Getting older is waking up one morning at 4am and randomly thinking, "I wonder what happened to the kids from "Bug Juice," Disney's late 90s/early aughts reality tv show about teens and tweens at summer camp." After a brief Google, I realized that actually, I don't give a shit. These people are now proper adults, so all the updates consist of are their job titles and whether or not they're married with children. They came from families who could afford to shell out thousands of dollars for frivolous summer fun, so of course they're all doing fine. And if they aren't, well... no one's publicizing their stints in rehab or the psych ward.
Before living in New York, I had no idea that summer camp was such an event. As an adult, nearly every parent I know sends their kids off to bumblefuck, middle of nowheresville for at least a few weeks each summer to like... touch grass, swim in a lake, give their first handjob, etc. The closest I got to this as a child was attending Creation, a 4-day Christian music festival with my bff Maddie right on the cusp of our budding atheism. I have basically zero memory of it, just the vague recollection of sleeping in a tent, waiting in line for communal showers, and "moshing" to Relient K.
While adult summer camps apparently do exist, I'm a hater who would find every second of my time there miserable. It would feel like paying to attend a mandatory corporate retreat with people you do not like and would otherwise never speak to. Why would I shell out $1k to potentially trap myself for an extended weekend with someone who won't stop talking about their lucrative holistic wellness side hustle? Gag me with a spoon! Summer camp, like most activities of yore, has a limited shelf life and I'm past the expiration date. Instead of canoeing with a rando, I guess I'll bask in the AC while rewatching the "Maisel" episodes where everyone goes to the Catskills.
John Gregory Dunne, Joan Didion's husband, was also a writer, but it's rare to hear anyone talk about his work. When he's mentioned, it's usually in relation to Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking" (2005), the memoir she wrote in the year after his sudden death at the end of 2003. Joan and John worked together for a solid forty years — they shared a byline on a longstanding column for The Saturday Evening Post, wrote several screenplays together ("The Panic in Needle Park," "A Star is Born"), and edited each other's writing. In creative partnerships like this, the man is usually the more successful, lauded figure. Take, for example: Elaine May and Mike Nichols, Gwen Verdon and Bob Fosse, Zelda Fitzgerald and F. Scott, etc. Even with pairings like Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo where the woman is much better known, it's usually a situation where the dynamic shifted after death; during their lifetimes, Diego was the much bigger name.
This was not the case with Didion and Dunne. She was, and forever will be, the star of that relationship... and rightfully so. That being said, John was no slouch, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading this 1974 reissue of his "memoir" (it takes liberties), written during a year spent in Vegas when he and Didion were on the outs. It's not a gossipy book that gives any kind of real insight into their marriage, so it's not worth reading if that's what you're after (although the dedication, to Noel E. Parmentel, Jr., John's friend and Joan's former lover, is worth dissecting, along with the opening quote by Margot Hentoff). I'd describe it more as a journalist's loosely strung together observations during a year in a weird place. There are a few primary characters, including a sex worker and a mediocre comedian, but there's no overarching narrative, just like... "Here are some people I frequently encounter." In that way, it reminded me of a less fragmented version of Renata Adler's "Speedboat" (1976), which I enjoyed less for reasons I can't remember.
What I loved most are John's descriptions of people, along with his admission of jerkin' it to Julia Child:
I lusted after Julia Child on "The French Chef." I would put a quarter into the Magic Fingers when she came on the air and lie on the bed and watch her prepare a quiche or a coq a vin, the mattress undulating while I concentrated with fertile imagination on all six feet two inches of the chef in her television kitchen.
What I loved least is how the memoir starts with John, age 35, at the doctor's office, acting like he has one foot in the grave. Idk if bro was on an SSRI, but he probably should have been.
Read it if you like: the grossness of Vegas, driving through the desert with your gas tank on E just to feel something, dry humor.
For anyone unfamiliar, Ziwe is a writer/comedian probably best known for satirical interviews where she baits people into saying crazy shit with questions like, "How many Black friends do you have?" and "What is your favorite gay slur?" She plays (what I think is) a hyperbolic, stylized persona that is some altered version of herself. She's been compared to comedians like Stephen Colbert (who she once interned for), Nathan Fielder, and Zach Galifianakis. Her schtick is one you'll either intuitively understand or feel confused and disturbed by forever. If you're not a fan of cringe comedy, she's probably not for you.
For me, Ziwe is hit or miss. I watched her eponymous show on Showtime and usually fast-forwarded through the non-interview parts because sketch comedy is my version of a gory horror movie. When her interviews are good, they're really good, but very guest dependent (and I hate that she chose to platform "Real Housewives" reject, George Santos). Lately, her YouTube series, "You'd Be an Iconic Guest," has been the antidote to my persistent dread c/o our worsening political shit storm. This Jinxk Monsoon interview had me laughing so hard that I woke my husband from a deep slumber. I don't understand how Jinkx manages to be so sharp while clearly stoned off her ass. In this interview, she shares opinion on Scar from "The Lion King," Jake Hay Rowling, and the disappointment of English food (boiled). Imagine if this show was just Ziwe interviewing drag queens? Katya, Bob the Drag Queen, and now Jinkx Monsoon... Can we get Utica (AKA Ethan Mundt, currently on S21 of "Project Runway") next? See also: Trixie Mattel on "Chicken Shop Date."
I know something is deeply wrong with me because every few years, I get the urge to rewatch "Scenes from a Marriage" (the tv miniseries, not the condensed theatrical release) for fun. This emotionally fraught relationship car crash has spawned many different iterations over the years: Woody Allen's "Husbands and Wives" (not the first time he's fellated Bergman), Richard Linklater's "Before" trilogy, and Noah Baumbach's "A Marriage Story." There was also a Hagai Levi remake in 2021 with Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain that I never finished. It wasn't bad, it just felt pointless. Everyone wants to capture the magic of the original — and some projects come close — but how the fuck could they possibly ever when they don't include Liv Ullmann? Her performance here is one of my all-time favorites, totally outshining the likewise very good Erland Josephsson.
