what a massive fucking relief that I actually liked this book!

From the first story, he had me — it follows a woman, Shelby, who has to get her leg amputated, and is arguing with her mother about her desire to have the leg mounted on her wall as a trophy. It’s a funny, heartfelt story, with a great, morbidly weird premise, and I genuinely breathed a sigh of relief that I loved it, knowing I could sink into the rest of the stories without worrying about what I’d have to say about it. What followed that opening story is a great, strange collection of stories, which range from speculative fiction to heartbreaking drama. Michael has a great ear for dialogue, his characters say a lot without having to say much, and his stories — unlike the collection’s title suggests — always know exactly where to leave you, both satisfied and wanting more.

So I guess what I’m saying is: feel free to send me your art, if it’s as good as this! (Or if it’s bad, actually, you can send that too — it might be kind of fun to tear a reader to shreds.)

10/28/25 - 11/18/25

I have returned! Welcome to Japan Week on Death By Consumption. We actually returned last week, so I fear the trip is already fading into a lovely dream I once had, now that I’m back to real life, and have logged back into the terrorist organization known as Microsoft Teams. (And a warning: this will be a long one, so I would suggest clicking the headline above to open it in full, because it will almost certainly get cut off as an email.)

This will not be a travel blog, nor is it a list of recommendations for your own trip to Japan (this will probably be the only Japan “guide” in which the only recommendation for the entire city of Kyoto is for a really good bathroom). This is simply an extremely non-exhaustive accounting of some notable consumption experiences we had over there, on what was, ultimately, one of the best vacations of my damn life!!! If I gave you the full recap of our trip, this email would run into the hundreds of thousands of words, so you’ll just be getting some highlights that are (hopefully) fun. If nothing else, this will give you something to read on the toilet while you’re hiding out from your family after Thanksgiving.

The first time I visited Japan was in 2007, when I was 20 years old. Back then, I had been saving money to go to Europe with my girlfriend, and when we broke up (no idea why!!!) I went off to Japan instead, backpacking solo for nearly a month. It was the first major adult trip of my life (I say “adult” even though I did, in a hostel in Kyoto, wake up from a nightmare literally screaming, “Mommy!” in a dorm I was sharing with 15 other people....... I hadn’t said “Mommy” in at least a decade, but my subconscious decided that was the moment for it to come roaring back into my vocabulary).

The first time I had ever traveled solo, that trip was a massive experience for me that shaped the rest of my life — I will never forget waking up that first morning in my hostel in Tokyo, on the 50th floor of some enormous building, looking out in awe at the city stretching out below me as far as I could see, a moment that absolutely shattered my little Wisconsin brain. I will also never forget the feeling of being so far away from everyone and everything I knew for the first time, that unique mix of freedom and loneliness that I eventually grew to find so familiar, and even comforting.

This is all to say: yes, I know it’s the most cliche thing in the world, a white guy loving Japan, but the country left such an indelible mark on me that it left me no choice. So, forgive my descent into white-guy cliche here, but there was really no helping it. Enough prologue — let’s get into it!

A manhattan — at Grandfather’s, in Shibuya, Tokyo

Tucked down in a basement off a busy street in Shibuya, this dark and smoky bar — so choked with cigarette smoke our eyes were streaming tears the whole time — offers decent cocktails and even better music. The DJ is, I assume, the titular Grandfather, an old man hunched behind the bar, meticulous in his button-down and tie, who smokes cigarettes, occasionally mixes a cocktail, and spins tracks from his impressive vinyl collection all night. It’s been open for at least 40 years, which makes me wonder if it was always named Grandfather’s, even when the guy was young. In the 80s, was it just called “Father’s”? I have questions.

The drinks are, to be honest, quite average, but they’re cheap, just a couple bucks, and served in cute glasses, and frighteningly strong, so I ended up getting drunk on three Manhattans while watching Grandfather pluck vinyl out of his enormous collection of albums. Vinyl bars are, of course, a huge thing in Japan, and the music at Grandfather’s feels more basic, more mainstream than many of the other spots, which is great when you just want a good sound system but also the ability to have conversation. At Grandfather’s, there’s none of the strict silence you’ll find in other listening bars — you’re there for the music, yes, but you’re also there to have a good time, so you’re free to chat.

While we sipped our outrageously strong, tiny cocktails, Grandfather bounced from album to album, serving up crowdpleasing classics like Jackson Browne, Steely Dan, and Fleetwood Mac. But then I noticed a glint in his eye as he pulled a new record off the shelves behind him. “Grandfather is about to do something crazy,” I told Justin, but nobody was prepared for what he hit us with, as Adam Levine’s voice — singing those unfortunately iconic opening lyrics: “I was so high I did not recognize...” — came blaring through the speakers. Yes, the man had selected Maroon 5 on vinyl, casually dropped into his hour of 1970s hits. It was an absolutely diabolical choice, one that would get most people’s aux cord privileges permanently revoked, and yet in that context, I have to say it was the most I’ve ever enjoyed Maroon 5.

