Remember when I said my brain was melting? It's because I decided to try Wellbutrin, which, by the time I discontinued it, made me feel like I was teetering on the edge of psychosis. When the dose increased after the first week, I barely slept for 10 days and was so tired that the only activity my brain could handle was crying while watching dog grooming videos. I was trying to push through in the hopes that the insomnia was only temporary, but I think it just wasn't a good drug fit for me. Womp womp, onto the next one. In my experience, psych meds can be very effective, it's just that finding the right one involves some trial and error. They all have annoying side effects, so it's a question of what you'd rather live with: the world's saddest orgasms or gagging each time you yawn. I guess I won't have to worry about this shit once RFK Jr. sends me to the wellness farms. I love being a human in this despicable country on this cursed timeline!
In happier news, the founder of Focus on the Family died, it's no longer 90 degrees, and we're getting a new Kelly Reichardt movie in less than two months. It's been a while since I've seen the man in my neighborhood who reads a book while walking his dog, but maybe our collective sadness can summon him? Let's try and if it works, we can all burn at the stake together during the Salem Witch Trials 2.0.
I don't know why this list is so dude-centric. I blame it on the aforementioned psychosis.
I fully expected to hate "Weapons" because it's been getting a lot of hype and I'm a contrarian bitch who assumes other people have awful taste, but it is the perfect movie to see in theaters right now. The last time I had this much fun at the movies was probably in 2019 c/o Bong Joon Ho's "Parasite." I don't want to say too much because I fully believe you should go into it knowing as little as possible, so here's a broad description:
Chaos ensues when an entire elementary school class, minus one boy, goes missing. It's not a traditional kidnapping situation, but something stranger, funnier, and dare I say, more iconic?
It's the type of movie that inspires bad film analysis with headlines like, "The REAL hidden meaning behind 'Weapons'" and "'Weapons is all about alcoholism and if you didn't understand that, you're a fucking idiot." The fact that I thoroughly enjoyed this movie is a goddamn miracle because the internet bro-douche nation was out in full force, spewing the kind of nonsense that predisposes me to hatred. There are many different, valid ways to read the film; however, what makes it great is that it functions best as pure entertainment and isn't under any highbrow delusions. What pisses me off about movies like, say, Ari Aster's "Eddington" (2025), is the smug, self-fellating tone combined with "Go girl, give us nothing" satire. I'd much rather watch a movie by someone competent who values fun over pretentious twattery.
Watch if you like: "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?," "The Guest," 90s horror movies, humor as a coping mechanism, an epic villain who is equal parts Jinkx Monsoon and Katya Zamolodchikova.
Sidenote: I saw "Weapons" at the Palisades Center AKA the place where joy goes to die. The AMC it houses is fine/standard but there's no separate entrance, so you're forced to walk through the mall to get there. During my trek to the top floor, I strolled past horrors like:
- A store called Party Razzle that is solely dedicated to mylar balloons and other pointless crap that will never biodegrade.
- Restaurants that belong in The Sims (Panda Pancakes, Little Buddha, Kong Dog).
- Frantic, sticky children thanks to the ferris wheel and other dumb kid shit strewn about for the sake of shoppertainment. Nothing makes parents want to spend a quick $50 on margs at the Red Crab Juicy Seafood & Bar quite like little Wrenleigh's midday frow-up at Billy Beez.
If I make it to old age, I'm definitely going to be one of those people who is ready to die.
Someone on Reddit said, "Maron's biggest flaw is making us think it was acceptable for white men to have podcasts." While I agree with this, I'm contractually obligated to support a fellow anxiety-riddled cat parent, especially when he's joking about letting his demented dad commit murder so that jail eradicates the need for a nursing home. I also agree with everything he says about liberal buzzkills "annoy[ing] the average American into fascism." He's not whining about cancel culture and wokeness like Dave Chappelle and Bill Maher, simply pointing out how goddamn annoying it is to be around hypervigilant moral superiority.
The left doesn't know shit about unity or choosing battles wisely, and I fully blame every single feckless Democrat for wasting time on piddly shit under Biden instead of codying rights (fuck the filibuster) and coming up with strategies that appeal to the working class. But hey, as Maron says, "at least we're not hateful douchebags." And here, in the present moment, none of us know what to do. We're trapped like rats in a Trumpian maze of despair, doomscrolling for hours each day, trying to make peace with the possible end times. By the end of Maron's special, and with the help of an especially sad Taylor Swift song (that he paid $50k to use), maybe you, too, will reach a place of calm where blacking out and never waking up doesn't seem so bad anymore. At a bare minimum, you'll feel comforted to hear someone else articulately, humorously detail what it's like to grow older as the world shifts in increasingly terrifying directions.
