EPISODE 1010: ROBERT AND PATRICK AND IAN AND ANTHONY AND CHRIS AND SIMU AND PAUL AND A COUPLE LADIES, I GUESS?
When there's no one and there is everyone.
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Hi and welcome back to Pop Culture Spirit Wow, where I am writing this before watching The White Lotus, because I am afraid for the fate of white guys who believe underneath they are Asian ladies. (And if they touch one hair on Belinda’s beautiful lizard-loathing head, we riot.)
It’s a bit of a short one today, as I get ready the April Almanac and an article I teased last week about someone really inspiring. But this week in the Wow, Marvel Studios tries to earn a place in America’s growing Legion of Corporate Super Villains; suddenly everyone’s talking about Lost; my new favorite singer/songwriter; and a poem for everyone who looks at a sign prohibiting something and says, “That’s not for me.”
THE WOWND UP
This week Marvel Studios announced the massive main cast of its new Avengers film Avengers: Doomsday, which is meant to reintroduce Robert Downey, Jr., as the villainous Doctor Doom and reboot/save the Marvel Universe. While in the past Marvel has tended to introduce casts like this at live events, for this event Marvel instead livestreamed a 5 ½ video of what appears to be an airplane hanger filled with directors’ chairs. Every 5 or 10 or 20 minutes, they moved down the line of chairs to reveal the name of the next of the 29 actors thus far in Doomsday. To be clear, the actors were not there. It was, until the end, when Downey Jr. showed up to give a little hand gesture and become the target of pop culture bloggers’ collective rage, just an empty hanger filled with chairs.
After the event, New Yorker advertising executive Pete Campbell shared his thoughts with a member of the Marvel marketing staff.
Meanwhile Nature Magazine is reporting that over 75% of American scientists it surveyed since the start of the new administration have said they are considering leaving the United States. What the survey does not report is that the other 25% are Doctor Oz, Dr. Phil, and Doctor Doom.
Actually they surveyed 1200 doctors.
Yeah…
And in other news, am I about to start rewatching Lost? Because suddenly everyone desperate for something to replace Severance seems to be writing about how Severance is a modern-day Lost, which on the upside means we might be getting a critical reappraisal of Lost, which it deserves, but on the downside I think radically oversimplifies Lost. Sure, they both have a hatch/elevator they’re trying to get down and dark forces that know way more than them, but Lost also has time travel, parallel universes, purgatory, a sprawling cast, and a French Lady. You think goats in a building are crazy? Try a sentient smoke monster on an island.
To the lady who gave me f***-you eyes when I told her she could not record at Marie’s Crisis, as she pointed her camera at the people at the piano below the sign saying you cannot record at Marie’s Crisis
“Marie’s is a cruel mistress,” One of its piano players told me after my first night, And I’ve learned that to be true. It’s hard to leave the magic behind, No matter what time it is, Or how much I’ve spent, Or how many days in a row this is, And how many of them I’ve been wearing the same outfit. Who wouldn’t want to put Marie’s in their pocket and take it away with them, When they finally have to go. But a recording of joy is not the same as the joy itself. And what is magic in the moment Dies in captivity, Leaving only weird and misbegotten husks— The faces of strangers Singing far less beautifully than you remember. (One of the secret ingredient of Broadway singalongs in a basement piano bar is alcohol. The others, I’ll never tell.) Also, do I come to your church and get your in face While you sing Amazing Grace? It says it on signs throughout the business, lady! Put your camera down, and open your eyes. Because no matter your age or attention span, No matter if you came for ten minutes before your fancy dinner next door Or spent all night here at your best girl’s bachelorette party, and wouldn’t stop talking in the corner by the window, and probably tipped, like, $1 a song or a drink, and then ignored the furious glares from everyone around you. No matter any of that, Or anything else, There is still one place where Marie’s can live on in your life, if you simply let it.
MOMENT OF WOW
This weekend Cooper Union did a celebration for the Trans Day of Visibility, which featured the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, the Youth Pride Chorus, and the incredible Justin Vivian Bond. In the face of the hatred and brutality being visited upon trans people by the U.S. government, the program offered nothing but celebration and joy. It was a gorgeous event, and Justin Vivian is an absolute star.
Thanks for reading!