Some sort of whisky cocktail — at Bar Nayuta, in Osaka

Bar Nayuta is, like Grandfather’s, a “hidden bar” that every tourist already knows about. It is one of the trickiest bars to find — there’s no sign, it’s on a third or fourth floor of a nondescript building, and the door is only waist-high so you have to practically crawl in. The bar itself only seats about 8 people, with extra space along the wall for people to drink and sit while waiting for one of the precious bar seats. On the night we arrived, the room was packed with not only exclusively white people, but the worst kind of white people: heterosexual couples. Our hearts sank, but we figured it had taken so long to find the spot, we had to at least try a drink.

The bar is one of those spots that has no menu, but you describe what you like and they make something for you, which, honestly, usually annoys me. It always feels like forced whimsy — just tell me what cocktails you make best, and I’ll order one of them! — and, frankly, the speakeasy-style entrance was already giving forced whimsy, so my skepticism was growing by the second. I asked for some sort of a boozy, slightly sour whisky cocktail, and the mystery drink that arrived turned out to be absolutely delicious. Okay, fine, I thought, sipping my custom cocktail, these straight people might be onto something.

Around us, all the couples were meeting other couples, everyone swapping stories and recommendations from the Japan Tourist Holy Trinity of Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka. I felt like I was on a cruise ship for Millennials. The small talk was maddening to eavesdrop on, and even worse when we got dragged into a mind-numblingly boring conversation with the couple next to us (Canadian, very nice people, let’s hope they aren’t reading this), who could not believe it when a couple they had met at a bar in Kyoto walked into this bar.

“What are the chances that we see them twice in Japan?!” the woman asked me. Well, Mary, honestly the chances are pretty high, considering you’re all going to the same three cities and following the same TikTok recommendations! I sipped my drink to keep my mouth shut.

But all my attention for the night was focused on the guy to the other side of me, a miserably arrogant straight guy with a silent wife, who ordered drinks by barking demands at the staff of the exact flavors he expected from his drink. With precious seating space in this tiny bar, this man had put his bag on the end of the bench I was on, taking up an extremely valuable spot, forcing four of us to squeeze into space meant for three. Which meant I decided to take matters into my own hands, and to initiate a passive-aggressive war for territorial control of the bench. With my thigh, I slowly shoved his bag closer and closer to falling off the edge, while he used his elbow to shove it back into my personal space. We both carried on like this for half an hour, pushing the bag into each other while never once acknowledging we were at war. With each passing second, I hated him more and more.

When he and his wife finally decided to close their tab, the man erupted with a loud and righteous indignity. “You don’t take DISCOVER?!” he practically shouted at the waiter, and I had no choice but to let all my inner antipathy out, and to laugh openly and obviously at his expense. You mean to tell me this guy was behaving with Amex Black Card attitude all night, only to whip out a Discover card? He was enraged, incensed, could not believe it, was practically trembling with fury at the disrespect towards him, a certified Discover Card Member. The indignity! Not for the first time, I had the thought that we’ve really, as a society, lost all sense of shame.

Karaoke and an ice cream sundae — at Sweets & Bar White Bunny, in Osaka

In many Japanese cities, but especially Osaka, some of the best restaurants and bars are hidden on the 3rd or 4th floor of a nondescript building that looks like your optometrist’s office. There’s virtually no way of knowing what you’re in for until you open the door and walk in. When we met up with our friends Emily and Jules in Osaka, who were in Japan on their honeymoon, we essentially all ended up spending the entire three days together picking doors almost at random, opening them, and eating and drinking in whatever setting we found inside.

This led to some unbelievably fun experiences — one of my favorites being the empty, tiny gay bar we found on the 2nd floor down some random hallway, in which Emily and Jules grilled the bartender about lesbian life in Japan through Google Translate, before he finally typed into his phone, “I may not be the most informed about lesbians in Tokyo.” Fair!

We had some incredible dinners in these tiny random spots, all of which were single-man operations, cooking spectacular dishes in spaces the size of my apartment’s bathroom. And here I’m going to give you the most important tip you could ever receive about Japan, and the only way to guarantee you never have a bad meal: use the website Tabelog, Japan’s Yelp. I fear I may be betraying some confidences here, as the Japanese people we met were reticent to even talk to Westerners about Tabelog, reacting in horror when they learned we were already using it (”How did you hear about that?!” I was asked, in the same tone you’d ask someone how they heard a piece of gossip you only told trusted friends). With good reason, too — we were told many stories about a beloved local spot that blew up on Western TikTok or Instagram, and immediately became a place only for tourists. (The locals are pissed to lose one of their favorite restaurants, but, as someone told us, the restaurant owners are almost always very happy to be “discovered.”)