Watch if you like: Laughing at life's absurdities, cat antics, communing with fellow curmudgeons, ”Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents.”
I used to love Mary Gaitskill in high school/college, but I hadn't revisited her or followed her closely as an adult, and was curious how I would feel about her writing with a fully formed prefrontal cortex. In my mind, she's Bret Easton Ellis-adjacent in her stark brutality and lack of concern for controversy/backlash. I don't think she's an edgelord or anything, just someone who isn't afraid to say how she feels even if it makes her look like an asshole. I've read some of her newer work over the years — like her Bookforum review of "Gone Girl" and "This is Pleasure," a novella published in The New Yorker — but I've been otherwise out of the loop. I decided to reacquaint myself after she popped up in The Point's recent issue on violence and was reminded of how much I envy her style.
This is all a long preamble to say that I revisited one of my favorite older essays, "Lost Cat," and am happy to report it still rules. It's ostensibly about Gaitskill's cat, Gattino, whom she adopts in Tuscany, takes back to the states, and loses shortly after. Gaitskill uses this loss as a jumping off point to discuss other complicated grief surrounding fucked up family relationships, the loss of her father, and her sometimes unwanted presence in the lives of two foster kids. At the time she wrote it, she was still married to fellow writer Peter Trachtenberg, who, it turns out, put his own spin on the lost cat memoir with a book called "Another Insane Devotion" (2012). He doesn't feature prominently in Gaitskill's "Lost Cat," but he's in there enough for me to have an unearned, vaguely negative impression of him. You know how much I love literary gossip/relationships, so Trachtenberg is obviously now on my TBR list.
If I haven't convinced you on Gaitskill, here's one of my favorite sections from "Lost Cat":
My father continued to throw tantrums and blame people for his suffering. A little while after I asked him if he wanted a real relationship with me, I wrote a letter telling him how angry I was with him for acting that way. Before I sent it, I told my mother about it. She said it would really hurt him. She said, ‘He told me, “Mary and I have a real relationship.” At the time I thought, How sad. Now I think he was right. Our relationship was real. What I wanted it to be was ideal.
There's some missing context I haven't given you for the sake of length, but this is a knife through the fucking heart.
Read [Gaitskill in general] if you like: Flannery O'Connor, women behaving "badly," subversive ideas that will probably piss you off sometimes, Mike Leigh films, emotionally fragile characters with self-awareness.
After watching "The Shrouds," I realized that I had skipped a bunch of Cronenberg's films from the 2000s. I'm a fan of his 80s work — especially "The Fly" (1986), "Videodrome" (1983), and "Dead Ringers" (1988) — and I can even fuck with films from the 90s that he wrote and directed, like "Crash" (1996). I've been (maybe unfairly) dismissive of films he's directed from original screenplays written by someone else. Watching them reminds me of when David Lynch bailed on S2 of "Twin Peaks" and it all went to shit. Yes, he still directed a few episodes and worked with Mark Frost on outlines, but the cohesive vision wasn't there. Cronenberg is certainly a good director who can take someone else's work and make it his own, it just doesn't resonate as deeply with me. I want the full Cronenberg experience or nothing at all; Viggo Mortensen's cock and balls only wield so much power.
What I like about "The Shrouds" is how much it reminds me of 80s Cronenberg: from the creepy technology, to the dry humor, to the chatty sex, to the horror of existing in a body that's out of control. It's all there, man. The impetus for the film was Cronenberg's grief after his wife's death in 2017. He's not typically a filmmaker who invites comparisons to his personal life, but "The Shrouds" features Vincent Cassel as a clear Cronenberg stand-in, playing a techno-entrepreneur named Karsh who invents an MRI-embedded burial shroud that allows him to monitor his dead wife's decomposition. In one of the film's early scenes, we see him on a date at what turns out to be his restaurant, located on the grounds of his cemetery. After he and his prospective paramour finish eating, they walk outside to examine his wife's corpse via gravestone monitor. And they say romance is dead!
MUBI's Daniel Kasman aptly describes the film as,
A dark and tender pleasure, underscored by Cassel’s precise and sincere embodiment of someone torn between wanting to crawl into the grave next to his wife and wanting to claw his way out of the tomb that his daily existence has become.
