EPISODE 1020: A PINEAPPLE

Also Shark Attacks, Our Lady of Christine Baranski, and the Jeffrey Dahmer Stand-Up Special.

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

Hi and welcome back to Pop Culture Spirit Wow, the newsletter that dares to wonder not only What Would Christine Baranski Do, but Where is Christine Baranski right now and how long would it take me to get there? (I swear I wouldn’t stalk her. I just want to be in the room where she happens.)

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THE WOWND UP

Big news for Marvel fans, the Punisher is coming to the next Spider-Man movie. Yes, that’s right, the guy whose whole thing is shooting bad guys to death is going to be featured in the new film about the nicest kid in the Marvel Universe (except for Kamala Khan). It’s basically like a Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood episode where Hannibal Lecter stops by. Guys, has anybody seen King Friday? GUYS?

In the Marvel comics, street-level characters occasionally wander through the Spideyverse, particularly Daredevil, who has a lot in common with Spider-Man (i.e. guilt). But Punisher is a pretty rare guest star, mostly because he’s a crazy person who kills a lot of people, and Peter is um, not. Jon Bernthal has made a career of playing mentally-broken characters like this (he’s the dead brother on The Bear, Rick’s best frenemy Shane on The Walking Dead, etc. etc.). He just did a couple eps of the new Daredevil show, where he was a particularly unwell-derful Punisher. So stay tuned…

Also, Pixar’s new movie Elio cratered this weekend, with the lowest box office ever for a Pixar movie. And maybe that’s just because it’s really really hard to land a movie these days. It really really is. But I do have to ask, Can we talk about the eye patch?

Really: Who did that to that child? I am so unsettled.

And in the world of advertising, the Hollywood Reporter is reporting from the ad world’s version of Cannes (which is not coincidentally held at Cannes) that everyone is expecting AI to destroy them all. Which is horrible and also ironic in that so much of advertising today seems to be about trying to sell us on AI, which we are not buying.

It seems like a great moment to read the latest from the Onion, “Self-Producing Netflix Algorithm Produces Jeffrey Dahmer Stand-Up Special.”

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HI AND WELCOME TO MY GILDED AGE PODCAST

The Gilded Age returned to Max last night for its third season. After being billed as a sort of American Downton Abbey, the show has patiently delivered an excavation of the foundations upon which much of modern New York City is based. Last season explored among other things the building of the Metropolitan Opera House as a response by the new money families of the city to their continued exclusion by the old money of New York. (It turns out, the Met is basically the Gilded Age’s TikTok.)

The big ideas of the new season are still forming, though the instability of the banks seems once again on offer. But I did have these thoughts after the first episode:

• Why isn’t Christine Baranski listed in the credits as “Our Queen”?

• Bravo would be entirely within its rights to insist The Gilded Age is a Real Housewives rip off, it’s so good at giving you characters to hate. (Mrs. Russell is so much a Jersey Housewife there should be a reveal that her first name is actually Carla.)

• Is there or has there ever been any show on television with so many strong and varied female roles? Because Wow. (Also, so many Broadway stars!)

Finally, do me a favor and listen to the opening credits of The Gilded Age.

They’re great, right? Driving, dramatic, urgent right from the jump. And then at 32 seconds something else swells, something a bit more arc of history, big picture, and yearning. It’s just a few seconds there, but then it returns around the one minute mark, and basically takes over until the very end.

That longer bit, does it remind you of anything?

How about the last 40 seconds of this:

It’s true, I see Star Wars in everything. But sometimes in a show about elite women in late 19^th century New York, it’s actually there.

But what does it mean???

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SHARK ATTACKS WE KNOW AND DO NOT LOVE

It’s the 50^th anniversary of Jaws, or as I like to call it, the thing my parents watched at the drive-in the family station wagon after we all saw something kid-friendly and they had put us to bed in the back seat, the sounds of which were still scary enough to permanently affect my relationship with all bodies of water, and not for the better.

In their defense I also made a habit of buying paperback books about shark attacks, UFO abductions, and Bigfoot from the convenience store up the road. (I’m pretty sure that book is an actual title I had.)

It’s also the 20^th anniversary of Brokeback Mountain, which has nothing to do with Jaws, it’s just a weird coincidence.

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MOMENT OF WOW

It’s Pride Week in New York City, culminating on Sunday with the parade. The theme is “Rise Up: Pride in Protest.” (#!% Yeah.) Whether from home, the parade, or your parade, join us, won’t you?

Earlier this year Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS hosted its yearly fundraiser “Broadway Backwards”, in which Broadway stars sing songs that were originally written for a gender other than their own. And for me, one of the great constant stars of the event is Len Cariou.

Cariou, who many people know today from his work on Blue Bloods, spent most of his career on Broadway, playing generally very straight men. But for years now, into his 80s, he has shown up at Broadway Backwards and delivered a wonderful number.

Last year, he and Chip Zien did a song from Cabaret. If it doesn’t capture what queer people were fighting for in the 60s and what we’re still fighting for today, I don’t know what does.

Happy Pride, everybody. Have a great week!