Japanese people are very tough on their restaurants (I would be too, if I had this much incredible food in one country!), so anything that ranks above a 3.5 out of 5 stars on Tabelog is guaranteed to be spectacular. And if it’s above a 4? Forget about even going there, you should have gotten a reservation 6 months ago. In 2+ weeks of eating in Japan, Justin and I became total Tabelog snobs, turning our noses up at a mere 3.25, and willing to wait over an hour if it meant getting into a 3.75. So, look, I’m giving you the key to always finding impeccable food in Japan, and all I’m asking is you don’t abuse it and ruin every restaurant for Japanese people, okay?

But there’s no Tabelog for bars, so Emily, Jules, Justin, and I were left to fend for ourselves, drinking at as many tiny, unsuspecting bars down nondescript hallways as we could find. Which led us, one night, to Sweets & Bar White Bunny, a second-floor bar that randomly serves enormously decadent sundaes and parfaits. We ordered a round of drinks and ice cream, but before we could even dive into the sundaes we were interrupted by the sounds of a man belting a Japanese ballad into a karaoke mic.

When we arrived at the bar, there were only two other people there — a kid in his 20s, silently drinking and playing on his phone, and a middle-aged man, who barely even looked up when we walked in. But, for whatever reason, a switch flipped with him about 10 minutes after our arrival, and he decided he simply had to serenade us. As we cheered him on, he stood over us, singing his goddamned heart out to whatever Japanese classic he had selected, and when he was finished, we immediately threw our own song selections into the mix. It was on.

For at least the next hour, the four of us sang karaoke with this man, who tried his best to keep up with most of our English-language selections. Emily asked ChatGPT what English-language karaoke songs were most popular in Japan, and we relied on the list it gave us, with middling success (another victory over the machines for human brains!). But the true cross-cultural megahit — which, really, should come as no surprise — was John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” which absolutely brought the house down. Even the young female bartender knew every damn word to that song. So if you ever find yourself trying to forge a cross-cultural connection via karaoke in Japan, that song is a sure ticket.

Throughout all this madness, the 20-something kid sitting at the bar continued drinking silently, barely even acknowledging the rowdy karaoke session going on just over his shoulder. Until, out of nowhere, he stood up, grabbed the microphone, and unleashed a staggering rendition of Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” belting into the mic, hitting practically every note, as we screamed and whooped with encouragement.

Karaoke excellence achieved, the young man sat down at the bar and never once touched the mic again for the rest of the night. Like a true star, he knew when to leave us wanting more.

12 gyoza and NO MORE — at Gyoza Daigaku, in Kobe

Justin and I took a day trip to Kobe, where we went to this (highly Tabelog-rated, of course) restaurant in Kobe’s Chinatown, where the one and only thing on the menu is gyoza. The only question, really, is: how many do you want? You could choose either 12 or 18 as part of a lunch set meal that came with rice and soup, or if you only wanted gyoza you could get an order of 7 or 14. We chose the 12-gyoza lunch set each, and when it arrived we could not believe what we were eating. Without question, these were the best gyoza we had on the entire trip, and we talked about them practically every day afterward. The filling was light but packed with flavor, the dipping sauce was a complex mix of tangy, spicy, salty, and umami, and the wrapper was tissue-paper thin. We wolfed them down, which only made us hungrier for more, so I pulled out trusty Google Translate and used it to ask the waitress, “Can we please get 14 more gyoza?”

“NO,” she replied. “One order only.” It turns out this restaurant has a strict one-order-per-person rule, presumably to keep turnover high, even on a slow day like when we visited, where half the seats were empty. We were not allowed to get even a single extra gyoza, no matter how much we begged. We were shattered, heartbroken, devastated, and left feeling like we had made the gravest mistake of our lives when we ordered 12 instead of 18. I still haven’t recovered, nor do I think I ever will. Let this be a lesson to us all. When life gives you gyoza, ask for the most you possibly can.

A bottle of sake — Izakaya Shinsui, in Kurashiki

We spent one night in the town of Kurashiki, famous for its absurdly picturesque canals that are surrounded by historic wooden buildings, little bridges, and drooping willow trees. The town tends to be more of a day trip destination, which meant after sunset the old town completely emptied out, leaving us virtually alone to explore the narrow wooden streets. Through — what else? — the magic of Tabelog, we found our way to this little izakaya, nestled at the bottom of a steep hill, in the shadow of a gorgeous temple that overlooked the town.

Sliding the door open, we were huffily greeted by an older woman, who clearly did not want to deal with Americans right now. Despite Japan’s famous hospitality, this was a fairly regular experience for us — someone at a bar or restaurant practically rolling their eyes when we walked in, like, “Oh, great, now I have to figure out how to communicate with idiots.” But we never let it put us off from a place, and actually viewed it as a challenge, an invitation to try to break down their walls, to charm the shit out of them, and to ensure we became friends by the end of the meal.

