Do long newsletters feel like homework? Samantha Irby has me worried, so I'm going to try throwing a few short ones into the mix. I can't waste prime "taking my cat outside on a leash" weather with too much yapping, so onto the recommendations!
Bad wigs are one of my passions, so I was excited to see this video pop up on my YouTube feed. Like yes... the world is burning, so let's all laugh while making fun of totally inconsequential shit like whatever the fuck this is:
Someone went to Spirit Halloween, took this wig straight out of the bag, and plopped it onto her head.
I'm going to give Coke Francis the benefit of the doubt and assume they never saw "The Accused" (Jonathan Kaplan, 1988) and don't know the backstory behind Sarah Tobias's (Jodie Foster) self-inflicted awful haircut. That critique is the only one that rang false to me and it's a shame the video begins with it. You also can't really have a bad wigs video without talking about Nicole Kidman, patron saint of unnatural hairlines. I spent the entire runtime of "Babygirl" (Halina Reijn, 2024) internally screaming over this assemblage of unbrushed plastic:
I place them firmly in "had I been there, would'na gone down like that" territory.
Otherwise, it's a solid video featuring many famous people looking stupid c/o shit lids. We love to see it! If I continue with "My Brilliant Friend" (which I'm on the fence about), S2-4 will include a wig watch section because there's plenty of madness to dissect.
I'm concerned about the people who read this newsletter. Too many of you have asked me how to access articles that I post without a subscription. Do you know about extensions to bypass paywalls? Do a Google! I pay for publications I love and want to support, but I'm not coughing up money for one-offs (and aside from Criterion Channel, I'm not paying for any streaming services, so maybe we need to have a separate discussion about that). In the same vein, I'm not using Amazon services for my Kindle because FUCK THEM. I'm still a physical book devotee, but there are some instances where a Kindle is more convenient — travel, bathtub, reading before bed — so my 3rd edition Paperwhite gets a decent amount of use.
Prior to this video, I already used Calibre (which also works for Kobo) to locally backup and organize my books. For a while, I used it to convert epubs until I realized Amazon actually has a tool that does this for you automatically, although their evil asses will probably take it away at some point, so it's good to have options. For many people, Calibre is probably enough. Download it, visit the subreddit, and enjoy your newfound freedom. If you have a kindle with ads and want to get rid of those (or run Linux, third party readers, or emulators), use this jailbreak.
If you're on the fence about having children and want someone to talk you out of it, watch one of Justine Triet's early movies. From the opening shot of her first feature, "Age of Panic," I felt the strong desire to pop a Xanax. The plot is simple: Laetitia (Laetitia Dosch), a journalist, gets called into work to report on the 2012 French presidential election runoff. As she scrambles to find childcare for her two young girls, their asshole father shows up and, with increasing aggression, insists on his right to see them. Throughout the film, Laetitia moves from one chaotic environment to another, struggling to balance work, childcare, her moronic baby daddy (who is also basically a child), and her own sanity with varying results.
Triet loves putting women into situations where they will be misogynistically judged, either by the viewer or the other characters in the film. Her female characters are always "bad" mothers: self-absorbed, career-driven, messy, and with horrible taste in men. Instead of wasting time demonizing or defending them, she throws you into their mayhem, forcing you to experience their exhaustion and hopefully, the world that led to their situations. I was shocked to find that this debut film, which I hadn't seen until recently because it never got US distribution, is maybe my favorite. It's the most unpolished, but in a way that perfectly suits the material.
I'm sorry to recommend something you can't easily stream (unless you start doing crime), but this film has been on Mubi in the past, so keep an eye out. In the meantime, you can easily find "Sibyl" (2019) and "Anatomy of a Fall" (2023) on Kanopy and "In Bed with Victoria" (2016) on Mubi.
During my last move, I found a notebook from college full of doodles that all say, "Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me." If you own something similar, I believe we are forever connected by a gossamer strand of sad girl energy. Boyfriend breaks up with you? Park that car. "In the Mood for Love" has already been checked out at the campus video rental? Drop that phone. Friends aren't answering your texts? Sleep on the floor. A drunken hookup makes it all worse? Dream about me. If this doesn't make sense, maybe you had a healthy upbringing that didn't result in extreme emotional lability and poor decision-making in young adulthood?
Anyway! Broken Social Scene rules and they're putting out an all-covers version of "You Forgot it in People" on June 6, along with a documentary about the band's early years called "It's All Gonna Break," screening a bunch of places in May and June. [Insert Ayo Edebiri "seated" comment.] A Maggie Rogers/Sylvan Esso team-up is a dream come true and I love their cheerier take on a song that never fails to make me cry. I can't wait to listen to the rest of the album, featuring a bunch of artists that make me feel old because I haven't heard of ~70% of them.
All I want to read these days are depressing, beautifully written books under 200 pages. I'm still reading longer stuff, it's just taking forever because my brain wants instant gratification. This novella is the first I've read from Alfred Hayes and it certainly won't be the last. It's about a man (written in the first person) who starts up an affair with a woman after saving her from... drunkenly drowning? Killing herself? Unclear. He's a successful screenwriter on assignment in Hollywood while his wife and kid are back in New York. She's an unsuccessful actress living in a squalid apartment with a black cat and a trash bin full of empty vermouth bottles. Their love affair is very obviously doomed, and although I had a good idea of how it was going to disintegrate, I remained consistently surprised by the writing throughout. Here's a snippet:
There was a noisy rush of water from the bathroom, and she appeared, ready for the evening, a smile she had chosen, I thought, from a small collection of smiles she kept for occasions like this, fixed upon her face.
The writing is cinematic and nihilistic, with a great deal to say about the kind of people attracted to and trapped by Hollywood (Hayes himself was one of these people). This is one of those books that actually lends itself well to adaptation, so someone talented should create a cross between "In a Lonely Place" (Nicholas Ray, 1950) and "The Long Goodbye" (Robert Altman, 1973). Who might like this book? I'd say... fans of Elizabeth Strout, neo-noir, David Lynch, telling yourself lies to detract from the harsh reality of failure.
For your viewing pleasure, here are the pets of the week:
Flop chews Chewy boxes. It helps to take the edge(s) off. Flannel is into Parkour, but she’s not going to make it her whole personality.
