I'm going to cool it on the weather talk lest I resurface memories of forced politesse in the office kitchen with that weirdo who loves posting unhinged "insights" on LinkedIn and, inexplicably, has power over your career advancement. You don't want to jeopardize your future (because you still care about that for some reason), so you talk about the blandest topics possible. Discussing the weather makes you feel ancient, but it's better than leaving a gap in the conversation that allows for incessant yapping about [insert boring child topic here]. "Please, tell me more about Ashlyn's CoComelon-themed birthday party. That doesn't make me want to shoot myself in the head at all."
Pro-tip: when someone holds you conversational hostage, take a note out of Charles Boyle's book and fake a text message. The person you're with will either think you're eccentric, on drugs, or that they just had a mini-stroke. You can gaslight them into believing it's the latter during subsequent interactions.
This has been your requisite Friday Night Dinner small talk. Please join me next week for riveting topics like: my favorite neighborhood cats, depressing old movies I can't stop watching, and prospective names for my tribe of pygmy goats. We have a lot of fun here, don't we?
This beautifully built website contains a curated library of short stories, browsable by category or reading time. Yes, there are many places on the internet where you can read short stories for free, but what I like about The Short Story Project is the level of curation (and the number of translated stories they feature). Last week, I read Nella Larsen's "The Wrong Man" in a dentist office waiting room, which was far preferable to 7 minutes of scrolling Instagram. It's one of those stories that efficiently demonstrates how trauma — and the subsequent mental illnesses that come with it — often traps women into patterns of retraumatization. Larsen published this story, her first, under a pen name (Allen Semi), thus obscuring her gender and race. Interestingly, "The Wrong Man" does something similar with its characters, keeping their races vague and true identities hidden, both from each other and the reader. It bums me out that Larsen wasn't able to publish more (thanks to professional and personal scandal, natch).
If you're looking for a longer story, you can't go wrong with "Are You Enjoying Your Forgiveness?" by Julia May Jonas, who you might know from her excellent debut novel, "Vladimir" (2022). This one is a 31-minute commitment about a family at a Vermont wedding in 1999. It's written in third-person omniscient with particular interest in one character, a pregnant 18-year-old named Pearl. One of my favorite passages occurs when Pearl runs into Katrina, a once close friend that she had grown apart from with age:
On the dance floor the girls felt a foreign, wild confidence, a feeling that would prove slippery for both of them for the rest of their lives—showing up every once and a while, without prediction or will, and then disappearing again, seemingly when most needed. For Katrina, this uneven confidence would mean that she preferred being alone, enjoyed word games, had cats and plants and eventually a partner with whom she could be quiet with. Once her self- consciousness was identified, she protected it, and herself, from the world. For Pearl, it would mean something different—more of a throwing herself into and yanking herself out of situations, followed by periods of self-hatred and depression.
If this doesn't make you want to read more, maybe you have awful taste?
Larsen (left) and Jonas (right).
"Track Star" reminds me of the good old days of "Cash Cab." Jack Coyne, the host, walks around New York City offering people $5 if they can guess the artist of whatever song he plays. Each time they choose to continue, it's double or nothing. The show started on TikTok, went viral, and now attracts big name celebrities like HAIM, Elmo, and Carrie Bradshaw's best boyfriend, David Duchovny. The Verge referred to it as "Your favorite musician’s favorite TikTok show." Thankfully for all of us clock app haters, it's also available on YouTube.
Similar to Amoeba's "What's in My Bag?" I enjoy "Track Star" because it often introduces me to new artists or reminds me of ones I had forgotten about. It's delightful to hear someone passionately (and often unexpectedly) express their love for another person's art. On RZA's episode, he made me choke on my coffee by referring to Billy Joel's lyrics as "on [the] level of Leonard Cohen." I mean, if RZA says it... sure. The guests aren't always famous, either. Fellow Millennials will appreciate this episode with Jess and anyone who's breathing should listen to Deven Golden (and check out his crayon art). Recently, Cynthia Erivo got me back into legendary singer/activist Miriam Makeba, the first African recording artist to win a Grammy. She grew up in apartheid South Africa, was exiled from the country after appearing in a documentary film, moved to the United States, and became increasingly political. (This article is a good primer.) Here she is singing on The Ed Sullivan show in 1965 in isiXhosa, her native language. This episode aired before The Voting Rights Act passed, so think about that for a second.
I'd be remiss not to mention that Jack Coyne's production company, Public Opinion, does more than just "Track Star." They also make videos about NYC mysteries/legends/problems, like how the Empire State Building's plumbing works and why all the cool people fuck with Film Forum (for one, they're unionized). Public Opinion is doing cool shit, and I'm happy to see it.