This izakaya is run — like many of the best are — by an old, hunched man working furiously behind the bar, and unlike the waitress, he was thrilled to have us in his restaurant, eager to speak with us despite the three of us having, like, 10 total words in common. Tragically there were no free seats at the bar, so we were shoved in a table in the back corner of the place, far from the old man and all the action. But we immediately got to work, ordering a collection of dishes from the menu, pointing at things and just going with it, and I felt the waitress begin to let her guard down, once she realized we wouldn’t be asking her a zillion questions she doesn’t understand, or making her job even harder. See? I wanted to say. We’re winning you over already. Please don’t hate us! This is how I know I’m still a Midwesterner at heart.

The rest of the izakaya filled up with exclusively locals, and our table was suddenly surrounded by groups of men, all loudly talking and ordering plate after plate of food and drink after drink. To one side, a table of four middle-aged men were aggressively throwing back drinks, ordering various bottles and generally mixing alcohol in a way that would guarantee a hangover if you weren’t a seasoned professional (which these guys clearly were). One bottle in particular caught my eye, and I wanted to know what it was.

Now, an aside on something weird that happened to me on this trip: 20+ years ago, my freshman year of college, I took a single semester of Japanese, curious to see if I could learn the language. I enjoyed the class immensely, but ultimately didn’t continue because the only Japanese classes available were at, like, 8 am on Mondays, and I wasn’t about to wake up that early every week (I love letting laziness hold me back in life!!!). I assumed I had lost the language since then, and yet the longer we stayed in Japan, the more Japanese kept coming back to me. At first it was basic stuff, like remembering “sumimasen” means “excuse me.” Then it got more complicated: I realized I could count to 10, and then 100, and then past that (okay, this isn’t that special; if you know 1-10 in Japanese, you can basically figure out the rest). By the end, I was starting to construct actual (basic) sentences. I can’t tell you anything I learned in my four years of college in the vast majority of my classes — I went up to the 300 level of chemistry and yet I’m still not really sure what a molecule is — but that Japanese 101 somehow lodged itself permanently in my brain.

So when the men next to us ordered a delicious-looking bottle of something, I leaned over and asked: すみません、それはなんですか (”Excuse me, what is that?”). When they replied in Japanese (”This? It’s sake” [with a lightly implied: “Are you a fucking idiot?”]), I felt like I could have walked outside and lifted a full car over my head. I had organically communicated in Japanese! Sure, I was speaking at the level of, say, an 18-month Japanese baby, but I had done it! All by myself! I thanked them, and we immediately ordered the same bottle from the waitress, who I saw in that moment decide that maybe she did like us after all. When the same bottle arrived at our table, the guys next to us burst into laughter, and raised their glasses towards us.

This little izakaya, in addition to serving some truly fantastic food, turned out to be one of my favorite meals of the trip. After the madness of Tokyo and Osaka, which, as we approached peak leaf season, were getting busier and more tourist-choked by the day, we had found ourselves in a completely empty, peaceful, beautiful town, in a delicious restaurant filled with only locals, who started out wary of us and ended up allowing us to feel like we fit in, if only for one night.

It encompassed everything I love about traveling. Forget the sightseeing, or the checking-off-your-list. For me, what sticks with me are the moments when you break through the differences between you and someone, and can share a real connection, even if only for a second. For this group of drunk men, and the formerly gruff waitress, to make a random American (one who’s so dumb he can’t even recognize a damn bottle of sake in Japan) feel welcome and not like an outsider for an evening — well, I just think that’s an enormous privilege, a feeling that I’m always honored to be gifted by a stranger, and one that I always hope to gift back to others in return. We walked out into the night, soaring on adrenaline and joy and an extremely strong bottle of sake, and marveled at the gorgeous, moonlit town we were lucky enough to find ourselves in, for just one night.

A $60 CBD cookie — at the James Turrell “Minamidera” experience, on Naoshima Island

Our next stop was Naoshima, a small island that’s become a hub for contemporary art. My friend Sebastian had told us about a museum on the island that also operates as a hotel, which lets you wander the museum after-hours. It sounded extremely special, and worth the extensive journey to get there (3 trains, a ferry, and a bus ride). Unfortunately, I discovered way too late that the 2025 Triennale was going to be happening on the island — and that we were arriving on the very last Saturday of the art festival. Reading horror story after horror story about hours-long waits for the ferry, and museums with lines out the door, I sent myself into an anxiety spiral on the train down to the ferry terminal. “This might have been a huge mistake,” I told Justin, as we gritted our teeth and got off the train.