The only thing I dislike about this synopsis is how serious it makes the film sound. The concept is dark and the ending's a downer, but I laughed at nearly every scene with Guy Pearce, who I don't think I've seen in a funny role since "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" (1994). If, like me, you haven't dug Cronenberg's recent work, watching "The Shrouds" is a great reminder that he's still cranking out gems in his 80s.
For the record, Samantha Jones would love this movie. She would be honored if, after her death, her lover made a movie about how much he misses fucking her.
Watch if you like: David Lynch, "Personal Shopper," "Solaris," "The Vanishing," crying while laughing, weird dreams that leave you feeling uneasy for days even though you can't remember a single detail.
P.S. If you've already seen the film and want a good deep-dive, check out Seventh Row's podcast with Angelo Muredda. If you find Cronenberg's work hard to get into, Angelo could potentially be your gateway; I always have a greater appreciation for Cronenberg after listening to him.
This is going to be a long one, so buckle up. If you don't already know about things like "Chapo Trap House" and "Red Scare," you should probably stop reading now to avoid infection. Also, there's no way for me to succinctly explain this online subculture of people I would have mercilessly tormented in college, but what I want to talk about requires context, so I will try. Rewind back to the 2016 Democratic primary when Hilary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders. Remember the Bernie Bros? At the time, I liked Sanders and probably would have voted for him, but I was so disgusted by his purported base that I didn't, which... in retrospect, means that I was successfully manipulated by establishment Democrats (see: the DNC email leaks).
Pre-primary, a political "comedy" podcast called "Chapo Trap House" arose from this ideological quagmire. Originally, the hosts were three cishet socialists angrily railing against political correctness and mainstream politics. They supported Sanders during the 2016 and 2020 election cycles, then, as far as I can tell, went fully off the rails during the pandemic as Russia prepared to invade Ukraine. I have no idea what they're talking about now, nor do I care. I've listened to the pod enough to confidently say the whole thing is just an uninformed circle jerk where someone makes a cogent point maybe 5% of the time.
Another similar-ish but less overtly political podcast that premiered during this period (in 2018) is "Red Scare," run by two women who think it's cool and edgy to say mind-numbingly stupid shit in the flattest affect imaginable. Listening to "Red Scare" is akin to poisoning yourself, and not in a fun way like with alcohol, but with arsenic. Rat poison? It’s like letting someone take a melon baller to your brain. These women maybe started from a somewhat reasonable place before morally bankrupting themselves with whatever anti-woke bullshit they're being paid to say by Peter Thiel (this is unsubstantiated, but I'd bet my life on it). Both of them are now pro-life, one is Catholic... I don't really understand if they actually believe anything they say or if they just love money/power so much that they're willing to say anything to stay relevant a la most modern day hack politicians. Here are my summed up thoughts on this podcast:
What I'm about to say next pains me: the most reasonable podcast to emerge from this wave — dubbed the "dirtbag left" by later "Chapo" addition, Amber A'Lee Frost — is "Cum Town." I listened to it a few times before it disbanded in 2022 and the best way to describe it is like... little boy sleepover where everything is "gay," everyone's a "retard," and someone gets kicked in the junk every five minutes. Someone on Reddit asked what the appeal is and this answer perfectly encapsulates it:
Why do I think "Cum Town" is the most reasonable? Because, despite the un-PC "jokes," the hosts aren't legitimately mean-spirited. They're not hiding terrible political views behind comedy; they're using comedy to draw attention to the "liberal buzzkills" that Marc Maron mentions in his special. To be clear, I'm not defending this as a viable or appealing strategy, but it's at least something my brain can logically process, and I don't find it culturally dangerous in the vein of "Chapo" or "Red Scare."
When the podcast ended, a spinoff called "The Adam Friedland Show," created by 2/3 of the "Cum Town" dudes, debuted on YouTube. This show is less pre-teen boy, more Dick Cavett on quaaludes. Friedland, who was the "Cum Town" punching bag, the self-described "nebbishy heel," hosts the show, interviewing people you will probably also find on "You'd Be an Iconic Guest." I didn't think much of the whole endeavor until I watched his June interview with Sarah Jessica Parker. Then, yesterday, he had one of NYC's worst congresspeople, Ritchie Torres, on the show and made him look like an absolute imbecile by asking him legitimate questions and letting him answer them. How the fuck did we get to this place where most pedigreed journalists are simping for Israel, the so-called radical leftist podcasts are defending Russia and TradCath values, and one of the few people with integrity is... Adam "rape sandals" Friedman? MAKE IT MAKE SENSE.
Happy Virgo season from David Cronenberg (right), on the set of "Dead Ringers" with Jeremy Irons and Genevieve Bujold.