The story is straightforward: over six episodes and ten years, Marianne (Ullmann) and Johan (Josephsson) go from marriage to divorce to something not easily explained. At the time it was filmed, Bergman and Ullmann were two years past the end of their five-year relationship, and both have admitted that real life heavily inspired the work.
In case you're not familiar with Bergman, I'll just say that like many others before and after him, he was a great artist but a terrible human. You may have seen this recent article in The Guardian with the headline:
Stellan Skarsgård on Ingmar Bergman: ‘The only person I know who cried when Hitler died’
If you need more evidence, this time of the domestic variety, look at how he handles this exchange in a 1975 interview for the New York Times Magazine with A. Alvarez:
Alvarez: I think [Scenes] is a wonderful film, but I have one reservation: The children seem to play no part either in the marriage or in its breakup.
Bergman: That's true. But I wanted to focus just on those two people, Marrianne and Johan, and strip away relatives, friends, almost everything extraneous. If I had involved the children, it would have been too complicated for two reasons. First, because children are so difficult to work with---a horror for the director. Second, because this has been a problem I personally couldn't solve. For me, it has been too bloody, too difficult. You see, I have had six marriages; before I was 30 I had married three times and had five children. The problem was too enormous to face. So I said to myself, as a human being I have made an enormous fiasco, therefore I must try to be a very good director. So I escape into the theater and the film studio and there I lived happily, more or less.
Must be nice, motherfucker! You think Ullmann, who Bergman had a small child with at the time of filming, enjoyed the same privileges? She did not. And maybe I'm projecting, but I'm sure the rage she felt over this inequality fueled some of her most scathing scenes in "Scenes." At least she got some incredible roles/performances out of what I'm sure was an emotionally abusive relationship; it's better than nothing.
Watch it if you like: psychological torture, men who are sadly predictable in their patheticness, two people talking to each other for five hours, Bibi Andersson (her performance in E1, jfc).
(If I said any of this as a guest on Ziwe's show, there'd be a chyron proclaiming, "Lindsay Pugh defends Nazi sympathizer" or maybe just "Lindsay Pugh loves Nazis." I can't wait for Google to crawl this, take it out of context, and use it in the fuckass AI overview when a future employer searches for me.)
Sometimes I feel like the cosmic underpinnings of the universe sense when it's been a bad week — which these days is every week — and give us a breadcrumb trail of little treats leading up to the weekend. Last Friday, we were blessed with the release of "Vegas" and Sharon Van Etten on KEXP; Tuesday, news broke that Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson are dating; Thursday was Jinkx on Ziwe; today is the death of "And Just Like That." As Jinkx would say, "It smoothes the rough edges off" (she was talking about weed, but it still applies).
I became hip to Sharon Van Etten during "Tramp," her third studio album. It came out during my first winter in Brooklyn (2012), and I used to play it all the time at the boutique where I worked. The owner would walk in with a disgusted look on her face like, "What's this woman complaining about?" The store had one generic Bossa Nova compilation album that we were supposed to play on repeat because it's what this control freak wanted... to drive us slowly insane with fifteen neverending versions of "The Girl From Ipanema." Anyway, Van Etten is a brilliant singer-songwriter and without my illicit listens of "Tramp," I never would have gotten through my soul-sucking retail job.
In this KEXP performance, she plays four songs from her newest album, "Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory." This album is her first foray into collaboration, which she talks about in the post-performance interview with the beloved Cheryl Waters.
"Biography of X" was one of my favorite books of 2023 (read my thoughts about it in Sophie's newsletter), so I was nervous for Lacey's memoir/novella, "The Möbius Book." By this point, you probably know how much I adore literary gossip, so it should be no surprise my ears perked up when I heard that this memoir was partially about the dissolution of Lacey's marriage with fellow writer Jesse Ball. If there's a breakup happening between two artists, you bet your ass I'm intrigued. Some of the best work emerges from heartbreak, and background knowledge typically deepens my appreciation of it; however, if I picked up this book knowing nothing, I still would have liked it.
"Möbius" is split into two parts: read one, turn the book 180 degrees and read the other. The experience is different depending on which side you start with, but there's no "right" way to read it. The novella side is about two old friends drinking mezcal, discussing faith, relationships, and the past, while blood maybe (or maybe not?) continuously leaks from the apartment next door.
The memoir side takes place in the aftermath of Lacey's breakup with a husband she calls "The Reason" who leaves her for a younger woman via email (look what Jack Berger hath wrought). In this half, Lacey and her ex are in the process of selling their house, so she's often staying with different friends, many of whom are also writers (like Sarah Manguso, author of "Liars," her own divorce novel inspired by reality). Through conversations with them and an exploration of the religious faith she once had as a teenager, she tries to make sense of her new life. It's existential and meandering in a way that might annoy some people, though I found it effective. Here's a snippet I highlighted:
It likely wasn't Hitler-evil she was imagining in this hypothetical husband, but an average, domestic sort, the kind that's more Machiavellian than sadistic, a man who can make you feel he knows you better than you know yourself, and oh, how nice it is to feel known.
Per usual, my cat is unimpressed. I should note that in this book, Lacey contemplates getting an "amor fati" tattoo and thankfully does not do it.
Read it if you like: "The Book of Birdie," "Scenes From a Marriage," books that mention 340984 other books that you now have to read.
Catch you on the flippity flip.