At the ferry terminal, we were confronted with....... total normalcy. Within 20 seconds, we had easily purchased ferry tickets, and when the next ferry arrived we casually strolled on board and got perfect seats on the top deck. The ferry seemed half-full, at best, with absolutely zero stress to be found. Maybe, I thought, I had over-exaggerated the public demand for contemporary art? Are kids these days not clamoring to view thought-provoking abstract sculptures?????

Another brief aside: back in Tokyo, we had gone into a CBD shop that we had heard had a “secret menu,” which we presumed meant they sold weed under the table. But that was either a lie, or the guy behind the counter didn’t like our vibe, because he told us that laws had gotten absurdly strict over the past few months (presumably connected to the rise of Japan’s new lady fascist leader), and that the penalty for selling weed was now 7 years in prison minimum, so no one was willing to risk it anymore. Instead, he pointed us to cookies with extremely high doses of CBD, that he assured us would get us high. He said to eat half a cookie to feel “really good,” but “if you’re going to be talking to people, maybe only a quarter cookie.” We purchased 3 of these cookies before walking outside, doing the Yen-to-USD math, and realizing we had just paid $60 PER COOKIE. With a sinking feeling, we realized we probably got scammed, and resentfully carried these stupid CBD cookies around Japan all week.

But as we arrived on Naoshima Island, we figured a day of looking at contemporary art was as good a time as any to put the CBD cookies to the test, so we each took a quarter-bite, as instructed, and headed off to our first exhibit: Minamidera, an art piece by James Turrell. The piece is inside an Ando Tadao-designed house, and, knowing nothing, we lined up and waited to enter. Our group of 20 were split into two smaller groups, before a woman led us inside the house.

Immediately upon entry, we were plunged into utter and total darkness. I could not see a millimeter in front of my face, so we were instructed to guide ourselves by keeping our right hands on the wall as we entered in single file. We were told to locate the benches at the back of the room, where we would sit in darkness and complete silence, and wait. Wait for what? We had no idea, and the woman left the room.

As instructed, we sat in silence, blinking into the pitch blackness for probably 15 minutes, which felt like 3 hours. Without vision our other senses were heightened, and I could hear even the tiniest movement from someone on the other side of the room. I worried I was breathing too loudly, or that I would cough and ruin everyone’s experience. I could feel my eyes rolling wildly in my head, desperately searching for something to look at, panic slowly rising in my chest as my eyes found nothing. My brain played tricks, creating movement in the corner of one eye, then the other, even though I knew I couldn’t have seen my own hand if I had raised it in front of my face. In those 15 minutes of silence and darkness, I spiraled through emotions — panic, hilarity, paranoia, calm, impatience.

Slowly, I started to realize that I could see something. Or could I? I wasn’t sure at first, and then I was: off in the distance, a small rectangle of dim light had appeared in my vision. I turned my head from side to side, testing if the rectangle would move with me or if it would stay in place, proving it was real, and watched in awe as the rectangle grew brighter and brighter.

Finally, after what felt like hours, we heard the voice of the woman who had led us in: “Did you find the light?” No one replied, afraid to break the silence, but I nodded into the darkness, my eyes fixated on the rectangle of light in front of me. “The light has always been there. Nothing in the room has changed. Only your eyes have changed.” At this little profundity, I swear, I nearly burst into tears.

She invited us to stand up, and to walk towards the light, and we all obeyed, starting with small, hesitant steps at first, before growing more confident once we realized that we could, in fact, see. I realized I could not only see the light at the end of the room, but light on either side as well. And, I discovered, I could also now make out the other people in the room, even somehow distinguishing Justin’s face from others. For a few minutes we all walked around the room, our jaws hanging open, with small ripples of laughter spreading through the crowd, as people were struck by a collective sense of awe. Reluctantly, after some time, we allowed ourselves to be guided out of the room, back into the light, where we blinked against the blindingly pure sun.

Justin and I stumbled down the streets afterward, delirious and dizzy from what we had just experienced. “Did that fuck me up, or was it the CBD?” I asked, and neither of us knew — is it actually possible to get high from high doses of CBD, or did we just get, somewhat embarrassingly, extremely high off of contemporary art?

I ultimately concluded the CBD did get me high, because over the next 8 hours of wandering art museums, the only real thing I said was variations of, “Whoa....” We sat through another James Turrell experience (we’re becoming real Turrellheads over here), a 45-minute silent sunset viewing that once again took me on a wild emotional ride, from frustration to annoyance to awe. We were staying at the Benesse House, a hotel inside a museum, which allows you to wander the museums after-hours, so we ended the night strolling a deserted museum in the dark of night, with nary a security guard in sight, feeling like teenage runaways, or Louvre burglars.

Our one night on Naoshima was a beautiful, unique little experience, one that taught me a couple lessons: 1) I like contemporary art more than I thought, and 2) CBD in extremely high doses can actually decently fuck you up. Do with that what you will.