I'm not typically one to watch comedy specials. It's not that I don't like standup, I just don't have the attention span for the recorded version of it. Unless someone is really gifted at the physical aspects, my mind starts to wander. If I'm going to watch you talk for sixty minutes while I'm stoned in bed, you better bring some pizzazz. I, someone whose finger is admittedly not on the pulse, usually find out about comedians via shows like "After Midnight" (RIP), "Taskmaster," "8 out of 10 cats," etc. Here are some people I like so that you can determine if our tastes align: Aparna Nancherla, James Acaster, Joe Pera, Jo Firestone, Margaret Cho, Maria Bamford, and Fern Brady. In case this data feels relevant, ~62% of those comedians have cats. The other 71% have dogs. 29% have cats and dogs. I'd guess 100% of them are mentally ill. My people!
Atsuko Okatsuka, the comedian I'm recommending, doesn't have any pets (that I know of), but she does have generational trauma, a tandem bicycle, and a husband who recently got a vasectomy. If this doesn't intrigue you, I think we're done here. Her physical comedy often sells jokes that would feel underwritten on paper, which is truly magic. This isn't to say she doesn't write a great joke, just that she has the rare ability to make something kind of basic really fucking funny solely because of her delivery. Her outfits are also always top-notch, and she wears an incredible Enföld skirt in this special that I still haven't stopped thinking about (it's sold out everywhere). Watch her for five minutes and I promise you will laugh and consider getting an ill-advised bowl cut.
Vintage Books is releasing a new edition of "Emma" next month with an introduction written by Jennifer Egan. This excerpted version in The Paris Review has fully convinced me to buy it, so kudos to everyone involved. Here's an excerpt of the excerpt:
Emma has been called a detective novel, and with good reason: the fun of first reading it consists largely in scrutinizing the suspects and trying to figure out not whodunnit but whowilldoit—as in who will marry whom. Austen’s ability to mystify the reader on this point despite her tiny cast of eligible singles and the limits placed upon their choices by rank and class, is something close to magic. As with any good detective story, the reader cascades through a series of misapprehensions that snap away like trapdoors, prompting a delicious sense of free fall as one assumed reality yields to another. Finally, Emma and the reader arrive at the biggest surprise of all: the answer to a mystery we didn’t realize were trying to solve until the moment of discovery.
If you thought Austen was boring, think again. There aren't many writers who spend their entire careers harping on the importance of marrying within your social class who can make it shocking for someone to [gasp] marry within their social class. A small digression: I just remembered that in S2 of "And Just Like That," Miranda briefly dates a Jane Austen audiobook reader named Amelia Carsey (they did my girl Miriam Shor so dirty). The fling dissolves when they're making out at Amelia's apartment on Valentine's Day and she accidentally steps into her cat's litter box. If this was your last brush with Austen, you owe it to yourself to clear the pipes with Egan's deft commentary on "Emma."
P.S. There's yet another "Pride & Prejudice" adaptation coming out, this one penned by Dolly Alderton and directed by Euros Lyn. I'm tentatively excited about it, but like... why not a different, less frequently adapted Austen that's actually directed by a woman? Can someone do "Northanger Abbey" (1817) justice?
In case it's not completely obvious, I'm a bit of a misanthrope. I find most people disappointing, and I genuinely don't enjoy my interactions with them. If given the choice of being alone or with another person, I will choose to be alone 8 times out of 10. I don't want to meet my heroes because I've met enough people in my life to understand that they're probably assholes, and I don't want their assholery to negatively impact the power of their work. I'm not a monster: I treat other people with respect and kindness, I just want to get away from them as quickly as humanly possible.
For some reason, I still love watching movies with strangers. And not just any strangers, the annoying old people who populate my local cinema, the Jacob Burns Film Center. I'm convinced all the theaters are designed to block cell phone signals because if they weren't, each screening would be overtaken by a nonstop litany of "By the Seaside," the ringtone everyone over the age of 65 is legally obligated to use at maximum volume. There is WiFi at the Burns, but the font they use to advertise the password is strategically tiny (if it wasn't, pawpaw would be screaming, "Siri, connect to Jacob Burns WiFi," causing yet another nightmare).
One time, I went there for a screening of "All That Jazz" and some woman walks in 20 minutes into the movie with her phone flashlight blazing. She couldn't figure out how to turn it off and after 5 minutes, I had to take the phone out of her hand and do it for her. People routinely talk through entire movies in what I like to categorize as a whisper shout, especially if it's a rep screening like "Moonstruck." My favorite part of the entire experience is the slide that shows before each movie, urging viewers to "add the Jacob Burns to your will planning." It's a common sense move when everyone in the room is busy talking about how they shrunk another inch and/or need help getting up because xyz hurts. Why do I like watching movies with these people? I think I find their technological ineptitude preferable to the zombies who can't watch a movie without multitasking. Either that, or I'm a masochist.
I leave you with the only scene from "And Just Like That" worth watching:
Would you rather deal with Aidan's fucked up family or get woken up by Shoe Bradshaw every morning? It's a no brainer.