Train platform soba — at Himeji station, on the way to Kinosaki Onsen

Our next stop was the town of Kinosaki Onsen, a small town famous for its 6 major onsens, or public baths. In all my visits to Japan, I had never actually gone to an onsen, so I was excited to spend an entire day soaking in a series of hot springs, and having absolutely nothing to do all day but wander from bath to bath, like a Roman senator.

On the way we had a train transfer at Himeji Station, where we found two identical twin little soba shops, on train platforms across from each other, which have been serving noodles to commuters since 1949. For the equivalent of $3, we stood inside the tiny shops, slurping down unbelievable bowls of perfect soba, sheltered from the cold drizzle outside. It was a supremely cozy experience, and the 5,000th time I felt enraged at the state of affairs in the United States. If every American came to Japan and experienced how pleasant life could be, the revolution would be over in 30 seconds. These people are even beating us at our own capitalistic games! Why can I get chocolate-covered grapes at 7/11 in Japan, but not New York?! Every day, we all agree to continue to live in a society without fast and efficient trains and luxurious and innovative cheap snacks, and I’m sick of it!!!

I was feeling particularly American, then, as we boarded yet another perfectly comfortable and relaxed train towards Kinosaki Onsen, and I knew once we arrived, I’d be feeling even more American. Because once we got there, we’d spend the rest of the day soaking in hot springs completely naked, as is required in Japan. While the Japanese are quite comfortable with casual nudity in these settings, my American ass is not, and I couldn’t help but look at every single man on the train to Kinosaki and thinking, “I’m going to see your dick later. Oh no, and you’re going to see mine...”

12 courses of snow crab — at ryokan Kobayashiya, in Kinosaki Onsen

After a few hours of soaking in various onsens — where, yes, everyone fully and shamelessly has their dicks out, something my tragically American mind struggled to not fixate on — we sat down for dinner at our ryokan, where we were informed it was the very beginning of snow crab season. What that meant for our dinner was a 3-hour, 12-course feast, a nonstop parade of snow crab prepared more ways than you’d think possible.

We had snow crab sashimi, baked snow crab, grilled snow crab, snow crab soup, even snow crab omelettes. Hour after hour we gorged on snow crab, our fingers raw after tearing apart shells — by the end of dinner, I calculated at least 20 crabs had been killed for the two of us alone. And the whole time we ate in our underwear, covered with nothing but yukatas, a kimono traditionally worn when going to the onsen (the hotel practically insisted we put them on, despite my worries of appropriation, and I’m still not convinced they don’t do it just to have a little laugh at all the silly white people, clomping around town on their little unsteady wooden sandals, clutching their silk robes and wicker purses, looking like idiots).

Between mouthfuls of crab, Justin and I kept having to readjust our yukatas, futilely trying to cover our underwear and bare chests. After 3 hours, us and the other guests had kind of given up the struggle to cover ourselves fully, so we all sat in the dining room, stuffed with ten pounds of crab each, our underwear peeking out from beneath our yukatas, like a crowd of gluttonous perverts.

And after stuffing ourselves (our feast ended with a massive snow crab hot pot, an obscene final course to bring out when you’re already 2.5 hours into an elaborate dinner), what else is there to do but strip naked in front of a bunch of men, stomach bloated with enough snow crab to feed a pod of orcas, and sink into more scalding hot water? I once again felt like an ancient Roman or Japanese noble, with my evening of soaking in public baths and my dinner of exotic luxuries, and I wondered why our richest citizens spend all their time desperate for attention on Twitter and starving themselves, when they could be living like this instead?

A toilet at the mall — in Kyoto

Nearly 20 years ago, on my first trip to Japan, I fell in love with Kyoto, and ended up spending 10 days there, exploring temples day after day, and getting lost in such a beautiful and peaceful city. Since Justin had never seen it before, I knew we had to at least stop by, despite hearing the horror stories of how it’s become a tourist bonanza in the decades since. And boy are those stories correct!

I couldn’t believe the hordes of tourists, choking the sidewalks so badly the only option is to walk through traffic if you want to get anywhere, and how difficult it has become to find a decent spot for dinner that doesn’t have a 2-hour wait, or wasn’t booked out 3 months ago. It depressed me, if I’m being honest, to see a city that was so formative to me when I was younger, turned into a place that felt, at times, like you weren’t actually in a 1,200-year-old city, but were in some sort of Japanland inside Disney World.

There was a Kyoto before Instagram, and there’s a Kyoto after. It’s not like there weren’t tourists 20 years ago — I remember finding them unbearable at the Golden Pavilion in particular, and shudder to think what that temple is like now — but the sheer number of tourists (in 2024 over 10 million foreigners visited Kyoto, on top of 45 million Japanese visitors!) is beyond staggering. Sure, there are still places you can find that haven’t been mobbed, but practically every corner felt as if it had been touched, in some way, by the volume of tourism.

The entire city felt like an ecosystem in which an invasive predatory species had moved in, and the locals had developed different evolutionary strategies to survive. Some bars and restaurants leaned into tourism, making a pretty penny in high-trafficked areas with their English menus and middling food. Others had developed ways to discourage tourists, like refusing to have an English menu (and many, I noticed, with only hand-written Japanese menus, presumably to make it more difficult for Google Translate to read them), requiring a cover charge to enter, or simply maintaining a vibe designed to scare off most tourists. Many of the best spots we found kept the majority of tourists away by not having seats, forcing you to stand the whole time, and by not serving traditional Japanese food (”No sushi,” a waitress greeted us with at one restaurant, which confused us until we witnessed the endless parade of tourists who entered, saw a chef standing behind a counter, and asked, “Sushi?”).

The city has become so overstuffed that it even threatens one of my favorite parts of Japan: the easy availability of high-quality public toilets. As someone with a — let’s call it — Jewish stomach, one that likes to act up when I’m traveling, I never feel more comfortable than when I’m in Japan, where I know even a dive bar will have a private bathroom with a gorgeous bidet waiting for me in case of an emergency. But in tourist-ravaged Kyoto, the bars and restaurants were too packed to even get into, leaving me feeling sheer panic when crisis suddenly hit.

Thankfully I had already done the dirty work 20 years ago, and I still remembered a safe space I used frequently when I was younger: the bathrooms at the Takashimaya Department Store, a massive mall right in the heart of tourist Kyoto. This store’s bathrooms are the platonic ideal of public restrooms: floor-to-ceiling stall doors, high-quality bidets, well-stocked toilet paper, sparkling clean seats and floors, and, most importantly, each of the 7 floors has two bathrooms per floor, with 2-3 stalls in each bathroom, so there’s no need for anyone to wait outside your stall, anxiously tapping their toes or yanking at the door like a gorilla in heat. If a stall is locked, you simply walk over to the next bathroom, where surely one will be available. I’m telling you, you’ve never seen public restrooms like these.

20 years ago, this store became my favorite place in the entire world to poop, and I’m pleased to report that at least one place in Kyoto has remained perfectly untouched all these years later.

Sake tasting and a tarot reading — at Toaru sake bar, in Kanazawa

We stumbled upon a teeny-tiny little sake bar tucked in the historic old town of Kanazawa, where we planned on only having a single drink before dinner, but unexpectedly had our favorite bar experience of the trip. Inside a space the size of my apartment’s bathroom sat only one woman at the bar, with another woman standing behind it, pouring from a bottle of sake. We sat down, the bartender poured us some glasses of sake to taste, and we didn’t leave for the next 3 hours.

Over that time we got to know the bartender Chori and her patron Maki, who were both happy to practice English with us, while peppering us with questions about New York, and swapping travel stories (Chori in particular has been everywhere, as I later saw when we connected on Instagram; in comparison to her, I’ve practically not left my house). “How long have you two known each other?” I asked, delighted at being allowed to crash these two Kanazawa besties’ cute little sake night, and they laughed. “We met tonight!”

Maki, it turns out, is a nail artist and tarot reader, and next thing I knew she pulled out her tarot deck and asked, “May I?” Maki proceeded to give Justin and I each a tarot reading, and while I won’t say what she told us, I will say that she really nailed each of us. It was an impressive display, only the second tarot reading I’ve ever had, and I’m now no longer a skeptic and will in fact be devoting my life to tarot moving forward (I was also, it should probably be noted, on my fourth glass of sake on an empty stomach).

Our little group was soon joined by two more women, both also locals from Kanazawa: one was an English translator, and the other woman knew a fair amount of Spanish. What resulted was an extremely fun conversation — just Justin and I and these outrageously charming women — in which we all communicated and translated for each other in a mixture of Japanese, English, and Spanish. The woman who spoke mostly Japanese and Spanish also knew a little bit of at least 5 other languages, but mostly just phrases like, “Stop staring at me,” in Russian, or “Don’t touch me,” in German. “I know how to deal with creepy guys anywhere,” she told us, and we all laughed as she taught the other women all the different ways you can tell a man to leave you the fuck alone.

Once our rumbling stomachs got too loud, we sadly had to part ways and head out in search of dinner, but not before following each other on Instagram, and drunkenly insisting that we simply had to have been friends in a past life, because this was too good a connection to be random. It’s rare to make real, potentially lasting friends while traveling in a foreign country, but don’t be surprised when Maki or Chori pop up again in a future email, visiting us in New York. It was written in the cards!

Unbelievable music — at JBS (Jazz, Blues & Soul), in Shibuya

Since you’ve made it this far, I’m going to let you in on a secret. When you go to Tokyo, everyone will tell you to go to a bar called Little Soul Cafe (the NYTimes just wrote about it, again, for like the 10th time), for a great vinyl listening experience. And I’m not discouraging you from going there! But if you want a truly spectacular and unique experience, the lesser-known JBS (Jazz, Blues & Soul) bar in Shibuya is where you should go. (In fact, while we were there, I heard a local laughing to someone else, “I tell every visitor to go to Little Soul Cafe, and I’ve never even been there! I just don’t want them coming here.”)

You’ll be discouraged, upon looking it up, by the low ratings on places like Google Maps and TripAdvisor, with endless 1-star reviews from patrons who got kicked out or treated terribly by the owner. But that is a sign of excellence, and one that should only make you hungrier to prove yourself worthy of sitting in his bar. I promise it’s worth it.

The owner, Kobayashi-san, has been spinning vinyl for nearly 30 years, from his massive collection of 10,000-plus records that line the walls. His area of expertise spans everything from jazz, funk, blues, and soul, to hip-hop, R&B, and rap — and if this elderly Japanese man were to play in Brooklyn, I’m telling you he’d be the most in-demand DJ in the city. His depth of knowledge was staggering, jumping seamlessly from 70s blues to new 2025 music from artists like Lady Wray, and everything in between. With each new song, someone would get up from their seat and lean over the bar to see what record he had put on, all of us trying desperately to remember every single artist’s name. Obviously this is beside the point of the experience, and music streaming is a scourge on art and culture, but, I’m sorry — I really need this guy to make some fucking Spotify playlists!

But mostly due to the bad reviews, I was worried we wouldn’t be accepted. I don’t think of myself as particularly cool, especially not in deeply cool Tokyo, and it sounded like Kobayashi-san refuses to serve anyone he deems unworthy. So we walked in, trying our best to straddle the line between looking cool but also normal, desperate for acceptance.

The owner was lining up his next track, so I tried to look as absolutely casual as possible while waiting for a drink — I looked at the shelves of vinyl, noting the “DO NOT TOUCH MY ALBUMS” sign, trying to shape my face into a look that projected awe, and deep respect, and love of music, and also kindheartedness for good measure. I badly needed him to judge me as worthy. But I also knew that, much like getting into Berghain, nothing makes you less cool than trying to be cool, so I tried to project what I thought of as “neutral coolness,” a vibe that suggested: yes, I’d love to buy a drink from you, but also no big deal if you don’t want to make one right now, and in fact I might even leave in a minute, I actually do have other places to be. Mostly, I worried I was noticeably trembling.

Finally, he took off his headphones and approached me, and I quickly stuttered out a pathetic, “Uh... two beers?” and watched, my heart in my throat, as he opened two bottles, and allowed me to purchase them from him. We were in! I scampered to our little table in the corner, and we sipped our beers and sank into the music, and the more I listened the less I had to put on a look of awe and love and respect, because those feelings came naturally — I mean, this guy was truly killing it. Listening to his music, on that sound system, in that setting, made me feel like I was truly hearing music for the first time in my life. Occasionally, I’d catch the eye of one of the 8 other people in the bar, and we’d smile at each other, sharing a look of, “Can you believe this?!”

The mood was only broken by the sudden and horrifying arrival of the smell of — well, of shit, to be frank. Within seconds, the small bar was filled with the stench of rotten eggs, or farts, but also, maybe, death? Most of the patrons started gagging, except for the locals and Kobayashi-san, who kept bobbing their heads to the music, completely unfazed by the room suddenly smelling like someone had emptied their bowels directly on the floor. Was this a test, I wondered, another way of Kobayashi-san making us prove we were worthy of listening to his music? Was this the newest innovation in the field of Japanese bars coming up with novel ways to keep tourists out? Or had a bathroom pipe burst, and were we all about to be engulfed in a tidal wave of raw sewage?

Our nostrils burned with the stench, and I worried the smell would cling to my clothes, my skin, my hair. We were flying home in the morning; would I fill the entire airplane with the smell of rotten egg farts? I kept making eye contact with a woman across the room, each of us sharing a look like, “What the fuck is going on?” but also kind of blaming each other with our eyes, like: “Did you fart?”

Thankfully I travel with Justin, queen of the self-care aisle, who whipped out a travel-sized stick of Aesop essential oil, a mixture of ginger root, lavender, and geranium, which we rubbed on our upper lips, and which replaced the stench with a lovely calming odor. Thus immune to the rank stench filling the bar — which seemed to evaporate after 30 minutes or so, with no explanation; maybe someone did fart! — we spent the rest of the night listening to the most spectacular DJ in Japan play an endless set of sublime American music. Hours after he had flipped the sign on the door from “open” to “closed,” he kept spinning tracks for us, and none of us could bear to leave before he decided to be done. It was the perfect send-off, and the best way to make me promise myself that I will come back.